Linked by Howard Fosdick on Thu 6th Dec 2012 05:26 UTC
With computers now shipping with UEFI Secure Boot enabled, users of any OS other than Windows 8 will want to know how to circumvent it. Jesse Smith of DistroWatch tells how he did it here. The Linux Foundation describes its approach here. If you want to boot an OS other than Windows 8, you'll want to figure this out before you buy that new computer.
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 17:26 UTC
So, the Xbox One disaster continues. Microsoft's policy for dealing with the used games market has reportedly leaked - and it's a clear and direct attack to destroy the used games market. Prices for used games will be set at the retail value of a new game, and retailers have to hook into Microsoft's computer systems and comply with Microsoft's terms and conditions.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:38 UTC
At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 11:29 UTC
The day has finally come! Jolla has finally announced the launch device for its Sailfish operating system - and by god this is a looker. It's decidedly different from other phones out there, but it has good specifications and carries a relatively reasonably price tag - EUR 399, and it's up for pre-order today, shipping in the fourth quarter of this year.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:33 UTC
Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.
Linked by David Adams on 05/16/13 4:23 UTC
OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/11/13 21:41 UTC
"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/08/13 14:22 UTC
This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/02/13 15:28 UTC
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/29/13 21:06 UTC
Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/24/13 22:24 UTC
They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.More Features »
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2010-01-21
"This is another reason I hate microsoft's secure boot design. Even if they had the best of intentions, it creates a single point of failure. One bug or leak breaks everybody's secure boot security worldwide. It just reaffirms how secure boot has been designed for 3rd party control rather than security.
Which is exactly why the hacking scene needs to get on breaking this single point of failure as hard and spectacularly as they can, then release something that crashes every system running "secure boot" in such a way to make it clear that it is worse than useless at what it was ostensibly designed to do. Better yet it needs to crash the hardware in such a way the OEMs are liable and it costs them enough pain they instinctively shy away from any future types of such systems. Maybe then it would make the whole thing go away again...
--bornagainpenguin "
Shouldn't be too hard when you have a modular firmware that's essentially an OS unto itself. (as complex as an OS kernel, high-level programming interface, standard library of helper functions, its own drivers for things like the network card, facilities for storing what (depending on the vendor) could potentially be megabytes of data in on-motherboard non-volatile storage, etc.)
I'm hoping for the day when a piece of malware comes out that waits for its creator to inform it of a 0-day exploit, then exploits Windows and UEFI to set up shop as a UEFI rootkit and resist all attempts to remove it without desoldering the flash chip and replacing it.
It'd be a fiasco worse than the Intel FDIV bug and it's completely possible because:
1. Every motherboard manufacturer is using Intel's reference implementation of UEFI with their own modules added in. It's effectively a monoculture like Windows. Hardware variations don't really matter.
2. They discover new bugs in the reference implementation quite often. It's like Windows in that way too.
Edited 2012-12-07 13:11 UTC