EU Accepts Resolution Abolishing Planned Obsolescence, Making Devices Easier to Repair (retaildetail.eu) 342
Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo writes: The European Parliament accepted a resolution to lengthen consumer goods and software's longevity, a counter to the alleged planned obsolescence process built into a lot of products. The European Parliament now wants the European Commission to create a clear definition of the term "planned obsolescence" and to develop a system to track that aging process. It also wants longer warranty periods and criteria to measure a product's strength. Each and every device should also have a mention of its minimal life expectancy.
Devices should also be easier to repair: batteries and other components should be freely accessible for replacement, unless safety dictates otherwise. Manufacturers will also need to give other companies access to their components so that consumers can visit those companies for repairs.
Devices should also be easier to repair: batteries and other components should be freely accessible for replacement, unless safety dictates otherwise. Manufacturers will also need to give other companies access to their components so that consumers can visit those companies for repairs.
As a European, (Score:5, Insightful)
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As European, i say labor costs are the primary factor why repairs are often infeasible.
It's not like our salary is that high. It's all the added taxes - starting with sales tax (also on repairs and other services) and not ending with labor taxes.
To bring home a $15 salary a technician would have to charge at least $65 / hour. And that's excluding the costs he or she might have for the shop, shipping, components etc. In effect it means that even a small 20-minute repair on, say, a smartphone will put you dow
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As European, i say labor costs are the primary factor why repairs are often infeasible.
It's not like our salary is that high. It's all the added taxes - starting with sales tax (also on repairs and other services) and not ending with labor taxes.
To bring home a $15 salary a technician would have to charge at least $65 / hour. And that's excluding the costs he or she might have for the shop, shipping, components etc. In effect it means that even a small 20-minute repair on, say, a smartphone will put you down at least a $120.
Any repair that is labor intensive will be costly. Component costs are only a fraction of the repair costs. And it happens that repairs are inherently labor intensive. Fix the tax system and repairs would get more affordable. But that's not gonna happen anytime soon.
I don't disagree with you but consider: Often a large proportion of the repair cost is diagnosing the faulty part. I was repairing stuff in the 60s 70s and 80s when we fixed a lot. The fact was that failures weren't random - it was mostly the same parts that failed in any given piece of kit. That knowledge streamlined repairs enormously along with the "muscle memory" we developed for dismantling and reassembling.
I think this will add costs to the manufacturer so the prices will rise, but that just makes t
Re:As a European, (Score:5, Informative)
The first? What about the USB charger law that put a stop to this nonsense? [souqcdn.com]
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Granted, although I had not heard of that before now.
Re:As a European, (Score:5, Insightful)
What have the Romans ever done for us? [youtu.be]
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You're not from around here I guess.
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This is the first good thing I have ever known to come out of the EU; pity they left it till now as the UK is just leaving.
Yeah, you must really miss the good old days before the EU put a stop to people being ripped off with excessive mobile roaming charges. Maybe you'll get the extortionate roaming charges back after Brexit? Hope springs eternal...
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FYI, the major UK mobile networks have stated that they don't have current plans to increase the roaming charges again post-Brexit. Given the commercial connections between them and their counterparts elsewhere in the EU and with an obvious PR disaster waiting for anyone who tried it first, that position seems unlikely to change any time soon either.
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In France, you can buy PAYG Mobicarte, but when you top up that SIM card, you have to use the money up within six months, otherwise the mobile phone company deactivates that SIM card and confiscates the money.
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I suspect that having now all said they have no plans and such a change shouldn't be necessary, they'd have little defence if they tried this and the UK regulator then immediately told them not to.
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Re: As a European, (Score:3)
Yeah, that happens if you only read British media.
Re:As a European, (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the first good thing I have ever known to come out of the EU
That says more about you than it does the EU.
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This is the first good thing I have ever known to come out of the EU
Then you're wilfully ignorant. The EU has done tons of good things, the fact that you've manged to avoid remembering any says a lot more about you than the EU.
Re:As a European, (Score:5, Interesting)
No, the first was in the late 90's when they forced consumer electronics to have power factor corrected power supplies and limited harmonic distortion. The amount of money and resources wasted because of cheap power supplies requiring building electrical infrastructure upgrades was stupefying.
It is good to keep the US in check as the default standards-bearer. They have shown this repeatedly.
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Don't forget the unified product standards that allow electrical goods, cars and food products to be manufactured that can be sold in every country in the EU, rather than needing a plethora of slight variations because various additives are allowed in one country but banned in another, or because they have different requirements for where the brake lights need to be positioned.
Re:As a European, (Score:4, Interesting)
Now accepting that as true, and it is UK money returning to the UK. It returns without a political bias.
Tories are not keen on spending money in non tory areas and you can probably say the same about Labour too. The EU has put money into economically deprived areas without political bias So you get nice things when the government of the day would rather cut spending to areas that support the "opposition". Think thats true of most countries to be fair.
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Bro, stop defending Apple. Jesus Christ man. You must be high.
Did my post even ONCE mention Apple?
My hypothetical applies to ANY product line with significant competition and updatable firmware, and was deliberately written to be agnostic to both product and embedded OS platform (if any).
Radio Shack (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember that pretty much anything electronic from Radio Shack had a schematic at the back of the user manual. Nice to have if you want to fix it years later (and still have the manual.)
I have a Radio Shack clock radio with a huge LED time display. Have had it for maybe twenty years, and it recently decided to show random LED segments instead of the time. Yesterday, I opened it up to look for any obvious smoked transistors or leaky capacitors. No, looks fine. Playing the odds, I replaced the largest (power supply) capacitor, and now it works again. I saved the cost of a new one and saved the landfill from one more piece of e-garbage.
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That's the way everything should be. Granted everything is integrated now, but since a battery doesn't last forever it should be the one component that is required to be easily replaced.
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All the TVs I owned also had schematics on separate sheets of paper added to the manual. Very handy!
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Almost everything that takes power is using up some sort of filament that will hit zero eventually... which is why computers need to be replaced every 5 years or so.
Filament? As in thermionic valves? I am afraid I tossed my ENIAC into landfill (irresponsible, I know) about 15 years ago and got a microchip based one instead, but I'm still using some of those 15 year-old bits today. I dont think there is anything I'm using right now that is less than 5 years old.
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Which planet are you from? You can still take a Color Computer 3 or a Commodore 64 from decades ago, plug them in and they will start instantly just like they did when they were brand new.
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I have waaaay older computers than that.
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this is the most ignorant thing I have read today, thanks for that
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People like you, putting a dollar sign at the expense of everything else is exactly why we're having so many problems today, both environmentally and as a society.
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Well good for you and good for the environment, but is it useful for anything more than an anecdote? I'm not saying it to be rude, but if you put a dollar value on your time and factor in the time you took inspecting it, the odds that it would work and that even though you expanded the life span you probably didn't give it another 20 years was it rational?
Humans don't on the whole care nearly as much about money as they think they do. We're certainly not rational machines who would substitute the weekend
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Humans don't on the whole care nearly as much about money as they think they do. We're certainly not rational machines who would substitute the weekend tinkering fixing an old alarm clock for an equal amount of time spent earning money so we could buy a new clock and have some left over money. That's not how people work, so yes, I'd say his actions were as rational as any other.
Landfill disagree with you, as much as the "-1, I disagree" votes say otherwise.
EU Parliament resolutions are non-binding (Score:5, Informative)
Literally, the headline. European Parliament has no actual legislative power. It just has a power of veto. All legislation must come from European Commission, which European Parliament gets to vote on. It's a "yes/no" vote with no right to modify the package and vote on the modified legislation. This is a power comparable to a veto power, and by definition is not a legislative power as the name "Parliament" and its supposedly being a "legislative branch" would imply. In most states, this is a power comparable to one of the powers held by the executive, who gets to veto legislative packages or approve them by signing.
It's also the only actual power European Parliament has, and of the key issues with EU's legislative system and why EU is routinely criticised for being undemocratic. It's something closer to an early Roman Senate, where unelected aristocrats selected by other members of aristocracy similar to the current state of European Commission gets to decide on what legislation to run through, and the plebeian Tribune of the latter days of Roman Republic (the European Parliament) can either block the legislative package or accept it, but has no legal ability to change the contents of the legislation.
As a result, unless it's a Commission's legislative initiative, it's not worth the paper it's printed on.
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This is wrong. All legislation must be approved by the EU parliament before it can have any legal force. European Commission only has power suggest laws to the EU parliament.
You can read about EU law processes here.
https://europa.eu/european-uni... [europa.eu]
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/... [europa.eu]
There is also some legislative power in Council of the European Union.
https://europa.eu/european-uni... [europa.eu]
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Those links confirm everything I said, as does your preface. Literally, every single point I made. How the fuck did you start your statement with "this is wrong" and then go to agree with every single point I made, just dressing them up to be slightly better sounding?
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You are wrong because you claim that EU parliament only has a veto power. EU Parliament has the right according to treaties to approve or deny any legislation that is being worked on by the EU. You are also wrong when you claimed that all EU laws must come from the European Commission. The other body that can issue laws for approval or rejection is Council of the European Union (ministers of the EU member states) based on suggestions by the European Commission.
This is all explained here.
https://europa.eu/eu [europa.eu]
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So literally, you again agree with everything I said, while pretending to disagree, then pretend extra hard that adding an extra step of European Council between Commission and Parliament constitutes a meaningful difference.
Ok. Nice trolling.
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You didn't show any the source for your claim. EU runs on a co-decision or a majority decision when it comes to EU laws. What system is used depends on what type of laws or decisions are being discussed.
If any EU law is rejected by any of the three legal bodies that are required (EU commission, Council of the European Union, EU Parliament) for an approval of an EU law it cannot enter into force as is the requirement of the EU treaties. This is why it takes such a long time for new EU laws to happen and ente
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The source is literally in your links.
Which is why you are now desperately trying to spin this the way you are. First you lied about what your links said. Second you tried to pretend that I said something different.
Now you're trying to pretend that "everyone can reject legislation" is somehow relevant to the point I made. It is not.
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I guess Commission folks weren't kidding when they said that they're going to need a disinformation body of their own to counter Russian propaganda a few days back. You're far less competent than Russians though. Russians aren't dumb enough to post links which confirm the position of people you're trolling and fully debunk your position, and then just keep doubling down on pretending that contents of your links aren't debunking your bullshit.
I know EU bureaucracy is generally known for being among the more
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"Days" was supposed to be "years" in original. Statement was from 2014 or so.
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Each major ruling family got a senator in the early Roman Senate. Hence the comparison. Please stop pretending that this is somehow "undemocratic but fair". Especially considering that you follow up is that "sovereign states cannot have too much power" which indicates that you are anti-sovereignty of the states in addition to being anti-democratic.
A common view for Pan-European supremacists.
For those ignorant of history, people who are against sovereignty of the European states are the people who drowned co
warranty need to start when the end user get it (Score:2)
warranty need to start when the end user get it not when it's shipped to the store / distributor
English? (Score:2)
The article is a blurb about another article written in Dutch. It would be nice to know exactly what they are talking about.
Hans says... (Score:2)
But these rats keep gnawing at my toes. Certainly we need to go to the store for ketchup.
As an American (Score:2, Insightful)
I am fucking jealous right now.
That's great - just one problem (Score:3)
These days obsolescence, (even among the highest-tech goods), is as much a matter of fashion as it is of product failure, unrepairability, etc. People expect and demand the latest 'innovation', even if it's only a small change in size, the lack of a bezel, or some other frivolity. The population at large is addicted to having the latest and greatest, with no thought for future generations. It's kind of a 'chicken and egg' situation: planned obsolescence and flashy advertising make unnecessary purchases more compelling, while the resultant increased demand further encourages manufacturers to make products that inherently don't last and can't easily be repaired. So along with legislation against planned obsolescence, we need mass education to help turn the tide of rampant consumerism.
Of course, taking these actions will have negative consequences for 'The Economy'. Personally, I don't think that's a bad thing - hence my sig. As a species, we need to start living within our means, and to abandon the notion that uncurtailed economic growth is anything other than a social cancer. Instead, we keep "borrowing", (or, more accurately, stealing), the resources that fuel our (largely) hollow and soul-suckingly luxurious lifestyle from future generations. The early investors live the high life, while the later ones, (many of whom either have no choice or haven't even been born yet), get screwed. Population growth makes even mere survival of mankind an iffy proposition in the long term, so we really need to stop treating the Earth as though it's a broken freezer that needs to have all of its contents consumed before they go bad. Our current habits are making us fat and lazy, and they they may eventually bring about the end of mankind.
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Very good.
Less Glue Please (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple and others - please stop gluing your fucking products together. I would rather buy displays i can fix, than thinner displays. I am keeping my computers for far longer than i used to, and need easy upgrade paths for internal components. why is this so hard to grasp for some?
As long as it includes software (Score:3)
As long as this resolution also includes software and not only hardware it should be good.
These days you're nothing with an android phone from 4 years ago that you can still repair but is running android 4.0 filled with security holes.
And let's not start with all the IoT devices.
Software obsolescence is just as big a problem.
printer ink!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Hopefully they include stop the knuckleheads from adding chips in toner cartridges and inkjet cartridges which expire by time instead of quantity=empty
I hope this leads to good things (Score:2)
... the intentions are good... let us hope it isn't another brick on the road to hell.
The problem is really the consumer (Score:3)
I would like to suggest the problem is actually the consumer. Consumers want neatly little packaged integrated things as products mature. They want their own knowledge requirements for the devices operation to decrease as products mature.
Consider cars. There was a period of pre-war auto manufacturing where it was non-longer bespoke but at the same time people expected to buy a car and own it for a long time - maybe indefinitely. They anticipated maintaining and repairing it. If you look at engine designs right up thru the early post war periods you see things like lined cylinders and valve guides. Basically all wearing parts were built to be replaceable. Granted it still might have major work in terms of labor but compare that to most modern mass market automobile engines - you'd have machine the block today once things like valve guides or cylinder walls wear or crack etc. Essentially they are now disposable devices. On the other hand you can now own and operate a car with virtually zero knowledge of how it works - they even have built in monitors to tell you when to get the oil changed now.
Think about how home stereo equipment evolved from 1960 - 2018. Discrete often home assembled components to integrated systems to one giant reciever with everything built in driven by your smart phone to "IoT Speaker"
We have seen the same thing with computers. Even if you bought something like a Northgate back in the early 90s it was in a standard box. You could replace the motherboard and CPU and retain the chassis and power supply. You might even keep the main board and slap and "overdrive" process on it. Granted you can still get "project box" style cases today and certainly there is a plenty big market for motherboards and stuff in standard sizes - but if you buy a brand name PC odds are pretty good its now some custom miniature case like a Mac min - or similar offering from HP or Dell.
So lets look at mobile. You use to manually sync your iPaq, Cassiopeia, or Palm with your laptop. You either manually cabled it up or careful started some IR sync tool and line up all the devices. Every application was side loaded; or you had a RIM that just did e-mail. Now yes its all integrated in your phone. You don't need to know how anything works. You don't need to really even learn any software tools - but you have way way less choice about how you are going to manage things. Want to backup your iPhone? - its iTunes or nothing (okay iCloud now). I used to be able to eject the CF card from my Cassiopeia and back it up however I wanted! Which is not say I'd go back!
What do we do now - we integrated the PDA / portable gaming devices into our phone - its all online - its mostly automagical. The consequence is people don't really know anything about them. I would suggest consumers don't really want replaceable batteries because they don't really want to be at the battery store flipping thru "phone books" of part numbers looking for a suitable replacement on Saturday afternoon - they rather just get a new phone!
Re:Regulations never backfire (Score:5, Insightful)
Energy Star has been a massive success, at least in appliances. It lets people who care compare relative energy consumption. It's meaningless when it comes to monitors and such, but quite useful for air conditioning or refrigerators.
"Success" (Score:3, Interesting)
Appliances are all junk now that require you to buy insurance from the store just to ensure that they make it to five years of operation.
Very few of them work well; for example, the energy-efficient dryer that requires you to run it twice, instead of once, or the energy-efficient refrigerator which specializes in spoiling food during its frequent "defrost" cycles.
Stuff worked better in the past. Toilets flushed. Refrigerators lasted for forty years. Washing machines actually produced clean clothes.
I am all
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Appliances are all junk now that require you to buy insurance from the store just to ensure that they make it to five years of operation.
Extended warranties are scams created by stores to fleece the customers.
Very few of them work well; for example, the energy-efficient dryer that requires you to run it twice, instead of once, or the energy-efficient refrigerator which specializes in spoiling food during its frequent "defrost" cycles.
You should probably clean out your lint trap, and possibly the duct. And you should actually close your refrigerator door, rather than leave it open.
Stuff worked better in the past. Toilets flushed. Refrigerators lasted for forty years. Washing machines actually produced clean clothes.
Toilets wasted water so much that it overwhelmed ill-designed sewer systems, refrigerators used more power in a year than replacing them every five years costs, and the components in the laundry detergents managed to combine with the excess in water usage to destroy even more sewer system
Re:"Success" (Score:5, Insightful)
Very few of them work well; for example, the energy-efficient dryer that requires you to run it twice, instead of once, or the energy-efficient refrigerator which specializes in spoiling food during its frequent "defrost" cycles.
Stop overloading your dryer. They work fine if you don't overload them. Of course, in this season, I hang up my clothes and don't dry them at all. A 50' line lets me hang an entire wash load. Before self-defrosting freezers, your food was spoiled by being frozen into place, and it took all damned day to defrost the freezer even during the summer.
Stuff worked better in the past. Toilets flushed. Refrigerators lasted for forty years. Washing machines actually produced clean clothes.
Fridges from then had non-encapsulated compressors and were loud AF. You could cheaply replace the compressor, but they didn't necessarily last a long time. You can still replace compressors, but nobody bothers any more. They just buy a new fridge. Toilets used more than twice as much water, so even if you have to flush twice sometimes you're still coming out ahead. Washers from then were not even slightly better than the ones we have now.
Agreed (Score:2)
New efficient washing machines that take two hours to complete a cycle but hey they only use a cup of water. Every fucking appliance at the store has those yellow stickers. What is the point?
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They compare the relative energy usage of the appliances.
...under conditions that will apply to almost no-one, because people have jobs and families and other major commitments, and they can't wait 3-4 hours for every load of washing to complete.
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...under conditions that will apply to almost no-one, because people have jobs and families and other major commitments, and they can't wait 3-4 hours for every load of washing to complete.
Well they should just put them on last thing at night like I do and then set it drying in the morning. No problem.
Just kidding!
What I actually do is leave the laundry for ages then do tons in one day on the quick wash cycle.
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What I actually do is leave the laundry for ages then do tons in one day on the quick wash cycle.
In my experience, that's what almost everyone does, except that with larger families "leave for ages" just means "want to put a normal week's worth of clothes through within a single free day at the weekend".
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In my experience, that's what almost everyone does, except that with larger families "leave for ages" just means "want to put a normal week's worth of clothes through within a single free day at the weekend".
I don't have a large family, but that's precisely what I do, which is at least an improvement over what I used to do. I used to live in an apartment with 3 washing machines and two of those colossal dryers.
Then I really could leave it for absolutely ages. There's a certain efficiency to be had by having
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How is a timer going to help me put 4-5 loads of my family's washing through the machine in a day, if each wash takes 3-4 hours?
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The idea that old appliances lasted longer is something of a myth. It persists because people keep seeing appliances built in the sixties and seventies that keep on going, built solid and in the highest quality. What you don't see is all the appliances built in the sixties and seventies that ended up on a landfill site because they fell apart after a year.
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The idea that old appliances lasted longer is something of a myth.
I partly agree with you: there's a clear case of selection bias going on. On the other hand stuff then was much, much more expensive as well and processes were not nearly as good so it was necessary to make them both overbuild and repairable to last any time at all.
If your modern appliance only lasts 1/4 as long it's still substantialy cheaper over all and probably does a much better job as well.
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Appliances are all junk now that require you to buy insurance from the store just to ensure that they make it to five years of operation.
Huh? Maybe you should come to the EU where there are mandatory minimum warranty periods and things generally seem to be of higher quality (comparing to your comment anyway).
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That is absolutely true regarding EnergyStar. However, regulations requiring EnergyStar compliance at worst might slightly increase the cost of the appliance or device. A regulation "abolishing" planned obsolescence is likely to have unintended consequences.
I get that 50 or 100 years ago planned obsolescence would have been almost unquestionably wrong. However, technology moves much faster today. Forcing companies to provide very long term support for long outdated technologies will decidedly tilt the pl
Re:Regulations never backfire (Score:5, Insightful)
Forcing companies to provide very long term support for long outdated technologies will decidedly tilt the playing field in favor large players at the expense of small innovative companies.
Thanks, but I don't want an innovative fridge, hair drier or cooker. I just want them to fucking work, and keep working.
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However, regulations requiring EnergyStar compliance at worst might slightly increase the cost of the appliance or device
Good. We should collectively stop fucking the environment to save a dollar.
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Forcing companies to provide very long term support for long outdated technologies will decidedly tilt the playing field in favor large players at the expense of small innovative companies.
There is certainly a risk there. That said, up to a point, I suspect mandatory transparency will improve a lot of these problems as much as hard standards.
I think of this increasingly like the mandatory health warnings we've had on cigarette packets for a long time. If the advertising or packaging for, say, a "smart" TV was allowed to list any third party services it integrated with but also had to state equally prominently how long those services were guaranteed to work for and what would happen to the rel
Re:Regulations never backfire (Score:5, Insightful)
The EU has similar measures to let you compare the efficiency and running costs of various appliances. For example a vacuum cleaner has to have a sticker that shows how well it cleans on carpet and on hard floors, how much noise it makes, how well it cleans the air before expelling it (really important for people with allergies) and how much it costs to run.
https://ec.europa.eu/energy/si... [europa.eu]
This new proposal is a great idea. The manufacturer will have to list the lowest MTBF of all components in the machine based on a standardized usage pattern. So if a washing machine has a belt with an MTBF of only 5 years then the label has to say "5 years" on it.
Video games should be interesting. "Servers guaranteed to run until 2019" could be pretty interesting on the next EA Sportsball game.
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Energy Star has been a massive success, at least in appliances. It lets people who care compare relative energy consumption. It's meaningless when it comes to monitors and such, but quite useful for air conditioning or refrigerators.
For once, we agree!
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Yes, it's clear a lack of regulations works just fine, there's never been a consequence from snake oil, investment hoaxes, or free building.
Heck, safety belts, fire codes, and handwashing signs probably kill more people. After all, somebody probably died from soap allergies.
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And that the Gramm, Leach, and Bliley act (all hard right Republicans) was passed by a nearly unanimous Republican vote, and with enough Democrats to make the act veto-proof. Sure Clinton could have just let it pass into law unsigned, but he could not have stopped it. Blaming the act as the work of Clinton is just a deranged lie.
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With strong language like this, what could go wrong?
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Even if language was "musts", no company would give a fuck. It's European Parliament's resolution. It has no legal power to compel anything, and is worth less than paper it's printed on.
That's why it states in the OP that they're now going to beg and plead that Commission notices Parliament for once. Because unless it's something Commission proposes, there's nothing compelling that Parliament can do. At all. It's literally the way system is set. Which is why Parliament passes these "resolutions", which are
Oh come on, false flag shill! Make an effort! (Score:3, Insightful)
It has been a long time since I saw a false flag provocation troll that half-assed and pathetic.
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Deliberate wind-up here. If you are that paranoid go ahead and change your gadgets every year; I have better things to do with my cash. But in fact the older the gadget the less spyware it likely to have in it - that crap increases all the time.
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You don't need to download spyware on to peoples' devices if it already comes preinstalled at the factory (points finger at forehead)
No no no (Score:5, Insightful)
Truly, Beau, that's just nonsensical.
If we put the onus on manufacturers (and programmers) to maintain their products instead of abandoning them, it's absolutely no different than them giving us a new product with whatever imaginary, or actual, malware you have in mind. If they're black hats, they're black hats.
The important objective in that case is keeping an eye on them, and a more stable / less ephemeral product line can only work in our favor in such undertakings. If product maker X is found to have shipped flaw or problem Y, then they are obligated to fix it, instead of just leaving it in the dust and whipping out a new model (I'm thinking of OS vendors here as well as supporting devs and hardware manufacturers.)
Requiring manufacturers and software operations to maintain their products or lose IP rights to them could be a very strong component of bringing some of the more obnoxious operations into line with actually benefiting the public with their work. If I, as a developer, stop supporting it, or won't remedy a detected flaw, then the public owns the product and that's the end of my revenue stream and my rights to the ideas and inventions incorporated in the product are now gone.
Our software and hardware IP system is badly broken, and IMHO that's a fundamental underpinning of why our products are such throwaways. There's no reason for a manufacturer / developer to keep working on X. We need to give them good reason to stay with it.
These days, almost any product can be flashed with completely new code; at least, if the designers aren't idiots. Everything from a smart light bulb to a router, firewall, or car should be updatable and should have updates. Likewise, you write software like I do, then you should fix the problems it has, particularly so in the case of security issues, but anything else, too. There's no adequate excuse to not fix broken code. From the OS end, there are almost no good excuses to break existing applications, security being the one exception.
We should recognize our obligation to not just produce product, but to produce good product that doesn't shaft the end user, either initially or later.
The culture of disposable hardware and software we've fallen into is bad on just about very level one might consider. Ending it, or at least, ameliorating it, would be the very best thing for every consumer out there.
Re: No no no (Score:4, Informative)
You're confusing the emergence of new technology with the maintenance of existing technology. They are separate issues. There is every reason to create a more advanced product; there is no reason not to provide for a replaceable battery in an old one.
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You seem to want to punish manufacturers for wanting to stay in business. What you propose is all stick with no carrot and would greatly increase the cost of new products to the detriment of the buyers (possibly majority) who don't really want to have the product last for more than a relatively short time.
It is not new technology that drives the cycle. It is primarily more evolved application of old technology, and it happens fast - much faster than devices usually wear out even when non-repairable.
Most man
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Seriously!?
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https://slashdot.org/~BeauHD [slashdot.org] the editor is a very different account from
https://slashdot.org/~BeauHD+(... [slashdot.org] which is a troll account.
Re: Effectively (Score:2)
Are you seriously afraid of Belarus?
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If a device lasts longer then they don't have to go to as much effort as frequently to download their spyware to your phone.
Medicinal marijuana clearly has side-effects.
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The current subscription model for new editions of Quicken requires you pay every year or two years or the software stops working...
Subs are planned obsolescence via threats (Score:3)
Subscriptions are, in a nutshell, planned obsolescence via threats. The only way you can keep such tempware working is a continual drain on your resources - it's designed to fail you otherwise.
I wouldn't buy subscription software under any circumstances, nor will I ever offer it (I'm a developer.)
You invest in my stuff, it'll keep working - it's yours now. I don't "license" it to you, I don't tell you what you can or cannot do with it, and I won't break it. If I offer a paid upgrade, then you get new stuff.
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I think there is a reason for subscriptions getting more popular. Software lasts longer.
Just look how many people still use Office 2000 - it's getting near twenty years old now, but it still runs, it still does everything most users want. But there was a time when you needed new software every few years because the old stuff just wouldn't run on modern hardware and operating systems. We've reached the point where companies are having a very hard time competing with the products they sold five or ten years a
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There must be more to that story than you're saying. Software companies can't just unilaterally update their EULAs after you've already bought a permanent copy of their product. At best, it would have no legal weight at all, and they'd look like idiots for trying, and it's hard to believe that the big ones like Microsoft are that naive.
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"It's unsafe to try to open our products because of the glue. You could hurt yourself."
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Or "It's unsafe to open our iMac Pro because we left exposed capacitor leads on the PSU" [youtube.com]
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Yeah, like that's going to happen.
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FUD. Products don't suddenly become cheaper when planned obsolescence is introduced (quite the opposite, in fact), and don't suddenly become expensive when going back to normal practice.
Longer warranties is a different matter, but that should have minimal effect on expected costs because the entire point of a warrantee period is to cover the time in which defective items are likely to fail. Anything that makes it to the end of its regular warrantee period is extremely unlikely to suffer from a warrantee-cov
Re:Just pay more (Score:5, Interesting)
This proposal is quite clever. They will have to put a sticker on the box that says "average time before something fails is X years", which instantly does two things:
1. Consumers know how long something will likely last, rather than just guessing based on brand reputation or anecdotes.
2. Longevity will become a selling point. Before they had stickers on vacuum cleaners showing how well they actually cleaned people just tended to buy the most powerful one, but now they make a more intelligent and informed decision.
Selling price isn't based cost of manufacture, it's based on what the market will stand. So for example goods often cost about the same in Europe as they do in the US (factoring in tax), but in Europe you get a much longer statutory warranty.
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This proposal is quite clever. They will have to put a sticker on the box that says "average time before something fails is X years", which instantly does two things:
1. Consumers know how long something will likely last, rather than just guessing based on brand reputation or anecdotes.
2. Longevity will become a selling point. Before they had stickers on vacuum cleaners showing how well they actually cleaned people just tended to buy the most powerful one, but now they make a more intelligent and informed decision.
Selling price isn't based cost of manufacture, it's based on what the market will stand. So for example goods often cost about the same in Europe as they do in the US (factoring in tax), but in Europe you get a much longer statutory warranty.
The problem with MTBF is that for most consumer electronic products it will be so long that most people will say "I'll replace it way before them." Even if 5% of the iPhones fail prematurely the sheer number made will make MBTF look good. Just look at HD MBTF's as an example. As for "about the same" the delta results from increase regulatory costs; and while I like the protections the EU affords me they are not without a cost. TINSTAAFL.
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iPhones aren't really the problem, it's stuff like household appliances. The cheap ones barely last 3 years a lot of the time.
Also stuff like software that is reliant on some server somewhere. What is the minimum lifetime of that service? A few years ago some smart TVs stopped playing YouTube because they dropped support for old devices. Imagine phones having a sticker that told you the earliest date that they would stop supplying updates.
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I'd also add 3. Companies will start looking for ways to fiddle the number.
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Selling price isn't based cost of manufacture, it's based on what the market will stand. So for example goods often cost about the same in Europe as they do in the US (factoring in tax), but in Europe you get a much longer statutory warranty.
No, just no. Almost all goods in Europe are somewhere between the US base price and the US price + extended warranty, because some really do fail and it really costs money. It's probably close to the real cost of the warranty though since they have to offer 2/5 years by default. In fact I'm quite sure the reason the US isn't seeing more early failures is because they have to take the EU market into consideration where they need to eat the cost themselves.
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Tesla are unrepairable. If it brakes you have to throw it out and buy a new one.
Wow! Using the brakes ruins the car! Who knew?