Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

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This is different. In order to be upgraded via software, the chip has to be able to function at the upgraded specs. So Intel can't take a broken batch and sell them in this type of machine anymore; they have to put the good one in no matter what.

That's what makes it seem arbitrary and annoying. When you buy a low-spec chip, you get it cheap because it could be defective. But when you buy this, it's perfectly functional, just artificially limited. You aren't helping Intel increase their yield and getting some savings for helping them -- you are just being fucked because they feel like fucking you.

I hated Intel for a long time, but then they started making good products and contributing drivers to Linux... but if they keep this sort of thing up, that goodwill is all going to erode and AMD will have to opportunity to get the enthusiast market again. (Their "we'll sue you for using the HDCP crack" is similarly goodwill-eroding, especially because there is nobody they can even sue.)

I'm genuinely curious - why do you find this to be a problem? Isn't the decision to upgrade (or not) completely up to you? How is this any different than enabling a feature set on a cisco router with a license key, or adding users to an exchange server. In both of those cases the systems are already capable of performing the function. Are you opposed to all of these classes of 'pay to enable' functionality?

Because it implies that I'm "licensing" the blob of engraved silicon sitting in my computer. How long until we're just "licensing" everything?

No, you're buying in installments.

I am not renting the privilege of using my computer from Intel; I purchased a piece of hardware they happen to produce. I own it now, and I shouldn't have to maintain a relationship with Intel any more than I should have to continue paying fees to Honda for the car I own outright.

Corporations are renting the privilege of using Exchange from Microsoft because they want a corporation to stand behind their email system. If they didn't want to maintain a relationship with a major corporation, they could just as easily have done it with open-source software.

Cisco is entitled to sell me more sophisticated software, but not to prevent me outright from using the hardware I bought the way I want to with my own software. And they don't. My company wants features that would be too expensive with a unified Cisco solution, so we run Cisco phones flashed with custom open-source firmware connected to a Trixbox.

This is just simple price discrimination. They could just add $50 to the price of each chip and then people who didn't want improved performance pay it anyway. This way those who want it pay for it, those who don't don't.

>> But when you buy this, it's perfectly functional, just artificially limited

Sadly this line reminds me of certain phones and media players

But this is no DRM-ful app store. The upgraded computer will run the same instruction set, just faster. The mechanism to disable the bigger cache until a code is entered inhibits nothing people would be doing with their Intel CPUs today. Perhaps the homebrew microcode scene suffers, but that's a niche.

Nothing wrong with AMD at the moment, they have a 12 core chip out!

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