The worst thing here would be recurring payments, and also maybe the idea that Intel can act like platform providers, and revoke your CPU's license to execute code if they deem your usage unacceptable. Just another step towards you not owning the hardware you already paid for.
I hope AMD doesn't copy this. Intel has been on a downwards trend recently and maybe this is just a dumb, desperate move from them. As you say the landscape is getting more competitive, which is a good thing for consumers.
> I hope AMD doesn't copy this. Intel has been on a downwards trend recently and maybe this is just a dumb, desperate move from them. As you say the landscape is getting more competitive, which is a good thing for consumers.
IDK. EPYCs board-lock to boards with Platform by blowing e-fuses. In some ways that's a bit more painful. (I get that it supposedly provides a Secure Boot. OTOH HP has supposedly done similar without having to blow the fuses.)
> Just another step towards you not owning the hardware you already paid for.
I understand the sentiment, but Intel will argue you didn’t pay in full for your hardware, so you didn’t pay for the features you won’t be able to use.
I see this as a continuum. At one extreme end, you pay a lump sum for perpetual use of the hardware (“buying”). At the other extreme end, they lend you the hardware as long as you have a subscription to their offerings (“renting”). Somewhere in-between, they offer you some basic functionality or a lower subscription rate if you pay a sum up front.
We have that intermediate with cable subscriptions. You get X channels with the subscription, but have to pay extra for others, or for a higher quality signal.
Again, I understand the sentiment, but I don’t think that you can claim you paid for something if the seller says you didn’t, and the seller advertised that you wouldn’t get what you think you bought for the price.
And yes, I can understand customers not being happy about this.
No, we don't. We need to enforce right of First Sale, and stop propping up predatory buisness models by giving them a free pass.
The moment things started to not ship with programming guides, and everyone started hiding their IC schemata and docs for fear of being sued were the first steps down this path we're going down.
I will not continue to follow it blindly, and I hope more people will join me as well. This has to stop.
Independent of copyright law, people have a more fundamental right to contract as they wish. If people wish to pay less by allowing a lack of full control of hardware in their possession, then we shouldn't stop them. To assert otherwise is to deny them a basic liberty. True, if many accept such limitations then it creates a kind of market pressure, but that's just competition, and we have no natural right to be protected from competition.
That's very clever trying to cast it as the customer who is desirous of this contract, when in fact that can't be further from the truth; it is often the seller who is, in fact pushing a contract, which isn't a genuine contract as soon as they figure out the technical means to do so?
I reject your assertion of the supremacy of the contract. The contract is a vehicle subordinate to State regulation , and the State recognizes there are things that cannot be contractually done, selling oneself or another into servitude being one, and I hold, that violation of First Sale rights should be another. To do anything else is to undermine the very concept of private ownership. When industry colludes and makes standard the practice of not offering wares for sale under traditional terms, I hold this as an appropriate circumstance for the State to step in, particularly when it is made as obvious that poor faith is at the root of the business practice. Insult me not with assertions that finding a way to extract multiple payments, or extort out recurring revenue by "unlocking" functionality via firmware delivered over the air is anything but poor faith veneered in the illusion of convenience for the customer in light of the purveyor also gaining the capability to at will degrade the product by definition.
I think at some point, it will become a competitive advantage to sell devices and platforms that are not locked in. Kind of like the way Linux crushed the competition in the server space. Open hardware might eventually become what everybody wants. Seems like right now everyone is on a path to Windowsify everything, but that could change.
Sounds crazy? Keep in mind, people used to pay money for programming language licenses. How many people are doing that anymore? Are the people who pay for that kind of stuff competitive businesses?
I will be shocked if they do not make this a subscription based feature. And honestly, do you trust them not to make it one in the future? If given the opportunity, I expect them to seek rent.
Is it really that hard to imagine having microcode in the cpu or another separate processor implementing a timer that requires proof of continuing subscription via a new certificate being uploaded to it or else it does something like lock the main processor to a max speed of 200mhz?
I hope AMD doesn't copy this. Intel has been on a downwards trend recently and maybe this is just a dumb, desperate move from them. As you say the landscape is getting more competitive, which is a good thing for consumers.