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EU Accepts Resolution Abolishing Planned Obsolescence, Making Devices Easier to Repair (retaildetail.eu)
Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo writes: The European Parliament accepted a resolution to lengthen consumer goods and software's longevity, a counter to the alleged planned obsolescence process built into a lot of products. The European Parliament now wants the European Commission to create a clear definition of the term "planned obsolescence" and to develop a system to track that aging process. It also wants longer warranty periods and criteria to measure a product's strength. Each and every device should also have a mention of its minimal life expectancy.
Devices should also be easier to repair: batteries and other components should be freely accessible for replacement, unless safety dictates otherwise. Manufacturers will also need to give other companies access to their components so that consumers can visit those companies for repairs.
Devices should also be easier to repair: batteries and other components should be freely accessible for replacement, unless safety dictates otherwise. Manufacturers will also need to give other companies access to their components so that consumers can visit those companies for repairs.
I say About Bloody Time.
Article posted summer 2017.
Energy Star has been a massive success, at least in appliances. It lets people who care compare relative energy consumption. It's meaningless when it comes to monitors and such, but quite useful for air conditioning or refrigerators.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
With strong language like this, what could go wrong?
Area51 - We are watching...
Yes, it's clear a lack of regulations works just fine, there's never been a consequence from snake oil, investment hoaxes, or free building.
Heck, safety belts, fire codes, and handwashing signs probably kill more people. After all, somebody probably died from soap allergies.
I remember that pretty much anything electronic from Radio Shack had a schematic at the back of the user manual. Nice to have if you want to fix it years later (and still have the manual.)
I have a Radio Shack clock radio with a huge LED time display. Have had it for maybe twenty years, and it recently decided to show random LED segments instead of the time. Yesterday, I opened it up to look for any obvious smoked transistors or leaky capacitors. No, looks fine. Playing the odds, I replaced the largest (power supply) capacitor, and now it works again. I saved the cost of a new one and saved the landfill from one more piece of e-garbage.
A dingo ate my sig...
It has been a long time since I saw a false flag provocation troll that half-assed and pathetic.
The current subscription model for new editions of Quicken requires you pay every year or two years or the software stops working...
"It's unsafe to try to open our products because of the glue. You could hurt yourself."
#DeleteFacebook
Appliances are all junk now that require you to buy insurance from the store just to ensure that they make it to five years of operation.
Very few of them work well; for example, the energy-efficient dryer that requires you to run it twice, instead of once, or the energy-efficient refrigerator which specializes in spoiling food during its frequent "defrost" cycles.
Stuff worked better in the past. Toilets flushed. Refrigerators lasted for forty years. Washing machines actually produced clean clothes.
I am all for ecology, but the way we go about it is silly, mainly because it is an excuse to avoid seeing the real problems.
Alternative Right.
Literally, the headline. European Parliament has no actual legislative power. It just has a power of veto. All legislation must come from European Commission, which European Parliament gets to vote on. It's a "yes/no" vote with no right to modify the package and vote on the modified legislation. This is a power comparable to a veto power, and by definition is not a legislative power as the name "Parliament" and its supposedly being a "legislative branch" would imply. In most states, this is a power comparable to one of the powers held by the executive, who gets to veto legislative packages or approve them by signing.
It's also the only actual power European Parliament has, and of the key issues with EU's legislative system and why EU is routinely criticised for being undemocratic. It's something closer to an early Roman Senate, where unelected aristocrats selected by other members of aristocracy similar to the current state of European Commission gets to decide on what legislation to run through, and the plebeian Tribune of the latter days of Roman Republic (the European Parliament) can either block the legislative package or accept it, but has no legal ability to change the contents of the legislation.
As a result, unless it's a Commission's legislative initiative, it's not worth the paper it's printed on.
warranty need to start when the end user get it not when it's shipped to the store / distributor
The article is a blurb about another article written in Dutch. It would be nice to know exactly what they are talking about.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
That is absolutely true regarding EnergyStar. However, regulations requiring EnergyStar compliance at worst might slightly increase the cost of the appliance or device. A regulation "abolishing" planned obsolescence is likely to have unintended consequences.
I get that 50 or 100 years ago planned obsolescence would have been almost unquestionably wrong. However, technology moves much faster today. Forcing companies to provide very long term support for long outdated technologies will decidedly tilt the playing field in favor large players at the expense of small innovative companies.
I find it interesting, since the EU tends to favor the little guy over the big guy in business/commerce. This regulation favors the big guy in order to "help" the consumer. (I put "help" in quotes since I do not think it will actually be as helpful to consumers as the regulators think it will be.)
Deliberate wind-up here. If you are that paranoid go ahead and change your gadgets every year; I have better things to do with my cash. But in fact the older the gadget the less spyware it likely to have in it - that crap increases all the time.
Lack of regulations only works in 3rd world countries.
Do you know that removing regulations under the Bush Administration cause the economic collapse?
Did you know that the Obama Administration had to spend $trillions of dollars to bail out lots of corporations like banking sector, housing sector, finance sector, etc.???
Forcing companies to provide very long term support for long outdated technologies will decidedly tilt the playing field in favor large players at the expense of small innovative companies.
Thanks, but I don't want an innovative fridge, hair drier or cooker. I just want them to fucking work, and keep working.
You don't need to download spyware on to peoples' devices if it already comes preinstalled at the factory (points finger at forehead)
Truly, Beau, that's just nonsensical.
If we put the onus on manufacturers (and programmers) to maintain their products instead of abandoning them, it's absolutely no different than them giving us a new product with whatever imaginary, or actual, malware you have in mind. If they're black hats, they're black hats.
The important objective in that case is keeping an eye on them, and a more stable / less ephemeral product line can only work in our favor in such undertakings. If product maker X is found to have shipped flaw or problem Y, then they are obligated to fix it, instead of just leaving it in the dust and whipping out a new model (I'm thinking of OS vendors here as well as supporting devs and hardware manufacturers.)
Requiring manufacturers and software operations to maintain their products or lose IP rights to them could be a very strong component of bringing some of the more obnoxious operations into line with actually benefiting the public with their work. If I, as a developer, stop supporting it, or won't remedy a detected flaw, then the public owns the product and that's the end of my revenue stream and my rights to the ideas and inventions incorporated in the product are now gone.
Our software and hardware IP system is badly broken, and IMHO that's a fundamental underpinning of why our products are such throwaways. There's no reason for a manufacturer / developer to keep working on X. We need to give them good reason to stay with it.
These days, almost any product can be flashed with completely new code; at least, if the designers aren't idiots. Everything from a smart light bulb to a router, firewall, or car should be updatable and should have updates. Likewise, you write software like I do, then you should fix the problems it has, particularly so in the case of security issues, but anything else, too. There's no adequate excuse to not fix broken code. From the OS end, there are almost no good excuses to break existing applications, security being the one exception.
We should recognize our obligation to not just produce product, but to produce good product that doesn't shaft the end user, either initially or later.
The culture of disposable hardware and software we've fallen into is bad on just about very level one might consider. Ending it, or at least, ameliorating it, would be the very best thing for every consumer out there.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Or "It's unsafe to open our iMac Pro because we left exposed capacitor leads on the PSU"
Subscriptions are, in a nutshell, planned obsolescence via threats. The only way you can keep such tempware working is a continual drain on your resources - it's designed to fail you otherwise.
I wouldn't buy subscription software under any circumstances, nor will I ever offer it (I'm a developer.)
You invest in my stuff, it'll keep working - it's yours now. I don't "license" it to you, I don't tell you what you can or cannot do with it, and I won't break it. If I offer a paid upgrade, then you get new stuff. It won't break your previous stuff, and it also won't turn into dead bytes on your computer.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
New efficient washing machines that take two hours to complete a cycle but hey they only use a cup of water. Every fucking appliance at the store has those yellow stickers. What is the point?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Did you know, repealing Glassâ"Steagall Banking Laws separating commercial and investment banking, that was Clinton in 1999, not Bush.
Clinton was President, the actual law was written by Gramm, Leach, and Bliley.
Don't let that fact get in your way. Or the fact that Republicans blamed Obama for the very same stimulus they passed.
I am fucking jealous right now.
These days obsolescence, (even among the highest-tech goods), is as much a matter of fashion as it is of product failure, unrepairability, etc. People expect and demand the latest 'innovation', even if it's only a small change in size, the lack of a bezel, or some other frivolity. The population at large is addicted to having the latest and greatest, with no thought for future generations. It's kind of a 'chicken and egg' situation: planned obsolescence and flashy advertising make unnecessary purchases more compelling, while the resultant increased demand further encourages manufacturers to make products that inherently don't last and can't easily be repaired. So along with legislation against planned obsolescence, we need mass education to help turn the tide of rampant consumerism.
Of course, taking these actions will have negative consequences for 'The Economy'. Personally, I don't think that's a bad thing - hence my sig. As a species, we need to start living within our means, and to abandon the notion that uncurtailed economic growth is anything other than a social cancer. Instead, we keep "borrowing", (or, more accurately, stealing), the resources that fuel our (largely) hollow and soul-suckingly luxurious lifestyle from future generations. The early investors live the high life, while the later ones, (many of whom either have no choice or haven't even been born yet), get screwed. Population growth makes even mere survival of mankind an iffy proposition in the long term, so we really need to stop treating the Earth as though it's a broken freezer that needs to have all of its contents consumed before they go bad. Our current habits are making us fat and lazy, and they they may eventually bring about the end of mankind.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Seriously!?
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
The EU has similar measures to let you compare the efficiency and running costs of various appliances. For example a vacuum cleaner has to have a sticker that shows how well it cleans on carpet and on hard floors, how much noise it makes, how well it cleans the air before expelling it (really important for people with allergies) and how much it costs to run.
https://ec.europa.eu/energy/si...
This new proposal is a great idea. The manufacturer will have to list the lowest MTBF of all components in the machine based on a standardized usage pattern. So if a washing machine has a belt with an MTBF of only 5 years then the label has to say "5 years" on it.
Video games should be interesting. "Servers guaranteed to run until 2019" could be pretty interesting on the next EA Sportsball game.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If this means that manufacturers will be encouraged to use screws instead of glue then it's a win for the planet.
Apple and others - please stop gluing your fucking products together. I would rather buy displays i can fix, than thinner displays. I am keeping my computers for far longer than i used to, and need easy upgrade paths for internal components. why is this so hard to grasp for some?
But these rats keep gnawing at my toes. Certainly we need to go to the store for ketchup.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Yeah, like that's going to happen.
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
FUD. Products don't suddenly become cheaper when planned obsolescence is introduced (quite the opposite, in fact), and don't suddenly become expensive when going back to normal practice.
Longer warranties is a different matter, but that should have minimal effect on expected costs because the entire point of a warrantee period is to cover the time in which defective items are likely to fail. Anything that makes it to the end of its regular warrantee period is extremely unlikely to suffer from a warrantee-covered fault if the warrantee period is extended, because if it was defective it would have failed already.
As long as this resolution also includes software and not only hardware it should be good.
These days you're nothing with an android phone from 4 years ago that you can still repair but is running android 4.0 filled with security holes.
And let's not start with all the IoT devices.
Software obsolescence is just as big a problem.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
This proposal is quite clever. They will have to put a sticker on the box that says "average time before something fails is X years", which instantly does two things:
1. Consumers know how long something will likely last, rather than just guessing based on brand reputation or anecdotes.
2. Longevity will become a selling point. Before they had stickers on vacuum cleaners showing how well they actually cleaned people just tended to buy the most powerful one, but now they make a more intelligent and informed decision.
Selling price isn't based cost of manufacture, it's based on what the market will stand. So for example goods often cost about the same in Europe as they do in the US (factoring in tax), but in Europe you get a much longer statutory warranty.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Of course not.
https://slashdot.org/~BeauHD the editor is a very different account from
https://slashdot.org/~BeauHD+(... which is a troll account.
Even if language was "musts", no company would give a fuck. It's European Parliament's resolution. It has no legal power to compel anything, and is worth less than paper it's printed on.
That's why it states in the OP that they're now going to beg and plead that Commission notices Parliament for once. Because unless it's something Commission proposes, there's nothing compelling that Parliament can do. At all. It's literally the way system is set. Which is why Parliament passes these "resolutions", which are nothing more than proverbial getting on their knees and begging for unelected aristocrats of the Commission to give them some legislative package that would even remotely meet what they're begging for. It's a desperate attempt of elected MPs who have no practical legislative power in spite of the big name of the organisation they're elected to, to pretend they have some actual legislative ability for the public.
Which usually ends up filed in the nearest trash bin in the Commission bureaucracy, because why on earth would Commission care about pathetic whining of elected and utterly powerless plebs at the Parliament. It has no power to compel them. And once Parliament is done posturing in the media, no one will remember it, just like no one remembers countless other similar Parliament resolutions on various topics.
Are you seriously afraid of Belarus?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
This proposal is quite clever. They will have to put a sticker on the box that says "average time before something fails is X years", which instantly does two things:
1. Consumers know how long something will likely last, rather than just guessing based on brand reputation or anecdotes.
2. Longevity will become a selling point. Before they had stickers on vacuum cleaners showing how well they actually cleaned people just tended to buy the most powerful one, but now they make a more intelligent and informed decision.
Selling price isn't based cost of manufacture, it's based on what the market will stand. So for example goods often cost about the same in Europe as they do in the US (factoring in tax), but in Europe you get a much longer statutory warranty.
The problem with MTBF is that for most consumer electronic products it will be so long that most people will say "I'll replace it way before them." Even if 5% of the iPhones fail prematurely the sheer number made will make MBTF look good. Just look at HD MBTF's as an example. As for "about the same" the delta results from increase regulatory costs; and while I like the protections the EU affords me they are not without a cost. TINSTAAFL.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
If a device lasts longer then they don't have to go to as much effort as frequently to download their spyware to your phone.
Medicinal marijuana clearly has side-effects.
I'd also add 3. Companies will start looking for ways to fiddle the number.
However, regulations requiring EnergyStar compliance at worst might slightly increase the cost of the appliance or device
Good. We should collectively stop fucking the environment to save a dollar.
Forcing companies to provide very long term support for long outdated technologies will decidedly tilt the playing field in favor large players at the expense of small innovative companies.
There is certainly a risk there. That said, up to a point, I suspect mandatory transparency will improve a lot of these problems as much as hard standards.
I think of this increasingly like the mandatory health warnings we've had on cigarette packets for a long time. If the advertising or packaging for, say, a "smart" TV was allowed to list any third party services it integrated with but also had to state equally prominently how long those services were guaranteed to work for and what would happen to the relevant features of the TV if the services were updated or discontinued and whether and when any updates would be provided and whether those updates might also affect other behaviour rather than simply maintaining compatibility, and then had to give a further prominent disclosure of other owner-hostile behaviours like phoning home after spying on you, and then had to give a further prominent disclosure about any security risks such as included sensors and networking capabilities and the track record of the manufacturer in terms of keeping their devices secure and the minimum amount of time that security updates would be provided for and what would happen to the device when they stopped... Well, you get the idea.
I do think there has to be room for mandatory minimum standards and levels of support, but ideally as a last resort. The first problem is that people today buy expensive things with wildly inaccurate expectations that are often tacitly accepted or even actively encouraged by the manufacturers and vendors of those things.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Hopefully they include stop the knuckleheads from adding chips in toner cartridges and inkjet cartridges which expire by time instead of quantity=empty
iPhones aren't really the problem, it's stuff like household appliances. The cheap ones barely last 3 years a lot of the time.
Also stuff like software that is reliant on some server somewhere. What is the minimum lifetime of that service? A few years ago some smart TVs stopped playing YouTube because they dropped support for old devices. Imagine phones having a sticker that told you the earliest date that they would stop supplying updates.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
And that the Gramm, Leach, and Bliley act (all hard right Republicans) was passed by a nearly unanimous Republican vote, and with enough Democrats to make the act veto-proof. Sure Clinton could have just let it pass into law unsigned, but he could not have stopped it. Blaming the act as the work of Clinton is just a deranged lie.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Tesla are unrepairable. If it brakes you have to throw it out and buy a new one.
Wow! Using the brakes ruins the car! Who knew?
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
... the intentions are good... let us hope it isn't another brick on the road to hell.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Energy Star has been a massive success, at least in appliances. It lets people who care compare relative energy consumption. It's meaningless when it comes to monitors and such, but quite useful for air conditioning or refrigerators.
For once, we agree!
Selling price isn't based cost of manufacture, it's based on what the market will stand. So for example goods often cost about the same in Europe as they do in the US (factoring in tax), but in Europe you get a much longer statutory warranty.
No, just no. Almost all goods in Europe are somewhere between the US base price and the US price + extended warranty, because some really do fail and it really costs money. It's probably close to the real cost of the warranty though since they have to offer 2/5 years by default. In fact I'm quite sure the reason the US isn't seeing more early failures is because they have to take the EU market into consideration where they need to eat the cost themselves.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
iPhones aren't really the problem, it's stuff like household appliances. The cheap ones barely last 3 years a lot of the time.
Consumers share in the blame as well; your consumer appliance is a good example. People often don't want to pay for quality appliances that will last, they buy on price and hence get cheap junk. There are quality alternatives out there that will last. For example, I have a blender that costs 4 to 5 times that of your average cheap one, but it is built like a tank and will last a lifetime. You don't see it in the most stores because they wouldn't sell because of the price; for most stores it a race to have the cheapest price and you get what you pay for, or at least pay for everything you get.
Also stuff like software that is reliant on some server somewhere. What is the minimum lifetime of that service? A few years ago some smart TVs stopped playing YouTube because they dropped support for old devices. Imagine phones having a sticker that told you the earliest date that they would stop supplying updates.
I wish I knew the answer on how to deal with those issues. That will be a whole new challenge as people discover their TV, radio, whatever stopped working because the manufacturer dropped support and updates. As for updates, a company could say 5 years but that would not mean any new features would be added, just that they'd do patches and offer repair parts. It's not reasonable to expect them to add the same features that future versions of the software have and may require more memory and faster processors to run well. As for a 3rd party dropping support for formats your product needs, I think it is unreasonable to expect a manufacturer to maintain 3rd party compatibility. If you're rellying on a server you're taking the risk that server goes away, a company I am working with is developing software that runs on a cloud server but we are making it provider agnostic so we can move it if our vendor goes away.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
The slight cost increase is often more than offset by energy savings and making a better informed decision on what to buy.
When you look at software you can see that it's usually the smaller players who offer better long term support, and the big ones that don't.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Consumers tend to make better decisions when they are informed. A sticker with the average lifespan and running cost of the product on should really help.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
pretend extra hard that adding an extra step of European Council between Commission and Parliament constitutes a meaningful difference.
It does. And it proves your statement completely incorrect: "All legislation must come from European Commission"
The second thing you're wrong about is that the European Parliament has "no right to modify the package and vote on the modified legislation." The European Parliament absolutely does have that right and it also has the right to tell the European Commission how to draft the law instead. WP's summary plus source here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The European Parliament doesn't draft laws because it a) speaks a dozen different languages and b) has no real expertise in drafting legislation.
It would need a thousand translators to translate the dozens of proposals for EU laws as well as waste a lot of the Parliament's time.
Legislation may also come from the Council of Ministers, who basically represent the elected national govts of the 28 countries.
The European Parliament vote on the President. The Commissioners are decided between the President and the Council of Ministers, and the European Parliament has a veto.
Commissioners are generally ex- prime ministers and ministers. There's no point Commissioners proposing laws the Parliament won't pass and they take Resolutions very seriously.
You're also completely wrong that the European Parliament has "no right to modify the package and vote on the modified legislation." The European Parliament absolutely does have that right and it also has the right to tell the European Commission what to draft. You can read about it, with the actual law here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You're obviously grossly misinformed, pro-Brexit as a result and quite happy to spread disinformation about the EU.
This isn't hard. Let's take Apple as an example - they'd be required to make their phones serviceable and not to try to block repairs with patents. It doesn't mean they'd have to make parts for everything in perpetuity.
Do we want to be creating a bunch of landfill? In addition, the greatest energy expenditure and environmental damage is caused by manufacture, so if you make something that lasts for fifty years it has a lesser impact than a whole bunch of cheaper disposable gadgets that get pitched out after only 12.25 years.
Alternative Right.
This is my experience, too. The energy efficiency of a washing machine in laundering white towels in a laboratory has little bearing on how it will be used in daily life.
The real problem here is the equation population times resource use equals impact.
It is politically correct to focus on resource use, not population. We like to pretend that if we all use EnergyStar dishwashers, a world of seven billion will not end in ecocide and Mad Max style conditions.
Alternative Right.
Not correct, in my experience and that of others I know.
Gotta keep that landfill healthy somehow.
The 1980s Kenmore I used to use did a much better job than the last few post-1990s fancypants "green" washers.
They also worked well and seemed to avoid clogs, even without the dreaded Taco Bell + ate a whole brick of cheese bowel movement.
You know what uses more water? Making new refrigerators, washers, dryers, and washing machines because they only last a few years.
Go to a showroom, ask about quality, and you'll get an interesting report. Then do the same with someone who maintains the machines. Quality has fallen along with cost, but disposable machines are more expensive in the long run, both in terms of energy and money.
Alternative Right.
Do government, lawyers, and regulations ever do anything but make the situation worse?
We were better off under the rule that if someone did something wrong to you, you sued them and won big.
Regulations mostly protect companies, especially from competition by raising the proportionate cost to the little guys. For a big firm, $500k in legal fees is no big deal, but it prevents smaller guys from entering the marketplace and competing with them.
That ultimately means fewer options and higher prices for the consumer, plus no competition for quality. Thus we get a society of disposable junk that goes straight into the landfill because the cost of recycling this stuff is higher than the value received.
Alternative Right.
I would like to suggest the problem is actually the consumer. Consumers want neatly little packaged integrated things as products mature. They want their own knowledge requirements for the devices operation to decrease as products mature.
Consider cars. There was a period of pre-war auto manufacturing where it was non-longer bespoke but at the same time people expected to buy a car and own it for a long time - maybe indefinitely. They anticipated maintaining and repairing it. If you look at engine designs right up thru the early post war periods you see things like lined cylinders and valve guides. Basically all wearing parts were built to be replaceable. Granted it still might have major work in terms of labor but compare that to most modern mass market automobile engines - you'd have machine the block today once things like valve guides or cylinder walls wear or crack etc. Essentially they are now disposable devices. On the other hand you can now own and operate a car with virtually zero knowledge of how it works - they even have built in monitors to tell you when to get the oil changed now.
Think about how home stereo equipment evolved from 1960 - 2018. Discrete often home assembled components to integrated systems to one giant reciever with everything built in driven by your smart phone to "IoT Speaker"
We have seen the same thing with computers. Even if you bought something like a Northgate back in the early 90s it was in a standard box. You could replace the motherboard and CPU and retain the chassis and power supply. You might even keep the main board and slap and "overdrive" process on it. Granted you can still get "project box" style cases today and certainly there is a plenty big market for motherboards and stuff in standard sizes - but if you buy a brand name PC odds are pretty good its now some custom miniature case like a Mac min - or similar offering from HP or Dell.
So lets look at mobile. You use to manually sync your iPaq, Cassiopeia, or Palm with your laptop. You either manually cabled it up or careful started some IR sync tool and line up all the devices. Every application was side loaded; or you had a RIM that just did e-mail. Now yes its all integrated in your phone. You don't need to know how anything works. You don't need to really even learn any software tools - but you have way way less choice about how you are going to manage things. Want to backup your iPhone? - its iTunes or nothing (okay iCloud now). I used to be able to eject the CF card from my Cassiopeia and back it up however I wanted! Which is not say I'd go back!
What do we do now - we integrated the PDA / portable gaming devices into our phone - its all online - its mostly automagical. The consequence is people don't really know anything about them. I would suggest consumers don't really want replaceable batteries because they don't really want to be at the battery store flipping thru "phone books" of part numbers looking for a suitable replacement on Saturday afternoon - they rather just get a new phone!
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Consumers tend to make better decisions when they are informed. A sticker with the average lifespan and running cost of the product on should really help.
You have greater faith in the average consumer's ability to make rational decisions than I do. You assume they'll even value knowing such things and use it in the decision making process over price. Price already acts as a proxy for quality, and what are the best selling products?
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Desperation on part of EU troll factory crew is getting real. "If Commission sends package to Council, which then sends it to Parliament, it didn't originate from Commission" according to your BS.
Wrong, the Commission is not involved at any point.
And second, no, Parliament cannot modify the package and vote on it.
Wrong, I already proved it can. Read the fucking law.
There's zero legal obligation for Commission to care about this whining, crying and begging in any way
Yet the Commission cannot pass any law without Parliament.
So the only thing you can actually whine about here is that Parliament cannot pass a law that neither the Commission nor the Council of Ministers/heads of govt want.
which is why most of these irrelevant resolutions are filed in the nearest trash bin at the low level bureaucracy of the Commission.
Where they belong.
Your agenda is showing.
> People often don't want to pay for quality appliances that will last, they buy on price and hence get cheap junk.
That's the only sane approach. As much as people like to say "you get what you pay for," there's seldom any truth in it. The expensive stuff is the same as the cheap stuff, it just has a higher profit margin. If it looks like it's higher quality, it's often only because it *looks* like it's higher quality. The manufacturers like those high profit margins, but don't want to miss out on sales to people who can't afford the higher price, so they make multiple versions of their products, some which *look* like crap and others which *look* high-quality, even though it's all the same low-quality shit on the inside, so that consumers who don't know any better and assume "you get what you pay for" will buy the most expensive one they can afford. Just pay attention the next time your shopping and ask yourself why lower-priced items are often so damn ugly when there's essentially no additional cost involved in choosing a color and shape for a product that isn't patently offensive to everyone's senses. Its because you're supposed to decide to buy a more expensive product.
Price acts a proxy for quality? Really? I have some Monster Cables to sell you!
Yes, people believe higher prices indicate higher quality, whether it is true or not.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Still trolling with your uninformed anti EU rant?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
... punctuated by Express propaganda like "EU aristocracy" whoever the fuck they are.
MTBF: that word does not mean what you think it means.
Also, that "50,000 hours" you see on LED packages? Complete bullshit.
If the manufacturers lie about the MTBF they will get into legal difficulties as the regulators investigate them, and consumers will be able to make a good argument in small claims court that their product lasted much less time than one would reasonably expect.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Designs reflect this with easy access (like frame crossmembers permitting in-frame overhaul
My point exactly they were designed to be maintained and it was assumed that when things wore out they would be replaced and or rebuild.
Its true they had shorter life spans; but that was not 'planned obsolescence' It was more a function of the manufacturing and materials capability of the era.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Yes, it does, because manufacturers compete on the basis of those numbers and yet, those numbers do not reflect real world usage.
Alternative Right.
That establishes relative rank, but does not tell consumers what they actually need, so they are still casting around in the dark.
In the meantime, nothing has been saved with EnergyStar and related programs which make junky disposable appliances end up in landfills where the older, sturdier versions kept working for decades.
What is it about the voters that they are so stupid that they think regulations benefit them?
Alternative Right.
They don't lie. "Truth is not truth", as Rudy Giuliani said. The lifetime of an LED in ideal laboratory conditions is 50,000 hours, and they just get gradually dimmer but they keep working. I forget what the "lifetime" cutoff is, 70% or something. But they keep glowing.
Doesn't sound so bad, does it? Well, you put those LEDs in a bulb with an electronic driver, and it's subject to catastrophic failure of any of the components. The you put it in an enclosed fixture where the heat builds up. And you bought the cheapest crap from the dollar store, with unknown reliability and poor manufacturing techniques. Then a power line spike comes along and fries the driver. Did you use it connector up in violation of the instructions? Doesn't matter, the company went out of business before the bulbs got to the USA and a 'different' company makes them.