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"The market" is only going to "punish" you if.. - The masses actually care - There is an alternative Neither is the case here. Most people couldn't care less

by copx 9y ago

"The market" is only going to "punish" you if.. - The masses actually care - There is an alternative Neither is the case here. Most people couldn't care less about things like ME and AMD and Intel are a oligopoly. If you want a modern x86-64 CPU you only have those two choices and both do this. That is the problem here, not fiat currency.

mrschwabe 9y ago
Agreed. See my pie in the sky reply to majewsky in sibling comment - but yeah, no easy way for the average man to 'punish' big bad Intel it would seem. Perhaps another technique to punish them is via class action lawsuit - with all the companies potentially affected by this and what now seems like evidence of intent forthcoming it maybe is solid basis for a case but I'm no lawyer.
confounded 9y ago
I'd say that there's a weird dependence between your two points; people often seem to care because there is an alternative. Examples of this might be Fair Trade coffee, or energy saving light bulbs. Prior to their marketing, I doubt that vague ethical considerations were on the 'top 10' list of consumer wants from a new product, if they registered at all. But when people are presented with a choice, if you can, why not get the better stuff? Another analogy might be something like the TPM chips on iPhones. I very much doubt that focus groups or surveys at Apple found TPMs in the list of requested new features. However, things like TPMs get written up, and add to the things that journalists can describe around the vague theme of relative security and relative privacy; important concepts to consumers. Once this is internalized, when making a comparison between phones, a motivated consumer might consider the absence of a TPM a problem. I doubt that Intel would start marketing _No Backdoor™_ chips, but I could imagine a consumer-facing hardware vendor coming up with some kind of comparison-based branding for avoiding the ME. There's a reasonable chance that Apple may continue to integrate vertically and get away from Intel over the next few years. And I was extremely surprised that Purism (a company basically founded on resentment towards the ME) could crowd-fund millions of dollars in the way it has.

by copx 9y ago

mrschwabe 9y ago

Agreed. See my pie in the sky reply to majewsky in sibling comment - but yeah, no easy way for the average man to 'punish' big bad Intel it would seem. Perhaps another technique to punish them is via class action lawsuit - with all the companies potentially affected by this and what now seems like evidence of intent forthcoming it maybe is solid basis for a case but I'm no lawyer.

confounded 9y ago

I'd say that there's a weird dependence between your two points; people often seem to care because there is an alternative. Examples of this might be Fair Trade coffee, or energy saving light bulbs. Prior to their marketing, I doubt that vague ethical considerations were on the 'top 10' list of consumer wants from a new product, if they registered at all. But when people are presented with a choice, if you can, why not get the better stuff? Another analogy might be something like the TPM chips on iPhones. I very much doubt that focus groups or surveys at Apple found TPMs in the list of requested new features. However, things like TPMs get written up, and add to the things that journalists can describe around the vague theme of relative security and relative privacy; important concepts to consumers. Once this is internalized, when making a comparison between phones, a motivated consumer might consider the absence of a TPM a problem. I doubt that Intel would start marketing _No Backdoor™_ chips, but I could imagine a consumer-facing hardware vendor coming up with some kind of comparison-based branding for avoiding the ME. There's a reasonable chance that Apple may continue to integrate vertically and get away from Intel over the next few years. And I was extremely surprised that Purism (a company basically founded on resentment towards the ME) could crowd-fund millions of dollars in the way it has.