The problem here is one of philosophy.
When you buy something and pay for it, should it be *yours*.
Shouldn't any valuable asset be just that, a valuable asset?
This is going on all over, some companies want you to buy their new products, sometimes for thousands of dollars and if you later on decide you don't want/need it you should destroy it rather than put it on ebay and sell it to someone who does. Barracuda products come to mind.
I for one don't believe in buying anything that has *no resale value*. I insist things I buy have value. I don't buy from any company that tries to interfere with that inherent value.
Every asset should have value. If a company through their policies or through technological means tries to interfere with that inherent value you should avoid buying their worthless stuff. They want you to buy it from them but they later on try to take the value away from you, the solution is to not buy from them!
It's no different in the game industry. If you can't sell it if you don't want it, you should just not buy it in the first place.
The company would then have to change their business policies or go out of business.
If the Xbox 720 is going to prevent your assets from having value, just don't buy it. Maybe rent it, like World of Warcraft.
But if Rackspace is the ISP, and the ISP presumably has other customers, doesn't a DDOS often affect other customers of that ISP? I think so. Rackspace would have to mitigate the attack, no fair trying to charge one customer. Unless they took on a well known target customer, that is.
Let me tell a story. Some years ago (long ago, really) I was working on some antispam stuff.
There was a popular free DNSBL that was being DDOSed all the darned time, this affected people's mail, including my customers.
Since it was a free list they had little money to do high cost anti-DDOS stuff. Understandable.
I contacted one of the big distributed hosting providers, a name you would know.
I asked one of their top people if the company would agree to provide hosting for that DNSBL, for the good of the internet. As a way of helping. The processes involved would be a tiny blip for a company their size. Others would maintain it, they just had to allow the queries. A tiny blip of DNS lookups for incoming mail.
I got an immediate response that this was an interesting request but they couldn't get involved in anything that would draw unwanted attention from bad people, because it could affect their shareholders. Understandable.
I responded that I would appreciate them helping but I understand. And how long would it be before they were themselves targeted and extorted by criminals? I got no response.
It wasn't long, I think less than a year they did have some criminals attempt to extort them under threat of DDOS. It was in the news.
I am sure they were able to handle it internally, they were big and had a big distributed system. But this just shows, you have to help if you can, or what happens when they come for you?
Like I said, I understand they don't want to take on a known target. But the stuff in the OP was nothing like that.
Thought so - you have no clue what you're on about. Clearly you won't listen to sense, so go ahead and act like you're being victimised. Me, I'll continue to treat both the device and the service as different. Even better, I'll rest easy in the knowledge UK law states I cannot sign my rights away, even if I wanted to on any ToS.
I bet, but only since you are in the UK.
We are talking about how companies (like Microsoft discussed in this thread) are loathe to have people suing them, so have instituted forced arbitration and the class action waiver.
Naturally you don't have that problem in the UK like we do in the US.
You have loser pays!
I imagine it's much more dangerous suing someone in the UK than it is here.
Here, you get a lawyer on contingent fee, and it costs you nothing. You sue, most of the time you get a settlement, and the defendant pays.
In the UK, however, if you are outlawyered, have abuse of discovery, have witnesses lying, there could be a million reasons, and you ultimately are not able to win the case you have to pay the other side's legal fees.
That doesn't happen here in the US. Lawsuits are FREE here!
Not that loser pays is a panacea. Notice that thing about the the tvshack guy, Richard O'Dwyer, he is really being dragged through it over there. All he ran was a search engine.
but what if you bought a quad core computer 2 years ago, and they sent out a signal that disabled three of those cores unless you pay a monthly fee
And now you're comparing apples to Alpha Centauri. You still haven't realised that Live is an added bonus you pay for separately, so it's subject to different terms.
Nah, it's the same thing.
When I bought the Xbox 360 I got Xbox live at the same time because that was what I bought into when I bought the hardware. Access to the network. I still have access to the network but on not nearly as favorable terms.
Are you all this quick to give up your rights in the UK? We don't go for that in the US.
Ya know, the Model M keyboard cords came any way you wanted them.
I have some with short cords like you describe, and I have some with cords 10' long. They made whatever you needed. It's not a replacement for a wireless keyboard, but they do serve different purposes.
You want clicky, definite keypresses and you don't mind the sound, or you want to be able to sit back on the couch.
What's interesting about that is IBM made nearly all the typewriters, and they made those keycaps to last because that was the right thing to do.
They didn't do it because of competition- they had almost none. They owned 90% of the market.
They didn't do it because anyone demanded it.
They did it because it was the product they wanted to make. Designed to last, to perform better than the market even demanded.
Contrast that to how things are designed and made today.
Cheaper, obsolescent, designed to fail sooner rather than later. To make you buy a new one. It's sad really.
You probably made the ones for the IBM typewriters, I remember, "Double shot molded".
You see, our forefathers knew what was necessary, they made things to last.
Now, you buy a keyboard and in 6 months the home row keys are worn off.
30 or 40 years ago you'd buy a washer, dryer or refrigerator and in 25 years it was still working.
Now, you're lucky if it lasts 5 years. They know it too, they have MBAs at the factory working on cheapening the parts to make them fail, so you will buy another.
Whereas years ago, they'd *never* have sold you something that would not last. Our whole society is like that. It's sad.
As I sit here typing this on a circa 1984 IBM Model M Clicky Keyboard!
The finest keyboard ever made.
I have had this one for >10 years.
None of the keyboard markings have worn off. Heh. Yes, you can still find them around.
I bought the system to get the online services too.
Now I am being cheated out of that.
Not that I can't still use it, I can. But not on the same terms in effect when I bought it.
Not what I call fair.
I don't use analogies in/., but what if you bought a quad core computer 2 years ago, and they sent out a signal that disabled three of those cores unless you pay a monthly fee? You think that'd be ok? And there were no rules when you bought the thing, or none that affected you. And now there are. And they already got your money.
One of the few competitive parts of the healthcare device industry, breast implants.
You go in the hospital for cancer treatment, *no one* can tell you how much it is gonna cost.
Go in the same hospital for breast implants, they can tell you to the penny.
No insurance.
If insurance were banned and you had to pay for your own healthcare you would have providers offering better service for less. With insurance involvement that just never happens. You get what we got now. Worse service for much more.
I don't think that's an appropriate solution.
When they sold me the thing it was on one basis. I agreed to terms when I paid them.
Now they are forcing a change to our relationship.
I can agree to it or I am losing what I bought, from them. Not exactly fair.
I have to say if a company wants to change the relationship we have in the middle, I should have the right to negotiate those terms, or disagree with them. What if I think the price they charged me three years ago is unsatisfactory under the new agreement, but satisfactory under the old agreement?
I should be able to stay with the old agreement, or maybe I will agree to the new agreement if they send me, say, $125,000. for that waiver of rights. That sounds fair to me.
Uh, not really. I was presented with a clickable forced arbitration last week by Microsoft, for the Xbox network. I could agree or not use the service, which would essentially mean my 2 Xbox 360s, all the games, all the optional hardware would become nearly worthless. Not an option for me.
Congress should just make those forced arbitration agreements illegal.
TV here isn't quite as bad as it was in the us, but we still have lots of commercials...
But welcome to capitalism, greed ensures that they will always try to push customers as far as they can... this has resulted in increased prices and increased commercials over time, and it will only get worse until not only are their actions noticeably decreasing profits, but they can't find any consumer hostile way of keeping you locked in... Actually improving the service will be the absolute last resort.
Ya know, I listen to talk radio in the car. There are some ads they run so much I can't change the channel quickly enough. Some of the more obnoxious ads I hate so much I turn the radio off. There is a point of diminishing returns on that kind of advertising. You'd think those radio and tv companies would realize that.
Maybe they think they haven't reached the breaking point yet. THEY HAVE!
I've been noticing this tactic for about 10 years now. There aren't any commercials in the first 15-20 minutes of the show, but as the show progresses the percentage of commercials approches 50%. It seems like they're stretching just how much you will put up with after you've been hooked.
I don't think I could watch TV without MythTV's auto commercial detection any more.
SHHHH! Don't tell anyone about that! You wanna get us all sued?
How long will it be before we see something similar on anything with a front facing camera? I wonder if Microsoft has plans to build this into their next Kinect? This is where these assholes are going with this, and then they'll bitch and complain when even more people just pirate their shit. God, how ridiculous...
You are saying you didn't enjoy television viewing interrupted every 5 or 10 minutes with brief playlets and illustrated lectures about the purchase of consumer goods?
I know Google Chrome has an adblocker, it might use the same maintained blocking lists that Adblock Plus uses. If so I would really recommend it for Chrome users.
But Google Chrome is too minimalist for me, I like all the menubars and controls that Firefox has.
That said, I don't like the new Firefox as well as I liked the old version with again, more menubars and controls. Heh.
But I am an old guy.
And that background data that all those apps seem to want to use costs you money in this day of metered data.
It's easily possible for apps you never ever use to leak data day after day day, downloading ads you never see.
This could make you go over your allotment from your cellular carrier and they will bill you for the overage.
All for nothing.
You never even saw those cool ads you downloaded!
Root your phone and put a big hosts table in there.
But, someone will say, "If you don't let them download and show you ads they won't be able to make those cool apps for free."
Sorry, if showing ads to someone who doesn't want to look at them is your business model and it stops working, you will have to either get a business model that works or go out of business.
I have been to websites that contained a warning "You are blocking ads, you may not use our website. Unblock our ads before you come back here". Sounds like a website to stay away from to me.
Having used Adblock Plus on Firefox for a number of years I don't really know what the unfiltered internet looks like. Whenever I am forced to use IE I have to experience it however briefly.
I know people who use IE exclusively which I can't imagine.
How many blinking ads can you stand? Darned few!
We badly need a way to support Adblock Plus on Android and on IE, or at least their filter list subscriptions.
IMHO Firefox has some pretty serious issues today, I would dump it except for Adblock Plus.
Not necessarily.
They would all be the same case.
I wouldn't be nearly rich enough to stand alone on those cases. If someone else was ultimately responsible. Not like I engineered and sold the infringing product. It's completely reasonable to countersue the person or company that put you up to it. What you are saying is that you're the wrong party, and the plaintiffs know that. They don't want to sue big companies with deep pockets and hundreds of millions of dollars in sales to protect.
You have to bring them into the case so they will essentially do the defense, including your defense. They should anyway, you are just their customer, right? You are innocent and being sued by these miscreants for their convenience. They should be paying for your defense.
What could you possibly say in discovery? "Yeah, I knew it was infringing when I bought it on sale at OfficeDepot. I hoped to be able to get away with it." Ridiculous. The last thing the plaintiffs want is you and a huge company on the other side willing to spend maybe millions of dollars to win against them.
What you need to do is countersue them and the manufacturer so they cannot dismiss the case, which believe me they won't be able to do quickly enough when Cisco's lawfirm calls them up and tells them they are going to do the case. Heh.
What you would do is get access points for your business from large companies then counter sue them. They made the purportedly infringing devices and you bought it from them. It's their problem.
If Cisco and Motorola as were mentioned in the story as going to court on this got thousands of lawsuits each, there would be some urgency on their part.
I doubt it's practical but WIBNI you could just burn everything and process the oxides left over.
Which happens now and is incredibly wasteful.
There was a video of a northern California ewaste recycling firm showing how their huge shredder could make mixed waste out of a brand new shopping cart. How wasteful! Whereas the environmental friendly way to recycle is by separation.
Circuit boards have chips some of which are needed, when those boards are sent to China they remove and reuse those chips. So new chips don't need to be made.
Same with plastics, we send our old plastics to China and they sort them by color for regrinding and making new products. If they are shredded or burned that cannot be done. They have to be sorted. If everything were just burned up or shredded and mixed it makes none of that environmental recycling work. You get a mixed waste stream that takes lots of energy to process and results in hundreds of tons of worthless waste that has to be disposed of. And no useful chips, so new ones must be made.
It takes more labor to do separation of recycling streams but it's much more environmentally sound and results in much higher value waste. And don't think this is somehow *dumping* of our old ewaste in China, it's not. They come here and buy our ewaste, they *need* the raw materials. And they want it separated and pay a premium for the material if it's like that. Shredded, that's the cheapest scrap.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, that Therac-25 writeup is fascinating.
Well worth reading.
The problem here is one of philosophy.
When you buy something and pay for it, should it be *yours*.
Shouldn't any valuable asset be just that, a valuable asset?
This is going on all over, some companies want you to buy their new products, sometimes for thousands of dollars and if you later on decide you don't want/need it you should destroy it rather than put it on ebay and sell it to someone who does. Barracuda products come to mind.
I for one don't believe in buying anything that has *no resale value*. I insist things I buy have value. I don't buy from any company that tries to interfere with that inherent value.
Every asset should have value. If a company through their policies or through technological means tries to interfere with that inherent value you should avoid buying their worthless stuff. They want you to buy it from them but they later on try to take the value away from you, the solution is to not buy from them!
It's no different in the game industry. If you can't sell it if you don't want it, you should just not buy it in the first place.
The company would then have to change their business policies or go out of business.
If the Xbox 720 is going to prevent your assets from having value, just don't buy it. Maybe rent it, like World of Warcraft.
But if Rackspace is the ISP, and the ISP presumably has other customers, doesn't a DDOS often affect other customers of that ISP? I think so. Rackspace would have to mitigate the attack, no fair trying to charge one customer. Unless they took on a well known target customer, that is.
Let me tell a story. Some years ago (long ago, really) I was working on some antispam stuff.
There was a popular free DNSBL that was being DDOSed all the darned time, this affected people's mail, including my customers. Since it was a free list they had little money to do high cost anti-DDOS stuff. Understandable.
I contacted one of the big distributed hosting providers, a name you would know.
I asked one of their top people if the company would agree to provide hosting for that DNSBL, for the good of the internet. As a way of helping. The processes involved would be a tiny blip for a company their size. Others would maintain it, they just had to allow the queries. A tiny blip of DNS lookups for incoming mail.
I got an immediate response that this was an interesting request but they couldn't get involved in anything that would draw unwanted attention from bad people, because it could affect their shareholders. Understandable.
I responded that I would appreciate them helping but I understand. And how long would it be before they were themselves targeted and extorted by criminals? I got no response.
It wasn't long, I think less than a year they did have some criminals attempt to extort them under threat of DDOS. It was in the news.
I am sure they were able to handle it internally, they were big and had a big distributed system. But this just shows, you have to help if you can, or what happens when they come for you?
Like I said, I understand they don't want to take on a known target. But the stuff in the OP was nothing like that.
Thought so - you have no clue what you're on about. Clearly you won't listen to sense, so go ahead and act like you're being victimised. Me, I'll continue to treat both the device and the service as different. Even better, I'll rest easy in the knowledge UK law states I cannot sign my rights away, even if I wanted to on any ToS.
I bet, but only since you are in the UK.
We are talking about how companies (like Microsoft discussed in this thread) are loathe to have people suing them, so have instituted forced arbitration and the class action waiver.
Naturally you don't have that problem in the UK like we do in the US.
You have loser pays!
I imagine it's much more dangerous suing someone in the UK than it is here.
Here, you get a lawyer on contingent fee, and it costs you nothing. You sue, most of the time you get a settlement, and the defendant pays.
In the UK, however, if you are outlawyered, have abuse of discovery, have witnesses lying, there could be a million reasons, and you ultimately are not able to win the case you have to pay the other side's legal fees.
That doesn't happen here in the US. Lawsuits are FREE here!
Not that loser pays is a panacea. Notice that thing about the the tvshack guy, Richard O'Dwyer, he is really being dragged through it over there. All he ran was a search engine.
Hah. We had some connected to a PDP-10.
And I had a room full of 029 keypunch machines for the old CDC6400.
Brings back memories.
but what if you bought a quad core computer 2 years ago, and they sent out a signal that disabled three of those cores unless you pay a monthly fee
And now you're comparing apples to Alpha Centauri. You still haven't realised that Live is an added bonus you pay for separately, so it's subject to different terms.
Nah, it's the same thing.
When I bought the Xbox 360 I got Xbox live at the same time because that was what I bought into when I bought the hardware. Access to the network. I still have access to the network but on not nearly as favorable terms.
Are you all this quick to give up your rights in the UK? We don't go for that in the US.
Ya know, the Model M keyboard cords came any way you wanted them.
I have some with short cords like you describe, and I have some with cords 10' long. They made whatever you needed. It's not a replacement for a wireless keyboard, but they do serve different purposes.
You want clicky, definite keypresses and you don't mind the sound, or you want to be able to sit back on the couch.
What's interesting about that is IBM made nearly all the typewriters, and they made those keycaps to last because that was the right thing to do.
They didn't do it because of competition- they had almost none. They owned 90% of the market.
They didn't do it because anyone demanded it.
They did it because it was the product they wanted to make. Designed to last, to perform better than the market even demanded.
Contrast that to how things are designed and made today.
Cheaper, obsolescent, designed to fail sooner rather than later. To make you buy a new one. It's sad really.
You probably made the ones for the IBM typewriters, I remember, "Double shot molded".
You see, our forefathers knew what was necessary, they made things to last.
Now, you buy a keyboard and in 6 months the home row keys are worn off.
30 or 40 years ago you'd buy a washer, dryer or refrigerator and in 25 years it was still working.
Now, you're lucky if it lasts 5 years. They know it too, they have MBAs at the factory working on cheapening the parts to make them fail, so you will buy another.
Whereas years ago, they'd *never* have sold you something that would not last. Our whole society is like that. It's sad.
As I sit here typing this on a circa 1984 IBM Model M Clicky Keyboard!
The finest keyboard ever made.
I have had this one for >10 years.
None of the keyboard markings have worn off. Heh. Yes, you can still find them around.
I got it twice, and had to agree twice. I didn't try cancel.
I bought the system to get the online services too. /., but what if you bought a quad core computer 2 years ago, and they sent out a signal that disabled three of those cores unless you pay a monthly fee? You think that'd be ok? And there were no rules when you bought the thing, or none that affected you. And now there are. And they already got your money.
Now I am being cheated out of that.
Not that I can't still use it, I can. But not on the same terms in effect when I bought it.
Not what I call fair.
I don't use analogies in
One of the few competitive parts of the healthcare device industry, breast implants.
You go in the hospital for cancer treatment, *no one* can tell you how much it is gonna cost.
Go in the same hospital for breast implants, they can tell you to the penny.
No insurance.
If insurance were banned and you had to pay for your own healthcare you would have providers offering better service for less. With insurance involvement that just never happens. You get what we got now. Worse service for much more.
I don't think that's an appropriate solution.
When they sold me the thing it was on one basis. I agreed to terms when I paid them.
Now they are forcing a change to our relationship.
I can agree to it or I am losing what I bought, from them. Not exactly fair.
I have to say if a company wants to change the relationship we have in the middle, I should have the right to negotiate those terms, or disagree with them. What if I think the price they charged me three years ago is unsatisfactory under the new agreement, but satisfactory under the old agreement?
I should be able to stay with the old agreement, or maybe I will agree to the new agreement if they send me, say, $125,000. for that waiver of rights. That sounds fair to me.
Uh, not really. I was presented with a clickable forced arbitration last week by Microsoft, for the Xbox network. I could agree or not use the service, which would essentially mean my 2 Xbox 360s, all the games, all the optional hardware would become nearly worthless. Not an option for me.
Congress should just make those forced arbitration agreements illegal.
TV here isn't quite as bad as it was in the us, but we still have lots of commercials...
But welcome to capitalism, greed ensures that they will always try to push customers as far as they can... this has resulted in increased prices and increased commercials over time, and it will only get worse until not only are their actions noticeably decreasing profits, but they can't find any consumer hostile way of keeping you locked in... Actually improving the service will be the absolute last resort.
Ya know, I listen to talk radio in the car. There are some ads they run so much I can't change the channel quickly enough. Some of the more obnoxious ads I hate so much I turn the radio off. There is a point of diminishing returns on that kind of advertising. You'd think those radio and tv companies would realize that. Maybe they think they haven't reached the breaking point yet. THEY HAVE!
I've been noticing this tactic for about 10 years now. There aren't any commercials in the first 15-20 minutes of the show, but as the show progresses the percentage of commercials approches 50%. It seems like they're stretching just how much you will put up with after you've been hooked. I don't think I could watch TV without MythTV's auto commercial detection any more.
SHHHH! Don't tell anyone about that! You wanna get us all sued?
Also, lets not forget about Apple's patent on software that would basically freeze our device unless we were demonstrably watching the ads they serve to us, making us answer questions about products featured and even using the camera to make sure that our eyes are focused on the screen.
How long will it be before we see something similar on anything with a front facing camera? I wonder if Microsoft has plans to build this into their next Kinect? This is where these assholes are going with this, and then they'll bitch and complain when even more people just pirate their shit. God, how ridiculous...
Ah, you must have seen "A Clockwork Orange".
You are saying you didn't enjoy television viewing interrupted every 5 or 10 minutes with brief playlets and illustrated lectures about the purchase of consumer goods?
Outrageous. What's the world coming to?
I know Google Chrome has an adblocker, it might use the same maintained blocking lists that Adblock Plus uses. If so I would really recommend it for Chrome users.
But Google Chrome is too minimalist for me, I like all the menubars and controls that Firefox has.
That said, I don't like the new Firefox as well as I liked the old version with again, more menubars and controls. Heh.
But I am an old guy.
And that background data that all those apps seem to want to use costs you money in this day of metered data.
It's easily possible for apps you never ever use to leak data day after day day, downloading ads you never see. This could make you go over your allotment from your cellular carrier and they will bill you for the overage.
All for nothing.
You never even saw those cool ads you downloaded!
Root your phone and put a big hosts table in there.
But, someone will say, "If you don't let them download and show you ads they won't be able to make those cool apps for free."
Sorry, if showing ads to someone who doesn't want to look at them is your business model and it stops working, you will have to either get a business model that works or go out of business.
I have been to websites that contained a warning "You are blocking ads, you may not use our website. Unblock our ads before you come back here".
Sounds like a website to stay away from to me.
Having used Adblock Plus on Firefox for a number of years I don't really know what the unfiltered internet looks like. Whenever I am forced to use IE I have to experience it however briefly.
I know people who use IE exclusively which I can't imagine.
How many blinking ads can you stand? Darned few!
We badly need a way to support Adblock Plus on Android and on IE, or at least their filter list subscriptions.
IMHO Firefox has some pretty serious issues today, I would dump it except for Adblock Plus.
Not necessarily.
They would all be the same case.
I wouldn't be nearly rich enough to stand alone on those cases. If someone else was ultimately responsible. Not like I engineered and sold the infringing product. It's completely reasonable to countersue the person or company that put you up to it.
What you are saying is that you're the wrong party, and the plaintiffs know that.
They don't want to sue big companies with deep pockets and hundreds of millions of dollars in sales to protect.
You have to bring them into the case so they will essentially do the defense, including your defense. They should anyway, you are just their customer, right? You are innocent and being sued by these miscreants for their convenience. They should be paying for your defense.
What could you possibly say in discovery? "Yeah, I knew it was infringing when I bought it on sale at OfficeDepot. I hoped to be able to get away with it." Ridiculous.
The last thing the plaintiffs want is you and a huge company on the other side willing to spend maybe millions of dollars to win against them.
What you need to do is countersue them and the manufacturer so they cannot dismiss the case, which believe me they won't be able to do quickly enough when Cisco's lawfirm calls them up and tells them they are going to do the case. Heh.
What you would do is get access points for your business from large companies then counter sue them. They made the purportedly infringing devices and you bought it from them. It's their problem.
If Cisco and Motorola as were mentioned in the story as going to court on this got thousands of lawsuits each, there would be some urgency on their part.
I doubt it's practical but WIBNI you could just burn everything and process the oxides left over.
Which happens now and is incredibly wasteful.
There was a video of a northern California ewaste recycling firm showing how their huge shredder could make mixed waste out of a brand new shopping cart. How wasteful!
Whereas the environmental friendly way to recycle is by separation.
Circuit boards have chips some of which are needed, when those boards are sent to China they remove and reuse those chips. So new chips don't need to be made.
Same with plastics, we send our old plastics to China and they sort them by color for regrinding and making new products. If they are shredded or burned that cannot be done. They have to be sorted.
If everything were just burned up or shredded and mixed it makes none of that environmental recycling work. You get a mixed waste stream that takes lots of energy to process and results in hundreds of tons of worthless waste that has to be disposed of. And no useful chips, so new ones must be made.
It takes more labor to do separation of recycling streams but it's much more environmentally sound and results in much higher value waste.
And don't think this is somehow *dumping* of our old ewaste in China, it's not. They come here and buy our ewaste, they *need* the raw materials. And they want it separated and pay a premium for the material if it's like that. Shredded, that's the cheapest scrap.