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Antifeatures
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== Hardware Antifeatures == === EDA and CAD-Software === ==== Flexible Lies Manager (Flexlm) ==== Most serious EDA-Software from Vendors like Mentor Graphics, Cadence, Synopsys are sold per feature. The flexlm license file controls with fine granularity which features of a full fledged installation you are allowed to use. Fortunately, flexlm holds to hw-ids like the host-id of a solaris machine (is an nv-ram and can be changed) or mac-address of pc-computer (is in eeprom and can be changed) So one can fight against flexible lies manager on this and other fronts, but this is mostly illegal, exept you hold a license and only want to exchange a broken machine with a new one without having to beg the ventor to kindly provide new license files. You just clone the old machine (mac-address, hw-id etc.) as seen from flexlm view... === Fridges === ==== Coke Retail Fridges ==== Coca-Cola Company provide retail display fridges to many small retail food outlets for selling Coke and related brands. These fridges are expensive, up to US$20,000 each. Undercapitalized small operators often won't invest in these fridges themselves. However they still have other refrigerated products to retail, such as butter and cheese. These popular but smaller lines don't justify a fridge of their own. Coke's agreement with the retailers specify non-Coke products may not be stored in their fridges. The anti-feature is in the latest range of these fridges, manufactured by Scope. Butter often comes wrapped in paper, whereas Coke is in a tightly sealed PET bottle. The electronic module controlled fridges somehow detect dairy products, and simply shut down. They will not run in the presence of dairy (and perhaps other) product. === Cameras === ==== EyeFi Brand WiFi Enabled SD Cards ==== The EyeFi card is a SD memory card with an integrated WiFi connection that allows automatic transfer of photos directly from the camera. It comes in 4 versions each their own retail box and with a price ranging from $50 to $150. However the included cards appear technically identical, excepting a 4gb to 8gb size jump which should add trivial costs. Even the cheapest version is upgradeable to the most expensive through paying for a software upgrade. The jump from Connect to Geo and Geo to Explore are arguably not egregious anti-features as the involve usage of 3rd party geolocation data and hotspot access, respectively, which likely carry subscription costs. However the upgrade to the pro version is absolutely anti-feature as all the pro adds is RAW transfer support and ad-hoc Wifi network connections directly to a computer. ==== Panasonic Camera Batteries ==== [http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/06/24/1851238/Panasonic-Begins-To-Lock-Out-3d-Party-Camera-Batteries Panasonic] issued a firmware update with an antifeature which disabled any third party batteries. ==== Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 vs. S300M ==== Mac OS drivers for the Fujitsu ScanSnap S300M have been intentionally broken to prevent use of the technically identical, but less expensive S300 "Windows model" with Mac OS. === Printers === ==== Printer Cartridges ==== [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20050222/1220232.shtml HP printers] have been supplied with cartridges that both report 'empty' when they have 25% ink still remaining, but also have a 'use by date' encoded into the chip, which disables the printer cartridge if it is used after that date (no HP printer will use it). In general the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkjet_printer#Underlying_business_model business model] of printer manufacturers has been to lose money on the printer and make it on the printer cartridges. This has caused such antifeatures as: * Reporting the cartridge as empty when (often substantial) ink remains. * Microchips that will report the cartridge size by number of uses rather than by amount of ink remaining. These will ignore any refilling of the cartridge. * accepting only regionnally bought cartridges (HP zoned the world the same way as DVD !!) ===== Lexmark ===== Lexmark also codes both printers and cartridges with region codes (a la DVD) and [http://support.lexmark.com/index?page=content&id=SO3581 causes their printers to fail to print with a cartridge from a different code]. Interestingly, some "compatible" printer cartridges are region-code free, and can print with any printer, so Lexmark's engineering not only makes things harder for their customers, but also encourages their customers to buy from non-Lexmark vendors. There are other features of the printer cartridge industry that are anticompetitive (e.g. use of DMCA and patents to protect antifeature code) but do not involve specific software or hardware - i.e. they aren't 'antifeatures' per se. ==== no network access ==== HP's PSC-series printers came with a Windows driver that specifically was designed to NOT allow the printer to be shared over a LAN, so as to not cannibalize the sale of their (more expensive) network-oriented printers. This could be hacked around, by installing the (massive) Windows drivers on client machines and using a Linux box as the print server. ==== Printer Yellow Dots ==== Many printers produce a background of hard to see yellow dots on every page. This pattern is unique to the printer and can be used to identify the printer that produced a page. This is not officially acknowledged by printer manufacturers, but appears to be as a result of a shady deal between government and the manufacturers. See: [http://seeingyellow.com/ http://seeingyellow.com/] === GPS === Many in-car GPS systems prevent the GPS from being operated while the car is in motion. This is intended to prevent drivers from getting distracted from the road; however, it also prevents passengers from entering a destination on behalf of the driver unless the driver stops for them. In some cars, this antifeature can be disabled by a secret button combination; in others, an actual hardware modification is necessary to disable it, and it's less hassle to simply buy another GPS entirely. === Media === ==== DVDs ==== DVDs include a whole collection of different antifeatures. These include things like region coding, DVD CSS, other types of DRM, unskippable advertisments and more. No user asked for any of these and you can pay extra for non-region coded DVDs, or DVD players that are nonlimited to regions -- which is just one example. === Mainframes === ==== Unnamed Ye Olde Mainframe from the Bad Old Days of Heavy Metal ==== The CPU came in two flavours... cheap and slow vs fast and 'spensive. Most victims (umm, customers), surprise, surprise bought slow and cheap... and found it too slow... and bought the upgrade. So the field engineer would hove into view carrying a anti-static bag with a board inside saying, "Shutdown... your upgrade has arrived" He would swap out the board, putting the old board into a spare bag, power up and off to the next vic..err.. customer. On the way, he'd pull over to the side of the road, haul out the old slow board, flick a switch on the "maus klavier" (dip switch), and on to the next customer. "Tada... your upgrade has arrived..." This was called a "screwdriver upgrade" -- on the IBM mainframes I saw upgraded the DIP switch was flicked in place and the customer was fully aware of the process. It depends upon the charging model as to if this was a anti-feature. For example, most IBM customers leased the mainframe per-MIPS. Upon requiring more MIPS they much preferred a screwdriver upgrade rather than the multi-year planning required for "forklift upgrade", where the entire machine had to be replaced and sometimes the software rebuilt (eg, the new mainframe hardware may have required a move from MVS/XA to MVS/ESA), with extended downtime and significant risk of deployment failure. Usually contracts for IBM-compatible mainframes explicitly requested the range of MIPS for the hardware, a mainframe with a lesser range being penalised as that implied a major upgrade would be required sooner. ==== Similar to the above ==== Server came with two sized hard drives 10 MB or 30 MB ( back in early 80's ) As above, an engineer arrived and flicked a switch to allow the server to access the other 20 MB, and yes, the bill was $10,000 ==== Modern version ==== Today's IBM zSeries mainframes can still be leased with extra processors that the customer can pay to turn on. The offering is called [http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/advantages/resiliency/datadriven/cuod.html Capacity on Demand]. === Internet === ==== Providers charging for ADSL Fastpath ==== Technically Fastpath is just a flag on the DSLAM, but most providers at least in germany charge you a monthly fee of about 3 EUR per month if you want Fastpath (lower latency vs. higher reliability in interleaved mode). === Television === ==== Freeview Australia ==== Australia uses the DVB-T standard for digital television like many other countries in the world. To help promote the adoption, the big channels formed the Freeview consortium to certify devices and market digital television to consumers. For an existing DVB-T DVR to gain Freeview certification, the fast forward and rewind features must be restricted to 30x maximum, and not allow skipping by less than 10 minutes. A certified device also must not allow the user to transfer recordings off its hard disk. === Processors === ==== Intel Pentium G6951 ==== Intel started to limit its processors capabilities by requiring users to pay extra $50 to [http://www.boingboing.net/2010/09/19/intel-drm-a-crippled.html enable some of the already-included (but disabled) features]. This will probably require all users of this processor to install proprietary software on their computers to be able to make use of their hardware and it will limit GNU/Linux users' abilities.
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