They only need to make the source available to the buyers of the phone. Can be done with an archive on an accomanying cd-rom, on the website (including on a registered users only part of it) and so on. And as long as they aren't distributing the phone, they need not give the source to anyone.
So what do you suggest - not carry any technology news that concerns China? Mentioning their abysmal human rights record every time they are mentioned?
In all fairness we should be doing the same for everyone else as well: mention the thousands of suspected Al Qaeda people imprisoned in the US without a trial or defense attorneys whenever there is a story on Intel or Microsoft; mention the lurking racism and attacks on immigrants throughout much of europe whenever Nokia or an european Linux distro is mentioned; bring up Japans xenophobia and unresolved wartime issues whenever/. mentions Sony? Oh, and for all of the above we can certainly bring up the dismal record on fair trade with the third world.
As for Steve Jobs enriching himself - well, he is welcome to it. That is what the relevant licenses allow, after all. If you have code that "Steve Jobs used to enrich himself" and you are not happy about it, then you should perhaps have released it under a different license?
Look at it this way: would you rather have the wristwatch that is hand crafted to perfection, works better, and will last forever, or would you rather buy the watch that came off of the assembly line, always loses time, and will break on you in a year or two?
Of course, when you actually look at watches today, handmade watches are temperamental, unreliable and need frequent service and proper handling to function well. The assembly line watches are reliable, keep excellent time and will cost you a tenth to a hundredth of a manually produced watch.
"Assembly line production" really does give any combination of cheaper and better than handmade stuff - that a lot of crap is produced just shows that "cheaper" tends to be a bigger customer draw than "better". But look at handcrafted stuff - half the appeal of it is that it isn't perfect. You can feel the finger grooves in the pottery; appreciate that all four legs of the table aren't exactly identical; enjoy the temperament and personality of your sports car. The other half of the appeal seem to be the price itself; it is expensive and exclusive; since it is hand made, it is one-of-a-kind.
None of those qualities are really benefits for a CRM system or parts database, of course. A comapny does not want a computer system that is temperamental, quirky or unique. The more you can standardize the better. And if the standard stuff is mediocre, well so be it - at least it is reliably mediocre. You can plan around it. You can make allowances for the shortcomings ahead of time.
Lowest quality is fine, as long as you know that's what you're getting and can accept it. If it is inexpensive enough it is still worth it.
But the companies will be paying taxes on their income, right? As will the people that do have a job (and those jobs are likely very highly paid; if they didn't need very qualified people for them, they would have automated as well, right?). So the government will still have quite a lot of income.
What would be needed is a social coverage system that does make allowances for having perhaps 50%-80% unemployment; in essence, "unemployment" would need to cease to be an abberration at all, and become the norm. In effect, you'd have everybody - having work or not - on a basic income (that may be purely monetary, or in a hybrid form) that gives you a basic but decent standard of living.
Now, I'm sure free-market people are busting a vein right now, but consider the alternative: having more than half the population with no money, no work, and no prospects of ever getting either? Can you spell "riots", "looting", "crime wave" and "insurgency"? I knew you could!
This is all of course contingent on the assumption of the parent posters that new work opportunities aren't opening up in sufficient numbers.
Also, there is a world of options in between our current 40h+ work week and "relax on the beach all day long". You have quite different amount of work being done in different parts of the world already; in Europe, we generally work quite a bit less than in the US for instance; valuing the extra hours of off time more than the added income. You could imagine a future where the normal work week could be an average of 10 hours or so (maybe as 20 hours per week for half the year).
But, don't forget that the "robotics revolution" is really a pretty long-term thing, and long-term, demographics show that population - especially the work-age population - is or will be trending downwards in more and more countries. For most industrialized countries, "labour glut" is simply not happening thirty to fifty years down the line.
What is happening (and has really been happening for a long time already) is that automation tends to remove the jobs that are the most brainless, dangerous or repetitive, at the same time creating new (but fewer) jobs "higher up" in the organization - as somebody already said, you need people to design, deploy and manage the automation systems. It does mean that education and training is becoming steadily more important, however. We are already long gone fron the days when someone could attend just grammar school, then start a job and learn in place. Twenty or thirty years down the line, having a high school diploma only will likely be similarily useless.
(A reply both to you and to Swillden): This is approximately the problems as I encountered them; it is not complete, as it was about a year ago I tried it last.
Hardware: older laptop, being installed using floppy-booted network install through a pcmcia network card (basic, common 3com card). Reason: no cd player on the laptop. I don't want X or anything like that on the machine; debian should be ideal for it.
Problem 1: which set of floppies should be used? No clear instructions anywhere on why to choose what set.
Problem 2: have one partition with user data that I want to keep. Once I boot the installer, the list of partitions is so amazingly non-informative (not even the sizes of the existing partitions are shown), that I must blindly guess which one is the one I want to keep, and hope my previous backups are good.
Problem 3: Apparently, the use of a pcmcia network card causes the installer to silently fail. Old, known bug, it turns out, after ten minutes with google, with no listed workaround and apparently no plan to fix, as the new installer will replace it anyway. Figure out how to manually insert and activate the needed kernel module. during the install.
Problem 4: Package selection - a sad joke. Start out trying to select stuff, highlight one line, and hit enter to mark it. Bad choice. For some unfathomable reason, that exits the package selection process. After a couple of retries, I realize the tool is so broken usability-wise that I will likely induce a heart attack if I persevere. As debian uses apt, it will be easy enough to pull down any wanted packages after the installation anyhow.
Problem 5: It boots - into kernel 2.2. Start to pull down a 2.4 kernel using apt. Seems no matter how I do it, I can't get a 2.4 kernel package and a corresponding pcmcia package to coexist (it is pretty confusing, as there are multiple packages of both, and they seem to want corresponding packages that aren't actually compatible with each other). Trying a couple of combinations, rebooting, and failing in different ways each time. Good thing I can fall back on the 2.2 kernel. Finally get a 2.4 and pcmcia kernel to boot, though it will not actually recognize my network card.
Problem 6: At about that time, it turns out the file system has become corrupted - possibly from one or another of the failing, panicking kernel boots.
As I had been at this for well over fifteen hours at this point, the prospect of starting over fillsed me with enough disgust that I shutdown the machine, booted a redhat floppy installer and got redhat 7 on to the machine in an hour or so, without any difficulties whatsoever.
I have missed some problems and a lot of details on the usability problems of the tools; it is nevertheless a somewhat accurate description of the kind of issues I had the last time.
But the most important thing about installers is that they are run once. People base entire distribution reviews on the installer, which is just stupid.
I agree - up to a point. I have tried to use debian twice so far, and both times I have ended up throwing the installation disks away in disgust and returning to Redhat. Life is too short to put up with the - frankly - utter crap that is the debian installation procedure. From a usability standpoint I suspect you could not design it to be less usable than it is already. And no, I'm not some wet-eared newbie.
When the installer twice prevents me (a not untechnical, fairly experienced Linux user) from actually getting a usable system after a day or two of fighting it, it is a relevant and important part of the distribution features. I know it is stupid, but it is rather unavoidable that a very negative experience right off the bat will impact negatively on the impression of the system as a whole; if the devels can't make and distribute a reasonably bug-free installer fit for human use, then what kind of mess have they done to the rest of the system?
I'm sure debian is great. I'm sure it is wonderful. I have no doubt it cures cancer, removes pollutants, creates a nuclear-free zone and gives my wooden furniture that deep, glossy shine. I'm convinced it is a floor wax and a dessert topping. I will not know, however, until I am actually able to install the freaking thing without committing violence on the installation media in pure frustration.
Hmm... Just 8 years for the population to replace all of their TVs sounds a little quick. Or does absolutely everyone in Japan replace their equipment way often?
From my experience here so far, yes, people do replace their stuff - especially electronics - quite often. Changing standards will likely just be seen as a great excuse to upgrade.
Actually, I like the cooking shows. As I don't (yet) speak the language, they at least make a little sense when watching them. Most other tv programs (especially the endless variety shows with a panel of people sitting along a table shouting about something) don't.
They offer both, but at least for previous versions of SuSE their distribution of Gnome has been somewhat lacking. Sometimes incomplete, or with mismatched versions of components. As a Gnome user, SuSE has hardly even been on the radar as an option for installation.
With Ximians distro becoming supported, though, it may be time to reevaluate it./Janne
Not at all impossible. I am using 1.1.0; I believe there is a slightly newer one available? Note that I do not find OOffice to be bad or anything - just that so far, Abiword and gnumeric (and LaTeX for serious writing) fits me better.
I just timed it on my P4/1.8, 512Mb ram, and for starting OOffice Writer it's 10 seconds to the splash screen, then another six seconds to get the main screen, for a total of sixteen seconds. Just choosing "exit", then restarting takes just under four seconds. As a comparison, Abiword on the same machine takes about three seconds to the main screen, and less than a second to restart. For me, that difference is enough that I end up using Abiword rather than OOffice almost all of the time in practice.
I'm sure Mandrake is fine for a lot of people. For me, however, the two main drawbacks is that Mandrake has a (in my view deserved) reputation of not being the most stable and well tested distro; and that Gnome as packaged by Redhat is pretty superior to Gnome on Mandrake (or SuSE for that matter).
Not really. Outsourced jobs are only a small part of those jobs lost. Most of them are lost because there is less work to be done (more of it is automated or made more efficient), and because those that have jobs work longer and harder than they used to. Blaming outsourcing is convenient, but faulty./Janne
Well, yes and no. A laptop is too large and unwieldy for some applications; you would not have travel directions and times on a laptop and run around in an airport or trainstation with it in your hands, for instance. Nor would you likely use a laptop in a semicrowded commuter train.
I am lusting for this thing, not the least due to the included dictionaries. I can't help but wonder, however, if what I would really find useful was a machine with a similar screen and memory size, but simpler software, slower (and thus more energy efficient) processor, and without all that connectivity. It would be useful as a satellite to the laptop which is now my main machine.
Well, the basic "kink" is that the stuff looks and acts desktop-like. There's windows, button bars, scrollbars and so on - all stuff that makes good sense on a arge desktop, but not on a device where I will be running one app only at a time. The screen should _be_ the window for the apps; the whole idea of a title bar is anathema to the format. That is something the Palm does right and Qtopia does not.
The design is really, really cool. But other than that, I don't really see the advantage of this. It seems to give no advantage compared to a normal bike, and has quite a few disadvantages (less space, more complexity). Throwing in a fuel cell-based drivetrain could just as easily (if not easier) be done for a two-wheeled bike as well - and would incidentally be a pretty good idea (with the electric motors in the wheels, you would get rid of the chain, and could have practical two-wheel drive).
Well, you do a typical fifteen page paper in formal legalese and you'll likely end up with 1k pages or so...
"The claimant of the first party, hereafter identified as Mrs. Lee, has a prior, wilful relationship with the claimant of the second party, hereafter identified as The Book, in that the claimant of the first party establishes the status of authorship on the claimant of the second party, a status that the claimant of the second party has yet to file a motion to dismiss. Within The Book, the claimant of the third party, referenced alternativel but equally as Scout and Miss Finch is described by the claimant of the first party as..."
The idea of a Linux-based phone is nice, but Qtopia just isn't a very good environment. It was far too clumsy and 'desktop'-like on the Zaurus, and will likely be even worse on such a cramped device as a telephone.
Ah, but being the best team is not the point, now is it? The point of a commercial sports team, as for any other commercial enterprise, is to generate income. The goal is _not_ to win - it is to sell seats and advertisements (directly, and through media deals). If the income from being a somewhat worse team with the guy is higher than being a better team without him, well, then having him is a good idea.
In fact, you could argue that sports teams that are perennial - and much loved - hopeless underdogs have found a niche that they would be very unwise to forfeit by doing something as stupid as actually start winning again. Fas better to garner sympathy money and merchandizing than become another anonymous middle-of-the-pack team that nobody cares about./Janne
For "important contracts,art samples, financial filings" you will not use a cut-rate consumer inkjet printer anyhow. They will have a big, serious laser printer that will hold up for the large amount of text being printed every single day, while the art department will have a high end inkjet or photo-printer (probably A3 or A2).
None of their equipment is targeted by third-party inkjet supplies companies.
Not even that. Out of that energy, a good deal turns into losses elsewhere, like transmission and gearbox (stuff you can do without with for instance electric motors). I believe the 'real' number is closer to 15%.
No. They in no way whatsoever restrict your right to use the GPL. However, a different product (the support) under a different kind of license is affected by it.
To take another example: A warranty for your router will only be valid if you do not modify it yourself, and that is true even when the software in the router is GPL. They do not restrict your right to change the code, but the warranty will still be affected (nullified) by it.
Slashdot Mirror
They only need to make the source available to the buyers of the phone. Can be done with an archive on an accomanying cd-rom, on the website (including on a registered users only part of it) and so on. And as long as they aren't distributing the phone, they need not give the source to anyone.
So what do you suggest - not carry any technology news that concerns China? Mentioning their abysmal human rights record every time they are mentioned?
/. mentions Sony? Oh, and for all of the above we can certainly bring up the dismal record on fair trade with the third world.
In all fairness we should be doing the same for everyone else as well: mention the thousands of suspected Al Qaeda people imprisoned in the US without a trial or defense attorneys whenever there is a story on Intel or Microsoft; mention the lurking racism and attacks on immigrants throughout much of europe whenever Nokia or an european Linux distro is mentioned; bring up Japans xenophobia and unresolved wartime issues whenever
As for Steve Jobs enriching himself - well, he is welcome to it. That is what the relevant licenses allow, after all. If you have code that "Steve Jobs used to enrich himself" and you are not happy about it, then you should perhaps have released it under a different license?
...and so they just connect you to another local guy that happens to have a dialect/accent that will fool you.
Look at it this way: would you rather have the wristwatch that is hand crafted to perfection, works better, and will last forever, or would you rather buy the watch that came off of the assembly line, always loses time, and will break on you in a year or two?
Of course, when you actually look at watches today, handmade watches are temperamental, unreliable and need frequent service and proper handling to function well. The assembly line watches are reliable, keep excellent time and will cost you a tenth to a hundredth of a manually produced watch.
"Assembly line production" really does give any combination of cheaper and better than handmade stuff - that a lot of crap is produced just shows that "cheaper" tends to be a bigger customer draw than "better". But look at handcrafted stuff - half the appeal of it is that it isn't perfect. You can feel the finger grooves in the pottery; appreciate that all four legs of the table aren't exactly identical; enjoy the temperament and personality of your sports car. The other half of the appeal seem to be the price itself; it is expensive and exclusive; since it is hand made, it is one-of-a-kind.
None of those qualities are really benefits for a CRM system or parts database, of course. A comapny does not want a computer system that is temperamental, quirky or unique. The more you can standardize the better. And if the standard stuff is mediocre, well so be it - at least it is reliably mediocre. You can plan around it. You can make allowances for the shortcomings ahead of time.
Lowest quality is fine, as long as you know that's what you're getting and can accept it. If it is inexpensive enough it is still worth it.
But the companies will be paying taxes on their income, right? As will the people that do have a job (and those jobs are likely very highly paid; if they didn't need very qualified people for them, they would have automated as well, right?). So the government will still have quite a lot of income.
What would be needed is a social coverage system that does make allowances for having perhaps 50%-80% unemployment; in essence, "unemployment" would need to cease to be an abberration at all, and become the norm. In effect, you'd have everybody - having work or not - on a basic income (that may be purely monetary, or in a hybrid form) that gives you a basic but decent standard of living.
Now, I'm sure free-market people are busting a vein right now, but consider the alternative: having more than half the population with no money, no work, and no prospects of ever getting either? Can you spell "riots", "looting", "crime wave" and "insurgency"? I knew you could!
This is all of course contingent on the assumption of the parent posters that new work opportunities aren't opening up in sufficient numbers.
Also, there is a world of options in between our current 40h+ work week and "relax on the beach all day long". You have quite different amount of work being done in different parts of the world already; in Europe, we generally work quite a bit less than in the US for instance; valuing the extra hours of off time more than the added income. You could imagine a future where the normal work week could be an average of 10 hours or so (maybe as 20 hours per week for half the year).
A good question.
But, don't forget that the "robotics revolution" is really a pretty long-term thing, and long-term, demographics show that population - especially the work-age population - is or will be trending downwards in more and more countries. For most industrialized countries, "labour glut" is simply not happening thirty to fifty years down the line.
What is happening (and has really been happening for a long time already) is that automation tends to remove the jobs that are the most brainless, dangerous or repetitive, at the same time creating new (but fewer) jobs "higher up" in the organization - as somebody already said, you need people to design, deploy and manage the automation systems. It does mean that education and training is becoming steadily more important, however. We are already long gone fron the days when someone could attend just grammar school, then start a job and learn in place. Twenty or thirty years down the line, having a high school diploma only will likely be similarily useless.
(A reply both to you and to Swillden): This is approximately the problems as I encountered them; it is not complete, as it was about a year ago I tried it last.
Hardware: older laptop, being installed using floppy-booted network install through a pcmcia network card (basic, common 3com card). Reason: no cd player on the laptop. I don't want X or anything like that on the machine; debian should be ideal for it.
Problem 1: which set of floppies should be used? No clear instructions anywhere on why to choose what set.
Problem 2: have one partition with user data that I want to keep. Once I boot the installer, the list of partitions is so amazingly non-informative (not even the sizes of the existing partitions are shown), that I must blindly guess which one is the one I want to keep, and hope my previous backups are good.
Problem 3: Apparently, the use of a pcmcia network card causes the installer to silently fail. Old, known bug, it turns out, after ten minutes with google, with no listed workaround and apparently no plan to fix, as the new installer will replace it anyway. Figure out how to manually insert and activate the needed kernel module. during the install.
Problem 4: Package selection - a sad joke. Start out trying to select stuff, highlight one line, and hit enter to mark it. Bad choice. For some unfathomable reason, that exits the package selection process. After a couple of retries, I realize the tool is so broken usability-wise that I will likely induce a heart attack if I persevere. As debian uses apt, it will be easy enough to pull down any wanted packages after the installation anyhow.
Problem 5: It boots - into kernel 2.2. Start to pull down a 2.4 kernel using apt. Seems no matter how I do it, I can't get a 2.4 kernel package and a corresponding pcmcia package to coexist (it is pretty confusing, as there are multiple packages of both, and they seem to want corresponding packages that aren't actually compatible with each other). Trying a couple of combinations, rebooting, and failing in different ways each time. Good thing I can fall back on the 2.2 kernel. Finally get a 2.4 and pcmcia kernel to boot, though it will not actually recognize my network card.
Problem 6: At about that time, it turns out the file system has become corrupted - possibly from one or another of the failing, panicking kernel boots.
As I had been at this for well over fifteen hours at this point, the prospect of starting over fillsed me with enough disgust that I shutdown the machine, booted a redhat floppy installer and got redhat 7 on to the machine in an hour or so, without any difficulties whatsoever.
I have missed some problems and a lot of details on the usability problems of the tools; it is nevertheless a somewhat accurate description of the kind of issues I had the last time.
But the most important thing about installers is that they are run once. People base entire distribution reviews on the installer, which is just stupid.
I agree - up to a point. I have tried to use debian twice so far, and both times I have ended up throwing the installation disks away in disgust and returning to Redhat. Life is too short to put up with the - frankly - utter crap that is the debian installation procedure. From a usability standpoint I suspect you could not design it to be less usable than it is already. And no, I'm not some wet-eared newbie.
When the installer twice prevents me (a not untechnical, fairly experienced Linux user) from actually getting a usable system after a day or two of fighting it, it is a relevant and important part of the distribution features. I know it is stupid, but it is rather unavoidable that a very negative experience right off the bat will impact negatively on the impression of the system as a whole; if the devels can't make and distribute a reasonably bug-free installer fit for human use, then what kind of mess have they done to the rest of the system?
I'm sure debian is great. I'm sure it is wonderful. I have no doubt it cures cancer, removes pollutants, creates a nuclear-free zone and gives my wooden furniture that deep, glossy shine. I'm convinced it is a floor wax and a dessert topping. I will not know, however, until I am actually able to install the freaking thing without committing violence on the installation media in pure frustration.
Hmm... Just 8 years for the population to replace all of their TVs sounds a little quick. Or does absolutely everyone in Japan replace their equipment way often?
From my experience here so far, yes, people do replace their stuff - especially electronics - quite often. Changing standards will likely just be seen as a great excuse to upgrade.
Actually, I like the cooking shows. As I don't (yet) speak the language, they at least make a little sense when watching them. Most other tv programs (especially the endless variety shows with a panel of people sitting along a table shouting about something) don't.
They offer both, but at least for previous versions of SuSE their distribution of Gnome has been somewhat lacking. Sometimes incomplete, or with mismatched versions of components. As a Gnome user, SuSE has hardly even been on the radar as an option for installation.
/Janne
With Ximians distro becoming supported, though, it may be time to reevaluate it.
Not at all impossible. I am using 1.1.0; I believe there is a slightly newer one available? Note that I do not find OOffice to be bad or anything - just that so far, Abiword and gnumeric (and LaTeX for serious writing) fits me better.
I just timed it on my P4/1.8, 512Mb ram, and for starting OOffice Writer it's 10 seconds to the splash screen, then another six seconds to get the main screen, for a total of sixteen seconds. Just choosing "exit", then restarting takes just under four seconds. As a comparison, Abiword on the same machine takes about three seconds to the main screen, and less than a second to restart. For me, that difference is enough that I end up using Abiword rather than OOffice almost all of the time in practice.
I'm sure Mandrake is fine for a lot of people. For me, however, the two main drawbacks is that Mandrake has a (in my view deserved) reputation of not being the most stable and well tested distro; and that Gnome as packaged by Redhat is pretty superior to Gnome on Mandrake (or SuSE for that matter).
Not really. Outsourced jobs are only a small part of those jobs lost. Most of them are lost because there is less work to be done (more of it is automated or made more efficient), and because those that have jobs work longer and harder than they used to. Blaming outsourcing is convenient, but faulty. /Janne
Well, yes and no. A laptop is too large and unwieldy for some applications; you would not have travel directions and times on a laptop and run around in an airport or trainstation with it in your hands, for instance. Nor would you likely use a laptop in a semicrowded commuter train.
I am lusting for this thing, not the least due to the included dictionaries. I can't help but wonder, however, if what I would really find useful was a machine with a similar screen and memory size, but simpler software, slower (and thus more energy efficient) processor, and without all that connectivity. It would be useful as a satellite to the laptop which is now my main machine.
Well, the basic "kink" is that the stuff looks and acts desktop-like. There's windows, button bars, scrollbars and so on - all stuff that makes good sense on a arge desktop, but not on a device where I will be running one app only at a time. The screen should _be_ the window for the apps; the whole idea of a title bar is anathema to the format. That is something the Palm does right and Qtopia does not.
The design is really, really cool. But other than that, I don't really see the advantage of this. It seems to give no advantage compared to a normal bike, and has quite a few disadvantages (less space, more complexity). Throwing in a fuel cell-based drivetrain could just as easily (if not easier) be done for a two-wheeled bike as well - and would incidentally be a pretty good idea (with the electric motors in the wheels, you would get rid of the chain, and could have practical two-wheel drive).
Well, you do a typical fifteen page paper in formal legalese and you'll likely end up with 1k pages or so...
..."
"The claimant of the first party, hereafter identified as Mrs. Lee, has a prior, wilful relationship with the claimant of the second party, hereafter identified as The Book, in that the claimant of the first party establishes the status of authorship on the claimant of the second party, a status that the claimant of the second party has yet to file a motion to dismiss. Within The Book, the claimant of the third party, referenced alternativel but equally as Scout and Miss Finch is described by the claimant of the first party as
The idea of a Linux-based phone is nice, but Qtopia just isn't a very good environment. It was far too clumsy and 'desktop'-like on the Zaurus, and will likely be even worse on such a cramped device as a telephone.
Ah, but being the best team is not the point, now is it? The point of a commercial sports team, as for any other commercial enterprise, is to generate income. The goal is _not_ to win - it is to sell seats and advertisements (directly, and through media deals). If the income from being a somewhat worse team with the guy is higher than being a better team without him, well, then having him is a good idea.
/Janne
In fact, you could argue that sports teams that are perennial - and much loved - hopeless underdogs have found a niche that they would be very unwise to forfeit by doing something as stupid as actually start winning again. Fas better to garner sympathy money and merchandizing than become another anonymous middle-of-the-pack team that nobody cares about.
Except, of course, that you _do_ have up2date available as always.
For "important contracts,art samples, financial filings" you will not use a cut-rate consumer inkjet printer anyhow. They will have a big, serious laser printer that will hold up for the large amount of text being printed every single day, while the art department will have a high end inkjet or photo-printer (probably A3 or A2).
None of their equipment is targeted by third-party inkjet supplies companies.
Not even that. Out of that energy, a good deal turns into losses elsewhere, like transmission and gearbox (stuff you can do without with for instance electric motors). I believe the 'real' number is closer to 15%.
No. They in no way whatsoever restrict your right to use the GPL. However, a different product (the support) under a different kind of license is affected by it.
To take another example: A warranty for your router will only be valid if you do not modify it yourself, and that is true even when the software in the router is GPL. They do not restrict your right to change the code, but the warranty will still be affected (nullified) by it.