If the machine doesn’t have a network connection, reusing the barcodes is a possibility. Imagine an image board where people post their pod’s barcode (or pictures taken in a supermarket or other place where pods are sold.) Maybe posting at least one pod a month is a requirement for participation, so a box of 12 pods would last you a year.
When you want to operate your machine, your ask the image board “Give me a barcode I haven’t used before.” and it shows you one that you can print on a label maker to attach to your pod. Given enough people posting pod barcodes, unless you’re doing a daily 100 cup challenge (a la the Futurama episode “Three Hundred Big Boys”) you’re not going to run out of new (to YOUR machine) codes.
Kroger, the USA’s largest grocery retailer, is doing away with all of its bulk coffee and the coffee grinder, to make room for more pods. This is already going on in the Cincinnati market; I complained to one of the store managers, and his response was that the market share of whole-bean coffee is declining precipitously in the face of these mediocre, single-use aberrations.
I was asked a couple of years ago if I wanted a Keurig machine for Christmas. My reply was along the lines of “Have you gone INSANE?”
These machines make one cup of coffee. ONE cup, as in 8 ounces. The smallest coffee mug I use is about 16 ounces. The largest, 52 ounces. Or sometimes I can just take a fresh-brewed pot of coffee, dump in about a half-cup each sugar and creamer, add a straw, and I’m set.
The reason they’re adding “DRM” to their coffee pods is that they don’t think that they make the obviously best product at the best price, but want to be able to force their customers to buy from them anyway. So when, inevitably, their system is cracked by a competitor who puts better coffee at a lower price into the pods, Keurig strikes me as the kind of company that might just sue.
But what if it’s only possible to produce lower-quality coffee at a lower price, such that the competitor’s product serves only to tarnish their brand?
I once took advantage of a big online deal for replacement brush heads for my electric Oral-B toothbrush. They look authentic and were advertised as such, but are of decidedly inferior quality and fall apart quickly; if I were to judge my toothbrushing experience from these brush heads alone, I would be much less inclined to stick with Oral-B. Would it not be to both the company’s and the consumer’s advantage to include “DRM” in their brush heads?
Of course, some sort of “seal of quality” would serve the purpose just as well, but as I said, these brushes were largely indistinguishable from the genuine article (and no doubt produced in flagrant violation of several laws already).
Now, I prefer to make my own pancakes from flour, buttermilk, eggs, etc, so I don’t pay much attention to the technology of ready mixes, but it’s my understanding that early mixes required the cook to add one egg, so as not to disturb the illusion of home cooking-- the “just add water” mixes, (which were technically possible at the time) with dry milk and dry eggs, didn’t sell.
Has anyone tried the argument that even if you can copyright your source code, that the object code is the output of a machine and not an authored creative work? Or that mechanically decompiled code (perhaps into a different programming language) is sufficiently different as to not be subject to the same copyright (and could later be re-compiled with and different compiler)? After all, traditionally copyright protects expressions not ideas.
of course you are right. I mean to say that if you bypass the DRM functions, there is no way for the maker to know unless it can report it back to them.
IANAL IANYL ATINLA, but my understanding of the legal theory is that the object code is not a product of a purely mechanical / mathematical / algorithmic process – as without the source code, the object code would not exist - i.e. the object code is itself an expression. Conceiving of it differently might arise the argument that a gzip’d file is itself not subject to copyright, because it is an expression of the idea but not the direct expression of the idea, but a machine-transformed one.
My grandmother is a firm believer that powdered eggs are best for baking. I’ve eaten them once, in a hospital canteen, shortly after my daughter’s birth. They’re fucking horrible. I got offered a staff discount mind, as I apparently looked so exhausted, I could only possibly be a locum.
But what if it’s only possible to produce lower-quality coffee at a lower price, such that the competitor’s product serves only to tarnish their brand?
If you judge a device based on what their competitor’s products behave like, you’re doing it wrong.
They look authentic and were advertised as such, but are of decidedly inferior quality and fall apart quickly;
So, you got taken by counterfeit toothbrush heads, and that’s somehow the manufacturer’s fault? Take it up with the reseller.
Wow. If I’m going to be putting this much energy into my cup of coffee, I want to be roasting and/or growing my own damn beans! If Keureg is to fall, I’d rather it be from malicious hacking than DIY folk circumventing their DRM.
I’m spoiled; there’s a city farm not 10 mins from my house, and I work somewhere where there’s the freest of free-range chickens, geese & guinea-fowl. I don’t eat shop eggs, not no-how. And whatever those things are, they scare me.
