Who's hardware is it anyway?

Posted on Tue 14 October 2003 by alex in general

I'm sure everyone who runs Windows has read and understood the href=http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/26517.html>EULA (or
End User License Agreement) that came with it. However a story caught
my eye href=http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020390,39116400,00.htm>about
the XBox which of course is not covered by a EULA.In a nutshell in the quest to avoid people using their hardware for
something else other than playing games, Microsoft
downloaded an update to the system software. At the same time the patch deleted any files that it didn't think should be there.The guy that was affected by this has written a href=http://xbox-linux.sourceforge.net/docs/remotedelete.html>letter
to Microsoft complaining about this behavior. It will be interesting
to see if he gets any response.
A lot of noise is made about FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) and its lack
of warranty. However if I screw up data on my system its generally
because:
  • I was running something marked as experimental/unstable
  • I did something stupid
Its worth asking yourself next time Microsoft install something on
your hardware that deletes your files what comeback do
you have?
Cool upcoming toy of the day. If I could get a cheap eye-cam on a ware-able computer
this would keep me happy until the neural interface is complete.

Question of the day: What does the leaking of the Half-Life 2 source code actually href="http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003-10-04&res=l">mean?