

Dear Intel: Sue Me - zbruhnke
http://www.zachbruhnke.com/intel-unlock-immora
Intel's recent threat to sue consumers or companies who choose to unlock the capabilities of their processors spurred this rant, I apologize to those who did not enjoy it. thanks for reading
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tptacek
Let me get this straight. Intel sells you a chip with X amount of L3 cache.
You buy the CPU because you agree that's a fair price for a CPU with that much
cache. You later find out that Intel snuck an extra megabyte of L3 cache into
the silicon, so you can upgrade over the Internet instead of having a new part
shipped to you. And you think this is _immoral_?

Intel could just as easily have (a) charged everyone $50 more for the CPU,
even those who don't care about the performance upgrade; or (b) shipped a part
that couldn't be upgraded at any price. Both of these outcomes are strictly
worse for consumers.

~~~
tzs
Or they could have sold him a chip with X amount of L3 cache and no extra
cache snuck in, and then priced the chip lower since it costs them less to
make. That choice is better for the consumer.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
You're only taking variable costs into account, and forgetting about the
likely tremendous fixed costs of having different manufacturing lines so they
can vary the L3 cache for different versions of the same chip.

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semanticist
Perhaps the call to 'sue me' would have more weight if you'd already managed
to hack the unlocking process.

But anyway, how are Intel doing anything to the 'free market'? In a free
market Intel can sell whatever they like for whatever the market will pay for
it. They're not quite a monopoly so if you don't like the 'unlockable'
processor, don't buy a machine that uses it.

The only way I can make this rant make sense in my head is if the writer
assumes that it's immoral to make a profit at all. My understanding of free
market economics is limited, but I suggest that the author of that rant has an
even worse understanding than I do.

~~~
zbruhnke
Let me start off by saying, clearly I am the author of this post. While I
understand the call to "sue me" seems to not carry much weight I assure you it
is not far from being done and posted on my site. And while I can appreciate
your post concerning my lack of free market knowledge you should know that it
could not be further from the truth. I have built and sold several (albeit
small) companies since I turned 18 and have continued on a daily basis to work
on new products and releases every day because it's what I love not because it
makes me money. While I understand the frustrations of some people with my
rant (and that's exactly what this article is) I would also like everyone to
realize what it is they are doing. Some would argue that they sell these at a
going rate, however the truth is demand sets the price of processors. The fact
that most computer users wait for prices to drop before purchasing the highest
end products is a testament to that. However intel effectively takes advantage
of those of us who always want the newest and best technology and then
proceeds to drop the price to "fair market value" for the rest of consumers
only to sell another "higher end" chip with several more features that in many
cases are just unlocked from the previous version of the product. Paying for
technology, should in effect, be paying for the research and development of
the people who put their efforts into it. Intel simply believes that in paying
for technology you should be paying for what they choose. My point in writing
this article is not that it was a new concept. It was not even that intel was
alone in these business practices, it was simply to point out that these
practices are not fair to the consumers who support these companies. I never
said this was not an example of the free market, I simply stated that
sometimes the free market simply is not a fair market for the consumers who
drive it.

~~~
techiferous
"However intel effectively takes advantage of those of us..."

Since there is no monopoly, you have the right to choose to buy an Intel
product or a competitor. _You_ have the choice. It's your money; therefore,
it's your power. It's not correct to say that Intel is taking advantage of
you. The people of Bhopal are victims; you are not a victim.

"Paying for technology, should in effect, be paying for the research and
development of the people who put their efforts into it."

Stated in another way, you believe that the prices of things should reflect
the cost to produce those things. So your real complaint is not with Intel,
it's with how the economy works.

~~~
zbruhnke
I think in the above post I already clearly acknowledged this was not solely
against intel. Although this article was titled with such notation. What irks
me as a consumer is the idea that companies set pricing along no guidelines
besides making profit. Most companies were started because of a love or
interest in something. However inevitably at some point nearly all companies
lose sight of their love for a product and fall in love with money. I would be
willing to wager that intel once built the best processor they could for the
best pricepoint they could. This article simply states that these companies
lose track of those ideas at some point. Again, I did not say this was new, or
that several companies were not involved in these processes. As an opinion I
simply do not think it is right. Are we all not entitled to an opinion?

~~~
semanticist
I disagree strongly: I imagine that most companies are started to make money.
Ideally someone can make money 'because of a love or interest in something',
but that's not always going to be the case.

I think you have an overly romantic and naive view of the world, which is why
you're so angry at Intel for doing something that's in no way unfair or
immoral.

~~~
zbruhnke
I do not think my view of the world is either romantic nor naive. I was simply
raised with a different mindset. Make no mistake, I have sold software, I have
made a premium on some of that software I sold as well. But I did not sell the
software to customers with scaled back capabilities and tell them that this is
basically a "lite" version of what they could get if they paid "x" amount more
dollars. Maybe that makes me a bad capitalist, or just dumb, but that is how I
have always operated and it has made me a fairly nice living at a fairly young
age. What i have done in other instances however is tell companies that if
they would like other features added I could work to add those features at an
additional cost. Maybe that is my real rant here. At least if Intel sold these
processors at face value telling end users that there were so called
"upgradable" processors before they were ever purchased then I would not have
as much of an issue. i simply believe in buying and selling products at face
value. So perhaps my problem actually lies in the idea that these were sold at
face value as one thing and then weeks, months or even just days later they
were told, oh but wait, we could also make it do this if you wished, but that
will cost you $(insert arbitrary amount here)

~~~
techiferous
I think this is probably about how the situation is framed rather than the
objective facts.

Consider a restaurant that charges $3.50 for a cup of coffee unless you are a
senior citizen in which case the charge is $2.50. Here are two ways that this
can be framed:

* Coffee: $2.50 (add $1.00 surcharge if you are young)

* Coffee: $3.50 ($1.00 discount if you are a senior citizen)

The objective facts are the same but our subjective feelings are different. We
hate getting "charged" for things but don't mind a higher baseline price if we
can get a "discount".

Are you sure the core of the problem isn't just that it "feels wrong" that the
chip has parts that are disabled?

------
dotBen
So it turns out the guy hasn't actually built any of this upgrade
circumvention software/firmware yet, so I'm not exactly sure what he's asking
Intel to sue him for.

Perhaps he should go play with the cracked HDCP crypto key instead; Intel says
it will sue anyone who uses that
([http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/intel-threatens-
con...](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/intel-threatens-consumers/))

------
zokier
I don't get why people are _now_ angry at Intel. Both Intel and AMD have
disabled stuff from their lower end for a long time. And now that Intel allows
you to actually recover those features (which would be disabled in any case),
they are the bad guys? I just don't follow that logic. Should Intel only make
$1000 high end chips?

edit: I just want to add that if the unlocking happens via microcode update
then you have practically zero chance of cracking it without at least
copyright infringement.

And I don't know about the rest of you guys but I'd be bit nervous about
applying a microcode update from unoffical sources.

------
ScottBurson
I'm shocked, shocked! that capitalist corporations charge what the market will
bear for their products.

------
rlpb
Will Intel be chasing people legally for cracking this facility? If so, what
legal means will they be using?

I am most worried about these legal implications. Never mind the L3 cache
size; I would prefer it to remain legal for me to hack and modify my own
hardware. I don't want to lose control over this ability. If companies can
dictate what I do with the hardware after I buy it, then to what extent will
this affect "hackability" generally?

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jacquesm
Let's reverse that, instead of writing what someone might do, I'll offer $250
for the person that cracks this upgrade scheme first and provides an easy to
use piece of software to do the unlocking.

Anybody else want to chip in to increase the prize?

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postfuturist
I've been annoyed at Intel for awhile, and I've been happily voting with my
pocketbook by only buying AMD powered laptops. Latest Intel annoyance:
consumer grade "Pentium Dual-Core" chips, which are basically Core 2 Duos
without VT-x instructions, so they are 64 bit processors that can't run 64-bit
VM's. OK, that's old news, but annoying nonetheless when you've got one you
are trying to get work done on.

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jodrellblank
Is this new? Am I misremembering that 3/486sx chips were dx chips with the
coprocessor disabled?

~~~
ScottBurson
It's much older than that. The tale is told, at least, that in the 1960s, IBM
sold a model of 360 that could be upgraded to a faster model by flipping a
single switch. They charged many thousands of dollars to send out a tech to
flip the switch (if you did it yourself, I presume it would void the
warranty).

~~~
halostatue
There are firmware locks on a lot of IBM hardware still, unlocked with the
right amount of $$ paid to IBM.

