[Noisebridge-discuss] Interview about planned obsolescence?

[Joshua Juran]

On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 4:54 PM, Jake <jake at spaz.org> wrote:
> On the subject of planned obsolescence, I was a mechanic in a former life
> and was working on a Ford Escort from the late 80's or 90's.

[snip]

> Ford had inserted plastic pieces into the holes, to make it impossible to
> insert the cheater tool and replace the module without removing the
> distributor, because you had to use a hot metal screw to remove the
> plastic inserts. Why would you shove plastic cylinders into these, holes,
> where screws (bolts actually, with heads almost as large as the holes to
> access them) were hard to get?
>
> There is only one explanation.  They did it to make it more difficult to
> repair.

To illustrate the problem with proprietary software, Richard Stallman
used the example of a car with the hood welded shut -- the point being
that you couldn't make repairs yourself without resorting to
extraordinary measures.[1]  Ford's scheme is morally equivalent, an
analogue to DRM.

Astute readers will observe that inhibiting cheap repairs is a form
the Broken Window fallacy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

Josh

[1] You can always make your own repairs to proprietary software --
though you might have to reverse-engineer it or buy the source code
first.