Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: The i2o Bus: A Conspiracy Against Free Software? (fwd) | Date | Fri, 18 Jul 1997 15:17:05 -0500 | From | Evan Jeffrey <> |
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>> technical information on drivers and such. There is also a MS supported >> standard for a network connect device that combines PCI/USB and other >> devices into a single port with an NDA protected spec. > >You aren't watching very hard. The biggest leap MS took against free >software was Windows/CE - the OS is in flash. Expect NetPC type devices >to include windows kernel components in flash in a couple of years
At least what gets flashed in can be flashed out.
Of course, supposedly intel's x86 microcode update system is based around some kind of encryption such that only an intel-approved update could go into it (mostly to prevent people from putting the wrong patch in and hosing their CPU--which btw would make one nasty virus).
I don't know how it works, (intel's website wasn't exactly technically detailed about it--they just wanted to point out that it could have fixed the fdiv bug) but MS got mfgs to do something like that... ouch.
=== Evan Jeffrey erjeffre@artsci.wustl.edu
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
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