Then when the manufacturing is optimised so that almost all the chips are flawless, you still have the mechanism to enable / disable cores present. e.g. this is a side effect of improvements in the manufacturing process, rather than Intel setting out to screw the user per se.

IBM, and people who write software for mainframes, on the other hand really are in the business of bending their customers over a barrel.

The hardware for their Z series all ship with the maximum RAM and maximum number of processors installed in the physical hardware. IBM then sell license codes to unlock RAM or unlock extra processors. E.g. they will sell you a unit with 128 processors, only of which 4 are enabled, and then ‘upgrade’ it.

The crazy proposition is that apparently some IBM customers actually think they *want* that arrangement because they pay license fees for the software they use based on the number of processors available to run the workload, so that it’s cheaper for the customer who pays license fees on software to have IBM to sell them a piece of hardware that is initially 97% crippled, then sell them upgrade codes over the phone if and only if the workload increases.

I think IBM and the dinosaurs must realise that linux/foss is going to blow them out of the water at some point, and they’re getting the money in hand over fist from companies who are locked in to their legacy systems while they still can.

In a way, those who want the extra bit of oomph is in fact subsidising the rest of the market with doesn’t need it. A good deal for the consumer.

Of course, corporations hate capitalism, and free markets, and, like Intel, will do everything in their power to avoid working in one. This is using various artificial and natural abuses of the free market to make extra money. Sure, its easy. Sure, everybody else is pretty much doing the same thing. But it’s only possible because the government says they can do it, and can arrest anyone else who tries to build and sell a competing version of the chip without said restrictions.

We all agreed that giving up on on the idea of a free market is the price we were willing to pay for innovation. That’s the only reason we did it – because free markets are NOT efficient at encouraging discovery. So when things like this come up, it comes down to this -

Is it worth giving up a bit more of the ideal of a free market, of capitalism, of a property based society, of freedom in general, for the bit of an increase in innovation this offers.

There’s an argument both ways, and I’m not going to say who’s right. Innovation is important, and has made our society many times better. But its important that when you take a side in this issue, you know which side your taking.

We all agreed that giving up on on the idea of a free market is the price we were willing to pay for innovation.

Patent and copyright law provide for government-protected monopolies. Neither are involved here.

What other “giving up” on a free market do you have in mind?

It’s like farmers painting blemishes on half of a bumper pear crop so that the good ones can keep a higher price.

Of course if their yields are known and it’s simply that there are always too many chips at the higher end of the spectrum for them to get a proper price differentiation between both ends of the market (given that there are always some people willing to pay phenomenal amounts for small gains at the top end), the analogy becomes a bit strained.

I seem to recall NVidia had some graphics cards that, when flashed with a better model’s firmware, would turn into that better model. Hmm…

No problem. I’ll just keep buying AMD processors.

Or for Logitech to sell you a Harmony remote, with all its buttons already installed, but if you want to use the 4 programmable buttons you have to pay extra for the software to do so?

Or for your local builder to sell you a house with 4 beds and 3 baths, but to lock you out of 1 bed and 1 bath, and they’ll sell you the key for an extra $10k? Even though you can pick the lock…?

The analogies make perfect sense to anyone in their right mind. When you buy a product with certain expectations of that product, its not right for the company to charge you extra for those expectations. What do you think consumer groups would do if computer manufacturers suddenly started selling laptops without an OS or software installed?

Thanks guys! :)

It’s not crippling. Buyers are well aware of the capabilities of the CPU they are buying, in advance. They just have a _choice_ to upgrade if they want to – for a lower price and hassle factor than if they needed to actually replace the CPU. This is good for everyone. Makes the manufacturing cheaper, therefore *you* pay less if you want to buy a CPU (ok, assuming that at least part of the cost saving is shared with the customer), and you create less waste when upgrading.

You get what you pay for – and you’ll pay more if you want more. Simple,you can make an informed decision, and your existing “rights” and CPU features are never taken away.

(Having said all this, the fact that many manufacturers have been doing this for a long time woud not make this specific move right. I’m just arguing that it’s not wrong in the first place.)

Robert

No it isn’t. So the question is really: do you know, before you buy, how the CPU really performs, or are you misled, and you can only reach that potential if you buy the upgrade too?

It seems you’re saying that you’re mislead. THAT would be bad, but I don’t think that’s the case here.

Robert

Computer hardware has been hardware disabled for years. That is, take a perfectly good chip that you have too many off in the expensive market, physically break it, and sell them in the cheap market. All this is doing is breaking it with software rather than physically.

PC hobbyists have been hacking hardware for years to “fix” chips to tap potential. Doing it in software just makes the job easier. Both for Intel to lock, and for hobbyists to hack.

Once upon a time a graphics company did this, locking certain features of expensive cards using driver software, and selling them on the cheap market. It didn’t take hobbyists long to figure out how to make a 100$ card perform like a 500$ one without any of the risk associated with physical hardware hacking!

So in short, go ahead Intel and make my day. PC Hobbyists will rejoice again!

If this chip makes some people wake up to the reality of IT manufacturers (and software developers! see Microsoft “Home” series…) holding back innovation just to make a quick buck, then so be it.

I don’t know what it is about the Internet that has created all of you folks that think it’s okay to enter into a contract and then just flaut it, but my parents raised me better than that. I don’t make agreements that I’m not willing to abide by.

Just because you buys a computer from Gateway with a particular model of Intel CPU does not mean that you’re entering into a contract with Intel regarding the use of that CPU. Or have you seen Intel employees with clipboards hanging around the Gateway section at Best Buy stores? “Now if you’ll just sign here…”

This situation isn’t as black and white as Cory makes it out to be because, presumably, Gateway tells you what the CPU specs are prior to your purchase. You get to choose whether to buy it or not with your eyes open.

OTOH, many of the articles about this say that Intel’s “artificially” crippled the CPU. That makes sense, since they have to be certain that their $50 “upgrade” will unlock the CPU’s features in all cases. So it’s not a matter of Intel selling “binned” CPUs.

This is, I think, the source of the economic problems in the West. A lot of our industries have decided that they want to be rent seekers-which means they are no longer trying to add wealth. This probably has something to do with increasing income inequality and the threat to Brin’s Diamond shaped society.

We live in an era where enclosure is being extended from land (and it is working very strongly there-drive around the American Midwest and you’ll find huge corporate latifundae) to everything. If current trends continue, we’ll be paying for thinking concepts that someone has acquired via enclosure.

He just moved a jumper on the mother board to allow addressing the memory that was already there.

I used to work for a company who had a software upgrade for a product that just allowed the present software to access the extra functions that were already there. Another company had two products with two different amounts of disk space. You guessed it, they both had the same hard drive.

In these cases the official explanation is that it costs less to maintain a single version of code or to stock a single size hard drive, and they want to maintain product differentiation, but it always makes me feel bad.

Still, there’s the parable of the farmer who hired men to harvest his crop one morning. That afternoon he hired more men for half a day’s labor. In the evening he paid them all the same amount. When the men who had worked all day complained, he told them “hey, you agreed to the terms of the contract and were paid fairly, so what’s your beef?”

If they sell these as they are, and most people don’t bother to crack it and dethrottle the CPUs, then they’re entitled to the benefits of the attempt. If customers snip the locks off of the property they now own and Intel goes bawwwing to the authorities that First Sale makes them sad pandas, well, too bad. Even if they go through a lot of voodoo to claim they’re licensing something to you the customer’s expectation is they’re purchasing something to own, and they do perpetuate that impression, therefore it’s damned reasonable to respect the sovereignty of a purchaser over their own property.

If Intel told me I wasn’t allowed to overclock my 2.4GHz q6600 to 3.2 GHz, which it runs at quite nicely, because of the opportunity cost of not selling me one with that speed from the factory, I’d tell them to go f*** a cactus, and that’s as much right as they have to control the goods after sale.

If they want to try and screw me, let them, I have the right to screw them right back. If they choose to use a lower price as incentive to be screwed, well it’s their loss for choosing that approach to supply.

What you described enshrined in the terms of this contract seem more like a rental agreement or licensing agreement rather than the transferral of property from one individual to another through sale.

I’m no lawyer so I don’t know what the usual laws are regarding a sale or how it differs to other sorts of contractual agreements. But I’ve never had to sign a contract to buy a stick of gum or any other physical item I can recall (except when accompanied by some financial service, like a loan or credit).

Stop making excuses for Intel.
These processors are fully tested and able to use all of their advanced features, the ONLY reason they can’t is because intel locked them out, just to be dicks about it.