since it is opensource you can know now with absolute certainty where the bug was and for how long it has been there, and you can check exactly how it is fixed. with closed source you would know next to nothing. definitely worse.

replacing that ROM is a straightforward form of "patching" a device. at the very extreme, replacing the whole device could be seen as a patch. ergo doable. it may not be cost effective, though, so industry might be tempted to shove the cost on the customer by coercing him to buy a new device. whatever justification, this boils down to the provider refusing to take responsibility over his own work, and this alone should promptly disqualify him, but it seems to be common accepted practice. still nonsense! :-)

this makes no sense. nothing is unpatchable. where you read "unpatchable" you should read: "we will not patch it because it isn't profitable, so please upgrade to our new shiny shit which we obviously won't patch either".

of course folks with malicious intent can find a way to patch it, and will. there is nothing adding to security here, quite the contrary. it's just a big clusterfuck. industry is only interested in perceived security. then of course people get what they pay for.

time to take opensource software and hardware seriously, already? not yet? ooooooook ...

thank you. i already missed an inflamated post about wtf "mpg" should mean.

now that i know, i'm still struggling to understand why this should be posted on a tech category, and why the fuck should i care about how much drivers have to pay for happily keeping on polluting our planet. ah, slashdot! hang them all!

that's not a regular computer user. it's more like a regular tv-watcher. computers should make us smarter, not dumber.

of course, everybody seems to endorse getting everybody dumber. governments, industry and preachers of all sorts, for good reasons. even the users, although their opinion is pretty irrelevant. they have very much proven to be eager to eat whatever shit they get served.

if this is some sort of joke it' clearly woooshed me.

please someone explain what's funny in this ignorant nonsense. this guy has absolutely no idea of what he is talking about, and makes it evident on every single sentence. i don't even unterstand how this gets published here. is it a parody?

some ideas just to not rule this option completely out:
- make it public, host it in github or similar. someone might volunteer to help maintain it. i could.
- contact unicef. as a peer in the workflow they might be able to help with resources, tools, knowhow or specifications.

why on earth does a charity run w7? were those computers a gift?

average computer illiterate users can do absolutely nothing with ms-access. specially smart average computer illiterate users can do utter crap with ms-access in which they themselves will get lost very soon. geeks can use ms-access as they would use any other relational engine (just a very limited one). in short: ms-acces offers zero, it's not really an alternative in this case.

developing something for them (the cited mysql/django approach) is cool but will make them dependent on you. do it only if you reasonably expect you'll be around for a while and are up for the compromise :-)

i second the spreadsheet suggestion. and i would add that probably the best contribution you could make is to train someone in that staff to be self-sufficient in this kind of tasks. it might be substantially more effort but definitely worth it, specially if you make sure he/she passes the knowledge on before quitting. of course, first thing to do is to ask if there's another bizarre requirement for having commercial software. if not, promptly format those bitches and grab free software for them, show them how to start using it.

i made no complaint at all. it was just laughing off the ceo's discourse. trying to justify this while claiming to strive for an open web will always be hilarious..

i also stated that drm is crap, but that's just an opinion, and even the whole world buying into it wouldn't change it.

i'm fine with that. and there are already forks that stay away from this and many other sneaky marketing stuff (see iceweasel for example). i expect that as firefox becomes more and more a marketing trojan horse those forks will just take its place. it's the circle of life! :D my comment was just about the moronic explanation and hypocritical excuses from the ceo. no big deal!

and yours is a good example of rethorical tautology. people also pay bank bailouts and it doesn't mean they demand them.

i see nobody demanding drm support here: https://input.mozilla.org/en-U... nor here https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/b...
do you?

interestingly, if you read through the thread for this bug, you will have a clue about who is actually requesting this crap:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s...

true. but this is only true the moment a major browser indulges in suporting this drm crap. this is not a feature the user demand, but the copyright lobby. and doing so is in total contradiction with any form of advocacy for an open web. it is clear that mozilla, under present management, has more important priorities than an open web, so all this ceo-talk is just the usual bullshit you'd expect from ... well, a ceo. oh wonder.

what you all seem to fail to note is that you can trust that shiny phone in your pocket even less, and that's probably why this model doesn't work (and shouldn't work).

you're just not ready for a future dominated by retards.
but resistance is futile. you will be UXed.

i don't think this quote means what you think it does.

ditto.

as much as a shotgun against your head is just a metal tube.

don't be so modest. you just contributed a fair share.