Droid X Self-Destructs If You Try To Mod 757
An anonymous reader writes with some discouraging news for hack-oriented purchasers of the new Droid X phone: "If the eFuse fails to verify [the firmware information (what we call ROMS), the kernel information, and the bootloader version], then the eFuse receives a command to 'blow the fuse' or 'trip the fuse.' This results in the booting process becoming corrupted, followed by a permanent bricking of the phone. This FailSafe is activated anytime the bootloader is tampered with or any of the above three parts of the phone has been tampered with."
Worst summary ever (Score:3, Funny)
Droid Does... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How is this even legal? (Score:5, Funny)
Termite? Methinks maybe thermite [wikipedia.org]?
Re:How is this even legal? (Score:2, Funny)
Cthuluphone.... (Score:1, Funny)
....after all, why opt for the LESSER of evils?
Re:Yes, and... (Score:3, Funny)
It's Slashdot's new plan to make people RTFA by picking a random paragraph to quote out of context in the summary, thus forcing them to visit TFA in order to work out what it's about.
Not that it's worked in the past, of course...
Glad I have an Apple phone. (Score:5, Funny)
Compared to the eFuse, their new iFuse just works, which makes for an infinitely superior bricking experience.
These aren't the droids we're looking for. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:How is this even legal? (Score:3, Funny)
twice as deadly!
Metal termites filled with thermite!
Apparently... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Easy for hackers to fix? (Score:4, Funny)
This is not the droid you are looking for (Score:1, Funny)
This Motorola unit has a bad motivator. Look.
Hey, what are you trying to pull?!
Re:iPhone Evil, Android Good (Score:5, Funny)
Where's you god now, Googlebots? WHERE'S YOUR GOD NOW?
Come over to the iSide, it's shiny!
Re:+1000. Goodbye Moto, Hello HTC (Score:5, Funny)
You're still using a 4-year-old phone? You're not doing HTC any good. :P
Re:It's the principle of the thing and more. (Score:5, Funny)
Eh? It’s just another safety feature.
Mandatory car analogy? Try pulling out an airbag system or modding it.
(For those not already aware, an airbag unit is basically a bomb. Don’t fuck with it.)
A better car analogy would be:
You don't like the rims your new car came with so you decide to swap over to some other ones. As soon as you remove the first wheel the entire car explodes.
Re:iPhone Evil, Android Good (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Easy for hackers to fix? (Score:5, Funny)
eFUSE can blow itself.
Lucky eFUSE!
Re:iPhone Evil, Android Good (Score:2, Funny)
They saw all the press Apple has been getting lately, first for "not really having a retina display" then for displaying the wrong number of bars to indicate signal reception strength. They wanted in on this, so they... wait a minute, they had to have started all of this before the iPhone4 was released. Dunno, maybe they're just plain evil.
Re:Worst summary ever (Score:4, Funny)
Re:So, are there reasons for this? (Score:4, Funny)
Please put the blame where it belongs!
Steve Jobs!
Re:It's the principle of the thing and more. (Score:5, Funny)
* May lead to loss of automotive transportation, groceries, pets, children and any other items still in the car.
Apple (Score:1, Funny)
Re:iPhone Evil, Android Good (Score:1, Funny)
Where's you god now, Googlebots? WHERE'S YOUR GOD NOW?
Come over to the iSide, it's shiny!
sorry, couldn't hear you... I think you were holding your phone wrong.
I've worked with Motorola (Score:1, Funny)
I've worked with licensing Motorola IPR (though not their cellular division), and have some experience with the Motorola attitude toward protecting their intellectual property rights.
Let me see if I can give you an idea of how Motorola is:
Find some African honeybees - not these pansy little "Aficanized" European bees we have in the US, but honest-to-God chase-you-for-5-miles-cause-you-dared-breath-near-our-nest African bees.
Via the Dark Arts, cross-breed these bees with Yellowjacket Wasps ("the skinheads of the insect kingdom").
Take some wolverines, infect them with rabies, and let them rape the bee/wasp crossbreeds. Again, via the Dark Arts insure offspring result.
Feed those offspring on a steady diet of crack, PCP, meth, and Talk Radio.
Grow them to about the size of a Dire Wolf.
These crossbreeds will shriek and run like scared little girls upon encountering ONE of Motorola's IPR folks.
Re:In past days... (Score:1, Funny)
as you rant about the good old days presumably you are a grey bearded hacker, so maybe your cognitive processes have given way to negativity and whining about how things used to be so much better, back in the good old days.
For someone whose brain hasn't calcified, the point was that "in the good old days" you didn't have to hack around a self-destructing device just to be able to do other fun hacking activities. You know, like your example of the quirky scsi card -- you didn't have to "unfix" what someone did to deliberately make corrupt data, why would a scsi card manufacturer design it to deliberately corrupt data. Not all hackers "in the good old days" would have enjoyed, or been able to afford, repeated hack attempts on newly purchased hardware as each new purchase burned itself up. Sure, some hackers with less stable personality would have been drawn like moths to the flame, but that would have only been a minority.
Maybe the distinction is just too fine for an old, addled, foggy brain to pick up on. But if you read more carefully and project less negativity you might be able to overcome these limitations.
Re:It's the principle of the thing and more. (Score:3, Funny)