Dear Lazyweb, where do I best put the following workaround

echo "Initio:WD2000JB-00EVA0:0x4000" >> /proc/scsi/device_info

I have bad luck with external drives. The first I bought is apparently a faulty prolfic PL3507. From all the other reports that happens quite often. And now my replacement housing, bought via ebay, works okay, but only with above workaround (which tells the kernel to ignore certain bad replies from the drive that make the kernel believe its read-only).

I also have a 2.5" housing with the PL3507 chip, that one works fine. But two out of three having issues, that sucks.

Now thats what I'd call good news (URL from #debian-devel)

This infoworld article claims:

AMD is strongly considering open-sourcing at least a functional subset of ATI's graphics drivers

Well, the article has some other facts wrong:

If AMD's graphics cards were the only ones with open device drivers, it might affect a buying decision or two.

Well, you know. There is not only Nvidia. There is Intel. And for both the R200 ATI Radeon series and the Intel video chipsets there are opensource drivers with 3D acceleration. It's not as if AMD/ATI would be the "only ones". Wait. Intel? Isn't that like the main competitor of AMD... AMD should better try to draw even!

But yeah, if AMD would do that, Nvidia would have some issues selling their stuff to Linux users. Manufacturers that try to sell desktop linux computers will prefer AMD if it's better supported out of the box (for servers, neither ATI nor Nvidia is relevant, of course).

For example Lenovo is reported to (plan to?) sell Thinkpads with SuSE Linux preinstalled (I'd actually prefer if they would sell them with FreeDOS preinstalled at a lower price); but if they preinstall the NVidia drivers (and some other things such as Intel wireless), they might violate the GPL or some of the other licenses, apparently. I don't know, just hearsay.