On Wed, 27 Apr 2005 22:08:49 -0500, Leonard Martin
wrote:

Well, how nice for you that you function in a world where $75 for a
manual is small change! There are lots of us hobbyists out here who like
to experiment with electronics but who might find that to be their "mad"
money for a month. Somehow, as one of them, I'm not convinced by your
"all us well-off businessmen should be good t each other" argument.


The last "new" price for a 5370B was over $30K, hardly hobbyist turf.
A decent used one can cost from a few hundred dollars (ebay, as-is) to
a couple of thousand (guaranteed, calibrated from a broker.) $75 ain't
bad in this context.


This kind of stuff is part of a trend that's been going on, to my
amazement, for a couple of decades now. It might be summed up as
"Business is more important than anything. The market is God. Whatever's
good for either is great, and the devil take the rest!" Under this
regime each new enormity perpetrated by some business, like this one by
Aligent (or the copyright extension that business got away with a while
ago) first causes a bit of squirming on the part of the victims, but
then other virtuous souls remind them of the three divine maxims set out
above, and everyone then naturally knuckles under.

How did a once-free, and in fact instinctively rebellious, people come
to this?

Leonard


Once free? What you are complaining about is precisely freedom. If you
don't like Agilent equipment, or their policies towards their
intellectual property, buy something else, or build your own. If you
don't like paying somebody for their book or their music, write your
own.

John