Matthias Kilian:
> [1] Sometimes, the black boxes aren't black but white and have fruit
> printed or engraved on them.

Bwa-ha-ha-ha :)
However, one can get proper manuals being an authorized service center, no?

> Ever tried to repair a broken iPod or 
> let someone fix a bug in MacOS X?

It's a standard practice nowadays -- noone includes any good docs with
their products anymore (schematics? what's that!?), but at least Apple
puts part numbers on most of their pieces... And that's the best they can
do, IMHO. Why swear at Apple if everyone is like them, and even worse?

No, I don't use anything from Apple, but I did fix a few of their products...
some were a nightmare to take apart, some were OK. One thing for sure though:
they do help to fight the tendency of lots of vendors to sell crap products
(in terms of quality -- materials, components, engineering and even exterior
and interior design) and think that it's OK. Take iPod, for instance. Put it
beside any other music player. See the difference? Although I don't own iPods
(for their 'pop' image and stupid iTunes interface, useless under BSD), if
not for Apple, we'd still be stuck with players made of cheap plastic, in a
shape of a large curved brick, (worst of all) with flashy face and controls
(made for Japanese schoolgirls?) and, as always, lots of features, useful
and not very :)

We can criticize vendors for not being OSS-friednly, but shouldn't go
too far. Remember that there's pressure to sell products for as little
money as possible (sometimes being 'competitive' means selling your
product for no profit, or worse). For many cheap goodies, writing
documentation is just a waste of time (what's the ratio of Unix users
vs Windoze ones in North America?), so if a vendor is kind enough to
supply a _functional_ FreeBSD driver for, say, $10 NIC -- it's great,
it means that someone in the company cares about BSD. Driver doesn't
work in -CURRENT? Throw away the card and buy something that works.
This NIC's chip is used in your notebook? You're lucky, you have a
driver. Want to change to -CURRENT? Well, you're screwed, but who
cares -- you should be using M$-Windows anyway.

Server hardware is a different story. There, vendors _must_ provide
documentation, it's absolutely essential. But don't mix these two
different markets. Either talk about general hardware, or quality
hardware meant to be in service for decades (this kind of hw is
usually supplied complete, with specialized OS).

[SorAlx]  ridin' VN1500-B2