3 ms·

What would you suggest? Placing the question of whether or not their products continue to work in the hands of third parties? I think there is a conversation

What would you suggest? Placing the question of whether or not their products continue to work in the hands of third parties? I think there is a conversation to be had here about the proper way to tie add-on services (which are inevitable) with one-time-purchase products. Consumers want some indication of whether they can reach the Internet, but this really requires some ongoing cost on the router manufacturer's part, which cannot be recouped indefinitely from a one-time hardware sale. we face a similar crisis in mobile apps. Apps increasingly require backend services to provide core functionality, which just isn't sustainable indefinitely with a fixed-price model. Inevitably when these companies are acquired, the backend shuts down, and people lose the product that they "paid" for. I think in the long-term, we are going to have to move to a subscription-based model where people are paying regularly for things they used to buy one-off. But in the short-term, you can have an endless stream of VC-backed companies who can afford to take on that cost for short periods. So anyone who actually broke rank would get beaten back pretty hard by the market.

mokash 12y ago
Mate, what are you even banging on about?
- colinramsay 12y ago
  He's saying that the back-end powering services which users love get switched off too often. Like in multiplayer video games where the central servers get discontinued, rendering the game useless. In the same way that if I wrote a script relying on some aspect of your personal website, that script would now fail because your site currently returns a 403 message :)
blueskin_ 12y ago
>I think in the long-term, we are going to have to move to a subscription-based model where people are paying regularly for things they used to buy one-off. i.e. renting software. People don't want to rent software. Look at the (un)popularity of Adobe CC etc. to show that. This is why online activation/backend is just a bad idea in general.
- PhantomGremlin 12y ago
  > People don't want to rent software. Look at the (un)popularity of Adobe CC etc. to show that. Something I stole from the Internet a while ago: "What is it with these customer-oriented companies that forget where their money is coming from?" Look up the words "Monopoly" and "Oligopoly" Short answer is, they don't *have* to care. You want them more than they need you. To further the point, Adobe stock hit an "all time high" earlier this year, on better than expected revenue and earnings.[1] YOU might not like Adobe CC, but they're making plenty of money renting it to you. [1] http://247wallst.com/technology-3/2014/06/17/adobe-earnings-brings-all-time-high/ http://247wallst.com/technology-3/2014/06/17/adobe-earnings-...
unwind 12y ago
You seem to be identifying what they did in your first line, then go off on some kind of wild tangent in the rest of the post. As I read it, there is no case of any "service" or "subscription" happening here. It's just a design that relies on a single point of failure to determine whether or not a product can perform its designed functionality, which might be a bit ... sloppy from an engineering perspective. In general, answering "am I connected to the Internet?" without relying on things outside your control is hard, probably because the Internet is all about things outside your direct control. :)
amouat 12y ago
My (rather old) router pings yahoo.com as a default test. Yahoo definitely didn't make it. However, the URL can be changed and the router doesn't stop working if yahoo can't be reached.
lordbusiness 12y ago
I would suggest placing the question of whether or not my internet connection works in the hands of my ISP. I had a similar situation when I used a Linksys router; if Linksys had any problems at all with their cloud overhead infrastructure, my internet connection died. All I need for my internet connection to work is my ISP's infrastructure; I want my router to work without phoning home to some bloatware belonging to its manufacturer. Apologies; please don't down vote me for this opinion.

mokash 12y ago

Mate, what are you even banging on about?

colinramsay 12y ago
He's saying that the back-end powering services which users love get switched off too often. Like in multiplayer video games where the central servers get discontinued, rendering the game useless. In the same way that if I wrote a script relying on some aspect of your personal website, that script would now fail because your site currently returns a 403 message :)

blueskin_ 12y ago

>I think in the long-term, we are going to have to move to a subscription-based model where people are paying regularly for things they used to buy one-off. i.e. renting software. People don't want to rent software. Look at the (un)popularity of Adobe CC etc. to show that. This is why online activation/backend is just a bad idea in general.

PhantomGremlin 12y ago
> People don't want to rent software. Look at the (un)popularity of Adobe CC etc. to show that. Something I stole from the Internet a while ago: "What is it with these customer-oriented companies that forget where their money is coming from?" Look up the words "Monopoly" and "Oligopoly" Short answer is, they don't *have* to care. You want them more than they need you. To further the point, Adobe stock hit an "all time high" earlier this year, on better than expected revenue and earnings.[1] YOU might not like Adobe CC, but they're making plenty of money renting it to you. [1] http://247wallst.com/technology-3/2014/06/17/adobe-earnings-brings-all-time-high/ http://247wallst.com/technology-3/2014/06/17/adobe-earnings-...

unwind 12y ago

You seem to be identifying what they did in your first line, then go off on some kind of wild tangent in the rest of the post. As I read it, there is no case of any "service" or "subscription" happening here. It's just a design that relies on a single point of failure to determine whether or not a product can perform its designed functionality, which might be a bit ... sloppy from an engineering perspective. In general, answering "am I connected to the Internet?" without relying on things outside your control is hard, probably because the Internet is all about things outside your direct control. :)

amouat 12y ago

My (rather old) router pings yahoo.com as a default test. Yahoo definitely didn't make it. However, the URL can be changed and the router doesn't stop working if yahoo can't be reached.

lordbusiness 12y ago

I would suggest placing the question of whether or not my internet connection works in the hands of my ISP. I had a similar situation when I used a Linksys router; if Linksys had any problems at all with their cloud overhead infrastructure, my internet connection died. All I need for my internet connection to work is my ISP's infrastructure; I want my router to work without phoning home to some bloatware belonging to its manufacturer. Apologies; please don't down vote me for this opinion.