Reasons for hacking DSOs

[kcbrown]

Why does it matter whether you are unlocking it for personal use or for business use?  Sure, it may matter as regards the support you can expect afterwards, but whether or not that serves as sufficient reason to refrain is dependent solely on the circumstances of the individual.

Like I said, it's just an opinion. Not based on law or ethics. Maybe it's based on the fact that when your business is reliant on other businesses, and your business also relies on respect of IP, then you might be more inclined to respect the IP of those other businesses on which you are reliant?

That may be true, but we're talking about what justifies restrictions on their actions, not what actions they would refrain from of their own volition.

I agree: a business is much more likely to simply leave the device as it is, and there's good reason for that: the desire for maximized after-the-sale support.  They depend on the instruments in question for their business, after all, so after-the-sale support is much more important to them than it would be to a hobbyist who would not be affected by the unavailability of such support to nearly the same degree.

This logic is unsound.  "A purpose of a lock is to prevent/deter theft, therefore all uses of a lock are for the purpose of preventing/deterring theft, and therefore to bypass the lock indicates intent to steal".

I don't think this is a great leap at all. If the code on the Rigol was not there to deter theft of IP, why not just have a menu setting "Press 1 for 50MHz. Press 2 for 100MHz."

"Theft" is not the same as "doing something that someone else doesn't want you to".  "Theft" has a very specific meaning: taking something that belongs to someone else without that other person's authorization.

Here, the copy of the code in question belongs to the owner of the device (to insist otherwise is to insist that the DVD you purchased is not owned by you, that you do not have the right to experience its contents even though you purchased those contents, and that the originator of the work therein has the right to unilaterally dictate to you everything you can and cannot do with that copy even though copyright law has already imposed scarcity).  The original code belongs to the manufacturer.  Copyright laws prevent lawful copying of the code without the authorization of the copyright holder, but that is not in play here at all, because no unauthorized copying of a copyrighted work is taking place when someone enters a magic key into their scope.  Nor is there any theft of "intellectual property", because "intellectual property" is a person's creative expression, not the forms it is fixed in.  Patents and copyrights exist not to protect from theft, but to provide greater incentive for creative people to release their creations to the world.  They do this by imposing artificial scarcity on things that otherwise would be freely available to all.  That's a necessary imposition in order to give creators sufficient ability to survive on the basis of the sale of their works, but it is also a sufficient imposition, as it makes the world of "intellectual property" roughly equivalent to the world of physical goods.  To go any further than that is to taint the market in favor of "intellectual property" holders in the same way it would taint the market for physical goods.  Few here argue that manufacturers of purely physical goods should be able to dictate arbitrary terms of use to purchasers, but that is precisely what they are arguing in favor of here with respect to anything else.

The term "theft" has been usurped by people who insist on treating everything that could possibly derive in any way from "intellectual property" as if it had the same scarcity properties as real property.  It's one thing to insist that the arena of "intellectual property" be governed so as to give it the scarcity properties of physical objects.    But as this thread illustrates, some go far beyond that in their insistence of how "intellectual property" should be treated.  They act as if "intellectual property" is some sacrosanct thing that would not exist at all if we didn't simply give creators whatever they wanted in exchange for use of instantiations of their "intellectual property".  The history of the world shows how incorrect that is -- people have been creating, inventing, etc., for far longer than "intellectual property" laws have been around, which proves that intellectual property laws do not exist to make creating, inventing, etc., possible, they exist to make it easier.

Whether the access is desired by someone who has a right to it or not is an independent variable.

I think this ties in somehow, as well. I mean, if a lock pick hobbyist buys a lock, of course he can pick it if he wants to. In this scenario, I see no problem with a hobbyist to unlock a scope for no other reason that simply because he wants to. But to pick a lock to get what's on the other side, something which the manufacturer charges money for (in the case of Rigol, they DO sell a higher bandwidth model, but this can easily apply to Agilent or Siglent or Keysight or Lecroi, or w/e company you want to insert there, which sells upgraded features, including locking out scope input channels, entirely!), for commercial use, then I personally feel that's different.

Then the question becomes: why do you believe the manufacturer should be free to implement whatever mechanisms they choose to control how the device is used, while simultaneously insisting that the purchaser is not entitled to do what they will with the device they purchased with their hard earned money?  More precisely, why do some insist on eliminating market forces for the former, while insisting that market forces must control the latter?  To insist that the purchaser buy something else instead of maximizing what they have is to insist that the manufacturer should control the market.  But markets operate best when the controls placed on them are minimized, when actors on both sides are free to choose what to do and are forced by the nature of the market to deal with the consequences of their choices.

the only truly legitimate justification for preventing either of them from doing what they want with what they purchased is active harm that may result from that use.

Ok, now I'm picturing a scope that is booby trapped to permanently brick itself if the wrong code is entered, lol. Yeah, I know you meant legal/financial consequences.

Well, actually, I had intent on physical harm (which includes things like theft of physical items) in mind with that.

A scope that is booby trapped to permanently brick itself would not last long in the marketplace.  The market nicely takes care of things like that.  Indeed, it is the reasoning of some of those here that would allow such a thing to survive in the marketplace.

Why does it matter whether you are unlocking it for personal use or for business use?  Sure, it may matter as regards the support you can expect afterwards, but whether or not that serves as sufficient reason to refrain is dependent solely on the circumstances of the individual.

I brought up the example of WinZip. I wonder what you think of it. Do you think anyone who pays for WinZip is a dickhead, because there are no consequences for not paying?

I've no problem with "donate-ware" or anything else.  Look, I'm not arguing against copyright law itself.  I'm arguing against unilaterally imposed contracts.  And I'm arguing that they are just as ethically unsound in the world of copyright as they are in the world of physical objects.  Not one person here has raised a logically consistent, non-arbitrary defense of them in the arena of copyrights that would not be equally applicable in the arena of physical objects.

Another example is free student versions of software. Or free device samples. The entire point of giving away this free stuff is so that if/when that 1 in 1000 people who get this free stuff actually starts to use this stuff in a commercial/business enterprise, then they will start to pay for it! 

Right.  Again, I do not argue against copyright.  I do not argue against right of refusal of sale.  As a vendor, you can choose whom you sell to, and what you sell to them.  Other vendors can choose differently.  The market ends up taking care of the inefficiencies that might otherwise arise.   But that is not what is being argued here.  What is being argued here is that the right to choose what you sell extends to the right to unilaterally, without prior agreement of the buyer, dictate to the buyer what they may and may not do with what they purchase from you.  And that requires the assent of the buyer when what is being sold is a physical good.  Somehow, non-physical goods, or even physical goods that operate with a non-physical component (firmware), are being treated as magically exempt from the expectations we impose on the sale of physical goods.

All I'm doing is calling people out on their hypocrisy.

I am not making a legal/ethical argument. This is just my own feeling.

Fair enough.  We're all entitled to our own opinions.  I'm entitled to my opinion that an opinion isn't valid unless it is logically internally consistent.   

If you write software for a living, you might see this differently. (And besides, you did not "discover" that the seller locked the glovebox. You purchased the car knowing it did not come with a glovebox; you were also offered a car WITH a glovebox, but you were too cheap to buy it.)

For the record, I have written software for a living, and the company I work for does software as its sole business.  And my stance is what it is in large part because I have been in the software industry in one way or another for 30 years.  I've seen the damage caused by overzealousness in the use of the power of copyright to unilaterally impose contracts.  It took people working for years for free to even begin to unseat Microsoft from their position, a position that wouldn't exist were it not for the power to unilaterally impose contract terms due to copyright.

I've also seen some of the consequences of going entirely in the other direction.

It is not an accident that our general understanding of what it means to "own" an item is what it is.  That understanding is the result of hundreds (if not thousands) of years of development of the laws and culture surrounding property and the markets that function for its supply and transfer.  History repeatedly shows that control over the actions of others is a power to be given away sparingly, because it will inevitably be horribly abused otherwise.  As regards physical goods, the general market has shown itself to be quite good at providing for the needs of buyers and sellers alike.  Why in the world would anyone in their right mind want to throw away those characteristics for things which the law already imposes the same sort of scarcity as physical goods?

[kcbrown]

At the end of the day, the fundamental justification you're using for supporting such arbitrary constraints on the purchaser is to make it possible for the manufacturer to employ arbitrary schemes to control what functionality is available so that the manufacturer may profit from those schemes, and to fully control the conditions under which that functionality is made available even when what is supplied to the customer is fully capable of performing the functions in question.  That is the same as insisting that a car manufacturer should be able to dictate to you how fast you can drive your car, with the only thing preventing you from going any faster is a switch that you can flip.  You are insisting that it would be wrong for the purchaser to flip that switch.   In essence, you are insisting that the manufacturer reserves every right to unilaterally tell you what to do with what you purchase from them, as long as that control results in greater profit for them.   On what basis do you claim that my characterization here is incorrect?

Why you only look at the consumer end? Are you born with the right that someone creates and delivers an oscilloscope you to with the features you desire and at the price you want? Nope. Eventually someone WILL do that.... as long as it is profitable to do so.

I'm not looking at this strictly from the point of view of the buyer.  I'm looking at it from the point of view of both.  The seller is already free to build his goods any way he chooses.  I am not arguing that the seller isn't free to do that.  What I am arguing is that the buyer must have no less liberty than the seller.  Just as the seller can build whatever he wants in whatever way he wants, the buyer must be able to do whatever he wants with what he purchases.  Neither should be able to unilaterally dictate to the other what he may and may not do after the sale.

What people are arguing here, however, is that the seller should be able to unilaterally dictate to the buyer what he may and may not do with what he purchased, while the buyer has no equivalent power.  I am challenging the entire basis of that notion.  It is a corrupt and evil notion, for it unnecessarily gives control over others to entities that have proven they do not deserve it (if you think they do, then you'd better read up on the history of monopolies and the abuses that have occurred at their hands.  A monopoly inherently gives the seller the ability to dictate terms).

employ arbitrary schemes to control what functionality is available

What functions are even available to begin with are somewhat arbitrary. While developing this product, they invested capital to create features that they figured might be desired and profitable to specific segments of the market (and tech nerds), but which were not necessarily highly desirable or must-have features for a broader market. But these features required an initial investment AND ONGOING MAINTENANCE COST (i.e. debugging/support). But you desire they should give these features to everyone....   Why?

I don't desire that they should give those features to everyone.  Whether they do or not is their choice.  What I do insist on is that they not demand that the customer artificially limit his actions in order to satisfy the manufacturer's desire to do things a certain way.

All of these things must be subject to the marketplace.  If the manufacturer insists on building his product in a certain way, he takes full responsibility for the consequences of doing so.  What people are insisting on here is that the manufacturer should be artificially shielded from the consequences of being lazy, of putting the same capabilities into all of their products, "protecting" that in any arbitrary way they wish, and then making up for doing that sloppily by imposing artificial limits on the actions of the buyer.

Does that not increase the cost for those guys that just want "a basic wrench" in order to do their job? In order to earn their income and pay for the roof over their head? Now these customers need to buy the top of the line product, so that the evil company doesn't profit as much?

Well, seeing how I've already outlined exactly how the manufacturers can do what they want without imposing artificial limits on the actions of their customers, this objection doesn't fly.

Put another way, just because a customer can attempt to take actions to bypass a lock doesn't mean he has the right to succeed in that.  I do not argue that customers have the right to succeed in their attempts, only that they have the right to make the attempt.

car manufacturer should be able to dictate to you how fast you can drive your car, with the only thing preventing you from going any faster is a switch that you can flip.   

And yet, this is exactly the case. Car manufacturers routinely "detune" motors for lower end model cars and motorcycles.

Yes, they do.  But importantly, customers of those cars and motorcycles aren't forbidden by unilaterally imposed contract from altering the tune of those engines.

What we're talking about here, on the other hand, is the notion that the manufacturer has the right to dictate to the purchaser that they not modify the tune of the car.  I'm not talking about something where the purchaser would lose warranty support if they were to take that action.  I'm talking about something where the purchaser would be in breach of law for doing so.

In addition, In the US, the government can and does also limit the top speed of vehicles that operate on US streets. That top speed is 189 miles per hour, IIRC. (How arbitrary does that sound? )

I don't believe purchasers are prevented from removing those limits.  In fact, I know they're not prevented in that way.  The cars that run the Texas Mile go far faster than that, and are still street legal.

This arbitrary limit must be put on a vehicle by the manufacturer for any vehicle that needs to be street legal, but which could otherwise exceed this limit. It seems silly that this is even necessary, since we have speed limits. Who needs a car to go faster than 120mph? (a little more than the average speed of some or our highways, lol.)

If that arbitrary government-imposed limit really is there, then yes, I agree it's utterly silly and worthless.

Same can be said for a scope that goes to 100MHz. I fail to see a big market for that vs 50MHz. High speed video signals, maybe? What else will fit in that bandwidth? Anything higher than a couple MHz is exotic territory for a switching PSU. 5x 2MHz is 10MHz.. which is going to cover a lot of peoples' needs for an oscilloscope. Need more, you probably need a lot more.

What about software defined radio?  Or radio in general?   What about microcontrollers running with 50 MHz crystal oscillators as their timebase?

Keep in mind, the bandwidth of a scope defines the maximum visible frequency in a waveform.  But waveforms are generally composed of a conglomerate of frequencies.  That square wave will have (as a practical matter) Fourier components at least an order of magnitude higher than its base frequency.



Much of your message assumes that I have some fundamental disagreement with the free market.  Far from it.  I'm actually arguing in favor of a freer market than what some her would have us operate under.  A free market requires free actors (both before and after the sale) and a balance of power between them.  Someone is not free in the use of that which they purchase when the person they are executing a transaction with has the power of unilateral imposition of terms. 

[mnementh]

(SNIP)
All that said, my stance on "why" people hack scopes? In my opinion it is because they can, because they are not willing to afford a larger sum of money for a non-profit activity (hobbyists) or they are struggling to keep their business and decide to take this route with minimum expenditure.

Thank you! for being the one person who offers 2 whole sentences in the last two pages that actually relate to the original post.


mnem
And for being the exception that proves the rule.

[KL27x]

What people are arguing here, however, is that the seller should be able to unilaterally dictate to the buyer what he may and may not do with what he purchased, while the buyer has no equivalent power.

He can do w/e he wants with it, sure.

you'd better read up on the history of monopolies and the abuses that have occurred at their hands.  A monopoly inherently gives the seller the ability to dictate terms).

What is the monopoly, here?

I don't desire that they should give those features to everyone.  Whether they do or not is their choice.  What I do insist on is that they not demand that the customer artificially limit his actions in order to satisfy the manufacturer's desire to do things a certain way.

Which actions are you talking about, here, being artificially limited?

What people are insisting on here is that the manufacturer should be artificially shielded from the consequences of being lazy

Not at all... WinZip is pretty lazy about how they charge for their software. And I'd venture that the majority of users do not pay for it. I don't think anyone should burn in hell for it, anymore than anyone would care about hobbyists unlocking a Rigol scope! I don't think anyone cares! I just don't agree that unlocking features, using the manufacturers own software, is "hacking" or "improving" something you own the same way as changing/modifying a physical good. Tweaking an ECU with a custom firmware to get more horsepower, that's hacking.

Well, seeing how I've already outlined exactly how the manufacturers can do what they want without imposing artificial limits on the actions of their customers, this objection doesn't fly.

Well, I think it is obvious that this increases the cost to other customers who just want the base model. So it's a tradeoff. And I already said I don't object to you hacking your scope.

Put another way, just because a customer can attempt to take actions to bypass a lock doesn't mean he has the right to succeed in that.  I do not argue that customers have the right to succeed in their attempts, only that they have the right to make the attempt.

This is one of the most curious things about your post. Very curious. I'll have to think on that. I'm thinking of Kwikset locks. They are the most common house/door/deadbolt lock in the US. And you can pick them with a couple of bobby pins in under a minute. But that doesn't matter, because the lock is just there to keep honest people honest. * In some way I think unlocking the Rigol for business use is not exactly honest, since there are other easy options to get what you need from Rigol and from other companies. Just an opinion.

I'm also thinking back to my childhood where you could stick a pin in the bottom of the cable box and get the pay channels for free, lol.

[kcbrown]

What people are arguing here, however, is that the seller should be able to unilaterally dictate to the buyer what he may and may not do with what he purchased, while the buyer has no equivalent power.

He can do w/e he wants with it, sure.

If it's the buyer you're talking about in the above (we've already established that the seller can do whatever he wants), well in that case, we have no disagreement. 

That was easy.   

you'd better read up on the history of monopolies and the abuses that have occurred at their hands.  A monopoly inherently gives the seller the ability to dictate terms).

What is the monopoly, here?

The point wasn't to say that a monopoly exists now, but to illustrate that businesses that have been given the power to dictate terms have used that power to ill effect.  It's an illustrative warning of what will happen if some people here were to have their preferences implemented.

I don't desire that they should give those features to everyone.  Whether they do or not is their choice.  What I do insist on is that they not demand that the customer artificially limit his actions in order to satisfy the manufacturer's desire to do things a certain way.

Which actions are you talking about, here, being artificially limited?

The action under discussion, that would be artificially limited if some had their way, is the ability to enter a magic code into the oscilloscope one owns so as to enable the features that were not enabled prior to that, even if he didn't obtain the code from the seller or one of the seller's authorized representatives.

What people are insisting on here is that the manufacturer should be artificially shielded from the consequences of being lazy

Not at all... WinZip is pretty lazy about how they charge for their software. And I'd venture that the majority of users do not pay for it. I don't think anyone should burn in hell for it, anymore than anyone would care about hobbyists unlocking a Rigol scope! I don't think anyone cares! I just don't agree that unlocking features, using the manufacturers own software, is "hacking" or "improving" something you own the same way as changing/modifying a physical good. Tweaking an ECU with a custom firmware to get more horsepower, that's hacking.

I fully agree that "hacking" is really a misnomer.  What we're talking about is not really any different than someone following directions to perform a simple modification to their car.

Well, seeing how I've already outlined exactly how the manufacturers can do what they want without imposing artificial limits on the actions of their customers, this objection doesn't fly.

Well, I think it is obvious that this increases the cost to other customers who just want the base model. So it's a tradeoff. And I already said I don't object to you hacking your scope.

If it really increased the cost of the base model to other customers, then how do you explain how Rigol manages to sell their DS1054Z for such a low price when they have arguably the most "hackable" (sorry, "easily modifiable") scope on the market?

No, you're looking at only one side of the economic equation.  The other side is that the customer base who have no problem with enabling the features in their scopes in this way will view a scope they can do that with as a better value for their money, and they'll thus buy the scope without hesitation.  The end result is that the manufacturer gets greater sales than their competitors, and thus more profit.

As I already said, a manufacturer will either price their goods in such a way as to take what customers are actually doing with them into account, or they'll have trouble staying in business.  It doesn't necessarily follow that their prices will be higher and, indeed, they may end up being lower due to better return on the mass production investment.

And additionally, you presume that implementing the locking system in the way I previously described is so much more costly that it'll have a significant effect on the prices.  But that's not the case at all.  The method of implementation is trivial.  Given that the Rigol codes clearly are derived from the serial number, it's even possible that Rigol's approach is more expensive than the method I outlined, because the approach I outlined is a standard one that is implemented throughout the software industry, as it is used as part of the SSL key verification mechanism in every browser in existence, and any other piece of software that has to do key verification.

Put another way, just because a customer can attempt to take actions to bypass a lock doesn't mean he has the right to succeed in that.  I do not argue that customers have the right to succeed in their attempts, only that they have the right to make the attempt.

This is one of the most curious things about your post. Very curious. I'll have to think on that. I'm thinking of Kwikset locks. They are the most common house/door/deadbolt lock in the US. And you can pick them with a couple of bobby pins in under a minute. But that doesn't matter, because the lock is just there to keep honest people honest. * In some way I think unlocking the Rigol for business use is not exactly honest, since there are other easy options to get what you need from Rigol and from other companies. Just an opinion.

Well, "honest" or not, it's not something most companies will find is worth doing, because they tend to value support more highly than the temporary financial benefits they might gain by unlocking the scope.

I'm also thinking back to my childhood where you could stick a pin in the bottom of the cable box and get the pay channels for free, lol.

Heh.  Yep.  Is it your fault the cable companies contracted with a hardware company that clearly didn't know what it was doing (or didn't care)?  Nope. 

At the end of the day, the deal is this: buyers are not responsible for the sellers' actions, and sellers are not responsible for the buyers' actions.  They each have to respond to the actions of the other, however, in whatever way suits their needs.  If they think of a mutually beneficial arrangement, they are free to make that arrangement, just as they are free to back out of it if it suits them.  There is no reason actors in the market cannot be (generally -- there are a few narrow exceptions, as with anything else) completely free in what they do, save for limits on distribution of trivially-copied works.  The latter limits exist to equalize the market in trivially-copied works with the market of physical goods, so as to encourage people to create trivially-copied works.

[tggzzz]

It is all software! it is all bits. The two are, in very very deep philosophical and practical ways, completely identical.

Well, strictly speaking, that's not true.  It depends on the architecture of the machine.

On most modern personal computer class hardware, code executes in regions of memory that are protected from writes, while data lives in regions of memory that are not protected from writes.  Of course, the operating system arranges things so that the hardware is configured in that way.

At the end of the day, what the computer executes is instructions.  The gating control we're talking about can be implemented either through instructions or through data.  The important thing isn't how that gating control is implemented, it's that it's a gating control we're talking about, not actual functionality beyond that.

Oh, look more closely at processor implementation, and you will see that is far too black and white!

Remember the old implementation technique of microprogramming, e.g. with the AMD2900 series of bitslice processors. There what you are thinking of as "code" and "data" are sucked from RAM into the processor and are then interpreted and decomposed into a sequence of simpler wider microinstructions that cause bits in hardware registers to change. In some machines, e.g. the Research Machines Orion, the user could change the microprogramming, thus making the machine faster at executing different compiled languages.

That technique is still used in intel's latest processors, and microcode is loaded during the booting process. Often it is used to cover up bugs in the silicon. And don't forget the Transmeta class processors.

If you want to see a pure software equivalent, learn about HP's Dynamo compiler and Java's HotSpot runtime system.

Fundamentally the familiar "universal machines" (i.e. computers+programs) is one enormous finite state machine (FSM). It is so enormous that it cannot be designed as such, and is composed of many interacting smaller FSMs. The common feature is all the operations and functions are controlled by bits located in familiar and less familiar places.

All control is by bit patterns, wherever they are located and however they act.

What's the difference between

• changing one EPROM location from 0x1234 to 0xabcd - where 0x1234 is the key that causes the lower bandwidth parameters to be poked into the hardware and 0xabcd is the key that causes the higher bandwidth parameters to be poked into the hardware
• changing another EPROM location from 0x1234 to 0xabcd - where 0x1234 is a JZ opcode that causes the lower bandwidth parameters to be poked into the hardware and 0xabcd is the JNZ opcode that causes the higher bandwidth parameters to be poked into the hardware

Answer: in very deep practical ways, absolutely none.

Perhaps so, but what we're talking about here isn't that.  What we're talking about is the difference between changing an EEPROM location and an NVRAM location.  But as I mentioned above, in the end, that's not what really matters.

I wrote EPROM, and NVRAM and EEPROMs are both types of EPROM. But as you acknowledge, the difference between different types is irrelevant.

There are no "special" bits. There are only bits. And any of those bits can be changed by an editor.

Oh, this is most definitely not the case.  The "specialness" of the bit isn't (necessarily) defined by where it lives during execution of the code, but (if anything at all) where it lives when the machine is turned off.  But that is only an indicator, really.

That line will continue to blur, however, as nonvolatile storage improves and continues to gain the desirable attributes of volatile storage.

Again, too simplistic, so simplistic that it ignores practical techniques.

Youngsters forget past generations of memory. It was normal to turn off a computer in the factory, ship it to the customer, plug it in, and it continued executing from the instruction where it had been turned off. Speeded up the on-site acceptance tests Core memory (you know, the origin of the "core dumps"!) was non-volatile.

For the future, HP is claiming that Samsung will manufacture their memresistor memory which will reenable the same benefits.

Regardless, what we're talking about is whether or not the system is configured to execute the code that implements the functionality in question.

And such configuration includes, without distinction, "repair" microcode, instructions derived from compilation, constants entered in an editor (stored in one place), constants entered in an editor (and stored in another place), wires on a PCB, tracks inside a processor, etc.

Tell me something.  If you had an oscilloscope that had a jumper on it, and that jumper controlled whether or not the oscilloscope's MSO functionality was enabled, and the scope you purchased had it set so that the functionality was disabled, would you believe it to be unethical to open the scope up and change the jumper to enable the functionality?  If so, on what basis?

That is known to be illegal, as IBM's customers found out when they were caught doing it to increase the speed of their mainframes. (I presume you aren't going to make an arbitrary distinction between a jumper on a board and a wire jumper on a backplane).

At the end of the day, the fundamental justification you're using for supporting such arbitrary constraints on the purchaser is to make it possible for the manufacturer to employ arbitrary schemes to control what functionality is available so that the manufacturer may profit from those schemes, and to fully control the conditions under which that functionality is made available even when what is supplied to the customer is fully capable of performing the functions in question.  That is the same as insisting that a car manufacturer should be able to dictate to you how fast you can drive your car, with the only thing preventing you from going any faster is a switch that you can flip.  You are insisting that it would be wrong for the purchaser to flip that switch.   In essence, you are insisting that the manufacturer reserves every right to unilaterally tell you what to do with what you purchase from them, as long as that control results in greater profit for them.   On what basis do you claim that my characterization here is incorrect?

All analogies are dangerous, and there are so many significant differences between that and the current discussion that it would be unprofitable to go down that rathole. There's too much heat and too little light in this discussion as it is!

[kcbrown]

I suppose I should answer the original poster's question as well. 

People "hack" scopes for any number of reasons:

• They like knowing that their scope is as capable as possible, that there are no artificial limitations in it.
• They like knowing that if they need a capability that exists after the "hack" but not before, it'll instantly be there for them.
• They want to experiment with the scope's optional features for longer than the trial period allows (assuming there's a trial period at all!), and don't want to go through the hassle of asking for permission to do so.
• They actually have a use for one or more of the additional capabilities, and would rather put what remains of their budget towards other things than towards those capabilities.

There are probably quite a few more than that.

[kcbrown]

Tell me something.  If you had an oscilloscope that had a jumper on it, and that jumper controlled whether or not the oscilloscope's MSO functionality was enabled, and the scope you purchased had it set so that the functionality was disabled, would you believe it to be unethical to open the scope up and change the jumper to enable the functionality?  If so, on what basis?

That is known to be illegal, as IBM's customers found out when they were caught doing it to increase the speed of their mainframes. (I presume you aren't going to make an arbitrary distinction between a jumper on a board and a wire jumper on a backplane).

Illegal?  I doubt it.   I'd bet money it was a breach of contract.   There's a huge difference between the two.

Actually, it could be that the hardware in question was rented from IBM, not owned by the customer.  That was pretty standard practice back then if I'm not mistaken, and that would make the modification technically illegal as the customer would be modifying property that didn't belong to them.  But purchase was possible, so it would be either that, or breach of contract.

Neither of those situations is applicable here.

At the end of the day, the fundamental justification you're using for supporting such arbitrary constraints on the purchaser is to make it possible for the manufacturer to employ arbitrary schemes to control what functionality is available so that the manufacturer may profit from those schemes, and to fully control the conditions under which that functionality is made available even when what is supplied to the customer is fully capable of performing the functions in question.  That is the same as insisting that a car manufacturer should be able to dictate to you how fast you can drive your car, with the only thing preventing you from going any faster is a switch that you can flip.  You are insisting that it would be wrong for the purchaser to flip that switch.   In essence, you are insisting that the manufacturer reserves every right to unilaterally tell you what to do with what you purchase from them, as long as that control results in greater profit for them.   On what basis do you claim that my characterization here is incorrect?

All analogies are dangerous, and there are so many significant differences between that and the current discussion that it would be unprofitable to go down that rathole. There's too much heat and too little light in this discussion as it is!

Well, fair enough, but at the end of the day, what we're talking about is the difference between a software switch and a hardware switch, each of which controls whether or not a capability is available.

If flipping the hardware switch isn't unethical, then neither is flipping the software switch.  And vice versa.

If a contract is in play, then the contact determines what can and can't be done.  Doesn't matter if it's software or hardware that's in play.  If a contract is not in play, then normal law is what determines what can and can't be done.  When copying is not in play, the ethics are identical.

[kcbrown]

All control is by bit patterns, wherever they are located and however they act.

Yep.  In the end, this is what it comes down to.  The rest is a matter of convention and implementation.

Youngsters forget past generations of memory. It was normal to turn off a computer in the factory, ship it to the customer, plug it in, and it continued executing from the instruction where it had been turned off. Speeded up the on-site acceptance tests Core memory (you know, the origin of the "core dumps"!) was non-volatile.

That is admittedly before my time.  But I do know of core memory, and core dumps.

Sounds like you may have some mainframe experience, in which case I'd bet you have some interesting stories to tell!


One thing that I think a lot of people fail to realize is that a lot of what we think of as somewhat recent developments were actually done way back during the mainframe era.  Virtualization, for example.

For the future, HP is claiming that Samsung will manufacture their memresistor memory which will reenable the same benefits.

I've heard of that, but haven't yet read up on the details.  Now I'm going to have to.   

[tggzzz]

Youngsters forget past generations of memory. It was normal to turn off a computer in the factory, ship it to the customer, plug it in, and it continued executing from the instruction where it had been turned off. Speeded up the on-site acceptance tests Core memory (you know, the origin of the "core dumps"!) was non-volatile.

That is admittedly before my time.  But I do know of core memory, and core dumps.

Sounds like you may have some mainframe experience, in which case I'd bet you have some interesting stories to tell!

No I didn't. But the first machine I used while at school was a 39bit computer with an architectural max of 8k words, and a 276us instruction cycle time. Programming was Algol-60 on 10cps teleprinters with 5 channel paper tape. There's one still operational in the National Museum of Computing in Bletchley Park. I must go sometime.

I still remember the light going on when I realised what a compiler actually did.

My first machine code program was to convert between two 5 channel paper tape codes. Without realising it, I coded it as an FSM and, unlike another person's, it worked first time.

When thinking about how I could make a processor (when 8080s were still new), I re-invented the concept of microcoding. A few years later I designed a microcoded system, but it was never implemented since the project was declared a success too early

And that's why I have a deep understanding that "it is bits all the way down".

One thing that I think a lot of people fail to realize is that a lot of what we think of as somewhat recent developments were actually done way back during the mainframe era.  Virtualization, for example.

And many of the advances were in the UK; the Atlas and Titan machines were seminal.

Hollywood has a history of peverting history in that regard; "Operation Burma" and "U571" are infamous examples.

[JPortici]

"Why do people hack DSOs?"

My humble opinion:
it is bullshit to pay for one product that already has all the features inside it (dave even shows us that the rigol fron panel pcbs are always populated! even if the plastic cover don't have the buttons/leds holes)
but it's crippled by software unless i pay the salesman to say "abracadabra" to unlock it.
Everything is already there, you only need the magic words. don't you see a problem in that?

I Understand it is much more convenient for the manufacturer to make one single product, my job is to design boards and write software anyway, but as an end user just i feel screwed over.
I have already paid for the full thing and what's inside it. Hacking the scope will void the warranty? I'm 100% okay with that, I respect that and it's in your rights because i actualy modified the thing.

I wouldn't be okay with "pirating" the scope software if you'd have to install the addon features from an external source, so if it wasn't already there.
What would be the difference for them to make a usb drive with the additional software tied to your scope serial number? Pennies? It would still be more convenient than sending the scope back to factory or sending a technician and they could enforce copyright laws with a clear conscience

[Mechatrommer]

this thread never stop? is it hard to see that rigol freely let us hack their scope?

[tggzzz]

... but as an end user just i feel screwed over....

I can understand that, in the same way that if I pay £10 for a theatre seat "in the gods", I feel screwed over because there are £100 "front stall" seats that see exactly the same performance.

I have already paid for the full thing and what's inside it.

No, you haven't. You have paid for a different (enormous) finite state machine (FSM). Now it is true that the difference is small and it is easy to edit one FSM into another, but they are still different FSMs.

Hacking the scope will void the warranty? I'm 100% okay with that, I respect that and it's in your rights because i actualy modified the thing.

Quite reasonable and internally consistent.

I wouldn't be okay with "pirating" the scope software if you'd have to install the addon features from an external source, so if it wasn't already there.

But you are installing features from an external source - the feature being a single number (which happens to beneficially change the FSMs operation). In other cases installing external features involves changing many numbers in the FSM (traditionally termed "installing software", even when that's not entirely correct).

Don't forget that all aspects of the FSM are controlled by numbers in the first place, and changing other might not be beneficial. Where are these numbers? Just look in the non-volatile memories to see them (all of them, e.g. including any that configure FPGAs).

[Fungus]

"Why do people hack DSOs?"

My humble opinion:
it is bullshit to pay for one product that already has all the features inside it (dave even shows us that the rigol fron panel pcbs are always populated! even if the plastic cover don't have the buttons/leds holes)
but it's crippled by software unless i pay the salesman to say "abracadabra" to unlock it.
Everything is already there, you only need the magic words. don't you see a problem in that?

No.

What if it wasn't already there? What if the prices/models/specs were exactly the same as they are now but the DS1054Z had a cheaper chip inside compared to the DS1104Z?

Would you still feel "ripped off", even though you pay the same and get the same?

[KL27x]

The action under discussion, that would be artificially limited if some had their way, is the ability to enter a magic code into the oscilloscope one owns so as to enable the features that were not enabled prior to that, even if he didn't obtain the code from the seller or one of the seller's authorized representatives.

Wow, this is really hamstringing the customers' ability to use the device as they see fit!    Who'd a thunk on my list of features when buying a scope I would be specifically looking for "the ability to enter a magic code... so as to enable features [that many customers willingly pay for]."

No, you're looking at only one side of the economic equation.  The other side is that the customer base who have no problem with enabling the features in their scopes in this way will view a scope they can do that with as a better value for their money, and they'll thus buy the scope without hesitation.  The end result is that the manufacturer gets greater sales than their competitors, and thus more profit.

I disagree. There is no way you can make this conclusion. The margin on the 100MHz version could be >10000% higher. Just as a hypothetical example, the net on the 100MHz version could represent over 75% of their profits between those two models, even if the percentage of sales is only 5% of the total. IOW, they might make as much selling a single 100MHz version as 20+ of the lower end models. You really have no clue what their profit is (or if they even make a profit) or how it would be affected. And the market is only so big. No matter how cheap they sell the base model, it is not going to make the average consumer want to buy it, once that market is saturated. This isn't a fad product that half the continent would buy on a whim as a birthday present or something.

If it really increased the cost of the base model to other customers, then how do you explain how Rigol manages to sell their DS1054Z for such a low price when they have arguably the most "hackable" (sorry, "easily modifiable") scope on the market?

What does one have to do with the other? "Increased" cost is relative. Yes, they sell the DS1054Z at a very attractive price, even if you leave out the "hackability." For a 4 channel 50MHz DSO, you will be shocked at how cheap this is compared to the competition. How cheap they sell it has no bearing on the fact that introducing a stronger key lock will increase their cost..... and how they distribute that cost is up them, but the most likely scenario, IMO, is an increase to the cost of the base unit.

Rigol is great for hobbyists. Hobbyists can buy and hack their Rigol. No one cares. But I don't agree with some of the reasoning/justifications that are being used.

[tggzzz]

Rigol is great for hobbyists. Hobbyists can buy and hack their Rigol. No one cares. But I don't agree with some of the reasoning/justifications that are being used.

Precisely.

[JPortici]

"Why do people hack DSOs?"

My humble opinion:
it is bullshit to pay for one product that already has all the features inside it (dave even shows us that the rigol fron panel pcbs are always populated! even if the plastic cover don't have the buttons/leds holes)
but it's crippled by software unless i pay the salesman to say "abracadabra" to unlock it.
Everything is already there, you only need the magic words. don't you see a problem in that?

No.

What if it wasn't already there? What if the prices/models/specs were exactly the same as they are now but the DS1054Z had a cheaper chip inside compared to the DS1104Z?

Would you still feel "ripped off", even though you pay the same and get the same?

You mean you pay less, you get less?
I wouldn't be getting the same because i would have a different, inferior scope in the series for the lesser price, which requires REAL modifications to become the better spec'd model. And that would be ok.
I'll say that again: if i had to pay X to get a medium which has the additional software features i then have to install into my scope, that can only be installed on my scope because it's associated with my scope serial number, i would be firmly against people pirating it.

But I am paying for something that already have everything inside it, that already is the best model, it only need the magic words to become it. And i have to pay for the magic? bullshit, i say.

[tggzzz]

"Why do people hack DSOs?"

My humble opinion:
it is bullshit to pay for one product that already has all the features inside it (dave even shows us that the rigol fron panel pcbs are always populated! even if the plastic cover don't have the buttons/leds holes)
but it's crippled by software unless i pay the salesman to say "abracadabra" to unlock it.
Everything is already there, you only need the magic words. don't you see a problem in that?

No.

What if it wasn't already there? What if the prices/models/specs were exactly the same as they are now but the DS1054Z had a cheaper chip inside compared to the DS1104Z?

Would you still feel "ripped off", even though you pay the same and get the same?

You mean you pay less, you get less?
I wouldn't be getting the same because i would have a different, inferior scope in the series for the lesser price, which requires REAL modifications to become the better spec'd model. And that would be ok.

So software somehow isn't "REAL"? What is it? Imaginary? Magic?

I worked for a company that destroyed an entire product line that way, the idiots!

I'll say that again: if i had to pay X to get a medium which has the additional software features i then have to install into my scope, that can only be installed on my scope because it's associated with my scope serial number, i would be firmly against people pirating it.

But I am paying for something that already have everything inside it, that already is the best model, it only need the magic words to become it. And i have to pay for the magic? bullshit, i say.

Of course you should pay for magic. It takes a lot of hard work to develop magic.

Standard engineering story...

• customer calls engineer to fix their boiler
• engineer hits it, it starts working, presents bill for $100 to the customer
• customer complains that is far too much for a single thump
• engineer thinks, and agrees with the customer
• engineer presents bill of $1 for the hit, and $99 for knowing where to hit
• customer realises what they have bought, and pays

Knowledge is power. Experience is power. Power is money. If you ever get significant knowledge or significant power, I look forward to your giving it away to other people for free.

[kcbrown]

On the one hand, we have people saying that what you purchased is what the seller claimed to be selling you.  On the other hand, we have people saying that what you purchased is what you actually received, including everything that was embedded within it, whether activated at the time or not, such that you have the right to attempt to activate something that doesn't come activated if you choose.

So let's say that the seller claims to be selling you a 50 MHz scope, and you find something in the UI that lets you change the bandwidth to 100 MHz.  It doesn't require a magic key.  It's just a checkbox that says "Enable 100MHz bandwidth".  Are you committing some sort of violation if you change that setting?

After all, the seller claimed to be selling you a 50 MHz scope, and as it was configured when you received it, it behaved like a 50 MHz scope.  By changing the setting in the UI, you are changing the configuration of the scope in a way that conflicts with what the seller claimed to be selling you.  So by the reasoning in this thread, you would be in the wrong to change that setting without, at least, paying the difference between what the seller charges for the 50 MHz version and what he charges for the 100 MHz version.

Right?

Now replace that UI setting with a jumper on the scope's motherboard.  If you change that jumper, and it results in the bandwidth of the scope going from 50 MHz to 100 MHz, are you committing some sort of violation against the manufacturer?

My position on this is simple: the scope is yours once you receive it.  If it is possible for you to configure it to give it greater capability, you have the right to attempt to do so.  You do not have the right to succeed in that attempt, of course.  If you lack the needed technical prowess, or lack the proper tools, or whatever, then you will fail at your attempt.  The seller can make it as difficult as he pleases for you to configure your scope differently than how you received it.  But at the same time, you can rightfully take whatever actions you deem fit in order to change the configuration so that it operates with more (or less, if that is your desire) capability.


The bottom line is this: if the seller really doesn't want you to have a certain capability in the instrument you buy, he is perfectly capable of giving you an instrument that lacks that capability, and is fully within his rights to do so (as long as he isn't claiming to be selling you an instrument with that capability -- that would be a violation of the law on his part).  But if the seller puts a capability in the instrument you buy, you are fully within your rights to enable that capability if you can, whether or not the seller likes it.  The seller can claim to be selling you something with less capability than it actually has (Agilent does this all the time -- much of what they sell meets specs that are better than what they advertise).  He cannot claim to be selling you something with more capability than it has. 

One other thing.  We know that Rigol scopes can be configured through keys that are available to enable functions they don't originally come configured to enable.  Nothing prevents Rigol from changing that.  We have no right to expect Rigol to continue to sell scopes that make such easy reconfiguration possible.  They do so of their own volition.

[kcbrown]

Now let's take configuration out of the equation entirely.

Suppose the manufacturer sells you a scope that he claims is a 50 MHz bandwidth scope.  Suppose you discover that it actually has a bandwidth of 100 MHz.

If you use the scope to perform tasks that require a 100 MHz bandwidth, are you in the wrong to do so?   After all, the seller sold you a 50 MHz scope.  Aren't you violating his "trust" by using it for things that a 50 MHz scope wouldn't be capable of?

[kcbrown]

The action under discussion, that would be artificially limited if some had their way, is the ability to enter a magic code into the oscilloscope one owns so as to enable the features that were not enabled prior to that, even if he didn't obtain the code from the seller or one of the seller's authorized representatives.

Wow, this is really hamstringing the customers' ability to use the device as they see fit!    Who'd a thunk on my list of features when buying a scope I would be specifically looking for "the ability to enter a magic code... so as to enable features [that many customers willingly pay for]."

The action is a gating function.  It makes possible other actions.  So through prevention of this one action, other actions are also being prevented.

But even if the action itself were the only one being considered, being artificially restrained from performing it is still a restraint, a limitation on your freedom.  And limitations on freedom demand good reason.

No, you're looking at only one side of the economic equation.  The other side is that the customer base who have no problem with enabling the features in their scopes in this way will view a scope they can do that with as a better value for their money, and they'll thus buy the scope without hesitation.  The end result is that the manufacturer gets greater sales than their competitors, and thus more profit.

I disagree. There is no way you can make this conclusion.

My sincere apologies!

I wrote that really badly, because I didn't mean to say that I disagreed with you.  I only meant to add an additional possibility, not replace your possibility with mine!

Which is to say, it's entirely possible for both factors to be in play at the same time.

Which factor ends up dominating the equation is a very interesting question in its own right, and probably depends on the circumstances.

If it really increased the cost of the base model to other customers, then how do you explain how Rigol manages to sell their DS1054Z for such a low price when they have arguably the most "hackable" (sorry, "easily modifiable") scope on the market?

What does one have to do with the other? "Increased" cost is relative.

But it is also absolute, because we're talking about a competitive marketplace where other manufacturers are making roughly equivalent products and selling them in competition, and the cost of development adds to the floor on the price one can charge for what one is building.  Since R&D costs are spread across the number of units sold, it follows that one will get a greater return on R&D dollars if one sells a larger number of units, and therefore one can sell at a lower price and realize the same amount of profit from the same R&D if one sells a larger number of units.  And yes, there are many other factors involved, including the ones you mentioned.

If the "hackability" of a scope makes it more appealing to a large segment of the customer base, that represents the opportunity for greater sales and thus a greater return on investment.   That is counterbalanced by the potential of larger per-unit profit for models configured to be more capable, of course, so there is tension between the two approaches.  Each represents the possibility of greater profit.  And as these scopes are competing against those from other manufacturers, it may well be that the additional appeal from "hackability" is what makes the difference in which manufacturer dominates.   As Rigol appears to now be dominating the low-end market (I haven't seen any evidence that they were prior to the DS1054Z) and their scopes are more "hackable", there is every reason to suspect a link between the two.  But it may also be that the value proposition of the DS1054Z as it comes configured is sufficient to explain that, too.  And yet a third explanation is that Rigol got there with the DS1054Z first.

Yes, they sell the DS1054Z at a very attractive price, even if you leave out the "hackability." For a 4 channel 50MHz DSO, you will be shocked at how cheap this is compared to the competition. How cheap they sell it has no bearing on the fact that introducing a stronger key lock will increase their cost..... and how they distribute that cost is up them, but the most likely scenario, IMO, is an increase to the cost of the base unit.

That may be.  I'll put it plainly: if "hacking" of these scopes represented a significant financial downside relative to the profit the manufacturer could be making without it, then the manufacturer would easily make up the difference in implementation costs, and would therefore have plenty of incentive to implement the system I referred to.

So: either Rigol is being stupid in making it possible for their scopes to be "hacked" in this way, and as a result will suffer financially for it, or they aren't.  I submit that they aren't, and that the popularity of their low-end scopes is evidence of that.

Rigol is great for hobbyists. Hobbyists can buy and hack their Rigol. No one cares. But I don't agree with some of the reasoning/justifications that are being used.

Sure, I get that.   But the question can be framed one of two ways:

• Why should people "hack" their Rigol scope the way they are?
• Why shouldn't people "hack" their Rigol scope the way they are?

People have been focusing primarily on arguments around the latter.

[KL27x]

but it's crippled by software unless i pay the salesman to say "abracadabra" to unlock it.
Everything is already there, you only need the magic words. don't you see a problem in that?

Personally, no. I respect your opinion, but mine is not the same.

I can buy a car that has Navstar capability. But perhaps I don't want to pay for the service and don't use it.

I can buy a smart phone with a GPS. But perhaps, I don't wish to agree to the EULA to use free nav software, and I don't wish to buy a paid app.

I can buy a milling machine with certain upgrades built in, and if/when I need them maybe I'll pay the money for the additional features. I'm not sour grapes, because I wouldn't have bought the machine if the existing functionality did not represent a positive functionality:cost ratio to begin with. I WILL appreciate the ability to pay another $10,000 to get the 5th axis functional, AFTER my company wins a multi-million dollar NASA contract for making diddly doos that require it.

If I think I can make my own [insert equipment/tool/product] myself that is better, cheaper, and with no locked/hidden features, then I will do so!

Again, I respect your opinion, but to me hardware in a DSO is absolutely NOTHING by itself. I am not in the least bothered if the hardware COULD do more with a different firmware. I do not feel "cheated" in the least. The way I see it, the fact that some people BUY the unlocked model, because they want to, this makes the base model cheaper. Why/where/how the money gets passed around does not matter to me.

Regarding a DSO, there is no artificial or arbitrary limit. The entire thing is arbitrary and artificial to begin with. Just because the ADC datasheet says such and such, there is no reason why the firmware needs to take advantage of all of it. (Anyone ever use only 8 bits of a 10bit ADC to make the coding easier and/or more compact, for instance?) Say you buy a microwave oven, and the microcontroller in it has 4kB of program memory. But only 2kB are used. Would you complain that this unused "hardware" is being wasted? That they could have crammed in a world clock and split timer for counting laps around the kitchen? That this is an artificial limitation?

As I said before, it is quite possible that Rigol makes next to nothing on the base model. As in, they would need to sell an unrealistic number of units in order to make back their initial investment. But the sales of the "unlocked" variety enable them to sell at that price. There is nothing, anywhere, that says that what you pay for has to be equivalent to some value of what you get, regarding the hardware. In fact, why aren't you miffed buying pure software? What a ripoff! I mean, a bunch of numbers burned on a CD does not cost $500.00 to make!!!

I see your side, and I respect your opinion. I disagree.

[kcbrown]

but it's crippled by software unless i pay the salesman to say "abracadabra" to unlock it.
Everything is already there, you only need the magic words. don't you see a problem in that?

Personally, no. I respect your opinion, but mine is not the same.

I can buy a car that has Navstar capability. But perhaps I don't want to pay for the service and don't use it.

And you are well within your rights to decide that way.

I can buy a smart phone with a GPS. But perhaps, I don't wish to agree to the EULA to use free nav software, and I don't wish to buy a paid app.

And you're well within your rights there, too.

I can buy a milling machine with certain upgrades built in, and if/when I need them maybe I'll pay the money for the additional features. I'm not sour grapes, because I wouldn't have bought the machine if the existing functionality did not represent a positive functionality:cost ratio to begin with.

And that's your choice, too.  Nobody is saying you don't have the right to choose that way.  Nobody is saying you don't have the right to choose not to hack the device you purchased to enable additional capability.

What we are (or I am, at least -- the person you're responding to seems to be objecting to the notion of getting potentially more than he paid for, which is odd.  ) saying is this: you have the right to try if you so desire.  That there is nothing intrinsically wrong in doing so.

Again, I respect your opinion, but to me hardware in a DSO is absolutely NOTHING by itself. I am not in the least bothered if the hardware COULD do more with a different firmware. I do not feel "cheated" in the least. The way I see it, the fact that some people BUY the unlocked model, because they want to, this makes the base model cheaper. Why/where/how the money gets passed around does not matter to me.

Agreed.  And as for the person who buys the model with the capabilities already enabled, they may well have good reason to do that instead of buying the less expensive version and enabling the functionality themselves.  Such as after-the-sale support.

As I said before, it is quite possible that Rigol makes next to nothing on the base model. As in, they would need to sell an unrealistic number of units in order to make back their initial investment. But the sales of the "unlocked" variety enable them to sell at that price.

Or it may be that they make a reasonable profit on the base model, are able to sell more because of its "hackability", and therefore derive greater profit from doing things the way they are.

Tough to say.  But as things are right now, they serve both the cheap hobbyist market very well, while also serving the market that requires support for the product and would thus refrain from modifying it.

[KL27x]

Agreed.  And as for the person who buys the model with the capabilities already enabled, they may well have good reason to do that instead of buying the less expensive version and enabling the functionality themselves.  Such as after-the-sale support.

I have another reason. It's because they can afford it and they want it. It's that simple. (I would say that it's because they NEED it, and it's going to be paid back in spades through the increased utility in commercial enterprise, but I would venture that 1% of the people that even buy the 100MHz model ever found a use for the 50MHz-100MHz range or the double sample memory.)

[kcbrown]

Agreed.  And as for the person who buys the model with the capabilities already enabled, they may well have good reason to do that instead of buying the less expensive version and enabling the functionality themselves.  Such as after-the-sale support.

I have another reason. It's because they can afford it and they want it. It's that simple.

Well, yes, that kind of goes without saying.

But suppose for the moment that what a hobbyist wants/needs is a 100 MHz scope, and he knows this going into it, such that he will automatically eliminate scopes that are permanently limited to 50 MHz from consideration.  He can purchase the DS1054Z and "hack" it to 100 MHz, or he can purchase the more expensive DS1104Z.  The latter is more than twice the price of the former.

Even if he can afford the latter, he may well end up buying the former because he'd then have $400 that he could use for something else.  He'd likely be giving up warranty support as a result, but it's an option anyway.  Under those conditions, I'd say there's a quite decent chance that he'll go with the DS1054Z.

The point is that just because a person wants/needs a certain set of capabilities, that doesn't automatically mean he'll go for the option that's directly advertised as having those capabilities.  Yes, he'll go for something that does have the capabilities he needs, but what will actually meet his needs and what is advertised to meet his needs are not necessarily the same thing.   His choices are guaranteed to be from among the former set, but are not guaranteed to always be limited to the latter set.

That doesn't mean he won't buy the more expensive (but otherwise functionally identical) scope -- he might well.  But he has a lot of incentive not to in this case.

(I would say that it's because they NEED it, and it's going to be paid back in spades through the increased utility in commercial enterprise, but I would venture that 1% of the people that even buy the 100MHz model ever found a use for the 50MHz-100MHz range or the double sample memory.)

That's possible, but when you buy a tool like that, you buy it not just for the things you know you need to do with it, but for the things you think you might need to do with it.  It's better to have a tool and not need it, than to need it and not have it.  And if the incremental cost is minimal to nonexistent, then there's really little reason to buy the tool with less capability.