James B. Byrne wrote:
On Mon, July 1, 2013 14:03, John R Pierce wrote:
On 7/1/2013 10:57 AM, Nathan Duehr wrote:
DRM'ed server hardware. Pure evil.
why is that evil? why should you pay for features you're not using?
Actually, firmware control of system features has been part of HPQ's business practice for as long as I can remember. The HP3000 series of MPE/iX mini computers ran on exactly the same hardware as the HP9000 HP-UX systems, but were priced considerably higher than their HP9000 equivalents. However, one could not simply run MPE/iX on the HP9000 hardware. One had to pay HPQ to come in and run a system utility that reset a flag on the processor to enable that. On the other hand, one could run HP-UX on the HP3000 hardware without requiring any changes.
<snip> Just so you know, that's not only in the computer industry. Many years ago, I was looking at a repair household appliances yourself book, and saw something I considered astounding. My late wife and I had a cheap washer - it had been the best she could afford before we met - that had no load size control, only one size fits all.
After looking at what the book said, I disassembled the control panel on top, we were amazed - there *was* a water level control... but no knob for it. I drilled a hole in the panel, reassembled it, and we used a screwdriver to set the water level to the <click> size.
It was, apparently, cheaper for the manufacturer to make all of them the same, but ask about $100 in the eighties to have a panel with the hole drilled and add a knob.
mark