Author Topic: Reasons for hacking DSOs  (Read 145355 times)

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Online tggzzz

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #225 on: March 25, 2016, 08:18:05 am »
I feel that if they don't want me to have those extra features on the cheaper scope, they shouldn't put them on there AT ALL. Then I don't have the option of hacking them into functionality. Anything less than that is just them being lazy and not wanting to pay the REAL price of differentiating their product for different markets. It USED to be we had no choice; it was ALL hardware and you HAD TO add or remove parts to add or delete functionality. And EVEN THEN, some of us STILL hacked our gear. ;)

The airline seats analogy is illuminating. You prefer the SouthWest Airlines business model where everybody is in cattle class. That's reasonable. But if you choose to fly, I don't know, cattle class in United then you feel entitled to barge into first class and sit there. There are epithets for people like that, none of them complementary.

Quote
Making it software makes it all so much easier; you only have to write the software once and copy it a thousand or 100,000 times. It ENCOURAGES the Stef Murky set to try and invent new ridiculous means of making a single product fit multiple markets; even to the point of NOW altering the HARDWARE so it can be mechanically crippled by the software.

This is standard practice in the corporate world. For example Oracle and IBM are famous for suing their customers if they catch them using more processors/cores that they have paid for.

Quote
Again, most of the civilized world has decided this in the customers' favor; that SELLING a hardware product while trying to hold control over the software required to make it work amounts to not selling it at all. "Buy" means "Buy"; "Rent" means "Rent". You buy a device, you own the copy of the software that makes it work, and you have the right to reverse-engineer that software to understand how it works. If in the course of that investigation you discover that they left additional software on it, YOU OWN THAT COPY OF THAT SOFTWARE TOO; "break-seal" license BS be damned.

That is an entirely different case, and it is either ignorant or disingenuous to conflate it with your other points above.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
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Offline Brumby

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #226 on: March 25, 2016, 08:52:42 am »
THIS I think is really that one step over the line; because EVERYBODY has to pay for all their R&D and the additional technology that goes into CRIPPLING the product. The bottom end customer shouldn't have to pay for the features put on his scope for the high-end customer that he can't use, and neither he nor the high-end customer should have to pay for the technology used to cripple the product.

You really need to have a closer look at development costing.  Your model will make it more expensive for EVERYBODY.
 

Offline Fungus

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #227 on: March 25, 2016, 11:29:35 am »
You're right, and I did forget to mention that in my thumbnail comparison. But the Rigol is still rated 50MHz, unlockable to 100 MHz while the Hantek is rated 100MHz, unlockable to 200 MHz. I'd call that a wash.

Depends on what you use it for.


Since every „big“ manufacturer produce in China, interesting has happened-
what  have we get:

1.products from mostly lower quality,
2.products with higher prices, despite the fact of significantly cheaper working environment!

"Higher prices?"   :-//

Go back a couple of years and make a list of 'scopes for under $500. Compare it to today.
 

Offline bozidarms

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #228 on: March 25, 2016, 08:19:06 pm »
Scopes for under $500 come not from "big" manufacturer, rather Chinese.
I have completely clear sad what is all about  - if you don't or won't realise  "it's your own fault" :box:
 

Offline mnementh

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #229 on: March 25, 2016, 08:20:28 pm »
I feel that if they don't want me to have those extra features on the cheaper scope, they shouldn't put them on there AT ALL. Then I don't have the option of hacking them into functionality. Anything less than that is just them being lazy and not wanting to pay the REAL price of differentiating their product for different markets. It USED to be we had no choice; it was ALL hardware and you HAD TO add or remove parts to add or delete functionality. And EVEN THEN, some of us STILL hacked our gear. ;)

The airline seats analogy is illuminating. You prefer the SouthWest Airlines business model where everybody is in cattle class. That's reasonable. But if you choose to fly, I don't know, cattle class in United then you feel entitled to barge into first class and sit there. There are epithets for people like that, none of them complementary.
Quote

Making it software makes it all so much easier; you only have to write the software once and copy it a thousand or 100,000 times. It ENCOURAGES the Stef Murky set to try and invent new ridiculous means of making a single product fit multiple markets; even to the point of NOW altering the HARDWARE so it can be mechanically crippled by the software.

This is standard practice in the corporate world. For example Oracle and IBM are famous for suing their customers if they catch them using more processors/cores that they have paid for.

Quote
Again, most of the civilized world has decided this in the customers' favor; that SELLING a hardware product while trying to hold control over the software required to make it work amounts to not selling it at all. "Buy" means "Buy"; "Rent" means "Rent". You buy a device, you own the copy of the software that makes it work, and you have the right to reverse-engineer that software to understand how it works. If in the course of that investigation you discover that they left additional software on it, YOU OWN THAT COPY OF THAT SOFTWARE TOO; "break-seal" license BS be damned.

That is an entirely different case, and it is either ignorant or disingenuous to conflate it with your other points above.


The Airline Seat analogy is completely irrelevant to this scenario. They HAVE security and bulkheads between the classes of seat, and the stewards won't serve you if you do move to the 1st class section, they'll send you back to cattle class.

This would be more like if all the classes were in the same single cabin, and the only thing stopping you from moving to an empty 1st class seat is a line of tape on the floor and the disapproving glances of other cattle class passengers. And when you DO step across the line, the stewards serve you as if you belonged there, because they don't have security to escort you back to cattle class, and because the Arline decided it was more efficient to serve a few brazen advantage-takers than to pay for Security and bulkheads that cost them 2 rows of seats apiece.

There. NOW your stupid Airline example is comparable.



I don't GIVE A DAMN if it is "Standard Practice in the Corporate World".

Standard practice in the corporate world nowadays is essentially to assrape EVERYBODY but the few who have the money to afford their OWN bodyguards and armies of lawyers, and to buy whatever laws they like to make it legal to continue assraping everybody. This is EXACTLY the kind of idiotic "Corporations Know Best" attitude that has turned the whole South of the US into a stinking cesspit of corruption, fracking and pollution. The entirety of Texas is turning into an episode of "The Oblongs"; and you KNOW where everybody but the CEOs are living... downstream.



No, it is NOT an entirely different case. You WISH it were, but it is NOT. It is actually the CORE of the problem, and it is a GLOBAL problem. The only people anybody actually expects to play fair anymore are those at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

SOME of the world has caught on to this and are changing their laws to level the playing field to SOME EXTENT. It is supremely arrogant to assume that the laws of the US are or should be applicable to the rest of the world; quite the opposite, really, in this age of batshit crazy litigation created out of whole cloth entirely by the American corporate culture of rampant greed and political corruption.

The GPL is just such an attempt at leveling the playing field. It is ENTIRELY relevant here, and it will continue to be until corporations actually lose enough cases in costly enough fashion that they stop treating the *NIX code base like it's their private property to raid for free at will. It is YOU who is being disingenuous to claim otherwise.



THIS I think is really that one step over the line; because EVERYBODY has to pay for all their R&D and the additional technology that goes into CRIPPLING the product. The bottom end customer shouldn't have to pay for the features put on his scope for the high-end customer that he can't use, and neither he nor the high-end customer should have to pay for the technology used to cripple the product.

You really need to have a closer look at development costing.  Your model will make it more expensive for EVERYBODY.

I know quite a bit about development costing, particularly in hardware. And I know that things have gotten MUCH cheaper since we've been able to make drastic changes in a product's fundamental architecture just by punching a few keys. Software development isn't free either, but it is exponentially cheaper than hardware development. And the final deployment cost is essentially free. THIS is why it is now the means of choice for Marketers  for just this kind of BS; they've come to expect to be able to do it for EVERYTHING. The bar has been LOWERED exponentially as a result.

Yeah... playing fair does cost more. Sucks, don't it?


You're right, and I did forget to mention that in my thumbnail comparison. But the Rigol is still rated 50MHz, unlockable to 100 MHz while the Hantek is rated 100MHz, unlockable to 200 MHz. I'd call that a wash.

Depends on what you use it for.


Since every „big“ manufacturer produce in China, interesting has happened-
what  have we get:

1.products from mostly lower quality,
2.products with higher prices, despite the fact of significantly cheaper working environment!

"Higher prices?"   :-//

Go back a couple of years and make a list of 'scopes for under $500. Compare it to today.

I agree with you on both counts.


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Online tggzzz

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #230 on: March 25, 2016, 08:26:27 pm »
I've omitted your rants that deliberately create strawman arguments and ignore the points being made. That leaves us with...

*FLUP!*

Your moniker, a fictional dragon from young adult SF, is appropriate.

There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
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Offline nctnico

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #231 on: March 25, 2016, 09:32:38 pm »
I feel that if they don't want me to have those extra features on the cheaper scope, they shouldn't put them on there AT ALL. Then I don't have the option of hacking them into functionality. Anything less than that is just them being lazy and not wanting to pay the REAL price of differentiating their product for different markets. It USED to be we had no choice; it was ALL hardware and you HAD TO add or remove parts to add or delete functionality. And EVEN THEN, some of us STILL hacked our gear. ;)
The airline seats analogy is illuminating. You prefer the SouthWest Airlines business model where everybody is in cattle class. That's reasonable. But if you choose to fly, I don't know, cattle class in United then you feel entitled to barge into first class and sit there. There are epithets for people like that, none of them complementary.
Perhaps but if you hack your scope nobody is going to say anything about it so that makes it a lot more OK than barging into first class on an airplane after which the flight attendant (and perhaps some security guy) will put you in your place.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline mnementh

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #232 on: March 25, 2016, 10:07:50 pm »
I've omitted your rants that deliberately create strawman arguments and ignore the points being made. That leaves us with...

*FLUP!*

Your moniker, a fictional dragon from young adult SF, is appropriate.


And you have been identified before as a self-important blowhard :blah:, who continually ignores all refutation of your own  BS arguments.  :bullshit:

How appropriate that you yourself deleted everything but your own wardrobe malfunction.

Kilrah was right, you're a troll; I've deleted your entire existence from my own paradigm. Thanks for playing!

I feel that if they don't want me to have those extra features on the cheaper scope, they shouldn't put them on there AT ALL. Then I don't have the option of hacking them into functionality. Anything less than that is just them being lazy and not wanting to pay the REAL price of differentiating their product for different markets. It USED to be we had no choice; it was ALL hardware and you HAD TO add or remove parts to add or delete functionality. And EVEN THEN, some of us STILL hacked our gear. ;)

Perhaps but if you hack your scope nobody is going to say anything about it so that makes it a lot more OK than barging into first class on an airplane after which the flight attendant (and perhaps some security guy) will put you in your place.

Umm... We have 10 pages of people saying something about it right here.  :-DD

The Airline analogy is not mine, it appears to be a fixture of the internet. I've seen it more times than I can count, and as here, applied entirely inappropriately. All I did what put it in the wastebin where it belongs. You're welcome!  :-+


mnem
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[EDITED: Incorrect Attribution]
« Last Edit: March 26, 2016, 02:50:29 am by mnementh »
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Online tggzzz

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #233 on: March 25, 2016, 10:19:03 pm »

I feel that if they don't want me to have those extra features on the cheaper scope, they shouldn't put them on there AT ALL. Then I don't have the option of hacking them into functionality. Anything less than that is just them being lazy and not wanting to pay the REAL price of differentiating their product for different markets. It USED to be we had no choice; it was ALL hardware and you HAD TO add or remove parts to add or delete functionality. And EVEN THEN, some of us STILL hacked our gear. ;)

Perhaps but if you hack your scope nobody is going to say anything about it so that makes it a lot more OK than barging into first class on an airplane after which the flight attendant (and perhaps some security guy) will put you in your place.

Umm... We have 10 pages of people saying something about it right here.  :-DD

The Airline analogy is not mine, it appears to be a fixture of the internet. I've seen it more times than I can count, and as here, applied entirely inappropriately. All I did what put it in the wastebin where it belongs. You're welcome!  :-+


mnem
 :-BROKE
mnementh, please ensure your replies don't misattribute quotes.  Follow the link in your post and you will see your mistake.

I'm perfectly happy for others to see what else I've posted in this forum and make their own judgement of me - as they will also do of you.
« Last Edit: March 25, 2016, 10:43:02 pm by tggzzz »
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
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Offline nctnico

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #234 on: March 25, 2016, 11:59:09 pm »
Yeah don't make it look like tggzzz contributed something sensible for a change   >:D  Sorry I couldn't resist... :popcorn:
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline mnementh

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #235 on: March 26, 2016, 03:00:53 am »
Yeah don't make it look like tggzzz contributed something sensible for a change   >:D  Sorry I couldn't resist... :popcorn:

Please accept my most humble apologies for the unintended slight; I promise it was a typo.  :palm: [EDIT] When I quoted you I quoted him as well, which I tried to delete but screwed up the formatting of my post. I overlooked the fact that I deleted the wrong lines when I previewed.[/EDIT]

OP (Offending Post ;) ) edited and annotated. :D


mnem
This entire thread is an exercise in series-parallel resistance.


« Last Edit: March 26, 2016, 03:05:41 am by mnementh »
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Offline Brumby

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #236 on: March 26, 2016, 04:10:04 am »

The Airline analogy is not mine, it appears to be a fixture of the internet. I've seen it more times than I can count, and as here, applied entirely inappropriately. All I did what put it in the wastebin where it belongs. You're welcome!  :-+


I believe I am responsible for introducing the airline analogy in this thread - and those who understand the concept I was trying to illustrate seemed to have done so without much hesitation.

The problem with all analogies is that they will never perfectly reflect the original subject matter and the limitations may be many.  Your continued dismissal of the airline analogy as inappropriate sounds more like decree than debate.  It is founded on a number of incidental factors that really have very little (if anything) to do with the question put.

Then, there's the matter of consistency.  You bag the analogy - and then come up with a variation which you declare as 'comparable' and STILL don't answer the question.



 |O
 

Online tggzzz

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #237 on: March 26, 2016, 07:36:33 am »
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 

Online tggzzz

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #238 on: March 26, 2016, 07:41:05 am »

The Airline analogy is not mine, it appears to be a fixture of the internet. I've seen it more times than I can count, and as here, applied entirely inappropriately. All I did what put it in the wastebin where it belongs. You're welcome!  :-+


I believe I am responsible for introducing the airline analogy in this thread - and those who understand the concept I was trying to illustrate seemed to have done so without much hesitation.

The problem with all analogies is that they will never perfectly reflect the original subject matter and the limitations may be many.  Your continued dismissal of the airline analogy as inappropriate sounds more like decree than debate.  It is founded on a number of incidental factors that really have very little (if anything) to do with the question put.

Then, there's the matter of consistency.  You bag the analogy - and then come up with a variation which you declare as 'comparable' and STILL don't answer the question.
 |O

Precisely.

I wonder if such posters realise they are doing that kind of thing, and how badly it reflects on them and their argument.

The tone of some of their replies is also revealing. Now I know that the unit of discourse on usenet isn't "the posting" but is  "the flame" - but fortunately on this forum the discourse is usually pretty civil.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 

Offline Zero999

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #239 on: March 26, 2016, 10:16:04 am »
I believe I am responsible for introducing the airline analogy in this thread - and those who understand the concept I was trying to illustrate seemed to have done so without much hesitation.

The problem with all analogies is that they will never perfectly reflect the original subject matter and the limitations may be many.  Your continued dismissal of the airline analogy as inappropriate sounds more like decree than debate.  It is founded on a number of incidental factors that really have very little (if anything) to do with the question put.

Then, there's the matter of consistency.  You bag the analogy - and then come up with a variation which you declare as 'comparable' and STILL don't answer the question.
You're confusing not understanding with not agreeing with you.

I understood the point you were trying to make the first time. Whether I agreed with it or not, or think your argument is a good one, is another thing.

The same could be said about a bus. If a bus drives past with lots of empty seats and I'd like to travel but don't have any money, should I be entitled to travel for free? After all I'm not costing the driver or bus company any more money by sitting on the bus. Of course not. I'm not entitled to travel for free!

A developer could write some software and charge each user for a licence, but does that mean everyone is entitled to visit pirate bay and use it, without paying?

Both running the bus and writing software incur costs to the company, which need to be recouped by paying users. But you're not comparing like with like. The bus has only a limited number of seats, when an unlimited number of people could use the software, paying or otherwise.

What would a software developer prefer: 1000 000 users, with only 10% of them paying or 100 000 users?

The developer would be foolish if they'd really prefer 100 000 users, over 1000 000 users. Those extra 900 000 users won't pay anyway, are not costing them anything and are spreading awareness of the product, attracting more paying users.

Yeah, that IS kindof what I meant when I said they were being lazy.

I feel that if they don't want me to have those extra features on the cheaper scope, they shouldn't put them on there AT ALL. Then I don't have the option of hacking them into functionality. Anything less than that is just them being lazy and not wanting to pay the REAL price of differentiating their product for different markets. It USED to be we had no choice; it was ALL hardware and you HAD TO add or remove parts to add or delete functionality. And EVEN THEN, some of us STILL hacked our gear. ;)

Making it software makes it all so much easier; you only have to write the software once and copy it a thousand or 100,000 times. It ENCOURAGES the Stef Murky set to try and invent new ridiculous means of making a single product fit multiple markets; even to the point of NOW altering the HARDWARE so it can be mechanically crippled by the software.

THIS I think is really that one step over the line; because EVERYBODY has to pay for all their R&D and the additional technology that goes into CRIPPLING the product. The bottom end customer shouldn't have to pay for the features put on his scope for the high-end customer that he can't use, and neither he nor the high-end customer should have to pay for the technology used to cripple the product.


Again, most of the civilized world has decided this in the customers' favor; that SELLING a hardware product while trying to hold control over the software required to make it work amounts to not selling it at all. "Buy" means "Buy"; "Rent" means "Rent". You buy a device, you own the copy of the software that makes it work, and you have the right to reverse-engineer that software to understand how it works. If in the course of that investigation you discover that they left additional software on it, YOU OWN THAT COPY OF THAT SOFTWARE TOO; "break-seal" license BS be damned.

On top of that, these scopes all operate on *NIX, which license specifically stipulates that you have to release your code back to the the public repository. Apps that run on it are not necessarily subject to this, but for sure any hardware extensions... the stuff that lets the OS control the scope... MUST be released back to the originating code base.

If I were a programmer capable of understanding and dismantling the code on my machine, I would be well within my rights, actually arguably bound by the GNU license, to release that code back to public code base.

And I think that too may be part of why these manufacturers don't get too oppressive with their security... they don't want to have to spend the money rewriting EVERYTHING because they pissed off the wrong hacker and s/he did exactly THAT with their entire firmware.
This represents my point of view quite well, with the most prominent bit highlighted. Of course companies will maximise profits but when they start violating the rights of the consumer, the line is crossed.

Another one is crappy licensing schemes which inconvenience the paying user and someone who has cracked it and not paid doesn't have to deal with. Worry about the paying customers for goodness sake. You're not going to encourage then with this BS. Those who want to use your product without paying will find a way. Your legitimate users shouldn't have to pay!

This is one of the things I consider when purchasing software. If has this sort of retarded BS then it counts against it. If it's easy to crack then I may do that, even if I do pay for the licence!
 

Offline Brumby

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #240 on: March 26, 2016, 10:48:22 am »

The developer would be foolish if they'd really prefer 100 000 users, over 1000 000 users. Those extra 900 000 users won't pay anyway, are not costing them anything and are spreading awareness of the product, attracting more paying users.


Herein lies the weakness of that argument....

If 900,000 users get to use the software for free, then the 100,000 who would pay for it, will ask "Why should I pay?".  You end up with everybody expecting to use it for free - and the developer gets nothing.  The knife cuts both ways.  You can't claim one and ignore the other.


Quote
Both running the bus and writing software incur costs to the company, which need to be recouped by paying users. But you're not comparing like with like. The bus has only a limited number of seats, when an unlimited number of people could use the software, paying or otherwise.

This is exactly what I mean by leaning on the weaknesses of an analogy and avoiding the question.  Also, that particular weakness has been covered by establishing conditions of the scenario where it is no longer relevant.  This is best demonstrated with the airline analogy, where the limited number of seats is not a consideration in the scope of the question.  If I can re-phrase the question it might go something like this:  IF you were to buy an economy class ticket for a flight and after it has taken off you notice there are no doors or guards to prevent you from walking up to first class and taking an empty seat - do you feel 'entitled' to take advantage of the opportunity?

There's no 'limited resource' argument here - the conditions have been specified so that that argument does not apply in this example.  So please don't try it on ... and just answer the question.
 

Offline Zero999

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #241 on: March 26, 2016, 01:39:04 pm »

The developer would be foolish if they'd really prefer 100 000 users, over 1000 000 users. Those extra 900 000 users won't pay anyway, are not costing them anything and are spreading awareness of the product, attracting more paying users.


Herein lies the weakness of that argument....

If 900,000 users get to use the software for free, then the 100,000 who would pay for it, will ask "Why should I pay?".  You end up with everybody expecting to use it for free - and the developer gets nothing.  The knife cuts both ways.  You can't claim one and ignore the other.

That clearly hasn't happened. People do widely use software without the licence to do so, yet the software developers have not gone out of business. Many software companies make a fair profit from selling their software and Microsoft even admit that they gain in other ways from unlicensed users.
http://www.informationweek.com/if-youre-going-to-steal-software-steal-from-us-microsoft-exec/d/d-id/1052865?cid=rssfeed_iwk_all

At some point people will pay for the software: there are other ways of making money, such as technical support and as long as it's just easier to buy it, then people will.

Quote
Quote
Both running the bus and writing software incur costs to the company, which need to be recouped by paying users. But you're not comparing like with like. The bus has only a limited number of seats, when an unlimited number of people could use the software, paying or otherwise.

This is exactly what I mean by leaning on the weaknesses of an analogy and avoiding the question.  Also, that particular weakness has been covered by establishing conditions of the scenario where it is no longer relevant.  This is best demonstrated with the airline analogy, where the limited number of seats is not a consideration in the scope of the question.  If I can re-phrase the question it might go something like this:  IF you were to buy an economy class ticket for a flight and after it has taken off you notice there are no doors or guards to prevent you from walking up to first class and taking an empty seat - do you feel 'entitled' to take advantage of the opportunity?

There's no 'limited resource' argument here - the conditions have been specified so that that argument does not apply in this example.  So please don't try it on ... and just answer the question.
Hell, I'd certainly do that, without a shred of guilt whatsoever.

The allocation of which seats are premium and which aren't is a complex decision and if the situation is as you've described, the airline got it wrong.

EDIT:
Come to think of it, I've done that kind of thing before. I often used to go to the cinema with a few people, late at night. The theatre was mostly empty so we just picked the best seats, rather than the ones the ticket was for. Technically a member of staff could have insisted we sat in the correct seats, but they were glad to have the business and we were happy we got the best seats, at no extra cost.

While the marketing folks, bean counters, management, designers, developers and warehouse might want to have it both ways - it is the customer who is DEMANDING to have it both ways.
Awhile ago the customer either purchased something, whether it be a radio or a piece of test equipment, or rented it.

If customer purchased the item outright, that meant it became their personal property. It meant they became responsible for insuring the item and any repairs, after the warranty period expired. It also gave them the right to modify it and improve its performance and accept that it would no longer be covered by the manufacturer's warranty.

If you rented the item, it still remained the vendor's property, which meant the customer could no longer modify the item. However, the vendor still had to insure the item and pay for any repairs, including spare parts, other than consumables.

Now the manufacturer wants it both ways. They want to customer to pay for the overall cost of the item but still own parts of it and forbid any modification to it. In some cases (Siglent, possibly Rigol, but we can't be sure about the latter) they've attempted to go further, by preventing resale of the (unmodified, not hacked item) in violation of the consumer law in most countries. It's this sort of crap which is immoral.
« Last Edit: March 26, 2016, 07:20:25 pm by Hero999 »
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #242 on: March 26, 2016, 02:53:28 pm »
The developer would be foolish if they'd really prefer 100 000 users, over 1000 000 users. Those extra 900 000 users won't pay anyway, are not costing them anything and are spreading awareness of the product, attracting more paying users.
Herein lies the weakness of that argument....

If 900,000 users get to use the software for free, then the 100,000 who would pay for it, will ask "Why should I pay?".  You end up with everybody expecting to use it for free - and the developer gets nothing.  The knife cuts both ways.  You can't claim one and ignore the other.
So one way or the other you have to give all the users the feeling they should pay for the software which is why organisations like the BSA exist.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline mnementh

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #243 on: March 26, 2016, 07:11:31 pm »
The Airline Seat analogy is completely irrelevant to this scenario. They HAVE security and bulkheads between the classes of seat, and the stewards won't serve you if you do move to the 1st class section, they'll send you back to cattle class.

This would be more like if all the classes were in the same single cabin, and the only thing stopping you from moving to an empty 1st class seat is a line of tape on the floor and the disapproving glances of other cattle class passengers. And when you DO step across the line, the stewards serve you as if you belonged there, because they don't have security to escort you back to cattle class, and because the Arline decided it was more efficient to serve a few brazen advantage-takers than to pay for Security and bulkheads that cost them 2 rows of seats apiece.
There. NOW your stupid Airline example is comparable.

Quote from: mnementh
The Airline analogy is not mine, it appears to be a fixture of the internet. I've seen it more times than I can count, and as here, applied entirely inappropriately. All I did what put it in the wastebin where it belongs. You're welcome!  :-+
I believe I am responsible for introducing the airline analogy in this thread - and those who understand the concept I was trying to illustrate seemed to have done so without much hesitation.

The problem with all analogies is that they will never perfectly reflect the original subject matter and the limitations may be many.  Your continued dismissal of the airline analogy as inappropriate sounds more like decree than debate.  It is founded on a number of incidental factors that really have very little (if anything) to do with the question put.

Then, there's the matter of consistency.  You bag the analogy - and then come up with a variation which you declare as 'comparable' and STILL don't answer the question.

 |O

No, only the folks who agree with your position. The rest of us see it for the aardvark in a punchbowl it is; that is to say, completely inappropriate to the conversation at hand.

As for whether I would feel "entitled"... don't try to drag me into THAT recursive sophistry.  ::)

WOULD I move to the 1st class seating, given my scenario above? Hells yes. I, like the universe itself, loathe a vacuum and will rush to fill it, and maybe I can bring something more to the equation than merely "Doing the disapproved of thing just because I can." I am willing to accept THOSE consequences of my actions, just as I am willing to accept the present consequences of hacking my 'scope.

If the consequences of jumping to 1st class were more severe; say I'd have to fight with a security guard and probably get arrested at the ends of the flight, then probably not. Just as if they started making the consequences of hacking my scope more severe; like having it check home with mommynet and disable itself if it discovers that it has been tampered with. Of course, I'd probably try and find a hack for THAT as well.  ;)

In short, you are conflating "Legal\Illegal" with "Right\Wrong".

Personally, I STILL think it's ridiculous to try and apply American mores and Licensing Law to a product made and sold in China. Their Laws are not the same as ours, and their ideas of "Right & Wrong" most certainly are not the same.


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Offline Brumby

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #244 on: March 27, 2016, 07:19:45 am »
As for whether I would feel "entitled"... don't try to drag me into THAT recursive sophistry.  ::)

Interesting - since that sense of 'entitlement' is fundamental to this argument.

Still - if you say the analogy is irrelevant, then it must be so.
 

Offline kcbrown

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #245 on: March 27, 2016, 08:25:58 am »
They didn't give anything to you, they only sold a licence to use it. You should be able to do anything reasonable with the things you have licenced but not the things you haven't licenced. In particular there should, of course, be a secondhand market in selling such licences, and the EU is attempting to enforce that concept.

If they sold me a license, then there must have been some point at which I agreed to that license.  At what point did I agree to such a thing when I purchased my piece of test gear?  Nothing appeared on the screen indicating any such thing.

Let's get something out of the way: firstly, do you agree that manufacturers are free to implement features however they want, and are perfectly free to implement them in such a way that they cannot be "hacked" if they so desired?

Secondly, do you agree that if something is in your lawful possession, that you should be able to do anything you want with it (excluding obvious things, of course, like intentionally using it to harm someone else)? 

Which is to say, do you believe the market should be free?

A free market depends on freedom of the players involved.  The sellers have to be free to build what they want in whatever way they want.  The buyers have to be free to buy what they want and do what they want with it once they have it.  Both entities have to be free to enter into binding agreements with each other as to who will do what.  And buyers and sellers both have to be free to do whatever they wish, absent the restrictions they agree to.  There are some basic limitations on that (e.g., warranties, right of return, etc.  And yes, even copyright.  See below) which have been imposed for the purpose of general improvement of the market, but aside from those things, markets are generally free.   Is that something you have a problem with?

In the United States, at least, copyright law exists for one reason only: to promote the progress of the sciences and the useful arts.  This is the explicitly stated purpose in the United States Constitution for which the power to impose copyright laws was granted to Congress, and the reason copyrights have term limits in the United States is because the Constitution explicitly states that the terms are to be limited.  Keep this in mind when you make claims about software copyright and its purpose.


Sellers generally have the right to build their products however they want.  But implicit in that liberty is the recognition that they must also bear the cost of doing so.  Obviously, that cost will be reflected in their prices.  Similarly, buyers are free to do whatever they want with the products they purchase, but implicit in that is the recognition that sellers might take steps to limit that through various means.

How does all this relate to "hacking" DSOs?  Simple: "hacking" the DSO is simply an action that the purchaser is physically able to take.  There isn't anything that physically constrains the purchaser from doing so.  Copyright law does not forbid the purchaser from doing so, either, at least with respect to the "unlock codes" we're talking about.  The DMCA covers mechanisms that prevent "access to a work protected under this title", but as applied to software, that "access" is with respect to the code, not the features implemented by that code.  This interpretation makes sense because copyright protects against unauthorized copies.  It does not govern use, at least in the United States, thanks to the exemption in 17 U.S.C. 117.   If use of the software/firmware during normal operation were covered by copyright law, then a license agreement would be necessary in order to legally use any computing device at all, including special purpose ones such as oscilloscopes


So: at least as regards United States law, it appears that "hacking" these scopes is perfectly legal, at least if we're talking about the type that involves entering an unlock key.  But, of course, manufacturers are free to implement measures that protect against that.  The kind of hacking that some refer to here (decrypting the code in the ROMs, for instance) is illegal per copyright law, as that does involve making copies.  But entering a magic key that unlocks a feature is not.

A manufacturer who is concerned about the kind of unlocking that we're primarily discussing here can easily implement a system that would make it impossible for the end user to determine what key he should enter into the scope to unlock a feature.  The manufacturer need only cryptographically sign with its private key a packet that contains both the feature descriptor and the scope's serial number, generating a blob that contains the signature and the feature descriptor.  Uploading the resulting blob to the scope would cause the scope to store the blob in its database.  The bootloader would have on file the public key of the manufacturer.  When the scope boots, the bootloader would go through the signed blobs and activate the features for which it is able to cryptographically verify the signature.


In light of the ease with which manufacturers can make unlocking features impossible without their explicit permission, and do so on a per-device basis, the ones that fail to do so anyway clearly are intentionally making it possible to "hack" their scopes.  That is a business decision on their part, just like purchasing the scope is a business decision on the part of the buyer.  If the scope can be "hacked" in that fashion, and the manufacturer fails to take steps to prevent it, who are we to say that "hacking" it is "wrong", when it's clear that the manufacturer clearly prefers that their scopes be "hackable"?

No, in this case, if someone has reservations about "hacking" these scopes, that's on them and them alone. 

« Last Edit: March 27, 2016, 10:03:40 am by kcbrown »
 

Offline Fungus

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #246 on: March 27, 2016, 12:51:18 pm »
Perhaps but if you hack your scope nobody is going to say anything about it so that makes it a lot more OK than barging into first class on an airplane after which the flight attendant (and perhaps some security guy) will put you in your place.

This is the point: People choose different standards of right/wrong when it comes to oscilloscopes, copying music, etc.

They do things that they wouldn't do in other circumstances and justify it to themselves as "harmless, I wasn't going to buy it anyway".

Sitting in first class is harmless to the airline, you were never going to pay for a first class ticket, the seats are unoccupied ... so why is nobody here arguing that they are entitled to sit there or that the airline is wronging passengers by leaving the seats empty? Interesting psychology, n'est pas?  :popcorn:


 

Offline nctnico

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #247 on: March 27, 2016, 01:12:39 pm »
They probably hire more or less staff and order more or less food depending on whether first class is nearly full or nearly empty so again the airplane analogy doesn't really fit well.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline G0HZU

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #248 on: March 27, 2016, 01:34:45 pm »
Quote
A manufacturer who is concerned about the kind of unlocking that we're primarily discussing here can easily implement a system that would make it impossible for the end user to determine what key he should enter into the scope to unlock a feature.  The manufacturer need only cryptographically sign with its private key a packet that contains both the feature descriptor and the scope's serial number, generating a blob that contains the signature and the feature descriptor.  Uploading the resulting blob to the scope would cause the scope to store the blob in its database.  The bootloader would have on file the public key of the manufacturer.  When the scope boots, the bootloader would go through the signed blobs and activate the features for which it is able to cryptographically verify the signature.
You make it sound really easy but the system you describe above would be prone to a patch (or a clone?) based attack.
 

Offline Fungus

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Re: Reasons for hacking DSOs
« Reply #249 on: March 27, 2016, 01:46:56 pm »
They probably hire more or less staff and order more or less food depending on whether first class is nearly full or nearly empty so again the airplane analogy doesn't really fit well.

Well obviously you don't get the extra attention, free first class food, etc.

(As has been mentioned several times already...)
 


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