Hanno's blog

Recently there were some News that Lenovo does not like Linux any more. This was supported by comments like this at Lenovoblogs (by a Lenovo engineer):

»Again, what’s the incentive for us to start providing all of this intellectual property for free to the Linux community? You may say it drives support for Linux on ThinkPads and people would buy more ThinkPads as a result. I think that’s a dubious assertion at best.«
(the subject was driver support for switchable graphics on modern thinkpads and brings up some common urban legends about linux and driver support)

Sadly, I experienced one more place where Lenovo seems to shift away from a Linux friendly viewpoint: I tried to return the windows license of my new Thinkpad with a pre-made form by Lenovo itself (I got this from someone else by eMail, not from Lenovo directly). In the net, you can find tons of reports that it was easy for people to get money back for their windows licenses by Lenovo.

Though what I got was this:
»Leider können wir Ihrem Wunsch nach Rückerstattung der Kosten für das auf Ihrem Lenovo Produkt vorinstallierte Microsoft-Betriebssystem nicht entsprechen, da das Betriebssystem aus unserer Sicht einen integralen Bestandteil des jeweiligen Lenovo Produkts darstellt.«
(rough translation: We won't refund your windows-license, because we think it's an integral part of the product)

I find it hard to understand why Lenovo makes this shift. When running around on linux conferences in recent months, the number of thinkpads is hughe. While many other vendors shift to a much more free software friendly behaviour (think of AMD/ATI), Lenovo seems to go the different direction. It's especially strange because Lenovo is probably one of the few vendors that has a notable market share in the linux community.

By the way, I welcome any hints how I should continue with the windows refunding. I'd prefer not to capitulate yet (like I did with my last laptop by Samsung), and I assume the law is clearly on my side.

Update: As some of you asked, here is the form by Lenovo, though you'll probably just get the same reply I got.

Probably interesting, here you can find all EULAs from Microsoft. They are quite clear on the subject and say that you MUST return the windows license to the vendor if you don't agree to the EULA.

In the meantime, I wrote several messages about the issue to various people and instutitions. The FSFE is also working on the subject.

Keine Ahnung was die Meldung bedeutet. Keine Ahnung wozu dieses Terminal da ist (steht im Stuttgarter Hauptbahnhof neben der zweiten Treppe, wenn man den linken Ausgang Richtung Klettpassage nimmt). Es steht hinten was von T-Com drauf, vermutlich so eine Bezahl-Internet-Surfstation.

Wir (Bernd und ich) hielten gestern im Rahmen einer Veranstaltung der LUG Backnang und des CCWN einen Vortrag mit Kritik an Vista, Mac OS und DRM allgemein. Ich erlebe gerade die Arbeit für freie Software allgemein sehr positiv, so meinte etwa ein Zuschauer, im Oktober hatte er Probleme mit seiner XP-Aktivierung, die der Meinung war, er hätte eine illegale Version und seit Dezember nutzt er Linux.

Wie üblich die Vortragsmaterialien (diesmal exklusiv als ODP, ich geh inzwischen davon aus, dass das jeder kann), Teil 1 und 3 waren von mir, Teil 2 von Bernd:

Slides Teil 1 (DRM), Slides Teil 2 (Windows Vista), Slides Teil 3 (Mac OS)
Gezeigtes Filmmaterial: The Corruptibles, A movie about Trusted Computing

... klingt irgendwie schon ziemlich scheiße.
Hat was von »geteert und gefedert«. Die armen Updates.

Proudly presented by Windows XP Update.

A while back, some people from the chaos computer club created a small tool called dingens (yeah, the name sucks) to disable windows services that open ports to the network.
The idea is simple, a common windows installation (esp. before sp2) opens various ports to the network by default, even if they aren't used for anything. This led to a couple of security threats in the past, many viruses used buggy services to attack remote computers.

Now, while it's probably in general not a good idea to use an operating system so poorly designed that it opens ports by default without needing them, if you're forced to use windows, dingens is probably a much better idea than most other »security solutions«. Why? Because it closes security holes instead of working around them and introducing new problems, like antivirus-apps or personal firewalls do.

Now, recently Antivir reported win32sec.exe (the dingens-tool) as
SecurityPrivacyRisk/Tool.KillService riskware

And Panda Antivirus says:
Hacktool/Servicekiller.A

Probably someone should tell the people at Panda about the different meanings of »Hacker«. Just because something was done by »Hackers« doesn't mean it's a hacktool. In fact, detecting dingens as something dangerous is trying to get rid of competitors in terms of security solutions. The only thing dingens endangers is the business model of so-called security companies.
After some people intervened, Antivir has removed the signature now. Panda still thinks it's a »hacktool«.

The complete idea of AV apps is wrong. The purpose of a virus is to use security holes to spread itself. AVs can only detect already known viruses. That also means the security hole is known and thus should be fixed, not worked around by some crappy software that can have security problems itself. The only valid usage of an AV I can think of is to scan email to reduce crap in your inbox. But, not to secure you (that should be done by a well-designed mail client), just to save you time from deleting the mails, the same thing spamfilters do. A command-line scanner like clamav (the only free one) is just fine for this. Everyone telling you that you need to install a »allround security solution« on your PC is lying.