Planned obsolescence or built-in obsolescence^[1] in industrial design is a policy of deliberately planning or designing a product with a limited useful life, so it will become obsolete or nonfunctional after a certain period of time.^[1] Planned obsolescence has potential benefits for a producer because to obtain continuing use of the product the consumer is under pressure to purchase again, whether from the same manufacturer (a replacement part or a newer model), or from a competitor which might also rely on planned obsolescence.^[1]
In some cases, deliberate deprecation of earlier versions of a technology is used to reduce ongoing support costs, especially in the software industry. Though this could be considered planned obselescence, it differs from the classic form in that the consumer is typically made aware of the limited support lifetime of the product as part of their licensing agreement.
For an industry, planned obsolescence stimulates demand by encouraging purchasers to buy sooner if they still want a functioning product. Built-in obsolescence is used in many different products. There is, however, the potential backlash of consumers who learn that the manufacturer invested money to make the product obsolete faster; such consumers might turn to a producer (if any exists) that offers a more durable alternative.
Planned obsolescence was first developed in the 1920s and 1930s when mass production had opened every minute aspect of the production process to exacting analysis.^{[citation needed]}
Estimates of planned obsolescence can influence a company's decisions about product engineering. Therefore the company can use the least expensive components that satisfy product lifetime projections. Such decisions are part of a broader discipline known as value engineering.

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Death By Medicine

Learn how to exercise your eye muscles for restoring healthy vision and eliminating prescription glasses

(NaturalNews) You're probably familiar with all sorts of mythologies promoted as "truisms" in modern medicine: Flu vaccines prevent the flu (they actually don't), CT scans are harmless (they aren't), chemotherapy works to save lives from cancer (it actually causes cancer), and so on. There are all sorts of falsehoods in dentistry, too: Mercury fillings are safe for you! (They aren't.) Gum health has nothing to do with nutrition! (It does.) Cavities can only be treated by drilling, filling and billing! (Often just a money-making scam.)

But did you also know that there are lies and mythologies promoted by eye doctors, too?

Here's a real whopper that's told to almost everyone: The reason you need glasses when you get older is because -- get this -- your eyeball changes its shape!

The only way your eyeballs change shape is if your skull gets cracked

This "eyeball changes its shape" con is a clever scam because it convinces tens of millions of people to buy high-priced prescription glasses each year, usually from the very same vision centers that promote this total quackery. If you just ponder it for a moment, you'll quickly realize how ludicrous the explanation really is. How can your eyeball change its shape when your eye SOCKET is made of bone?

Think about it. For your eyeball to get "longer" as they often tell you, your very skull would have to alter its bone structure. And while that most certainly happens in infants and children, the human skull doesn't keep shifting around when you're an adult. Unless you're run over by a truck or something, anyway, in which case blurred vision should be expected.

No, the real problem with the vision of most people is not that "your eyeball is getting longer" (ridiculous!) but rather that your lens muscles are getting flabby and out of shape!

How your lens muscles gets flabby and out of shape

Your iris is a muscle that controls your pupil, which is like the aperture of a camera lens. Its job is to regulate the amount of light entering the eye. The iris is not our concern here because we're more interested in the muscles that alter the shape of your lens.

Those muscles are part of what's called the ciliary body of your eye. The ciliary body contains muscles that, in real time, alter the curvature of your eye lens to achieve the proper focus of whatever scene you are observing (http://library.thinkquest.org/25607...). "Proper focus" means altering the curvature of your lens so that the rays of light entering your eye fall on your retina with pinpoint accuracy.

As any photographer well knows, your focus must be altered when viewing something right in front of you (a near object) versus something far away (a far object). In a camera, this change in focus is achieved by altering the distance between two lenses contained in what is commonly called a "camera lens" (it's actually multiple lenses), but in the human eye, this is achieved by changing the shape of the lens through the contraction or relaxation of the ciliary muscles.

You probably never noticed yourself doing this because you don't feel your ciliary muscles working, but they achieve this focus for you thousands of times a day, automatically and without any effort on your part.

Some people (like myself) have achieved conscious control over these muscles, and we can consciously choose to alter the focus of our eyes at any moment, regardless of what scene we're looking at. But for most people, the function is their ciliary muscles is involuntary. (I'm in my 40's and continue to have perfect vision, never needing contact lenses or glasses. I also boost my vision with nutrition such as astaxanthin, lutein and zeaxanthin supplements.)

How to strengthen your ciliary muscles that control your eye lenses

Like any muscle, the ciliary muscles can become weak. How does a muscle become weak? From lack of exercise, of course. If you want strong legs, you need to walk and run from time to time, right? Well, if you want a strong, functioning ciliary muscle set, you need to alternate your vision between near objects and far objects so that these muscles are challenged to stay strong. This also increases the flexibility (range of motion) of your eye lenses (sort of like yoga for your eyes).

Now here's the real kicker in all this: Most people in modern society never view anything far away anymore! They don't live out in the country, in other words, so they're not looking at something a mile away. No mountains are even visible in most cities, and peoples' vision is focused entirely on things that are close. So their ciliary muscles are "locked" in a state of constant contraction. This causes these muscles to tighten, just like your leg muscles if you never stretch out from time to time.

This is all made even worse by the television set -- or perhaps your computer monitor. Today's population spends so much time viewing mobile texting devices, cell phones, portable gaming devices and computer monitors that it's amazing their ciliary muscles have any range of motion at all.

Sooner or later, after a lack of exercise (i.e. focusing on things at various distances), your ciliary muscles get flabby while also losing range of motion and then your eye lenses can't achieve the focus they're supposed to. So instead of the light rays striking your retina where they're supposed to, they may strike a point inside your eyeball a quarter inch in front of your retina instead (as an example, or in other cases it may be some distance behind your retina, which also causes blurred vision). This is where eye doctors get their ridiculous idea that "your eyeballs are too long!"

That's stupid. Your eyeballs aren't "too long." That's just some mythology dreamed up by vision doctors to sell you more glasses. No, unless you're a mutant or something, the real problem is that your ciliary muscles are too weak and lack range of motion to alter the curvature of your lenses.

This problem, fortunately, can often be solved with simple exercises.

(By the way, it should also be obvious from this that the very act of wearing contacts or wearing glasses makes your eye problem worse because it allows your ciliary muscles to stop working, relying on the artificial lenses of your glasses to do that work for you. In much the same way that taking insulin makes diabetes worse over the long haul, wearing glasses also makes your vision worse over time...)

How to exercise your eyeballs and help restore healthy vision

So what if there were a way to exercise your eyeballs and restore the strength and range of motion of your ciliary muscles? Would that restore normal vision?

For many people, YES! Not for everyone, of course. There are other causes of poor vision, such as cataracts, neurological damage (aspartame!), cross-linked protein rigidity of the lens itself (poor nutrition) and so on. But in a surprisingly large number of cases, healthy vision can be restored through simple exercises that you can do at home, in just a few minutes a day, using only your eyes and a simple tool.

That simple tool is a pair of pinhole glasses. They're like exercise machines for your eyes. You simply wear them for a few minutes a day, then walk around and look at stuff. Click here to pick some up from the NaturalNews Store.

How pinhole glasses exercise your ciliary muscles and help restore normal vision

Looking through pinhole glasses, as simple as it sounds, causes the ciliary body of your eyes to engage in adaptive exercise that increases the range of motion of your ciliary muscles which control your lenses. This happens because the pinhole glasses are made with hundreds of tiny holes that change the light entering your eyes from an overpowering mass of light rays to a collection of lower-intensity, distinct light rays that effectively give your eyes a more "organized" pattern on which to focus. There's probably a more technical explanation for all this, of course, but the practical upshot is that all sorts of people who suffer from vision problems -- myopia, hyperopia, presbyopia, astigmatism, computer vision syndrome, and so on -- often report instantly improved clarity of vision when wearing these pinhole glasses.

It's not magic, it's just physics. If you force your eye lens muscles to adapt by challenging them, they will usually respond with improved function over time (just like building leg strength by walking or jogging).

Even better, many people report ongoing improvements in their vision even after taking off these pinhole glasses. Looking through the pinholes, you see, exercises the muscles that control the shape of your lens, and as those muscles become stronger (over a period of several days and weeks), they become more capable of focusing light in the proper place on your retina. This means no more blurry vision.

It's the same principle as doing pull-ups to get a stronger upper body, or walking up flights of stairs to build stronger leg muscles. Your eye lenses are controlled by muscles, and like any muscle in your body, those muscles need to be challenged in order to stay strong and fully functional -- and to restore their full, healthy range of motion.

Click this link to pick up some pinhole glasses right now from the NaturalNews Store:
http://www.naturalnews.com/NNStore-...

I find it interesting, by the way, that some people would rather have crutches than restore their normal healthy function. Have you ever seen those people zipping around in electric scooters at the grocery store? Many of those people used to be able to walk just fine! But then they started using the scooters as a convenience, and now -- after a few months of that -- their leg muscles have atrophied to the point where they can't walk! Prescription glasses do the same thing to your eyes. Once you start using them, your ciliary muscles atrophy to the point where you need those glasses just to see clearly.

The vision industry, not surprisingly, makes money off consumer ignorance. It's not in their interests to teach people how to restore your own healthy vision without needing prescription glasses. This is the same way that the pharmaceutical industry doesn't want you to prevent disease because they make more money when you stay sick!

The safest and most affordable way to improve vision for many

Pinhole glasses are a safe and affordable way to take responsibility for your eye health and potentially avoid costly and inconvenient contact lenses or glasses forever. These pinhole glasses cost about the same as a pair of sunglasses at the grocery store, and they're not medical devices at all, so they need no prescription. They contain no lenses themselves, either.

Safety note: Do not wear pinhole glasses while driving or operating heavy machinery such as an airplane, a military humvee or a wrecking ball crane. These glasses partially obscure vision and should be used solely as exercise devices in a safe environment like your home.

They don't work for every case of vision impairment, of course, as there are many causes for blurred vision. But they work remarkably well for most people who try them. And there's no risk in trying, since you can return them to our store if they don't work for you, so there's zero risk in finding out if your own vision problem might be partially or fully resolved by simply exercising your eyes.

Pinhole sunglasses are available now at the NaturalNews Store Holiday Specials page:
http://www.naturalnews.com/NNStore-...

We've heard countless success stories from people wearing these simple devices. Try them yourself to see how they might help you! And remember, our satisfaction guarantee means there's no risk in trying these to see how they might help you live with stronger, more flexible eye muscles.

Zero-cost options you can achieve on your own

Another way to approach this is to simply exercise the range of motion of your ciliary muscles by alternating between focusing on close objects versus far away objects (such as the horizon). This is most easily accomplished from inside your home, near a window. Simply look at something on your desk, then look at something outside your window that's far, far away (ideally, at the horizon). Alternate this process several times, then rest your eyes, and then repeat. Do this daily for a few minutes each day.

With added nutritional support for eye health (lutein, zeaxanthin, astaxanthin and so on), these exercises can, over time, enhance the range of motion of your ciliary muscles and eye lenses. With these exercises, you may discover that you are able to reduce the intensity of your prescription glasses, step by step, until one day you don't need them at all.

The pinhole glasses may help accelerate this process even more, in much the same way that working out with weights is a faster way to build muscle strength than working out with no weights at all.

The most important point in all this is to realize that blurred vision is not some sort of permanent eye damage but usually just a functional aberration that can often be resolved through training. In much the same way that physical therapy can help people rebuild functional muscle mass in their legs, arms or torso, eye exercises can help rebuild functional strength in your eyes.

It's the greatest secret of the eyeglasses industry: Many people don't need eye glasses! Many people don't need contact lenses! What they need is eye exercise. But don't expect the for-profit vision industry to tell you about any of that. Like Big Pharma, they only make money when people stay victims and believe they cannot help themselves. Here at NaturalNews, we specialize in teaching people how to restore health by taking responsibility for their own health outcomes, thereby avoiding the outrageous costs (and inhumane suffering) caused by the medical industry.

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For all you married couples who want a good laugh