Windows 8 gets Personal Use License for anyone building their own PC

Re:Windows 8 gets Personal Use License for anyone building t... by ck2 on Tuesday August 21, 2012 @11:18AM (#4413053)

So a modern car is way more complex than an operating system, and even contains several operating systems in itself.

Why does an OS need to have an EULA while a car does not?

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Re:Windows 8 gets Personal Use License for anyone building t... by nathan_long on Tuesday August 21, 2012 @11:24AM (#4413082)

1) I doubt you're correct about the complexity. 2) The EULA is at largely about "we take no responsibility for whatever breaks." This would never fly legally for cars because failures kill people. Also, it's less reasonable; since you're unlikely to install arbitrary programs in your car and open it up to the internet for attack, whatever goes wrong likely IS the maker's fault.

Not that I'm a fan of EULAs.

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Re:Windows 8 gets Personal Use License for anyone building t... by jlgreco on Tuesday August 21, 2012 @01:19PM (#4413640)

There are any number of modifications people can make to cars that make them more dangerous through no fault to the maker. On some cars, not making modifications is something of an exception, think of Wranglers.

The difference I think is that if someone modifies their jeep and ends up killing themself, it is rather easy for Jeep to prove their innocence; no matter how wrecked the car is the modified suspension or whatever will still be rather apparent. Imagine the nightmare that would be for a software company though.

Of course proving innocence is not how things are supposed to work, but...

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Re:Windows 8 gets Personal Use License for anyone building t... by dpark on Tuesday August 21, 2012 @12:00PM (#4413276)

First, a modern car is likely not more complex than an operating system. That the car "contains several operating systems in itself" isn't especially meaningful, because operating systems are not fungible. The "OS" controlling your ABS system (for example) is going to be as simple as possible. Windows on the other hand is aiming for as general as possible.

Second, you do have licensing agreements with your car. You have warranties that become void if you do X or Y, if you fail to properly maintain Q or R, etc. And those various OSes in the car are not sold to you any more than Windows is. They are licensed, under what specific terms I don't really know.

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Re:Windows 8 gets Personal Use License for anyone building t... by JonnieCache on Tuesday August 21, 2012 @01:59PM (#4413860)

Modern cars often have around 100mb of executable binary in them. It's pretty terrifying.

http://www.autosec.org/pubs/cars-usenixsec2011.pdf

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Re:Windows 8 gets Personal Use License for anyone building t... by Lagged2Death on Tuesday August 21, 2012 @03:53PM (#4414441)

That's got to include stuff like the stereo and navigation systems, which seems like cheating. The engine-management and safety-related systems are bound to be much smaller, and certainly don't need to me so large.

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Re:Windows 8 gets Personal Use License for anyone building t... by JonnieCache on Tuesday August 21, 2012 @04:36PM (#4414649)

They are attack surfaces. Everything in the car is networked. Look at the paper: you can attack the engine through the gps. Maybe that was a different paper but I think it's in there.

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Re:Windows 8 gets Personal Use License for anyone building t... by Lagged2Death on Wednesday August 22, 2012 @10:20AM (#4417447)

They are attack surfaces ... you can attack the engine through the gps.

Sure, but the "attack surface" of the engine management firmware itself isn't enlarged by the presence of an insecure GPS system, is it?

I don't know if the people developing engine management firmware think about fire-walling themselves off from the rest of the in-car network. Certainly, they should. If they do, then the size of the code in the rest of the car doesn't seem relevant in terms of securing the really important stuff.

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Re:Windows 8 gets Personal Use License for anyone building t... by TheAmazingIdiot on Tuesday August 21, 2012 @04:28PM (#4414619)

My dad is an acoustical and electrical engineer who works for heavy vehicle industries.

On one project, a burner controller, he used a PIC microcontroller. I think the capacity of onboard storage was 48k. He didn't add any extra storage.

I could be slightly wrong about the exact specs. I do arduino mainly.

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Re:Windows 8 gets Personal Use License for anyone building t... by ceejayoz on Tuesday August 21, 2012 @01:04PM (#4413576)

> Why does an OS need to have an EULA while a car does not?

Have you checked your car's user manual?

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