Tuesday, February 22, 2005

HP fucks their clients



so bOINGbOING (come è usuale) has got the Bad Word on technology DRM stuff.

HP BIOS Locks Out All Cards Save Those on a Whitelist

Ian Hogben discovered that his HP laptop stores a whitelist of allowed Mini-PCI cards in its BIOS. If the WiFi card you buy isn't on the whitelist, your laptop won't boot. The anticompetitive implications for this are stunning: if you don't go to HP on bent knee before shipping your cards, they'll lock them out of their hardware and none of their customers will be able to use your card. Not to mention what happens when new cards are invented after your laptop leaves the factory: sorry, no modern hardware for you, your laptop only works with museum pieces.

here's the link to the original hogbender.blogspot entry they cite about this problem.

1 comment:

emily1 said...

and they don't even give them the benefit of a reach around.