You're not paying attention. Just think back a bit to the time there WAS no control board. You could actually repair the old clockwork sequencer using common household tools. Now, the sequencer (the control board) mostly can't be repaired, just replaced. And you can't really just throw any old controller in there, you need a specific one.
On our old washing machine, there was a simple switch to stop it if the lid was lifted, Any switch would do or you could just twist the wires together and accept the risk. On the new one, it's a latch and door sensor, and it goes through an initialization procedure to detect if it's been hot-wired.
In general, the new design is superior in most ways, but it DOES make repair without the right factory parts harder to impossible.
It wasn't too long ago that it was crazy to think that a small micro controller would do a cryptographic handshake for validation on something as trivial as an ink or toner cartridge, but guess what?
It would also have seemed crazy to suggest the same for a headlight, but that's exactly what happens with some cars today. And OMG, don't even think about swapping out the radio, a task that used to be well within the abilities of a typical high school student.
It wasn't that long ago that the idea of a cell phone with batteries you couldn't swap out using no tools at all was absurd. Now it's typical.
And then there's things like farm equipment. John Deere used to be highly repairable.
The trend is clear. Now is the time to head it off while there are still plento of people who know how to repair things.
In other words, you'r major appliances needed a repair before they were even 10 years old. Fortunately, they were built before the repair lockdown was complete, so you were able to source the replacement parts and didn't need any sort of special licence to incorporate the new parts into the system.
Might you feel differently had you been forced to buy a new washer and dryer or pay a certified and authorized repairman 75% of their new cost? Because that's what Right To Repair is legislating against.
Perhaps you were just unaware that things have changed in the decade since you bought your stuff. And that they're continuing to change for the worse.
All the more reason not to disempower those who might follow in your footsteps by making the experience you had impossible without committing a felony or two.
How much different would your experience have been if the transmission did a handshake with the main board and since you didn't use an unobtainable official part and introduce them to each other with an even less obtainable USB device run by a piece of software that costs $1000, it just blew an internal fuse and never worked again?
The trend is away from such repairability. You were able to repair a machine made 10 years ago, but you might have been out of luck if it had been 2 years old.
Imagine how annoying (to say the least) it would have been if that inlet valve did a cryptographic handshake with the main board and instead of the machine working again, it displayed "E35" and shut down. That may seem far-fetched, but some very expensive new devices will do something very much like that.
As for the other devices, accidents happen. Why should cracking the screen on a $500 device after 2 years require a new device when a $40 screen should take care of it? It's not as if society has a need to fill up the landfills faster. And why should the manufacturer be allowed to force you to pay $200 in labor for the 5 minutes work it should take to replace that screen (that is, $2400/hr) assuming it can be repaired at all.
Just to add to the fun, you get to pay more for the device in the first place to cover the cost of making sure you won't be able to fix it later.
All this and at the same time, the quality and honesty of "authorized service" companies is going WAYYYYYY down. Just this week, I had an "authorized service technician" for my mom's heat pump try to convince me to let them charge $259 to replace a perfectly good $12 capacitor. Last year, they wanted $100 to zip tie $2 worth of foam insulation onto a refrigerant pipe. They won't be coming back.Imagine how much they would have demanded for the work if I actually couldn't just buy the parts and fix it myself (or for the less technically inclined, hire someone else to do it).
In other words, YES we do need such laws now when it is still possible to address the problem.
Those fantastic costs you see? Most of it is the marketing campaign, that is, not something the universities do. Next up, the clinical trials. Also not what the universities do. so you can take the bulk of that off the scale.
Even if a new drug discovery is public information, hiring the researcher's team to help with synthesis and provide a zillion details that won't make it into the scientific paper makes a lot of economic sense for a company wanting to go into production.
Also keep in mind when you hear about the sunk costs of a failed drug, they don't actually spend the tens of millions on marketing until after the drug passes it's clinical trials. So if a promising drug doesn't work out, it isn't nearly as big a loss as the pharmaceutical industry would have you believe.
Naturally, it would be the government grants that carry the public requirement,. It does make sense that the public should have an ownership interest in something it funds, just like the corporations want when they fund things.
At one time, a hacker was someone who probed various systems to learn about them and perhaps use them in unexpected ways. A cracker was someone who mindlessly applied someone else's instructions to copy prevention to make copies. It was akin to script kiddie. Typically, the hacker did it for fun and knowledge (perhaps cred), the cracker did it for money and free stuff.
So figuring out how to make the Nintendo willing to load unsigned games = hacking. Mindlessly applying that procedure for $50/pop = cracking.
So, since he is driving my insurance premiums up to fund the research, when the breakthrough comes, I may expect a big fat dividend check, right? The money absolutely won't find it's way into his pockets instead, like all that investor money?
OK, it appears his stupid bounty on Hillary's hair cost him a bit. But since it is low security, most of his fellow inmates are still going to be well in to the upper middle class.
OTOH, the entire electronics industry manages plenty of R&D on far smaller margins.
Consider, at $148K/year/patient, I'd be shocked if they're not pulling in over a billion a year. Quite possible 10 billion a year (the conditions it treats aren't rare).
It's worse. For the peons, it's "You're guilty. Go to jail. Go directly to jail. NOW!". Followed by "Now that you have no job and no prospect of a job, pay everything back with interest and penalties or go back to jail".
For corporations it's "please agree to this fine without an admission of guilt. Pay when convenient". And the fine is less than they stole.
Beyond being fair use, since the entire point of software is to run it on a computer, by selling it to you, they are implicitly permitting you to use it in the customary manner.
So they could easily cut out 90% of a typical EULA? That's a good start.
Of course, a fair bit of that is already implied in law. If you give someone a copy, you have implicitly permitted them to have it. If you put it on a site whose whole reason to be is sharing pictures, you have implicitly agreed that they may present it to others. People are responsible for their own actions, so another user that misuses the picture is responsible for that.
There's no need to re-construct the entire body of law from first principles just to have someone upload a picture they want to share.
Slashdot Mirror
You're not paying attention. Just think back a bit to the time there WAS no control board. You could actually repair the old clockwork sequencer using common household tools. Now, the sequencer (the control board) mostly can't be repaired, just replaced. And you can't really just throw any old controller in there, you need a specific one.
On our old washing machine, there was a simple switch to stop it if the lid was lifted, Any switch would do or you could just twist the wires together and accept the risk. On the new one, it's a latch and door sensor, and it goes through an initialization procedure to detect if it's been hot-wired.
In general, the new design is superior in most ways, but it DOES make repair without the right factory parts harder to impossible.
It wasn't too long ago that it was crazy to think that a small micro controller would do a cryptographic handshake for validation on something as trivial as an ink or toner cartridge, but guess what?
It would also have seemed crazy to suggest the same for a headlight, but that's exactly what happens with some cars today. And OMG, don't even think about swapping out the radio, a task that used to be well within the abilities of a typical high school student.
It wasn't that long ago that the idea of a cell phone with batteries you couldn't swap out using no tools at all was absurd. Now it's typical.
And then there's things like farm equipment. John Deere used to be highly repairable.
The trend is clear. Now is the time to head it off while there are still plento of people who know how to repair things.
In other words, you'r major appliances needed a repair before they were even 10 years old. Fortunately, they were built before the repair lockdown was complete, so you were able to source the replacement parts and didn't need any sort of special licence to incorporate the new parts into the system.
Might you feel differently had you been forced to buy a new washer and dryer or pay a certified and authorized repairman 75% of their new cost? Because that's what Right To Repair is legislating against.
Perhaps you were just unaware that things have changed in the decade since you bought your stuff. And that they're continuing to change for the worse.
All the more reason not to disempower those who might follow in your footsteps by making the experience you had impossible without committing a felony or two.
How much different would your experience have been if the transmission did a handshake with the main board and since you didn't use an unobtainable official part and introduce them to each other with an even less obtainable USB device run by a piece of software that costs $1000, it just blew an internal fuse and never worked again?
The trend is away from such repairability. You were able to repair a machine made 10 years ago, but you might have been out of luck if it had been 2 years old.
Imagine how annoying (to say the least) it would have been if that inlet valve did a cryptographic handshake with the main board and instead of the machine working again, it displayed "E35" and shut down. That may seem far-fetched, but some very expensive new devices will do something very much like that.
As for the other devices, accidents happen. Why should cracking the screen on a $500 device after 2 years require a new device when a $40 screen should take care of it? It's not as if society has a need to fill up the landfills faster. And why should the manufacturer be allowed to force you to pay $200 in labor for the 5 minutes work it should take to replace that screen (that is, $2400/hr) assuming it can be repaired at all.
Just to add to the fun, you get to pay more for the device in the first place to cover the cost of making sure you won't be able to fix it later.
All this and at the same time, the quality and honesty of "authorized service" companies is going WAYYYYYY down. Just this week, I had an "authorized service technician" for my mom's heat pump try to convince me to let them charge $259 to replace a perfectly good $12 capacitor. Last year, they wanted $100 to zip tie $2 worth of foam insulation onto a refrigerant pipe. They won't be coming back.Imagine how much they would have demanded for the work if I actually couldn't just buy the parts and fix it myself (or for the less technically inclined, hire someone else to do it).
In other words, YES we do need such laws now when it is still possible to address the problem.
So your recommendation is to ban health insurance?
Because unless you make it actually illegal or socialize healthcare entirely, it's not going to go away.
Those fantastic costs you see? Most of it is the marketing campaign, that is, not something the universities do. Next up, the clinical trials. Also not what the universities do. so you can take the bulk of that off the scale.
Even if a new drug discovery is public information, hiring the researcher's team to help with synthesis and provide a zillion details that won't make it into the scientific paper makes a lot of economic sense for a company wanting to go into production.
Also keep in mind when you hear about the sunk costs of a failed drug, they don't actually spend the tens of millions on marketing until after the drug passes it's clinical trials. So if a promising drug doesn't work out, it isn't nearly as big a loss as the pharmaceutical industry would have you believe.
Naturally, it would be the government grants that carry the public requirement,. It does make sense that the public should have an ownership interest in something it funds, just like the corporations want when they fund things.
At one time, a hacker was someone who probed various systems to learn about them and perhaps use them in unexpected ways. A cracker was someone who mindlessly applied someone else's instructions to copy prevention to make copies. It was akin to script kiddie. Typically, the hacker did it for fun and knowledge (perhaps cred), the cracker did it for money and free stuff.
So figuring out how to make the Nintendo willing to load unsigned games = hacking. Mindlessly applying that procedure for $50/pop = cracking.
You're going to have to be explicit about the false equivalence there, I'm not seeing it.
BTW, I don't do lunch.
Because our representatives are well wined and dined to keep the gravy train running.
So, since he is driving my insurance premiums up to fund the research, when the breakthrough comes, I may expect a big fat dividend check, right? The money absolutely won't find it's way into his pockets instead, like all that investor money?
I never said being an ass was illegal. If by 'authoritarian' you mean I frown upon ripping people off, then I suppose so.
Since you seem to be comparing, I suppose you support ripping people off?
They're all upper middle class, just not the ones you'd want for a neighbor. All well able to afford his overpriced drugs.
I wouldn't want Shkreli as a neighbor either.
The fact that if they don't, it comes out of my tax money.
Where "willing" is a relative term. More like sufficiently bent backwards over a barrel.
It's not like people who tend to get stuck with such a bad deal are at all likely to have enough saved to hold out for any length of time.
OK, it appears his stupid bounty on Hillary's hair cost him a bit. But since it is low security, most of his fellow inmates are still going to be well in to the upper middle class.
How many electronic product designs last 20 years? (put another way, how many Pentiums do you suppose Intel will sell this year? How many PIII?
How many attempts at a blue LED failed miserably? or white? When's the last time you shopped for RAMBUS memory? Or bubble memory?
How many revisions do you suppose a new car frame goes through until one doesn't flunk the crash test?
How much research do you suppose went into the rotary engine?
Also true in other industries.
Often, they only come in after grant funded research finds a promising drug. The grant funded failures are on the public dime.
That's not to say that there is no risk to the company. Not all promising drugs pan out, but it's not as if they take all of the burden on.
OTOH, the entire electronics industry manages plenty of R&D on far smaller margins.
Consider, at $148K/year/patient, I'd be shocked if they're not pulling in over a billion a year. Quite possible 10 billion a year (the conditions it treats aren't rare).
Unlikely, he's going to rich-people prison where the facilities are nicer than are available to poor people living in an apartment.
He absolutely is that bad and he's a total ass besides. He deserved all that he got and more.
Unfortunately and most telling, none of what he got was for his shenanigans with drug prices. He got away scott-free for that.
It's worse. For the peons, it's "You're guilty. Go to jail. Go directly to jail. NOW!". Followed by "Now that you have no job and no prospect of a job, pay everything back with interest and penalties or go back to jail".
For corporations it's "please agree to this fine without an admission of guilt. Pay when convenient". And the fine is less than they stole.
Beyond being fair use, since the entire point of software is to run it on a computer, by selling it to you, they are implicitly permitting you to use it in the customary manner.
So they could easily cut out 90% of a typical EULA? That's a good start.
Of course, a fair bit of that is already implied in law. If you give someone a copy, you have implicitly permitted them to have it. If you put it on a site whose whole reason to be is sharing pictures, you have implicitly agreed that they may present it to others. People are responsible for their own actions, so another user that misuses the picture is responsible for that.
There's no need to re-construct the entire body of law from first principles just to have someone upload a picture they want to share.
Nobody reads it because it's a zillion pages of non-negotiable word salad.