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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday July 01 2020, @02:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the gone-with-the-wind dept.

https://www.iafrikan.com/2020/06/30/do-we-really-own-our-digital-possessions/

During 2019, Microsoft announced that it will close the books category of its digital store. While other software and apps will still be available via the virtual shop front, and on purchasers' consoles and devices, the closure of the eBook store takes with it customers' eBook libraries. Any digital books bought through the service – even those bought many years ago – will no longer be readable after July 2019. While the company has promised to provide a full refund for all eBook purchases, this decision raises important questions of ownership.


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  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday July 02 2020, @07:20PM (5 children)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday July 02 2020, @07:20PM (#1015495)

    Try to get parts for an Apple some time (yes, a computer SHOULD be a durable good).

    Apples aren't durable goods, they're luxury items. Are you going to complain about getting spare parts for a Bugatti car or a Coach handbag? When you buy an Apple, any repairs need to be done by Apple themselves, not by you or third-party companies. Honestly, complaining about this is silly. I've have no trouble getting spare parts for my Dell laptops.

    Newer appliances now need a particular board to make them run. Not like the old days when you could swap out a timer or even repair the old one. A digital control board SHOULD last a lot longer than a mechanical sequencer, but they don't.

    You can repair circuit boards too. This complaint just comes from people who don't understand electronics and whine that it isn't as easy as something mechanical. Circuit boards rarely fail, and when they do, the problem is usually cheap electrolytic capacitors. The other problem is usually cold solder joints.

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  • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday July 02 2020, @08:35PM

    by Reziac (2489) on Thursday July 02 2020, @08:35PM (#1015519) Homepage

    "Apples aren't durable goods, they're luxury items."

    Exactly!!

    --
    And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
  • (Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday July 02 2020, @08:39PM (3 children)

    by sjames (2882) on Thursday July 02 2020, @08:39PM (#1015521) Journal

    Apple is not a luxury good. I said computers SHOULD be durable goods. The comparison with Bugatti is a bit extreme. How many Bugattis do you see in the parking lots compared to how many iPhones and MacBooks you see around?

    I understand electronics just fine. I have designed circuit boards and I have repaired them. There's no excuse for them not outliving a clockwork sequencer by a factor of 10. I note that the tools needed to repair a board do go a bit outside of the set of basic tools every household should have and be familiar with.

    When you can get a replacement board, they charge outrageous prices for them. You could almost get a CM to make you a one-off for that price, but you'd still need to get the firmware from somewhere.

    You can see the transition happening in some areas. Some gas water heaters have a safety sensor that detects when the burner fails to shut down and trips to shut it down. Once repaired, you press a reset button. Others have a one time "TRD" that breaks when overheated (or it gets old) and it blocks the air inlets smothering the burner out (leaving unburned gas spewing from the burner).

    The most typical approach today is to use "value engineering" to get the marginal cost of production down followed by "value pricing" to make sure the savings stay in the manufacturer's pocket.

    Dell has gotten better about repairability lately, but there was that era where if you swapped in a non-Dell power supply, it would blow the mainboard because they swapped 3 or 4 pins in the otherwise standard ATX connector.

    • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday July 02 2020, @10:39PM (2 children)

      by Reziac (2489) on Thursday July 02 2020, @10:39PM (#1015558) Homepage

      Yeah, I remember the horror stories about Dell vs normal PSUs. It's a good deal of why my ...uh, computer museum... has but one older Dell, and it was amenable to normal parts. Tho I still recall the argument I had with a fan-of-Dell... someone sent me a top-of-the-line Dell because he was tired of fighting with its constant overheating just from admiring its navel. I took one look inside, dumped the shroud and the teeny tiny fanless heatsink, gave it a normal heatsink with a normal fan, and its operating temperature dropped *40F* degrees. Anyway the fan-of-Dell was horrified because surely they design 'em for best airflow and you'll ruin it! Um, which part of no-longer-overheating did you not understand??

      The newer ones, tho... pretty much interchangeable everything, at least for the normal form factors. Which is probably nowadays the cheaper way to build 'em.

      Um... how is that behavior by gas water heaters not an explosion hazard??!

      --
      And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Friday July 03 2020, @02:14AM (1 child)

        by sjames (2882) on Friday July 03 2020, @02:14AM (#1015630) Journal

        Um... how is that behavior by gas water heaters not an explosion hazard??!

        That's a damned good question! The theory is that once the flame is out, the thermopile will cool and shut down the gas valve. My preference is the resettable overheat switches that directly disconnect the thermopile from the valve. At least with that, if the valve itself is stuck, the gas will be burned off rather than building up.

        The saga of fixing my water heater under warranty is a sad one. It did eventually get fixed, but only because I did the diagnosis myself and did a little social hacking.

        • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday July 03 2020, @02:19AM

          by Reziac (2489) on Friday July 03 2020, @02:19AM (#1015632) Homepage

          Good thinking... why are you not a designer of gas appliances? :)

          We just put a new gas water heater in the rental house... I hope it does not have any of these weird newfangled ideas....

          And yeah, *resettable* not one time and dead!

          --
          And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.