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Phoenix Sounds Death Knell for BIOS
Anonymous Coward writes "The sky will fall next.... Betanews is carrying a story about Phoenix ditching the trusty old BIOS and moving to 'Trusted Computing'... ya right... Time to stock up on those old motherboards boys!" A follow-up/analysis on this story.
Or buy a motherboard with a BIOS that doesn't come from Phoenix.
Last time I checked, Phoenix wasn't the only company on Earth that made motherboard BIOS setups.
I'm sure that something else will pop up.
Or, another idea.. write/call/visit Phoenix and tell them that you think their idea sucks. Give their 1-800 # a call. Vote with your wallet, as usual.
Time to move.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Never, unless of course you meant security for anyone except the computers owner. Then it makes plenty of sense to make the computer a remote-controlled slave terminal...
I wonder if the "trusted" version of Windows will be running programs for third parties, for whom Microsoft has sold their users CPU cycles ? After all, there's allready projects paying for computer time, and DRM would make this secure (impossible forge results). Why let users profit, when one can use them to profit Corporation ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
As part of the "trustworthy computing" model established by Microsoft, Phoenix d-NA will leverage support for Redmond's CryptoAPI (CAPI) to deliver intrinsic security on systems running Windows and .NET applications
Why do I find leveraging any single crypto or security solution from one single vendor for the entire system worthy of concern more than trust? Nevermind that it's Microsoft, with an examplary track record of security expertise and openness with standards.
Not for me, nosiree.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Does anyone have a list of what motherboards use Phenoix BIOS? I'm going to put a compuer together soon, and i want to know which to avoid.
Browse at -1, because trolls are often the most creative part of
When will this industry ever learn that there's no such thing as a magic bullet? Let's see, just off the top of my head, there was OOP, not to mention Extreme Programming, and now the apparent holy grail of security, "Trusted Computing".
Well, guess what, writing high quality software is hard. Writing high quality, secure software is *really* hard. And there's nothing that will change that.
Ok, so you, me and 10,000 other geeks will buy non-trusted computing motherboards. Meanwhile, Joe Sixpack and all his buddies ignorantly purchase millions of the "trusted" and "safe" offering.
I'm glad mac users get Doom 3, but a full library of games it does not make.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And suddenly Joe Sixpack and his buddies discover they can't download music anymore. And they tell their friends...
People pay Gartner for worse... managers and marketing people are always looking for pre-digested "facts" to allow them to make decisions without doing any real research. I used to work as a technical marketing manager, and dealt with Gartner (and other analysts) frequently. Their level of expertise is suspect, and they issue definitive statements with questionable data.
Remember their noises about "Total Cost of Ownership" a few years ago? I applied their methodology to a teakettle, and established that the TCO of said teakettle was well over $4,000.
--Larry
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
And Joe sixpack and his friends are too lazy to do anything about it and too stupid to know what to do if they weren't. Joe sixpack and his friends have been having their noses rubbed in shit by our wonderful and pure democratic government and perfect serene friendly capitalism bread and butter spawned corporations for generations. They've always just rolled over and begged before... what makes you think that's going to change now?
;)
For hundreds of years joe sixpack and his friends have gotten weaker and weaker. The big recognizable first piece was centralized citizenship after the civil war, prior to that the only citizens of the USA lived in washington, everybody else was a citizen of their state which in turn was a member of the union.
Next came the military, the constitution set up a division of powers, the central government was not supposed to have a standing army, that was supposed to be left to the states, while the central government maintained the navy. This wasn't random, it gave the states themselves the greatest power in domestic defense and limited the central government to only the direct military power to counter foreign foes (of course the militia's could be rallied). The air force was of course not covered in the Constitution. If you pay attention you'll notice the central government makes sure they are covered if this falls through, the navy is still the most highly funded of the forces, having within it all 3 types of armed forces. The Marines for instance are really just a subset of the Navy. The Navy's air power and number of craft are almost as extensive as the air force itself. And I guess it goes without saying, the navy of course has a navy
Now after centralizing authority and military power the government then started disarming the citizens. Deciding to do no more than pay lip service to the 2nd amendment (after all the government certainly doesn't feel people might need arms to overthrow it like the forefathers who had to do just that did when they put it in!). Now guns are being taken away, the classes of arms available to citizens has been reduced and reduced, arms are VERY closely watched by our police state.
Since these things became stronger, than the last significant threat (assault riffles) has been removed from citizens hands, the government has proceeded to clench down. Showing it's force in foreign countries (iraq for instance), using "Terrorism" which was likely at least inadvertantly funded by our own CIA as an excuse to give federal agents more and more authority to lock down and control the population.
Now to ensure Joe sixpack complies with all this they have been brainwashing him in school. School curriculum's are of course regulated by the state. They have to be in accordance with state tests, if you've noticed the state regulations tend to be most specific in matters of US History, where the government makes sure that text books and tests teach the materials in it's own interpretation of history. The interpretation that paints a picture of country being oppressed and fighting the good fight for independence. Supporting the common man etc etc etc. Rather than the truth, a bunch of rich men, did not like paying taxes and did not like the fact that england had given trade monopolies to rich men in england instead of them. Well over 80% of the population were loyal to the crown, more than that before war happened an innocents were caught in the crossfire. The enlistments in that war and pretty much every patriotic cause thereafter have been founded on a grain of truth buried in a stack of propoganda.
Our government lies to us and herds of us like sheep. It teaches us a revised history in school. It teaches conformity in school. Picture our children being stamped one by one in a great convoluted Jello mold. It convinces us to give up our liberties one piece at a time. It okay to whine about one piece or another, but it happens so often on such a regular basis nowdays we hardly remember what
While it's gonna get ugly in the US, I don't suspect that China would use a BIOS with built-in spyware or DRM. China, along with the largest population, has both the manufacturing power to create motherboards sans M$-DRM.
.... that will end this quickly.
In fact, it would be very surprising to me that most of the EU coutnries would submit to this kind of US verndor lock-in. I would expect to see non-TCP motherboards available for a while.
And when parts of the internet are "closed off" by TCP "checking" routers, then all holy hell will break loose. Wait until our neighbors can't get to "playboy.com"
"'Trustworthy computing' means that Microsoft can trust that we didn't hack our (their) system. It doesn't mean that we can trust Microsoft."
Keep saying it until it makes sense.You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
I'm still suffering from this utter nightmare of Pentium III id codes that just made using the internet a living hell. No really, you remember when the sky fell back when they were announced?
/sarcasm
Also I'm upset because it's impossible to get around the DVD regions and watch discs from other countries. Asia fears the DMCA so much that it's impossible to find a player that does not submit to the region codes.
ok
Seriously, this isn't going to work. Taiwan will have cloned BIOSes out faster than you can say "Overclocking is popular!" and warez groups will have the can only run on trusted hardware feature of the next windows cracked faster than you can say "Product Activation".
Give it 8 months. Even if there isn't an outcry that gets it reversed or ignorable like the P3 chip codes, I'm betting some major MB manufacturer *coughABITcough* will have something like, dual bios, trusted/untrusted with a toggle between them.
As for network routers killing "untrusted" clients, how do businesses expect to keep their linux servers on the network? Yeah, I think either we'll be seeing other OSes support it, or it'll be turned off more often than on. Also what about network-aware appliances like attatched storage, printers etc? I doubt it'll be that easy to convince businesses to just toss them as incompatible. They probably will just patch their existing windows desktops and stay on 2000, xp, or 2003 or whatever doesn't have this nuisance. I know tons of places that still refuse to move up from 2000 to XP.
Also, if only "trusted" software runs, I'm curious how students will do programming assignments on their computers at college. Do they just stand in line for the woefully inadequate lab resources? Do they get "special for academic use only" versions of windows and MSVC that allows them to execute their own code? What does it mean for professional developers, no development station can ever be on the network because it can't be trusted? That's going to make for some intersting development and testing work.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!