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Re: Why all high end devices have something stupid in them?

I still think the n900 will be counted as one of the all-time greats. Too bad there hasn't been variants with bigger screens, no keyboard, wimax etc so that people could buy the model that's perfect for them

as to openness, consider that motorola crypto sign bootloaders etc so that when they decide to end support, your device is given the death penalty. I wonder when apple will start doing that or fix it to prevent jailbreaking?

it will be interesting to see what happens in the PS2 community now that the master key leaked making it effectively an open platform. people can now sign their own binaries. rampant piracy yes, but amazing homebrew too!

Re: Why all high end devices have something stupid in them?

Quote:

Originally Posted by speculatrix (Post 920717)

as to openness, consider that motorola crypto sign bootloaders etc so that when they decide to end support, your device is given the death penalty. I wonder when apple will start doing that or fix it to prevent jailbreaking?

Any examples of this ever happening? I mean, not rumors. But actual folks showing evidence of this actually happening.

Re: Why all high end devices have something stupid in them?

Quote:

Originally Posted by speculatrix (Post 920717)

Did you mean Sony PS3?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/...tion-hack.html

Quote:

Originally Posted by gerbick (Post 921352)

Any examples of this ever happening? I mean, not rumors. But actual folks showing evidence of this actually happening.

Is it rumours or actual folks?
Petitions:
https://supportforums.motorola.com/message/109285
https://supportforums.motorola.com/message/311110
https://supportforums.motorola.com/message/160363
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?ui...98&topic=13747

News:
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2010/07/mot...t-custom-roms/

Hacking:
http://www.droidxforums.com/forum/dr...ootloader.html
Hacked:
http://www.gadgetsdna.com/milestone-...d-broken/3574/

Motorola's response:
http://www.androidguys.com/2010/07/1...r-controversy/

EDIT:

Quote:

Originally Posted by gerbick (Post 921389)

I knew about eFuse, however take a look over at XDA-Developers and the activity on the Droid is more than the activity here on the N900.

The question I have though is have they ever pulled the kill-switch? So far, that's been a no.

Motorola said that eFuse can be used to prevent booting with unapproved software:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/16/m...sy-says-efuse/

That's the most likely reason why hacking involved booting with approved software and then later replacing it with unapproved software without rebooting.

I see no kill-switch mentioned here. At least, it seems that Motorola cannot silently activate eFuse on one particular device.

But, you obviously know Android much better.

Best wishes
:)

Re: Why all high end devices have something stupid in them?

Quote:

Originally Posted by ndi (Post 919880)

Everything can be fixed. But fixing is like a million dollars. Trivial for a behemoth company like Nokia or the Linux community, impossible for a small village like us. And only one is handy. And he's Amish. And hammer's got a hole in it. And he has the runs.

I kid, I kid.

Everything can be fixed, except unless it's closed for any number of reasons.

Re: Why all high end devices have something stupid in them?

Quote:

Originally Posted by danramos (Post 919394)

Except the parts they can't.
THANK YOU!

I see you're going for infamy now... lol.

Well, you've been elevated to a new tag by somebody here... Dan the Troll.

Re: Why all high end devices have something stupid in them?

Hey, can't be that bad, wikiwide seems to like the show.

Re: Why all high end devices have something stupid in them?

Quote:

Originally Posted by gerbick (Post 921389)

The question I have though is have they ever pulled the kilswitch? So far, that's been a no.

It's not a killswitch, per se, but a staked chain. Once changes to Android come down the pipe that require a new kernel, buyers are dependent on Motorola releasing a newly signed kernel. Otherwise, they're stuck on the old version and hoping for whatever backports they can get.

This serves Motorola, because they can then use things like Honeycomb or 2.4 or whatever as a selling point for their newest shiny phone, despite the older hardware likely being more than capable of running it.

Yet for some reason, Motorola is the only vendor to enforce this.

Re: Why all high end devices have something stupid in them?

Quote:

Originally Posted by gerbick (Post 921805)

I see you're going for infamy now... lol.

Well, you've been elevated to a new tag by somebody here... Dan the Troll.

I prefer to see it as a compliment and that someone feels that they have nothing to contribute. It would seem that when someone can't make an intelligent, cogent argument back in a discussion, the only thing they have left is that ancient, caveman reaction to grunt, gnash their teeth and perhaps call the other person names or label them negatively.

Troll, though, hm? Can I begin charging people for posting comments? :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by wmarone (Post 922388)

Yet for some reason, Motorola is the only vendor to enforce this.

Not true, actually. I've been reading up on several other manufacturers doing this, including Samsung--which surprised me. Apparently, there's something along those lines implemented in firmware on the Samsung Galaxy Tab but it's been disabled and unused so far, except for some recent updates in European versions of the Tab's OS.

Re: Why all high end devices have something stupid in them?

Quote:

Originally Posted by danramos (Post 922768)

Troll, though, hm? Can I begin charging people for posting comments?

I'd pay for this Gervais-like performance...