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posted by janrinok on Saturday March 15 2014, @11:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the more-lock-in-is-just-what-we-needed dept.

FuckBeta writes:

"Guido Stepko reports - In an GOLEM interview at CEBIT 2014 fair, Frank Kuypers, technical account manager at INTEL corp., proudly presented a new feature in INTEL processors, called "hooks", beginning with the new 2014 "Merrifield" 64 bit SoC chip generation.

In the Intel network only mobiles with certain Android versions are allowed to use certain functionalities. If you then replace your Android version, e.g. by a free Cyanogenmod Android kernel, not only some chips would stop working, e.g. LTE/UMTS, but also mails from your employer would be blinded out, because now the processor itself would 'classify' the new software as 'risk'.

Now, beginning with the new 2014 power efficient mobile "Merrifield" processor generation, this functionality will be used to lock the processor for certain OS'es or OS versions. Whether there will be a SDK or use of this 'functionality' will be kept a secret, still is undecided, Kuypers said.

Ryan O'Dell sees a potential abuse of the technology: "You'll buy a computer from a shop with Windows OS and not be able to change to Linux or another OS in the future. You may be able to buy the processor unlocked for a sum. With mobile phones/tablets it can be worse with phone networks also potentially have a lock-in. It's a disaster for the consumer"

Google translation from German: (Google)

 
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  • (Score: 1) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday March 18 2014, @12:50AM

    by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Tuesday March 18 2014, @12:50AM (#17867) Journal

    This is why I start with a kit and then when it comes time to upgrade I get a new board and repurpose the board that came with the kit. My current PC started with an Athlon X2 kit with 2 RAM slots with 1Gb each, I first swapped the board for a newer board with 4 RAM slots (while giving the older board to one of the boys) and then later down the line I swapped the X2 for a Phenom II X4 followed by the Phenom II X6. This way I could start with a really cheap kit and then take my time and keeping an eye out on the sales it keeps the price really low while making sure I'm never without a system.

     

    My final total on this system is less than $600 and has 8Gb of RAM (can hold 16Gb but I really don't see a point in that much RAM ATM), 3Tb of HDD space and an HD7750. If you don't have people to pass them to Craigslist or similar allow you to recoup a large portion of your purchase price thus making the system even cheaper.

    BTW a word of warning...SSDs to this day die WITHOUT WARNING so either have the OS and ONLY the OS so if it dies you can just reimage without loss or have it mirrored with a HDD so you don't end up losing your data. In many ways SSDs are in the same place that HDDs were in the 80s, many huge improvements but stability? Not really there yet.

    --
    ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.