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Discuss BIOS and Palladium Issues With an AMIBIOS Rep
After this Slashdot discussion about the relationship between BIOS biggie American Megatrends Inc. (AMI) and Palladium appeared, we got an email from AMI sales engineer (and former Linux.com contributor) Brian Richardson, who wrote, "I am a bit concerned that the information you provided misled your readers into thinking AMI was promoting Palladium or taking some sort of anti-open-source stance. This might be due to the fact that TCPA was mistakenly equated to Palladium, or questioning how Linux would run on a TCPA-enabled system ... or by the horde of angry Slashdot readers telling us they would never buy an AMI product because we were forcing standards on them." Brian offered himself up as (his words) a "Slashdot interview victim" to clear things up.(Update by RM: And, says Brian, he's happy to answer other BIOS questions as well.) So ask, already, and let's get things cleared up. (Usual Slashdot interview rules.)
Do you have any funny acronyms for AMIBIOS?
How many hours will it take after the first Palladium boards hit the market for someone to crack it and have linux running on it? Should I have put an 's' onto hours?
AMIBIOS or NOT?
How do you sleep at night?
No, I have not RTFA, I'm just taking the piss, ok?
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
Only to catch terrorists...
Will the BIOS contain spyware?
Never! It will contain some select offers from our partners and collect some information to customize and improve your booting experience
Can we really take the word of a conglomerate?
Will you be able to ensure that what you are saying is accurate?
No.
Our EULA will take care of that.
Modern conglomerates usually misrepresent their products if they think it will generate more customers. How can we be sure that you wouldn't be doing this to us?
As the courts become less and less of a threat for a corporation (and already a 0-threat to a corporation from an individual). There is NO way to be sure. Unless all the non-entry level employees in the company will be made to sign all these statements...
But surely that means we already have Trusted Computing? Windows (and other software) has shown itself to be vulnerable to many attacks which would breach my personal security (e.g. by mailing out my private documents to random people). Seeing as my machine is capable of breaching my security, that means it's trusted. Windows is already Trusted, Linux is Trusted, IIS is very Trusted ;)
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Of course. All my answers will be the [...] truth. No editorial input will be applied [unless deemed strictly necessary to guarantee appropriate standards of presentation -- Ed] between the time that [I] write the article and the time that [I] send it to [its recipient]. The PR guys promised. [No, we didn't.]
Come on, who're you kiddin'? Any reply from this guy, or anyone else writing on a subject so obviously controvserial, is going to be screened seventeen times over by PR weenies before it gets out into the wild.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.