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The market isn't small enough for these tactics to work. It's much more likely that this was a response to the very real and well documented problem of illegal

The market isn't small enough for these tactics to work. It's much more likely that this was a response to the very real and well documented problem of illegal exports. Another Japanese company, Mitutoyo, was caught several times illegally exporting these machines to embargoed countries, including North Korea and Iran. Some of Mitutoyo's executives were jailed for this.[1] Adding tamper-proofing and tracking is a great way to make sure that regain confidence and avoid prison. Edit: I'm not sure why this was downvoted. A representative from Mori said something similar on the board linked to by the original article: "Regarding the device, Weapons of Mass Destruction. Worst case for a negligent violation would be Dr. Mori himself spending time in the slammer. That along is enough motivation for DMG MORI to follow the regulation very carefully. Other reasons include all of those stated above! btw, no need to waste time on bypassing it. It is pretty solid. We have to make it so Iran, N. Korea, etc's best can't bypass it." [2] I think that this is a perfectly plausible explanation and don't think that the real ulterior motive is controlling resale, especially when other foreign competitors do not have the same restrictions. [1] http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2006/09/02/news/mitutoyo-tied-to-iran-north-nuclear-quests/#.UmWKRlPp47k http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2006/09/02/news/mitutoyo-ti... [2] http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/dmg-mori-gildemeister-maho-cnc/mori-ellison-gyroscope-unlocking-273841/ http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/dmg-mori-gildemeister-m...

simoncion 13y ago
Isn't that a problem for Customs to worry about?
- deleted 13y ago
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anotherbadlogin 13y ago
That doesn't hold water. How grossly incompetent would the engineering have to be if the machine can't tell the difference between being moved a few hundred feet vs. out of the country? If the vendor knows the original ("approved") location of the machine, it can figure out where the nearest border of an embargoed country is. This policy is thus bullshit.
Fuxy 13y ago
Then why not just white-list all the areas not covered by the embargo so customers are not required to got trough this lengthy procedure every time they want to re arrange the shop. Also it's not very difficult to trick a GPS sensor into thinking its somewhere else as long as your signal is a lot better then the ones coming from the satellite so i would disagree with them being solid.
- drchaos 13y ago
  > it's not very difficult to trick a GPS sensor into thinking its somewhere else as long as your signal is a lot better then the ones coming from the satellite and that's probably the reason why they include a gyro and shut down the machine if it is moved at all, regardless of what the GPS says.
  - Fuxy 13y ago
    And once you're dome moving it you fake your location by spoofing the GPS and call to get it activated again and none's the wiser. A gyroscope doesn't do much besides detect if it was moved it can't tell where it was moved so you're basically relying on spoof-able input.
    - tlow 13y ago
      That's not entirely true. Early navigation was done with gyroscopes, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system specifically: "The INS is initially provided with its position and velocity from another source (a human operator, a GPS satellite receiver, etc.), and thereafter computes its own updated position and velocity by integrating information received from the motion sensors. The advantage of an INS is that it requires no external references in order to determine its position, orientation, or velocity once it has been initialized."
      - falcolas 13y ago
        One good earthquake will cause some real problems... I find it interesting that the GPS is even receiving signals inside of a machine shop. One would think that the interference from the machine itself, not to mention the typically metal building, would attenuate the already weak signals pretty badly.
deleted 13y ago
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simoncion 13y ago

Isn't that a problem for Customs to worry about?

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

anotherbadlogin 13y ago

That doesn't hold water. How grossly incompetent would the engineering have to be if the machine can't tell the difference between being moved a few hundred feet vs. out of the country? If the vendor knows the original ("approved") location of the machine, it can figure out where the nearest border of an embargoed country is. This policy is thus bullshit.

Fuxy 13y ago

Then why not just white-list all the areas not covered by the embargo so customers are not required to got trough this lengthy procedure every time they want to re arrange the shop. Also it's not very difficult to trick a GPS sensor into thinking its somewhere else as long as your signal is a lot better then the ones coming from the satellite so i would disagree with them being solid.

drchaos 13y ago
> it's not very difficult to trick a GPS sensor into thinking its somewhere else as long as your signal is a lot better then the ones coming from the satellite and that's probably the reason why they include a gyro and shut down the machine if it is moved at all, regardless of what the GPS says.
- Fuxy 13y ago
  And once you're dome moving it you fake your location by spoofing the GPS and call to get it activated again and none's the wiser. A gyroscope doesn't do much besides detect if it was moved it can't tell where it was moved so you're basically relying on spoof-able input.
  - tlow 13y ago
    That's not entirely true. Early navigation was done with gyroscopes, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system specifically: "The INS is initially provided with its position and velocity from another source (a human operator, a GPS satellite receiver, etc.), and thereafter computes its own updated position and velocity by integrating information received from the motion sensors. The advantage of an INS is that it requires no external references in order to determine its position, orientation, or velocity once it has been initialized."
    - falcolas 13y ago
      One good earthquake will cause some real problems... I find it interesting that the GPS is even receiving signals inside of a machine shop. One would think that the interference from the machine itself, not to mention the typically metal building, would attenuate the already weak signals pretty badly.

deleted 13y ago

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