So by your standards, it's totally fine for Lenovo to use the laptop you bought from them to mine crypto a year after you bought it from them because the necessary hardware to enable that (it having a GPU) was installed at the time.
I mean it's a viewpoint, it's a certifiably bonkers one but of all the viewpoints it definitely is one.
Much like the F-150, if the license agreement between you and Lenovo allow Lenovo to do so, yes. I mean, if you didn't want that, you wouldn't have agreed to it, right? You are allowed to say no.
>“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
If a contractual party is not acting in good faith, there is a legal system to address that.
But I know you will say that the legal system doesn't act in good faith, so... I guess you're screwed. Such is the pitfall of living under a dictatorship.
Which is why I'm not providing what you seek. Production goes to he who is paying, and in this case I am the one doing the paying. Thus, you know the content is written for me and me alone.
> What are we supposed to do about the fact that you are not arguing in good faith?
A rational actor acting in good faith would start talking terms to see the sale go through, but as you are also here in bad faith we can continue to write only for respective selves. Nobody was expecting anything else anyway. I don't imagine anyone has ever paid someone else to write a comment on HN and that isn't about to change today.
The "you can just not agree to it" argument is so bogus. You can only buy good/services that are for sale, and when they all have the same crappy terms, you have to agree to somebody's to live in the modern world.
That's like the people who claim only idiots live in HOAs but neglect the fact that, in some markets, nearly all real estate worth living in is covered by an HOA of some sort so your alternative isn't "buy a different house" it's "live in an apartment forever"
> You can only buy good/services that are for sale
The world is full of custom car builders. Buying a something like the F-150, but without the undesirable computing components, is quite practical and very possible.
It'll be expensive, which I expect is what you were really trying to say when you pretend there is no such thing for sale, but you're just returning us to the heart of discussion: The F-150 is cheap, comparatively, because it has already priced in the tracking subsidy. You're accepting of those undesirable terms because the lower price makes it compelling enough to do so.
Is it really "accepting a concession" if the "alternative" is so expensive as to not be an option anyway?
This is like telling someone who doesn't like that they have to wait in traffic they should just take a helicopter to work everyday. Yes, it's technically an option for some people, but for the vast majority it's not.
Yes. That concession is what gets one with limited means into an F-150. If it was sold at its true market value, absent of all value diminishing systems like tracking, they wouldn't be able to afford that either.
Same goes for roads. You most definitely can build roads that don't have traffic, but only the rich will be able to afford to use them. Traffic is what enables those of lesser means to also participate.
It's a pretty good tradeoff for those who are poor. And the rich can buy whatever they want anyway.
Yes, the world is full of custom car builders. I'm sure I'll find someone that can build me a replica of the f150 lightning that doesn't enable spyware on me.
Mind to help me out a bit and point me at a few companies doing that? Around Kentucky if you don't mind since that's where I am.
I'd start with Ford. They're well known for their custom builds — what they call VSO. And they're already tooled up for production of an F-150-style vehicle around Kentucky to boot.
It won't come cheap like an F-150, but nobody can expect it to be cheap when the value proposition is much higher.
When someone comes to you with a unique custom request for something, your response is: “Nope. Not on my website, not going to do it”?
Must be nice to have the luxury of being able to do nothing. Ford doesn’t have that luxury, though. It has to answer to angry shareholders if it lets a lucrative customer slip through.
A license agreement, or a contract in general, cannot permit either party to violate the law. What you're describing in this scenario, and what has actually happened in some cases, is effectively theft of use and arguably fraud.
Fraudulent terms of service are not above the law, nor are they above basic expectations in society of fair dealing. You can try to litigate this any which way you choose, based on the language contained in the contract/TOS, and it fundamentally does not matter. At some point, something has to give and it ends with burning down buildings and building guillotines. History is full of abundant lessons about the supremacy of social mores and standards that suborn the law, and the supremacy of the law over the specific parties of any given contract.
I mean it's a viewpoint, it's a certifiably bonkers one but of all the viewpoints it definitely is one.