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A number of states are considering right to repair bills, legislation which if passed would make it easier for individuals and repair shops to replace or repair electronics parts. Repair.org reports that 17 states have already introduced bills this year and while most aim to make repair parts and manuals accessible, Washington's proposed legislation would straight up ban electronics that prevent easy repair. "Original manufacturers of digital electronic products sold on or after January 1, 2019, in Washington state are prohibited from designing or manufacturing digital electronic products in such a way as to prevent reasonable diagnostic or repair functions by an independent repair provider," says the bill. "Preventing reasonable diagnostic or repair functions includes permanently affixing a battery in a manner that makes it difficult or impossible to remove."
[...] Naturally, tech groups have jumped to make their opposition clear. In a letter to Morris, groups such as the Consumer Technology Association, the Telecommunications Industry Association and the Computer Technology Industry Association said the bill was "unwarranted" and added, "With access to technical information, criminals can more easily circumvent security protections, harming not only the product owner but also everyone who shares their network."
Source: Engadget
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Aiwendil on Monday January 29 2018, @12:34PM (3 children)
Most people in your field needs to be LARTed it seems - in my field the on-site documentation is put back _and_ alphabetised. The most common pieces used we laminate a copy of and affix to the wall near the unit (or in case of lack of wallspace - on the unit). Net result is that we rarely need to walk more than 25m for documentation and usually less than 5m (we usually have to walk further to reach the light switches).
The archive is also digitized and everyone in a project has access to all relevant drawings to them via the project platform, so in the rare cases documentation are missing (or if you need to work at the places that is newer than on-site documentation [gets updated monthly]) you can just pull them).
The digitization came about due to the archive ending up being messy enough that it often was faster to just visit the on-site copies, so we just decided on digitizing everything (and keeping dead trees copies in the archive as well - digital storage fail to meet our archive requirement (at least 40 years of readability)).
I think it is a legal issue as well somewhere that enforces this behaviour with us, it is at least in a few of our sibling industries between which we exchange workers quite a bit.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 29 2018, @10:56PM (2 children)
I truly envy you, for your work environment.
Digitization is beautiful. I thought that we were entering the 21st century when they set up a computer in the shop. "Sweet", says I. "We can get the digital stuff, and put it all in one place, and maybe get digital copies of stuff that is on paper now!" What a fool I was. Upper management basically forbids putting most of our stuff on the hard drive. "It's illegal to make copies!" "What?" I ask. "You can't just make copies of this stuff! It's all copyrighted!"
Sweet Jesus - my own management actively prevents me from creating a digital library to make my job easier. So, we're still using a filing cabinet, and a couple of lockers for all that stuff.
Yes, I envy you. Fully half of what I know about our equipment is simply undocumented. The stuff my boss knows is equally undocumented - and that's just the way he likes it. He thinks it makes him indispensible.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Aiwendil on Tuesday January 30 2018, @12:27AM
Start to work in infrastructure - this is the norm there (well, is in western europe anyway). The flipside is that mistakes are considered small if they end up with only a few millions in incurred costs to society.
Were I work the praxis for the last couple of decades has been to always demand that we get the copyright (or be allowed unlimted internal copies and unlimited modification for internal use and use with contractors and their subcontractors) on every piece of documentation we get our hands on, and most of it are produced in-house (I actually create lots of the documentation - which is kinda funny since I don't have clearance for most documentation nor for visiting the archive [quite a bit of documentation has been created by me taking a few hours with a camera and photographing _everything_ installed and then creating docs from images]). This is pretty much a sideeffect of our stuff needing to be around for decades.
Oh also, here in sweden physical documents are getting rare (both private and at work), so when you'd normally just ask someone to mail you a few binders of documentation you now just get an email with pdf:s instead (surprisingly many companies has full-duplex ADF-scanners) - there is a perverse sense of schizotech in getting a freshly created PDF of documentation that states the equipment needed is "an Intel 80386 or compatible with math co-processor, DOS5.0 or higher, and an RS-232 port". (This explains why being cashless isn't a major issue here - here cash just was something that got properly digitized late in the game)
Have you tried asking the boss if you are allowed to set up an internal "best practices archive" where people document what they've done? Normally that tends to transfer all the information without transferring the documents themselves while being easier to sell to paranoid management. Or maybe an archive of the current state of your equipment?
And I really hope he enjoys never being allowed to turn off his phone - that is what indispensible really means, being on-call 24/7/365.24
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday January 30 2018, @01:56AM
I'm a very hands-on EE (I'd rather build racecar engines than sit in an ivory tower), not a lawyer, but as far as I know, it _is_ legal to make those copies, including scanning / digitizing, OCR, etc. It comes under "fair use". It's worth researching. You really need to be able to use a computer to search for info.
Also, you should have diagnostic charts _along with_ schematics, wire lists, part location drawings, etc.
I do a fair bit of wiring. I know crimps are supposed to be awesome, but the problem, IMHO, is that most crimpers don't measure pressure, so you can't really be sure enough cold weld happens. Good old twist wire nuts are great, just make sure the wire ends are even before starting the twist or nut, but you knew that.