T
terryc
By your logic Microsoft should only be charging $0.50 for the costs of
the DVD when they sell Windows7.
Is it worth that much?
By your logic Microsoft should only be charging $0.50 for the costs of
the DVD when they sell Windows7.
Where is the deception?
Perhaps a better example would be promising a scope with 100MHz bandwidth
then delivering 50MHz bandwidth.
I'll leave the dickhead judgement to my friends.
YOU FUCKWIT POMMY MORON !!!
What you have done is possibly a criminal act in the USA, using a
computer to deprive Rigol of revenue. In the US, "using a computer" to
perform an act can be a much more severe crime than the act itself.
I have some sympathy for Rigol here. Many of our products have an
option that can be enabled in firmware, and that we charge for. We put
a lot of engineering effort into the firmware, and need to be paid for
it. If buyers of my gear can order the cheaper one and make it into
the expensive one, by copying an EPROM maybe, or setting a bit in
flash somewhere, I can't recover the cost of the feature. The act is
arguably legal theft. It's certainly moral theft.
Why Jones would choose to hurt Rigel is a mystery to me.
John
Are you really that ignorant? So I create a 100Mhz scope and sale it for X
dollars as a 100Mhz scope. I then slap a new sticker on the 100Mhz scope and
call it a 50Mhz scope and sale it for Y dollars.
Now, if my profit margins for the 100Mhz scope was not that high then how
could I make profit on the "new" 50Mhz scope? Either they jacked up the
profit margin significantly to be able to do this trick or they are making
virtually no profit on the 50Mhz scope.
BUT! If they are making no profit on the 50Mhz scope then why not just
reduce the price of the 100Mhz scope in the first place?
They are exactly trying to simply get into a market that the 100Mhz scope
can't because of it's higher price. They can lower the price, pretend it's a
crappier version and then increase their market size for three reasons.
Those that can't and never will buy the 100Mhz version but will buy the
50Mhz and those that are lured in by the 50Mhz version and decide "I might
as well get the 100Mhz version since it's just a "little more"". Also those
that buy the 50Mhz version may decide to buy the more powerful one as an
"upgrade"... which in fact there is no real upgrade involved.
The dishonesty is in the tactics they use and tells you a lot about what
they think of their customers. This, of course, is not a new trick.
The dishonesty part is equivalent to lying. If you called them and asked
them about it do you really think they will tell you they are exactly the
same hardware with just a firmware change to cripple the cheaper version?
You can hide behind the cloak of capitalism all you want but this is not
capitalism but outright theft.
How do we know you are wrong and I'm right? Very easily... call up rigol and
ask them about the difference between the models. If they are honest they
will tell you there is only a firmware difference. If they are dishonest
they will make up something that we already know is false. The street name
for this kinda shit is lying. You may be confused by the big word dishonesty
but maybe one day you'll figure it out.
Of course this is not necessarily criminal but is walking the fine line. An
ethical company would not implement such practices. I don't know about
you(well, I guess I do) but I'd rather do business with a company that isn't
out to screw me.
John Larkin said:No. But that costs the seller nothing, and is perfectly legal. Jones
has cost Rigel
John Larkin said:What you have done is possibly a criminal act in the USA, using a
computer to deprive Rigol of revenue. In the US, "using a computer" to
perform an act can be a much more severe crime than the act itself.
I have some sympathy for Rigol here. Many of our products have an
option that can be enabled in firmware, and that we charge for. We put
a lot of engineering effort into the firmware, and need to be paid for
it. If buyers of my gear can order the cheaper one and make it into
the expensive one, by copying an EPROM maybe, or setting a bit in
flash somewhere, I can't recover the cost of the feature. The act is
arguably legal theft. It's certainly moral theft.
Products are increasingly IP and less hardware these days, and the IP
is expensive.
Of course, Rigol made it too easy. They will probably go back and make
it harder to do, and that will make the scope cost more in both
versions.
I recently got a 1052E, and it's a pretty nice scope. The digital
filtering is not perfect, but it's sure cute. It has way more goodies
than a comparable Tek for under half the price. I'll probably get a
few more.
There are many small details which indicate that the software was
written by indiots.
BTW, one of the things that I design are the analog front ends for
scopes and like. Some with BW to 1 GHz. The idea of using varicap just
doesn't make any sense to me.
"Good - Better - Best" marketing principle is old as a World.
Vladimir Vassilevsky
DSP and Mixed Signal Design Consultant
http://www.abvolt.com
John Larkin said:On Mar 30, 8:03 pm, John Larkin
On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:29:12 +1100, "David L. Jones"
For those with a Rigol DS1052E oscilloscope, you can now turn it into a
100MHz DS1102E with just a serial cable:
Dave.
What you have done is possibly a criminal act in the USA, using a
computer to deprive Rigol of revenue. In the US, "using a computer" to
perform an act can be a much more severe crime than the act itself.
I have some sympathy for Rigol here. Many of our products have an
option that can be enabled in firmware, and that we charge for. We put
a lot of engineering effort into the firmware, and need to be paid for
it. If buyers of my gear can order the cheaper one and make it into
the expensive one, by copying an EPROM maybe, or setting a bit in
flash somewhere, I can't recover the cost of the feature. The act is
arguably legal theft. It's certainly moral theft.
Products are increasingly IP and less hardware these days, and the IP
is expensive.
Of course, Rigol made it too easy. They will probably go back and make
it harder to do, and that will make the scope cost more in both
versions.
I recently got a 1052E, and it's a pretty nice scope. The digital
filtering is not perfect, but it's sure cute. It has way more goodies
than a comparable Tek for under half the price. I'll probably get a
few more.
John
The design cost is amortized over all the units. [Hey, don't worry
what the consults charges, it will go to zero as we sell a million
units.]
Rigol does themselves a disservice by having to maintain two
products. They should just sell the higher speed scope, bomb the
market, and then own it.
It's also very dishonest and goes to show why humanity will never make it
very far. People like Larkin are too arrogant to understand this. Do you
think people would buy their products if they knew that the only difference
between the low end and high end versions is the price? At the very least
they could have added some true functional improvement that made it
justifiable but simply changing the model number doesn't justify a 40% price
increase.
People buy the standard and Pro versions of Windows knowing the only
difference is a few flags. Windows consumer versions are brain-damaged
to allow only a small number of network connections at a time, and
cost almost nothing bundled with a PC. Windows Server removes the
limit and costs about $2K.
If you spent years writing a book or some software, would you be happy
if people copied it and distributed it for free, cutting off your
rotalties? After all, copies cost almost nothing. Now can you justify
charging $20 for a book or $500 for a program when it costs pennies to
manufacture copies?
John Larkin said:You don't favor copyrights or legal protection for intellectual
property? If you spent years writing a book or a symphony or
developing a product that was mostly firmware, you wouldn't mind if
people copied it and sold cheap knockoffs?
On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:29:12 +1100, "David L. Jones"
For those with a Rigol DS1052E oscilloscope, you can now turn it into a
100MHz DS1102E with just a serial cable:
Dave.
What you have done is possibly a criminal act in the USA, using a
computer to deprive Rigol of revenue. In the US, "using a computer" to
perform an act can be a much more severe crime than the act itself.
I have some sympathy for Rigol here. Many of our products have an
option that can be enabled in firmware, and that we charge for. We put
a lot of engineering effort into the firmware, and need to be paid for
it. If buyers of my gear can order the cheaper one and make it into
the expensive one, by copying an EPROM maybe, or setting a bit in
flash somewhere, I can't recover the cost of the feature. The act is
arguably legal theft. It's certainly moral theft.
Products are increasingly IP and less hardware these days, and the IP
is expensive.
Of course, Rigol made it too easy. They will probably go back and make
it harder to do, and that will make the scope cost more in both
versions.
I recently got a 1052E, and it's a pretty nice scope. The digital
filtering is not perfect, but it's sure cute. It has way more goodies
than a comparable Tek for under half the price. I'll probably get a
few more.
John
The design cost is amortized over all the units. [Hey, don't worry
what the consults charges, it will go to zero as we sell a million
units.]
Rigol does themselves a disservice by having to maintain two
products. They should just sell the higher speed scope, bomb the
market, and then own it.
Destroying a market isn't usually a good way to make money in the long
run.
And it's easily possible that Rigol saves a boatload of money by having
only one assembly number to design, code, build, and test. Remember
that (as Dave discovered earlier) they're actually overclocking the ADCs
on the 100 MHz model--so one can argue it's really a 50 MHz scope that
Rigol themselves hacked into a 100 MHz one.
Companies have been selling crippleware forever--the earliest example I
know of was the 6 MHz IBM PC-AT. You changed the crystal and one other
thing that I forget, and suddenly you had a blistering fast 8 MHz AT!
(Cooler than the coolest thing ever, no?) There were similar howls of
outrage over that one.
The moral question is actually an interesting one, I think, and the
different views seem to hinge on what people think they're buying, and
whether a hardware/software combination is more like hardware (which you
can hack up as you like) or software (which has a license agreement
you're bound by).
<snip>
Not at all. IP costs money to develop and has to be paid for. And
there are economies of scale from building one hardware platform and
marketing competitive products that have different firmware. Rigol's
error was to make the hack too easy.
It's like stealing stuff out of cars. People will steal thongs if you
don't roll up the windows and lock the doors, so everybody has to roll
up the windows and lock the doors. Ditto big steel vaults in banks.
It's inefficient because a minority of people will game the rules any
way they can, sometimes just because they can.
It has very clean transient response as shipped, at the 50 (or 70) MHz
bandwidth. The hacked version is ratty looking. I wouldn't do the hack
even if it was morally and legally fine.
This is a very nice little scope, superb for the price. It has loads
of more features than a comparable Tek at around 1/3 the price.
Why Jones would choose to hurt Rigel is a mystery to me.
<snip>
Jones is perfectly capable of estimating the considerable economic
damage he is doing to Rigol.
<snip>
John said:The scopes are not identical because they have different specs and
firmware.
John Larkin said:Does that mean you are willing to copy software, purchased by yourself
or others, in violation of a license agreement? And that your
willingness depends on your opinion of the quality of the product?
By your logic Microsoft should only be charging $0.50 for the costs of
the DVD when they sell Windows7.
John Larkin said:Jones still hasn't said why he did it.