My Epson Stylus Photo R1800’s been running low on ink in a couple of cartridges for a few days now. I’ve been putting off ordering them until this weekend. Now I find that when the printer believes a cartridge has reached 0%, it won’t print […]
All posts filed under “Technical protection measures”
Another phone business model designed to frustrate the customer
In a similar vein to a recent mention of a Verizon trick which attempts to force the user to use an expensive data service to check e-mail, rather than the free built-in WiFi, Uninnovate discusses the (Sprint) LG Fusic which not only disables on-phone features […]
Uninnovate – engineering products to do less
Image from uninnovate.com I’ve just come across a very interesting new blog, uninnovate.com, which focuses on the phenomenon of “engineering expensive features into a product for which there is no market demand in order to make the product do less.” The first few posts tackle […]
Some links: miscellaneous, pertinent to architectures of control
Ulises Mejias on ‘Confinement, Education and the Control Society’ – fascinating commentary on Deleuze’s societies of control and how the instant communication and ‘life-long learning’ potential (and, I guess, everyware) of the internet age may facilitate control and repression: “This is the paradox of social […]
The Privacy Ceiling
Scott Craver of the University of Binghamton has a very interesting post summarising the concept of a ‘privacy ceiling’: “This is an economic limit on privacy violation by companies, owing to the liability of having too much information about (or control over) users.” It’s the […]
Use of RFID in DRM
Via Dave Farber’s Interesting People, a brief New Scientist article outlines Sony’s continuing obsession with restricting and controlling its customers (the last one didn’t go too well): “A patent filed by Sony last week suggests it may once again be considering preventing consumers making “too […]
Ed Felten: DRM Wars, and ‘Property Rights Management’
At Freedom to Tinker, Ed Felten has posted a summary of a talk he gave at the Usenix Security Symposium, called “DRM Wars: The Next Generation”. The two installments so far (Part 1, Part 2) trace a possible trend in the (stated) intentions of DRM’s […]
Freedom to Tinker – The Freedom to Tinker with Freedom?
At Freedom to Tinker, David Robinson asks whether, in a world where DRM is presented to so many customers as a benefit (e.g. Microsoft’s Zune service), the public as a whole will be quite happy to trade away its freedom to tinker, whether the law […]
Review: Everyware by Adam Greenfield
This is the first book review I’ve done on this blog, though it won’t be the last. In a sense, this is less of a conventional review than an attempt to discuss some of the ideas in the book, and synthesise them with points that […]
Friend or foe: Battery-authentication ICs?
Via MAKE, an article from Electrical Design News looking at lithium battery authentication chips in products such as phones and laptops, designed to prevent users fitting ‘non-genuine’ batteries. Now, the immediate response of most of us is probably “razor blade model!” or even “stifling democratic […]
DRM now the ‘biggest issue’ in preserving information for the future
The Guardian has an interview with Richard Masters, of the British Library’s digital objects management programme looking at the impact of technology on archiving. The usual worries about file formats, media incompatability and how to select what to preserve and what not to are discussed, […]
Oh yeah, that Windows Kill Switch
I know the furore surrounding Microsoft’s ‘Windows Genuine Advantage’ is a few days old, and perhaps I should have blogged about it at the time, specifically the rumoured ‘Kill Switch’ which would remotely deactivate any PCs apparently running ‘non-genuine’ copies of XP. That’s certainly a […]
Embedding control in society: the end of freedom
Henry Porter’s chilling Blair Laid Bare – which I implore you to read if you have the slightest interest in your future – contains an equally worrying quote from the LSE’s Simon Davies noting the encroachment of architectures of control in society itself: “The second […]
Forcing functions designed to increase product consumption
A few days ago, Tim Quinn of Dangerous Curve posted an interesting observation on the Simple Control in Products page: “This may not be what you had in mind, but I immediately thought of such things as toothpaste pumps that ‘meter’ use to insure the […]
ABC wants to disable fast-forwarding on digital video recorders
Via BoingBoing: ABC Looks Beyond Upfront To DVR, Commercial Ratings Issues (needs you to sign in – use username ‘wasteoftime’, password ‘wasteoftime’): “ABC HAS HELD DISCUSSIONS ON the use of technology that would disable the fast-forward button on DVRs, according to ABC President of Advertising […]
Neuros: ‘Freedom by Design’
Following on from the last post about the Neuros MPEG4 recorder, looking on the Neuros website reveals something pretty unusual for a company involved in consumer product design – a clear statement of design philosophy, ‘What do we stand for?’ that’s heavy on content and […]