I don't understand what a solution can be. If they're never going to release supporting documentation anyway, does it really make a difference for them? Since they're profiting with or without us anyway. So we can either choose to just make it work, or just not buy their products. I think the former is more productive than the latter since "boycotting" their product won't really affect them (at least any time soon) so they won't care anyway. On the other hand, learning to do things like reverse engineer and write drivers can be a good experience, especially for a young person such as myself. I just want to make my stuff work, regardless of what anyone else thinks of it... and if other people want to use my code too, then I'd be glad to share. But the primary focus is for my own personal gain, not to help others have support for their hardware.
Of course the other option being that I could just go ahead and forget all of that and buy a Thinkpad of my choice so the work is already done for me. All of my previous machines just coincidentally had bad compatibility with OpenBSD because I didn't exactly choose them from selections like at a store (I took whatever was available for free or cheap) and I didn't always get what I want because I didn't grow up in a household where we really had the luxury of even buying a computer at all, but I was always open to picking up thrown away boxes that were functioning perfectly fine. After I recently finished high school (just barely; I'm not very smart which is also why I failed every class in two semesters of community college) I've been working full-time for minimum wage with extra shifts to save up for that new ThinkPad I've always wanted. It took a while after the rent, bills, and food, but I'm not sure if I still want to make the purchase because I could learn so much from trying to get my current notebook to work instead of just relying on something that works out of the box. So I'm still contemplating on whether my money can go to better use. What do you think? --- On Fri, 1/22/10, J.C. Roberts <list-...@designtools.org> wrote: > From: J.C. Roberts <list-...@designtools.org> > Subject: Re: Books on reverse engineering? > To: "Ted Unangst" <ted.unan...@gmail.com> > Cc: "Tomas Bodzar" <tomas.bod...@gmail.com>, "Tobias Ulmer" <tobi...@tmux.org>, "James Hozier" <guitars...@yahoo.com>, misc@openbsd.org > Date: Friday, January 22, 2010, 9:05 AM > > [snip] > > At present, James only asked the question of "How?" but > skipped over > the far more important question of "Why?" > > I've been a DataRescue/HexRays customer for over a decade, > and I have a > full licenses for the IDA Pro disassembler and the HexRays > decompiler. > I am certainly not "great" at reverse engineering, but I > can usually do > well enough. When I see the constant complaints from the > open source > world about closed hardware, in particular nVidia, my > personal thought > processes is very consistent... > > 1.) Get Angry. > 2.) Say to myself, "I could fix this," since > disassembling and/or > decompiling the closed source nVida > drivers is certainly possible. > 3.) I ponder how long it would take to do, and how > much time I would > sink into supporting it. > 4.) And finally I get to the rational conclusion; I > SHOULD NOT HELP A > HARDWARE VENDOR WHO REFUSES TO RELEASE > DOCUMENTATION! > > The reality of "why?" is truly ugly; If I spend my time > supporting > undocumented hardware, then I am only encouraging vendors > to refuse to > provide documentation. It actually makes more sense to > throw away the > undocumented hardware and replace it with well documented > hardware. > > As you can see, the challenge of getting something to work > is not the > most important consideration. The most important thing is > the > precedence you set by helping hardware vendors to remain > closed. > > James would do more good by "stomping" on the device as he > mentioned, > taking pictures of the destruction, putting up his poor > experience up > on a blog, and mail the link to the VP of Marketing at the > vendor. > > Being nice with vendors seldom works. > > -- > jon
