181–190 of 228 posts
Closed-source firmware and silicon must end, because it's impossible to authoritatively verify correctness or rule out malware implants inserted at some point along the way.
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If some other CPU architecture were the dominant PC platform, do you think it wouldn't grow such features too? It's not hard to imagine an alternate universe in which we all have RISC workstations with the equivalent of ME, and Intel/AMD are the minorities who have more "open" CPUs without, but only because they hadn't grown enough. The underlying reason why ME became popular is the same reason why proprietary walled…
> The underlying reason why ME became popular ... ... is also because it provides management features that are wanted by enterprise customers. If you're running hundreds of servers in a data center, the more management you can do remotely, without visiting the machine room and preferably automated as much as possible, the better. This is quite irrelevant and even undesirable for an individual's personal computer.
Admins use the ILOM/IPMI for servers, so you don't really need it for server CPUs. For laptops all management happens at the operating system level, not below it.
What happened to 3rd party chipsets? Seems like VIA, ALi, SiS, Nvidia nForce, all stopped making them for Intel processors around 2008. If there were alternative chipsets still around, we would see more motherboard makers adopting something like openBMC with an alternative chipset and using it. No Intel PCH, no Intel ME.
If there were alternative chipsets still around, we would see more motherboard makers adopting something like openBMC with an alternative chipset and using it. No we wouldn't. All the chipsets would be subject to the same market forces and thus would converge on similar features, including the ME. Just like how 99% of x86 systems are running UEFI instead of coreboot.
Big companies will do open consumer friendly products, once the ecosystem exists and there is some consumer awareness.
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Then let owners control whether it's enabled or not (by a hardware switch if necessary). As it currently stands, I can't imagine a benign reason that would drive intel and AMD to lock users out of their machines.
You can't think of any reason? Have you or do you work for a large company [1], especially hardware companies? I've sat through I don't know how many "planning" meetings, which were little better than design by committee, and whose outcome was not in the best interest of the customer despite the best intentions of everyone there. 1. Or the government or one of it's contractors. I've even sat through meetings 12 engin…
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Wouldn't it just take a motherboard maker or two to find an alternative to the PCH, like Nvidia nforce or a VIA chipset. adopt something like openbmc and sell it as an open feature? No intel PCH, no Intel ME. Seems like the Linux kernel is eager to support it: https://lwn.net/Articles/683320/ What happened to 3rd parties making chipsets? Another case of Intel abusing it's monopoly?
I'd love it. But it probably would increase the manufacturer's costs for the motherboard (including engineering, component costs, etc.), distract the organization (managers, engineers, purchasing personnel, etc. spending time on this novel tech instead of just buying Intel/AMD chipsets), reduce quality (can they really compete with Intel's engineering resources?), which increases support costs, etc. ... all for a mar…
VIA used to make dual socket server class chipsets, for the pentium 3, which ever age was in.
ACPI is almost as horrible: complicated, opaque, untrusted code running on a VM instead of using declarative data tables. Closed-source firmware and silicon must end, because it's impossible to authoritatively verify correctness or rule out malware implants inserted at some point along the way.
Imagine if some non-US government voided Intel and AMD's patents as a self-defence measure against these probably-backdoored 'features'. Why should they protect the profits of hostile corporations?
Voiding patents probably doesn't change anything because patents usually contain just vague description.
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You can't think of any reason? Have you or do you work for a large company [1], especially hardware companies? I've sat through I don't know how many "planning" meetings, which were little better than design by committee, and whose outcome was not in the best interest of the customer despite the best intentions of everyone there. 1. Or the government or one of it's contractors. I've even sat through meetings 12 engin…
Explain to me why I can't disable it for my home PC.
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Likely to do with the EURion constellation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation Another item of interest may be printer stenography, in which every piece of printed paper, seemingly from every printer, can be traced back to make, model and potentially even the unit used to print it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_steganography
I'm one of the most paranoid people you're ever likely to meet. (People more paranoid than I am won't communicate online.) Printer stenography is just beyond the limit I set for myself to try to disbelieve, and yet, here it is. (Meaning that I always assumed something like this was going on, because that's what I would do , but I try to disbelieve it so as to be able to act normal. I believe all phones are continuall…
I still don't use facebook and I run free/open-source software exclusively, but worrying about it didn't change anything.