FTC urged to stop tech makers downgrading devices after you've bought them Consumer and digital rights activists are calling on the US Federal Trade Commission to stop device-makers using software to reduce product functionality, bricking unloved kit, or adding surprise fees post-purchase. In an eight-page letter [PDF] to the Commission (FTC), the activists mentioned the Google/Levis collaboration on …
"Gene Cash":
"The Register will watch to see if the FTC responds to the activists and inform you of any progress"Thanks, but don't hold your breath...
The FTC during the Biden administration has been the most activist pro-citizen incarnation it has been since at least the 1970s.
In fact that goes for a variety of agencies since Biden came to office and appointed a bunch of aggressive consumer advocates to head them. (And luckily their finger-biting bare majority in the Senate kept the Republicans from killing off all those appointments except for a few examples like one FCC commissioner he tried to appoint, Gigi Sohn.)
If Trump manages to re-occupy the WH, say goodbye to all of them and back to all industry shills and political lackeys at the top of the DoJ antitrust division, FCC, FTC, EPA, CDC, NLRB, EEOC, HHS, SEC, etc etc.
Those are -my- evil salesbots! But saying it's not theft when the fresh router kernel machine stops and there's not even a device header file that drops is wrong, as is legacy key management. (Not that a broad ecosystem of key audits isn't necessary over one giant glowing vuln org.) Zendodo with revocable keys if an IP buyer can get backers for the quality of its new maintainers?
This is why I buy my own music to listen to. I have spent over a decade building and curating and adding to my iTunes library. I have turned a lot of the proprietary files into standard file formats. Files are stored in ordinary Mac folders.
I can listen whenever I want to whether I have a net connection or not. In tunnels, in the air, inside a Faraday cage*, Why would I junk all that and pay monthly for Apple Music? I have more than 49hrs of music in there now. I have very wide and eclectic musical tastes starting with Medieval madrigals and including most of Yousu N’Dour’s work.
*My degrees are in Physiology, we had room sized shielded rooms for doing intracellular recordings during my PhD. A very thin glass electrode with an ionic solution and a wire in it becomes a very good aerial so you have to shield to do recordings.
Before the "digital TV" revolution, TV sets made in the 1950's worked just fine here in the USA (I don't know about the 405 line ones used in the UK). Sure they only displayed monochrome, but they worked for OVER 50 years. I doubt that any other tech equipment has that long a lifetime.
Motor vehicles and weapons might be exceptions, but 50-75 years ago these weren't "high tech!".
I would love to buy TVs equivalent to the ones sold today with no apps. No support for streaming or casting, nothing that can control it other than the remote it comes with, can only display a picture from an attached HDMI device.
I wish there was a law that said that TVs sold in the US have to have a switch in the back that if flipped, disabled all the smart stuff and made it default to showing HDMI1 input when powered on. Or that someone would DD-WRT them and find a way to wipe the OS and replace it with it something that basically turned it into a dumb monitor. No drivers for the antenna or the wifi? Who cares, I don't need either! Can't do the fancy AI picture smoothing or soap opera mode stuff? Don't want it! All I care is that it can turn on/off, adjust volume, and switch between the various HDMI inputs. If I can do stuff that became common in the 80/90s like adjusting the color from the defaults that's nice to have, but even that is probably something I can live without.
Of course, you can get such devices. They are called "professional" displays, sold by the likes of Panasonic or NEC and cost three or four times as much as a cheap TV of nominally equivalent spec. I say nominally because cheap TVs don't usually come with guarantees about 24 hour operation and such.
Even a "smart" TV can be dumbed down a bit if you don't connect the network cable and refuse to give it the credentials to your WiFi, but it isn't ideal, and different TVs react in different ways to being deprived of a connection to the mothership.
For some reason the thing isn't working for me right now so I can't give you a direct link, but try business.panasonic.co.uk (or .com outside the uk)
M.
Alternatively, desktop monitors. They don't have "smart" functionality, many have 2-3 HDMI ports like TVs, and usually they also have speakers now. So basically a TV without a tuner (which is also excellent for escaping the license in countries that enforce a TV/Radio license like the UK and Japan)
It’s called a large computer monitor with HDCP[1] on the HDMI input. OK you’ll need to supply your own audio output but since TVs are uniformly Bloody Awful in this area that’s not a massive hardship. Readily available at reasonable cost from an IT kit barn near you…
[1] High Definition Copy Protection - required by most set top boxes etc to display broadcast or streamed content - not all computer monitors with a HDMI port support this, but quite a few do…
I have a 42" not-smart Samsung TV. I bought a $99 stereo amplifier, a 20" HDMI cable and an HDMI splitter from Amazon, and a wireless KB and mouse. The splitter is connected to the PC and shares the signal between my monitor and the TV. The HDMI cable runs downstairs to the basement where the TV is located. This allows me to replicate anything on my monitor to the screen in the basement, No need for smart anything.
> soap opera mode
Could someone explain what this is, since I don't watch soaps.
My first thought was a TV that spends half an hour (less ad-breaks) arguing with you every time you want to change channel. Gradually increasing the volume every minute. Then goes into a sulk and refuses to turn on for the rest of the day.
I believe it's a form of picture frame freqency smoothing, interpolating frames between those actually transmitted, to smooth and "improve" motion.
Gives an unsettlingly smooooooth motion effect, which isn't to everyone's liking, but is reminiscent of certain daytime soap operas.
Either that, or next week I will wake up and it'll turn out that this whole comment was just a dream.
“ Or that someone would DD-WRT them and find a way to wipe the OS and replace it with it something that basically turned it into a dumb monitor”
Having worked on TV stuff, I can tell you that it is very unlikely that someone can come up with an alternative OS/firmware for a normal TV. They use very application-specific chips which you could probably get the specs for (maybe. Maybe not) plus other specific hardware that it’s very unlikely you could get the info for. This is all (mostly) in the name of reduced manufacturing cost, so the situation is not going to change any time soon
"Or that someone would DD-WRT them and find a way to wipe the OS and replace it with it something that basically turned it into a dumb monitor."
On the other hand, if you can identify the panel involved there usually ARE dumb monitor boards for them (just rip out the existing guts and plug in) that range from $20-$60
Panels have generally standardised interfaces, so that's a lot easier than it sounds and has been sucessful for me in several local instances where the "TV" part was unusable as was the HDMI provided. End result a lot less ewaste going to landfill and (surprisingly) a much better picture from the panels in question
Last I checked, many companies use an ancient Linux kernel that is long out of support... that's littered with tons of proprietary binary blobs from their OEM supplier of the week. The Linux kernel may or may not also be violating GPL by containing code patches that never goes back upstream. Those suppliers are also almost always in Shenzhen or some other parts of China so enforcing the GPL on them can be a tenuous task.
You can do that now. Nobody forces you to use the apps. I never do. I do attach whatever I need via HDMI, such as Roku or computer. If you never connect smart TV to your network via LAN or wi-fi, then it stays a dumb, non-connected TV. I don't connect mine, the apps aren't worth it and the become outdated too quickly. You also can still buy some Non-smart TVs, but those are getting more rare.
They are working on that. There are some that place a banner on the screen over the displayed image informing you that it can't get a network connection. AFAIK, they do allow you (for now!) to press an "OK" button to acknowledge the "problem" and it will go away until the next time you use it.
Correct, no one forces you to use the apps. But still, they are collecting data on you. What do you watch, when do you watch it? Live, replay?
Does it have a mike or a camera secretly recording you or observing how many warm bodies are in the house? Camera could be worked out from the outside, but mike could be hidden inside and thus won’t be found unless you open it up. Who routinely opens up a TV without an actual fault to fix?
Sharing data like “Oh, the fat one likes dwarves and Snow White normally has more clothes on than that”, but “The little one likes Paw Patrol, a lot”. With Google, Sony, et al.
Remember, it only takes one open wifi for the devices to (1) send data to the mother ship and (2) get a firmware update. I can count about 20 wifi SSIDs around me. While I have never opened mine, pretty sure others have, from time to time. And if it gets the order to brick, even not connecting to my own networks (but rather one of my neighbours), it will do so.
The name and number of SSID around you is, in urban areas, as good as “what four words” for geo-locating anyone.
So, I’d love a completely dumb monitor with : HDMI inputs x 4, sound, input control, perhaps colour saturation and that is about it. No wifi and no Rj45.
But still, they are collecting data on you
Well that's solved by not letting it connect to the internet, but that solution only works so long as the TV doesn't refuse to stop operating without an internet connection or at least an update (enabling the internet long enough for an update would give it the opportunity to upload everything it has been collecting on you for months/years)
You can do that now
If it boots up into a smart TV interface there's no guarantee it won't change behavior in the future. Maybe it complains if you haven't updated it in too long and refuses to operate until you do - and who knows what that update does or if the address it is trying to reach for updates still exists? Maybe it starts showing ads when the picture is paused - even if the paused picture is from an HDMI source?
Sure TODAY you can treat a smart TV as a dumb TV, but OEMs are doing everything they can to force people to use their interfaces and make it more annoying to choose an HDMI source. Before long there will be TVs that refuse to operate without an internet connection - because they are "useless" without one since you can't run the apps, right?
"If I can do stuff that became common in the 80/90s like adjusting the color from the defaults that's nice to have, but even that is probably something I can live without."
Speaking of which, have you noticed how hard it is to change brightness/contrast on "modern TV? Buried in menus, and no buttons on the remote control to directly adjust them. A pain in the arse with some shows unless you watching in a blacked out room.
I mean, if the text mode does Deepdream on the monospace font, is that bad? It's power optimized, you should be able to get that HMI to your service and like, leave local notes on your flat screen fridge and mellow out transitions (v. epilepsy etc) if your nerves get filed down sometime.
I have a so called 'Smart TV' made by LG. It has never been connected to the internet and is only used to display an HDMI signal from my FreeSat PVR.
You don't have to use the 'Smart' crap. I only bought it because it was 50in in size and was a hell of a lot cheaper than a computer monitor of a similar size.
To go back on topic.
Manufacturers who downgrade their devices after purchase should be sued into oblivion. They have broken the contract of sale. Clear and simple. YMMV naturally.
Except that, depending on the TV, they can be "hard" to work as just a TV. Some automatically go to the "smart" home screen on startup, and you then have to manually select TV tuner or HDMI inputs. And god help you if you press the wrong button !
I've lost count of the number of times I've had to explain to SWMBO how to "just show me TV".
I have a 32" 'Supermarket Special' (actually it is a real brand, but you most often see it sold in supermarkets) that I bought in 2006 as the main telly in the lounge, and is still working. Nothing smart about it.
I was a bit miffed as it was sold as a HD TV, but unfortunately this was before they tightened down on what could be called HD, and this is really an HD Ready (720p) with a 1080i downscaler so it reports as 1080i to any device that's attached to.
But it's still working, (sort of).
It is a 'Trigger's broom'. It's has had the power supply (firstly re-capped and then replaced), the TCON board, the digital tuner and the display panel (most recent change - wow was that difficult to find!) all changed, although the main-board is the original one, as is the audio amplifier board, speakers and case. I did also have to repair the button board. But it's the same TV!
All of this because the SO did not want to re-design where it fits in the lounge for another telly, plus she likes the restrained tones of the colours and the non-reflective screen and sound that modern tellies just don't seem to be able to match.
After struggling to find the replacement panel, I think that the next failure will be it's end, however.
405 line sets of the 1950s and 1960s were often provided with UHF 625 line converter boxes for when the 405 transmissions on VHF were switched off. I think the last was some time in the 1980s? Many TVs sold in the 1960s were dual standard and anything capable of tuning to 625 line UHF (whether mochrome or PAL colour) would have continued to work right up until the last analogue transmitters were turned off in 2012.
You can revive these if needed with a suitable DVB-T or DVB-S receiver although you might need to convert its output. Some receivers from the 1990s - 2010s had RF output which would have worked perfectly well with any 625 line TV. Some had composite video output which would work with a 625 line TV which has a composite input (maybe a separate input or maybe on a SCART socket) and some receivers had RGB outputs via SCART which would work perfectly well with any TV from about the mid 1980s onwards which had an RGB input. In fact this is what I used to do with my Trinitron widescreen up until it died about 8 or 9 years ago.
And for modern receivers with only HDMI output, there are plenty of HDMI to SCART (some don't do RGB but some do) or HDMI to composite converters and there are even a few HDMI to UHF analogue for those old TVs with only an aerial socket, though it might be easier and cheaper to do HDMI to composite and then composite to UHF. I've done the latter quite recently at work to convert the composite output from a Raspberry Pi to RF for a TV from the 1960s which was being used in a display.
M.
405 line sets of the 1950s and 1960s were often provided with UHF 625 line converter boxes for when the 405 transmissions on VHF were switched off.No they weren't. (You might be thinking of Band III converters, which allowed Band I-only sets to receive the higher frequencies allocated to ITV stations. They were essentially just another mixer-oscillator that down-converted a Band III signal to an IF in Band I.) Converting a 625 line video signal to 405 lines would have required a washing-machine-sized cabinet's worth of 1980s technology. And though there were some dual-standard sets made, the need for so much duplication of effort meant they did not work out much cheaper than two new sets (almost the only parts common to both systems were the CRT, speaker and parts of the power supply).
The 405-to-625 changeover was handled by keeping 405-line transmissions of BBC1 and ITV going for about the expected lifetime of a 405-line TV set after the manufacture of such sets was discontinued, which in practice meant until the 1980s. In some areas, channel 4 came on-air before 405 went away!
You might be thinking of Band III converters, which allowed Band I-only sets to receive the higher frequencies allocated to ITV stations
Band III also being VHF, but a set of frequencies which wasn't previously used for TV. I could have sworn I had seen a UHF converter in the early 1970s - but then I was still in short trousers, so perhaps I misunderstood what it was doing. Amazing how early memories are formed, and my family didn't have a TV at all until my grandfather brought his (4-button, 625 line Pye set) with him when he moved to live with us c1973.
M.
UHF to VHF converters used for 625 line gear that had only Band 1 & III outside of UK and Irish places that could get UK TV, the Band 1 & Band III used for 625. I've never seen one.
VHF to UHF converters were more common and used for cable or Ireland (in the areas with band I & Band II 625 line, like Galway, Clare, Limerick, Cork & Kerry) with UK UHF only TVs
West of Ireland Band I 625 line turned off in 1999.
Irish 405 (border & east coast) turned off in 1985.
There were also in 1955 in UK Band III converters for old Band I 405 only sets to add ITV. There were never 625 to 405 converters for the public for BBC2 1960s, later C4 Nov 1982, and last was C5. Dual standard sets were made for a while till BBC1 & ITV were added to 625 lines.
The 625-405 converters were never sold to public in 1985 and were either a 405 camera pointed at a screen or an entire 19" rack. It was maybe 30 years later that hobby 625-405 converters appeared, using FPGA.
Belgium was keen on multstandard sets with Belgian & French 819 lines different, and reception also of Dutch & German 625 lines (Many ethinc groups / languages in Belgium). No standards converters, because before FPGA only a Broadcaster could afford them. See Barco TVs. They also added NTSC on export and professional models.
My parents had the last B&W 405 line VHF television rented out by DER in Scotland. Finally the company balked at the costs of keeping a technician trained to repair it (and the necessary spares) and bought them out of their rental contract for two hundred quid (several years' fees) plus the telly thrown in. It lasted another two years or so.
Radio Rentals were always much better than DER, and even into the late 1960s still supported their original rented radios.
I know I used to work for them, and went to one owned by an elderly lady - I forget what the problem was (it had the red "30s" valves) and as a matter of course cleaned up the glass dial front and replaced the blown lamps.
Hearing it running she came back in and it was something like "I'm so glad you... OHH!" I asked if something was wrong, and recovering she said "it's all lit up. It's NEVER been lit before".
Not only did I get an extra cup of tea and cake, but when I got back to the workshop the boss informed me that she'd been on the phone with fulsome praise for the 'lovely young man' - I got a fair bit of ribbing from the others!
There are devices that convert HDMI to Component video. And many higher end CRT TVs nearing the end of the CRT era will have component inputs, even supporting 576P Progressive Scan. Failing that, you can further convert component to composite, and then push the composite to a RF modulator like a VCR so very old TVs can support it. It's an ugly chain but Technology Connections and Techmoan does it all the time so it works at least.
There was a concerted effort to ensure standardisation and compatibility that manufacturers these days would decry as unwarranted government interference. That was partly because the lack of spectrum meant that there wasn't really the option of a free-for-all, but by the 50s (in America) and 60s (in Europe) it had such a hold on popular entertainment there'd have been riots if the system had been arbitrarily broken.
There are even still vestiges that linger on in digital TV - the vertical resolution of standard definition video is 480 pixels in the US (the number of visible lines in the NTSC system) and 576 in PAL countries for similar reasons.
There's probably a lesson for today's manufacturers in the marketing advantages of products that are obviously part of a supported ecosystem, but perhaps one they are not predisposed to acknowledge.
But, there again, I thought a bassinet was some sort of low-pitched woodwind instrument, so what do I know?
Irish 625 started basically in 1962, UK 625 a bit later. But the pre-existing 405 channels were not turned off till 1985 in UK and Ireland.
A restored 405 line set will work on 625 line via an FPGA based standards converter.
The 625 line & 525 line gear that has video in will work on DVB-T or DVB-S (or both for €90) €50 set-boxes, even with HD signals.
Cheap adaptors connect analogue VGA, NTSC, or PAL from anything to HDMI (RGB, Component or composite).
There are also HDMI converters to Component, Composite and RGB.
A €12 line-in adaptor for phone or MP3 player makes local stereo FM, allowing any FM radio (1945, 1959, 1955, 1962 etc) to work off DVB, DAB, streaming, etc.
I don't buy ebooks I can't remove DRM from. Both MS and Amazon abandoned earlier DRM making the ebooks useless.
DCMA and DRM are evil. So are gadgets that could work off-line and deliberately can't. I won't use anything like that and not even app versions of web sites.
ePubor will strip DRM from Kobo, Google and Amazon (never tried MS). You might have to wait for an update as the standards change, but it gets there.
I have a Kobo eReader, and seeing as removing ones eyes with a spoon is less painful than using the Kobo store 90% of my books are from Amazon and de-buggered. If I can't strip it it gets returned.
The ePubor is a rip-off of free NoDRM's DeDRM.
I only download to PC then copy to the ereader, no matter where I buy an ebook. Kobo's purchase & download is simpler than Amazon's where there is no shopping trolley and you have to pick a target Kindle for each download.
I don't use the "Store" feature on any brand of ereader.
Where my blanking interval data at?! Yass serviceable power supplies and flyback calls (find the charred diode!) are important. Modular ATSC 3.x is important, I see the chiral broadcast antenna bits around but having a NAB of the people (or Circuits World Degrowth colon Patreon) seems to be a bit farther away! I was promised micro organization democracy with local privacy key management, but I'm seeing LGe (so, WebOS wonks) and other chaebol throw up hands at ATSC 3 compliance something. Is there a Korean WebOS fansite with the drip on this low Q signal?
Where even are the JavaScript consoles of the 4k TV? Lend unto the 8mm side bezel that which is V8 shadow DOM heartbeat to the TV.
It's not just Doctorow novels with plowshared weapons doing the job of making the dog look good chasing porch pirates and removing stinky distractions itself.
I doubt that any other tech equipment has that long a lifetime.
10 pulse-per-second rotary dial POTS terminals (Plain Old Telephone System aka analogue telephones) from the 1930s still work fine on modern PSTN lines.
Of course there's a push from the likes of BT/OpenReach in the UK to discontinue the baseband POTS service on your copper pair in favour of SIP services so that is unlikely to be true for much longer
And plenty of other routers have similar functions though the Fritz!box does go over the top with options! The bog-standard BT device has a BT-style telephone socket on the back (all the other routers I've looked at have RJ11) so you don't even need an adapter and I'm told it can support 4 REN so you can even connect wired analogue extensions.
No idea if these devices will respond to pulse dialling though; it's difficult to tell without trying (we're still on PoTS, though fibre has now arrived so it's only a matter of time before I shift over). Some specifications say they respond to timed-break recall so the capability is there, but even if you can't dial out you will still be able to receive calls and often the bell of our red GPO phone in the hallway is audible when the warbly-sounders on the DECT phones scattered around the house aren't (say, if you're in the garden), so that's useful.
M.
I know, I have a FRITZBox! myself which as you say, has both an FXS port & a DECT base station built-in. Nice kit and supplied gratis (well, included-with) by my ISP. They're fairly ubiquitous in Germany & some other European countries for domestic phone/net providers as well. The stock firmware is not as flexible router-wise as OpenWrt but at least it gets regular auto-updates and is way better than the non-maintained, limited functionality crap most UK ISPs give punters.
But we were discussing long-lived technology. Baseband POTS is still one of my favorites for its simplicity & elegance. (Okay I'm a bit biased - I used to design payphones.)
TCP/IP's doing pretty well longevity-wise too. :-)
Funny you should say that.
I was in a rather posh hotel in the Netherlands a while ago with a rather grand spacious public area between reception and the lifts (elevators).
It still had a row of phone hoods on one wall but they no longer had phones, just a notepad, a pen and a USB socket!
(Makes me think of my favourite "plot holes you could drive a Sherman tank through" disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow. If the library hadn't had POTS payphones, Jake Gyllenhaal wouldn't have got to be groped by Emmy Rossum. Bring back POTS! Hang on, if he hadn't gotten through to Dennis Quaid then maybe Jay O. Sanders wouldn't have had to die at the shopping mall with the surprisingly fragile roof.)
You should assume it has a limited life. Possibly very limited if you are buying it from a startup or no name company.
I mean, its stupid to have a bassinet that requires an app and subscription, but I assume it provides some capabilities that go beyond a normal bassinet that just sits there, or a slightly upscale one that can be set to rock unattended. But before buying something like that, you have to ask yourself - is what the app does something that couldn't be handled with a few buttons on the unit itself? Or is it just a risk that the company could go out of business, or start charging a subscription to access what used to be free after a year when sales drop like a rock because China clones are on the market for 1/10th of the price?
> its stupid to have a bassinet that requires an app and subscription
Nowadays it's hip to require an app and a subscription. Many won't buy if it hasn't an app and a subscription (and a "social media" connection)...
I've seen BBQ smokers requiring an app to be used. Grilling/smoking your meat over burning embers is about as old as putting your baby in some king of recipient to isolate it from the hostile environment. Today all this requires an app. Mandatory. You need to prove you're moving with the times.
Have you seen the new Bluetooth diapers?
Wow that Spotify Car Thing bricking is shocking. Just looked at the website (https://carthing.spotify.com/).
FAQ - What shall I do with my car thing? Find your local bin.
I don’t own one of these but even so Spotify will now never sell an item of hardware to my household or my family. I don’t understand why company loyalty/brand image doesn’t seem to matter any more. Am I hopelessly outdated because I remember bad treatment and avoid it in future? Companies must suffer some loss due to these shenanigans, no?
Along the same line of thought --
Apple sells a phone with an unremovable battery, Apple users go "meh". And then Samsung sees that Apple was not punished for doing the wrong thing, and now their phones have unremovable batteries.
Apple takes away the headphone jack on the phone, Apple users go "meh". And then Samsung sees that Apple was not punished for doing the wrong thing, and now their phones no longer have a headphone jack.
Apple implemented parts pairing just to prevent you from fixing your own product, Apple users go "meh". And then Samsung sees that Apple was not punished for doing the wrong thing, and now their phones have parts pairing too.
Of course, Apple is not the only company that kicks you hard in the groin and then demands you say thank you for the privilege. I am just using them to make a point. When did consumers become so apathetic to companies screwing us that we just accept and go on? Why aren't we doing more to punish companies that are openly doing us wrong? As shown by the Apple example, when one company is not punished for doing the wrong thing, other companies in their greed also follow suit. How did it get this way? Whenever people ask why I don't like Apple, I openly tell them it is because of how they did us wrong, and since we the consumer didn't punish them for doing wrong, now every other company is also doing the wrong thing.
I think we need to get more vocal telling people how they are being cheated. If enough people wake up, things can change.
> When did consumers become so apathetic to companies screwing us that we just accept and go on?
After all the consolodation done by these massive companies which lead to reduced choice so that even if you wanted to do something about it, in practice you had no other viable place to get that category of product from. So all you can do is say meh because "what are you going to do about it?", is being answered by those asking the question with "nothing, that's what!".
Break them up, all of them! Into much, much smaller pieces.
Apple users go "meh"
While there are some ways in which Apple has gone out of its way to ensure compatibility - for example the translation layers between PPC Macs, Intel Macs and Arm Macs - the "dump the users" attitude has been around for a very long time. Remember the iMac? Ditched the Apple Desktop Bus (which admittedly was getting a bit long-in-the-tooth) in favour of USB1, an interface which (IIRC) hadn't even been properly standardised at the time the iMac came out. Keyboards, mice, modems, printers and some other bits of kit which could have transferred to the new machine all had to be replaced, and as you said, Apple users [went] "meh" - and put up with the one and only mouse available. The iMac didn't come with a floppy disc drive and that, coupled with the lack of ADB in an era when (home) computers were rarely networked and mostly didn't have CD writers, made it needlessly difficult (and/or expensive) to transfer your files from an older machine to a newer one. Correct me if I'm wrong, but as I remember it, the iMac didn't even have an external SCSI bus, so you couldn't even take your Syquest drive across, should you have had one. Or SCSI scanner.
Now, there's a good argument that in the long term USB was by far the better bet for things like keyboards and mice but at the time it was a bit of a wrench.
M.
The original iMac was originally designed to be an office workstation. It was designed to be connected to a network, it didn't need a local floppy drive or CD/RW.
The pretty case came later when it was decided to repurpose it as a home computer, the original case was never released, and may not have even been completely designed before the project changed, but the specs were already finalized. The modem was on a separate board, so intended to be optional.
The very first iMacs had a removable panel in the space where the usb, modem and audio in/outs were located.
Removing that plate gave access to what was called the mezzanine board (iirc).
The German company Formac made a SCSI card that fitted to a socket on the mezzanine.
The second gen iMacs had that card and the panel removed so the mod was no longer possible.
I think the usb had improved a bit too.
I have in my loft one of those first edition iMacs - fitted with the Formac card.
I used my Umax scanner and scsi Zipdrives with it.
About the parts pairing: Right now the UK has been inviting tech companies to discuss device theft and what they can do about it. The only ways apple can prevent or reduce iPhone thefts is by using technology to find stolen phones, which would work a lot better if the police acted on that information, and by reducing the value of a stolen device.
Part pairing means a phone repairer cannot use the screen of s stolen iPhone to repair another one, reducing the value of the stolen phone.
Or you know the cops could actually do their job rather than not turn up, gaslight -"it's a grey area", "that's not a crime" etc, ask about CCTV and when told there isn't any just say there isn't anything they can do or lastly get threatening when pressed on the issue and starting implying you are guilty of something or "we don't like people who contact us frequently", "you know smart people take a telling" and worse - plod Scotland
My car was stolen in May. I reported it to Police Scotland immediately, supplying photographs of the low loader which whipped it. They acknowledged receipt and finally got back to me last week, asking if I had any photographs of the low loader which whipped it. Clearly they are not remotely interested. Probably too busy with Humza Yousaf's thought hate crimes legislation.
"Part pairing means a phone repairer cannot use the screen of s stolen iPhone to repair another one, reducing the value of the stolen phone."
There was a BBC News story just today showing what happens to stolen phones. They end up in Shenzhen or similar where they are stripped for useable parts, which may or may not include having the gear to make paired parts appear to be genuine again. For all we know, the parts end up back on the Apple production line as a "side hustle"
Part pairing has existed in cars longer than in iphones for exactly the same reason and it's had exactly the same effect: A rise in an underground market dedicated to "divorcing/remarrying"(*) parts which ostensibly came into existence to facilitate reuse of parts from scrapped cars(**) but is mostly used by chop shops
(*) The car industry's term, not mine
(**) Supposedly you CAN get a dealer to do this, but the reality is that very few will do it and those who will charge more than the cost of new parts on the basis that they have the specialist dealer-only software(***) needed and they have you over a barrel
(***) It used to be that such software was obtainable, but now it's all keycoded and requires per-use authorisation keys(****) obtained by phoning home to the Central Scrutiniser. Automakers are doing everything they can to block right-to-repair laws
(****) As a consumer you CAN get the keys, but be prepared to hand over your firstborn plus an arm+leg. Mandating that the stuff is available is one thing, but discriminatory pricing is the norm
"When did consumers become so apathetic to companies screwing us that we just accept and go on?"
When the young, rebelling against their parents "old fashioned ways" began to accept "renting everything, owning nothing", instead of listening to their parents sage advice and experience of saving up until you can afford something and not demanding it "now" for a small upfront cost and a very long tail of paying forever (until the real owner decides you can't have it any more)
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I'm pretty sure you have to have a steady job to be able save money.
Perhaps you missed the last 7 recessions? And wages failing to keep up with inflation for 50 years? And temp jobs being the majority of jobs? And the mergers? And layoffs? And zero hour? And offshoring? And ever decreasing choices for everyone?
Do try and keep up.
There's a big difference between replacing a broken fridge with credit, and upgrading your working 26inch TV to a 42inch one, or updating on credit to the latest expensive iphone.
The "brighthouse" generation attitude has sod all to do with increased levels of poverty, they are just fueled by greed, and "must have latest shiny shiny NOW"
"Perhaps you missed the last 7 recessions?"
I lived though and well remember the last 6 recessions. The 7th was in 1961, a year before I was born, so I hope you'll excuse and allow me that one. clearly you are a bit older than me if you remember the 1961 recession :-)
So yeah, I grew up in the shadow of the UK still recovering from WWII and a general philosophy of buy what you need and save up for luxuries, avoiding buying on the never-never as much as possible. I'm still living in the house I bought when I was 21 and lived through 10 years when mortgage rates were in double digits and could only afford an old car I had to keep fixing myself or do without. I do have a level of sympathy with those who were born during and have only ever known low interest rates. I have a lot less sympathy for those who have experienced higher rates and the past and still have loans and debts up to hilt.
Yes. The younger generation is brilliant: they invented the concepts of debt and renting. They didn't exist before. Older people have never had either, even when they were young. Now all the young have to do is get the patent royalties on those and their problems will be solved.
I'm not sure why so many people like making a generational thing out of this. Lots of older people buy things with subscriptions, either willingly or not. For instance, some people I know, aged 59 and 63, who purchased those security cameras for which you have to pay every month to use them at all. Their children didn't make them do that; they chose to do it all on their own. Just in case they were unaware, I explained the subscription terms. They were aware and chose to accept it.
To the extent that there is any generational thing here at all, it's because it is easier to make a subscription out of devices with modern technology and the manufacturers are taking advantage of that. It's easier to have a camera that only works with the manufacturers' servers and phone app now that the users have phones it can work with and a connection to keep the cameras and the servers in contact. That would be a more convincing argument if there hadn't been many similar things before which used the same terms. Before there were cameras connected over WiFi to your phone, there were still home security systems, often paid for monthly and managed by a company. It's not just those. Televisions were rented. Cars were leased. People chose that option, or were sometimes not given another option, even before the year 2005.
Subscriptions work because people sometimes choose them. I generally try to avoid them whenever possible, but I'm also comfortable doing some of the work that a subscription involves. If I ever decide I need a camera on my house, I'll do the network setup to get in contact with it when I'm away. I may even build the device, probably with a Raspberry Pi in it. A lot of people who want that are not willing to do that, and when given the option of a single-purchase camera which requires them to learn some network admin or one with a convenient app that just works, they choose the subscription. Some people are just not as frugal as we are or value things differently, and age is not really a factor in it. The important things are that we make clear when something is a subscription and when they're not so that people can make an informed decision and that we prevent companies from switching from "you bought it" to "just kidding, you didn't, and now you have to pay again to keep using it".
I prefer the fine art telling people to insist on their stuff passing tests (at the reviewers if not the oem design planning and thenceforth,) over volume, environmental audio etc. We have small bits left in school on slavery deprecation and yet it's left to 400 fell imaginations plus the student to know how a free press and truly edgelord life (running mistagged people to freedom) might bring human succor.
WTF? That seemed like it was written in English, but the words appeared to be in some sort of strange and incomprehensible order, not to mention included both made up and defunct words. I know English is a fluid and evolving language, but I think you just jumped a few too many steps in the evolutionary process for the rest of us to be able understand your point. I I'm assuming you did actually have a point.
Not even things that are bricked.
I'm on my third tablet. Teh first two are fully functional, but on the final version of Android they got are unusably slow. Theres no usecase for them unless you go into esoteric things like home automation hub (Alexa does that fine...) car touch screen (much more trouble than its worth) etc.
The latest tablet is 10" and £70....it'll never get an update and when it gets too old its cheap enough to slat without worry.
There is spotify car thing, where some people may not be able to listen to music, but what about the actual car thing? [Fisker owners](https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/ev-startup-fisker-files-bankruptcy-2024-06-18/) are finding out about that, and imagine how the UK would have handled it if Rover going bust had bricked all Rover cars? It seems this should be top of the list when it comes to legislation about digital resiliancy.
...if Rover going bust had bricked all Rover cars?
Well, Rover going bust didn't brick my Mini Cooper S but it did mean that the 5 year anti-corrosion warranty I had was worthless. I had a problem with one of the inner sills and took it to a body repair shop who did Rover work only to be told that as Rover had just gone bust I was out of luck.
That hurt as I had only just got over the fact that my fancy Janspeed exhaust had lost it tail pipe and finisher. Rotted clean through after 18 months. When I contacted them for a warranty replacement I was told that "No, sorry, we have gone into receivership and will not honour any warranty." Months later they were back in business but by then it was too late as I had bought a nice stainless steel exhaust for £200. Bah!
"if Rover going bust had bricked all Rover cars?"
It does make one wonder where we headed with all these "connected" cars, especially EVs if the mothership goes under or decides to no longer support the model which is constantly "calling home". Will it still work? Will it still mostly work? Will it go into "limp mode" after 6 months of losing contact? What about older "connected" cars using 3G as 3G is switched off? Is the (e)SIM accessible or replaceable?
Obviously they will need to be replaced.
The general trend is making everything as short-lived as only possible, so you have to spend lots of money, again and again (and a couple subscriptions to boot). For a while the car industry didn't dare to do it, at least not too openly, but with those new technologies and the "connected" thing they seized the opportunity to introduce built-in obsolescence just like everyone else. Clients will grumble a little, but when everybody does it (and they will), there will be no choice left but to submit. "O brave new world" and all that...
Meanwhile, I still have my old Land Rover where the only electronics are an aftermarket points replacement.
There's no DRM or similar crap to stop people making spares for them, and most of the stuff that tends to be a problem* can always be handled by a bit of old fashioned metalwork.
* Shhh, listen quietly, that sound you can hear is a mix of the chassis rusting and the door panels turning to white powder. It's nearly as loud as the noise from Italian cars of a similar era.
>Am I hopelessly outdated because I remember bad treatment and avoid it in future?
Possibly, but you're not alone. I still have Mazda and Barclays Bank on my personal boycott list, because of actions they took almost 40 years ago that affected my family.
Some families, generation to generation, pass down valuable antiques, or photographs of sentimental value. I pride myself on my carefully-nurtured selection of heirloom grudges :)
For some products - maybe quite a lot of the consumer items - one possible response would be for the vendors to drop the price of the hardware but increase the monthly license fee. That would undermine the 'I'm not getting my resale value' argument at a stroke. They could drop the product with very little notice and, providing they stopped taking their fee, the consumer wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
Welcome to the brave new world.
I'm sort of fine with this. If they need ongoing revenue to make something work, I can understand why that is. Sometimes, there really is no way to provide the advertised service without expensive stuff such as a bunch of servers to run software which the embedded chip in the product can't run locally. The important thing is that they explain that, in clear words, right on the product page not in a terms of service document. People should be able to know up front what the hardware costs and what they need to pay to keep it working, which will allow most of them to decide that the monthly payments are not something they want so they will not buy this product. The problems come when they think they've bought something and end up getting a subscription, either because the manufacturer hid that one was involved, or because the manufacturer didn't have one when they bought it but added one later.
The problem I have with all this, is the unavailabilty of options of minimalistic self contained units with all their functions built in (hard coded.)
Even dumb digital TVs invariably had gratuitous DVD players which remained unused until the broadcasters changed their codecs and rendered the device ewaste.
A set top box, a HDMI monitor and PC speakers replacement worked well until the degradation in the broadcast content pulled the plug for me.
When reruns of Mrs Brown's Boys became the high point of the TV week as they would say on Craggy Island, I thought "feck this" and called full time on broadcast TV.
Am I the only the one who finds the hardest thing to do on the cleverest smart phone is to make a simple (voice) phone call using a remembered number. Clearly not really a phone, rather a miniature multimedia tablet with a (un)supported phone function.
Of course, this was the same company (ok, Sony BMG, same parent company) who put an autoinstalling rootkit on their audio CDs just to prevent copying. To quote Sony Pictures Entertainment senior VP Steve Heckler in 2000, "The industry will take whatever steps it needs to protect itself and protect its revenue streams ... It will not lose that revenue stream, no matter what ... Sony is going to take aggressive steps to stop this. We will develop technology that transcends the individual user."
The former sold themselves out to Logitech who killed the product, but the server is open source and still maintained.
I recall reading Sonos suddenly stopped supporting some of their speakers and bricking them
We now have just a few squeezeboxes, but more Alexa's. At the cost of the later I am not worried if they suddenly stop working.
Not so worried about the squeeze boxes now either as they have had a good run. But what happened to both does make me wary of the next quality sounds system I get
I bought a pair of nice B&W speakers, and a NAD amplifier, in 1993 (ish). The set-up still provides the sound in our lounge, with a TV, RPi/MoodeAudio and an HTPC plugged into it.
Not going anywhere near anything smart that becomes dumb when the server's owner decides so.
I gave up on NAD after the "HiFi" receiver I purchased turned to have worse-than-telephone-bandwidth AM and a hideously insensitive FM frontend - a a time when ALL the local AM stations were broadcasting _at least_ 9kHz bandwidth (several priding themselves on 15kHz if a 9kHz notch filter was used to filter adjacaent station carriers) and the nearest FM station was 80 miles away
Seriously, If I wanted to listen to potatoes I'd just buy a portable with 2 inch speaker. My Nakamichi car stereo had both significantly better FM sensitivity and AM audio bandwidth
The Sonos story is slightly different to that. Sonos announced they were going to update the app with new features, but the update wouldn’t work with older units. But that was fine and dandy, because Sonos offered to take the old units back and give a 1/3 discount on new ones.
Understandably, owners (including me) of older units were not impressed with Sonos’ generous offer, and there was a huge outcry on their forums and elsewhere. In the end Sonos backed down, and they now provide two separate apps: S1 for old units & S2 for new ones.
That was in 2020. At some point I’ve no doubt Sonos will pull the S1 app citing ‘security issues’, but if/when that happens I definitely won’t be replacing my freshly bricked units with new Sonos ones.
That should be law.
Command and control procedures and specification must be lodged with the copyright office. Offline copy of any PKI keys used to secure the devices. Once the manufacturer goes belly up, or just decides to not give a frack, the lot goes open source/public domain.
Cannot justify good hardware being ditched at the stroke of a pen. On environment ground alone, but could be others as well.
More expensive at the outset perhaps, but our vast library of DVDs and BluRays (and CDs) will remain available for watching at any time of the day or night, and even when the internet connection goes down, so long as it's possible to buy a suitable player, and they don't disappear if you decide to stop paying the subscription.
I have a (much smaller) collection of Laserdiscs too. That player was built like a tank and aside from cleaning the dust away from the lens now and then it works as well now as the day I bought it (circa 1996, in a "remainders" sale for £70 just as DVD was being launched with players costing £500+). There is something to be said for physical meda.
M.
No, actually, I haven't - except for one or two DVDs which have some physical damage. Perusing the shelves and digging out an actual physical disc is part of the fun of watching a movie (much like travelling to the cinema, queueing up and buying expensive popcorn) and the way things are set up at home it's also more convenient, and it's certainly more convenient with regards the "extras". The CDs are "backed up" because cars these days don't have CD players but they do have USB sockets.
Backing up the DVDs is something I might consider one day, but it doesn't half involve upgrading the network storage. Currently I'm in the middle of expanding to 4TB online; the current 2TB is about 80% full of home movies, photographs and documents (10% "other" and 10% free). I'd probably need to double it three or four times again if I were to rip the library byte-for-byte*, or even re-coded at a reasonable quality - and then double-double-double-double the NAS backup capacity to match. And I can't rip BluRays (never looked in to it, don't even have a computer-attached BluRay drive) and some DVDs are an absolute pain; I've met Disney DVDs where a naïve rip results in a totally jumbled-up film where short (under a minute) segments are played in a seemingly random order.
M.
*I mean, just the Bond 50 collection on BluRay (122 hours on 22 discs) would probably take getting on for a TB at on-disc bitrates
Shout out to the wonderful Humax FoxSat satellite box firmware update by Raydon, which gives my box a web based interface, an FTP server and the ability to record HD unscrambled.
My media server is a second hand HP Compaq tower running Mint and Plex which to my amazement is able to boot up with 6 HDDs and an SSD fitted, we're talking about 30Tb of storage in total - well over 6,000 movies, a few hundred TV series plus all my music (ripped from CD as flac). One day I may get round to watching them all.
Thanks for that - I have a Foxsat which is retired and having recently installed a new satellite system (complete with wideband LNB and new receiver) I was contemplating having to whip the hard drive out again and lose the HD stuff.
Then again, it seems that direct broadcasting to homes, in Europe at least, is not much longer for this world. Astra haven't launched any new satellites in ages, and the ones at 28E are coming to the ends of their service lives. I think one has about six years left? You'd think Sky, as one of their biggest customers, would be up in arms but of course not - they are quietly converting everyone to video over IP. Once Sky has gone the business case for 28E will be marginal I reckon, so Freesat must also be making plans to leave.
Soon the only reliable way to get TV which doesn't rely on a solid, fast internet connection will be a pointy stick on the roof sucking in the signal from the nearest 3-mux terrestrial transmitter which - remember this folks - is only there because of the licence fee.
M.
My NASes (one main, one backup) are currently built around 2½" drives. At the time I built them I assumed the capacity of 2½" drives would increase in line with 3½" drives so with space for six or eight drives (RAID Z2) I should be fine for many years. Instead what I see is that 2½" capacity has stuck at 1TB if you don't want shingles and 2 or 3TB if you don't mind. I totally failed to realise that once SSDs were available at >256GB at "reasonable" prices the market for 2½" spinning rust would nigh-on disappear outside the datacentre.
Our NAS usage isn't particularly heavy, except when dumping memory cards from a week away or something, so I can get away with shingles even though FreeNAS / ZFS isn't particularly keen. Does vastly increase rebuild times though.
The NASes are in small(ish) form factor cases and there is little space for 3½" drives so I'd have to rebuild in new cases if I move to 3½". There are all sorts of calculations to undertake on costs and complexity because these systems have "evolved" over many years, not least of which is whether I'd actually want to stick with FreeNAS (TrueNAS). Maybe now is the time to start from scratch and build something a bit more future-proof, but the car needs servicing, the bathroom needs rebuilding, the kitchen fund keeps getting tapped for "emergencies" and... ... ...
M.
... our vast library of DVDs and BluRays (and CDs) will remain available for watching ...
DVDs, yes; Blueray perhaps not*.
They (the "media industry") learned from the mistakes made with DVDs (single key, eventually leaked, region coding widely bypassed/disabled) and made Blueray more complicated. The encryption system means that newer disks can be make that won't play on older devices that haven't updated their keys (hence the players needing a "phone home for updates" facility). Thus the idea of buying a player and never connecting it to the internet means that it can, in theory, be made incapable of playing newer disks. That same update can also block playing certain disks - e.g. if one has suffered bad piracy. So you can face a situation where you buy a disk and it won't play until you update the player, and that update could well drop support for existing disks.
So the only real guarantee is to strip any protection from disks you buy and keep unencrypted backup copies.
* TBH, I could be out of date on this. I recall a master key being leaked and widely copied around the internet to make it impossible to take down every copy. But I've not followed what this means in practice.
On a related theme, I bought some disks a while ago with PDFs of workshop manuals for my Land Rovers. The disks were encrypted (but this wasn't stated anywhere) so didn't work on my Mac. Luckily someone figured out how to completely bypass the encryption and save the PDFs in usable format - which is handy as the software only worked on Win 95/98/XP ! For an added bonus, the original disks were also setup so you had to sit through "very annoying" animations/visual effects every time you accessed them - just like the very annoying crap on the start of most DVDs.
They can find their "tech friend" to migrate them to Linux. Most apps run via browser, so underlying OS is no longer as relevant. I am able to run Slack, M$ Teams, Word, Excel, etc via browser on my Linux desktop systems. But yes, it's sad that M$ can't be held accountable for basically what amounts to "forced obsolescence" of otherwise still-usable, perfectly good hardware!
w11 requirements stopping many devices from being used...cannot or are not even aware of *nix)and will have to replace perfectly good kit
Hey, don't knock it! I got myself a very nice scanner for free because there was no Win7 driver for it and it "just worked" with Sane on 'nix (and still does!) :-)
I'm expecting a drop in the value of "old" laptops when MS decides it's had enough of supporting Win10 :-)
Funny, last phone I had from a certain well known manufacturer suddenly started going through the battery like wild-fire after its last update. Thought it might be my paranoia but this seems to suggest I was right. Bad strategy on their part. I've never bought another phone from that manufacturer as a result!
If you bought something, you should have a reasonable expectation of it lasting for as long as you take proper care of it.
If someone other than you does something without your consent that causes your property to be less functional that it was before, how the hell is that not considered vandalism?
Sounds like a good way to handle it. Another comes to mind, too:
Removing functionality, including complete bricking, of a device after it's been purchased is willfully depriving the user of its usefulness. Theft is defined as "taking another person's property or services without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it" (Wikipedia). Charge the companies with theft!
Uninstalling software, or "updating" it to be useless, or suddenly charging an extra fee for what was free when the device was purchased should be flat-out illegal. (Charging a fee could be considered blackmail - "nice software you have there, pity if it stopped working...")
Note that this wouldn't apply to simply not updating the software anymore (after a couple years). If it's still at the same functionality as it was when purchased, even if it's now outdated compared to other products, that's fair.
The **ONLY** exception would be a service that very clearly MUST use an off-device data source. A music streaming service, for instance. Even then, there should be a guarantee that it works for at least 5 years, and the company owes the customers a pro-rated amount if it's cancelled before then. And bankruptcy shouldn't get them out of it - consider the ripped-off customers to be creditors that must be paid.
Still using mine driven by a Rasberry Pi than you for open source.
My NAS stores the music and phone app and my orginal Logitech kit still works.
Very much the exception as I have a TV now unable to do much as it is "to old"
We just need a sensible life for stuff. 7 years or even 5 would be reasoable.
even 5 would be reasoable
Since buying my first house nearly 30 years ago I have had precisely three "main" TVs*, and the first of those was second hand and already 10+ years old. The next TV was a widescreen Trinitron and lasted 17 years if I remember correctly** and the current one (which does have a fault which needs repair but is otherwise perfectly functional) is coming up for eight I think. Five years for a TV is not acceptable. A five year warranty perhaps, and then at least another five years of expected life. My S-VHS player is 25 years old and still works reasonably well, though it isn't used as often as it used to be.
And as for Raspberry Pis, I am just about to retire 14 Pis, 12 of which have been running almost continuously, playing videos, since 2012 (they are first batch Sony model Bs). That's twelve years (well over 100,000 hours) for a computer which cost thirty quid. Yes, I had to replace some early (cheap) SD cards, and they became a lot more stable with various OS updates, but if I had another use for them (they're not being chucked - I might well have a use for them at some point) I would expect them to carry on working for a good time to come.
M.
*and moved house five times!
**the Trinitron died suddenly one day when the other half was watching a work-related DVD. The children, to this day, claim the thing was bored to death.
This is a valid issue for sure and there are many bad examples.
But I don't think anyone should expect that an article of clothing dependent on a technology platform notorious for killing off support after 3 years is a consumer product with a long support lifecycle.
(Funnily enough "fast fashion" has been very popular lately in the west and it basically means cheaply made clothes that fall apart quickly. So this is not exactly outside current trends in that respect)
Synology DSM 7.2.2 update press release:
“ DSM 7.2.2 introduces a strategic shift in offloading media processing to clients and mobile devices, leveraging widespread media decoding and encoding capabilities to reduce unnecessary server resource usage.”
In other words we have removed hardware processing of H.264/H.265 and dressed it up as a benefit. Fair enough if it became an optional thing but to actually remove functionality that many will have bought their NAS for (cctv dev, media server etc.) is disingenuous.
That doesn't even make sense. If the existing box can handle that, why remove it? I could see them releasing a new unit with cheaper hardware where that could be a way of making it seem as decent as the older device, but removing it from a device that is currently capable doesn't make any sense at all to me.
The FCC has apparently ruled that US cable providers no longer have to support CardCards, which among other things, are required to interface TiVo DVRs to digital cable systems. So as of sometime in October, my cable provider- Optimum - will cease to support their CableCards and my two TiVo's become bricks. The wife is not happy! Not clear what the alternatives are, but undoubtedly it'll cost me more money.
I have a TomTom satnav. It came with lifetime map upgrades. After about three years (in 2019) it, like many other TomTom devices, stopped receiving map upgrades. This was because it had exceeded its service life, defined as "the period for which it receives free map upgrades". Can't be serviceable after they end, can it? Paging Mr Heller.
I am sure that it was a completely coincidence that at the next GPS week number rollover, which happened a month or two later, it lost all ability to tell the time. A cynic might suspect that TomTom realised they had fucked up the code and semi-bricked the devices rather than fixing them.
Only a damn commie would not want endless high speed churn!
Share holders have rights too, you know! And the most sacred right is to screw you as hard as they can!
Now excuse me while I call customer support for my 2 year old, 3 thousand quatloos refrigerator that has stopped working. I've got my snacks and drinks while I wade through the voice menus. And even though it's just one week out of warranty, I'm confident they will still honor the warranty! And if not, I'll speak to their manager!
Until recently you could remotely schedule timed recordings on your FreeSat box via the app. The box and the app were linked together via a FreeSat ID.
The shitheads who operate FreeSat decided to retire the ID function so now this no longer works. Whilst they put a notice on their website (yeah, I check their website regularly...) they didn't even bother emailing users to say this would happen. First I knew was a whole load of recording requests that got stuck "pending" for several days.
This was a fab function as you could schedule recordings anytime/anywhere whenever you heard about a good program worth watching. Now you have you have to be sat in front of the TV, with the remote, bring up the search screen and drive the little cursor thing around to spell out the program name you are looking for. Literally going back 10 years in terms of functionality.
The explanation given was "internal system changes" i.e. it cost us a few pennies to run so we turned it off ... because we are shitheads...
The same shitheads operate a live TV streaming platform so obviously their business plan is kill of FreeSat/View as quickly as possible by enshitifying it and drive people to their streaming platform. Which incidentally is only available built in to certain "smart" TV screens.
The way it worked was quite interesting, the recording requests were actually sent over the satellite link, presumably alongside the program guide. I discovered this when my box didn't have internet access but recording requests from the app still showed up. I was well impressed. This did mean there was a certain amount of latency, sometimes tens of minutes which I imagine a lot of people with the attention span of a goldfish couldn't cope with. It also sometimes screwed up and you got phantom recording requests but this was infrequent and not really a big hassle.
Of course the entire platform (FreeSat) is in jeopardy because the satellites themselves (Astra 2) are nearing end of life and Sky, the primary user, is also desperately trying to drive their customers to streaming so they don't have to pay for new satellites. Tough titty if you live at the end of a long telephone line with shit DSL service.
Surprised this hasn't been picked up by El Reg.
In 2020 BMW brought in a system where the car had the hardware installed from new but you had to pay a subscription to activate it.
You want the heated seats to work? That will cost you £X per months sir (or madam).
Needless to say that this went down like a lead brick and BMW quietly dropped this lunacy a couple of years later ... and never mind the queue of hackers prepared to *update* your software for a small fee.
BMW currently charges quite a lot of money for various *software services* like being able to book a service from the car, video streaming etc. One of the options is to activate the "auto parking" *service* (a service for the same BMW drivers who don't understand what the indicator stalk is for).
I don't drive a BMW and never will.*
And I can park my car between the white lines without computer assistance.
"You want the heated seats to work? That will cost you £X per months sir (or madam)."
I had the misfortune of having a VW Passat (insurance loaner) less thatn 2 years ago which had exactly the same thing
The list of "subscription" or "fee to activate" options in the dashboard display was eye opening - and I understand they phone home regularly so you can't "bypass" the unlocks
Every computer I have ever bought has been bricked because the M$ OS no longer runs on it. I have three computers that are not connected to the Internet - one runs Windows XP Pro, and two run Windows 7 Pro - each running because they have software that would not run on the "new" shiny OS. I'm getting ready to add to that threesome because I have some Windows 10 apps that will not run on windows 11. And I also have an old desktop that runs windows 95. why don't I run VMs you ask? Because of the security risks. I thought If I protected them with a firewall at the perimeter they would be safe - no, there is always someone who has thought of that!!!!LOL Anyone with alternative ideas - please post and let me know what the alternatives are.
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