Hi,
For years I worked as a corporate programmer, then later a freelance consultant. There is just no way Netpliance is overly interested in spreading disinformation regarding I-Openers on this board. First, it's too technical, the cost of someone who had a clue would be overly great, and resources would be better spent investigating security on future product. Secondly, I think most here fail to understand the situation. Netpliances business model is not working, due to excessive hacking, this is a management problem. While the cause and ultimate fix will be technical, the approach for Netpliance is to understand (as management not hackers) what has gone wrong, why and what the least damaging fixes are.
The model used, to take a laptop, employ off the shelf parts, software, drivers and what not, clearly was an error. Fixes, such as no-USB, no IDE connectors built in, which wouldn't require board modifications (but would require minor production modification) would likely limit most hacks, yet this hasn't happened (yes, some would solder on new headers, some would solder on USB ports, but lets face it, it's tons easier to order a kit from Codeman, or cables to go, or digikey than to solder).
That a production modification hasn't been made, that manual clipping of IDE pins was actually done at one point, demonstrates a technical ignorance by Netpliance management. The filing they made in May shows only $300,000 (roughly) spent on R&D, this from a company which has close to a quarter billion capitalization (sp).
Until Netpliance understands what went wrong, and manages to aquire and deploy sufficient technical resources as are necessary to preclude hacks (or to greatly limit them), the only courses of action are to 1) accept ongoing and increasing losses (unacceptable), 2) design a non-Intel based unit (likely the long term fix, many (more than the Linux lovers would like) I-Openers are happy go lucky W98 machines at the moment), 3) Until the causes for loss are understood and a fix deployed to limit loss by increasing the front end cost of the units (which I believe has been done) and finally 4) To make some peace with the retail channel by fulfilling backorders even if it means several millions of dollars of losses (which I believe Netpliance has finally done).
The entire situation here is not a total loss for Netpliance. Exposure to many geeks, and exposure in the press have had value, Netpliance is undoubtedly investigating how to turn that value into profit. Harassing this newsgroup, is likely not only a waste of time for anyone at Netpliance capable of doing so, but is likely not along any of Netpliances economic and corporate interests. The straw man of someone working for NPLI and regularly harassing this board, is in my opinion a misunderstanding of how corporate management thinks.
