But they could be making more money!

Since I've been looking into BluRay, I've heard information that makes it more annoying everything time I hear more. The discs have keys that get updated, so if you have a player, you need to update the firmware, until it stops being supported so you need to buy a new player. And on the computer, you need commercial software. It sounds like a huge money sink, but... they are missing out on a trick.

In general, you get a computer with hardware and software, and there are drivers for the hardware, which hopefully work, and everything ticks along. (I'm going to ignore Microsoft's tendency to depreciate Windows.) As long as you don't change anything, and aren't interesting in updating, you could keep going on and on...

But how is that making money for the corporations?

What they need is a way to force money out of people, even if they do nothing! How about... device drivers that expire? That way you need to update, even if you don't want to get any new items, until eventually the corporations stop supporting, and then you have to upgrade everything...

But, wait, then things might be able to be cracked! (As far as I can recall, I don't have any cracked software or hardware on my computers.) We can delay that if we look at how the gaming system is handling piracy. The computer needs to talk to the main server (as long as it isn't down, or the company hasn't gone bust, etc.) before you can use a particular device.

Or... how about we log into a computer that's housed elsewhere that we can set up and stuff, and pay money for the priviledge?

Yep, we're back to the terminal/server model.

But at least corporations would be making money.

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