That could easily be applied to installing modified firmware, don't you think?
No. The original manufacturer specifications cover a broad range of features, many of which are disabled by Verizon. By uploading Motorola's firmware (which isn't really modified -- it's the flex/SEEM), you're only uploading software copyrighted and written by Motorola. By modifying the seem (compare to modifying the registry), you still haven't modified the device from its manfacturer specifications.
and I suspect less tightly regulated than the 800 and 1900 MHz bands reserved for cell phones
suspect? should be pretty obvious.
Anyway, Motorola does not recertify every compatible phone with every firmware they release to its service centers and customers. I was trying to make an example that would be easy to understand, but clearly you felt the need to argue anyway.
Also, they failed to mention that they had crippled it before he bought it.
Why do they have to? It's not like they are advertising that the phone can do things it can't. They are allowed to customize the software they place on the phone, and they do. If their modified software disables or disallows functionality, they haven't done anything wrong as long as they aren't lying about the phone's capabilities.
Seems to me that cell phone companies selling crippled phones without full disclosure merits an investigation by the local Attorney General and/or Consumer Protection office for fraud.
What fraud have they committed? I don't see where they ever advertised or said the phone could do anything it couldn't. It does what it was described and sold to do. The phone may be capable of doing other things, but they don't have to let it.
My question is this: is it f(IMEI) = subsidy code or f(IMEI,carrier_id) = subsidy code?
I think there's a bit more to it; the "database" problem you had probably had something to do with the "carrier_id" variable not actually being an actual "carrier_id" but instead something more, like a randomly generated key.
From what I understand, a batch of phones is manufactuered for one carrier and those IMEIs are all sequential or somehow assigned so that they are identifable as being in a range belonging to a given carrier. But all this is based on my observations, and may be completely wrong.
Also, FCC regulations may prohibit him from modifying it
Doubt it.
the phone has to be certified not to transmit at unacceptable power levels or on the wrong frequencies, and those functions are controlled by software
They're controlled by software on WiFi devices too. It's not like the device gets recertified every time Linksys releases a new firmware on their routers; (they could very easily modify their firmware to violate FCC regulations). The software for many, many devices is updated all the time. Modifications to that software could violate FCC rules, but that doesn't mean that those devices and software get recertified every single time.
Even a minor firmware change like this may require recertification, AFAIK.
The point of all this? That's real hacking right there. The guy/gal or guys/gals who worked on that bootstrap code to remove the subsidy lock on my v551 without even needing to know the firmware revision my phone was at.. now they deserve an article on Slashdot.
They don't need to know the firmware revision because the subsidy lock has nothing to do with it. The subsidy unlock code is based on the IMEI.
A Slashdot article is definitely NOT deserved, as the unlocking algorithims are not public and the hardware to unlock these phones is sold at a decent profit and used to make even more profit.
Summary: Verizon Wireless's customer agreement does not have these stipulations you speak of. You are, in effect, making things up.
Direct quote:
Your wireless phone is any device you use to receive our wireless voice or data service. It must comply with Federal Communications Commission regulations and be compatible with our network and your calling plan.
And if the contract states that you won't use Verizon's services with any phone running non-Verizon-authorized firmware, what then?
I don't know, maybe the Verizon firmware police will confiscate your phone after using their firmware-detecting machine? The customer agreement linked above has no mention of Verizon-authorized firmware. It says it only must be compatible with Verizon's network and your calling plan.
Unless they had intended to charge you for custom ringtones or something silly like that...
When you purchase a phone, it becomes your private property... they *sell* it to you, at a reduced price, and you also sign a contract tying you to the SERVICE. The phone however, is not theirs. You're allowed to modify the software on it all you want. So if these nonexistant contract stipulations existed, it's still not their phone.
I'm sympathetic that the stuff that they do charge for is often bullshit. But that doesn't mean that you should have the "right" to circumvent what you've contractually obligated yourself to follow.
There is no contractual obligations here and no circumventing of them.
It's one thing if they really did sell you the device outright, and sold you service on their networks with no stipulations about what you could do to the software running on your phone.
They did sell the device outright! The device is yours; the contract you sign for 1-2 years is in exchange for a reduced price on the phone.
They allow you to do whatever you want. They *sold* you the phone. It's *yours*. The contract only locks you to their service. If you cancel the contract after the first 15 days, you keep the phone and pay the early termination fee (before 15 days, you return it and pay no fee.)
But if you don't like the terms of the contract, you don't have to accept them. If enough people felt like you, and actually did something about it and refused to do business with companies that offered shitty ToS, and told them so, there'd be a market for products that did not come with shitty ToS strings attached.
I don't see anything in Verizon's ToS that's nonstandard or not to be expected from any large corporation. The problem is not with Verizon's ToS, but with the phones they sell.
It is extremely difficult/impossible to enter the nationwide wireless market without reselling, so there's not going to be some new nerd-friendly service launching.
Also, there are other choices that don't limit their phones down so much. Cingular and T-Mobile sell GSM phones without any limits on what you can do (besides the subsidy lock); if you don't like their phones, you can use any other compatible GSM device. Sprint's phones aren't nearly as limited...
Look at Speakeasy as an example of an ISP who respects what geeky customers want, or Google as a web services company that by and large does things right -- this isn't just some idealistic pipedream, it is a reality and can be for more products if we stand up and make ourselves heard, instead of being whores for the lowest-priced goods and services available, without regard to the other intangible costs.
Speakeasy fills a niche market. Otherwise, SBC and Verizon have a much larger DSL marketshare. I still don't understand what the huge attraction to Google is all about: good search engine, otherwise I don't care. If you want to stand up and make yourself heard while making up things about large corporations, you'll only make yourself look stupid. There have been and still are mobile companies that don't do this to customers. Verizon has never been the only choice.
You *could* do that, but no matter how it's done, it's not a good idea.
In cases where hosts are already connected when the router is turned on, this means that whatever device requests an IP address first would get connections forwarded to it.
And in cases where there's only one PC connected, that's probably because people are using it as a firewall *because* it does not forward incoming connections. I know a few people that recommend this.
I really don't like it when IPv6 is enabled by default. I usually end up deleting the ipv6 module in Linux, just so it stays out of my goddamn way. I have no plans on using it anytime soon, and I find IPv6 addresses in ifconfig annoying.
I don't follow why won't there be anything to connect to if you merely disable filtering?
Because the router offers no services by default to the WAN interface.
Ok, yes, the firewall is blocking all incoming connections, not NAT. What's your point?
You said "A NAT router will accept all inward connections by default". I refuted this. Windows XP SP2 is a NAT router that does not accept all inward connections by default.
That's because the *firewall* has been turned on by default on that particular device, that is completely independant of NAT. I can have a firewall without NAT, and I can have NAT without a firewall.
No, no, no! Do you know what you're talking about? Do you correctly understand how NAT works? A NAT router has an internal IP address and an external IP address. Incoming connection attempts on the external IP address are not magically forwarded to clients on the internal network. Unless forwarding is configured, by the end-user, any incoming connection attempts to the external IP won't be forwarded and will reach *only* the router.
There is no reasonable default forward-all-ports setting. Most people that buy typical consumer NAT routers do so to share Internet access, so the router could assume that one system should have all incoming connections forwarded to it... but there's no way of knowing *which* system to forward to.
Some people buy these devices as security devices, becasue incoming connections do not go through to their system by default...
My NAT router (Linksys WRT54G) does not accept any incoming connections by default. It has "Firewall" mode turned on by default. If you turn that off, it won't filter incoming connections, but there won't be anything to connect to!
Even Windows XP SP2 does this; the firewall is turned on by default, and if you enable Internet Connection Sharing, the firewall is *still* turned on, blocking all incoming connections.
No matter what you do, except for those strange cases where the router automatically forwards everything to another host, the most anyone from the ouside network can connect to is the router itself.
Those files themselves are based on BSD code. However, the actual kernel code that was in Windows (NT3) was rewritten nine years ago (NT4). Also, that code was never directly from BSD; it was bsed on a commercial product Microsoft had purchased.
FreeBSD has working SMP support. A few things are still under the GIANT lock, but most are esoteric devices.
Working, but not great. And the threading support is weak.
Journaling is currently being added.
Which makes it irrelevant right now. Until it's been released and proven to be stable and reliable, I don't see any widespread usage of it. (Plus, with FreeBSD 5's less the spectacular record of working well, I wouldn't consider a new FreeBSD filesystem for quite some time.)
USB support existed in the BSD's--I believe NetBSD had it first--about two years before Linux.
This feature isn't too useful outside of desktop/workstation usage, so most corporations won't be too terribly interested. Furthermore, USB support does exist in both operating systems now.
Jails have existed in FreeBSD for quite some time.
This is something that is missing in Linux. However, its usefulness is limited;
When will Linux support Soft Updates?
Linux as a whole never will. Soft updates are a feature of individual file systems, of which Linux supports many. Soft updates and journaling file systems are mutually exclusive, and given the success of journaling file systems, I don't see them coming to Linux any time soon.
When will Linux use sysctl() instead of/proc?
Many years ago?
But even better: when will this make a huge difference in how either operating system works or in functionality?
How about virtual channels on a sound card?
Only a major concern for desktop users. Just about every sound card nowadays has hardware mixing; why not use that instead of your kernel-level (still software, not hardware!) mixer?
Many of the features you have listed are of no interest to many corporations, unless they are in the business of proving desktop operating system solutions.
They can do the job, but at a lot more effort by the writer
It takes less than 15 seconds to open up a file in UltraEdit over FTP. Other editors with remote file editing are just as easy to use; both free and commercial software text and HTML editors exist that will edit files remotely.
and with much lower functionality.
Much lower functionality? I don't know what "functionality" you're talking about. Maybe if you're editing files with Notepad. But for those using something like Dreamweaver, and editing the page is as simple as opening the file, making your changes in an easy WYSIWYG environment, and saving.
If you ever used the ftp and edit technique for updating even a once a day page
I don't use the "ftp and edit technique". I use the "text/HTML editor that doesn't suck technique". I only use databases when it's warranted.
And you're sure that every single box out there is up to date?
How can you be sure? You can't. Microsoft can't keep every retailer from selling old products. However, they distribute the newer versions as soon as they can.
I've ended up with very outdated stuff from stores before, hardware and software wise.
And unless you actually buy something that *is* the newer version, you will continue to get old stuff.
Are there any visual differences on the outside of the box to tip off the buyer which version the CD has on it?
In SP2 you must mean that spyware is just as easy to install.
It requires a larger amount of clicks, and most users still end up ignoring the way Internet Explorer presents the warning.
Close popup dialog, whoops you have spyware
There is not a popup dialog anymore. ActiveX control installation attempts display an alert at the top of the browser window, which most people will not notice. Then, they must click on that bar and select the Install Control option, and then again click Install. The user is warned that this could be unsafe (in bold text) at the install dialog.
Visit website, you have spyware.
I have never had this happen.
Stop using MSIE and you have a better chance, but still not perfect.
Now it's clear you're trolling; you must be talking about all those easy-to-install spyware exploits for Firefox and Opera that don't exist?
No matter what you do, if people click that confirmation dialog, it's all for nothing.
And that is, of course, the confimration dialog that users aren't even shown by default.
The stock copy of Windows XP sold on the shelf right now is vulnerable to attacks patched back in 2001
Wrong. The stock copy of Windows XP sold on the shelf right now is Service Pack 2. Before that they sold SP1(a), and before that it was the original version. Please research before posting.
It would be awhile. Since almost all Linux users are much more technologically adept than your typical Windows user, the few Linux boxes that are out there (not counting services) are less likely to have worms or anything like that. From what I understand, most worms either search nearby IP addresses or randomly chosen ones, so the chances of getting an infection in Linux is much lower.
Spyware is included in this assessment. I'm guessing that if someone gets online, chances are they're going to go to one of the larger sites on the internet - many of them have spyware on them. Guess what? They'll probably do that within 12 minutes.
...and in SP2, spyware is much more difficult to install.
Slashdot Mirror
No. The original manufacturer specifications cover a broad range of features, many of which are disabled by Verizon. By uploading Motorola's firmware (which isn't really modified -- it's the flex/SEEM), you're only uploading software copyrighted and written by Motorola. By modifying the seem (compare to modifying the registry), you still haven't modified the device from its manfacturer specifications.
and I suspect less tightly regulated than the 800 and 1900 MHz bands reserved for cell phones
suspect? should be pretty obvious.
Anyway, Motorola does not recertify every compatible phone with every firmware they release to its service centers and customers. I was trying to make an example that would be easy to understand, but clearly you felt the need to argue anyway.
Why do they have to? It's not like they are advertising that the phone can do things it can't. They are allowed to customize the software they place on the phone, and they do. If their modified software disables or disallows functionality, they haven't done anything wrong as long as they aren't lying about the phone's capabilities.
Seems to me that cell phone companies selling crippled phones without full disclosure merits an investigation by the local Attorney General and/or Consumer Protection office for fraud.
What fraud have they committed? I don't see where they ever advertised or said the phone could do anything it couldn't. It does what it was described and sold to do. The phone may be capable of doing other things, but they don't have to let it.
No, you own the phone the moment you pay for it.
Haven't you noticed that if you sign up for a longer contract, you will get the phone for less.
But you pay them if you cancel the contract, so no matter what, they don't lose money.
I think there's a bit more to it; the "database" problem you had probably had something to do with the "carrier_id" variable not actually being an actual "carrier_id" but instead something more, like a randomly generated key.
From what I understand, a batch of phones is manufactuered for one carrier and those IMEIs are all sequential or somehow assigned so that they are identifable as being in a range belonging to a given carrier. But all this is based on my observations, and may be completely wrong.
He doesn't warn you about this becuase such a stipulation does not exist in the Verizon "TOS".
that would seem like something that should have been mentioned...
I invite you to show me which lines of Verizon's customer agreement someone would have to be concerned about?
He didn't.
Also, FCC regulations may prohibit him from modifying it
Doubt it.
the phone has to be certified not to transmit at unacceptable power levels or on the wrong frequencies, and those functions are controlled by software
They're controlled by software on WiFi devices too. It's not like the device gets recertified every time Linksys releases a new firmware on their routers; (they could very easily modify their firmware to violate FCC regulations). The software for many, many devices is updated all the time. Modifications to that software could violate FCC rules, but that doesn't mean that those devices and software get recertified every single time.
Even a minor firmware change like this may require recertification, AFAIK.
Well... you don't.
They don't need to know the firmware revision because the subsidy lock has nothing to do with it. The subsidy unlock code is based on the IMEI.
A Slashdot article is definitely NOT deserved, as the unlocking algorithims are not public and the hardware to unlock these phones is sold at a decent profit and used to make even more profit.
Direct quote:
Your wireless phone is any device you use to receive our wireless voice or data service. It must comply with Federal Communications Commission regulations and be compatible with our network and your calling plan.
And if the contract states that you won't use Verizon's services with any phone running non-Verizon-authorized firmware, what then?
I don't know, maybe the Verizon firmware police will confiscate your phone after using their firmware-detecting machine? The customer agreement linked above has no mention of Verizon-authorized firmware. It says it only must be compatible with Verizon's network and your calling plan.
Unless they had intended to charge you for custom ringtones or something silly like that...
When you purchase a phone, it becomes your private property... they *sell* it to you, at a reduced price, and you also sign a contract tying you to the SERVICE. The phone however, is not theirs. You're allowed to modify the software on it all you want. So if these nonexistant contract stipulations existed, it's still not their phone.
I'm sympathetic that the stuff that they do charge for is often bullshit. But that doesn't mean that you should have the "right" to circumvent what you've contractually obligated yourself to follow.
There is no contractual obligations here and no circumventing of them.
It's one thing if they really did sell you the device outright, and sold you service on their networks with no stipulations about what you could do to the software running on your phone.
They did sell the device outright! The device is yours; the contract you sign for 1-2 years is in exchange for a reduced price on the phone. They allow you to do whatever you want. They *sold* you the phone. It's *yours*. The contract only locks you to their service. If you cancel the contract after the first 15 days, you keep the phone and pay the early termination fee (before 15 days, you return it and pay no fee.)
But if you don't like the terms of the contract, you don't have to accept them. If enough people felt like you, and actually did something about it and refused to do business with companies that offered shitty ToS, and told them so, there'd be a market for products that did not come with shitty ToS strings attached. I don't see anything in Verizon's ToS that's nonstandard or not to be expected from any large corporation. The problem is not with Verizon's ToS, but with the phones they sell.
It is extremely difficult/impossible to enter the nationwide wireless market without reselling, so there's not going to be some new nerd-friendly service launching.
Also, there are other choices that don't limit their phones down so much. Cingular and T-Mobile sell GSM phones without any limits on what you can do (besides the subsidy lock); if you don't like their phones, you can use any other compatible GSM device. Sprint's phones aren't nearly as limited...
Look at Speakeasy as an example of an ISP who respects what geeky customers want, or Google as a web services company that by and large does things right -- this isn't just some idealistic pipedream, it is a reality and can be for more products if we stand up and make ourselves heard, instead of being whores for the lowest-priced goods and services available, without regard to the other intangible costs.
Speakeasy fills a niche market. Otherwise, SBC and Verizon have a much larger DSL marketshare. I still don't understand what the huge attraction to Google is all about: good search engine, otherwise I don't care. If you want to stand up and make yourself heard while making up things about large corporations, you'll only make yourself look stupid. There have been and still are mobile companies that don't do this to customers. Verizon has never been the only choice.
Wrong. If you kill Explorer, it does not start back up. However, if it crashes, it does come back.
I can't remember ever having to kill Explorer. It either works, or crashes (and therefore re-runs itself).
the registry does have ACLs
In cases where hosts are already connected when the router is turned on, this means that whatever device requests an IP address first would get connections forwarded to it.
And in cases where there's only one PC connected, that's probably because people are using it as a firewall *because* it does not forward incoming connections. I know a few people that recommend this.
I really don't like it when IPv6 is enabled by default. I usually end up deleting the ipv6 module in Linux, just so it stays out of my goddamn way. I have no plans on using it anytime soon, and I find IPv6 addresses in ifconfig annoying.
Because the router offers no services by default to the WAN interface.
Ok, yes, the firewall is blocking all incoming connections, not NAT. What's your point?
You said "A NAT router will accept all inward connections by default". I refuted this. Windows XP SP2 is a NAT router that does not accept all inward connections by default.
That's because the *firewall* has been turned on by default on that particular device, that is completely independant of NAT. I can have a firewall without NAT, and I can have NAT without a firewall.
No, no, no! Do you know what you're talking about? Do you correctly understand how NAT works? A NAT router has an internal IP address and an external IP address. Incoming connection attempts on the external IP address are not magically forwarded to clients on the internal network. Unless forwarding is configured, by the end-user, any incoming connection attempts to the external IP won't be forwarded and will reach *only* the router.
Some people buy these devices as security devices, becasue incoming connections do not go through to their system by default...
It's a strange case if configured automatically/by default.
Even Windows XP SP2 does this; the firewall is turned on by default, and if you enable Internet Connection Sharing, the firewall is *still* turned on, blocking all incoming connections.
No matter what you do, except for those strange cases where the router automatically forwards everything to another host, the most anyone from the ouside network can connect to is the router itself.
Those files themselves are based on BSD code. However, the actual kernel code that was in Windows (NT3) was rewritten nine years ago (NT4). Also, that code was never directly from BSD; it was bsed on a commercial product Microsoft had purchased.
Linux does have numerous journaled filesystems, which are mutually exclusive to soft updates and don't need fsck.
5) Project Evil (Windows network card ABI emulation).
Uh? This concept originated in Linux as a commercial product, and has been cloned by open-source ndiswrapper.
Working, but not great. And the threading support is weak.
Journaling is currently being added.
Which makes it irrelevant right now. Until it's been released and proven to be stable and reliable, I don't see any widespread usage of it. (Plus, with FreeBSD 5's less the spectacular record of working well, I wouldn't consider a new FreeBSD filesystem for quite some time.)
USB support existed in the BSD's--I believe NetBSD had it first--about two years before Linux.
This feature isn't too useful outside of desktop/workstation usage, so most corporations won't be too terribly interested. Furthermore, USB support does exist in both operating systems now.
Jails have existed in FreeBSD for quite some time.
This is something that is missing in Linux. However, its usefulness is limited; When will Linux support Soft Updates?
Linux as a whole never will. Soft updates are a feature of individual file systems, of which Linux supports many. Soft updates and journaling file systems are mutually exclusive, and given the success of journaling file systems, I don't see them coming to Linux any time soon.
When will Linux use sysctl() instead of /proc?
Many years ago?
But even better: when will this make a huge difference in how either operating system works or in functionality?
How about virtual channels on a sound card?
Only a major concern for desktop users. Just about every sound card nowadays has hardware mixing; why not use that instead of your kernel-level (still software, not hardware!) mixer?
Many of the features you have listed are of no interest to many corporations, unless they are in the business of proving desktop operating system solutions.
It takes less than 15 seconds to open up a file in UltraEdit over FTP. Other editors with remote file editing are just as easy to use; both free and commercial software text and HTML editors exist that will edit files remotely.
and with much lower functionality.
Much lower functionality? I don't know what "functionality" you're talking about. Maybe if you're editing files with Notepad. But for those using something like Dreamweaver, and editing the page is as simple as opening the file, making your changes in an easy WYSIWYG environment, and saving.
If you ever used the ftp and edit technique for updating even a once a day page
I don't use the "ftp and edit technique". I use the "text/HTML editor that doesn't suck technique". I only use databases when it's warranted.
How can you be sure? You can't. Microsoft can't keep every retailer from selling old products. However, they distribute the newer versions as soon as they can.
I've ended up with very outdated stuff from stores before, hardware and software wise.
And unless you actually buy something that *is* the newer version, you will continue to get old stuff.
Are there any visual differences on the outside of the box to tip off the buyer which version the CD has on it?
Yes, it says Service Pack 2 right on the box.
In SP2 you must mean that spyware is just as easy to install.
It requires a larger amount of clicks, and most users still end up ignoring the way Internet Explorer presents the warning.
Close popup dialog, whoops you have spyware
There is not a popup dialog anymore. ActiveX control installation attempts display an alert at the top of the browser window, which most people will not notice. Then, they must click on that bar and select the Install Control option, and then again click Install. The user is warned that this could be unsafe (in bold text) at the install dialog.
Visit website, you have spyware.
I have never had this happen.
Stop using MSIE and you have a better chance, but still not perfect.
Now it's clear you're trolling; you must be talking about all those easy-to-install spyware exploits for Firefox and Opera that don't exist?
No matter what you do, if people click that confirmation dialog, it's all for nothing.
And that is, of course, the confimration dialog that users aren't even shown by default.
Wrong. The stock copy of Windows XP sold on the shelf right now is Service Pack 2. Before that they sold SP1(a), and before that it was the original version. Please research before posting.
It would be awhile. Since almost all Linux users are much more technologically adept than your typical Windows user, the few Linux boxes that are out there (not counting services) are less likely to have worms or anything like that. From what I understand, most worms either search nearby IP addresses or randomly chosen ones, so the chances of getting an infection in Linux is much lower.