[CamperBob2]

What you're actually saying is that I shouldn't be allowed to determine what kind of RAM my application needs. Instead, you are saying that someone with a gun should dictate this choice to me.

That's what we mean when we say that people with your point of view are promoting nanny-statism. It amounts to infantilization of adult consumers and subsequent disempowerment.

Occasionally such legislation can be justified, as when genuinely hazardous products are involved, or products whose use involves wide-ranging externalities, but usually not. People can and should be educated -- and expected -- to make their own decisions about things like whether they need ECC RAM.

[etbe]

How do YOU propose doing this when most computer "experts" have never used ECC RAM and when it's only available in high end specialist systems that aren't on sale in regular computer stores?

I think my knowledge of the topic is pretty good but I learned from this discussion that almost all AMD CPUs support ECC RAM and you apparently just need a motherboard to match. When accompanying people who were buying "gamer" PCs (after they rejected my recommendation for a second hand workstation grade computer with ECC RAM) I never witnessed store staff saying "hey you could get a motherboard with ECC support".

[CamperBob2]

It's simply none of my business whether or not someone does the homework to understand what kind of RAM they should buy. I bothered to inform myself; they can, too.

[_factor]

Next up. CPUs that will spit out the wrong calculations 1/1M times. You’ll have to pay more for the enterprise version to get uncorrupted processing. The spare traces cost 5 cents, but we can charge 20% more for the privilege instead.

Just because you can allow it, doesn’t mean you should. I don’t want to live in a world where you need a PhD to avoid being scammed by increasingly sophisticated ploys. Data isn’t free anymore and the right questions are becoming harder to ask.

[CamperBob2]

Data isn’t free anymore and the right questions are becoming harder to ask.

Ridiculous. Access to knowledge has never been as widely and freely available as it is now (no thanks to the nanny-statists.)

[etbe]

If it's none of your business why are you getting so involved in this discussion?

[some_random]

It's none of their business whether or not others choose to use ECC. It's absolutely his business whether or not authorities force them to use ECC RAM or else.

[etbe]

Why is taxing non-ECC RAM instead of ECC RAM more of a problem in this regard than the thousands of other taxes?

The government imposed a 12% GST on all computer gear just because they felt like it. Would making ECC RAM GST exempt satisfy you?

[CamperBob2]

Because failure to speak up when bad laws are proposed results in bad laws getting passed.

[some_random]

Any one of thousands of policy options that aren't "just ban it".

[etbe]

But no-one here has advocated banning anything. Please read before replying.

[graemep]

> People can and should be educated -- and expected -- to make their own decisions about things like whether they need ECC RAM.

So you think its realistic to expect the average consumer to assess the pros and cons of using ECC RAM?

We could solve this by better information which addresses your concerns about it being nanny statism. We would need it to be something that consumers understand - e.g. We could require all computers without ECC RAM to have a warning label saying something like "this computer uses cheap memory so is prone to crashing and losing your data". I strongly suspect the impact of that would be very similar to that of just banning non-ECC RAM.

I would also argue that having reliable RAM is a reasonable extension of existing legal requirements for consumer products: e.g. that they are of satisfactory quality and fit for purpose (to use the current UK terminology).

[some_random]

There are two issues with nanny statism, the first is poorly informed kneejerk overreactions, the second is immediately jumping to heavyhanded policies. In your example even the absurd warning label is significantly less of an issue than flat out banning non ECC RAM.

[graemep]

I agree in principle and there are many examples of it.

I just do not think that banning non ECC is an example of nanny statism.