The Trouble with Tethering - Features - features.engadget.com

This is an story writen by a geek writer, but it's very clear and easy to understand, and it's about an important subject... tethering.

The story explains it better than I could, but the example given was a coffee machine that was very good. They considered buying it, and it seemed like a good buy, but they didn't. Why? Becuase the machine required 'pods' of coffee to make the coffee.

So, that means they would never be able to use the flavor they wanted. They would also be stuck if the price of the 'coffee pod' (love that phrase) was raised. And most importantly, if the company went out of business, they would have a very useless nothing machine.

This is an important topic, becuase we will be seeing more and more of this in the near future. Today, we take for granted that we can get after market items like priter ink and car parts from where ever we want. That is changing. Even now, the larger printer makers are considering or already doing this, by adding chips in the ink holders that tell the printer that they are company made. And new laws make it illegal for other companies to even try work out what the chip does, making third party inks impossible.

"Hey, that is just computer stuff... I don't care!" I'm sure some of you are thinking that. But I've got news for you. Chips can be put anywhere. It would be quiet simple to make a shaving razor that only took blads from 'chipped' blades made by the same company. And don't you doubt they are considering this right now.

As computers and electronics become smaller and more flexible, some amazing things are happening. Unfortunately, some of the worst practices of the computing world are coming to the regular world right along with those amazing things. So things that just geeks like me had to worry about will soon be facing you at the grocery store.

One of these days, you may be wondering what all that 'open source' talk was about, becuase you'll be looking for an open source razor.