Also looking forward to getting Ice Cream Sandwhich on the 12th of January. I ordered mine a few days ago, but Amazon was out of stock so it looks like I may have to wait a while.
"Regarding the bootloader, the reason we chose to lock it is due to content providers' requirement for DRM client devices to be as secure as possible."
It's nice that in the end they prioritized what their customers wanted over what other parties whose interests run completely counter to their customers want. It's frightening that the content cartels have enough influence to essentially try to lock down general purpose computing in the first place.
You are not a normal ASUS customer. If you were, you wouldn't be here discussing this. "Normal" customers want Netflix, Hulu+, Kindle, and the like, not hackable boot roms.
Open source boxes that are not locked down generally do not get to have an official Netflix client, Hulu+ client, etc. Users won't buy things that don't have the content they want, and Hollywood won't let things have that content if users can easily compromise the digital path.
Btw, it's not ASUS's issue, it's that users want movies and Netflix has them. It's not Netflix's issue, it's in their contracts with DRM providers and studios, contracts they have to sign to have the movies users want. To carry the movies, lock things down. Users want movies, ergo, things are locked down.
For all the Apple hate, Jobs stared down the record labels, and unlocked music. To solve the "open" business, Google should put money behind open business models for movies, enough money that Hollywood capitulates and all these contracts up the chain can get redone in the consumer's interest.
Less happy to read that GPS is beyond fixing. I don't particularly care about that, to be honest, so I might end up buying one anyway (once they're available in the UK, damn), but still, it's one of those where you wonder how the hell could make it through QA (and if they missed that, what else did they miss...?)
Amazon is responsible for getting the record labels to release music as DRM-free MP3.
Which is precisely why this level of lockdown is completely ridiculous.
As you say, locking a boot loader has no effect on whether "Normal" customers can steal content -- they're not going to mod their device, they want something that just works, and if it provides an easy way to get the content they want affordably, they won't even care enough to pirate. Where's the win for the studios? And there's certainly no win for the customer.
In the meanwhile, such a lock down does reduce the value of devices for the hacker news audience. Loss for at least some ASUS customers, possibly even a loss for ASUS.