On Tue, 28 Oct 2003 14:29, Rob wrote: > Worse still would be if this got > into the channel and someone with an axe to grind decided to sue > Mandrake for knowingly selling something that would destroy > equipment, however cheap the equipment may be... in some > jurisdictions this would probably be legal no matter what the > EULA or the GPL says.
It's unequivocally the equipment's fault. The Mandrake-shipped kernel hews to the ATAPI spec, which requires the device to ignore or return an error for standards commands that it does not implement. Instead, the device dies when it receives a well-defined ATAPI command. Even if it did abuse the opcode for something else, it comes under the category "blood stupid" to accept a firmware upload on the wrong opcode with no checksums or data integrity checking of any sort. What happens if the power fails midway through an update? What happens when Windows begins to crash and spew garbage down the IDE buss? If you want corroborating evidence to show that it's not Mandrake's fault, do the search that Juan suggested. You'll find Windows users blowing up LG drives in the same way. Good luck suing Microsoft or the writers of the Windows burner software in question for that one. LG's claim "untested with Linux" is bogus, both because Linux ain't the problem, and because as another poster noted, their retail box says it's supported under Slackware. Cheers; Leon
