Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!sharkey!aucis!bnick
From: bnick@aucis.UUCP (Bill Nickless)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Ethics of crippler circuitry
Summary: What if the buyer removes the cripplers?
Message-ID: <132@aucis.UUCP>
Date: 14 Feb 89 02:41:39 GMT
References: <7143@pyr.gatech.EDU> <11630010@hpsmtc1.HP.COM> <1257@raspail.UUCP>
Lines: 27

In article <1257@raspail.UUCP>, bga@raspail.UUCP (Bruce Albrecht) writes:
> I think most business customers are buying functionality without regard to
> how it is obtained.  When a customers know they need a performance level of X,
> and that it costs around $Y, they don't want to buy performance level of X+x'
> for $Y+y', even though they may need X+x' later.  That's why IBM (or maybe it
> is Amdahl) leases CPUs that run at a certain MIPS rating; when the customer
> needs a faster machine for a short time, they change the microcode to speed it
> up, charge the customer more, and resets it to the slower machine when the
> customer no longer needs the higher performance.

What do the companies (Amdahl, IBM, et. al.) do about the "sneaky" computer
operator who figures out that you remove board X and get Y*1.5 performance?
Or if you flip this switch or comment out this code or patch the OS to allow
more than the licensed number of users on?  

How does that concept of "I've bought it, it's mine" apply here?  Is it 
unethical to get the best performance possible out of a machine you've paid
for, even if the manufacturer didn't intend for that performance to be avail-
able?

If a vendor is going to sell me a computer, I would use it to its best 
performance--regardless of what the vendor intends!
-- 
Bill Nickless                    Andrews University Computer Science Department
...!sharkey!aucis!bnick or bnick@aucis.UUCP                  Unix Support Group

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