EU Prepares 'Right To Repair' Legislation To Fight Short Product Lifespans (bleepingcomputer.com) 190
An anonymous reader writes: The EU is preparing legislation that would legalize a customer's "right to repair," and would force vendors to design products for longer life and easier maintenance, in an effort to combat electronic waste and abusive practices like manufacturers legally preventing users from repairing their devices. The legislation is in its earlier stages of public discussion, but it already has the backing of several EU Members of Parliament, along with support from organizations like Greenpeace.
Currently, in the US only eleven states have similar laws, and they have been adopted after years of public discussions, and only for certain markets, and not for all types of products. It is unclear what leverage the EU will use to force manufacturers to produce longer lasting products, as this would mean lesser profits for big businesses, who often used tactics such as software DRMs, warranty contract lock-ins, and soldering components together, just to avoid users repairing products on their own.
Currently, in the US only eleven states have similar laws, and they have been adopted after years of public discussions, and only for certain markets, and not for all types of products. It is unclear what leverage the EU will use to force manufacturers to produce longer lasting products, as this would mean lesser profits for big businesses, who often used tactics such as software DRMs, warranty contract lock-ins, and soldering components together, just to avoid users repairing products on their own.
Damming the flood/whack a mole (Score:5, Insightful)
While I applaud such measures [as a techno-nerd one of the most infuriating aspects of the economy for me is the enforced obsolescence] I cannot help but wonder - since the whole planet agrees on the basic principles of free market capitalism, which inevitably result in forced obsolescence and a race to the bottom ["best product for the most affordable price' is the same as "worst product for the highest possible price"] why do we then spend absolutely enormous amount of time, money and effort to STOP the system going to where it goes naturally based on its premises.
What an absurd idea - make the worst and most destructive qualities of humans the most rewarded in the system [greed!], thus creating evolutionary pressure for all of us to become more and more sociopathic [i.e. successful] and then start pushing against the inevitable outcome.
Why don't we change the system so that it encourages and promotes human survival, procreation and happiness rather than greed and criminal wasting of resources. Ah, I know - the economists told me that the present system reflects exactly human nature [which is flawed, so we can't do jack shit about that - what a fucking LIE this is!] so this is the best of all possible worlds - where the ancestors of those economist set the system 200 years ago to benefit the "haves" and now we call that "natural system"; we claim that it is as immutable as the laws of Nature rather than a scam set up by humans to keep and increase their power.
'Summary: Humanity collectively opened the shitter above our heads and then stood in the shit rain wondering why it is shit and not honey.....unbelievable!
Re:Damming the flood/whack a mole (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? European countries are fairly socialist. China is a communist government with a healthy leavening of capitalism. In the middle east, most countries are essentially giant oil companies (that collude in a monopoly) that play dividends to all their citizens.
I mean, yes, everyone agrees that some free market capitalism in the mix is important. But no one thinks that unadulterated laissez-faire free market capitalism (except about half of America, the half in charge).
Re:Damming the flood/whack a mole (Score:5, Interesting)
Even America doesn't believe in free market capitalism, judging by its actions. If you truly believed in free market capitalism you wouldn't have telecoms monopolies, utilities monopolies, banks "too big to fail" and so on.
Perhaps the easiest first step would simply be to require public availability of repair manuals and guaranteed public availability of parts for X amount of time (maybe sector dependent) in order to achieve a CE marking.
Re:Damming the flood/whack a mole (Score:5, Interesting)
If we truly practiced free market capitalism, we wouldn't had a national telecom system at all.
Governments wouldn't have forced people to allow telephone poles on their property. To build a local exchange would require negotiating a contract with every single landowner where you needed to place a pole and you'd probably be paying monthly or yearly rent for it if you couldn't sucker the owners into selling rights to you.
After all those expenses, you'd still only be a local exchange. To connect to others, you'd have to make sure that your equipment is compatible with the other exchanges around you and come up with some sort of agreement on the costs of running lines between the exchanges (and paying off the landowners). On the wild chance that you get past all those hurdles, you'd then have to deal with peering charges for all those connections. Imagine a call from New York to San Francisco... hundreds, if not thousands, of peering charges tacked on by every local exchange in between (free market doesn't mean you get to use other people's equipment for free after all).
Assuming you pulled all that off, you'd now be the proud owner of a local monopoly. Imagine a competitor trying to enter the market... are you going to let them use your poles or wires? Of course not. They'd have to negotiate for a whole new set of poles and lines and pay the full cost without the hope of a monopoly on customers. And they'll have to negotiate a peering agreement with you so that their customers can call your customers. Unless you're feeling generous and love the idea of giving up your monopoly and sharing your profits with someone else, you've got no incentive to agree to peering. You're the entrenched monopoly, after all, and screwing over competition improves your bottom line.
So yeah... the nation wide phone system wouldn't exist. Telephones would be little more than a novelty available only in densely populated areas.
Oh... cell phones, ham radios or other wireless devices? Bwahahahaha.... the government allocats spectrum for them and prosecutes anyone who fucks with it. In the truly free market, you're on your own and any competitor who wants to take down your cell phone business can pay a few teenagers to drive around town in trucks with high powered jamming devices (you can buy one for about $100, though they're very illegal in the US) and boom... unhappy customers abandoning you for your non-jammed competition. All completely legal thanks to the truly free market.
Free markets always devolve into monopolies. Properly regulated markets are not free, but they also don't allow monopolies and too-big-to-fail companies.
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'Enlightened' free market capitalism could tolerate some monopolies. Utilities such as electricity, water, and sewer could be the more efficient means of delivering these goods or services.
Telephone as a monopoly may have been the best means to develop the ubiquitous network and compatible devices that the POTS offered. Today, however, wireless is where growth and focus are, along with VOIP, which needs no dedicated network but can run on wired and wireless, with no real concern for the underlying media an
Re:Damming the flood/whack a mole (Score:4, Informative)
In the real world, spectrum would be property and interference would be trespassing, as was being developed in the courts before the government laid claim on the entire spectrum.
Without a government-enforced license, how do you treat spectrum as property? I own all electromagnetic radiation that passes through my land (with no limit on altitude?) and can block anything that I want? How would you ever create a mobile network if that were the case?
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Yeah - and I say this as someone whose base-ideology is libertarian - attempts to extrapolate our inherent rights to include property just don't hold up. I part ways with most libertarians because they take this step, and then use it to justify capitalism as an extension of our fundamental rights as human beings. I don't buy it, and view free markets as a useful tool - technology invented by man to align price and demand. You can, in principle, have your right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
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If your 'inalienable right to life' includes your right to end your life it you choose, that is similar but not quite identical to your implicit right to self-defense. Both rights recognized by legitimate societies.
But your similar right to free speech is not without limit. and so it is with property. If you can define a use of your property that is necessary for others to use theirs, is the choice then to either silo up everyone and develop a society of interlocking individual property agreements, or is it
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A challenge for the libertarian ideology is when our technology is not sufficiently advanced to protect individuals, and yet lives are on the line nonetheless. Vaccines currently fit this description. Most vaccines only work if some high percentage of the populous is vaccinated. Vaccines are not 100% safe. Therefore, we deliberately harm a few individuals in order to save a far greater number. I would much prefer if we could stick to libertarian principles and make it a personal decision, but to do so would
One Thought--Charge for the Landfill (Score:2, Insightful)
Require appliance companies to label their products in an easily scannable way. Any time one of their products hits a waste transfer station, the appliance company has to pay the waste transfer station a nontrivial disposal fee that is a percentage of their list price. Start with a very high percentage if a product is disposed of in the first year after manufacture and reduce it over time.
Give them a financial incentive to make their products last longer.
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Even America doesn't believe in free market capitalism, judging by its actions
The free market is a myth. All markets are regulated or rigged in some way or other.
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"Free market" means your cronies get to do what they want and are exempt from regulation. There really is no such thing as a fair free market free of oversight, there's always someone out there ready to abuse the system in some way (polluting the neighbor's property, restricting market access, etc). So the struggle is to get a government (or other measure of enforcement) that supports you and your friends, and maybe discouraging your competition as a bonus.
Re:Damming the flood/whack a mole (Score:5, Interesting)
Neither is correct. Euroean countries are fairly social-democratic, not socialist (workers own the means of production). And as for China, communist government is an oxymoron. Even the USSR realised that and called themselves socialist (resulting in the citizens of many former socialist countries receiving a share of the state owned enterprises after the breakup/independence), with communism being a long-term goal.
Re: Damming the flood/whack a mole (Score:3)
Europe is more like "capitalism with a human face", in other words social democracy.
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The US could have been that way, but there was an active marketing/propaganda effort against trade unions and social institutions, which accelerated after the Russian revolution by linking it to communism. Despite so many decades having passed there is still a knee jerk reaction against the words "social" or "union". Certainly while growing up it wat he belief of many that trade unions were just a gateway drug to full blown takeover by the commies.
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China is a communist government with a healthy leavening of capitalism.
China's more like an ultra-capitalist oligarchy with some communist bumper stickers on it.
Re:Damming the flood/whack a mole (Score:5, Informative)
I cannot help but wonder - since the whole planet agrees on the basic principles of free market capitalism...
You have made a very incorrect assumption.
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On a national political level, very nearly the whole planet does subscribe to those principles, even the Scandinavian countries and arguably even Chavista Venezuela. The only clear exceptions are Cuba and North Korea.
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Why don't we change the system so that it encourages and promotes human survival, procreation and happiness rather than greed and criminal wasting of resources.
Now where's the profit in that?
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What an absurd idea - make the worst and most destructive qualities of humans the most rewarded in the system [greed!], thus creating evolutionary pressure for all of us to become more and more sociopathic [i.e. successful] and then start pushing against the inevitable outcome.
On the other hand, it is pretty clever to find a way to use that destructive quality to keep the same destructive quality at bay. It's the buyers greed to get things cheep vs the sellers greed to max the selling price that doesn't keep the system in an exact balance, but slows down the race to the button so much, during the last few hundred years, it almost seemed stable, and that's the actual remarkable thing - requires only a minimum of external regulations.
Capitalism is going down - but slowly. Like the
Re:Damming the flood/whack a mole (Score:4, Interesting)
While I applaud such measures [as a techno-nerd one of the most infuriating aspects of the economy for me is the enforced obsolescence] I cannot help but wonder - since the whole planet agrees on the basic principles of free market capitalism, which inevitably result in forced obsolescence and a race to the bottom ["best product for the most affordable price' is the same as "worst product for the highest possible price"] why do we then spend absolutely enormous amount of time, money and effort to STOP the system going to where it goes naturally based on its premises.
Hear! Hear! This sort of crap has been going on for far too long - there seems to be, maybe not an actual conspiracy, but something that looks a lot like a universal acceptance that this is the way to make business, from the invention of the razor with disposable blades onwards. However, there is also a strong and possibly growing trend the opposite way, of people tinkering and quite often re-discovering the "old ways": learning how to hone and use a straight razor, or learning woodworking without electric tools etc; and in the process discovering how little actual value is added by the supposedly indispensable, modern tools. Linux, FOSS and RaspberryPi are other examples of the same: maybe people are sick of being powerless and dependent on buying shitty products when it is so obvious that they are being defrauded, in effect.
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This is called hypernormalization. It happened in the USSR, and it happened in modern western politics. People know the way things are is wrong, that the system is broken, but they can't imagine living any other way so they perpetuate it.
The Soviet system is corrupt, but they couldn't imagine any other way of living.
Politicians are all corrupt liars, but since they are all that way we might as well vote for the demagogue we like the best.
Capitalism produces bad results, but communism is apparently the only
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The Soviet system is corrupt, but they couldn't imagine any other way of living.
Who are “they” exactly? Even on paper the nomenklatura was working towards communism (they just had no idea how to get there). Even those not in power had in their living memories times of democracies and nationalisms.
Capitalism produces bad results, but communism is apparently the only other option and is reportedly terrible
Then be so kind and tell us about those other options. Seriously. We have had feudalism, mercantilism, autarky, collectivism, communism, wild capitalism, state capitalism, regulated capitalism, libertarianism. None of these seems to “work”.
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Socialism and regulated capitalism seems to work reasonably well.
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Socialism and regulated capitalism seems to work reasonably well.
Sorry, my bad. When I hear “the west”, I assume it's Scandinavia, UK, France, Germany, which is more of a mixed bad.
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With the exception of the UK, where else is doing better? Certainly not the US. Canada maybe?
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Re: Damming the flood/whack a mole (Score:2)
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This is why I vote for the pirate party.
From the top of my head I can't remember what kind of economic system they support. Skimming the wikipedia page gives me an impression that it is regulated capitalism.
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None, because economic systems are orthogonal to what the pirate party is about. Generally the pirate party is a single issue party (nothing wrong about it, the green party started this way) and could only rule in a coalition government unless it adopts a full platform.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I agree with every single thing you said, and would like to add the following observations:
...why do we then spend absolutely enormous amount of time, money and effort to STOP the system going to where it goes naturally based on its premises.
The simple answer is that individual citizens (a) have let themselves be hoodwinked into believing that our current system of economics is somehow 'natural' or 'inevitable', (b) thereby managing to lose sight of the facts that there are alternatives, and that by collective action we can bring them into being. For a sobering and scary look at one of the key methods used to turn people into sheeple, read John Taylor Ga
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While I applaud such measures [as a techno-nerd one of the most infuriating aspects of the economy for me is the enforced obsolescence] I cannot help but wonder - since the whole planet agrees on the basic principles of free market capitalism, which inevitably result in forced obsolescence and a race to the bottom ["best product for the most affordable price' is the same as "worst product for the highest possible price"] why do we then spend absolutely enormous amount of time, money and effort to STOP the system going to where it goes naturally based on its premises.
The problem in capitalism that this kind of regulation is trying to address is the ability to unload difficult-to-evaluate costs onto the general public. Generating twice as much waste doesn't cost the manufacturers anything, so there's no incentive for them to minimize it. One of the basic assumptions of capitalism is that the price of a product reflects the cost to produce it. Regulations like this attempt to make the cost more accurate.
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Because unregulated capitalism destroys nature, social structures and ruins culture. Therefore, we apply new rules here and there until we found out a way of economics which does not have these issues and still support freedom, equality and social support.
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Mod parent to +5! A post for the ages!
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The good news for you is that here in the UK it's likely the hard left Labour party will get into power in the next 5-10 years, mostly thanks to the growing Muslim population and the leftist indoctrination system they call education.
Dude, that's unfair. Hate her all you like, but you can't deny that May worked long and hard to make this possible.
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It's nothing to do with Muslims, it's the fact the last few years have been a complete failure. We have learnt again that Tory policies are as corrupt and non-evidence-based as they have ever been. Despite the desperate attempts by the hard right in the UK to deceive the poor and uneducated that they will represent them people are starting to wake up and realise that's a complete fallacy. Scandinavia shows that a happy and prosperous society can be achieved through progressive policies and that the current
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How can it be the Muslim population? They're at about 4%. What is it with racists and making up facts?
Re:Damming the flood/whack a mole (Score:4, Interesting)
However, it may not be before the day of reckoning.
Meanwhile, various pillocks seem to thing that if one extreme is bad, the opposite is better. A plague on both your houses. Extremes are what is bad, and you American "Libertarians" fuckwits are no better than any other kind of extremist.
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Extremes are what is bad, and you American "Libertarians" fuckwits are no better than any other kind of extremist.
They can't wait to pop outside, stick a dollar in the meter of the coke-branded sidewalk, and scrape the dung off a nice, juicy steak.
What we really need is information. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Then again, it almost always boils down to filter caps on the PSU. Sure it would be cool to have documentation, but for this common sort of repair I'm okay with flying blind.
Re:What we really need is information. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think it's nearly as cut-and-dry as you think it is. Things like schematics and source code are only useful to a very small percentage of consumers, let alone actual technicians. Most of the time only high dollar items will ever be worth repairing. What good is a schematic to repair a $20 device, when a an hour of a repair tech's time is $50? And really, source code? Try to find a shop you can take something to in order to have it reprogrammed. And then how much is several hours of a coder's time going to cost you?
A lot of this issue is more about the legal aspect, where companies abuse laws like DMCA and Copyright to help lawyers make repairs and 3rd party parts and services unlawful. It's the "razor blade game" where you are legally forced to buy their blades. It's easy for service parts to be that way simply because an electronic daughterboard or ECU is pretty easily seen as patentable, and the program that runs on it is copyrighted. Black-box development of say a replacement ECU is possible, but expensive, and then they try as above to abuse laws like DMCA to keep you buried armpit-deep in lawyers and sue you into leaving the market, whether or not they've actually found something legally justifiable to keep you out. They usually have a three step plan: 1: Sue you. if you win, 2: Sue you again. If you win (and assuming you still have enough money to keep paying your lawyers) then 3: buy you out and shutter your business. We see this time and time again. They need to address this "assault by attorney" problem head-on.
Although a lot of technical people wish they could repair things more easily, the truth is that a lot of consumers aren't going to be willing to do what it takes (or COSTS) to repair things. I've got a drop-in charger for a radio here that I've been fiddling with on-and-off for weeks, and haven't been able to figure out. I had no schematic so I wrote one up. All the parts are obtainable. Haven't been able to figure out what's wrong with it yet though. What's my time worth? I suppose I'd have been a lot smarter to just have gotten online and bought a new one by now. A lot of things simply aren't worth anyone's time to fix, even if they have all the ideal support. And it's not just a matter of the manufacturer not making it repairable - a lot of the time it doesn't even matter because even with ideal circumstances that by its nature it's going to be cheaper to make a new one than fix your broken one.
And if you're going to try to force them to make a better product, that's going to be a huge uphill battle. Manufacturing in the consumer market is a race-to-the-bottom where suppliers like China are doing their best to provide products at the minimum (and ABSOLUTE minimum) acceptable quality and durability the consumer will accept, in order to provide it at the lowest possible price. That makes forced-durability a tug-of-war, and one that will have boundaries and limits that are impossible to clearly define in any standard way.
Look at a laptop computer nowadays. One board. Memory and even sometimes the SSD are soldered down. Unquestionably the lowest cost way to manufacture it. Display panel is one integrated piece, no separate backlight or even LCD controller, it's all glued into the top shell along with the camera. Again arguably the lowest cost way to make it. That leaves the top case with its keyboard, trackpad, and speakers, all manufactured as one piece. If you're thinking demanding the schematic to the board is going to get you anywhere, you're insane. How about the camera being replaceable? No, the consumer demands low cost and a thin, light design, and so the camera is going to have to stay glued into the top. The only point of leverage here that makes sense is to somehow cap the cost of the parts. An $800 laptop should not have a total cost to assemble from parts of $1500. If anything, the parts aren't assembled and that should result in a LOWER cost for sum of parts than for completed product. $800 laptop? Then $750
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Source code would let us fix things like security issues or Y2K style time bombs, and once fixed the firmware update should be relatively easy to install.
Schematics are definitely less useful now due to very high levels of integration. Take a look at the Raspberry Pi schematic, it's basically one chip and some connectors. Tiny bit of trivial power supply stuff. However, a lot of stuff could be fixed if parts were available, even if the parts were on the level of whole PCB assemblies or proprietary chips. Th
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Address them at the same time. Basically put in a solid right to repair with legal teeth, and then use that as a lever to require documentation and relevant source code to be made available. (Think of how constitutional rights have pushed things around in the US. An EU-wide 'constitutional right to repair' would be a major stepping stone, since the market is large enough to be worth it for a lot of companies.)
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also lack of software updates (some make you paid big $ for them) others sue to shutdown emulators / shutdown places that host roms / software / manual scans or free.
What gives some holding corp that now owns rights to force you to re buy the software you own?? Just think if EA said you must re buy our old games for the right to run them in dos box.
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These are already not valid in Europe.
auto drive cars need free software/ maps years 6+ (Score:2)
auto drive cars will need free software/ maps years at least 6+ as the last thing you want is for one to shut down do lacking an software update just for ford to say after 2-3 yeas you can buy a new car or go to dealer for an update at say $500-$1000.
What if they need super mapped roads and say to keep driving you can to do the dealer for an 4TB hdd upgrade for only $500-$600 or you can put car into limited my zone mode as the factory 320GB hdd can only fit an area 800 miles from your home base.
Love the idea, practice may be difficult (Score:2)
So I am all for a right to repair, but a design for easier maintenance may be difficult to enforce because it can go against other aims of the product.
For example, lots of functionality could be in a set of custom surface mounted chips. There is nothing wrong with smds and they can make designs more compact (usually desirable), but they sure are difficult to troubleshoot and replace if
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As far as it needs to go to make repairing possible.
So Europe's phones will be half a millimeter thicker than the phones in the rest of the world? Cry me a river.
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So they're a whole millimeter thicker and weigh 50 grams more?
Greenpeace? (Score:2, Insightful)
along with support from organizations like Greenpeace.
If Greenpeace supports it, then I better take a closer look first.
Too often, they did things purely for PR purpose and would do more harm than good.
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This measure would obviously reduce the amount of electronic waste. No need to get all paranoid.
I am sceptical (Score:2, Insightful)
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Do keep in mind that Error 53 is there for good reason: The Fingerprint reader has been tampered with and cannot be trusted. Now, it would have been better to warn the user and allow it to be used as a normal home button, but the reason for Error 53 is sound. It just wasn't handled elegantly.
The sensor, even when replaced with an apple sensor, but not done through an official apple channel, bricked the phone. It even happened if the sensor was never used to authenticate the unlocking feature. It was only with blowback from the public that they changed this. Elegantly my ass, apple knew exactly what they were doing; they aren't known for doing things half assed and not thought through. To use a car analogy that's like saying ford disabled your truck because the brakes were replaced - it's f
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The car analogy doesn't even work, because the car could run someone else over with a faulty brake job while the cellphone could, at worst, damage the one who replaced the sensor if he fucked it up.
With the car it would at least make sense that someone competent has to wave the dead chicken over it, with the cell phone there is exactly NO excuse.
Re:I am sceptical (Score:4)
Authorized? It's my phone, if anyone gets to authorize anything here, it's me.
It's about time Apple and the likes of it learn the meaning of "selling" and "ownership". Either you sell me something or you retain ownership. Trying to do both is a con job.
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No this is definitely not what happened. Going by your analogy, if I install a new battery and the phone recognises that the battery is not genuine and then intentionally shorts itself to start a fire, that would be exactly what happened.
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Yes, it would, because the vendor would be liable for warranty if the battery doesn't follow specifications. I say that as someone who repairs a lots of phones on the side.
But in this case the replacement part does follow specifications and is compatible to the phone, but the phone software recognises it as a non-genuine part and refuses to work with it, making it DRMed hardware, same shit as these DRM chips in printer ink cartridges.
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Are you being willingly obtuse?
They make a step that is obviously a trade secret and only available to the actual Apple repair technicians under a non-disclosure agreement.
This is nothing unusual, I have signed a NDA of a different phone manufacturer which allows me to repair their DRMed hardware. Without a certain step their phones wouldn't even boot after they have been opened for repairs, even if nothing has been changed.
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According to the laws around here it would be Apple's fault if putting the battery in the wrong way makes your phone go up in flames, yes. Because of a different law that has nothing to do with any "right to repair", but still, yes.
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Fine, then why can't I, as the user, accept that I know that the sensor has been tampered with (because I did it) and I do trust that? Case closed. Fuck you Apple, nobody gives a shit whether you trust it. I don't trust you either.
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No, the correct way would have been "I detected a new sensor. It's going to work as soon as you enter your admin password".
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Aunt Tilly doesn't. But there's Mobile-Ahmed around the corner in his funny little shop who'll do it for her for just 5 or 10 bucks.
And we created another job here in the country, ain't it wonderful?
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In an information age? Huge.
Aunt Tilly gets to watch TV shows telling her about the woes of online bad boys that steal your bank from your phone. All Ahmad has to do is to put a big sign in his window that he can keep the bad boys away.
No problem (Score:5, Funny)
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The UK is soooo fucked, it is incredible. And they did it to themselves.
A simple first step - extend mandatory warranties (Score:2)
The EU already has mandatory warranties, when a product is sold to a private consumer.
The minimum is two years, but there is a catch:
After six months, the burden of proof shifts from the seller to the buyer. In many cases, that means YOU have now to prove that you did not mishandle the product. Make that easier for the consumer, and perhaps extend the two years too. A lot of companies will now have to up their standard of quality.
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I'd settle for 5 years in the first step, but extend it to software, including embedded software. The scope of the software warranty could be similar to what Microsoft does during extended support:
Fixes for vulnerabilities, but no new features.
I think that would already send many vendors into a panic ;)
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I know that it would cause some hives in the mobile phone sector. We'd certainly see some low budget players vanish.
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But yeah, you can't do this without some negative side-effects, it was probably the same with RoHS... With any luck though customers will never notice and half the world will adopt the standards because making products they can't sell the EU is bad business.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Not Lean (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone who works in implementing lean practices, this is a terrible approach. There is a cost to making something user repairable. Extra connectors, new interfaces, room for accessing subassemblies (which increases overall size), added thickness to support thread engagement of screws. If there isn't a mandatory recycling program (i.e. manufacturer has to buy back failed or obsolete or unwanted product), then we're just going to create more waste.
Even with a strong recycling program, this is not a win unless a large number of customers *actually* repair their devices instead of buying the new shiny version. How do we know that this isn't creating a cost for all customers and wasted energy (more material) to appease a vocal minority of customers many of whom won't actually repair their devices?
The EU needs to figure out a way to improve this iteratively by making smaller, incremental changes and seeing if customers respond. For example, find the most common reasons phones get tossed out and address those - battery, screen, and phone body are obvious candidates for replacement. This gets say 80% of the issues addressed for minimal cost. Then move on to bigger problems.
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I've worked with your "lean practices" before. It's not lean, it's cutting to the bone. You wouldn't believe the shit I've seen them go through to save a penny. Add to that the aggressive "F U consumer" attitude. Deliberately making things non-repairable so they the consumer MUST buy a replacement. ZOMG added thickness for screws! What ever shall we do? Everything MUST be as thin as paper because...I don't know why really.
Oh, so devices will cost a few cents more so that we can repair them? Gosh, w
Re:Not Lean (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, cost means nothing. Nothing at all. Take any phone you want. Now try to tell me with a straight face that the cost to make it has ANYTHING AT ALL to do with the price the customer has to pay. Try it and I'll yell BULLSHIT at you before you're done. Because it is.
Cost has literally nothing to do with the final price of a product. Cost determines whether a product is made, for it will not be produced if the cost outgrows the potential selling price, but that's it. Do you really want to tell me the iPhone would get a cent cheaper if it could be made for 10 bucks less?
The price the customer has to pay is a careful calculation of the profit "sweet spot". Where is the maximum of profit_per_item*items_sold? That's the question. You really want to convince anyone that the extra buck it costs to make it repairable would change that by even that buck? I call bullshit.
And thickness: Newsflash, nobody gives a shit how thick your phone is. If anything, it might actually survive being slipped into a pocket again if it's thicker than the average slice of tinfoil again.
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The EU isn't just making repairs easier, it is making short product lifespans unprofitable. For example, they are considering making appliance manufacturers state the Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF) of various components, particularly the one with the lowest value. If consumers can see that a fridge with an MTBF of 5 years is only â20 cheaper than one with an MTBF of 10 years, they will likely pick the latter one.
By putting the number on the box, suddenly it becomes a stat that consumers can easily com
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. And the manufacturers that lie will find themselves facing a rather large fine and pretty bad publicity. Will take a while, but I think this will actually fix the issue.
Replaceable Batterys on Phones (Score:2)
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I hope so. I currently have them (BB Z10) and I will insist on them for the replacement when that phone breaks down. As I have no apps on it and a spare and 5 spare batteries (very cheap on ebay ;-) that may take a while though.
Forcing is good now? (Score:2)
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Forcing is good.
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Yes, it's really so bad society tries to force you not to kill people randomly.
Fucking libertards.
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Killing people is wrong. Making devices, that other people buy voluntarily is not.
It is high time for that (Score:2)
Companies ripping off customers because the customers cannot tell something is going to break down after 2.5 years (2 years mandatory warranty in the EU) is just completely unacceptable. Sure, I personally have a policy to never buy again from anybody that does this to me, and that has worked pretty well so far, although I have had to amend it to "for a few years". (Currently on my shit-list: Netgear, Asus, Seagate permanently, Enermax for bad PSU fans.) But ordinary people are basically getting screwed ove
Where does it end? (Score:2)
I can't replace CPU/RAM/HDD on my MBP when it fails...
Though I have no interest going back to the days where all the components were pluggable and I had a 10lb laptop.
Why only phones and tech? I can resole a pair of leather shoes, but my sneakers, I cannot get resoled? What gives Nike?
Glue is the new screw (Score:2)
and ultrasonic welding if they feel like being a real cunt
Re:Wonderful (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh please, melodrama much?
For once the EU actually does something to the benefit of the average Joe, but rest assured you find some dimwit to complain about it.
Re:Wonderful (Score:4, Informative)
Oh please, melodrama much?
For once the EU actually does something to the benefit of the average Joe, but rest assured you find some dimwit to complain about it.
To be fair you would kind of expect "Vinegar Joe" to complain when Average Joe is the one who gets the benefit.
Re: (Score:3)
For once? The EU does more than any other democratic government to further consumer's interests against corporate ones.
Old fashioned countries like the UK greatly benefit from the influence of the more modern, progressive ones in the EU. That's why we want out of it - our country is shitty and that's the way we like it, thank you very much.
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How would it become less secure?
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The mechanism that implements that is called "FUD". In actual reality, mobile phone security is pretty bad already and hardware replacements or modifications will not have any significant negative effect.