Technology the way it should be made

In the good old days technology was built to last. At some point somebody decided that this was a bad business model. If a technology company is to continue to make a profit, they shouldn't have to compete with their older products, should they? The short answer is that they decided not to compete with older models by building into them flaws that cause them to cease to work after a specified amount of time. A Sony VAIO laptop I bought several years ago worked beautifully for three years (the warranty period plus a few months) before the mainboard self-destructed due to poor design. The curious among you can refer to the footnote to find out more about this problem. I'm sure most of you have, at one time or another, experienced this frustration, so it is with pleasure that I refer you to this article which talks about a cell phone taking quite a beating inside a fish and still being functional (after it was dried out, of course). It seems that at least somebody is pushing aside the principles of "planned obsolescense" in favor of durability.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to excellence in technology, and we will take this opportunity to explain our plan for dealing with "planned obsolescence." Under the GPD anyone found guilty of designing a product to self-destruct after the warranty period has expired will be subjected to a full night of listening to Kenny G's album Breathless while sitting in an uncomfortable chair. This may sound cruel and unusual, but as I have subjected myself to this torture (see second footnote) I am authorized to inflict it on others.

1. My laptop died because the capacitors in the vicinity of the processor were affected by the heat of the processor such that their capacitance changed. When their capacitance changed, alarms went off in the processor saying that the capacitance was incorrect, and the processor would abort. It was pretty neat for a while to run the operating system for a few minutes and then have it turn itself off. After a few more weeks it wouldn't even boot. The root problem here was that the designers of the motherboard didn't stop to think for long enough about heat distribution or long-term damage to the capacitors. Because the warranty had expired, however, Sony had no impetus to take responsibility for the design flaw.

2. I endured this torture in 2001 at the Lima, Peru airport. My flight arrived at just before midnight local time and my outgoing flight was supposed to leave at 6:00 am (but didn't leave until almost 10:00 am) so we decided against getting a hotel for a few hours' worth of sleep. They were playing the same Kenny G album over and over and over all night long.