For a Core M, Intel HD Graphics, 8GB, 11.6" laptop.
That's some pricey freedom.
They don't even have a model with an Ethernet port (which makes me question what disabling the ME actually does anyway, because isn't the ME for things like OOB access?).
Sorry, but - as always - I have to live in the real world rather than some scene out of Hackers. And if I really valued my freedom and genuinely thought things like this were the threat, I wouldn't be using any of these machines, no matter the cost.
They don't include an ethernet port on the machines because there is no compatible hardware they can install on their devices which can be operated within Linux without requiring use of a firmware blob. As a Purism Librem 15v3 owner, I'm not quite as hardcore as Purism themselves are, so I am willing to use firmware blobs for specific devices. So instead of PureOS I run Arch. I have also replaced the 100% libre Atheros wifi hardware with an Intel module because the Atheros module had les than great performance (plus doesn't support 802.11ac). As for ethernet, I have a USB3/Ethernet dongle that I use for that purpose. Having said all that, I have used Purism's update to completely disable Intel ME on my laptop and everything is working without a hitch. I don't trust Intel ME. I'm willing to trust tiny firmware blobs for specific devices in specific cases. I'm not willing to trust an entirely seperate and unauditable system that operates independently and secretly. No sir. IME is a cancer (and PSP by extension) on modern day computing.
To those that claim that you can disable and remove Intel ME on other laptops, so this really isn't a big deal or particularly notable. You are telling half truths. For older hardware that is certainly true. For Skylake level hardware there are no other devices that that had have or currently can have the Intel ME removed/neutralized/disabled. me_cleaner doesn't support Skylake level systems yet. In fact the Purism update process makes use of a forked version of the me_cleaner which contains changes Purism has made to accomodate their Skylake hardware. They plan on switching back to me_cleaner once all of their patches are accepted in the upstream project.
But hey, don't take my word for it. Cruise the blogs and forums on Purism's website if you want to learn more. Don't take my word for it. Don't take anybody's word for it. Especially not Intels much less AMDs.
Frankly your response only serves to show me just how far the standard for discourse here at Slashdot has fallen. I remember the days when Slashdot was a reliable community of Linux users. The fact we've got users here now that actually get their panties in a bunch over me taking a pot shot at Windows 8 is a sign of the times I suppose. What a sad, sad sign it is however.
The hardware has changed in some way. There are numerous discussions on the patches required to deal with the changes. There is also an arch thread that covers it and links to all of the pertinent details:
For starters - they haven't broken my SSL. Secondly, Superfish was only installed on non-Thinkpad machines. So in a sense I have voted with my wallet by buying a machine that was guaranteed to not have Superfish installed by default rather than purchasing a cheaper and ultimately less well built model that likely would've had it installed.
As for obvious distaste for Arch users, you are kidding right?
...and it rocks. Seriously. I've got Arch Linux loaded on this thing and it screams. The keyboard kicks ass. The trackpad is easily the best I've ever seen on a PC laptop. Picked mine up for a reasonable price with a 10% off coupon (I5, 8 gigs, 128 gig SSD which I upgraded to 512 gig on my own later in an effort to avoid the extortion like upgrade prices Lenovo charges on their site) for around $1100. I'm getting between about six and eight hours of battery life in Linux at the moment.
It's a sweet piece of hardware. Superfish? Who gives a fuck? I didn't even boot the M.2 SSD the thing came with. I immediately opened up the laptop and changed out the SSD as my first order of business. Buying a laptop this nice just to run Windows 8.x probably just means you are some kind of moron. Do yourselves a favor and move onto a better operating system.
Still while it is a great Linux laptop - it's not perfect - yet. The Trackpoint buttons dont work quite right in Linux yet but numerous patches (libinput, xorg synaptics driver and the kernel) are making their way into source trees everywhere. So for now it's a trackpad only experience as the trackpoint is useless without working hardware buttons.
In any event I couldn't be more pleased with this purchase.
All or nothing? Nearly every part of systemd beyond the minimal PID 1 functionality can be switched out with replacement components. Linux users are supposed to be more intelligent, though if that's the case why is it that so many of them seem to have shoved their head up their ass in regards to systemd? Almost every piece of information in the original post is 100% inaccurate and yet nobody is calling the author out on it.
This guy created Citrix? Sounds like they'll need to build a whole new nastier level of hell to accommodate him. Citrix is one of the worst products ever made. Years later and it's still clearly nothing more than a nasty hack. Give me a Citrix box and I'll give you back a p0wned box. As for OS/2, well that just makes me sad.
This isn't just about copyright notifications. The version of DOSBox being used in this distribution is a modification of 0.70. It was clearly modified on a source level as the exe is now dependent upon the existence of certain Steam libraries. This has been confirmed here:
Running the modded DOSBox.exe in it's own directory first complains about missing SDL libraries. After adding those, it will them complain about missing Steam libraries. This is clearly a derivative work under the terms of the GPL and the source code has not been made available.
So Valve/Id have to go down one of two roads now:
1) Release the derivative source and give us valuable insight into how their DRM Steam engine works.
2) Pull the release and piss off a ton of people on Steam.
Either way - Valve is in trouble here. What kills me is that instead of protecting the game executables, they protected the GPLed Emulator they use to run them. What a bunch of idiots. If you ever needed a reason to hate Valve and Steam, they've just handed it to you on a silver platter. I mean isn't it ironic that for all the DRM in Steam designed to protect their own copyrights, that they manage to trample on the copyright of several people in the process and they just don't seem to care?
When your PS2 was knocked over, was the disc spinning at the time? It is my understanding that the 360 keeps the disc spinning most of the time. I don't remember the PS2 doing that....
My sources tell me that the discs get scratched when people decide to change the orientation of their XBOX 360 while this disc is spinning. So lets say that they have a game in the XBOX 360, they hit pause and suddenly decide, "I don't like how this thing looks horizontal, let me sit it vertically and see how it looks". During that transition, the spinning disc will actually collide with the tray and cause extreme damage to the disc rendering it useless. Oh and there is also a loud grinding noise.
Anybody stupid enough to damage their game this way probably deserves to pay for the replacement fee as it is. This information has been relayed to me and confirmed by a regional manager at Gamestop and given the number of stores he manages, I'm quite willing to take his word for it.
It is amazing that anybody buys this crap. TPM chips are on the motherboards of Intel based Macs. The Intel Dev Kit makes heavy use of TPM to keep the OS from being run on unauthorized computers. As some of you may have heard, an image of the Intel Developers Kit (includes OS X 10.4.1 install) leaked onto the web. There are a number of fake releases - but this particular one is real and the community has been dissecting it rather heavily. Here is their rebut to this specific article:
I suggest everybody take the time to read this. Yet again we have a slashdot article which not only is wrong but being defended by a bunch of goons who can't be bothered to find out the truth for themselves.
I can't speak for many others but my SSID is "KeepDrivingAsshole" - I've also seen one in my wardriving travels called, "LeaveMeAlone". Apparently somebody had already had a bit of fun with his network, eh?
VB6 is a horrible programming environment compared to VB.NET. The.NET framework can't be compared to anything in the pre VB.NET world as there is no real basis to perform the comparison. VB6 and below are interpreted dung heaps of languages that rely upon programmer inexperience and inability to cope with truly logical constructs. I suspect the reason you and your friends continue to use VB6 over VB.NET is simply that you haven't the skill to make ends meet in the.NET environment.
Also there was only one version of VB ever made that wasn't bloated. That of course was the original version for DOS (screenie linked below):
Wow. I don't comment on here much anymore but somebody who gets the joke ought to mod the parent up as funny. Then again they are probably watching too much anime around here to have time for cultured films like "The Royal Tenenbaums".
The difference between Windows and Linux in this regard is:
1) The people smart enough to write the drivers in Windows are also smart enough to buy better hardware.
2) The people smart enough to write the drivers in Linux are too cheap to buy the better hardware to begin with.
Such a viscious cycle - wouldn't you agree? A few years ago A LOT of VIA boards had that IRQL_LESS_THAN... error show up. A lot of Via fans tried to point to Creative Labs Soundcards, ATI or NVidia Video Cards as the source of the problem. Sadly enough this problem seems virtually non existant on machines with decent chipsets (Intel, SiS...) and the fact that the VIA fanbois didn't and still don't recognize this speaks highly of their inability to see the truth clearly.
As for VIA itself - go to any of the LKML mailing list archive sites and do a nice search for VIA related stuff. That ought to give you a real good idea how bad VIA stuff really is.
Is there a VIA Chipset on the board or not? If so - you lose. The Linux kernel is absolutely full of VIA related hack jobs in order to keep things working correctly. So much for compatibility huh...?
Get better hardware. Seriously. This error has next to nothing to with Winamp and has more to do with the piss poor components sottered unto the VIA motherboard that is likely driving your box. I've heard these complaints before for less educated people and you aren't doing yourself any sort of service by revoicing them here. That is CLEARLY a hardware related problem and blaming it on an end user application that never directly touches the hardware is nothing less than pure ignorance.
MIPS, PPC, and Alpha all had NT4 versions (fully. None of them made it to Windows 2000. The alpha version of win2k made it to Release Candidate 1 and was subsequently dumped by MS and Compaq.
Supporting Links: http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/nts/down loads/re commended/SP6/allSP6.asp (Notice the inclusion of an DEC Alpha download for SP6 for NT4)
Wow... that page is quite telling is it not? Somebody mod this guy up please. The evidence sited on that page pretty much says it all. SCO themselves is to blame for what they are blaming IBM for. They even have Ransom Love's own Keynote speech recorded to prove it! Not to mention the dozens of links to postings made to various Linux development lists that clearly show SCO to be the driving force not IBM.
If you have read the additional information link I provided you would see quite clearly that both the 9700 and 9800 cards work fine with these drivers. AFAIK the only problems with these drivers occur in Xinerama or Dual Screen modes. Otherwise if you are using a single screen you should have no problems.
I've used these drivers and they work very well with my ATI Radeon 9700 (with same caveats in dual monitor modes). This latest version is reported by dependable people to work with R350 chipset cards.
If you aren't going to try the drivers - stop whining. Being that you use Linux - you should be used to making use of solutions that aren't 100% officially supported. Make no mistake, these drivers ARE from ATI and they are considered bleeding edge. They may not officially support use of these drivers but that shouldn't keep you from pulling your head out of your ass and TRYING to use them before whining.
What really boggles my mind is that you went out and bought a 9700 card without doing the research in regards to available drivers. Assuming the drivers didnt exist, thats a lot of money to flush down the toilet for no good reason. If you bought the card to use in Linux and didn't take the time to research the driver situation then you really have nobody to blame but yourself now do you?
Slashdot Mirror
"Preorder from $1,199"
For a Core M, Intel HD Graphics, 8GB, 11.6" laptop.
That's some pricey freedom.
They don't even have a model with an Ethernet port (which makes me question what disabling the ME actually does anyway, because isn't the ME for things like OOB access?).
Sorry, but - as always - I have to live in the real world rather than some scene out of Hackers. And if I really valued my freedom and genuinely thought things like this were the threat, I wouldn't be using any of these machines, no matter the cost.
They don't include an ethernet port on the machines because there is no compatible hardware they can install on their devices which can be operated within Linux without requiring use of a firmware blob. As a Purism Librem 15v3 owner, I'm not quite as hardcore as Purism themselves are, so I am willing to use firmware blobs for specific devices. So instead of PureOS I run Arch. I have also replaced the 100% libre Atheros wifi hardware with an Intel module because the Atheros module had les than great performance (plus doesn't support 802.11ac). As for ethernet, I have a USB3/Ethernet dongle that I use for that purpose. Having said all that, I have used Purism's update to completely disable Intel ME on my laptop and everything is working without a hitch. I don't trust Intel ME. I'm willing to trust tiny firmware blobs for specific devices in specific cases. I'm not willing to trust an entirely seperate and unauditable system that operates independently and secretly. No sir. IME is a cancer (and PSP by extension) on modern day computing.
To those that claim that you can disable and remove Intel ME on other laptops, so this really isn't a big deal or particularly notable. You are telling half truths. For older hardware that is certainly true. For Skylake level hardware there are no other devices that that had have or currently can have the Intel ME removed/neutralized/disabled. me_cleaner doesn't support Skylake level systems yet. In fact the Purism update process makes use of a forked version of the me_cleaner which contains changes Purism has made to accomodate their Skylake hardware. They plan on switching back to me_cleaner once all of their patches are accepted in the upstream project.
But hey, don't take my word for it. Cruise the blogs and forums on Purism's website if you want to learn more. Don't take my word for it. Don't take anybody's word for it. Especially not Intels much less AMDs.
Frankly your response only serves to show me just how far the standard for discourse here at Slashdot has fallen. I remember the days when Slashdot was a reliable community of Linux users. The fact we've got users here now that actually get their panties in a bunch over me taking a pot shot at Windows 8 is a sign of the times I suppose. What a sad, sad sign it is however.
The hardware has changed in some way. There are numerous discussions on the patches required to deal with the changes. There is also an arch thread that covers it and links to all of the pertinent details:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/view...
For starters - they haven't broken my SSL. Secondly, Superfish was only installed on non-Thinkpad machines. So in a sense I have voted with my wallet by buying a machine that was guaranteed to not have Superfish installed by default rather than purchasing a cheaper and ultimately less well built model that likely would've had it installed.
As for obvious distaste for Arch users, you are kidding right?
It's called a trackpoint.
...and it rocks. Seriously. I've got Arch Linux loaded on this thing and it screams. The keyboard kicks ass. The trackpad is easily the best I've ever seen on a PC laptop. Picked mine up for a reasonable price with a 10% off coupon (I5, 8 gigs, 128 gig SSD which I upgraded to 512 gig on my own later in an effort to avoid the extortion like upgrade prices Lenovo charges on their site) for around $1100. I'm getting between about six and eight hours of battery life in Linux at the moment.
It's a sweet piece of hardware. Superfish? Who gives a fuck? I didn't even boot the M.2 SSD the thing came with. I immediately opened up the laptop and changed out the SSD as my first order of business. Buying a laptop this nice just to run Windows 8.x probably just means you are some kind of moron. Do yourselves a favor and move onto a better operating system.
Still while it is a great Linux laptop - it's not perfect - yet. The Trackpoint buttons dont work quite right in Linux yet but numerous patches (libinput, xorg synaptics driver and the kernel) are making their way into source trees everywhere. So for now it's a trackpad only experience as the trackpoint is useless without working hardware buttons.
In any event I couldn't be more pleased with this purchase.
All or nothing? Nearly every part of systemd beyond the minimal PID 1 functionality can be switched out with replacement components. Linux users are supposed to be more intelligent, though if that's the case why is it that so many of them seem to have shoved their head up their ass in regards to systemd? Almost every piece of information in the original post is 100% inaccurate and yet nobody is calling the author out on it.
...because Windows is such a well loved brand!
This guy created Citrix? Sounds like they'll need to build a whole new nastier level of hell to accommodate him. Citrix is one of the worst products ever made. Years later and it's still clearly nothing more than a nasty hack. Give me a Citrix box and I'll give you back a p0wned box. As for OS/2, well that just makes me sad.
This isn't just about copyright notifications. The version of DOSBox being used in this distribution is a modification of 0.70. It was clearly modified on a source level as the exe is now dependent upon the existence of certain Steam libraries. This has been confirmed here:
& postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=60
http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=16285
Running the modded DOSBox.exe in it's own directory first complains about missing SDL libraries. After adding those, it will them complain about missing Steam libraries. This is clearly a derivative work under the terms of the GPL and the source code has not been made available.
So Valve/Id have to go down one of two roads now:
1) Release the derivative source and give us valuable insight into how their DRM Steam engine works.
2) Pull the release and piss off a ton of people on Steam.
Either way - Valve is in trouble here. What kills me is that instead of protecting the game executables, they protected the GPLed Emulator they use to run them. What a bunch of idiots. If you ever needed a reason to hate Valve and Steam, they've just handed it to you on a silver platter. I mean isn't it ironic that for all the DRM in Steam designed to protect their own copyrights, that they manage to trample on the copyright of several people in the process and they just don't seem to care?
Ironic.
When your PS2 was knocked over, was the disc spinning at the time? It is my understanding that the 360 keeps the disc spinning most of the time. I don't remember the PS2 doing that....
My sources tell me that the discs get scratched when people decide to change the orientation of their XBOX 360 while this disc is spinning. So lets say that they have a game in the XBOX 360, they hit pause and suddenly decide, "I don't like how this thing looks horizontal, let me sit it vertically and see how it looks". During that transition, the spinning disc will actually collide with the tray and cause extreme damage to the disc rendering it useless. Oh and there is also a loud grinding noise.
Anybody stupid enough to damage their game this way probably deserves to pay for the replacement fee as it is. This information has been relayed to me and confirmed by a regional manager at Gamestop and given the number of stores he manages, I'm quite willing to take his word for it.
It is amazing that anybody buys this crap. TPM chips are on the motherboards of Intel based Macs. The Intel Dev Kit makes heavy use of TPM to keep the OS from being run on unauthorized computers. As some of you may have heard, an image of the Intel Developers Kit (includes OS X 10.4.1 install) leaked onto the web. There are a number of fake releases - but this particular one is real and the community has been dissecting it rather heavily. Here is their rebut to this specific article:
/me sighs....
Classic Beta's Rebuttal of the claims in this article.
I suggest everybody take the time to read this. Yet again we have a slashdot article which not only is wrong but being defended by a bunch of goons who can't be bothered to find out the truth for themselves.
I can't speak for many others but my SSID is "KeepDrivingAsshole" - I've also seen one in my wardriving travels called, "LeaveMeAlone". Apparently somebody had already had a bit of fun with his network, eh?
The image url I provided was incorrect. There was an extra slash on the end. It should be:
d os 1.png
http://www.jaylittle.com/jaylittle/downloads/vb
VB6 is a horrible programming environment compared to VB.NET. The .NET framework can't be compared to anything in the pre VB.NET world as there is no real basis to perform the comparison. VB6 and below are interpreted dung heaps of languages that rely upon programmer inexperience and inability to cope with truly logical constructs. I suspect the reason you and your friends continue to use VB6 over VB.NET is simply that you haven't the skill to make ends meet in the .NET environment.
s 1.png/
Also there was only one version of VB ever made that wasn't bloated. That of course was the original version for DOS (screenie linked below):
http://www.jaylittle.com/jaylittle/downloads/vbdo
I hope to see you in the post VB-kiddie world some day soon. Until then have fun wallowing in DLL hell.
Damn I wish I had some mod points... this is easily the funniest comment I've seen on /. this week. Nice work man.
Wow. I don't comment on here much anymore but somebody who gets the joke ought to mod the parent up as funny. Then again they are probably watching too much anime around here to have time for cultured films like "The Royal Tenenbaums".
Sigh...
The difference between Windows and Linux in this regard is:
1) The people smart enough to write the drivers in Windows are also smart enough to buy better hardware.
2) The people smart enough to write the drivers in Linux are too cheap to buy the better hardware to begin with.
Such a viscious cycle - wouldn't you agree? A few years ago A LOT of VIA boards had that IRQL_LESS_THAN... error show up. A lot of Via fans tried to point to Creative Labs Soundcards, ATI or NVidia Video Cards as the source of the problem. Sadly enough this problem seems virtually non existant on machines with decent chipsets (Intel, SiS...) and the fact that the VIA fanbois didn't and still don't recognize this speaks highly of their inability to see the truth clearly.
As for VIA itself - go to any of the LKML mailing list archive sites and do a nice search for VIA related stuff. That ought to give you a real good idea how bad VIA stuff really is.
J
Is there a VIA Chipset on the board or not? If so - you lose. The Linux kernel is absolutely full of VIA related hack jobs in order to keep things working correctly. So much for compatibility huh...?
J
I got some better links for you:
6 8.244/pub/videos/atari// passwd
http://64.12.168.244/pub/music/
http://64.12.1
http://64.12.168.244/etc
Opps.
J
Get better hardware. Seriously. This error has next to nothing to with Winamp and has more to do with the piss poor components sottered unto the VIA motherboard that is likely driving your box. I've heard these complaints before for less educated people and you aren't doing yourself any sort of service by revoicing them here. That is CLEARLY a hardware related problem and blaming it on an end user application that never directly touches the hardware is nothing less than pure ignorance.
J
MIPS, PPC, and Alpha all had NT4 versions (fully. None of them made it to Windows 2000. The alpha version of win2k made it to Release Candidate 1 and was subsequently dumped by MS and Compaq.
n loads/re commended/SP6/allSP6.asp
Supporting Links:
http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/nts/dow
(Notice the inclusion of an DEC Alpha download for SP6 for NT4)
http://home1.gte.net/res008nh/nt/ppc/ntfaq.htm
J
Wow... that page is quite telling is it not? Somebody mod this guy up please. The evidence sited on that page pretty much says it all. SCO themselves is to blame for what they are blaming IBM for. They even have Ransom Love's own Keynote speech recorded to prove it! Not to mention the dozens of links to postings made to various Linux development lists that clearly show SCO to be the driving force not IBM.
J
If you have read the additional information link I provided you would see quite clearly that both the 9700 and 9800 cards work fine with these drivers. AFAIK the only problems with these drivers occur in Xinerama or Dual Screen modes. Otherwise if you are using a single screen you should have no problems.
I've used these drivers and they work very well with my ATI Radeon 9700 (with same caveats in dual monitor modes). This latest version is reported by dependable people to work with R350 chipset cards.
If you aren't going to try the drivers - stop whining. Being that you use Linux - you should be used to making use of solutions that aren't 100% officially supported. Make no mistake, these drivers ARE from ATI and they are considered bleeding edge. They may not officially support use of these drivers but that shouldn't keep you from pulling your head out of your ass and TRYING to use them before whining.
What really boggles my mind is that you went out and bought a 9700 card without doing the research in regards to available drivers. Assuming the drivers didnt exist, thats a lot of money to flush down the toilet for no good reason. If you bought the card to use in Linux and didn't take the time to research the driver situation then you really have nobody to blame but yourself now do you?
J