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Phoenix DRM Reads Your E-Mail
martensitic writes "eWeek reports that Phoenix has developed a utility allowing users of its laptop DRM BIOS (last discussed here) to 'check their Outlook data on a notebook computer without needing to boot the machine.' Since Longhorn is still several years away, Pheonix is developing their own trusted apps to sell the BIOS to laptop manufacturers. One can only imagine what other innocuous bells and whistles will be used to leverage DRM onto Joe Laptop's machine."
It's not like the BIOS transmits info anywhere else or logs keystrokes. It's seems to be a quick boot access method to get to your PIM data. And, quite frankly - its ABOUT BLOODY TIME.
Even with a fast 2 gig PC its hard to convince the family to use the contacts database instead of the paper version- takes too long to boot, logon, load the app. Sheesh, it seems as if this type of information access is going backwards these days. The faster the hardware gets, the more bloated the software gets.
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
Zawinski's Law strikes again.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Ignoring the various 'Good God what else could they do' responses, do yuo *really* care about the 10 seconds or so it takes to come out of hibernation mode ? Enough to want DRM h/w on your machine ?
Really ? Good for you. I don't.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Now I can write an Outlook virus that takes out the system BIOS
Why get such a BIOS? Increase BIOS complexity and you will end with a heavy, buggy bios. KISS!
I, for one, welcome our old great Award BIOS!
but with the prevalence of viruses and spam factory trojans contracted via the inboxes of lusers, this may be a case of lesser of two evils. *If I can disable it* then I don't mind.
How dare such a potentially privacy infringing combination be developed? I find it sickening that this could allow someone else to go through my emails about generic viagra.
Ah, it allows me to access my Outlook data. Very good. But does it allow me to connect to the net and retrieve new data for viewing?
--
The last digit of pi is four.
Now viral e-mail can spread even when your computer's down.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The NSA has been reading my email for years! :-P
'check their Outlook data on a notebook computer without needing to boot the machine.'
Sounds like another Outlook virus.
Open Source BIOS anyone? Prohibitively expensive? Administratively impossibile? Too geek even for /.?
Why just Outlook data? Why not extend this idea further. I dont USE Outlook, so I want my BIOS to enable me to check my Eudora mail, engage in ICQ, MSN-MSGR, and AIM chat, check the weather, stock quotes, movie times, and train schedules from my favorite web sites. To support all these things of course, my BIOS would need to bring up a sophisticated operating system... lets call it 'Bindows'. This 'Bindows' would be rather large, so it will need the ability to 'hibernate' quickly and wake up from hibernation quickly.
Yes, this will be great.
Much better than what we have now...
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
With 20 second hibernation restores, are people really so pressed for time that they have to read e-mail from their fricken bios? Leave the bios alone. Bioses generally work fine, are feature packed, and nowadays don't give people problems. If manufacturers need to diferentiate their products they should add usefull features like DVD and mp3 cd playing without booting. These sort of features are for when I am generally not sitting at the computer but just looking at the screen, usually saving the battery life or perhaps noise level (media pc anyone?) If I wanted to read e-mail I would just boot and read e-mail.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Ok, so here's what they do. They enable access to MS outlook information (address book, email etc) without having to go through the entire boot sequence.
That means, your anti-virus product hasn't been launched yet, but you can still read that funny mail telling you to "see this amazing attachment".
It also means, that they're basically providing an API to the outlook address book. That means, if you can fake that you're really just the BIOS requesting the information, you can make a virus that can access all the information it needs - undetected.
Some might call this a feature. Other might call this Yet Another Reason To Avoid Phoenix And Outlook.
Underholdning.info
I really get the feeling they're trying any old tactics to sell Joe Public the idea of DRM.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Since it is instant on and negotiates with my 802.11b to grab emails in only a few seconds.
Surely this has,if nothing else, the potential to simply create more problems than it solves?
/.? :P
Solved: Annoying need to wait for a few seconds while my machine comes out of hibernate mode.
Problem: A plethora of BIOS destroying viruses and worms, spread by email, capable of rendering whole systems useless.
Given the (frankly silly) amount of worms circulating in today's email, would this really produce a worthwhile benefit? I fail to see how this produces more good effects than bad. If you really, honestly, have such a pressed schedule that you can't wait for your machine to come out of hibernate mode then
a) You need a less pressing job
and
b) What are you doing on
id rather my bios just connected the HD and not actually read data from my files thanks
what happened to doing a task but doing that task really well
if writing the bios is simple enough that you have time to add applications then just drop the price, my alternator for my car doesnt include extras with it just does its job cheaply and well
BIOS: Acronym for Basic Input-Output System
s/Basic/Bloated/
I'm a chainsmokin' alcoholic sociopath, so-ci-o-path
POST
BIOS initialization
Nag Screen Asking you if you want to read your email or continue to boot.
Nag Screen Asking you if you want to read your email or continue to boot.
Nag Screen Asking you if you want to read your email or continue to boot.
Nag Screen Asking you if you want to read your email or continue to boot.
Then you come back to your new computer with your cup of coffee expecting to see your Windows desktop...
You hit the NO key, which is a combination of CTRL-SHIFT-N-Enter keys.
Nag Screen Asking you if you are really sure you want to boot into the OS, because you can read your email from the BIOS.
You confirm by contorting your hands and hitting the combination of keys confirming that you really want to boot into the OS.
The comptuer boots and you enter Windows, check a few web sites and then check your email.
Who the heck is going to use this? This seems like that 'wonderful' push technology that MS pushed so many years ago that turned out to be something nobody wanted.
It's like the new "2-Stroke Gasoline Engine Powered Toothbrush". Sure, it might be more powerful then a plain old battery powered toothbrush, but nobody wants that stinky gasoline exhaust smell in the morning, plus it brushes to 'well' that the enamel on your teeth is removed after one use...
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Use your PDA for storing contacts, not the PC?
--
This sig is inoffensive.
So is there any way I can erase and use that 200Mb BIOS that it's going to take to cram in Outlook?
I thought that's what we had the FBI for?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
BIOS - Basic Input Output System
What does checking Outlook email have to do with _Basic_ Input or Output? Why don't they keep going and put a spreadsheet in the BIOS while they're at it?
From someone who did, once, inadvertantly flash a bios with the wrong firmware and have to go though the hell that ensued to get a new firmware chip....the idea that the BIOS can directly connect to potentially damaging information is downright frightning. Imagine the potential if they allowed dynamic updating (think windows update), and the hell that could ensue if someone figured out how to hack its updating system.
Perhaps those email-hoxes of old about a virus completely destroying your computer were actually profetic.
Chris Knight is my hero.
I've read elesewhere that all this is doing is making use of an Outlook "extension" that, on a regular basis COPIES data from Outlook to a seperate area that the "quick check" application in the BIOS can access.
So really, saying that it's providing "access" to Outlook data is slightly misleading. It's actually providing BIOS data to a "shadow" copy of the Outlook data
Come to think of it, it has a Phoenix BIOS. http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/Compaqtabl etpc/us/download/19800.html
"
The QuickLook Utility is a collection of components which allow the user of a Tablet PC model listed below to quickly and conveniently view their personal information manager (PIM) data without booting the tablet all the way up into the operating system."
RTFA, it will require a plugin in Outlook which basically will export your email to a flat ascii file which can be read by the BIOS. Not exactly the invention of the century, but I guess reasonably practical. If they make the fileformat open, you can program a linux version!!
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
I usually don't have anything much to add, but at the risk of being shown how insignificant my thought is....
Isn't running an "app." from the BIOS kinda like running an OS on a RAM drive? With this technique, isn't the BIOS is just a read-only image of a low-end OS to run a single app?
I mean, when RAM drives are cheap, won't everything be similar to this, except a full-blown OS will run? If so, I'm not sure this has much to do with DRM at all, FWIW. Orthogonal, anyone?
Clemmitt
sigfault (core dumped)
They weren't kidding, were they? The corollary is, then, that all devices evolve until they can read email.
I don't see any p/w or other protection mentioned in the PIM-in-NSBIOS (Not So Basic I/O sys)... so now I'm gonna need a dongle to secure the data?
Amen to all who said vendors should leave the BIOS "basic."[this sig has been trunca
I want my machine to do whatever I want it to do. When computers start to behave differently, I'll stop using them. Or I'll start looking for old C64 schematics! I can imagine my laptop shutting me outside my home. Or filling my police record! Do you remember HAL? :)
This just shows what a pile of crap the Windows portable architecture is. My Powerbook hasn't been rebooted since the last time I updated the OS (current 68 days ago). When I open the screen, it's ready to work in 10 seconds. It joins whatever wireless network is available and checks my mail, immediately. When I close the screen, it goes to sleep. This is in stark contrast to the legions of Windows laptop users I know that *know* about 'Hibernate' mode or whatnot but are mortified to use it since they're basically assured of a blue screen or other egregious crash as a result of doing so. But really, instead of fixing the problem, let's move important functionality to the BIOS. That'll be GREAT!
You guys are so behind, phoenix changed name to Firebird and then Firefox a looong time ago.
Hey! The BIOS and I have something in common!
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
Let Microsoft/Phoenix kill themselves.
Did not M$ learn any thing from the Intel serial number in the processor, killing there sells. The only reason that M$ does not want to do the DRM in the OS is that it does not want to have to share the APIs ( because of antitrust ) and can lock in people to M$ to look at there own documents if you go to switch to Linux that your will loose your documents.
I never implied anything about non-volatile RAM. The article is about a mini-OS in ROM or PROM. It's not the same thing at all. Whatever they stick in that PROM will be obsolete in weeks. I don't want an OS in my boot PROM. As you said, the whole "BIOS" is a stupid idea. The boot PROM should be a minimal bit of code that knows enough to read data from a boot sector on a hard disk, a CDROM, and a floppy, then execute whatever it found on that boot sector. Leave the rest up to the OS.
The right way to do what Phoenix is proposing (if it should be done at all) is to change the OS so that it has a 'fast boot mini-mode' that comes up right away without the entire 5 minutes of booting everything. But Phoenix doesn't make OSes, they make boot PROMs. So their solution is to put it in the boot PROM. I'm sure if this was "Subway"s idea they would put a mini-OS in a lean turkey sandwhich and issue a press release that it was a great idea.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
birth of new companies, or rise of small ones. Why ? because i will certainly prefer a bios with no crap built in, and many others like me, will create the demand for such computers. Even if most players in hardware scene prefer to sell "secured" products, there will be a huge demand for clean bioses and computers.
Remember what happened when overclocking became something that most guys at least wanted to try ? One by one, all motherboard manufacturers (except Intel of course) began to produce models that allowed better support for overclocking. Now it's easy to modify bus speed by a precision of 1 mhz or something if i'm not wrong. No jumper mess or other weird tricks are necessary ( i remember taping of some parts on my celeron 300 to have 2.4 volts)
So, MS or whomever supports this kind of movements will create a huge push for migration to more open systems. It's not hard to guess that all major apps will suddenly refuse to work on "untrusted" computers. So, that will create another great oppurtunity for open source software, for it'll possibly be the only option to work on "clean" computers.
So there is a strong possibilty forusers migrating to "open" alternatives, which may create a nice **ck y*u effect to MS and supporters of such "trusted" environments
Once you lick the lollipop of mediocrity, you'll suck forever!
OpenBIOS
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
A better, and actually quite sensible, solution, would be to have a number of highly specialized mini-operating systems on your computer: One that runs in text mode and boots in a few seconds, for checking email, or remotely logging into another machine; one that boots even qicker, for taking notes at a meeting; another one for watching DVDs (I believe Linux is making inroads here already...); a third one with the capability of browsing simple web sites (no Java, Flash, etc.) Of course what I called different operating systems will probably just be one and the same operating system, with different services enabled. All that's needed is actually the possibility to start the OS in different configurations, and the ability to shut down all but the most essential services (which shouldn't be many).