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It's extremely reckless to leave out what the general practice to make things likely to break because of some super cheapo part and not be easily repairable does to us and our environment in the long run. You're not even trying to weigh one against the other, you completely ignore a major part of the equation, and the incentive you create to make things needlessly complex or expensive to repair (special or very soft screws in other with mundane widgets being the lightest form of that I guess), if need be by obfuscation. How much damage would be cased by "reckless repairs", and how much damage is currently being caused by fleeced customers? The Amiga came with schematics... that seems like a parallel universe now... and then I realize that was what some kind of golden age of openness to me, probably seems very closed and uptight to what computer scientists in the 60s or so did and experienced. And hey, isn't Linux incredibly complex? What if someone tinkers with the sourcecode, breaks it completely, and ends up exposing very private email someone else send to them to them? What if someone uses a Raspberry Pi to automate their garage door, instead of buying a "professional product", and another person gets harmed or even killed? Those things can happen, and then that person is liable for what they did.. isn't that enough? Or at least enough in most cases? If people repairing cars leads to a lot of accidents, then it's the job of lawmakers to study, recognize and deal with that. It's a farce for all sorts of products being hard to repair because people repairing their stuff is less profitable than them buying more, and then to justify that with safety. If it's about safety, then you have to hand over responsibility. If you find out a new food you invented can carry a new disease if not stored properly, inform the authorities so they can make rules for everyone, instead of doing your own little thing and not telling anyone. Some companies probably don't want that because proper laws would deal with it in respects to how dangerous something is, how much expertise is needed, and so on... not just solely "how much additional money can we squeeze out of it". So it's not about safety (that's not in reference to your comment which I believe is sincere, but in reference to what many companies are doing), that simply doesn't mesh, it's about the desire to control and exploit, to channel people into what companies need/want instead of channeling companies into what people need/want. Being exploited and manipulated in this fashion is a net decrease of safety. That just about everybody who exploits is in turn the exploited pet of others in other areas, that everybody who presumes to be a magician to the plebs is in turn a pleb in the sight of another magician, that doesn't make it better or more fair, it makes it a maelstrom. Our tools get faster and bigger, but we become consumers instead of makers, parrots instead of sources. We hop from raft to raft on a windy river, rather than building and expanding and improving our world. That is just so boring and also dangerous, besides sorely lacking dignity. Anyone who works to change that, no matter in what capacity, I support without ifs and buts. Generally speaking and kind of a tangent, but how much damage is done to the mind by making the world and the objects we use to function and socialize more opaque, so that we become to resigned to either consume or watch? That's hardly on our radar, but I would count on it. |