Back in the days when dinosaurs were still walking the streets, I worked for an oil company that owned a large Control Data Corp. Cyber mainframe (ah, those were the days..)

At one point my employer got an offer from CDC to upgrade the memory of their Cyber, to double the size (I think from 32 MB to 64 MB). The only problem was the price, it was so horribly expensive that even an oil company had to think about it. And debate it endlessly internally, as I recall. In the end, CDC offered to lease the upgrade to them, so they accepted.

The next day our resident CDC technician (yes, resident. These computers came with an on-site technician) walked into the computer room with a pair of wire cutters in hand. He shut down the Cyber, opened a cabinet door and cut a single wire on the backplane. "There, all done."

Needless to say, my employer was not amused, but they got the memory upgrade they paid for.

In many ways this issue is the same as downloading crippleware or time limited try-before-you-buy software. The full functionality is already there, but you haven't yet paid a license for the right to use it.

In the end this comes down to a question of virtual vs. physical ownership. If we accept that we don't own a piece of software, just the right to use it, why not the same with hardware? You paid for a processor, yes. It's physical, you carried it home from the store. The manufacturer promised you N cores, spinning at whatever GHz, and with a certain amount of cache. They delivered on that promise.

Now they're offering an upgrade without the need for a new trip to the store. Why is this bad?

the insults facing the Galapagos

Surely the worst insult facing the Galapagos has to be Crea^H^H^H^H Intelligent Design?

Just a thought.