What a bunch of greedy bastards. Not being able to repair an appliance/device/tool/whatever in some contexts could make the difference between life and death.
And not just in combat. Imagine if the air filter on the Apollo 13 couldn't be hacked with what the astronauts had at hand up there because it was driven by closed electronics whose brain was sandwiched in multiple layers of DRM, NDAs, stupidity and lawyers: the guys would have been doomed.
"We're sorry this Lithium Hydroxide canister does not appear to be genuine or has been refilled. Please contact Boeing for assistance and to order genuine parts."
As an aside one of the things I love about old school military equipment is the "battle short." It effectively disables all the safety equipment and limit switches and allows the device to run even though the device believes it should not. There's an extra measure of confidence you get just from seeing that option available to you. "No, damnit, RUN!"
Curiosity (the Mars rover) has a battleshort mode and when we use it there's a message that says "putting my battle shorts on." Never fails to crack me up.
Ever since the first time I encountered HDCP I have had a little fantasy about the bridge screen on the Enterprise refusing to display anything because of an hdcp glitch.
These days the imaginary recalcitrant screen isn't simply blank though, now there are ads which never fail.
I was at a local gyro shop a few weeks ago and all their menu displays were showing Amazon ads over their menus. I gave up on humanity right then.
> Ever since the first time I encountered HDCP I have had a little fantasy about the bridge screen on the Enterprise refusing to display anything because of an hdcp glitch.
Speaking of SciFi, I fantasized about a novel in which an alien species visiting our long dead planet in the future can't recover what's left of our culture because it had been all wrapped in DRM whose keys died with us. By extension, if the Rosetta Stone makers adopted the same practices, we would know squat about ancient Egyptian language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone
What I hate the most is when companies will come out and say they don't want people touching things due to safety concerns. The awful thing is that it is working.
More and more I see people saying "Oh I won't touch the brakes on my car because what if I mess up". I am confident most people could replace the brakes on their car.
It's not just repairing cars, I told a coworker I replaces the fuse in my Bosch blender and he looked at me as if I was insane. "But what if it catches fire?" was his reply.
Dragging my team to the nearest maker space for a teambuilding exercise as soon as I figure out how to convince HR to pay for it. People need to know things do not catch fire if you repair it.
I dunno... I had a microwave that came on when you opened the door... turns out it would boil water with the door closed without entering time too... Thanks GM, love the "safe" microwave that nobody can service. Replaced with the dumbest microwave option I could find.
Seems just a rehash of the same old excuse: "someone think of the children!" which usually comes from people not giving a damn about children but worried about their own interests.
