There's a simpler explanation - fat people seek out fatter people as friends, so they won't look so fat when they stand beside them.
You might laugh, but its true. Fat people can't easily strike up friendships with skinny people. They don't do the same things. How is a skinny person going to play tennis with a fat person? Or long walks? Or roller blading? Or riding a bike? Or even long shopping trips at the mall... Or anything else that doesn't involve sitting more or less motionless...
So fat people hang out with fat people, both because they are looking for assurance that they themselves aren't as fat as some other people, and because they don't have all that many options.
So of course, when you get fat people together, they reinforce each others habits of inactivity and over-eating... so yes, fat friends will make you fat(ter).
BTW - if you're fat and don't have any friends fatter than you, you're the one that fat people want to stand beside when its time to take pictures. Time to cut out the crap food, the too-big portions, the second helpings, and start starving yourself, because nothing else will work. And no, you don't have a glandular problem - you got that way one bite at a time, just like everyone else.
Your 3rd requirement runs contrary to what I'm saying - updates must NOT be applied by the end user. Mods should only be made by those approved by the manufacturer.
And such a device has been around for more than a decade - glucometers. Owned by the end user. Can result in death if the software is altered by the end user.
Its not about ownership - its about "conveying". They made it so generic that almost anything fits. When you implant a device, you've conveyed the device and the software on it to the person who it was implanted in.
BTW, thanks about my mother, but she brought it on herself. Even when I was a little kid, I warned her not to smoke, that it would kill her. Do you know what smoking does to diabetics? Diabetes makes the capillaries fragile - smoking constricts them, and the blood no longer circulates properly. Gangrene set in. They amputated at the ankle, then the knee, then the upper leg, then... that was it.
She went from "I'll give it up when the price hits $X" to "I'll give it up when I'm ready." to "Why should I give up my only pleasure?"
I'm against the death penalty, but I'd PAY for the privilege of throwing the switch on tobacco marketers.
"Are they re-installable? That's a scary thought (more than your windows suggestion). But if they are not re-installable, they fall outside of the tivoization clause."
You're wrong - they most certainly ARE re-installable. What do you think they do with pacemakers that are installed in a patient who then dies a few months later without ever leaving the hospital? They clean them up and implant them in the next patient. That's what they did when my mother died. Do you really believe they're just going to throw out almost $10,000 of hardware that's almost brand new?
The FAQ is not the license - its just an interpretation of the license; the actual terms of the license take precendence. Also, no patient buys their pacemakers directly from the manufacturer - so everyone in the supply chain is distributing - "conveying" - they all get the keys.
Devices like glucometers, insulin pumps, etc., have to have some embedded smarts. As time goes on, they get improved with more smarts. As for the pacemaker example, combine it with an O2 sensor, and you now have a demand pacemaker, instead of one that lags behind the actual needs of the patient. Also, since the heart functions best when the beat pattern is slightly chaotic (its natural state) instead of absolutely regular, you can program it for that as well.
If the device is working fine, you don't want anyone tampering with it. If the device isn't working fine, you, as the manufacturer, don't want others tampering with it, having their patch harm someone, re-installing the old binaries to cover their mistakes, and then having people suing you.
Your name is on it - your insurers want to make sure only your code goes in it. Ditto for your customers. They want to know that someone's brother-in-law can't come in and "helpfully improve" something, and cause a disaster.
"If there's any GPL3-only software today, it's brand-new. If this medical device is so important, nobody's stopping it from using the GPL2 version like they have for the past 20+ years. Or find a BSD program to do it. Just because there's a market in which GPL3-licensed programs can't compete doesn't make it any less useful than pointing out that there are markets where GPL2-licensed programs couldn't compete 10 years ago."
Device manufacturers don't look just at today, but at the future. The GPLv3 is a non-starter for devices that need to guarantee that they run only legit code.
Ditto for critical systems that have to be in compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley. The ability for 3rd parties to run modified code without an audit trail makes GPLv3 software a non-starter. Think banks, accounting, control systems, etc.
Moving to a BSD license would make Microsoft crap themselves because then full compliance at all levels would be possible. Right now, they're laughing because they know that, as time goes on, more and more systems are going to have to be S-O certified, and that means non-GPLv3 software. GPLv3 is a nice way to take yourself out of the competition...
Except that the possibility of running unsigned/unproven code is enough to remove a device from certification.
In your scenario, there's nothing to prevent someone from running malicious code, doing what they want, then re-installing the certified code. Who gets the blame?
Really, the GPLv3 is screwed up because it is targeting something that is none of its business - hardware. GPLv2 is fine. It does the job. So is the BSD license. So are a whole bunch of other licenses. The GPLv3 was a political statement, not a real license.
Well, you'd have to admit that pacemakers fulfill the definition of a tangible device normally used for personal purposes, for a significant portion of the population.
The user in some cases wants peace of mind, and the freedom to run a software/hardware combo that cannot be altered except by the manufacturer. Pacemakers are a case in point. Or would you rather your loved one's next super-dooper pacemaker run "Windows Widow-Maker Edition" (at least it could make a legit claim of being an embedded version;-)
This is an area where the GPLv3 is wrong in at least some of the problem domains.
"tangible personal property which is normally used for personal, family, or household purposes"
Just how is a pacemaker not tangible personal property that is normally used for personal purposes? Or an insulin pump, or a glucometer?
Or are pacemakers, insulin pumps, and glucometers not medical devices?
They f$cked this aspect of it up in their ill-conceived rush to be "pure as the driven slush". Holy wars are stupid - and the GPLv3 is a holy war, and the law of unintended consequences doesn't apply just to the field of medical devices, but to all software that has to guarantee that it cannot be modified except under controlled circumstances.
A lot of medical devices fall under the "consumer product for personal use" definition.
"tangible personal property which is normally used for personal, family, or household purposes"
Pacemakers.
tangible property
not just normally, but exclusively for personal purpose - keeping your person alive
and yet, its a medical device, so medical devices are not automatically excluded
So tell me, just how is a pacemaker not "tangible personal property which is normally used for personal... purposes"? Ditto glucometers, insulin pumps, and other medical devices? In their rush to ram the new GPLv3 down everyone's throat, they fucked this aspect up, big time.
Who's talking about an updated bios? Not me. You can update a bios with a floppy, but try to find an update for those old motherboards... also the last I looked, the bios wasn't as you claim, hardware - its software (the bios firmware is software, not hardware, which is why you can flash it).
There are drivers for Windows that will allow you to use more of the hard disk after you've booted into Windows without updating the bios - they used to ship them on CDs with the hard drives. Nowadays, they're either on the drives, or on the manufacturer's site. I have several Western Digital CDs that came with a pair of 250-gig hard drives 4 years ago.
You ever tried it? It doesn't work as advertised, at least under Win98SE. I know, because I tried it. Windows refused to make it large than 32 gigs, so I put the drive in another box, made a C:\ partition with 60 gigs, formatted it, and lo and behold - it appeared to work... until I hit the 32 gig limit, and it screwed up the data at the beginning of the drive, which included the OS files.
I was able to recover most of the data by stuffing the drive in a linux box.
What Microsoft says and what really happens are sometimes two very different things. I'm a cynic when it comes to Microsoft for a reason - I've been bitten too many times.
Read the definition of a personal product.
"tangible personal property which is normally used for personal, family, or household purposes,"
That includes blood sugar meters, insulin pumps, pacemakers, privately owned dialysis machines, etc.
Take the simplest example - a pacemaker. It certainly is tangible property. It certainly is normally for personal use - its not like you share it with others. And its certainly a medical device.
So, its a medical device which is tangible property normally for personal use.
How could it be anything BUT a medical device which is "tangible property normally for personal use?"
This is not splitting hairs... the GPLv3 is flawed when it comes to medical devices, as well as systems that require Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.
Sure I did, many times. Devices that are upgradeable use flash memory, not read-only rom. Heck, even motherboards use flash nowadays. Of course, if they use EEPROMS, then they have to convey the source, etc. BTW, medical devices like blood-sugar meters, insulin pumps, portable dialysis machines, portable defibrillators, etc., are consumer products under that definition - "tangible personal property which is normally used for personal, family, or household purposes,"
Also, as I point out elsewhere, compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley will require that some systems be completely unmodifiable except by the vendor or their agent. Nice way to cede more ground for no good reason.
Riiiight.... you'd rather have a 1near-00% guarantee of death by aortic hyper-extension rather than a chance of injury by some bozo's laptop. Stop being so negative. Rear-facing seats are less of a risk because of how your body is made. And there's nothing to say you can't put your arms in front of your face. Better a bruised or broken arm than your heart being ripped off its arteries.
I've been against the GPL v3 for some time, because the GPL v2 was sufficient, and v3 really does end up ceding whole markets to non-open code. I'm surprised more people haven't cottoned on to the problems with compliance under Sarbanes-Oxley. If you have to provide the keys, you as a vendor can't guarantee that critical systems haven't been modded, so your package is deficient.
As long as the source is made available, anyone can make a non-locked-out version - heck, the original vendor can offer it in both flavours, as a "feature." This is one area where we're cutting off our nose to spite our face. RMS might be on some sort of "holy jihad", but I'd confine mine to "one true brace" and vim. The real world isn't always a nice place, and sometimes some form of lockdown is essential - like when they're processing your paycheck via direct deposit. Wouldn't want someone to pull an "Office Space":-)
"As you well know, GPLv3 anti-tivotisation only applies to consumer devices."
The anti-tivo provisions apply to all binary code that is distributed, not just consumer devices. Any distribution of binary code has to be accompanied by source and keys, or the source and keys have to be available for 3 years, yadda yadda yadda.
It says you can make DRM, but you have to distribute the signing keys as well - kind of defeats the whole purpose.
Also, your goal when you do modifications isn't to create the exact same binary - the "exact same binary" wouldn't have your mods. You're free to take their source, mod it, and run it on other hardware. The gpl v2 says nothing about proprietary hardware, and last time I looked, most hardware is proprietary, not just Tivo.
Really, just take what you want from their source, add the features to mythtv, and use your own hardware. Or buy hardware that supports modding - there is some, you know. And you're free to build your own.
A lot of us have read it and saying "it sux" is just our way of being polite.
Its a fuck-up. The gpl was originally about software, and trying to extend it to hardware is inappropriate. It means that GPLv3 code is cut off from a lot of applications, for example, use in running medical devices where you absolutely want to prohibit anyone from changing the binaries; because of provisions for distributing keys, any device containing GPLv3 software is no longer certifiable. Nice way to hand a critical market to Microsoftie, where the blue screen of death is not just a metaphor.
There are other examples, if you care to do some research; we've commented on them before. The GPLv2 was sufficient to defang the Novell-MS deal, but people panicked. The GPLv3 is a political maneuver that plays right into Microsoft's hands. They would love all free software to move to GPLv3. They'd shit-stain their tidy-whities if it all forked to, say, a BSD license instead. Sun could, for example, merge linux and solaris. Linux with zfs would be an instant hit.
"When I heard an engineer talking about this on TV (was it mythbusters?), he said that a baby sitting in its parent's lap could "become a projectile" in a crash"
What a bunch of BS. You could say the same about a car. Belt the kid into a certified car/aircraft child seat.
For infants and children who fit in rear-facing and forward-facing car seats with harnesses: FAA recommends using car seats that have this label: "This restraint is certified for use in motor vehicles and aircraft." For best fit in aircraft seats, use a seat less than 16 inches wide.
The FAA requires airlines to allow the use of a certified car seat if the child has a ticket. The FAA strongly recommends, but does not require, that children under age 2 ride in a car seat.
Not allowed: booster seats or child vests. Also, NO "belly belts" made to hold a child on an adult's lap (allowed in some countries).
For children over age 2 without car seats: seat belts must be used. A snug fit may not be possible for small, thin children.
For children who no longer fit into car seats with harnesses: lap belts must be used. The aircraft seat belt may fit a child better than a lap belt in a motor vehicle. The lap belt will help restrain a child in turbulance or an air crash.
Harnesses that hold a baby on a parent's lap are NOT permitted, even if claiming to meet FAA standards.
A bit of common sense or a few seconds searching would have told you this.
First off, I'll state the obvious - Win98SE is not Win98. 32 gig hard limit on installation to a bootable drive. Secondly, if this isn't your boot partition, and if it wasn't formatted directly from the install CD as a fresh install, I call bullshit back. Installed as a second drive, even as a second bootable drive, isn't the same thing - the newer drivers are already loaded at the point in time that you created the second drive. Also, if your bios supports drives larger than 8 gigs, you've essentially got a "get out of jail free" card.
Try installing it on a machine with an 8 gig bios limit, fresh install from CD, on an unformatted drive (or one formatted with a different file system, such as ext2), and see what happens. Microsoft's fdisk program on Win98 (including Win98SE) ha a hard-coded limit of 32 gig partitions. The only way around that is to load a special driver from your hard disk manufacturer. So, while you hard disk manufacturer might support larger drives under Wn98SE, Microsoft doesn't.
So, don't be so quick to call bullshit. Win98SE doesn't support creating partitions bigger than 32 gig - any support you get is from 3rd party utilities, not Microsoft.
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There's a simpler explanation - fat people seek out fatter people as friends, so they won't look so fat when they stand beside them.
You might laugh, but its true. Fat people can't easily strike up friendships with skinny people. They don't do the same things. How is a skinny person going to play tennis with a fat person? Or long walks? Or roller blading? Or riding a bike? Or even long shopping trips at the mall ... Or anything else that doesn't involve sitting more or less motionless ...
So fat people hang out with fat people, both because they are looking for assurance that they themselves aren't as fat as some other people, and because they don't have all that many options.
So of course, when you get fat people together, they reinforce each others habits of inactivity and over-eating ... so yes, fat friends will make you fat(ter).
BTW - if you're fat and don't have any friends fatter than you, you're the one that fat people want to stand beside when its time to take pictures. Time to cut out the crap food, the too-big portions, the second helpings, and start starving yourself, because nothing else will work. And no, you don't have a glandular problem - you got that way one bite at a time, just like everyone else.
Your 3rd requirement runs contrary to what I'm saying - updates must NOT be applied by the end user. Mods should only be made by those approved by the manufacturer.
And such a device has been around for more than a decade - glucometers. Owned by the end user. Can result in death if the software is altered by the end user.
Its not about ownership - its about "conveying". They made it so generic that almost anything fits. When you implant a device, you've conveyed the device and the software on it to the person who it was implanted in.
BTW, thanks about my mother, but she brought it on herself. Even when I was a little kid, I warned her not to smoke, that it would kill her. Do you know what smoking does to diabetics? Diabetes makes the capillaries fragile - smoking constricts them, and the blood no longer circulates properly. Gangrene set in. They amputated at the ankle, then the knee, then the upper leg, then ... that was it.
She went from "I'll give it up when the price hits $X" to "I'll give it up when I'm ready." to "Why should I give up my only pleasure?"
I'm against the death penalty, but I'd PAY for the privilege of throwing the switch on tobacco marketers.
Sure you'll be issuing patches for many devices - patches aren't just for fixing programmers' errors, but for adding features.
"Are they re-installable? That's a scary thought (more than your windows suggestion). But if they are not re-installable, they fall outside of the tivoization clause."
You're wrong - they most certainly ARE re-installable. What do you think they do with pacemakers that are installed in a patient who then dies a few months later without ever leaving the hospital? They clean them up and implant them in the next patient. That's what they did when my mother died. Do you really believe they're just going to throw out almost $10,000 of hardware that's almost brand new?
The FAQ is not the license - its just an interpretation of the license; the actual terms of the license take precendence. Also, no patient buys their pacemakers directly from the manufacturer - so everyone in the supply chain is distributing - "conveying" - they all get the keys.
And if the kernel were to go to GPLv3?
Devices like glucometers, insulin pumps, etc., have to have some embedded smarts. As time goes on, they get improved with more smarts. As for the pacemaker example, combine it with an O2 sensor, and you now have a demand pacemaker, instead of one that lags behind the actual needs of the patient. Also, since the heart functions best when the beat pattern is slightly chaotic (its natural state) instead of absolutely regular, you can program it for that as well.
If the device is working fine, you don't want anyone tampering with it. If the device isn't working fine, you, as the manufacturer, don't want others tampering with it, having their patch harm someone, re-installing the old binaries to cover their mistakes, and then having people suing you.
Your name is on it - your insurers want to make sure only your code goes in it. Ditto for your customers. They want to know that someone's brother-in-law can't come in and "helpfully improve" something, and cause a disaster.
"If there's any GPL3-only software today, it's brand-new. If this medical device is so important, nobody's stopping it from using the GPL2 version like they have for the past 20+ years. Or find a BSD program to do it. Just because there's a market in which GPL3-licensed programs can't compete doesn't make it any less useful than pointing out that there are markets where GPL2-licensed programs couldn't compete 10 years ago."
Device manufacturers don't look just at today, but at the future. The GPLv3 is a non-starter for devices that need to guarantee that they run only legit code.
Ditto for critical systems that have to be in compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley. The ability for 3rd parties to run modified code without an audit trail makes GPLv3 software a non-starter. Think banks, accounting, control systems, etc.
Moving to a BSD license would make Microsoft crap themselves because then full compliance at all levels would be possible. Right now, they're laughing because they know that, as time goes on, more and more systems are going to have to be S-O certified, and that means non-GPLv3 software. GPLv3 is a nice way to take yourself out of the competition ...
Except that the possibility of running unsigned/unproven code is enough to remove a device from certification.
In your scenario, there's nothing to prevent someone from running malicious code, doing what they want, then re-installing the certified code. Who gets the blame?
Really, the GPLv3 is screwed up because it is targeting something that is none of its business - hardware. GPLv2 is fine. It does the job. So is the BSD license. So are a whole bunch of other licenses. The GPLv3 was a political statement, not a real license.
Well, you'd have to admit that pacemakers fulfill the definition of a tangible device normally used for personal purposes, for a significant portion of the population.
The user in some cases wants peace of mind, and the freedom to run a software/hardware combo that cannot be altered except by the manufacturer. Pacemakers are a case in point. Or would you rather your loved one's next super-dooper pacemaker run "Windows Widow-Maker Edition" (at least it could make a legit claim of being an embedded version ;-)
This is an area where the GPLv3 is wrong in at least some of the problem domains.
Certifiable as "certifiable under the guidelines of Sarbanes-Oxley". Clear audit trail. Safeguards against tampering.
Distributing the keys in those cases is a complete foobar.
Sigh ... here we go AGAIN!!!
"tangible personal property which is normally used for personal, family, or household purposes"
Just how is a pacemaker not tangible personal property that is normally used for personal purposes? Or an insulin pump, or a glucometer?
Or are pacemakers, insulin pumps, and glucometers not medical devices?
They f$cked this aspect of it up in their ill-conceived rush to be "pure as the driven slush". Holy wars are stupid - and the GPLv3 is a holy war, and the law of unintended consequences doesn't apply just to the field of medical devices, but to all software that has to guarantee that it cannot be modified except under controlled circumstances.
A lot of medical devices fall under the "consumer product for personal use" definition.
"tangible personal property which is normally used for personal, family, or household purposes"
Pacemakers.
- tangible property
- not just normally, but exclusively for personal purpose - keeping your person alive
- and yet, its a medical device, so medical devices are not automatically excluded
So tell me, just how is a pacemaker not "tangible personal property which is normally used for personalWho's talking about an updated bios? Not me. You can update a bios with a floppy, but try to find an update for those old motherboards ... also the last I looked, the bios wasn't as you claim, hardware - its software (the bios firmware is software, not hardware, which is why you can flash it).
There are drivers for Windows that will allow you to use more of the hard disk after you've booted into Windows without updating the bios - they used to ship them on CDs with the hard drives. Nowadays, they're either on the drives, or on the manufacturer's site. I have several Western Digital CDs that came with a pair of 250-gig hard drives 4 years ago.
You ever tried it? It doesn't work as advertised, at least under Win98SE. I know, because I tried it. Windows refused to make it large than 32 gigs, so I put the drive in another box, made a C:\ partition with 60 gigs, formatted it, and lo and behold - it appeared to work ... until I hit the 32 gig limit, and it screwed up the data at the beginning of the drive, which included the OS files.
I was able to recover most of the data by stuffing the drive in a linux box.
What Microsoft says and what really happens are sometimes two very different things. I'm a cynic when it comes to Microsoft for a reason - I've been bitten too many times.
Read the definition of a personal product. "tangible personal property which is normally used for personal, family, or household purposes,"
That includes blood sugar meters, insulin pumps, pacemakers, privately owned dialysis machines, etc.
Take the simplest example - a pacemaker. It certainly is tangible property. It certainly is normally for personal use - its not like you share it with others. And its certainly a medical device.
So, its a medical device which is tangible property normally for personal use.
How could it be anything BUT a medical device which is "tangible property normally for personal use?"
This is not splitting hairs ... the GPLv3 is flawed when it comes to medical devices, as well as systems that require Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.
Sure I did, many times. Devices that are upgradeable use flash memory, not read-only rom. Heck, even motherboards use flash nowadays. Of course, if they use EEPROMS, then they have to convey the source, etc. BTW, medical devices like blood-sugar meters, insulin pumps, portable dialysis machines, portable defibrillators, etc., are consumer products under that definition - "tangible personal property which is normally used for personal, family, or household purposes,"
Also, as I point out elsewhere, compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley will require that some systems be completely unmodifiable except by the vendor or their agent. Nice way to cede more ground for no good reason.
Riiiight .... you'd rather have a 1near-00% guarantee of death by aortic hyper-extension rather than a chance of injury by some bozo's laptop. Stop being so negative. Rear-facing seats are less of a risk because of how your body is made. And there's nothing to say you can't put your arms in front of your face. Better a bruised or broken arm than your heart being ripped off its arteries.
Point taken. Thanks.
I've been against the GPL v3 for some time, because the GPL v2 was sufficient, and v3 really does end up ceding whole markets to non-open code. I'm surprised more people haven't cottoned on to the problems with compliance under Sarbanes-Oxley. If you have to provide the keys, you as a vendor can't guarantee that critical systems haven't been modded, so your package is deficient.
As long as the source is made available, anyone can make a non-locked-out version - heck, the original vendor can offer it in both flavours, as a "feature." This is one area where we're cutting off our nose to spite our face. RMS might be on some sort of "holy jihad", but I'd confine mine to "one true brace" and vim. The real world isn't always a nice place, and sometimes some form of lockdown is essential - like when they're processing your paycheck via direct deposit. Wouldn't want someone to pull an "Office Space" :-)
"As you well know, GPLv3 anti-tivotisation only applies to consumer devices."
The anti-tivo provisions apply to all binary code that is distributed, not just consumer devices. Any distribution of binary code has to be accompanied by source and keys, or the source and keys have to be available for 3 years, yadda yadda yadda.
PS - sorry about your keyboard.
It says you can make DRM, but you have to distribute the signing keys as well - kind of defeats the whole purpose.
Also, your goal when you do modifications isn't to create the exact same binary - the "exact same binary" wouldn't have your mods. You're free to take their source, mod it, and run it on other hardware. The gpl v2 says nothing about proprietary hardware, and last time I looked, most hardware is proprietary, not just Tivo.
Really, just take what you want from their source, add the features to mythtv, and use your own hardware. Or buy hardware that supports modding - there is some, you know. And you're free to build your own.
A lot of us have read it and saying "it sux" is just our way of being polite.
Its a fuck-up. The gpl was originally about software, and trying to extend it to hardware is inappropriate. It means that GPLv3 code is cut off from a lot of applications, for example, use in running medical devices where you absolutely want to prohibit anyone from changing the binaries; because of provisions for distributing keys, any device containing GPLv3 software is no longer certifiable. Nice way to hand a critical market to Microsoftie, where the blue screen of death is not just a metaphor.
There are other examples, if you care to do some research; we've commented on them before. The GPLv2 was sufficient to defang the Novell-MS deal, but people panicked. The GPLv3 is a political maneuver that plays right into Microsoft's hands. They would love all free software to move to GPLv3. They'd shit-stain their tidy-whities if it all forked to, say, a BSD license instead. Sun could, for example, merge linux and solaris. Linux with zfs would be an instant hit.
"When I heard an engineer talking about this on TV (was it mythbusters?), he said that a baby sitting in its parent's lap could "become a projectile" in a crash"
What a bunch of BS. You could say the same about a car. Belt the kid into a certified car/aircraft child seat.
A bit of common sense or a few seconds searching would have told you this.First off, I'll state the obvious - Win98SE is not Win98. 32 gig hard limit on installation to a bootable drive. Secondly, if this isn't your boot partition, and if it wasn't formatted directly from the install CD as a fresh install, I call bullshit back. Installed as a second drive, even as a second bootable drive, isn't the same thing - the newer drivers are already loaded at the point in time that you created the second drive. Also, if your bios supports drives larger than 8 gigs, you've essentially got a "get out of jail free" card.
Try installing it on a machine with an 8 gig bios limit, fresh install from CD, on an unformatted drive (or one formatted with a different file system, such as ext2), and see what happens. Microsoft's fdisk program on Win98 (including Win98SE) ha a hard-coded limit of 32 gig partitions. The only way around that is to load a special driver from your hard disk manufacturer. So, while you hard disk manufacturer might support larger drives under Wn98SE, Microsoft doesn't.
So, don't be so quick to call bullshit. Win98SE doesn't support creating partitions bigger than 32 gig - any support you get is from 3rd party utilities, not Microsoft.
depends on the bios, the windows version and patch level, etc.