Slashdot Mirror
When Forced "Upgrades" Bring You Down
Viadd sent us an interesting article about
unwanted upgrades. Its a little ranty, but it basically surrounds ReplayTV "Upgrading" their units by changing a feature in a way that Tog thinks is worse (and I'd tend to agree). With more software becoming subscription based, the line between bug fix, feature enhancement, and removal of features is going to get more blurry. I don't think that this particular example is the best, but this is really important to think about. Should we pay to remove bugs? What about when "Features" are trojaned along with the bugfix that we don't want? And what about when every device in your house is computerized? How does that amplify the problem? And what about when its a device like your tivo which upgrades automatically, leaving you no way out?
... Uh.. OK Shyster.. Nice try..
- A.P.
--
Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
It's pretty much been eradicated from the Internet out of fear that it might be illegal, but I found a copy of it here.
- A.P.
--
Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
We could either hack the DOC support into our current (single firewall) product, or rewrite the entire thing from scratch, and Do It Right(tm). We decided on the latter, and after 3 months of the dev and QA team working till midnight (or later in some cases) we have a product that is 99% done. We're back to normal hours anyway, and have one version out the door. A second one is currently undergoing final QA.
But back on track.
Before all you needed was a registration key. This was created by a serial number that you got when you purchased the product combinged with your MAC address, creating a unique key. Without this you got a demo mode, but still could update to the latest and greatest software.
Well, sales had their way and decided that hey, we can make this a revenue stream, and decided to make people pay for upgrades. This involved creating a new key which was basically a support receipt. Show the receipt at the door and you get upgrades... don't want to pay? Get only the last released version, no upgrades, no security fixes, no nothing. I personally don't like it, but I'm not at the top of the food chain here, so I can't complain too much.
But you'll notice a few things here:
Oh well, a little bit OT I'm sure, but it's interesting to see this from the other side. I wonder if this feature was originally put in because someone in the upper echelon said "hey, we can make more money from this thing!"
That's fine for the 19th century where 'service' meant going out and getting your shoes shined or something, but what about the 21st, 'everything is a service' century? You used to be able to _buy_ hardware (toasters, hammers, cars) that was just hardware, and there were organisations like UL that saw to it that you wouldn't get sold a toaster that would electrocute you if you spilled coffee under it. Increasingly everything is a service. Communication is a service. Interacting with other people becomes a service. Hell, soon your car will be a service- you'll be buying a license to run its software (that will say AS IS on it). What then? What, after all non-service, non-computer-internet-based industries have dwindled to the point that, in order to live a normal life, you have to choose which grocery service and which bill-paying service and which credit-card service you want?
"Surprise! Outlook Express has automatically upgraded you to a full Passport membership!"
Better yet- the next version of MS Word still has a spell checker, but saves disk space for you by keeping work file caches on a special Passport server...
It's like how if you accept the upgrade to the mp3 codec suggested by media player, it will downgrade your professional version of the Freunhoffer codec to the standard version. Not that I have an illegal copy of the codec...
guess what? The CD player I bought in 1985 won't play A lot of CD's that are released nowadays. For example, Wierd Al's latest, since it is 'mixed mode'. Is that not an unwanted upgrade? A CD is a CD right? Think before you open your trap.
This has been happening for years outside of the computer industry. I have a Stereo system built in 1974 that sounds better than just about anything on the market today. And it is still pumping bass. Anything you buy now is designed to die in a matter of months. This began in the mid-80's with the yuppies having more disposable income, manufacturers realized they could make stuff disposable. That is the same idea here. Everything will be disposable eventually, including computers.
uhm, the subscription fees? They haven't included lifetime fees in the base price yet, have they?
hawk
> versions removing features that the previous version had.
Word 6.0. Fatal removal.
Word 1.0-5.1 had typesetting commands. The typestting command let you type things such as
Word 1.0-5.x had a usable "insert symbol" command. You mapped it to a useful key (command-escape), and the next character you typed would be from the symbol font, and then return to whateveryou were doing. THose of us that use a lot of greek variables find this useful. THere may be a way to remap it, but as it comes, you use that command and get hit with at least two pop-up windows, the first to choose a symbol font, and the second to click a character.
These two features of word were the reasons I stayed with mac as long as they did. Once they were gone, I refused to "upgrade" at a loss of critical functionality. (And then I found lyx, and dumped mac for *nix, as it did those better than word anyway. I had to suggest the second one, but it was in the source within a week . . . and unlike the word typesetting commands, you can maneuver around your displayed equaition in lyx with the keyboard).
additionally, word 6 screwed up mailmerge for all but the most simplistic users. it used to be entered as text, but now you have to use oint-and-click, and rather than displaying the commands, it displays the result from the first object in the feed-file--and you *must* have a feed-file associated rather than specifying it in the document. how bad is this? if you have an "if", and the test is false for that item, the if only includes text when true, it displays the blank as the result. that's *all* it displays: nothing. try to click on nothing to change it . . . how painful is it to use? i used to prepare massive numbers of bankruptcy and divorce pleadings for my law practice with a hypercard front end and word mailmerge. when forced to face word 6 mailmerge to send out a couple of hundred semi-customized applications, i discovered that it would be less work to write a mailmerge module for lyx--and it was less work. what worse can you say about someone's software than that it's so much hassle to use
What worse can you say about someone's software than that it's less hassle to write your own than to use it???
hawk
DirecTV has already done this.
I'm also surprised to see this kind of thing shocking anyone. Yeah, it is really underhanded, but everyone saw it coming. Every person who used Tivo or ReplyTV had to think to themselves, "wow... this is great, but if everyone did this it wouldn't fly." There are some good and legitimate uses of these devices, but the commercial skipping feature was bound to cause problems. Inherently everyone who used the feature knew that it was a time bomb and wouldn't last. The bottom line is this: If you are doing something that undermines the system, and your only way of continuing to do it is the expectation that the vast majority will "play by the rules" then this is crossing the line into thievery.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
And viewers have no obligation to look at the ads. If they can block it out so that they never even become aware that there _are_ ads, they're entitled to. And since it's already paid for, you can even keep copies of the show forever. It's a great deal.
No one's making advertisers pay for TV either. If they can't adapt, too bad for them. It's certainly possible to have TV with no product ads - HBO's been doing it for years. They only advertise themselves....
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
DirecTV has done something similar; personally I've been expecting MS to introduce an autoupdate to Office at some point in the future that "slipped past QA testing" to force stragglers to adopt Office.Net. Naturally, updating won't be an option for the version or two immediately previous to .Net....
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
For a couple of months now, I've been playing the MMORTS game "Mankind" (read: playing far too much). It's published and maintained by a European company (French?) called Vibes.net. Periodically, Vibes updates the client game, and when you log on these updates will automatically be downloaded and installed. Nevermind the potential for a disgruntled employee to hit every MK player with a virus...
So here's what happened. Vibes decided, for whatever reason, that ingame e-mails should be stored on the player's computer rather than on the servers. So everyone logs on, and their clients download this update. Except, in addition to reorganizing the mail system, this update, for no explicable reason, screws up the entire building system. Most costs show up as negative numbers, disallowing you to execute those builds. Your builders say they can build ground structures in space, and space structures on the ground. In short, Total Chaos ensues as no one can get anything done, assuming they can even log on and enter their [star] systems.
Now, the big issue here is really that Vibes obviously needs better QA. I get the feeling they didn't test this patch AT ALL before releasing it. However, if the upgrade system wasn't force-feed, the people brave enough to download an untested patch (this isn't the first crazy-ass patch Vibes released) would be able to warn off the more cautious players from getting it.
Hypothetical examples can be instructive too. Think of what would have happened if every NS3 user had automatically been "upgraded" to NS4, or from 4 to the ultra-bloat of 6. Or if MS had forcefully pushed out the catastrophic IE5.5. Or if (heaven help us) the Linux kernel automatically "upgraded" itself...
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
If I may dream a little dream, what I would love to see is allowing me to pay extra (that they can give to the advertising asses) to not watch any commercials on taped shows. It'd be a simple thing to do - just a binary code embedded into the stream - 1s when it's the show, 0s when it's the commerical. I only watch 1s for an extra $10 a month...I'd pay that in a heartbeat!
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
> If you are pausing the TV, why are you paying attention to it??
To look at that frame in detail. Is that who it looks like in the background? Is that player offside? Is that ball over that line? It that spaceship really half a hairdryer spraypainted silver (B7)? What is the subliminal message in the Psi Corps advert (B5)? Are they reusing the model from episode with an extra bit stuck on?
--
rant
According to Q273006, this is "by design". Thanks, guys.
We need some sort of universal television listings data base protocol usable by any brand of "hard drive as VCR"-type device that contains the television listings and only the television listings. Any machine that has to be hooked up to a phone line and allowed to make any calls that it wants to and hold any kind of "conversation" that it wants to without you having any say in the matter or else it doesn't work, well you don't really own that machine, you've just licensed its "boat anchor" functionality. I just hope that automobiles don't turn into "transportation subscription delivery devices".
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The difference is that the show that you're watching doesn't have a commercial in the middle of whatever scene you paused it in the middle of. In effect, they are lying to you. Not to mention putting something on your television screen without your permission that you didn't ask for.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Removal of the 30-second skip backdoor
You can hardly equate this to the forced commercial watching that ReplayTV added. ReplayTV removed one of the key selling points of the unit. The feature that TiVo removed wasn't a selling point, was never mentioned in the marketing literature or owner's manual, and was not even accesible on an unmodified box. In fact, the general public was never even supposed to know it was there. It was simply some left over code for a feature that was apparently toyed, with but never meant for inclusion in the released product. So some clever folks figured out how to activate it, big deal. You still can't insinuate any evil-doing on TiVo's part for removing it.
Capacity reduction for hacked TiVos
Not even worth mentioning. The amount of space lost is fairly trivial. I only lost about 4 hours on mine. It's OK, I've got plenty of space to spare, I still never manage to fill the thing up anyway.
Autocorrection jump-back changes
Yep, you're right. The new setting for this feature sucks ass. Hard. Apparently, though, some "focus group" preferred it this way. One has to wonder if the focus group was made up of quad-amputees who were operating the remote with their noses. Even after a case of beer, my reflexes still aren't slow enough to accomodate the new settings.
Now instead of being able to see the whole name of a show, I can see adds for digital cable. Yay!
Almost as good as the local electric company running big ad campaigns on TV. I'm so very pleased that my rates are higher than necessary in order to allow them to advertise to what is a captive market anyway.
Heh, you have to educate your reflexes to become as slow as after 2 cases of beer!
That's a whole lot of beer. It would consume entirely too much time do down two cases every time I wanted to watch TV. Not to mention the expense involved. And the hangovers...
Maybe weed is the answer. If I remember my partying days correctly, it always slowed my reflexes WAY more than alcohol.
:-)
1.Make a skip-forward-15-seconds button (the only feature of ReplayTV I envy)?
If you still have software version 1.3, you can enable this functionality by setting the appropriate environment variable. Details should be here somewhere. Try the search engine.
Sadly, this ability seems to have been removed in software version 2.0.1. Sucks, but it's not quite as evil as what this article talks about, since it was never an official feature anyway, just some leftover code that wasn't really supposed to be there.
2.Make it so that when you press record mid-way through a show that you've been watching it doesn't discard what you've already watched?
The guy above me is correct. Software version 2.0.1 adds this ability, with one caveat: If you want to include the buffer in your recording, you have to also record the rest of the show in Best quality. Apparently, switching qualities in mid-recording proved too troublesome to deal with.
Howdy doodily doo!
>>made sure that it had the 1.3 software, because I live where there is no service.
you don't live in the USA or UK? just cause they don't CURRENTLY have your listings, let'em know, should take at most 3 weeks (worst case). friend bought one, his apartment complex's custom cable dealie didn't have listings. told TiVo, within a week he had listings, and they emailed him every step of the way so he knew how it was progressing. but if you don't live in the USA/UK, then i kinda see your point.
>>Removal of the 30-second skip backdoor
i'd say it would be more accurate to say 'the old backdoor trick no longer works'.
>>Capacity reduction for hacked TiVos
it was a rather pathetically small amount lost to 'reserved space' and TiVo did WARN people for approximately 6 months (or more) before the update was released that this would happen
>>Autocorrection jump-back changes
and thanks to Otto, you can change it back easily (or to whatever you think is the best amount), check out the underground forum over on www.tivocommunity.com
> I have to admit that hearing of ReplayTV disabling features is pretty sorry, and definitely makes for just cause to
> complain about the "autoupdate" features that have begun to appear in just about everything these days.
Thoughts like these went thru my head today at work.
I had to test some software on the Win2K platform, so I pulled an image from the network & pasted it on the box. Discovered this morning that the image didn't include Service pack 1, so I followed our network Admin's advice & connected the box to windowsupdate.com to get the patch.
I thought that what would happen was that I'd download the file & run the install from a local directory; what I saw happen was a netowrk upgrade. I have no idea what I downloaded & installed today, & can only trust Microsoft wasn't looking for another way to pry into what I had on that computer.
Aw well, it's only a test bed, & sometime in the next couple of months we'll fdisk & reinstall the software on it.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
> The service pack, as well as all of the other addons that are traditionally installed via
> network-download (aka Active Setup) are able to be downloaded and saved from the MS Windows 2000 page (it states
> it as network administrator download, just because they figure they'd be the only ones using it), which easily allows for
> download and then offline installation.
You're probably right, there's nothing evil going on, but I did all of this in dumb user mode (``I didn't do anything! I just booted up my computer, clicked on some stuff, & started typing away. So why doesn't it work, expert?") But I'm the sort of guy who always selects the custom install -- when asked -- just to see what gets installed. And I wasn't asked.
MS is obviously not coding software for the endusers. It's looking to other corporations, & what they are willing to pay for. And that should be a warning to everyone who uses their software.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
We have run into the same thing from a certain unnamed company. The interface is much slower and more prone to almost freezing for a few minutes. We also noticed that one by one channels started disappearing. Not that they were no longer being carried, but that the company claimed we never had them in the first place.
Gosh! How *dare* they change a system that they provide to you for no cost, so that they can maybe make some money off of it so they can ay for the bandwidth you are using?! Bastards!
Seriously, this is different than ReplayTV or TiVo, where you have already paid them for the service they are rendering. You've basically entered a contract with them by exchanging money for goods. How much have you paid for ICQ? Nada. Are they contractually obliged to you to provide that service? Nope. For them to change how their software works when it connects to their free service isn't unfair. It's just business.
Really, your only alternatives are to live with it, or to seek free alternatives, such as Jabber. But remember that even if the software is free, someone has to pay for the servers to manage the messaging network. TANSTAAFL.
Your analogy isn't even REMOTELY close. You are the sysadmin for those machines, at a company you work for! With ReplayTV, you are their customer, paying your valuable dollars for a product YOU NOW OWN that they are coming in and changing without your permission. I just don't see the comparison.
When you're pausing it so you can read something on the screen, or determine whether the receiver's foot was down before he left the end zone, or a myriad of other possibilities.
If "Freeze-Frame" was one of the included features of Replay, and they chose, without user validation, to remove that feature, then they're taking away something they've already paid for. Nevermind that they've since changed it back--the original behavior of the unit was altered without the customer's approval to be no longer in compliance with advertised specifications.
We've all seen the warning "Specifications subject to change without notice," except, in the past, once you've actually purchased something, the specifications stopped changing.
even when this feature was still active ... you could bypass the ads simply by pressing one more key after you hit Pause
If this restored the live-action TV, then you're still not regaining the lost freeze-frame feature. If this turns off the ad and returns you to the current program, frozen on the screen, then it's a little more acceptable. But still, it's something that you didn't ask for, and that wasn't part of the deal when you bought the unit.
What if Netscape or Microsoft downloaded updates to their browsers that forced you (and hackers couldn't figure out how to prevent the forcing) to view an ad before each page you viewed? Sure, you can get past the ad simply by clicking somewhere, but it's still a feature you didn't ask for. And, technically, legally, there's no reason the next patch you download can't do exactly that. Then where will we be?
FINALLY. someone with some sense.
Disclaimer: I'm an avid TiVo user. Thus, my bias is to presume that ReplayTV users are chumps / suckers / whatever. Don't take it personal.
It sounds to me like ReplayTV users have a business relationship with a company, and that this company is abusing the relationship. When that happens, unless it's someone you just can't shake like the power company, it's up to you to remedy the situation.
It sounds like, from some other posters, that they removed this "feature" some time ago. Personally i never heard of it, but I don't know anyone who uses a ReplayTV box. So, it would seem, that the situation has been resolved.
On a larger scale, the set-top appliances now coming onto the market are setting the precedent for subscription-based software to come, and so far it seems to be going well.
Sure, there will be evil out there, but the sky isn't falling.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
Well number one you dont own your digital box, so they can make it display anything they want and you cant do anything about it. Simple fact, they own it... you dont.
Second, digital cable is terribly slow. it's in it's infancy. you try streaming mpeg2 video at 640x480 on 50 channels over a single cable and see how fast things react. They are doing amazing things over simple Coax.
Oh, good luck with the sattelite carriers, their boxes suck more, get updated constantly. and have more outages than most at&t cable systems. ( know I had it. want my box and dish? I'll give it away for free. it's crap to begin with.(sorry no card. sold on ebay for $100.00)
I wish I had the luxury of being in a digital cable area.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Warning: May be Offtopic.
.25dot pitch job. Not a Trinitron, but hey, a big step up from 15. Total paid for upgrades over 24 months: $1280.00 or so.
I hear a lot of griping about forced upgrades and obsolescence of PCs, especially in this thread and in the "Cheap $500 PC" sub-thread of the MacOS X article from earlier today. Here is my experience, in the hopes it might make you realize just how easy it can be to stay "with the curve" with respect to the ever-increasing PC specs.
In March 1999, I bought a new Abit BX6 Revision 2 motherboard with the Intel 440BX chipset and a Slot1 processor interface. ($125) I assembled a system in an Enlight 7200 series ATX desktop case/PS ($50), 64megabytes of PC100 RAM ($125), Celeron 333 Slot1 processor ($100), 32x CD-Rom ($50), Floppy drive ($15), nVidia Riva128ZX AGP video card ($25), 4.3GB HD ($85), Generic Keyboard and mouse ($25), SoundBlater 16 ISA sound card (Free), 56K external modem left over from my Mac (Free) and reasonable 15" monitor someone gave me (Free). Shares a printer with iMac; cheap Canon printer has USB and parallel interfaces, so we use both. So $600.00 initial investment, less the $200 I received on eBay for the sale of my older Mac Quadra 840av. (My wife had pretty much taken over the "new" iMac we got in November 1998, so I needed a PC for myself).
Since then I have done the following upgrades:
Upgrade to Celeron 366 processor, overclocked to 550MHz ($120 including Alpha Heatsink). Added 128 meg stick of PC100 RAM ($100). Moved everything into new, 10-bay full-tower ATX case ($60 including shipping). Spray-painted case and drive fronts silver and changed power LED to a brilliant blue one like VALinux uses on their servers ($4). Installed "geek." sticker ($3) from thinkgeek.com on side of unit.;)
Got DSL, added 3com 10/100 PCI NIC ($40). Installed 2x DVD-Rom drive ($45) and Creative DXR2-overlay DVD decoder PCI card ($30). Installed SB Live! PCI sound card ($50). Added SCSI CD-R from another old Mac, and bought PCI SCSI card ($200 total). Added PCI Ultra ATA-100 PCI card ($40) and 30GB, 7200RPM ATA-100 hard drive ($130).
Upgraded processor again to Celeron II-600 ($75), running at 927 MHz with Alpha heatsink, with Abit Slotket III FC-PGA to Slot1 adapter card $15). (Had to update BIOS for that one, but since Abit was kind enough to put out updates, this mobo will run processors up to 1GHz, despite being designed when the fastest processor was still 500MHz.)
Upgraded video card to GeForce2MX AGP card ($130). Just added new stick of PC133 RAM, 256 megs ($90). Added speakers + sub from eBay ($30). Bought 19" monitor ($248) from WalMart, REAL nice
Sold all replaced parts (vid card, case, 2 processors) on eBay for about $130.
Here it is March 2001, and guess what: by buying an expandable motherboard, and middle-of-the-road-priced (but quality) components for 24 months... I spent a net of $1550 for a very feature-complete, very fast (almost one gigahertz, with 448 megs of RAM and fast I/O), and spiffy-looking box. That works out to about $65 month hardware allowance, which for somebody like me is NOT all that much. Plus, I can watch DVDs on my TV (video card has SVideo out) and burn CDs.
So my point is, play your cards right and ride the upgrade-frenzied industry out as long as you can. I have at least another year before I'll upgrade my motherboard to a dual-socket AMD motherboard with DDR RAM, so I just set the PC budget aside and enjoy what I have!
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
Enough ReplayTV Customers (myself included) complained about this new "feature" that they removed it in a subsequent version of the OS. The system still works, congratulations.
echo Prpv a\'rfg cnf har cvcr | tr Pacfghnrvp Cnpstuaeic
Yes, his standing as a guru of "human interface evangelism" and "practical design" has dropped in my eyes. Guess what, Tog? Real humans read straight quotes all day long and like 'em.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
At the very least, I think this is going to enrage a lot of people who use "traditional" appliances (TVs, VCRs, washing machines, etc.) and don't expect the functionality to suddenly change on them with no notice, and more importantly, to have a freature which they presumably paid for be replaced by something useless to them!
It would be like pressing the "mute" button on your TV's remote control and having the channel changed to QVC or something.
--
I have to admit that hearing of ReplayTV disabling features is pretty sorry, and definitely makes for just cause to complain about the "autoupdate" features that have begun to appear in just about everything these days.
But a better example would be of one of the oldest and best Intant Messengers, ICQ. I've been using ICQ since 1996 now, and although people constantly have complained about the "feature bloat" that seems to find its way into each new revision, I've stuck through it, because that "bloat" has been merely surface deep in my opinion with the option of being disabled once I found my way deeper into the preferences.
But I returned from Spring Break three weeks ago to find that ICQ's new "autoupdate" feature (which it doesn't give you the option to enable or disable) had added advertisements to all of my ICQ windows. (This is with ICQ 2000a/b for Win32) I was horrified...how dare they change the way my program works without even consulting me? They could also be sending my personal information up to ICQ for their advertising purposes....the bastards! --Somehow I can't help but think that it's all AOL's fault for buying ICQ in the first place.
Thankfully, a few hacks and tweaks later, I was able to kill the damned advertisements (you can read how to do it from my site here, although various programs and utilities for doing the same duties have recently popped up). But although the autoupdate feature is now disabled, I am very disconcerted by the possibility that this will begin to happen in other software.
Will Netscape/Mozilla soon be autoupdating itself with advertisements and Spam to appear in the titlebar? We all know what RealPlayer already does...so what happens if they decide to autoupdate us all to no more media player (the media player only makes up 10% of a RealPLayer window anyway) and just make the whole thing one large advertisement?
We need to band together to send these companies a message that this kind of treatment will not be tolerated. We should not and will not sit by and allow companies to take control of our software from us. How should we go about doing this? Any ideas?
Let's band together...and prevent further atrocities like ICQ and ReplayTV from continuing.
-Julius X
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
WMP7 and MP6 both store their info as basic Windows codecs. WMP comes with a better selection than MP6 did though.
However...WMP will not phone home without your consent if you dont' want it to. Just change the options in the WMP Options menu for autoupdates and codec downloads. Very easy.
However, I like your idea about RealPlayer. I'd go all the way back to 4.0 if I could, before they adopted the nonstandard interface that always seems to slow things down. For me, I just always disabled their *barf* SmartCenter "feature" and run it in small mode so I don't have to deal with the crap.
-Julius X
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
I don't think that was the main trust of the argument though. The issue is that in the future as software becomes more and more subscription based you're going to see ads pop up on your favorite (non-open-source) desktop. And as more entertainment comes online and movies become streaming rather than rental, and with the convergence of more computing power in the home entertainment system Microsoft will begin to see that it (and AOL/Time-Warner among others) is the new form of TV.
You don't think they'll pad the bottom line by charging for ads? Ads targeted specifically at you since they now know what software you run, when you run it, how late you stay up, how much pr0n you download (if applicable), where you trade, how much you use eBay, and so on. It's all open-season. That coupled with the poor saps that will be forced to use Passport with Windows XP, you've got some ripe privacy violations just waiting to happen (not to mention terrific targeted marketing to sell).
I had a problem playing diablo2, my cdrom (and many others) wouldnt support their copy protection algorithm, so they released a patch. I liked diablo2 for a few months. Diablo2 forces patches down my throat when i connect. They fixed it so good i cant play diablo2 again. They say a fix is coming soon. I havent played diablo2 in 6 months. I hate blizzard. Its nice that you can make a game, have people buy it, and then break it so they cant play it anymore, and thats just fine with them.
Ultimately though, this means more work for the company anyway.
Why?
Well imagine their servers. They have to keep backwards compatibility with your older box, or else they lose you as a customer. Or you're forced to upgrade. I think lots of people have been talking and thinking about this as only a client-side issue, but it's server side as well.
Simply put, you cannot expect a company to allow you to configure every aspect of their product and support it at the same time. It sucks, yes. But as long as there's a server at the other end that your client has to interact with, that's how it is. No one's forcing you to upgrade your Windows or Linux installation to continue using it. Even Windows 3.1 can still be used, as long as you only use the software available for it.
Fact of the matter is, if you're using their service, you gotta play by their rules.
What gets me are programs that have no server with which to communicate (in order to function, that is) but automatically check for an update and download/install it for you. This is not only an annoyance, but a security risk as well.
Well, in regards to the autocorrection, I feel fairly confident that they'll add some way to adjust it in the next version. Simply because the variables are there now, making a menu of some sort to tweak them shouldn't be difficult. Regardless, the autocorrection was about the most hotly debated topic when 2.0 was in beta. Personally, I hate the extended length. But I tweaked it, so no biggie.
However, I have to take issue with the "there's no positives". View Upcoming Episodes is the most useful feature I can imagine to have added to the Tivo. The Season Pass Manager is a close second. 1.3 was almost unusable without the View Upcoming Episodes functionality. Wishlists are nice, and excellent for catching things that suggestions don't. Essentially, the combination of these things let you stop relying on suggestions to catch "occasional" shows that you want to watch.. That's the big benefit.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
It's sort of a different case if they change the service so that it's completely different from what it was when you bought it. But like I said, they reserved that right in the EULA, so even though it really sucks balls, you accepted that risk.
This is one reason I think software as a subscription is a horrible idea. If the next incarnation of MS Word (Word.NET I assume) decides that I don't really need a spell checker, I'm SOL. But like the title says, speak with your wallet. If/when I get a computer that comes with any subscription-based software the first thing I'll do is format, install my warezed win2k and warezed o2k (hypothetically speaking of course). The only thing companies care about is money. If they find a feature in an app is causing them to lose money, they'll remove it. If adding a super-annoying "feature" (e.g. ads) will get them more money, they'll add it in a second. Why anybody would expect them to do anything else is beyond me.
__________________________________________________ ___
rooooar
I have a simple cheapo webcam from Logitech, and when I downloaded a "patch" from them to fix some minor bugs and add some functions to the basic software that came with it, I noticed something very wrong.
The original software had a webcam-update feature that defaulted to using a partner website (forget the name now), but it allowed you to send the JPEGs and HTML anywhere you wanted, via FTP. SO, I had a nice little webpage on my site with a randomly-updated image of me looking stupid staring at my monitor.
The "upgraded" software will ONLY connect to the Logitech partner site, and they have thus far (4 months) ignored my emails requesting an explanation or a fix. So, I am forced to look for shareware or freeware programs to do something that is explicitly ADVERTISED will work on a piece of $40 hardware. Naturally, I can't just go back to the original software, since it is incompatible with WinME, which is on my new machine and which prompted the update in the first place. Grrr...
Illegitimi non carborundum
I can't wait until we hear about the first "upgrade virus", an infection that gets on a shoveware server and then tells all the suckers they need to download an "upgrade" with the hostile payload in it.
Think of the thrill of destroying millions of computers in a matter of hours.
OK, pedantics will note that what I'm describing isn't stricly a virus or a worm, so call it what you will.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Heh...
"Microsoft Windows Update has detected unsupported operating system partitions on your hard disk. As unsupported operating systems are known to be "lousy" and "anti-american" and "destroy intellectual property", it will be upgraded to NTFS, giving you 34 GB of free hard disk space! Please wait....".
Upgrade complete! Click OK to reboot your computer...
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
Speaking of this, does anyone know how to:
0 .html it replaces the functionality of the "Advance" button
1. Make a skip-forward-15-seconds button (the only feature of ReplayTV I envy)?
There is supposedly a code to enable 30 second skip on versions of tivo software less than 2. Details here: http://www.avsforum.com/ubbtivo/Forum1/HTML/00554
2. Make it so that when you press record mid-way through a show that you've been watching it doesn't discard what you've already watched?
That functionality will be in 2.0. But no one has yet discovered the code to enable 30-second-skip in 2.0...
TiVo rocks.
Also, the guide only holds about 2 days of programming in it, and only half the shows in the guide have blurbs for them. It used to hold a week of programming, and had info on many more shows. Now where do you think AT&T found the memory space to store those ad images, after filling the box's firmware full of code to display useless eye candy?
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
A certain cable company I was using (by lack of other choice)
Oh, do you mean AT&T Digital Cable?
There's no need to withhold names to protect the guilty.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
... but, this real-play thing is their software and hardware is it not? And you are also subscribing to their services right? True, it may not be convient, but I don't know that it's not moral. Unless they promised in the beginning not to give you ads, I can't see how this would be morally wrong. In addition, I would assume that the advertisement does allow you to go right back to the program when you return to your TV. It's like if I run an office, with a bunch of computer and a Novell network. One day I decide to change the log-in script to do something different. I dont' really need to tell any of the users that I've changed anything, might be nice to do, but I need not do it. So maybe I now change all their screen savers to "Dilbert".. ? not morally wrong.. but perhaps inconvient?
You will have banner-ads integrated in your toaster when you upgrade it to correct the 'burnt-toast-while-in-shower' bug.
Nope, eh, I live in Canada eh. I've been trying to get them to bring TiVo here for over a year, eh, but no luck, eh.
If you haven't already got the 2.0 software you have two choices. Give up on getting the TiVo service, no updates, no guide data, etc. and keep the features you like in v1.3, or accept the change.
I have no hard choice to make. I just recently got a TiVo, and made sure that it had the 1.3 software, because I live where there is no service. So far it's by far the best VCR I've ever owned. Buffering live TV is amazing, having about 16 shows queued up for recording is wonderful. Not having to search for a blank tape, or the blank part of a tape is sooo convenient. Having the service would be nice, but I can live without it.
Besides, the system runs Linux. Sure it's stripped down, running on a PPC chip with some strange libraries but it's Linux -- BASH shell and all. I've been poking around with it for about a week and I think within a month or so I should be able to give it my own guide data from sources I can find on the web. And you know what? It's *fun* to hack.
I agree that it kinda sucks that the upgrade is not optional and breaks some things that people counted on. But you do have a choice -- until you get 2.0 you don't *need* the service for the thing to work.
The commercials on pause was an original feature of Replay. It was 'upgraded' out months ago. You no longer get commercials when paused. They even took out the Replay Zone's that were basically commercials for one networks programming. Perhaps the original replay units are getting different upgrades, but my panasonic doesn't have these issues.
\w0zz - OpenBSD - A Better Solution
Replay has left the commercial marketplace, so perhaps you can fairly call that "failing." They are now licensing the technology to be embedded into other systems, and products like Set Top Boxes.
I would speculate since Replay has left the commercial marketplace and the collapse of ad supported business models has more to do with the feature's removal than anything else.
http://www.hawknest.com/
I don't use the pause much, but thought it was still there, it just doesn't start until 10-15 seconds after you push pause. In any case, they've stated from the very beginning that ads were coming. How else do they pay for the program guide? That doesn't come free and anyone who expected otherwise is living in an ivory tower or should have bought a Tivo (which I think is a much inferior device) where they pay monthly for the program guide. The issue of forced updates is one worth discussing, but that's life with any product: just try to get support for an Edsel, DOS, Xenix-286 or Quicken 98. I loved DOS Quicken because it was fast and easy to use, with keyboard commands I was used to. When I ran into a problem with it however, I was forced to update to the Windoze version because that was the only way to get a fix. Fortunately Quicken's been improved since, but it's fundamentally the same problem.
Windows 9x?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Yes. PayMyBills has "upgraded" me *two times* now since they were taken over by PayTrust. The first "upgrade" was to take away the system where they wrote their own checks on my behalf (instead of simply printing checks with my name and account number). Now when a check gets to its destination, it may bounce. And it doesn't shield my account number like their semi-money order did.
The next upgrade was to charge me for my account that had one year of free service left. Oh, and also to "upgrade" me to a plan that charges on a per "transaction" basis (which the "transaction" was upgraded to mean a bill received or a payment sent).
I just LOVE these upgrades.
Tivo just did this to me as well. They send some notice about an upgrade including all kinds of details. I didn't think much of it and went ahead with the upgrade. I think they let you opt out, but I'm not totally sure about that. I'm pretty sure there is no way to go back. They ended up adding some really useful features that cut down on remote clicks a lot, however, in the process they introduced some ugly interface items and some other annoying features. I think we can expect a lot more of this
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
in a world without bounderies or fences, who needs Gates anyway?
I am a Replay Tv owner and also have a relative who works as an engineer at Replay. Replay added the described "feature" in an attempt to raise much-needed money. People complained so they removed it.
As a software developer, I definitely see the advantages to automatic upgrades, especially when the hardware is a closed system. Without automatic upgrades, technical support can become a nightmare, since everyone could have different revs of the firmware, and new versions should fix old problems. Theoretically, the product will improve with age. Automatic upgrades of non-closed systems (i.e. a PC) are not a good thing, since there is a good chance that the upgrade will break user-installed software and/or hardware.
Now both Replay and Tivo are hungry for money. Both companies are losing money. Accordign to Freeedgar, Tivo lost over 200 million dollars, last quarter losing 89 million dollars. Replay has also lost a lot of money, but never went IPO. Replay is currently being acquired by Sonic Blue, formerly Diamond Multimedia and S3.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
And SP5 is notably unstable... SP6a was the next best thing after SP3...
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
But you should have the right to refuse the "upgrade" so long as you don't ask them to support it. The Replay device is an appliance, not a license--if they want to rent the devices, they should do so. Otherwise, they shouldn't force "upgrades."
Fact of the matter is, if you're using their service, you gotta play by their rules.
Fair enough--but then they should be required to disclose all those rules in plain language, prominently, and pre-purchase. Only then can the manufacture wax righteous that "it's what the customer agreed to." At the moment, the fact that a service is required at all is downplayed, and there's certainly nothing in their product literature stating prominently that they can force "upgrades."
What gets me are programs that have no server with which to communicate (in order to function, that is) but automatically check for an update and download/install it for you. This is not only an annoyance, but a security risk as well.
I agree. It's only a matter of time before there's some massive trojan deployment that takes advantage of one of these.
ReplayTV has already disabled this feature.
In fact, they did so months ago!
Thanks for pointing that out, the article really had me scratching my head - I bought a Replay a couple months ago, and I'd never seen this "feature".
File this one under "old news".
but the big problem with that sort of leverage is this: for it to work, people (at some point) have to be willing to actually cancel the service to get the company to listen. But once you cancel the service, you stop receiving (all or some of) the benefit of the product. If you don't buy another Replay, you can use the current one, which is fair and paid for. If you stop subscribing to TiVo, you have to give up a lot of the convenience that the product brought you.
Take cellphones as a very similar example. Most cellphone companies suck and their services are too expensive (I think) but changing providers is a huge hassle. plus there aren't any really GOOD providers to switch to. Verizon could certainly make me listen to an ad every time i place a call; is the moral outrage going to outweigh the cost of having to change my digits?
I don't think most people are so willing to give up the convenience of services that they've already gotten used to or started relying upon.
The guy's jumping the gun. ReplayTV _did_ notify its customers of a system upgrade, which included the advert "feature", through a News Message downloaded to the unit -- he should have checked this. The feature was pulled later during a bug fix a few weeks later and no longer exists.
The user agreement he agreed to upon service activation allows Replay service to upgrade the box when they see fit. The loser has no case.
Dude, you rock!
(And props to Julius X for his comment encluing me about the WMP options menu to turn off the auto-phone-home feature, *doh*, I've gotten so accustomed to MS wanting to do this stuff "for me" that I never considered they'd put an option in to turn it off - so I never looked! ;-)
No, I don't want the new player with a million flashing banners in it. I just want to play the damn video stream, and all I need is the missing .DLL file associated with the new codec, damnit!
My solution: Check what's in C:\Wherever\Common Files\Real, copy it out, perform the "upgrade" on an expendable Windoze install, and see what DLLs got upgraded.
Then just copy the new DLLs into the old directory. Odds are you'll be able to play the .RM file just fine.
I've managed to keep using RealPlayer version 6 up to the present day using this technique.
Does anyone have a similar hack for things like the Sorenson .MOV codec under 'doze media player? I'm damned if I'm ever upgrading that monstrosity past version 6. It's bad enough that Real tries to re-download itself when it finds an unknown codec, but WMP phones home without my consent to do it "automatically".
Fuck that. Anyone know where WMP stores its files, and what's required for the various codecs?
TiVo runs Linux and has been hacked pretty well. So if they remove something and you want it back, add it yourself.
But.... I think it's easy to see why ReplayTV did this. They are failing. TiVo is beating them in the market, for good reason. ReplayTV isn't selling boxes any more, they are trying to "license their technology!". Which, if you know anything about this business, means they are gone.
If you are pausing the TV, why are you paying attention to it??
I find advertisements annoying. Most of them are flashy, extra loud, and in short penetrating. The advertiser wants your attention by all means he can get. When i'm pausing the TV it's most likely i want to focus on something else, maybe taking a phonecall. Then i really don't want advertises blaring in the background.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
What bothers me even more is the possibility of redefining the contract under which you are allowed to use the thing. With the new update comes one of these click-away contracts which may as well redefine the terms of use. Maybe a DVD-player suddenly asks you to buy a special version if you want to run public shows. I really don't want to think of something really nasty here in fear of seeing it in reality tomorrow.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
I've had my ReplayTV for, oh, 6-8 months now I think. Maybe a bit more. Anyway, I noticed the ads during pause myself. Kind of annoying, but it was just a static image of Santa drinking a Coke. Big deal.
A couple months ago, however, the ads went away. I haven't seen an ad (be it a placeholder like they had, or Santa drinking Coke, or whatever) during pause or anything else for quite a long time. I can't explain it, but I'm not sure what this guy is complaining about nowadays.
Really, you do want to upgrade. When I first got my Tivo, I loved it. But after a while, you notice that some things are pretty awkward, some obvious features are missing and some things are just wrong.
:)
2.01 fixes 60% of my pet peeves, and introduces some new features I didn't even know I needed
I heard people complain about the autocorrection change, but I haven't even noticed it.
Adding insult to injury, SP4 itself did not fix all the Y2K bugs and hotfixes were necessary. SP5 is the minimum "safe" version.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
They did, in fact, do what the author of this article described, around Christmas time last year (I remember the coke-drinking Santa Claus ad in particlar) but (on my unit, at least) they removed the extra commercials and restored the way it used to work in less than two months, so I'm not sure what this guy is complaining about:
- They did something people didn't like
- customers complained
- they fixed it.
Where's the story?Yep, I already would scour the html source for the .mov, copy the link, and paste it into my \trash\t.htm file. That about: trick is very cool.
Thx !
It turns off the ad and puts the frozen frame back on the screen.
Although the question raised by this article is still valid, the basic facts that provoked it are already obsolete. ReplayTV has already disabled this feature.
In fact, they did so months ago!
I'm a very happy long-time Replay owner (since October of 1999) and I agree with the author that the product has significant advantages over Tivo. However, I think he's blown this all out of proportion.
First of all, when you are pausing the show you are watching, what difference does it make if they put an advertisement on the screen? Really, is it that much of an intrusion? Come on!
Second of all, even when this feature was still active (and its been disabled for months now) you could bypass the ads simply by pressing one more key after you hit Pause. (The Exit key).
Once again, this is much ado about nothing, in the case of the specific ReplayTV feature, anyway.
Actually, rolling-back to SP3 from SP4 was not easy due to the fact that SP4 made changes to the SAM and Security Hives of NT 4.0. This change also makes it difficult to use the NT 4.0 CD to do repair installations on post-SP4 systems.
A bit off topic, but....
All the talk of razor blades reminds me of a conversation my roommates had. They came to the conclusion that by _weight_, razor blades are the most valuable substance on earth.
you mean Ass-backwards compatibility..
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
Notwithstanding the earlier comments about the feature having been corrected after lots of people complained...
Software is just a set of instructions that controls hardware, so it seems logical that the software would do what you want it to do. What is it going to do; complain?
But that isn't really true. Software serves the purposes of the people who write it, but only indirectly serves the needs of the consumer who buys it. A company writes useful software because they can trade that software for money, and writing good software lets them collect more money for more software. But the software is written by the company and for the company.
That is really the reason that I love Linux. It is written for my needs by other people with the same needs. Compare the advertising screens in AIM and GAIM for example, the ad filtering tools of Netscape 6 (or IE for that matter) versus Mozilla, or the spam filtering of procmail and mutt compared with Outlook.
Advertising pressure is all around us. Eventually your VR-spec's will no doubt advertise nearby pizza parlours in flashing green and red trying to attract your attention away from the sidewalk ahead of you.
He who has the code controls his own future; I want to be in control of the data I see, I don't want the machines that serve me to make their own decisions about what I should see based on the interests and focus groups of the corporations that supply them.
I'd add that the end of the world is upon you all, but then I really would be needlessly raving. But truly -- all of you who cut down open source or Linux every chance you get. Have you really thought through what you will be getting instead?
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
ReplayTV has a presence in the AVS Forum, so post any gripes/suggestions about the ReplayTV there.
------
James Hromadka
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
One forced upgrade that I'm really pissed about right now is that of internet explorer.
/. a few days ago, it mentioned that they didn't put out a patch for 4.02, let alone even test to see if it HAD the bug! So now I have to be veeeery wary when using IE4... sucks.
Sure, most people who use it are using versions 5.01 or 5.5 right now.... but what about those who aren't? I actually PREFER version 4.02 to the latter stuff, but with the bug that was on
-----
This happened to me, in a slightly different realm. A certain cable company I was using (by lack of other choice) "upgraded" their digital cable service about 6 months ago. Unfortunately, the upgrade was horrible. It limited some of the basic functionality of digital cable drastically (the worst was the guide menu, which shrunk horizontally to one time slot, vertically to 6, down from 3 and 9).
They obviously had something new and better to replace this with: lots and lots of advertising. They started inserting ads everywhere possible. The guide was blanketed with a pay-per-view ad in one corner, a cable service ad in another (go figure, you already have it, and they still have to eat valuable screen space to advertise to you), and an ad they were selling out to local businesses in the third corner, leaving a very small area for the actual guide menu. They also added advertisements to the banner that appears as you change channels.
Unfortunately, the end user had no choice, as the upgrade just happened over the cable feed, and there was no way to control it. The worst of it, though, was that they decided that the new features (advertisements) made it much nicer, I suppose, so they raised the subscription rate about 10% over the already rediculous amounts.
I did spend about 2 hours on the phone, listing specific complaints with them, with the basic response of "tough", to which I promptly cancelled my service and lived without television for a short while. Luckily, I moved soon after, and haven't had quite the same problems here.
Unfortunately, with some of these markets that have such huge barriers to entry, it's tough to do much about the shit some companies want to impose on their users. Too little competition, and only between 2 or 3 companies, really keeps service crappy. Often, the only real control you have is not to partake in their service.
I know, I am using broken software to begin with, but it is on my work supported computer, and I need to run Windoze to support certain apps that don't work under a real OS yet. So I try to keep the thing updated, and will usually apply "patches" to keep the system as stable as possible (even W2K bluescreens on me, less than NT4, but still....). So, I installed the Outlook Security Patch. There is no uninstall for this. What I have now is the inability to send links from within IE, executables from my harddrive, and a bunch of other problems I haven't even un-earthed. The worst is that there is no way to back out, short of re-imaging my laptop! Pretty amazing actually..... Robert
Man I'm sick of all these Gen-X'ers talking about the MARKET, they have this faith that the market will always produce the best solution to any problem ... what none of you realize is that while the market is "correcting" consumers are getting fucked.
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
offtopic test...
I work for a School District in PA, we use a lot og Macintosh computer in all of our labs. When computers used to have hard drive problem we would pop in our trust Norton disk doctor for Mac and it could fix the problem right away. With the new Macs that are coming out Apple designed them so that each model could only boot from a bootCD made for that specific model. That breaks Norton on almost every computer we have. I'm wondering if Apple did this intentionaly so that 3rd party utilities would be broken. Interestingly enough Apple released it's own version Disk Tool software that can boot all the Macs, but it costs a fortune for a district License.\ =\=\=\=\=\
=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=
Automatic software updates are about trust. Some companies and organizations i trust. I strongly trust Debian. I trust Apple to do auto-updates on their own software. I trust TiVo, unless they run out of money and sell themselves and don't retain the same employees.
Talk about loss of features....
Ok my karma is maxed out. When do I become Enlightened?
A. The ReplayTV Service is the heart of ReplayTV. It provides the nightly Channel Guide updates to your ReplayTV unit. This ensures you've always got the latest TV shows to record. Part of the nightly update is ReplayZones-categories of the best shows from some of the biggest names in television. The Zones change every day, so you always have access to the best new programming. The ReplayTV Service is your personal television organizer. ReplayTV will record: your favorite daily or weekly shows shows based on a theme you choose shows you find using a keyword search shows from the ReplayZones categories you pick In addition, when new features are available, the ReplayTV Service delivers them directly to the ReplayTV unit over the telephone line.
A. The basic ReplayTV Service is free. That's right, no monthly fees to pay. That should free up some cash for your favorite snacks-which, by the way, you can now grab whenever you want. Just hit pause. And have fun.
Note that nothing in the "features" indicates that they will ever download advertising, or delete an existing feature.
So if they go beyond that, they've "exceeded their authorized access", as the term is used at 18 USC 1030, the "anti-hacking" statute:
(4) knowingly and with intent to defraud, accesses a protected computer without authorization, or exceeds authorized access, and by means of such conduct furthers the intended fraud and obtains anything of value, unless the object of the fraud and the thing obtained consists only of the use of the computer and the value of such use is not more than $5,000 in any one-year period;
Viewed in terms of federal computer crime law, Replay's actions look like this:
1. Replay misrepresented their intent in requesting access to the user's computer.
2. Having thus fradulently induced the user to provide said access, they then abused the limited access their users provided them to break into the user's computer and install a program.
3. Said program gained revenue for Replay, thus obtaining something of value.
That looks like a federal crime. The FBI's local office should be contacted.
See, I'm not sure it's entirely true that manufacturers just give people what they want. There are powerful forces in effect that cause manufacturers to seduce, trick or browbeat people into desiring whatever it is that the manufacturer is producing - whether people really want or need it at all.
Let's say you have a factory. Using classic Industrial Revolution assembly-line technology, this factory allows you to make things. Of course, the economy of scale is in full effect here, so in order for you to produce items cheaply enough to offset the factory's operating costs you must produce massive quantities of those items.
Now it's not enough to just produce lots of items - they won't pay off your operating costs by sitting in a warehouse, you know! (In fact, they'll just cost you more money if you store them for any length of time - inventory is bad.)
And you can't decide not to produce lots of items, because then your factory is just sitting there, using up valuable real estate, and costing you money!
So you have all these items that you must produce - whichs costs money - and then you have to sell them, to recover the cost of making them. Turning a profit is nice, too.
As a result, manufacturers are constantly faced with warehouses full of random stuff that they must then get us to purchase. Why? Not because we need it. Not because we wanted it - hell, we didn't even know Nike Air Jordans existed until Nike told us about them. . . No, they must sell this stuff simply because it's there.
It's not always like this, but it's often enough the case that you can't seriously say that manufacturers just sell us what we want. They sell us whatever they have, assuming their marketing campaign is good enough to convince us to exchange money for it.
Now go buy a Mercedes SUV.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
What is going to happen when toasters and fridges start to auto update and they break? You don't have the flex to grab your floppies or cd's to reinstall the previous version. Will my toast be burned along with my house? My beer warm and my ice cubes wet? We've all done an upgrade at one point or another that broke usability on a machine. I wonder how this is going to pan out as this upgrade model becomes more prevalent.
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
When's the last time you've been able to use a computer with off-the-shelf games
My games are so off-the-shelf that they've never even been on a shelf. Am I correct in inferring a hierarchy analogous to that of New York theater, i.e. "shelf," "off-shelf," and "off-off-shelf"? Besides, there are still some very popular games that don't need a GeForce or a 1 GHz Athlon. For example, TETRIS® and TETANUS(TM) both run just fine on my 25 MHz 486DX. If game makers can't make their software gracefully degrade on old hardware, that's their problem.
and Windows applications, as well as Windows itself, for more than a year or two
Most popular proprietary apps require Windows 95, or Windows 95 with Winsock 2. M$ Office, on the other hand...
Will I retire or break 10K?
Apple's Quicktime doesn't let me save the .mov either. I happen to LIKE saving movie trailors and backing them up to my "Movies CD".
View Source on the HTML document that links to or embeds the movie and grab the movie's HTTP URL. (This does not work for pnm:// or rtsp:// URLs or URLs whose servers are Referer: protected.) Then make a new HTML document that links to said URL. (In IE, you can enter about:<a href="url">here</a> to create this document on the fly.) Right-click the link, Save Target As..., enter a path on your local filesystem, wait an hour, and your movie is ready to play.
Will I retire or break 10K?
a friend had a folder with every single installer for every version of every program that he's ever downloaded, I thought that it was a great idea. The folder is archived to CD every six months or so
I do this too; I have at least two CDs of this stuff (mixed in with a bit of w4r3z), but sometimes it fails:Will I retire or break 10K?
Apple also recently announced a firmware "upgrade" that is causing a lot of Mac computers to not recognize some 3rd party RAM modules that worked perfectly and without fail prior to the firmware upgrade.
Apple claims that it had to impose tighter RAM specifications. My take is that if they were aware that they needed to do that, then they should have informed customers a long time ago. The company has so far refused to offer any further details... like actually explaining WHY the RAM doesn't work now, whereas before it worked fine.
Articles are at MacCentral and MacNN.
- It's terribly slower now.
- If you want to see the "blurb" for the show you've got on, it used to be an overlay, but now it's full-screen with ads (so you can't keep watching and quick check which ep it is).
- They've taken to spamming the boxes, too. ("Watch Idiot vs. Dolt tonight at 7:00 in the heavyweight championship... only $349.95 plus TT&L".)
- It's hideously slower!
Did I mention that it seems to be using a 486 over at AOL via a satellite link to Afghanistan to do anything? I won't even get onto the fact that they use "Red" for movies and "red" for cartoons (or kids shows?); after all, as long as I have my TV tuned well and don't lose my Pantone chart, I can tell the difference.Corporations most of the time just meet the demands of the consumers. The folks who read /. are a very specialized niche and don't represent the whole market. We read something like this and automatically assume that it is being shoved down our throat. But that's not true. Consumers like replacing and getting "new" items every couple of years.
/. community won't like this, but we won't purchase software like this. Someone will supply our demand for stable software, whether we write it ourselves or let someone else do it.
Just look at the automobile industry. How many people lease cars? Millions! A lease is not the best financial decision, it's a horrible financial decision. But people don't buy a new car based on finances, they purchase it b/c they want to look cool, get a new vehicle every 3 years, and enjoy that "new car smell". It allows them to keep up with the Jones.
Computers will probably ultimately end up the same way. With fewer people getting into technology, or actually caring what goes on inside a computer (as long as it has e-mail and AIM they're happy) they will be glad to throw out the "old" model every 2-3 years, and get a brand new one! "It must work better, it's newer than the old model!"
Of course, my examples are in reference to hardware. Software is slightly different. Most users will like the automatic upgrades. They don't know enough to try it themselves, and when they do they spend most of their time on the phone with tech support. The
it is a lot like i have been saying a lot, when people complain about 'no way out' of doing something. it is pretty simple: do not buy the items which have these strange proprietary auto upgrade 'features' if that feature bothers you a lot. wait until the hack-it-yourself linux version comes out, or whatever, but there is a lot of whining about corporate business models (Music companies and their unrippable CDs, auto-upgrading TiVo) and the 'way out' is, as always, simple as not buying something which is not open. maybe talk to RMS about that...
The REAL sam_at_caveman_dot_org is user ID 13833.
I'm one of those irritating shits who reads /. but runs windows. I've suspected for a couple years now that eventually upgrades would remove functionality that I believe to be essential. So, when I saw that a friend had a folder with every single installer for every version of every program that he's ever downloaded, I thought that it was a great idea. The folder is archived to CD every six months or so, and in this way, I'll always be able to do things like rip a CD or use PGP or the like, even if future versions of various software programs are forced to comply with the mandates of The Man. I'm willing to bet that the same sort of thing could be done with any OS, though I'm also willing to bet that open software is much less susceptible to complicity with the aforementioned mandates of The Man.
I believe it was SP4 that the only thing anyone can tell (where I work anyway) that it did was break Lotus Notes connectivity so you could not run a notes server with that pack installed. Calling MS brought a 'You need to purchase a Server license for that machine.'
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
I argued with one company in 1988 that I should not have to pay for support to report their bugs to them. Later, if you were the first to report a bug to Microsoft, they would then not charge you for the upgrade.
Before, on the old days, I called in to report a problem with SoftIce .99, they told me that they knew about it and if I would like the beta version to see if that fixed the problem.
The web has helped a little so that there is an easy way to see the bug list instead of waiting 30 minutes on hold to be told that the problem was in their database.
If the UCITA had a provision to require a vendor to be responsible for their bugs, it would pass like wildfire (or at least with users).
Fight Spammers!
A large part of the software industry is becoming subscription based. Unlike traditional shrink-wrapped software, subscription-based software "services" use client software (or hardware) which works in conjunction with servers run by the company. These servers hold play lists, hosted web sites, TV listings, you name it. This allows the software to access dynamic data which can't be bundled up and shipped to the client. Subscription fees are like cable fees: you are paying the company for the service (the cost of bandwidth and server maintenance, generating new content, hosting web sites, etc.), not the software itself. This is a common model for MMORPGs, for instace.
Given that the service requires clients to interact with servers run by the company, let's consider some scenarios:
There are bad reasons too. A company wants to add a new money-making service, and since this means more revenue they want to make it mandatory. I can understand why cash-starved companies would want to do that, but it's wrong. If someone is paying for a service already, they should never be forced to take an upgrade which makes them pay more (in time, money, or aggravation). That means the company is failing to live up to its end of the bargain.
As somebody who was working for Personal Software (VisiCorp) when Visicalc was launched, but in no way part of the group writing the licence, let me add my own view on why the licence came to be.
It wasn't just because of the fear of bridges falling down. That was a longstanding fear with tools and programs sold to engineers, and was the source of clauses in many contract waiving "consequential damages." For example, when you use film, they put in a warning that they are only liable for the cost of the film if it fails, not the value of the picture you lost. If not, they would have to charge a lot more for film and developing, since people use 20 cent film to take million dollar pictures.
It was much more than that. The reality, as all programmers know, is that large and complex systems have bugs. They will always have bugs. All the copies sold will all have the same bugs. There will be new versions, which will fix some of the bugs, but not all of them. And the new versions will have new bugs.
This will never go away. And the software vendors know it, but the users at the time might not have known it. The reality was, if you can get sued because you have bugs, you can't release software at all.
This is unlike most manufactured goods. When they have flaws, usually the flaws are limited to a few particular units. When they have design flaws, which force recalls or class action suits, product lines and companies are often ruined. Most products had simpler designs, and design flaws were few because you could test for them.
But you can't test software enough to get out all the design flaws. Or if you can, it's a rare and very expensive skill.
So the only way to realistically sell software, especially $150 software like Visicalc, is to say, "Face it, this thing is going to come with some bugs."
I always figured at some point the world would come to understand what bugs are and we could develop social and legal concepts of what sort of warranties make sense for software. So that people will do QA, but not delay releasing software endlessly. So that the sort of bug that raises legal liability exists but is rare enough that people can run a business.
We aren't there yet.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Don't worry about it. I already have the new software, and the good changes far outweigh the bad. (Plus, I don't really think any of the changes are bad to start with)
The backdoor for 30 second skip, I've never heard of. Is it mentioned on the TiVo underground?
Also, though I originally was irritated by the auto-correct change, I got used to it quickly... and I think the "slow-fingered" people in the house appreciate it.
However, if they ever decided to put advertisements in the software or remove a feature I really liked, I'm sure I'd be pretty upset.
This reminds me a lot of DSS (DirecTV) and their constant efforts to battle pirates. We live in an age where the business model of "Give away the razor, but sell the blades" holds fast. Continuing support is the ONLY way to rack in the big cash with very expensive technological products (er... and I don't mean the Gillete Mach 3).
Essentially, we are no longer buying products (as this article suggests), but rather so many forces have FORCED us into continuing service and support for any kind of product: razors, soft contact lens, hell CLOTHING needs washed heheh... well that's a weird example, but clothing is a great example of a product that is not perfect. It gets dirty. It needs washed. Its counter-productive to anticipate everything that could be spilled on it (although I think I read they're working on that).
So, welcome to more of the same.
----
Wrong wrong WRONG. And this guy gets a 5....shessh. Here's facts for everyone else:
1) Taking away one "backdoor" is not a big deal. TiVo runs on Linux and hackers are working on new toys every day. Just because you lock your front door doesn't mean you didn't leave any windows open (or make your house drill-proof)
2) Capacities weren't "reduced on hacked TiVos." The new OS just requires a little more space. Also, they just tweaked the Basic quality a little to make it appear like you "gain" a little space back. Regardless, it's not a big deal. TiVo is playing VERY nice with consumers by encouraging communication between its engineers and end-users. And its Beta Test led to all the neat features in 2.01
3) If you know about the change, how can you not know about the fix? We have been talking about it for MONTHS now, and Otto made a very simple instruction sheet on how to tweak the autocorrect to anything you want. It includes the setting values for near-1.3 autocorrection times too. Check that out...all it will cost you is a null modem cable at Radio Shack.
And lastly, you have no IDEA how much nicer 2.01 makes things. Trust me, you'll love it.
------
Let me give you the lowdown
"Your desired configuration is not compatible with our marketing plans, you will be upgrade accordingly.
it used to be a joke about MS and the Borg. Now it is not so funny.
It is this sort of thing that leads to "bad thoughts"
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
NOTE: they even have a 800 number for customer care. Remember kiddies, no foul language.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Much as the author likes to claim that software is sold as-is these days, it's not totally true. If it were, there would be no difference between a "real" software product and open source software, at least in terms of the producer's liability.
However, we all know that part of the reason (perhaps just a small part, but a part nonetheless) why management types were leery of open source was because there was nobody you could sue if something went disastrously wrong with it.
And I suspect that anyone who thinks a software company can avoid liability for some disaster by slapping two words on the box is fooling themselves. (If I'm wrong, and there are precendents for this, then please post away.) Oh, they'll still do it to cover their asses, but I think everyone knows it will get challenged if something truly horrible happens, like loss of life.
--
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
Yup. This thread mentions the (select - play - select - 3 - 0 - select) code for 1.3 units. It turns skip-to-live into a 30 second skip.
I know I don't need it, but to me "2.0 + service" is still a better deal than "1.3 + no service", especially given that I've got a dozen or more season passes (with conflicts carefully resolved used the old workaround in the TiVo FAQ). However, that won't stop me from complaining that I'd still be happier with just "1.3 + service". Plus, I've already paid for the service (the two day new unit trial was enough to convince me to go with lifetime).
As I said, I'd never even tried the backdoor. But I did notice that people were upset over it. I'm not saying that TiVo isn't allowed to pull it (and it's not like they killed a selling point), but people are certainly missing the fact that it's gone. As for people hacking in a replacement, there's the whole issue of the myworld application being closed.
2) Capacities weren't "reduced on hacked TiVos." The new OS just requires a little more space.
I thought I did a decent job of explaining that it wasn't TiVo going after hacked units, but rather was an aspect of the update taking up more space. Besides, there's a certain "high score" factor in having a TiVo with a lot of hours.
3) If you know about the change, how can you not know about the fix?
I'm not an avid reader of the TiVo hacking forum. I read it for a few weeks starting with right before I decided to get my TiVo, then stopped reading. I probably wouldn't have even known 2.0 was finally rolling out, except that I was having problems with my TiVo and decided to go digging for repair tips. Despite having thrown a second harddrive in the thing, I've still never hooked a machine up to the serial port -- there's no PC nearby and either lugging the TiVo/TV to the PC or the PC to the TiVo would've been a pain. Even worse, if the BIOS password isn't "factory", I'm going to have to go through all the trouble of recracking the case.
Furthermore, I'd argue that the change in autocorrection is something that would also be visible to someone who wasn't into hacking their TiVo. Part of the beauty of the TiVo is that, while there are all kinds of fun ways to get into the system and such, it's also nice and simple from a J. Random Consumer standpoint. And if J. Random Consumer has also been using his TiVo for 6 months or so, he's going to notice that suddenly the FF is off. Personally, I never even bothered to figure out the timing for the 3rd FF speed -- the 2nd speed still got me through a commercial break in about 10 seconds, gave me a chance to see if there were any interesting commercials (I've been known to stop, go back, and watch commercials that interest me), and still autocorrected almost perfectly. I've got it down to a science.
I've gotten all my season passes crammed in there with the workaround from the FAQ. I'm happy with my TiVo. I'm more than happy -- I've gone around convincing other people how great TiVo is (which, admittedly, isn't that difficult to do). I, personally, feel no need to upgrade. Without such a need, any negatives (no matter how small or trivial) aren't being outweighed by any positives.
There are at least 3 "negative" features in the new TiVo release:
If the upgrades were completely optional, I'd be more than happy to stick with my existing version of the software. I love my TiVo. It works great. I don't want them changing it.
It has another purpose:
copyright control and to promote the worst media format to ever come into existence: windows media
In debian I can choose which sources I want to include. If I just want security updates, I've got them, and nothing else.
Idiotic corporations and windows programmers should take a look.
--
. . .
With ReplayTV, your threats only really amount to 'If you do this, I'm never going to buy a ReplayTV unit again!' Frankly, this isn't really all that much of a threat to a company who already received your money.
On the other hand, the Tivo $10/month fee is key to their profitability. If you and 1,000 of your closest tivo-using friends (see below on the tivo forums) were to threaten to leave them due to a similar complaint, you'd probably be able to raise some eyebrows.
Now, this is a pretty interesting situation. While I've always been the first to criticize subscription software (which, essentially, this is - since you can't use Tivo w/o the listings [as of version 2.0 of their software]), it seems to me that we're actually receiving some leverage here - at least when we use the software as a group.
To see an excellent example of a group of software users coming together in a community, check out the AVS Tivo Forum, where a very good number of Tivo users congregate to speak with each other, and extraordinarily, Tivo representatives. This forum is a model of how a company should interact with their customers. They even rolled out a beta version of their latest software update to a significant number of forum users - giving them the opportunity to test their code on a large scale, and giving these users a chance to be the guinea pigs they desire to be :)
I guess enough people complained :)
You would think they would be stumbling over each other in a rush to patent such a consumer unfriendly concept.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
BZZT! Sorry! DMCA says you can't reverse engineer. You know, it really just hit me that the Man is truly taking control...
Tog may not like the unrequested features, but is he complaining about the bugs that were also fixed in the firmware upgrade?
I kind of like the idea that embedded devices can easily get bug fixes over networked systems, instead of the old way of burning EPROMS and flashing EEROMs.
Most people arn't going to buy toasters that need firmware updates every few weeks. The market will shake out the offending products when more reliable and "stable" appliances become availible.
end communication
Of course, my examples are in reference to hardware. Software is slightly different. Most users will like the automatic upgrades. They don't know enough to try it themselves, and when they do they spend most of their time on the phone with tech support.
software, so far as i can tell, isn't different at all. everyone wants the newest thing with the highest number.
case in point: my father has a 133 mhz pentium. now, i had an old oem copy of win 95c for him when he wanted to upgrade his machine, but instead he went with win98. why? because the number is higher.
"newer is better" is a fucking _mantra_. look at cars, movies, books, hardware, software - at least in america, if it's more than a year old nobody wants to see it.
--saint----
Perhaps Tog should start writing without "smart" quotes before he complains too much more. I got sick of it after the first two paragraphs and left.
An hour after posting I was thinking, "Damn, I forgot to mention the box appears to be powered by a Timex Sinclair ZX/80, needs 3-5 seconds to render seven lines of text plus ads, and won't respond to IR commands while it's rendering." Basically, it sucks byzantine royal ass.
Happy now?
Remain calm! All is well!
Um, so I should be happy that I'm forced to lease the hardware indefinitely, with no control over what software is run on the hardware? BTW, my cable "agreement" values the hardware at $500 should I lose or damage it.
Oh yeah, my 14-year old TV can process the non-digital channels and surf in real time (the piece-of-shit ad-bound AT&T box needs 2.5 seconds to change to an adjacent channel). Don't wish for digital cable--w/o the bandwidth, it will disappoint you.
Remain calm! All is well!
I use AT&T Digital Cable for TV (no bandwidth yet, the lamers). It comes with this great surf feature which allows(ed) you to scan 12 channels at a time to see text descriptions of what is showing at any given time, and you can skip up/down by 12 channels at a time, or ahead by 1/2 hour increments or days.
A few months after signup, they "upgraded" the console to limit the text-surf to seven channels at a time, with only 20 character width available for program description. The reason? So they could grab half the screen area for ads.
What really hacks me off is that there's a separate $2/month charge for this "service" that teases me to watch more TV, and they reduced its functionality. I think I'm about ready to switch to the Starband/Echostar 150 channel option for $99/month.
Remain calm! All is well!
Too late... How about this toaster, that burns the day's weather forecast onto your morning toast?
~Philly
But luckily, with MS Service Packs, and most hotfixes now, it's VERY easy to rollback changes. I think that that is a VERY important feature to any "upgrade".
since last week, icq has been displaying ads in the message windows. This really sucks. It can although be avoided by disabling auto updates in the windows registry.
The crucial distinction missing from the article is that the consumer does not simply buy a stand alone piece of harwdware that has set features. The deal is the hardware is cheap(er than it would be otherwise) and you have to pay for an ongoing service. You can cancel that service and they can change the terms of the service. So legally (as opposed to ethically) they have the right to modify what is provided (e.g. add ads, or even make the service more functional by adding features but upping the monthly fee), unless you have a written contract setting forth the exact terms and how long they will be available. Short of that, if you don't like it, cancel the service. It's sort of like the moron Everquest players suing Verant/Sony because they don't like the way the game is evolving. They too bought a product (the game) and pay for monthly service.
It all seems pretty simple to me -- if you want to use what the manufacturer has given you, you use it according to their terms. If part of the service they provide includes upgrades, they include upgrades. For one thing, it'd be a nightmare to have to do tech support for different units, some with the X patch, some with the Y patch, some with both, some with neither, etc. etc. Just upgrade the damn thing! And if you don't want to upgrade, then don't use the service, plain and simple. If the company makes bad changes, no one will use it, so it's in their best interest to make good changes...
---
evil adrian
Phred
Does not surprise me, they are both part of the dotcom, build it, be first and you will inherit the earth. Only the basic business model was never as simple as make a great bit of hardware and sell it for a profit. Oh no, they wanted to get into the TV listings service business - well Tivo's CEO boasted as much.
It is a cute idea but the implemenation sucketh, I should be able to plug in as many firewire boxes into the device as I like to boost capacity. I should be able to tape radio and manage my CD library (ripped to MP3 or similar).
I would rather pay $1500 for a box that does what I want and need it to than $400 for a premature attempt to go mass market.
Why do so many slashdotters drool over a closed box like Tivo?
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Unfortunately this has been going on for some time. MS Office used to have a very nice newsletter template for Word. The first version of Office after they released MS Publisher had no more newsletter template, but Publisher did. Coincedence? I'm guessing no.
It's a shame that companies have quit trying to entice you with a better product and started trying to charge you multiple times for the same thing.
--
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
Apparently the older OnDigital (Digital Terestial TV) decoder boxes could output composite video/RGB & S-VHS. After an upgrade, the S-VHS output option vanished. Reason? People dubbing from OnDigital to SVHS tape (or so I've heard...)
Pardon me if I am repeating this, but it seems to me that if you don't like the flavour they're serving you don't have to use their service.
It's not like the worst thing that could ever happen to you is that the TV gets turned off, right?
If you don't like the newfangled computer controls on your car, buy an OLD car. If you are too much of a weenie to wrench on your own junk, PAY somebody else to do it. Novel idea I know, but worth considering.
As for cars, so for computers.
I don't know if the author of the article checked this or not, but if the contract(I'm assuming one was signed for the ReplayTV service) stated "ReplayTV reserves the right to modify the service without prior notice" or something to that effect, you can't really do anything about "forced" upgrades.
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
Now, you may argue about whether GNU and the GPL is the right way of achieving that and whether Stallman has been a good spokesperson for these kinds of issues. And GNU/GPL won't automatically make software easy to use for the masses of computer users who aren't sufficiently skilled to roll up their sleeves and modify it to their tastes. But, despite all its problems, I have seen no better approach so far than the approach GNU has taken.
It is, of course, ironic that the complaint about ReplayTV comes from someone who has worked for Apple for so long, a company that has taken many positions in the past that were really in conflict with the GNU project (Apple seems to have mellowed more recently, though).
I think that consumers should have the option of wether to buy these features or not. As the article said: Until now, no matter how cynical the software manufacturer's part of the annual upgrade dance, it took two to Tango, and those who didn't want to upgrade anymore could just step off the dance floor. This means that basically they are saying Forgot you! Users never requested a sharp reduction in the functionality of their machines, no notice was given that the machines would be downgraded in this way, and the users, who must of necessity tie to the TV logs to use the device, had no way of avoiding the damage that was done!
Diplomacy is the art of letting people have your way
if your someone who buys software often you are well aquainted with going to the companies website and downloading patches, updates, etc. However what happens when these updates are nessacary for the continued operation of the product. Take the example of Quake 3 Arena While there is a single player mode to the game it is market as an online game. And the only way to keep playing is to install all the patches. What if id decided to charge say $5 for each update. I'm not saying id would but company marketers drooling over this. Think of it. To keep using the product you have to keep paying for it. That is a companies dream. To have an absolute control over its market and to keep that market. Why do comics always have to be continued at the end? So you'll buy the next one. The more they make it necessary for you to buy the next installment the more money they can make. Which brings me back to online products. With continuing changes no one can make perfect software. This keeps the market for patches open. Whether companies making products dependent on patches it is only logical that sooner or later they will begin charging for it. you think thats crazy? What about services calls for your non computer products? Are those free?