The story about how secure boot for Windows 8, part of UEFI, will hinder the use of non-signed binaries and operating systems, like Linux, has registered at Redmond as well. The company posted about it on the Building Windows 8 blog - but didn't take any of the worries away. In fact, Red Hat's Matthew Garrett, who originally broke this story, has some more information - worst of which is that Red Hat has received confirmation from hardware vendors that some of them will not allow you to disable secure boot.
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Member since:2011-01-28
WorknMan,
"It's not like MS has a monopoly on the desktop either, when you consider that it competes with OSX, as well as smartphones and tablets these days."
Semantically, it depends on the definition you choose to use for monopoly. While there's no market share breakdown which is universally agreed upon, individual markets do define what it means to legally be a monopoly.
In the UK, I've read that's it is a 25% market share. In the US 50% qualifies as a monopoly. A "pure monopoly" would be 100%, but I'm not really sure whether any company in modern history has ever had 100% market share. It terms of what matters here, microsoft is monopoly which can be subjected to anti-trust law.
"will eventually figure out a way to 'root' their PCs (or just buy one unlocked)"
This is presumptuous. I believe the bios has always been more secure than the OS, even if only because it's much less complex. It's not like users can run software within the bios to exploit a privilege escalation attack. The bios is a few dozen menus with static options, how likely is it that pounding on any of the computers's external IO ports will manage to jailbreak the bios?
Even if we can, we'd have to reflash the bios for the hack to be persistent. This is possible but every single motherboard would need a custom hack in order remain jailbroken. Also, there's a serious risk of bricking the motherboard this way.
"98% of the population won't give a shit. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but that's just the way it's going to be."
I think people do mind anti-features like DRM, vendor lock in, and application restricts, but they just not informed about these things until it bites them. An iphone user once asked me if I could write him a simple app, and wasn't even aware that his device was forcefully locked to the apple store, and that he or I would have to enroll as a commercial apple developer before we could write software for his iphone. Strangely enough, even though he owned the iphone, he never knew that he was tethered to apple without hacking into his phone.
But I think your conclusion is fair, people will buy into microsoft locked devices just as they bought into apple locked ones. For us, that means we can no longer buy any random new/used computer and expect it to run under linux anymore. And we may no longer be able to recover windows machines with knoppix rescue disks and the like.
Edited 2011-09-24 05:08 UTC
Member since:2005-11-13
Right, which is why I said they'll either find a way to unlock it, OR just buy a motherboard that's already unlocked. Since there are mobos that are friendly to overclockers (who are definitely a niche group), I have no doubt that there will be manufacturers selling unlocked boards as well.
As for the mainstream, it's pretty much all over. As you said, they would only care about these restrictions if it happens to bite them, but for the majority of the population, it's not going to. So if things go as projected, we're just gonna have to choose our PCs/laptops carefully, because there probably are not enough enthusiasts out there to make a big enough stink about this for most major PC vendors to care.
Edited 2011-09-24 17:58 UTC
Member since:2006-11-22
I'm curious to see how this effects the corporate environment where they often like to make a wholesale shift from say Win7 to Win8. Basically, buying win 8 hardware they won't be able to load Win 7 on. Going to make migration and desktop management even more of a nightmare than it currently is with Windows. So glad I work in the server/network environment and don't need to bother with this any more. I actually like to see MS make themselves more and more of a pain to use. Eventually people should reach a point of frustration where they throw up their hands and say enough. I really hope the hardware vendors dive all in and choke on this colossally bad idea. Let the support costs / returns explode for Win8 certified hardware and see if the OEMs are willing to choke down the MS garbage next time.
When the users and IT depts finally have had enough and throw up their hands we'll get more variety in the desktop market. Vista was a godsend for Apple and Linux on the desktop, this could just be part two of that saga.
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces."But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Member since:
2005-11-13
Probably not. It would be a bit hypocritical for governments to come down on Microsoft for this, while at the same time giving tablet and smartphone vendors a free pass. It's not like MS has a monopoly on the desktop either, when you consider that it competes with OSX, as well as smartphones and tablets these days.
As for this whole secure boot thing, it'll go down just like it does on Android - 1-2% of the userbase is going to complain bitterly and will eventually figure out a way to 'root' their PCs (or just buy one unlocked), while the other 98% of the population won't give a shit. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but that's just the way it's going to be. My parents are not going to give a rat's ass that Windows is the only OS they can install, if that's all they intended to install anyway.