As soon as I saw this thread I knew it was trouble. I was able to
resist posting for the first couple of days - I do wish I had
maintained this restraint.
On 19 Jul 2007, at 00:48, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
if somebody buys locked hardware, it is his own freaking fault. Or
could
ANYBODY claim to be surprised by say Tivo?
Apparently some people legitimately were:
On 18 Jul 2007, at 17:15, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
> That's because you *could* swap out the software on early TiVos.
b) I never said Linus didn't own a Tivo himself.
What I said was that he might see things differently were
"Tivotisation" to _cost him personally_ time, inconvenience,
frustration and expense.
if that would be the case he would not have bought a Tivo...
I didn't bring up Tivo, it was someone else who did so in response to
me.
You're clearly not grasping my point, so I'm sorry for not making it
more clearly.
I can't imagine you might be ignoring my point just for the sake of
arguing. ;)
My reference to Linus changing his mind was in reference to him
hypothetically going out and with his own money buying some Product_X
(not a Tivo!!) which was shipped running Linux, which didn't perform
quite as he expected and which he subsequently & UNEXPECTEDLY found
he was unable to fix because it would only run his software if the
binaries were signed with some secret cryptographic key.
I imagine him crying "They're using the operating system _I_ wrote to
lock me out of _my own_ hardware?!?!?!?"
Discussing Tivos at this stage isn't conducive to constructive
discussion because we're all familiar with that particular brand.
My own personal experience is with an ADSL modem-router which is
locked to a specific internet service provider. At the time I bought
this model <http://groups.google.com/group/uk.telecom.broadband/msg/
e94af4c1a93bad18> there was very little written on the internet about
it being locked to the vendor's network - I guess it was perhaps just
a year old and that few owners of the router would have reached the
end of their 1-year minimum contract with the ISP (although they
could legitimately have sold the router on within that year and used
a USB ADSL modem instead).
It was only having bought the device that I discovered this problem
and I didn't even know it ran Linux until I subsequently started
analysing its firmware (I believe the vendor may have breached the
"keep intact all notices" part of clause 4 of the GPL, but that's
aside). After I found the device worked at my friends' house using
their Wanadoo username & password (but not at my own house on my ISP)
I searched extensively and found only a couple of references to the
locking after some considerable searching. So it clearly was not my
expectation that the device would be locked and it's hardly
reasonable to assume I might have expected it - the practice of
giving away "free" wireless routers with ISP contracts was far less
common in the UK at the time.
I'm not trying to blame Wanadoo or you or Linus or anyone for my
mistake in this matter - I'm merely trying to illustrate how easily
one could find oneself in possession of locked hardware running open-
source code.
If you retain your opinion on these matters having found yourself in
such a position then I'll concede that you're a man considerably more
charitable than I.
My hypothetical situation of Linus personally expending time,
frustration and expense is clearly a mere literary illustration.
Considering that his Red Hat and VA Linux stock options bring Linus'
net worth to $20 million or so and manufacturers line up to gift him
dual-processor G5s it's unlikely that an £80 router is going to cause
him the same dismay it would to a single mother on minimum wage who
unexpectedly found herself that much out of pocket.
and why does a temper proof box cause you 'frustration'?
Because I'm unable to use a device I purchased in a way it might
reasonably be expected to be used.
The active part of the last sentence is "when needed"
and when do you 'need' to hack a tivo?
When your subscription expires? I assume that the Tivo subscription
is only for the TV schedules and there are now plenty of alternative
free sources for those. You might well wish to run MythTV on your set-
top box - why shouldn't one do that? The user does, after all, own
the hardware.
And telling someone what he can do with HIS hardware is
just wrong.
I hope you appreciate the irony of this statement.
Stroller.
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