On 09/07/2017 02:18 PM, Rick Moen wrote:

Quoting taii...@gmx.com (taii...@gmx.com):

I also find a bit questionable your going around attempting to tarnish
the reputation of someone with a real name, while concealing your own.
Criticism isn't allowed?
This is of course nothing like what I said.

I dislike when people deal with speculation instead of proven facts
when judging technical merits.
Then, _address what you perceive as speculation_.
I apologize - I should have done that in the first place instead of resorting to name calling.

Mr. Selli has said:
*That IBM's POWER CPU's have a hardware level backdoor and have had backdoors in the past whilst providing no real evidence to support that those claims, he bolstered that argument by stating that IBM's work with the US military is suspect and thus concludes guilt by association.

IBM sells POWER chips to both the the US Military and the Chinese Military, doing that is largely as to why they are still in business - as the worlds third maker of high performance computing hardware one simply can't and shouldn't ignore the worlds two largest consumers.

IBM has done a variety of bad things, but that doesn't mean OpenPOWER isn't a really good one.

* That the presence of a BMC chip on POWER means it has a backdoor

BMC chips are a common server feature required for remotely administering a computer without headache, this one is owner controlled (no hw code signing enforcement) and has full source code available to the public after POWER9 is released.


*That TALOS is proprietary closed source hardware - which isn't true - as not being that is the entire point of it.

After the release of POWER9 the board and BMC firmware sources will be provided, and both the CPU/board and the BMC are owner controlled due to the absence of hardware enforced code signing. Full documentation and HDL's will be available for all components besides the onboard broadcom nics which currently require a firmware blob as there are no open source non-intel gigabit NIC's - but the FSF says that this minor detail doesn't prevent it from receiving RYF certification as they are behind the POWER-IOMMU and as such are not capable of doing anything malicious.


* That the reason he/purism hasn't made owner controlled hardware is because it is "too expensive" Purism's "Librem" 15" laptop is $2,000 - in comparison one can have a TALOS-2 DIY build for $2.6K thus making an actual owner controlled device with significantly higher performance only an additional $600 which isn't really an obstacle for someone that can already afford a $2K computer (there are a variety of low cost low/mid performance owner controlled devices, now the high performance sector has one too)


* That the HAP mode "disabled" ME and makes a purism laptop somehow equivalent to TALOS when it comes to privacy and security.

ME_Cleaner even with HAP mode doesn't disable ME - a black box supervisor processor is still mandatory for the x86 boot process and is capable of a variety of dirty tricks so even if one can verify that it is actually off (difficult...by using an electron microscope perhaps?) there are various things that it could have done before powering off.
ME cleaner is nerfing/cleaning, nothing more.


* That we should contribute and trust a company that is attempting the sisyphean task of truly disabling ME.

Google has many times attempted to get intel to provide a method to disable ME and remove it from the boot process for their in house computers and the coreboot laptops they sell, they have not been successful - thus if a billion dollar company can't pull it off a small upstart certainly can't. I am sure it is **technically** possible to disable ME, but it would require years of research and hundreds of thousands in R&D for a single intel CPU generation making it pointless.


There are real owner controlled devices out there now, I see no reason to chase a pie in the sky dream of a free x86 - which simply isn't ever going to happen.

If purism had in 2013 consulted a skilled hardware engineer and not insisted on peddling intel quanta rebrands they would have probably made one of the following: * An 2013 AMD FT3 device, easily made open source (the Lenovo G505S has only a few blobs that can be easily replaced) with sandy bridge equivalent performance
* A performance ARM device such as an AppliedMicro CPU
* A POWER mobile workstation type laptop, which is possible with POWER9's lower wattage CPU's. * A KCMA-D8 laptop - the C32 platform has 35W 8 core CPU's and already has libre firmware so one would simply have to make a custom 1U "laptop" case, battery etc. The fact that they haven't retasked to do one of the above means that I distrust them and that they are sucking resources from real computing freedom projects and thus my nerves get twinged every time someone talks them up, moreso someone highly skilled such as mr. selli who I believe should know better.

  Instead ttempting
cheap character assassination, from behind cover of anonymity, suggests
you have no real argument.
I do not consider that character assassination, but I do again apologize anyway as I respect your contribution to the community.
I don't use my "real" name on the internet for the same reason I
don't want a computer with ME/PSP.
Once again, you are deflecting and changing the subject.  I said nothing
against being anonymous.
I felt as though you did :[
  I merely said that slagging reputations of
real named people with unsupported derogatory allegations, especially
when you refuse to name yourself, is disreputable and bogus

Of course, you don't actually need to worry about 'taii...@gmx.com'
developing a bad reputation:
I have a fine reputation, and I wish to keep it that way - I am not one to simply "walk away" nor start trouble.
At some point, you can just walk away from
that 'nym and be someone else, which is the whole point, isn't it?
No it isn't, I have had 5 separate targeting hacking attacks on me in my 10 years on the internet - one of those people attempted to find my physical location so he could SWAT me which is why I never use my real name nor have any type of social media.

I think a dng-philosphy list may be a good idea, but I was under the assumption that [DNG] was simply a campfire for systemd refugees (as it isn't dng-dev) based on list description and the previous content of the list which mind you this thread is quite benign compared to some.
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