<p>This is precisely what's wrong, with everything.</p>
<p>--<br>
Sent from my HTC Vision (G2), running Gingerbread.<br>
That is, a phone-like mobile device. :)</p>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Jan 22, 2011 8:07 AM, "Tom Freeman" <<a href="mailto:tfreeman@intel.digichem.net">tfreeman@intel.digichem.net</a>> wrote:<br type="attribution">> Mike<br>> <br>> I will respond at the top to the question at the bottom.<br>
> <br>> Many (most?) companies are in business to earn money (you already knew <br>> that!). Selling stuff gets money. Supporting stuff costs money. As an <br>> oversimplification, if they keep the money they win. If what they do <br>
> encourages you to go away, they keep the money.<br>> <br>> Support is a cost center, but not a profit center.<br>> <br>> But again, you already knew all of that.<br>> <br>> With everybody already lawyered up, about the only offense the consumer <br>
> has left would be, as pointed out already, the Better Business people and <br>> publicity of the slashdot and TV type.<br>> <br>> IMHO, of course<br>> <br>> On Fri, 21 Jan 2011, Michael B. Trausch wrote:<br>
> <br>>> On Fri, 2011-01-21 at 22:17 -0500, Scott Castaline wrote:<br>>>> Sorry for using bandwidth on this, but I again asked Gigabyte if I<br>>>> could<br>>>> just RMA the board and here is their response:<br>
>>><br>>>> "Since Linux is open source we are unable to verify it, we suggest<br>>>> testing with Windows based OS. It does not need to be Windows 7"<br>>>><br>>>> I've already informed them that I don't have Windows and really can't<br>
>>> afford to buy it just to prove or disprove that this board is bad.<br>>>><br>>>> Any comments?<br>>><br>>> Right, because it is ever so much easier to "verify" an opaque binary<br>
>> blob.<br>>><br>>> I seriously question the knowledge of the people behind some of these<br>>> companies. They are making hardware, which is by definition neutral of<br>>> an operating system in particular. Being that they are creating<br>
>> hardware (or at least, creating boards that use hardware that they<br>>> supposedly have the specs for), it should be relatively easy for them to<br>>> create a driver for any operating system; particularly one that is "open<br>
>> source" because there are so many people who are able to work on the<br>>> bloody thing *and* the whole API is actually available in (somewhat<br>>> readable) source code form.<br>>><br>>> For fuck's sake, it would not be *all* that hard to build a minimalistic<br>
>> framework built around the Linux kernel (or for that matter, any member<br>>> of the BSD family, if they're worried about being forced to commit<br>>> indecent exposure) and provide a disk that boots up the kernel and loads<br>
>> a minimalistic program that can validate that all the hardware is up and<br>>> running correctly and operating within specified parameters. They used<br>>> to do similar things with DOS-based boot floppies and CDs, and that was<br>
>> a much more difficult task.<br>>><br>>> Is there such a thing as a hardware manufacturer that knows what<br>>> supporting their product *actually* means? I mean, seriously. You'd<br>>> think that motherboard manufacturers were in the business of selling<br>
>> illicit drugs, not selling and supporting their own hardware.<br>>><br>>> --- Mike<br>>><br>> _______________________________________________<br>> Ale mailing list<br>> <a href="mailto:Ale@ale.org">Ale@ale.org</a><br>
> <a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale</a><br>> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at<br>> <a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo</a><br>
</div>