Re: Java and avoiding software piracy?

On Jul 17, 3:02 am, Roedy Green <see_webs...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Tue, 17 Jul 2007 06:35:11 -0000, Twisted <twisted...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone who said :

Seconded. Software "rental" or "as a service" is a euphemism for
software "serfdom"

I think you have it backwards. Once a vendor has all your money he can
laugh at you. He can sell you crap that does not work at all. With
rental, after 2 months you can leave having given him only a fraction
of the dough he would get had he delivered.

Wrong. With the subscription, he can laugh all the way to the bank.
Maybe he's locked you into an N-year contract. Maybe he simply has a
monopoly on the software and nobody else's is remotely compatible.
Most likely your data is on his servers instead of your computer, and
he can dictate terms by holding this data hostage.

Not to mention, right now if you want to word process, you pay $X up
front and then can word process to your hearts' content for the rest
of your life for only the costs of electricity and keeping the
hardware maintained. With your vaunted subscription model, you have to
pay $X over and over and over again or the software stops working.
After some point in time you've paid far more money than in the non-
subscription scenario but you're no better off. Continuing to use the
software doesn't cost the software vendor anything, unlike continuing
to use electricity which costs the hydro company, yet you're being
billed as if it's a utility whose "consumption" somehow actually is
consuming something other than electricity. This simply doesn't make
any sense! It's extortion, pure and simple.

"Rent-to-own" where after you've paid the original full purchase price
you "own" it and don't need to pay any more except to get a whole new
version is better, and arguably better than the current system where
you pay up-front.

Better yet is just to disallow software merchants disclaiming "fitness
for purpose".

Best of all is to set information free and charge for things that are
genuinely scarce.

The other advantage is the vendor keeps all his customers up to date.

Yes, a very big advantage for the vendor. Not for the customers, of
course. Customers of course get this experience:
* New bugs appear as if by magic and they can't just sit at a version
they can use and whose bugs they're used to working around.
* Features disappear or tell you one day you now have to pay extra to
use them.
* DRM components are updated, which invariably makes things worse
rather than better for consumers.
* And so forth.

Forced updates and "subscription models" have some prototypes we can
examine:
* Google Groups. The interface and bugs keep changing. Bugs and issues
don't get fixed often and it's not possible to get ahold of the
developers to report stuff or get help.
* Intuit's upgrade treadmill basically makes its tax-preparation and
accounting software into "subscription" software. There are numerous
reports of former functionality disappearing or becoming "premium"
stuff that they demand extra money for you to use.
* Subscription TV services such as satellite companies drop channels
you can only get back by paying more each month than you used to.
(While their costs are no doubt actually going *down* over time.) They
frequently rearrange channels or otherwise gratuitously scramble your
favorite lists into unusability every couple of months.
* Prices keep jacking up and up on both of the above items that aren't
free.
* Apple's iTunes DRM keeps changing. Upgrading is apparently mandatory
for some things to keep working, from all accounts, making it
essentially a subscription, so there's no escape from the random and
arbitrary limits on song-burning, playlist-building, and other things
gradually contracting, from 7 of something down to 5 and then 4, and
things of that nature.
* There are numerous well-documented examples of automatic updates to
anti-virus subscriptions generating new bugs, false positives, or
otherwise corrupting things, and often expiring something so that you
have to pay for a more expensive version, instead of just paying the
existing subscription.
* Microsoft has pushed a nefarious Windows update, "Windows Genuine
Advantage Notification", by deceptively putting it into the so-called
"critical" updates, which are supposed to only be security patches.
Windows Genuine Advantage was made outright mandatory but didn't do
much harm to most users of Windows XP. However, those who downloaded
the "Notification" update and installed it, which would supposedly
just tell them whether or not their XP was genuine (what the existing
WGA already was determining and reporting to Microsoft when you used
Windows Update), found that in fact it would classify a percentage of
installations as "pirated" basically at random, including known
legitimate ones. In fact, the "Notification" was nothing of the sort;
it was a booby-trap that would cause WGA to fail and XP to demand
reactivation on a random percentage of the infected machines. Of
course, reactivation of XP has suddenly become curiously difficult
right around the time of the big Vista roll-out ... it's notable that
Microsoft continues to push the WGAN "security patch" at those users
like myself that have refused to install it, and that if you "hide"
the update in the Windows Update Web site interface, this particular
one periodically unhides itself. If you're not wary, the automatic
update tray thingie will download it and try to install it soon after
that happens if you don't go and rehide it. (Needless to say, I've
long since turned off automatic installation of updates. I review the
list when it says there are new updates and it's bogus fairly often.
Besides the bogus WGAN "security patch" one update, cryptically named
"917953", repeatedly shows up as new after it's been installed. In
fact, I install it again every time there's other patches than just
that one showing up new, and after a couple of reboots it again shows
up as if it were brand new! It does so periodically every few days
until the next batch of updates. This has been the case for more than
a year now. So I manage the update process manually, or my computer
would be rebooting itself every day or two due to "917953" if it
worked at all after being infected with WGA "notification".)

Actually, I guess WGA "notification" *is* a security patch of a sort.
It just doesn't provide any security for the user's computer (rather
the opposite, as it's more vulnerable to requiring reactivation, which
is bad). Rather, it is a "critical security patch" for Microsoft's
cash flow, and particularly the less-than-stellar sales of Vista...

So, does any of the above sound like anything you'd want becoming more
widespread than it already is? Oh, I forgot, you're apparently
planning to be a vendor of such "services", which means you'd be
laughing all the way to the bank. So I guess your answer would be
"yes".

I know what mine is.

.

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