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Comment Re:Did they (Score 1) 322

No, you just entirely missed the point of the comment because you focused on one line and tried to be pedantic.

The point is that I, as a user, cannot take the code and make a fix and apply it on my system. Sure, I can put my own compiler on there, but if there is a bug in the GUI layer that causes it to hang when I enter suspend I cannot go to the git repository and apply a fix and run with it. I'd have to wait until Mr. Jobs has blessed the next version of OSX and hope that they've fixed my bug.

Now, I'm not positive Android in most forms holds true to the "no freedom has been lost" part because the vendors don't allow you to flash your own code image without doing a good deal of hacking and violating your service agreements.
PlayStation (Games)

US Air Force To Suffer From PS3 Update 349

tlhIngan writes "The US Air Force, having purchased PS3s for supercomputing research, is now the latest victim of Sony's removal of the Install Other OS feature. It turns out that while their PS3s don't need the firmware update, it will be impossible to replace PS3s that fail. PS3s with the Other OS feature are no longer produced since the Slim was introduced, so replacements will have to come from the existing stock of used PS3s. However, as most gamers have probably updated their PS3s, that used stock is no longer suitable for the USAF's research. In addition, smaller educational clusters using PS3s will share the same fate — unable to replace machines that die in their clusters." In related news, Sony has been hit with two more lawsuits over this issue.

Comment Re:At least it was fixable. (Score 1) 611

Open and configurable has nothing to do with this. A sufficiently intelligent malware could have made things as bad as a virus on Windows. Think of a malware that infects your libc to catch certain system function calls (such as those done by the "remove instructions") and redirects them to innocuous behavior. Even on a system that provides SHA1 checksum verification of all libraries and binaries installed through the package manager, you are still susceptible to a ill-behaving fopen/fread. The only way around something like that would be to boot from a clean boot disk with a known-good libc, which is pretty similar to the only way to be sure to clean a virus off Windows.

The fact of the matter is if you have root access and you run programs without knowing what they do, you are exposed to nasty things irrespective of what OS you are running.

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