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Should products be fully documented so that consumers can make an informed decision?
by intricatedetail 6y ago
Should products be fully documented so that consumers can make an informed decision?
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoI don't know. It's Windows vs Linux all over; I think Open is better, but Intel has never (AFAIK) pretended to do that. If a customer knows "Intel/Microsoft controls this", I personally feel like that's an acceptable tradeoff. And for people who find that unacceptable, there's Debian on POWER9. But if you're picking Intel, it's not like these opcodes change anything; we already have ME sitting there controlling the machine.
- intricatedetail 6y agoDid they release specs so that customer could build their own ME to manage the CPU? That would be interesting.
- google234123 6y agoWhy would they do that?
- intricatedetail 6y agoI can't imagine why someone would hide details of the product they are selling. That is dishonest and should be illegal. Imagine if someone was selling food and would omit some ingredients from the list or you buy a house with a basement and you don't get a key nor info what's inside.
- garmaine 6y agoQuite the contrary, I suspect that telling the details would be illegal. The ME engine predates Snowden and is widely believed in the security community to be subject to NSA meddling. It may be that Intel is the recipient of a NSL preventing them from disclosing too many details. But for whatever reason they have been very tight-lipped.
- crummy 6y agoDoes all the software you buy disclose all its functionality?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- garmaine 6y agoI’m not sure if this is sarcasm or not. If you are genuinely curious, the answer is “no.”
- tinus_hn 6y agoThey don’t even release instructions on how to turn it off.
- salawat 6y agoYes! God, I miss tge days when things actually shipped with manuals on how everything works. I have a fiew old pieces of hardware I keep manuals around for just to remind me of what the writing style is supposed to look like.
- google234123 6y agomanual != fully documented...
- monocasa 6y agoBack in the day they were though. Full schematics, microcode listings, and a flow chart to understand the microcode.
- duskwuff 6y agoCan you give an example of a processor whose microcode was publicly documented? (Barely-public documents like patent filings don't count.)
- tinus_hn 6y agoFor the 6502 there were manuals that detailed how many clock ticks every instruction takes and what happens during the ticks, which is pretty much the same.
- Google234 6y agoThat’s .001% of information that describes a processor. Anyway people measure it and provide it today too.
- tinus_hn 6y agoWhat is the other 99.999% of information? Yes, there was some undefined behavior that was not in the official manuals but certainly not a 100000 times what was in there.
- occamrazor 6y agoIn most cases there is a public API which is documented and a private API which is not. In this specific case, users do not have the ability to use this instruction, so there is no reason to document it.
- intricatedetail 6y agoWhy is it acceptable for companies to keep such information away from a consumer?
- nolok 6y agoBecause it is not part of the public-accessible product and the company is free to change it at will from one version of the product to the other, or even between multiple batch of the same version. You see it from an "they should inform us" POV, but there is also the "there is no guarantee it will be there" side.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoWhat do you mean it's not publically accessible? A bank's vault is not publically accessible because there is a meter of steel, concrete, and armed guards. We can debate if some private bank API's are publically accessible (you can still DDOS them). This shit, however, is inside my property, that I bought with my money, and it might end up being used by some malware. It is by definition accessible, and could be a security bomb. How can any believer in free market defend companies secretly selling to comsumers the equivalent of a dangerous remote control mechanism embedded in their car? Market only works if sellers aren't lying all the time, and in IT industry we made it the norm.
- nolok 6y agoYou're talking security, he was talking official documentation and thus guarantees about it being there that way. Your bank doesn't guarantee you that the lock model X45-b from company SUPERLOCK will protect your gold in their vault, even if that's what they use right now, and it's not specified in your contract with them, they just guarantee to protect your gold. This way they can change the lock without being in breach of contract.