UEFI Formed to Replace BIOS

anonymous cow-herd writes "Businesswire reports that several leading technology companies including Intel, AMD, Microsoft, IBM, Dell and HP and others have formed the Unified EFI Forum. The non-profit corporation will assume responsibility for the development and promotion of the EFI specification, a pre-boot interface originally developed by Intel that is intended to replace the aging PC BIOS."

Comments

Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[AKAImBatman]

I've said before, and I'll say it again: Why not OpenFirmware/OpenBoot?

Let's go through the list and see what EFI has compared to OpenFirmware, shall we?

1. EFI has a built-in bootloader. (Check)
2. EFI has built-in device drivers. (Check)
3. EFI has a shell environment. (Check, except that OpenFirmware isn't so laughable.)
4. EFI is cross platform. (Check)
5. EFI maintain *some* of the old PC BIOS calls. (No Support in OpenFirmware. Boo hoo.)
6. EFI adds trusted computing. (No Support in OpenFirmware. OF believes in computers being controlled by their owners.)

So why EFI and not OpenFirmware? Could it be a Not Invented Here Syndrome, or something more sinister? Is this the beginning of Trusted Computing for all? How do they expect to get customers to purchase an EFI system when a PC BIOS one is still well supported? Will they try to make an exclusive contract with Dell and invite the wrath of the justice department?

Only time will tell.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[ckaminski]

Have to admit that #2 is the prime reason I want new bootware. Dammit, the whole software IDE raid thing has me pissed. Why do I need drivers (except for software management) for RAID that pretends to be ATAPI? Either implement it as a real ATAPI translation layer, so I don't need drivers, or don't call it "IDE" raid. jeebus.

If USB could figure out driverless storage, I'm sure the rest of the industry can. How many different ways of defining storage can there be?

Networking too. I'm sick of device drivers. Sick I tell you! And not just because I run Linux. I've got an IBM T41 laptop, and trying to figure out which of 18 Windows ethernet/wifi configurations the thing came configured with is pissing me off.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Total_Wimp]

... or why not have the fine folks who support OpenFirmware join the EFI group and work with them to make a standard that meets everyone's needs? I sure hope they don't have a "Not Invented Here" mentality that will stop them from working to create a real industry standard with a real industry group.

Leaders of OF should send EFI a letter. The worst they can say is "you're not welcome." But then everything will be right out in the open, won't it?

TW

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[oringo]

Well I didn't read the spec of EFI, but I took a look at openfirmware's website, and the first thing that I read was openfirmware is IEEE1275 standard, but is WITHDRAWN by IEEE. Could that be the reason of EFI, or the result? Another possible explanation is that microsoft wants more control of this, and they know they can get it because no standards like this can fly without them.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[garcia]

Is this the beginning of Trusted Computing for all? How do they expect to get customers to purchase an EFI system when a PC BIOS one is still well supported?

1) New Microsoft products will not boot on machines not installed with a DRM'd loader.

2) The "regular" Internet will not work with those people that aren't using trusted computing (i.e. online banking, music stores, etc).

3) People are buying new computers instead of cleaning off spyware because it's more cost effective.

4) Microsoft is now creating "anti-spyware" software (*cough* the recent Claria reports *cough*) so that people may end up going down the road listed in #3.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

>>So why EFI and not OpenFirmware?

And the answer is...

>>6. EFI adds trusted computing. (No Support in OpenFirmware. OF believes in computers being controlled by their owners.)

Media companies want the strongest DRM they can get and to hell with your rights as far as they're concerned. If Microsoft can convince media conglomerates that EFI controlled hardware coupled with an OS that respects DRM (aka some future Windows), then they can make more profit by selling music and videos over the net.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[badfish99]

Perhaps the reason is that the EFI webite says that the spec is available to anyone who cares to pay them $2500 and sign an NDA, whereas OpenFirmware is widely documented, so doesn't offer the same opportunity for profit.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[oringo]

That's the same for PCI and heck lot of other IEEE standards.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Enigma_Man]

Your average customer hasn't ever even HEARD of a BIOS, so they don't know WTF it is. They just hear "three point too giga flops prints faster, faster internet, faster faster" from the sales droids. They don't care if it's Intel, AMD, Dell, Gateway, or a steaming pile of poo in a box, as long as they hear big numbers at the shop where they buy it. They don't know, don't care. Then when 90% of all "computer-users" have bought these trusted-computing Longhorn-lockdowns, there won't be any choices, even if everybody does realize "hey, I can't watch these pirated movies anymore" they'll be complacent sheep, because that's what they always do: look at viruses, spyware, etc. People don't know enough to be able to care.

-Jesse

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[oxygene2k2]

well, OF exists for 1994 - so intel should have joined the OF effort (IEEE standard, even)

they didn't.. and defined a standard 10 times larger than OF, doing approximately the same

if we (the OF people) join them, the best that could happen is a combined standard 11 times larger than OF - not wise.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[oxygene2k2]

IEEE1275-1994 is withdrawn because no-one cared to pay money for someone at IEEE to rubber stamp a changed year number (so it could become IEEE1275-1999 and then -2004).

it's still in active use on every PPC device and every SPARC device, necessary extensions (new busses etc) are handled via supplementals.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Lepaca Kliffoth]

You're about 99.99% right. However many people who use Microsoft products go around saying Microsoft sucks and Windows is bad and it's stupid that you can still be infected by viruses etc etc, maybe because there are many people who ask nerds before buying a PC or when they run into trouble.
That won't matter when they'll start seeing ads like "Latest Britney Spears single free with 2 Big macs!" and they'll find out it doesn't play on systems without DRM, so your conclusions are still absolutely correct. I believe a big part of the general public doesn't trust Microsoft anymore but their feelings against that company aren't strong enough. They're mindless consumers and can be easily led like the sheep they are.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Taladar]

Drivers are fine as long as there is exactly one driver per device category (one for mass storage, one for network cards, one for sound cards,...) and all hardware handles the translation from this standard interface to internal formats/commands on the hardware level.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[oxygene2k2]

the idea is to do the same thing as now, just portably: provide the driver on the option rom that can be put onto the device

openfirmware does it this way since 1994

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[NineNine]

They're mindless consumers and can be easily led like the sheep they are.

You mean like all of the Slashdotters that only shop at mega-corporate stores like Amazon, EBay, Best Buy, and Fry's?

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[DenDave]

Without a doubt it is a Not Invented Here Syndrome, in addition to a "we don't own the patent" disorder.

OpenFirmware is clearly a better alternative but it reeks of IBM and that scares most of the companies mentioned..

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

OOHHH! ZING! I bet that felt good. No matter who you are, there's always some sheeple you can taunt.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[LurkerXXX]

So instead you will keep from joining their group the only folks who would be opposed to trusted computing?

They didn't join your group. Get over it. Staying pure in your group might make you feel good, but it's the group made of major manufacturers who will decide what's actually produced and out there for consumers to use. Not trying to join up with them and make the voice of reason present within that grou might be much much more unwise.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[oxygene2k2]

OpenFirmware is SUNs brainchild, IBM (and Apple) adopted it in the powerpc development process

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[kidtux1]

What are the benfits of this new scheme over a BIOS? http://www.kunae.blogspt.com/

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Openfirmware reeking of IBM? I am sure I read that wrong or you mistyped. Openfirmware (IEEE-1275) was a joint project between Apple and Sun Microsystems. Others have implemented wholly or partially OBP for their systems. SGI for example uses a hodgepodge of OBP and DEC.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Threni]

> How do they expect to get customers to purchase an EFI system when a PC BIOS
> one is still well supported?

Does this argument cope with AGP vs PCI, or PS2 vs USB etc?

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[jonadab]

> They just hear "three point too giga flops prints faster, faster
> internet, faster faster" from the sales droids.

I hate to break it to you, but it's not 1990 anymore, and the word "faster" no longer sells hardware except in server space (which is clearly not the market you're talking about), to a relative handful of gamers and powerusers, and to the extreme low-end of the knowledge curve (where the difference between terms such as "computer" and "internet" is still unclear and problems with NetZero can get blamed on the computer's memory, or possibly the monitor).

For the mainstream ordinary everyday end user (the kind of person who either knows how to copy and paste, or is aware that it is something they probably should learn how to do at some point) there are three possible reasons to buy a new computer at this point:
1. The old one is broken. This is probably the most common of the three.
2. The old one doesn't support new features that are wanted, such as
burning DVDs. PowerUsers will add components or install new software,
but end users in some cases will replace the system instead, especially
if the upgrade process might otherwise require a screwdriver.
3. The money is burning a hole in the wallet.

The third option also covers reasons that aren't any kind of reason at all, such as, "It looked cool on the store shelf" or "My cousin has that brand and really likes it".

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Sique]

On the other hand, when everything actually running on the Trusted Plattform is going to cost money, and there is no free (as in beer) contend available (because of the licensing costs and requirements to get a Trusted Platform certificate), how interesting will it be to everyone? How often will they upgrade?
How many people have an Xbox or PS2 or GameCube or , and don't want an additional all purpose computer because the system they own completely satisfieds their needs?
It all boils down to the question: If we cut down on the number of providers (and DRM just cuts down the number of entities which offer something for you, being it legal or not), how long does it take until the system is no longer able to cope with demand (not necessarily in numbers, but in features, possibilities, additions)?
The IBM compatible PC was successful not necessarily because of the offerings of IBM and Microsoft, but because of the ease to create derivates and additional tools. PkZip and SideStep, Norton Utilities and all the hundreds of thousands little share- and freeware helper made it the versatile platform it is today. Introducing the trusted platform just cuts the roots to this flowering. How long will it grow if the soil gets thinner?
I give the Trusted Platform about 10 years, then something will grow up in parallel and replace the Trusted Platform step by step. It will be a sheer necessity, because the platform is moving too slow for the demand, laws and industry standards be damned.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Mac Degger]

"Not Invented Here"-mentality?

Jesus...are you guys all this naive? Look at the first-poster's post and see the last item. The reason the mayor manufacturors want EFI over anything else is of course Trusted Computing. Anyone who thinks otherwise (especially considering OF has 11 years of getting the bugs out) is hopelessly naive.

And it's sad, not just because with DRM/TC that 'great firewall of China' can be implemented anywhere quite trivially and in a targetted way, or just because the little group with it's (admittedly better) OF doesn't have jack shit influence-wise, or just because if it did join EFI (even if EFI let it) it would be drowned out, but most of all because the first couple of posts at /. come out with some bogus 'well, maybe it's because of a NIH-mentality!'. Yeah; right.

I'm sorry this post is so vitriolic, but the fact is that here it is: DRM made for mass consumption. Only the geeks will know not to buy it, but it won't matter, because soon you won't be able to buy anything without a TC-EFI 'bios'. Or at least something up-to-date. For proof, just try and get a decent PCI(non-e) graphics card, and just look at what's happening to AGP.
And for the people who say 'it'll be hacked'....yeah, it will, but it won't do us much good; look at all the guys with chipped xbox's who don't do it for the pirated games, but for the otherwise never playable Japanese imports. Yeah, they can crack it, but they can't play 'Live'.

So I'm a bit bitter about this: if we can't get enough people to talk with their wallets, we will soon truly have two internets: one for the masses, all EFI'd and bright-shiny-new, and one for the geeks who run ten year old hardware, because that's the last pieces which rolled off without EFI.

And for those who hope for capitalism and market forces to right this: forget it. PC-electronics is only feasable due to high mass-market penentration: geeks alone are too small a market for manufacturors to cost-effectively make EFI-less products when that's the standard. And even if they do manage (at largely inflated prices, too high for the average geek), you won't be able to use it on the EFI'd internet2.0.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Hal_Porter]

Yeah, but most corporate buyers use ancient MS operating systems, e.g. Windows 2000.

Unless these UEFI boxes still allow you boot with the old Bios, you won't be able to install this sort of thing on them, and they won't sell. And if they need to boot 5 year old MS operating systems, they'll boot any untrusted OS.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Lepaca Kliffoth]

I don't see any difference between mindless consumers who read slashdot and mindless consumers who don't...

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Intron]

Do you have any idea how much time standards committees suck up? Who's going to support an OS developer sitting in meetings for a year? You chipping in?

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[callipygian-showsyst]

They don't care if it's Intel, AMD, Dell, Gateway, or a steaming pile of poo in a box, as long as they hear big numbers at the shop where they buy it.

I don't think that's true. Many maufacturers have tried to build impressive boxes (eMachines) that didn't sell because customers ultimately care about quality.

Frankly, it seems that you have some not-so-hidden agenda: They just hear "three point too giga flops prints faster, faster internet, faster faster" from the sales droids.. Remember, now that your Mac platform runs on PeeCee hardware, too, there's no more Megahurtz myth you have to explain away. And, as we all know now, the stories put forth by Apple--especially during the pre-G5 era--on how the G4 is faster, simply weren't true.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

LBJ took the IRT down to 4th St. USA.
When he got there, what did he see?
The youth of America on LSD.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[ratboy666]

Standards are reviewed every 5 years, and if it isn't championed, its withdrawn.

Given that the "PC-BIOS" du-jour semi-standard won out, IEEE 1275 was withdrawn.

However, lets review what we lost:

IEEE 1275 defined a VM for hardware. ROM code for devices would be written in ANSI FORTH, and compiled to byte codes. Different processors could efficiently interpret those byte-codes to run low-level functions.

Basic drivers in ROM, in machine-independent format. (use the same ROM for PPC, Intel, SPARC, etc.). For instance, a basic "frame buffer" style driver for video could be included, which means "instant-on" gratification for installing a video card. You may need to add a driver later to take advantage of "whiz-bang" 3D or something. [PS My Linux box, *never* uses BIOS after boot, except for "SMM" -- which is another discussion).

Ability to put patches in nvram, again, in FORTH (want to support a new 15 button mouse, that needs a twig to go into 15 button mode? Easy, just put a bit of code into nvram).

Since it makes sense to actually USE the console (because display and keyboard drivers are available), it is EASY to support terminals via serial port (or why not a basic network stack). Indeed network boot using TFTP, in a straight-forward way, using "built-in" network drivers is a standard feature.

Your "typical" SUN box has ALL of this. The "PC" industry just didn't bother.

Instead, Intel has come up with "PXE" which is sort of network boot (will boot from TFTP), but is limited (naturally) to Intel processors.

Go figure -- the problems have been solved, the solution ignored, and now we are starting again...

Give some support to IEE 1275.

Ratboy.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[bp m_i_k_e]

...not that there's anything wrong with that.

Agreed that most people don't care about most things until they feel the effects. But, expecting consumers to know anything about BIOS is asking them to be a bit more than an informed computer user. The average consumer shouldn't have to care about BIOS.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[metamatic]

Pity you mentioned Windows, if you were running Linux on your T41 I could probably have helped you out.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

the word "faster" no longer sells hardware except in server space

While 'faster' isn't the only consideration, it is in the top 3. For the people who ask me for advice, it's the top 2 slot behind 'the old one broke'/'the old one now crashes'; clients, lawyers, family members, neighbors, ... all non-geeks.

While I have been telling the same people for years that speed no longer matters...they bringing it up as the primary concern. Every. Single. Time.

The third option also covers reasons that aren't any kind of reason at all, such as, "It looked cool on the store shelf" or "My cousin has that brand and really likes it".

To a point. The justification for getting the 'cool' looking system is that it 'was the best -- the fastest and most powerful'. Meanwhile, they would do better with a system 1/4 the speed with 2x the RAM. They ask my advice, and promptly ignore it...sound familiar?

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

wow you havent met a so called commoner in a LONG time have you.

they are sheep, but not in any way, shapeor form you describe them as.

here is a tip, dont talk about people unless you actually know what you are talking abut.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[uglyduckling]

But they mean a different thing by "faster" than you do. You think they mean more GHz on the processor, more level 2 cache or faster memory modules. What they mean is: why does it take 5 minutes to boot the computer when I want to check a quick e-mail before leaving in the morning? Why does it take so long for Internet Explorer to load, or for that page to come up when I click on a PDF link on a web page?

A new computer does solve that problem to a certain extent, because (especially with Windows) a clean install can make the subjective speed much quicker. Plus the memory requirements for software tend to go up an aweful lot during the useful life of a machine. I bet you most of those friends and relatives (unless hardcore gamers) would be very satisfied if you took their machine and did a clean install of whatever OS they use (and if Windows make sure it's 2000 or XP) and increased the RAM to 512Mb.

I'm posting this from an Athlon 1GHz with 640Mb RAM which is mainly used with Ubuntu Linux and occasionally XP. It never feels slow, except when doing heavy Photoshop work. The only thing I'd really like is TFT that does 1024x768.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[pcmanjon]

Why isn't any Linux organization included in the list of people in on the creation. What, is the linux "hackers" going to just sit back and drink beer and worry about converting to the new bios later, like always?

Seriously, Linux should be more proactive in changing the shape of the industry instead of sitting back and struggling to adopt stuff that has been decided without them.

-- A debian/slackware user

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

if we (the OF people) join them, the best that could happen is a combined standard 11 times larger than OF - not wise.

Why not create an UEFI driver that loads OF and walk through the front door?

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Shaper_pmp]

This, unfortunately, is exactly right.

The problem is that now PCs are poised to explode into the home entertainment market as a general-purpose device, the overwhelming majority of the market is going to be Joe Sixpack, who's quite happy to buy DRM-encrusted shit because he doens't know any better.

For most of the history of the PC, people who've been buying PCs (or at least advising those who do) have been the more technically literate, so things like DRM would have a hard time gaining headspace.

With the PC's move from "expensive equipment" to "commodity entertainment device" the majority of the new buyers are much less technical than previously, so manufacturers can at last freely lobotomise their products for Big Business interests, and still be assured there's a huge market (in fact, the majority of the market) who'll be willing to buy them.

So, Joe Sixpack can't watch pirate movies (like he once vaguely heard of people doing), and can't back up his DVDs, but then he never could, so by his perceptions he doesn't really "lose" anything.

As for us hackers, techies, geeks and nerds, well, we're just going to have to get used to forswearing all mainstream-culture media, or living with an ass-full of MPAA/RIAA cock every time we turn on our machines.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Pxtl]

Am I the only one who reads UEFI and thinks of UFIA? Then again, maybe the similarity of acronyms isn't coincidental.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[moonbender]

I think there's still some hope left for market forces. Sure, geeks aren't large enough a market. But people who want to play their "pirated" movies and music are a fairly large market - just look at the mp3 player boom - and chances are some manufacturers will cater to them. Most DVD players you can buy these days, especially those sold at Wal-Mart et al, are capable of playing back DivX. And as far as I know it's not difficult at all to find a DVD player that is either region-less out of the box or trivially easy to modify that way.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[SalesEngineer]

Intel talks about this point a lot in their EFI presentations: OpenFirmware isn't 100% ready for standards in the PC market, like ACPI. Since it's a small IEEE group that isn't terribly active, it would take a long time to modify the spec. Check out some of Intel's past presentations on their IDF website.

A lot of the OF features listed by ./ users can be built into a PC BIOS or EFI firmware. Press a key for alternate boot, network boot & a list of active devices ... already in a lot of Taiwan mobo BIOS & OEM products.

While OpenFirmware is a BIOS alternative, many companies don't feel it's what they need for their market. OF is only in large use by two companies, Sun & Apple. Sun only uses OpenFirmware on their non-x86 platforms, and Apple is going away from OF to EFI in the new Intel Inside Mac (aka "PentaMac", "iNtel").

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[bp m_i_k_e]

or living with an ass-full of MPAA/RIAA cock every time we turn on our machines

...maybe they could be sued for ignoring the "Do Not Enter" sign.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[e4tmyl33t]

And that' one thing I change (well, try to anyway) when I sell a machine. I inform people of things that most people are completely oblivious of. Differences between AMD and Intel chips, exactly WHY they should get their spyware removed instead of just buying a new box, that numbers don't govern the entire performance of the machine, etc. Although the market where I work is pretty much comprised of rednecks, hicks, and people with 5-10 year old boxes who know absolutely nothing about computers. A great example is in this webcomic (which feels like 7/10 of my sales and the sales of my companions) http://cad-comic.com/?t=archives&date=2003-10-10 Anyway, I'm trying to change the views of SOME people that whats emblazoned on the front of the box is not at all what governs your performance. Example: Recently we got a few new Pentium D systems in the store, one of which being a large Sony VAIO that comes with a big Logitech 5.1 surround system. People see that it's clocked at 2.8, so they automatically think it's inferior to a 3.2 P4 system. Then I explain that the computer has two processor cores, gets things done more efficiently, and such, quoting a personal example I had while setting up such a machine NEXT to an AMD64 system, it multitasked much better and got the "complete setup" including anti-virus, antispyware, Windows update, and such done in 15 minutes where the AMD64 system hung when I tried to do the WinUpdate and a Norton Trial removal at the same time. Took that one half an hour. People were impressed and said that they would look into things other than numbers in the future.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[ZorinLynx]

>2) The "regular" Internet will not work with those people that aren't using trusted computing (i.e. online banking, music stores, etc).

Maybe music stores (which I don't care about personally since I don't buy music online), but banking? Why would a bank purposefully drive away customers?

Hell, my bank recently ADDED Firefox as a supported browser for online banking. At least where my bank is concerned, they're moving AWAY from requiring Windows.

If your bank starts pulling this shit, visit a branch, close out your account, and take that shiny cashier's check to a bank that still supports open standards.

Luckily there's enough banks out there that there's a choice here.

-Z

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[jafac]

#6 sounds significant to me as well.

Also significant;
Where is Apple on this? They didn't sign up for the UEFI panel? Future direction on OF vs EFI for Macintoshes is really becoming a very big question. (but this is the FIRST indication since the PPC->x86 announcement that OF might actually be in consideration)

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

But they mean a different thing by "faster" than you do. You think they mean more GHz on the processor, more level 2 cache or faster memory modules.

You're 1/2 right. They do specifically ask about the one with the 'fastest gigahurts'(sic) just as they ask about the camera with the most megapixels. Level 2 cache and faster memory modules? Nope; not even a consideration.

What they mean is: why does it take 5 minutes to boot the computer when I want to check a quick e-mail before leaving in the morning? Why does it take so long for Internet Explorer to load, or for that page to come up when I click on a PDF link on a web page?

Actually, they don't mean that. Once they get the computer, they are assured that it is the fastest just -- because they bought the fastest. Compared to what they bought 3-5 years ago, it is amazingly fast even if you discount the garbage they have dropped on the old machine.

I bet you most of those friends and relatives (unless hardcore gamers) would be very satisfied if you took their machine and did a clean install of whatever OS they use (and if Windows make sure it's 2000 or XP) and increased the RAM to 512Mb.

Yep. Friends, clients, and family would be...but they don't want that. The old machine is 'slow'. They want 'the fastest'. Advice never comes into it beyond affirming what they already have picked out; the fastest computer. I've stood right next to some of them when they are shopping for a new computer, and they will almost always take the advice of the clerk. (Note: While most don't know what they are talking about, some do. I complement the ones who are good.)

The only people who listen? My house mates; one is a bartender, another is a research scientist (but not computer literate). They realize that I know WTF I'm talking about and they take advantage of that. Almost everyone else has 'a better idea' and they don't want to hear why they might be better off with a different choice.

I'm posting this from an Athlon 1GHz with 640Mb RAM which is mainly used with Ubuntu Linux and occasionally XP. It never feels slow, except when doing heavy Photoshop work. The only thing I'd really like is TFT that does 1024x768.

Right now? A Dell Latitude CPx with 384Mb, a 512mhz PIII, running under FC3. A little tight, though I'm using the stock kernel and a bunch of tools that are really overkill. I'm going to wipe everything out and install FC4 in the next couple days.

That said, this Dell is about to die (fan noise, keyboard flakey, hinge cracked...all of these problems repaired before and now the repairs are failing). Averatec seems like the winner the next time around.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[AKAImBatman]

Why would Apple care? They already have OpenFirmware, and it isn't going anywhere. All they're doing is pulling the PowerPC chip out of the board, and throwing in an Intel chip with customized microcode.

Besides, Jobs hates being tied to any particular vendor. Under PowerPC he had both IBM and Motorola. Now he has Intel, AMD, and newfangeled competitors such as Transmeta. Why would he then tie himself to an Intel owned firmware that sucks in comparison to OF? :-)

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[ThePhilips]

IMNSHO, OpenFirmware is way too open.

PC industry is filled with crippled hardware. Only if people knew the quality of what they buy...

It is quite showing that OF is adopted only by Sun & Apple: both well know for quality harware with good record. Companies not afraid to respond to customers claims. And frequently responding.

Additionally, from rumors I have heard, EFI is designed madularly, and modules basicly can be any kind of binary blobs. So EFI will improve nothing on side of BIOS - it will remain closed source, and will quite quickly end-up being fix for every hole system might potentially have. Just like BIOS.

After all, all those magic stuff they promise, can be as easily implemented on top of modern BIOS. There is no technical problems as it is. *NO* *TECHNICAL* *PROBLEMS*. Many companies have source code for BIOS. Just sit down and do it. Just like IBM did with Slimline Open Firmware - stripped down version of OF, sufficient to boot Linux on JS20 blades.
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/power/librar y/pa-dw-slof.html

P.S. From what I have heard about BIOS developement, it is low amount of flash which is problem: normally installed on PCs is only 64k. That's the problem - not BIOS itself. EFI I'm sure will mandate something like 1MB minimum of flash - after all the prices are now so much lower. But still as it stands: there is no un-solvable problem with BIOS.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Total_Wimp]

First off, the reason I used the term "Not Invented Here" was because that was the term the original post used. I'm not bashing Open Firmware.

Second off, 'Trusted Computing' can, and likely, will coexist with I-have-control-of-my-own-box computing. The question is, how will that coexistance work?

1. Is it gonna work by the Linux community needing to buy seperate motherboards with seperate firmware and seperate CPUs.

2. Is it gonna work by the Linux community hacking the firmware in ways that aren't technically legal (think Xbox) so the business community won't have anything to do with it.

3. Or is it gonna work by having firmware where 'Trusted Computing' can be turned off and on (or forced off and on) depending on the OS you choose to run?

If the F/OSS doesn't work with major industry groups, you're going to get #1 or #2 and F/OSS operating systems will be marginalized or worse. If they work with the industry groups you'll at least get a shot at #3.

There is a good second reason though. If F/OSS wants to be part of the computing community then they're going to have to come out of their F/OSS burrows occasionally and join industry groups to create industry standards. Yes, it's hard. Yes, lots of these groups don't work. Yes, some of these companies are evil, or mean, or monopolistic. So what?

There's a term for people who don't join in the decision making process and then complain about it afterwords when the decisions go against them. Actually there are several terms, but the one I want to use today is "childish". It's time for F/OSS to grow up and actually play with the big boys.

TW

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[AKAImBatman]

OpenFirmware isn't 100% ready for standards in the PC market, like ACPI.

There's nothing stopping an OF implementer from adding the ACPI extensions outside of the OF spec. OF is designed to be customized for each hardware platform.

Since it's a small IEEE group that isn't terribly active, it would take a long time to modify the spec.

As opposed to all the time and money Intel is wasting on making their own spec?

A lot of the OF features listed by ./ users can be built into a PC BIOS or EFI firmware.

Of course it can. But it's already in OF, so why reinvent the wheel?

Sun only uses OpenFirmware on their non-x86 platforms

Not entirely true. The Sun bootloader is OpenFirmware. i.e. It's on the disk instead of the Boot ROM.

Apple is going away from OF to EFI in the new Intel Inside Mac

Got a link to prove that? I see absolutely no technical reason why Apple would need to switch to EFI, nor do I see any political reason.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick question, what about OpenBIOS and LinuxBIOS? If my memory serves me well, some motherboard manufacturers sell products with LinuxBIOS (ECS?). Will these two projects be able to survive and provide an viable alternative to this probable DRMed future?
http://www.openbios.info/project/
http://www.linuxbios.org/index.php/Main_Page/

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenFirmware users have to deal with GFX cards that are insanely expensive. EFI probably supports older GFX cards.

Not to mention EFI is non-reversengineerable. Their are rumors that the intel macs in '06 will use EFI as opposed to OF/BIOS.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[ferat]

Us geeks have more power than you give us credit for. Nobody in my extended family buys anything computer related without asking me first. Its annoying, I end up being tech support for all the aunts and uncles and cousins, but its the way it is.

They come to me and say "Hey, I want to do X with my computer, will *something they configured somewhere* do the job".

I'll say, "No, that's an EFI box, you don't want that", and they'll get something else I recommend.

Even non technical folks can understand a simple comment like "The only thing this 'new and exciting' technology gives you over the old tech is the ability to have someone else tell you what you can and can not do with your computer".

I turned everyone that asked me away from Divx (and the reason I mentioned above was the driving force behind people's decision to go with my recommendation), and I'll do the same with any trusted computing platform. And I'll advocate boycotting any company that tries to force it on us (hell, I still don't buy anything from Circuit City).

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Enigma_Man]

I totally agree. I went all through college with a PII 350 with a gig of memory in it. It hauled ass for anything I'd need to do, even most games were within reason. My main point was that the average consumer hasn't ever even heard the word "BIOS", so if they see "UEFI" they'll assume it's a new feature, which just adds to the perceived value. The technical aspects of things are beyond people, and I'll bet that a lot of people will buy these EFI machines before they realize that they can't get the newest songs and movies from Limewire anymore. By that time though, most people will have an EFI machine, and it'll be too late, 'cause they'd have chucked the old machine already.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[AKAImBatman]

OpenFirmware users have to deal with GFX cards that are insanely expensive.

I agree that your average ATI/NVidia card (what Apple uses) is pretty expensive, but that's hardly unique to OF systems. PCs pretty much always come with a high end 3D card these days.

EFI probably supports older GFX cards.

What exactly does this mean? The hardware drivers should be built into the boot PROM, so the firmware should have no trouble supporting the card, no matter what it is. That's true of both OpenFirmware and EFI.

Not to mention EFI is non-reversengineerable.

That's the theory, anyway. Reality and a flash card reader/programmer say otherwise.

Their are rumors that the intel macs in '06 will use EFI as opposed to OF/BIOS.

Where do people come up with this stuff? Just because Apple said that they would require Apple hardware for OS X does not mean that EFI will be loaded. In fact, Apple hasn't even admitted to any DRM in their future hardware! For all you know, it may be a special hardware component you need!

Besides, Apple has been using OF for years now, and its openness hasn't bothered them. Why should it begin bothering them now?

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[gwait]

But here's how it will roll out:

Step 1: Microsoft will finally fix trojans & viruses properly, using the DRM stuff to prevent "illegal" software from running on your machine for you.

Step 2: Let the spin doctoring begin: Anything not DRM authorized is illegal software, and anyone who tells you otherwise must therefore be a criminal.

Step 3: Lobby congress and make it illegal to connect a non DRM computer to the internet - look at the billions people spend trying to defend their systems from viruses etc now! Only bad people want that to continue!

Oh yeah, step 0: Make it illegal to disable any software protection, (already done) and make damn certain this new DRM - ah - Secure Bios (tm) is covered so we can arrest any criminal who tries to replace it with that obviously subversive Open Bios that the criminals want you to install..

Our only hope is that the others on the team will have a financial reason to keep this from happening..

Cue theme from "The empire strikes back"...

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Aryeh Goretsky]

Hello,

Perhaps you meant Borland Sidekick?

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[NatteringNabob]

Hear, Hear! Well spoken Bruce! I notice that Sun and Apple are conspicuouly absent from the list of members. Of course, this presents an enormous opportunity for Sun and Apple as they collectively have enough market share that they can create a market for OF motherboards, and it presents Sun with yet another chance to flat out own the Linux market. Of course, Sun will screw it up and miss the boat in yet another hopeless attempt to prop up Solaris/SPARC. 5 years later they will have figured out that the boat has sailed without them and by then it will be too late.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Fareq]

Yeah, you and the other 0.000000000000000003% that actually know what DRM and Trusted Computing are.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

And for those who hope for capitalism and market forces to right this: forget it. PC-electronics is only feasable due to high mass-market penentration: geeks alone are too small a market for manufacturors to cost-effectively make EFI-less products when that's the standard. And even if they do manage (at largely inflated prices, too high for the average geek), you won't be able to use it on the EFI'd internet2.0.

How many geeks here work in IT? How many are responsible for purchasing/selecting hardware for big corporations to use? I say lets tell the hardware manufacturers to check their Trusted Computing at the door and then we will choose their hardware over another vendor's.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[ckaminski]

Boot Knoppix. I seem to have no problems with Knoppix...

The problem (as if) is that Knoppix is a relatively recent OS distro (2004) whereas WindowsXP SP2 is not (2002). Wireless drivers of all sorts are present on the Knoppix CD, but not Windows. It's an inversion of the great Linux Driver Paradox. Weird.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[greenrd]

Like Linus, I don't really see the problem with DRM per se. It's just a tool. Tools can be used for good or for evil. You'll still be able to watch movies on TV and at the cinema, and soon I expect someone will develop a cheap alternative to Windows based on a specific DRM-enabled binary Linux distro - to enable people to watch DRM stuff without having to shell out for Windows Vista.

What I'm slightly worried about is DRMed Word documents being output by default by MS Office 2010 or something - but I'm not too worried, because I think Microsoft will face huge legal, technological and PR problems if they decide to go down that route.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple dropped OpenFirmware.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[SdnSeraphim]

Actually, I am (somewhat) worried about Word and DRM. I do not think that there will be a PR backlash against DRM and Word, because large corporations actually WANT it. Large and small companies now are worried about information leak. If they can set up their computers so that documents will only be readible by people with the proper keys, they would LOVE IT.

Stopping information leaking will be the bait, some other (unimaginable by me now) DRM "feature" is the payoff.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[jafac]

Why would he then tie himself to an Intel owned firmware that sucks in comparison to OF? :-)

Early reports from users of the new development system stated that the machine had an Intel BIOS.

Apple has been virtually silent on the issue.

Apple may tie itself to BIOS as part of a deal with Intel to get certain price or volume guarantees.

OR, Apple may tie itself to EFI as part of a deal with large music industry players, as part of a plan to guarantee DRM, in exchange for certain pricing on music. (ie. "give us DRM, or we'll price tracks lower for your Windows-based competitors).

Of course, in the absence of any firm, clear, statements from Apple, this is all speculation. Which is the whole point of my original post. This is an issue that matters a great deal - and Apple has not spoken up about it - the direction is not clear, and there's plenty of reason for concern, not just for Mac users, but also for developers.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[InvalidError]

My guesses:
1- At startup, the CPU will check the BIOS image against a private key stored in the CPU. If this check is positive, the TC flag is set, otherwise it is cleared and the only way to set it is to flash a compilant BIOS and do a hard-reset.
2- The BIOS checks the boot image's certificate and clears the TC flag if the check is negative.
4- The boot image monitors the OS' boot sequence and clears the TC flag if any file/driver's certificate does not check out.

This way, until the root keys used to sign the BIOS or loader images is cracked, the TC flag gets cleared before the first non-compliant layer gains control, prohibiting the CPU from decrypting TC code. People still get to run non-secure BIOS/OS/Apps by forfeiting the ability to use TC/DRM stuff.

No need to have a BIOS option to turn TC off, it would turn itself off as soon as non-compliant components are encountered. (Unless you want it off on an otherwise compliant setup.)

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[lgw]

Does OF give you a full network stack, and allow you to get an IP address from DHCP in order to boot from the network? Can you write ROM code for it in any low-level language, it is it some weird forth-only thing?

The advantages touted by EFI are the ability to have EFI drivers that are also your Windows drivers (and are built from your normal C/C++ build environment), a full networking environment in the EFI shell, and a GUI from the EFI shell (no more command line or text-based menuing system for configuration) assuming an EFI video card.

These are powerful advantages, but I have no idea how OF compares.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[4of12]

Trusted Computing

Silly geeks.

People aren't buying personal computers any longer.

They're buying Copyrighted Media Connectors/Players/Recorders.

The word "computer" is just a throwback to a bygone era when you could create programs as much as any large company could.

These modern gameboxes will permit some programmability.

But less programmability as time passes. Consumers aren't going to notice the transition and by the time they do notice it will be too late and they'll just grumble while the Preview of Coming Attractions part of "bootup" gets way too long and loud.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Sique]

That's correct, thanks.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Fweeky]

"Instead, Intel has come up with "PXE" which is sort of network boot (will boot from TFTP), but is limited (naturally) to Intel processors."

Um. Did I just dream our Sun X1/T1 PXE environment?

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[ShadowOnline]

What's wrong with making Word documents DRMed to make you the documents unalienable owner? DRM owes its existance to the need to protect intellectual property. A Word document you've written definately falls under that header. I also see uses for this in the corporate world where the company owns whatever you make on their time.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[ratboy666]

Yes, you can get your IP address from a server: normally we use bootp protocol, but DHCP should also be possible.

As to development -- the system uses byte-code. Whatever source language produces the byte-code is fine. Usually, its FORTH.

The shell is a command line, with history and editing. After all, we don't want to lose the ability to run from a serial terminal.

Ratboy.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[ratboy666]

PXE can be supported by servers running TFTP. And, PXE can be supported by Linux, etc.

On the other hand, the PXE "spec" is massive. I don't know if SUN makes a SPARC based PXE client.

It is a big spec that put me to sleep...

Ratboy.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry about the AC post but employers are not always the most forgiving...

It is quite showing that OF is adopted only by Sun & Apple: both well know for quality harware with good record.

Not sure about Apple but I do take exception to icluding Sun in that statement. I would like to offer two examples of less than brilliant engineering:

1) Ever removed a serial console from a Sun system when the key is in the "unlocked" position?

2) Why does Sun say that the only way to trap errors is have a laptop connected to to serial port running TeraTerm with a large scroll-back buffer?

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[mrchaotica]

3. Or is it gonna work by having firmware where 'Trusted Computing' can be turned off and on (or forced off and on) depending on the OS you choose to run?

If the F/OSS doesn't work with major industry groups, you're going to get #1 or #2 and F/OSS operating systems will be marginalized or worse. If they work with the industry groups you'll at least get a shot at #3.

You realise there's no chance whatsoever of #3 because the entire point of Treacherous Computing is that you can't turn it off! It doesn't work otherwise, and the DRM-mafia know that.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[maxpublic]

Not trying to join up with them and make the voice of reason present within that grou might be much much more unwise.

The "voice of reason" isn't going to have any effect on the inclusion of so-called 'trusted computing'. It WILL be included, no matter anyone else thinks about the matter.

So why should they join the group and give it another layer of legitimacy, when in the end the group is going to shove trusted computing up everyone's ass anyways?

Max

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[LurkerXXX]

With one way there is some small hope. With the other there is none.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[TheGavster]

IDE RAID refers to the ability of the controller to use disks designed for use on an IDE bus as components of an array. No promise is made as to how the system addresses the controller.

USB drives are not driverless storage; they are simply a catagory of devices with similar enough characteristics that newer versions of most popular operating systems include a driver that supports them.

That said, a standardized RAID interface would greatly simplify its use; it probably won't happen anytime soon as IDE RAID is both young and built on a standard that is on its way out. SATA controllers with RAID support are becoming more standardized, however. Most chipset-integrated controllers seem to work pretty smoothly these days.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Ulrich Hobelmann]

People don't know enough to be able to care.

No, they don't care enough to be able to know. They don't do a lot with their machines. If they break, they ask the friendly nerd in the neighborhood to fix it. They don't care about alternative OSes because that would mean getting out of the TV chair and actually doing something.

To these people it's NORMAL that computers get infested with spyware and viruses, because that's how computers work. Likewise "The Net" (the movie) is how things go ;)

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[jonadab]

> A new computer does solve that problem to a certain extent, because
> (especially with Windows) a clean install can make the subjective speed
> much quicker.

Yes, the clean install issue is very real. I was lumping that under reason 1, "the old one is broken", because slower performance is by a wide margin not the most significant problem an old Windows install accumulates -- especially if it's Win9x. I will concede though that in some cases the slowdown could also be noticeable, but I don't think it's usually the biggest factor.

> Plus the memory requirements for software tend to go up an aweful lot
> during the useful life of a machine.

This is mostly a factor for people who install software upgrades, and the majority of people who are comfortable doing that know what swapping is and understand the difference between RAM and a CPU. Granted, some of them might still choose to just buy new hardware. But I was under the impression we were mostly talking about end users, and as a rule end users don't install software upgrades, so the software they're using has the same memory requirements it did when they bought the computer.

> I bet you most of those friends and relatives (unless hardcore gamers)
> would be very satisfied if you took their machine and did a clean install
> of whatever OS they use (and if Windows make sure it's 2000 or XP) and
> increased the RAM to 512Mb.

My family's still happy with the Duron 700 system I built for them several years ago, which is running Windows 98 SE. I think I built it shortly before OEM versions of Windows XP became available. I did upgrade the RAM a couple years back (because, I had some extra sitting around after an upgrade of my own), and have done a few software upgrades (mainly, the browser, repeatedly, and the office suite, repeatedly; also, a new version of Pegasus Mail a couple years back, and assorted other things) and several times have troubleshot it, and have removed malware of one sort or another at least twice (whatever came with KaZaA the first time, and Gator the second time). But they've commented to me about how much better their computer works than other people's computers, that are newer; I attribute this to basically the things you point out: putting enough RAM in it, and, more importantly, installing decent-quality software, deleting the everliving daylights out of certain incredibly shoddy software (which I won't name here, but its initials are OE), and the occasional maintenance. Honestly, I think having somebody competent service the thing once a year or so is worth twice as much money as new hardware -- up to a point. (There are limits, of course; I'm not suggesting that vintage-2000 hardware will still be good in 2025, or anything.)

Oh, and they have never had to deal with Windows dial-up networking because I put the modem in a Linux box and use a couple of Perl scripts to manage the connection, and all they have to do is click a bookmark on the browser's toolbar to fire off the thing that checks the connection and redials if necessary; that probably helps a bit, too, quite aside from the obvious benefit of its firewalling functionality (though this is less vital for Win98 than it would be for WinXP; Win98 is less stable when apps crash due to bugs, but it's also less vulnerable to worms, so connecting it directly to the internet is less dangerous, assuming you don't use client software that resembles swiss cheese, by which I mostly mean the aforesaid deleted mail client, although certain browsers and media players can also qualify).

> I'm posting this from an Athlon 1GHz with 640Mb RAM

I confess, I don't want to go back to less than a GB of RAM. But I don't pretend my usage pattern is typical in that regard. (Lots of windows open, some of them for months on end... X servers running on two different VTs with different usernames logged in... Numerous tabs in Firefox at all times... Six or eight gnome-terminal windows, with various c

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

I've said before, and I'll say it again: Why not OpenFirmware/OpenBoot?

OpenFirmware is FORTH, interpreted. EFI is C, compiled down to a custom bytecode. Certainly it's a lot easier for most people to develop for EFI. You have clearly never seen some of the serious EFI software developed. Intel's SR870BN4 and BH2 servers (4- and 2-way Itanium 2) come with a very nice management suite, some 20MB in size, to run diagnostics, adjust logging/view logs, configure remote booting/management, etc etc. There's just no way such sizeable software would ever be developed for OF, it's too much pain for the embedded-development types who are more than comfortable with "weird" dialects of C.

As for trusted computing, EFI certainly doesn't _add_ it (my old HP rx2600 certainly didn't know anything about trusted computing when I bought it 3 years ago), though it certainly adds _support_ for it.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[jonadab]

> It never feels slow, except when doing heavy Photoshop work. The only thing
> I'd really like is TFT that does 1024x768.

I would think, for serious Photoshop work, that you would want a good quality CRT that does 1280x1024 or better (x24bpp of course) with a good refresh rate, preferably with at least an 18" viewable diagonal. I paid less $300 for mine, in 2001, so I'm sure they're more affordable than that these days. I'd be surprised if you couldn't get a quite good flat CRT for $200 at this point, though I haven't priced them in the last six months. The advantages of a CRT are *important* for graphics work, especially the better color discretion and accuracy. I know they use a little more power and take up a little more desk space, but if what you're doing exercises the CRT's strengths in the way graphics work does, then it's worth it.

Another advantage of a CRT is that you can set them to resolutions other than the main one you use most of the time, when you need the extra resolution (any 19" or better CRT worth its salt can do at *least* 1600x1200, especially if you're willing to live with a lower refresh rate for a few moments), or when you need things to be a bit bigger for a moment, e.g., so that you can see if your line is crooked by one pixel. Just zoom out to 640x480 mode, and suddenly if your horizontal or vertical line doglegs one pixel, it jumps out at you immediately. (Most *nix/X11 systems these days will handle this scaling on the fly without bothering your apps or window sizes; just hit ctrl-alt-+ a couple of times, and you are zoomed in on a portion of your desktop workspace; moving your mouse to the edge scrolls your viewport around like you would expect. It is possible to get third-party software to do this in Windows also, if that's your cup of tea, e.g., Matrox PowerDesk.) On a good CRT, this actually looks good and is very clear; try it on an affordable TFT display, and it's going to be as blurry as a TV screen.

In summary, I wouldn't want to have to do Gimp work in a TFT display, with only a 1024x768 resolution. For that purpose, that's not a good use of your money, IMO.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFWP. The website says that the spec will be available for FREE upon completion, the $2500 is if you want to have a hand in writing it.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Read up on Trusted/Treacherous Computing

these be scary times
-m

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Apple Acolyte]

Apple has stated unambiguously that their PCs will not use OpenFirmware. According to Apple's universal_binary.pdf, page 47:

Macintosh computers using Intel microprocessors do not use Open Firmware.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[wilsoniya]

Its ironic that the Trusted Computing web site uses such an untrusworthy httpd as apache: HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2005 08:26:37 GMT Server: Apache Location: https://www.trustedcomputinggroup.org/home Connection: close Transfer-Encoding: chunked Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 I guess that the TC folks cant even trust themselves!

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[ThePhilips]

I'm sorry, but none of the Sun hardware I have worked with - couple of WSs and couple of carrier grade servers - had serial consoles.

We used networked message logging and it worked perfectly Okay. I cannot give you guarantie that it was Sun's native solution but I'm pretty sure it was. To put it simply, serial console cannot be made redundant, so in my application fields it is rarely used for anything. (Thou everything is equipped with serial (rs232, hdlc) ports.)

P.S. Even if you need to keep terminal always attached, you can implement your own terminal application and add filters to remove non-error messages. + buy a additional blade/rack server (cheapest fitting one) and equip it with multiport serial card. I actually seen place where logging info from bunch of server racks was muxed into some wider serial connection (FR or hdlc), and then relayed to special server where it was demuxed, cleaned up and stored onto raid. People this way were keeping track of all messages for one day, so if critical error occured they have a chance to find anomalies preceding the error and thus localize the problem.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[tricorn]

Below a certain market penetration level, "most" vendors will be happy to ignore those customers. Any long-time Mac user can attest to that. For example, one of the only decent movie theaters near me only allows on-line ticket purchase/seat-reservation if you use IE. If you don't, either you can't even select your seat (one version of the javascript code), or when you go to purchase it they charge your card but don't issue you a ticket/reservation. Complaining about it simply gets "well, everyone can use IE, so why should we fix it? " Lots of banks only "support" IE on Windows for on-line banking - one had some strange javascript error where (in Safari), when you click on "pay my balance", which clears the "pay this amount" field, and then when you submit, complains that the field is empty. I complained and they explained that they only support IE.

That wasn't a critical error (I could either copy the balance amount to the manual field, or as I discovered, if I entered 0.01 in there AFTER I selected the "pay my balance", it ignored the amount and paid the balance anyway, and bypassed the javascript bug - but then they "fixed" that, and I ended up scheduling a 0.01 payment which I had to cancel - and just recently, the underlying bug has been FIXED). But it does show that there's still plenty of stuff that you're locked out of if you don't fall in line with the majority crowd.

If it gets to the point where you have to be running a trusted OS on a trusted hardware platform before any ISP will allow you onto the Internet, I'm not sure what choice you'll have. Will there be enough people with enough resources to create an alternate network? Will the government try to regulate that one as well? Will freedom-of-speech and freedom-to-associate win out, or will despotism finally eliminate those entirely?

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[DenDave]

In terms of installed platforms I think IBM leads the OpenFirmware path but I could be mistaken.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[AKAImBatman]

Well, that at least proves that Apple will move away from OpenFirmware. Thank you. :-)

Now, can anyone prove that they're going to use EFI?

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's abandoning OF for the intel macs. This was in fact mentioned in slashdot already (that's how I learned of it).

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Co nceptual/universal_binary/

do a grep. IIRC it's on page 47 of the PDF version.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[uglyduckling]

Yes, you're quite right - it was a brain error, I had meant to type 1280x1024, I already have a TFT that can to 1024x768. I've got a small desk and most of the graphics work I do is for web pages, so I don't need to be particularly colour accurate. I should have typed Gimp instead of Photoshop since Gimp has been the norm for the past year or so.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[_damnit_]

Maybe music stores (which I don't care about personally since I don't buy music online), but banking? Why would a bank purposefully drive away customers?

Have you been to Bank of America lately? Well, almost any bank now will do for this discussion. You can't speak to a human anymore unless it's in a grcery store "bank center" where they're mostly salespeople anyway. If you do walk into an actual bank, they'll charge you!!
My wife worked in a Credit Union [which is supposed to exist for the benefit of its members] and they started screwing their members too! First they extended membership to anyone who has ANY job within 100 miles. Then when some of these losers started bouncing checks, they had to raise fees to cover for them. On top of that, if you can talk to a human, they HAVE to start their conversation with a sales pitch for crappy certs of deposit (CD's) with ungodly low yields. If they don't sell enough services to the members, they can be disciplined.

Now, why would banks/credit unions do that to their customers/members? Usually two reasons:

• The CEO is looking to grow the company to show that he achieved some huge percentage of growth and deserves a big bonus or better job at a bigger bank. This is irregardless of whether the company is properly focused on long-term stability for the benefit of customers, employees and shareholders.
  
• Stock price evaluations need to be manipulated to "maximize shareholder value". This usually means a company should split or divest itself of some of its holdings so the current day traders can collect the cash from the sales or (more likely) ride the wave of excitement afterwards and sell quickly so they can get out a devalued company [which should probably merge with another to cut costs from redundancies!]

What the hell, we might as all just quit our jobs and day trade. I'm not against business. I just want someone to look a little further out than the next quarter's SEC filing. Shit who am I kidding, it'll all get better now that CAFTA passed, right?

If your bank starts pulling this shit, visit a branch, close out your account, and take that shiny cashier's check to a bank that still supports open standards.

Luckily there's enough banks out there that there's a choice here.

Go ahead, visit a branch - $2
Get a cashiers check - $5
Go to a grocery store and open an account at one of the few banks left like Citi, BofA, Wells, US Bank, Wash Mutual, Chase [... oops, they're gone too!] I'm sure they'll listen to your complaints about "trusted computing" over the din of "cleanup on aisle four!"

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[jonadab]

> I should have typed Gimp instead of Photoshop since Gimp has been the
> norm for the past year or so.

Gimp, Photoshop, whatever. For most purposes they're largely equivalent, once you get past the interface differences. I could have said "raster image editing software", and it wouldn't change the semantics of my post. I just said "Gimp" because that's the one I happen to use.

What about Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see Apple in there at all. They're going x86, I'd think it'd be in their best interests to be involved in the low level stuff so they can bolt on their Apple-specific goop a bit easier.

Re:What about Apple?

[CyricZ]

Unless they've already got something in place, and do not need to "bolt on their Apple-specific goop" later on.

Re:What about Apple?

[dorkygeek]

Apple already has OpenFirmware, which works pretty nicely. No need for an UEFI Bios.

Re:What about Apple?

[lowmagnet]

I thought that would be pretty obvious. In the case of this group, Apple = Intel. It seems to me that Apple will be implementing any bleeding edge technology Intel produces. I think EFI is the only way Apple will be able to implement target disk mode in their new x86 hardware, too.

Re:What about Apple?

[DevNova]

"Apple = Intel"

Okay, did anyone else just shudder when they read this?

Re:What about Apple?

[SalesEngineer]

Apple is using EFI/UEFI for their new Intel Inside Macs, but they haven't joined the group yet.

Re:What about Apple?

[RAMMS EIN]

I'm hoping that Apple will stick with OpenFirmware. I really don't like how EFI is basically exactly OF, except that it's completely incompatible. If Apple ships computers with OpenFirmware instead of OF, that will be one reason for me to prefer their hardware over others.

Re:What about Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but OF is the reason you can't buy GFX cards built for PCs and stick them into Macs. Expect to pay $100 less for a Mac because of that (somewhere around that number). And Mac GFX cards will come out at the same time as PC ones due to being exactly the same.

There's no point in OF if a newer booting chip will do the same thing and be cheaper.

Re:What about Apple?

[ciroknight]

I think you need to do a little fact checking. Nobody knows what Apple is going with, but everyone assumes EFI because it's the best, ready to go alternative. They still have the option of BIOS + DRM chip and OpenFirmware + DRM chip, as well as BIOS and OpenFirmware without DRM.

Re:What about Apple?

[Trillan]

BIOS would seem to still be a possibility, but Apple has already ruled out OpenFirmware.

Re:What about Apple?

[ciroknight]

That link didn't rule out crap, that link says that Intel macs (as of now) don't have OpenFirmware, which is of course, common knowledge to us geeks, but maybe not to a lot of new Mac devs.

The link says absolutely nothing about future Intel macs, which is where the speculation currently resides.

Re:What about Apple?

[mikefe]

Ahh, but there just has to be something left about the mac that is technically better.

Here's to hoping they use OpenBoot or OpenFirmware.

Re:What about Apple?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Nobody knows what Apple is going with, but everyone assumes EFI because it's the best, ready to go alternative.

There was a post on the Apple dev list from someone at Apple, who said, paraphrasing, "Everyone who hasn't heard of EFI is asking for OpenFirmware - Everyone who has heard of EFI is asking for EFI."

It doesn't take much to read between those lines. Sure, there's an outside chance that it'll be something else, but it's not profitable to bet on outside chances.

UEFI, please read this.

[robyannetta]

The Linux community politely asks the Unified EFI Forum to not add DRM into EFI as this may be construed as anti-competive.

Re:UEFI, please read this.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Linux community politely asks the Unified EFI Forum to not add DRM into EFI as this may be construed as anti-competive.

This is our reply: "Hahahah ahahahHh ahHAhahaha..."

Thank you.

Re:UEFI, please read this.

[tmilam]

Do you really think they'll take linux into consideration? Of the companies listed, some are dead set against linux, and others, such as IBM and HP - have a vested interest in it. Really, ultimately DRM is unavoidable as it benefits big business. This scares me....Any chance we can get Novell or Red Hat into the UEFI?

Re:UEFI, please read this.

[eclectro]

The Linux community politely asks the Unified EFI Forum to not add DRM into EFI....

Dear Linux community;

DRM is the reason why Unified EFI was formed, otherwise we could stick with a known technology that works reasonably well and not spend heaps of cash to lockdown computers.
I know that you Linux guys never need to reboot, but many others spend significant amount time doing so. We will use this fact to force this technology adoption by the unwashed masses. We need to start collecting rental fees on everything sent to your computer, you know.

Love,

Your corporate pimp-daddy

P.S. Embrace us and don't fight us. It will be easier that way.

Re:UEFI, please read this.

[wild_berry]

Or a consortium of the Linux BIOS people and the ACPI/APM people (with the swsusp2 people, etc.)?

Re:UEFI, please read this.

[Punboy]

Funny, cause Intel, AMD, HP, and DELL are all four linux supporters. Seems to me that Microsoft is the only one that is anti-linux.

Re:UEFI, please read this.

[akadruid]

Intel, AMD, HP, and DELL are all four linux supporters
Linux supporters? No. I don't see anything like the support they have for MS Windows. They will be going down the Windows Vista/DRM route. Here's some examples -
dell: sell linux servers because people pay for them, and it stops MS getting too carried away with licensing figures. Do you see a 'Ubuntu (-$17)' option on their website? Nope.
HP: They do have a supported linux latop in some countries. better, but still only noise.
Intel: They make chips, not systems. They will sell whatever Dell et al want them to. e.g. apple-only chips.
AMD: See above.

Re:UEFI, please read this.

[Punboy]

Intel has donated alot of time and money to the open-source movement. Particularly stuff for desktop development.

AMD has voiced support and donated some as well.

Re:UEFI, please read this.

[poot_rootbeer]

Do you really think they'll take linux into consideration?

They (being hardware manufacturers) should, if they have any sense. I'm no Linux zealot, but it's clear that that the Wintel era is in decline. Apple's decision to migrate to x86 only cements the idea that consumer PC hardware platforms are going to need to stay OS-agnostic if they want to maximize market share.

Really, ultimately DRM is unavoidable as it benefits big business.

Depends on which branch of big business. To content distributors and software developers, it's perceived as a benefit (but then, so was every other intrusive copy protection scheme at some point).

To hardware manufacturers, DRM support is unnecessary complexity and a pain in the ass.

Re:UEFI, please read this.

[Anonymous Coward]

" the Wintel era is in decline."

If it becomes technically impossible to offer a non-Windows or non-OSX product for end users that allows them to (a) install it or (b) do the things they want to do with a PC, such as connect it to the internet and check their bank balance then Wintel is not likely to end up in decline.

Re:UEFI, please read this.

[Trogre]

Sadly I think you'll find that Dell, Intel, and AMD are more "we'll-do-whatever-you-say-microsoft" than they are "we-love-linux".

It's about time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally! The BIOS of most PCs is really most annoying. And it could have much better onscreen documentation!

Re:It's about time...

[Anonymous Coward]

BIOS doesn't need documentation. If you need documentation to manage your BIOS, then you shouldn't be managing it in the first place.

Most current BIOSs have semi-decent documentation anyway, even the proprietary Dell/HP/Gateway, etc... Still, if you need documentation, stay the hell outta the BIOS.

Re:It's about time...

[badfish99]

That's because it's badly implemented.

The original BIOS was designed by one vendor (IBM). This one will be designed by a committee. So it is hardly likely to be any simpler, especially as the hardware is now more complicated than the original IBM PC. So the implementations of this are hardly likely to be less buggy.

As for documentation, you can get as much of that as you like once you've paid $2500 to the UEFI consortium.

Re:It's about time...

[Dining Philanderer]

Documentation is the least respected and perhaps most important part of software. One of the very few things I liked about being a Nuke in the Navy was that EVERYTHING had a manual/procedure to review. Do you honestly think that the ability to manage your BIOS is an inborn trait that some have and others are doomed to never achieve? Lack of documentation is the single biggest reason I have not yet invested the time to learn *nix...Perhaps that has changed...

Re:It's about time...

[SilverspurG]

Lack of documentation is the single biggest reason I have not yet invested the time to learn *nix

Say what?

Re:It's about time...

[Anonymous Coward]

EFI is already designed by Intel and is being used in some non-x86 systems, one example is Itanium.

Re:It's about time...

[Dining Philanderer]

Sorry I was not clear enough...

The last time I tried to venture into the *nix world (years ago) the documentation left something to be desired to say the least (for someone with absolutely no prior exposure).

When I tried to ask questions around campus the attitude of the *nix gurus stunk so I just stuck with what worked. It didn't matter to me what system/compiler my professor used to grade my work, I was just concerned with turning in bug free source code.

'BIOS doesn't need documentation ...if you need documentation, stay the hell outta the BIOS' - pretty much mirrors the attitude I ran into and that set me off.

Of course things change over time. That is why I wrote Perhaps this has changed... at the end of my post. I didn't mean to offend any nice *nix people...

Re:It's about time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out FreeBSD. It's got the best docs of any OS I've used since the Commodore 64.

Re:It's about time...

[Anonymous Coward]

*nix documentation does pretty much suck, particularly in the GUIs. The command line isn't so hot either. The information is usually there in some form but may be split up across hundreds of pages of man entries. God forbid you want to find something like how to edit the command history in bash, burn a CD, set up Samba, secure your computer, or even change your screen resolution. All these things are an order of magnitude more difficult than their equivalents in Windows.

Re:It's about time...

[qeveren]

I think he was saying that all Linux documentation in existance completely sucks, from a (Linux) novice's point of view. I agree with him.

Great

[taskforce]

So we're allowing the guys who make CPUs to set a new standard for something which works perfectly well?

I can see it now: EFI update - minimum specs - 3.2Ghz HT Pentium 4, 512mb RAM (1GB reccomended) 128mb Video RAM.

I guess it could be worse... Microsoft could be designing it.

Re:Great

[jmrSudbury]

This will only be available on new computers, so why not have high standards for the cpu requirement. CPU's have not been coming out with higher GHz lately. A 3.1GHz system bought almost 2 years ago is still near the top of the line with respect to cycles per second. The main problem would be if they require some specific technology that only one cpu maker has.

Re:Great

[NickeB]

...companies including Intel, AMD, Microsoft, IBM, Dell and HP...

Re:Great

[Eric604]

This will only be available on new computers, so why not have high standards for the cpu requirement.

Hi Bill Gates!! You here too?!!

You're completly right man. Right now it's working fine on 4MHz cpu's. So why not redesign it with much higher requirements and basically doing the same? What took you so long? I guess you hit the bloat limit on windows and looking for another project.

Apple

[Henriok]

So.. Is there really any doubt whether Apple will use EFI in their machines? Seriously.. they can't use BIOS now!

Re:Apple

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Is there really any doubt whether Apple will use EFI in their machines?

Yes. You'll note that they're not listed as a member. Not invited? Not interested? Working on something else? Will they just license the developed tech from Intel? Who knows. But it's interesting that Dell is there but Apple is not.

Re:Apple

[goldspider]

I sure hope they don't... OS X is looking mighty fine these days (compared to both Windows and Linux) and I'd hate to see something like Trusted Computing getting in the way of an otherwise fine replacement for our ever-more-restrictive PCs.

Re:Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple uses Openboot :
sudo nvram auto-boot?=false
reboot

Re:Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's interesting that Dell is there but Apple is not.

Can you say "market share"?

Re:Apple

[Punboy]

Apple probably just doesnt see why they should pay $2500 to contribute to it. Seriously, they're CHARGING for companies to contribute.

Re:Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just the processor being switched out.
Macs arent becoming pc's, they're just using X86, they're still macs. It's not like you're gonna pop one open and bam, looks like your standard pc now, it's gonna be the same hardware, just running a different cpu arch.
x86 != pc
a PC could have a sparc cpu for example. x86 is just commonplace.
So, ,the new macs will still be macs, just with a different proc. So, why do they need to embrace PC technology for their non-pc hardware?

Re:Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to make it clear, Open Firmware implementations exist for Intel hardware:
http://www.firmworks.com/open_firmware/literature/ open-fw.pdf

Why change?

Re:Apple

[morgan_greywolf]

I'm betting Apple has developed its own DRM to protect Mac OS X. They don't want to EFI. The fact that x86 Macs won't have EFI will be a major selling point for Macs ... Apple's goal of making Mac hardware cheap will put them in contention with the likes of HP and Dell and Lenovo. Note that the fact that IBM pulled out of the PC biz at this point isn't a coincidence either.

Re:Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that x86 Macs won't have EFI will be a major selling point for Macs

For who? The miniscule section of the market who actually know what EFI is? It's not like the majority of purchasers know or care about such things.

Re:Apple

[tricorn]

They don't need to, but they may have made an agreement with Intel to use EFI, for example. No one knows, other than a non-specific "Intel Macs don't use Open Firmware" line in a tech note, which could be referring to the new Macintels, or could just be commenting on the current developer-only leased machines.

Sceptical...

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

What's wrong with the PC BIOS anyway? Give or take a few gremlins when new technologies are first introduced, the basic tech seems to have adapted remarkably well for a very long time. Since flashable BIOS technology is now routine, even the early adopter problems don't seem like that great an issue. What's the replacement supposed to offer as an advantage over tried-and-tested, apart from a few buzzwords?

On a more sinister note, there's no mention in TFA of DRM and the idea of "trusted" computing, but I can't help wondering whether this isn't one of the main aims behind the scenes, given who's supporting this new organisation.

Re:Sceptical...

[Bert64]

It doesnt adapt well to serial consoles..
It has limitations on which parts of the disk it can boot from..
It's not scriptable..
It can't be configured in any ways other than what the "setup" program makes available to you..

OpenFirmware as used by SUN is much nicer, you can run diagnostics, write scripts, and get some low level information about the hardware attached... You can control the whole system from a serial console easily, and even install the OS from there..
You can also explicitely boot from any partition on your disk, instead of requiring a bootloader in the MBR to do the selection for you.

Re:Sceptical...

[CyricZ]

Most PC BIOSes work fine. But that said, improvements are still possible. The SGI Indy boot PROMs of nearly a decade ago contained a shell that could be used to manipulate various system parameters. That was quite a useful tool missing from even the most modern of PC BIOSes. They also had numerous built-in diagnostic tests that far exceed the basic tests offered by many PC BIOSes.

While I haven't used very recent SGI workstations (ie. Tezro, Fuel), I can only assume that they have added to the functionality.

Re:Sceptical...

[Enigma_Man]

What is wrong with PC BIOS, a short list by me:

• Written in Assembly
• Not modularized
• Extremely craptistic source code
• Stuck with ancient ways of doing things
• At the mercy of the board manufacturer if you need features outside of what is provided
• etc, etc.

Believe me, I love assembly, and use it at any chance I get, but for something that is as complicated as a BIOS has become, it just isn't the right way to do it.

-Jesse

Re:Sceptical...

[SenFo]

Being able to control the system through a serial cable will be nice since we now require an add-on "System Management" card to do it. I don't, however, understand why scripting is such a big deal. Can somebody with a little more knowledge on the subject please give me a little insight?

Re:Sceptical...

[wed128]

What language would you put it in? The bios seems like the perfect application for assembly code. The problem is that the bios needs to be kept simple.

Re:Sceptical...

[DrSkwid]

because without it one can have < 5 second boots from power to login prompt

Re:Sceptical...

[CyricZ]

What language would you put it in? The bios seems like the perfect application for assembly code. The problem is that the bios needs to be kept simple.

Forth, with the Forth virtual machine/interpreter written in assembly. This is the sort of application that Forth excels at.

Re:Sceptical...

[EvilSS]

Don't worry, I'm sure the vendors will still sell you a "System Management" license to actually turn the functionality on!

Re:Sceptical...

[Enigma_Man]

I'd write it in C, with some assembly hooks for the immediate boot process. The BIOS for modern PCs has to do a lot more than it used to: It has to initialize the hardware (which was the original intent, and is fine in assembly), but even that is getting much more complicated now, with networking, wireless, and video. Imagine having to edit BIOS options on a cluster of 300 PCs, it'd take you weeks using Award/AMI BIOS that don't have anything like serial or network console controllability. The big big use I see for something that isn't assembly is the booting process. That's the Achilles' Heel of the BIOS. Ever tried to boot off of a PCI-based SCSI adapter/drive? You probably can do that, but if you have two SCSI cards, you're screwed. The BIOS doesn't know or care how to tell the difference. USB boot is sketchy at best, and even CD-boot varies from manufacturer-to-manufacturer. The Award-BIOS source code is full of patches upon patches to support different quirky hardware that would be much better implemented in C. Things like large hard drive support would almost be trivial in C, but in assembly, you've go to change large swaths of code for larger bit-amounts for drive size. The newest size is 48-bit, which is a large number of TB, but drives keep getting bigger. The code itself is a gigantic mess of thousands of files with a loose grip on reality. There are circular dependencies from hell and code that just shouldn't exist.

-Jesse

Re:Sceptical...

[Hal_Porter]

It has limitations on which parts of the disk it can boot from..


If your PC was built after around the mid 90's, the Bios has Int 13h extensions. That means you pass a 64 bit LBA to the read and write functions, which is enough for a very long time - 137GB* is 28 bits of LBA for example, so you can have drives of 2^36 times 137GB. I.e big.

The OS should test for this at install time, and write a LBA bootsector. This can read anything you can reach with a 64bit lba.

So the current interface is OK essentially forever.

Implementation wise, a Bios released after >137GB drives became available already supports at least 48 bits of the 64 bit LBA. So you should be able to handle disks of 144 petabytes without reflashing.

INT 13 may be primitive, but it's not a limiting factor, and it hasn't been since the mid 90's. Primitive software tends to be relatively easy to make bug free, and advantage that you shouldn't underestimate. It's also an open standard, unlike this UEFI. I can't see a spec on the download page.

* 2^28 is 128 Gigabytes, where a GB is 1024^3. Unfortunately hard disks manufacturers call 1000^3 a GB, so they call this a 137GB drive.

Re:Sceptical...

[Mac Degger]

"Imagine having to edit BIOS options on a cluster of 300 PCs"

Uhm...couldn't you just create a custom bios by hacking in your desired options in the standard bios, then flash all the machines with floppy's/cd's/usbsticks? That would be a hell of a lot faster than doing it all manually....but of course, not as fast as doing it over the ethernet.

Re:Sceptical...

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesnt adapt well to serial consoles..

HP ProLiant servers have had serial console BIOS support for MANY years. It's very doable.

Re:Sceptical...

[oxygene2k2]

we wrote the virtual machine in C - still small, and it's less maintenance that way

www.openbios.org

Re:Sceptical...

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously didn't read the article, did you?

The biggest benefits to this system, forgive me if I overlook many of the others, are... Native Unicode support (i.e. Japanese systems will be able to have Japanese boot screens), hardware level S4 (Hibernation) support, no more clunky MBR crap and support for LBA64.

Re:Sceptical...

[Intron]

You missed the biggest reason: every mobo with a BIOS means a royalty paid to Phoenix.

Re:Sceptical...

[gilesjuk]

You have to write in assembly more often than not for the bootcode since you can't use libraries and even simple C programs will require some library of sorts.

Assembler is required for absolute control when starting up a device.

Re:Sceptical...

[Enigma_Man]

Sure, you can hack together a BIOS with the options you want using the rag-tag assortment of "tools" for doing such a thing that've been developed over the years. If the OEM decided to include their own proprietary checksums and anti-modification checks to the BIOS (which does happen quite a bit) you're up poop creek without a paddle. If you have a large cluster of PCs, they're probably not all fully functional PCs with floppy drives / CD roms / accessable USB connectors, so there's that as well. I'm not saying that the current Award/AMI bios aren't adequate for most people, but then again, so is Windows. But there are much better ways out there of doing things.

-Jesse

Re:Sceptical...

[Bert64]

And it still doesnt work as transparently as sun's, last i saw it did constant refreshing of a fixed-size screen to simulate the display you'd see on the screen.. unlike the sun terminals, which just scroll down

Re:Sceptical...

[VAXcat]

Write the BIOS in C...perfect, then we can have buffer overflow exploits in the BIOS...

Re:Sceptical...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which language? BASIC of course. Basic Input Output System.

Re:Sceptical...

[Enigma_Man]

You can have buffer overflow problems in many languages. You can also prevent buffer overflow problems using good programming practices. I picked C, because it's a well-established high-level language, but there are others out there that would also be suitable

-Jesse

Re:Sceptical...

[VENONA]

While writing fingerprinting software for Linux, 've found that: Some (most?) BIOSes lie in order to circumvent problems in "popular software." Probing for hardware in a running system can be dangerous to system stability, and some info cannot be probed for at all, such a a BIOS ID string. The software is meant to record basic (and not-so-basic) information on systems at small and medium sized installations. Trying to question the BIOS in an environment like that, given the current state of affairs, will make you nuts. Overall, PC BIOSs are crap, compared to the mechanisms that you find in the server hardware I'm used to. I guess you just get more for half a million dollars. Despite all the above, building Trusted Computing code into the BIOS of personal computers is, IMHO, a Seriously Bad Thing. I'd like to see the open solution go in.

Re:Sceptical...

[VAXcat]

The typical apologia of the C fan...it's not the language, just the bad bad programmers...there's just no excuse for a language that allows (nay, encourages) buffer overrun problems the way C does. It's like a pistol that always stays cocked, with no trigger guard...it won't go off unintentionally, unless the bad bad owner accidentally touches the trigger, and then it's the owner's fault...

Re:Sceptical...

[Enigma_Man]

I'm not a C fan, I haven't programmed in C since school. The languages I use day-to-day are perl and assembly. They both allow you to do anything you want, without guards or guides. It's just a personal preference, because I like to be the one to do things.

-Jesse

Re:Sceptical...

[John Courtland]

This is retarded. You can buffer overflow anything. We managed to buffer overflow Java the other day at work. I understand that you're being all whiny about unchecked buffers, but let's be realistic. All it takes is ONE support function from a C programmer worth a damn and unchecked input buffers are dealt with.

Regardless of that, what high level language are you going to use for the BIOS that provides buffer overflow protection and will run on raw x86 hardware? There are no Java VM's or libraries down there.

Re:Sceptical...

[lgw]

If you have problems with buffer overflows in your code, you don't belong in driver (or controller) development. Period. Some coding work belongs to those who obsess over bytes and bits, and buffer overflows aren't a problem for that crowd.

The problem isn't the language, the problem is the right programmer for the right job. You can't make device controller programming idiot-proof, even if you did somehow manage to do it in some managed language.

Re:Sceptical...

[lgw]

Well, there's no reason you can't have a C runtime library in a boot environment, and you could even dynamically link against it if the standard provided for that (and I think EFI actually provides this, as well as providing a real network stack). C can always be used as just a macro assembler, but without the resouce limitations of the 80's there's no reason you can't make "normal" C code run in the boot environment. Your code doesn't have to fit in 2KB any more.

Re:Sceptical...

[lgw]

There are no Java VM's or libraries down there.

Oh, I'm sure some idiot will write one. Then programmers who have no business doing this kind of programming in the first place will leak other kinds of resources instead. Yippee.

Re:Sceptical...

[Anonymous Coward]

even simple C programs will require some library of sorts.

That's nonsense.

Obviously if you are writing a BIOS you are not going to expect to use malloc(3) for example. But that doesn't mean you can't write a C program without these high level libc abstractions.

You can write very stand-alone-ish code for C. It's very doable. That's why people write KERNELS in C. Kernels that do not require ANSI-compliant libraries complete with all the ring3 junk.

With a few asm() statements for the IN and OUT instructions, plus some other low-level stuff, you could probably write the rest of the BIOS almost entirely in C. There's no reason C code can't poke at hardware registers too, given a few asm() wrappers.

Re:Sceptical...

[colinrichardday]

2^28 is only 268,435,456. 128 billion is about 2^37.

Re:Sceptical...

[Anonymous Coward]

And it still doesnt work as transparently as sun's, last i saw it did constant refreshing of a fixed-size screen to simulate the display you'd see on the screen.. unlike the sun terminals, which just scroll down.

That's probably the same feature on the embedded PC/104 boards we use from Diamond Systems ("Prometheus"). During POST, the screen is updated using ANSI sequences, and then the operating system loads to put its own serial console driver up. After the OS loads, you get standard serial terminal behavior.

Not as perfect as AIX's hard-wired serial console, but functional enough to get by. Only the first three seconds or so of boot use the ANSI redraws anyway.

Re:Sceptical...

[Anonymous Coward]

But none of those matter for an end user, except number 5 -- and how many people are seriously going to try to extend their BIOS or its equivelant?

Re:Sceptical...

[overture1812]

It's 2^28 sectors with 512 bytes per sector.
28 bit LBA is 2^27Kilo Bytes =2^17MegaBytes =2^7Giga Bytes =128GB =137 billion bytes.

Re:Sceptical...

[Bert64]

But what if you need to change any boot configuration settings? Using the setup program in that ANSI redraw mode is horrendously slow and awkward!

Insyde?

[ttys00]

The UEFI Forum board of directors include representatives from the following nine leading companies: .... Insyde

I've heard of the other companies... what does this one do?

Re:Insyde?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are a bios firm.

http://www.insydesw.com.tw/

Re:Insyde?

[springbox]

They made the BIOS that's in the HP OmniBook XE2 DE, which apparently can't get the fan to turn on to prevent the system from overheating during anything else but boot time.

Re:Insyde?

[Secrity]

Google porovides two links to two different companies named Insyde. One of the Insydes is a Taiwanese company that is a Microsoft Windows Embedded Partner. http://www.insydesw.com.tw/tc/index.asp http://www.insydetech.com/ Somehow I don't think that they are talking about the Insyde that sells computer hardware in Van Nuys. http://www.insyde.com/

More info

[asliarun]

Read more about EFI here.

I dunno....

[jusdisgi]

I just can't help but think back to the 40 or 50 times before I've read "_________ to replace PC BIOS."

Somehow, after a while it just starts to feel like it's not really going to happen. Like Duke Nukem Forever press releases, sort of...

Re:I dunno....

[maxwell demon]

Did you hear the plans of Duke Nukem Forever to replace PC BIOS? The advantages are:

• Intuitive shoot to boot interface.
• PC health parameters immediatly visible through scene (e.g. if your processor is running hot, you'll get a desert).
• If your OS doesn't boot any more, you still can have fun with your computer.

Re:I dunno....

[SalesEngineer]

Yeah, but I can actually get code/product based on EFI ... no such luck for DNF.

The SGI Indy boot PROM monitor.

[CyricZ]

I've always wanted something similar to the old SGI Indy boot PROM monitor, but on PCs. While similar technology is widespread on Sun and Apple machines, amonst others, it is far superior to the simple option-toggling capabilities of most PC BIOSes. The shell was quite handy, and the built-in diagnostic tests were even better.

Re:The SGI Indy boot PROM monitor.

[cmason]

I once had a very expensive SGI under my desk; I believe it was a dual processor Onyx, like $30k. One day I came in and I couldn't telnet to it. Hook up the serial console, reboot. The machine basically pointed at the scsi controller and said "You might want to have a look at that." Call up SGI tech support. They have me read them the diagnostic code; within five minutes of getting on the phone they're overnighting a new "logic carrier."

Being green as I was, I asked, "Does that have the SCSI controller on it?"

"Yes," the tech answers, "along with just about everything else."

Now, what arrived by FedEx was indeed basically a new motherboard, complete with processors, etc. Slide the old one out, the new one in, back in business in about a half hour (most of that because the entire lab was watching and I didn't want to screw up). I have to say I was impressed that the machine was able to diagnose itself down to a level lower than what could be replaced in the field.

The moral of the story is that, boot diagnostics are cool because you spend less time on the phone. I've never had such an experience with a PC, where if you're lucky you get a couple LEDs. I guess that's what you get for $30k.

Re:The SGI Indy boot PROM monitor.

[cmason]

I meant Origin, not Onyx. Origin 1000, maybe? This was ca. 1999.

Re:The SGI Indy boot PROM monitor.

[labratuk]

The moral of the story is that, boot diagnostics are cool because you spend less time on the phone. I've never had such an experience with a PC, where if you're lucky you get a couple LEDs. I guess that's what you get for $30k.

Mmm. That would be nice, but you see the problem is that SGIs didn't generally have to cope with a lot of third party hardware. Everything that the firmware would ever communicate with was pretty much known before the box left the factory.

PCs have a huge amount of (often obscure) third party hardware available for them. What makes this even worse is that lots of the standards are often developed after the bios was shipped. How many motherboards do you have which were bought before SATA was widespread? Firewire? It ain't gonna be very clever when you add an SATA card.

In the past, BIOSes have coped with this by being fairly abstract to these things - as a consequence they're pretty dumb and don't have (m)any clever diagnostics.

Buy it's not so simple when you have a world where there are x hundred IDE chipsets, y hundred ethernet controllers, z thousand graphics chips and 100,000 UNKNOWN DEVICES.

Re:The SGI Indy boot PROM monitor.

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably an Origin 200 if it was in a tower-like case, or a 2000 if it had a 2'x2' footprint. The 200 was also notorious for having everything soldered on the mainboard, including the CPUs.

Re:The SGI Indy boot PROM monitor.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh well, I just wished apple had come up with a graphical interface as usefull as the SGI prom for their OF, however they failed. SGIs read "Press ESC for options" in large friendly letters, and then present a Menu that's usable with only the mouse for the basic options, and a powerful shell and diagnostic tool for those who need more. Instead of going this way, Apple has even removed even the "words" command from their OF, and not implemented the nice device aliases as found on SUNs to do things like "boot cdrom" or "boot net". They could have done it properly, with a cursor-editable command line with history, instead they chose to use 'secret' key combinations to trigger booting from CD or running in firewire mass storage mode. Additionally, Apple's OF proms tend to have a tiny font that's totally unreadable or at least ugly when compared to SUN's 12x22 font.

Re:The SGI Indy boot PROM monitor.

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be no problem for an OpenFirmware prom. Cards that don't follow a known standard just come with a eprom with a handfull of Forth procedures that add a device node to the OF device tree and define methods to read and write to the device, plus maybe some diagnostics functions. Want to boot off that device? Just run "boot /dev/path/to/new/device". Always boot from it? set DEFAULT=/dev/path... Don't know where the device node is? just 'cd' to there and use 'ls' to look for it, they usually have a more or less descriptive name.

Things aren's as elegant with SGI's ARCS prom (except of course that it looks way nicer), but once the firmware for the card in question is written, it should integrate just as nicely into the PROM's menu and shell (but not the diagnostics) as all the onboard hardware does.

Who's doing what....?

[Rahga]

Intel,
Maker of overpriced, underperforming processors...

AMD,
Leading manufacturer of budget CPUs.....

Microsoft,
Singlehandedly proved that breaking antitrust law can be worth the hassle....

IBM,
Services provider de jour....

Dell
Master of manufacturing, jack of no other trades.

HP
Titanic 2000.

Wow, what a dream team.

Re:Who's doing what....?

[aardwolf64]

Those are the leaders of the PC market. Perhaps you were expecting someone like eMachines? Had you looked at the article, you would have seen even former industry giants such as AMI and Phoenix, former creators of BIOSes.

Re:Who's doing what....?

[wirerat1]

Well when you have an economy that is going to head to the big flush and all it is going to have is patent and copyright law for future money, why would you be suprised that big business tries to embed it at the lowest levels possible of computing? ... And I agree with the other posters, that they will cut out all other operating systems other than Microsoft from the playing field.

Re:Who's doing what....?

[Dachannien]

Maybe, just maybe, Consumers Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or at least somebody who represents the needs of the user?

Re:Who's doing what....?

[Jesus_666]

Do you really think they'd let those near the UEFI? Hey, they probably have signs saying "EFF members will be shot on sight" all around their offices.

Re:Who's doing what....?

[lgw]

How many boxes do they ship? Industry standards are chosen by the industry. It's a standard when all the major vendors agree to come onboard - otherwise it's just a piece of paper.

Re:Who's doing what....?

[maxume]

eMachines=Gateway...

Get rid of plug and play and bring back jumpers!

[Imposter_of_myself]

I know it may seem archaic to some, but I wish they'd bring back jumpers. Anyone who tries to make a server today, knows what I am talking about when the BIOS decides to "re-arrange" the order in which your cards are seen, e.g. You used to boot from an Intel RAID card, you add a Qlogic FC card, and now the box thinks that it should boot from the qlogic. In the old days, the jumpers ruled the show - you could set what order cards booted in. Maybe this new BIOS can allow me to set this order? That is one of my gripes about the BIOS today.

DMCA

[Hoi Polloi]

Let me take a guess, they'll build DMCA enforcement into it sooner or later.

Re:DMCA

[SilverspurG]

Anything which they build into it requires code at the OS level. Any code at the OS level is stored in memory somewhere. Any code stored in memory can be analyzed and reverse engineered.

They're not going to cut the F/OSS community out of the picture entirely. The proprietary houses are doing what they can to stay 6-8 months ahead. Eventually, though, they have to release the specs to someone. Hard to write a media player that makes use of the built-in DRM if the people writing the media player don't know how the DRM works. Maybe they're looking at software as a collaboration-only development model. One company writes all these parts, and then MS adds in the code to make it work with DRM. Then, unless you're employed by MS, there's no legitimate reason to be writing code anymore. Hobbyist programmers can now be labelled terrorists... Or copyright infringers. It's all the same these days.

Re:DMCA

[Inkieminstrel]

"Anything which they build into it requires code at the OS level. Any code at the OS level is stored in memory somewhere. Any code stored in memory can be analyzed and reverse engineered."

Not so. At all.

Trusted computing involves the ability to hide everything from the user. It uses built-in memory curtaining to prevent you from reading another program's memory. It uses checksums to make sure that the IO drivers are not tampered with. It uses hardware-based encryption to make sure that you don't have the access to the keys to decrypt files. It uses application signing to make sure that only trusted applications do have the keys.

Trusted computing is all about DRM. If done properly, there will be no way of circumventing DRM in software short of brute forcing keys. All DRM breaking will have to be done in hardware.

"Hard to write a media player that makes use of the built-in DRM if the people writing the media player don't know how the DRM works."

Exactly. With trusted computing you can't. The songs that play in one application will only ever run in that one application.

In short, it sucks.

Re:DMCA

[SilverspurG]

Trusted computing involves the ability to hide everything from the user.</i>

RealPlayer, Winamp, Quicktime, and all other media apps still need to know what format to put the data stream in when sending it to the hardware device. And the code which handles that data to push it down the wire must be somewhere.

It uses built-in memory curtaining to prevent you from reading another program's memory.</i>

Debuggers will always be able to get around this. Sandboxes. Virtual environments. Etc. etc. etc.

All DRM breaking will have to be done in hardware

IFF there is only one software vendor in the entire world. I know the industry is trying to move this direction, but I'm willing to bet large sums of money we'll cut it off at the pass.

One thing UEFI will certainly do is...

[squoozer]

... make it about as hard as possible, if not impossible, to impliment a completely free open source operating system. I reckon that is all but guaranteed.

My bet wpuld be on some weird and wonderful, not very good, patented DRM technology that will be forced on it by one of the partners and cross licensed to the others for peanuts. Of course those won't be the licensing terms given to other people

Thinking of licensing terms I have another grumble but I think I'll spare you that one for now [walks off to grumble elsewhere]...

Re:One thing UEFI will certainly do is...

[saur2004]

It could be licensed for peanuts to anybody. All you have to do is make sure there is a nice little non-disclosure agreement in that licensed and bingo, you just cut out anyone wanting to GPL their work.

Re:One thing UEFI will certainly do is...

[pp]

Yea right...

Linux has been booting on EFI Itanium boxes since the beginning, even before there was a 64-bit Windows (outside MSFT labs, that is :-) ).

EFI is certainly not pretty, but it's still a great improvement.

Re:One thing UEFI will certainly do is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, we all know how hostile IBM is to open source.

Re:One thing UEFI will certainly do is...

[Junior J. Junior III]

Why? Dell, IBM, and HP are all on-board with Linux. Only Microsoft is anti-Linux. They can put significant pressure on Dell, IBM, and HP, but if these three companies wanted to they could unite against MS and coronate Linux as the successor to the MS empire.

EFI at last!!!

[rwyoder]

It's about time we get rid of carburetors on the PC and adopt EFI!

Re:Uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a body incorporated according to the law so as to have distinct legal personality from its members, yet is not to be operated to provide a financial profit to its members, and must operate in compliance with its objectives.

this wont kill Linux

[FudRucker]

there already is too much of a demand for Linux, either UEFI will accept Linux or some motherboard MFGer's will continue to produce mainboards with the old PC BIOS, i don't like the sound of UEFI and will probably go out of my way just to not purchase boards with it...

Re:this wont kill Linux

[rincebrain]

Ding.

You and me both, buddy.

Re:this wont kill Linux

[Intron]

What is likely is that the PC splits: you will need an EFI motherboard to boot Windows, which will have DRM to reduce pirate copies of MS software. MS doesn't need sinister motives when they have an obvious one. If you install a flash BIOS, you can have non-DRM Linux. Content providers will do what they do now, which is only support Windows. Dual boot of new MS Operating Systems will be difficult.

Re:this wont kill Linux

[BlueStrat]

"there already is too much of a demand for Linux, either UEFI will accept Linux or some motherboard MFGer's will continue to produce mainboards with the old PC BIOS, i don't like the sound of UEFI and will probably go out of my way just to not purchase boards with it..."

Actually, I think the plan is to "authorize" only "TCPA-compliant" versions of linux, which will make the big corporate linux vendors the only linux OS providers whose distributions will run in "Trusted" mode, as they'll be the only ones to be able to afford TCPA licensing. This will satisfy the corporate linux users, while simultaneously locking out the non-corporate backed/owned linux distributions and software providers.

This makes me wonder also if this might also be a way to break GPL, by having a "Trusted"/protected linux, the DMCA might trump GPL and not allow the modified sources to be distributed, setting some kind of precedent.

In any case, it'll be a cold day in hell when I use any TCPA-like hardware or software on my computer..I'll limp along as long as I can, but if/when the time comes that it just becomes impossible (or flat-out illegal) to use non-TC-enabled computers in any meaningful way, I'll stop using/buying personal computers and devote more time and the money I used to spend on computing to playing guitar and writing music.

Just my $0.02

Strat

Re:this wont kill Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been said a thousand times, but TCPA will NEVER stop booting whatever operating system and programs you want. Anything else would be a stupid business decision (for customized Windows installs too, not just Linux) and would kill the business PC, server and embedded market for anything touching TCPA, even if typical consumers don't care. This fact was well documented by IBM and even Linus Torvalds himself said TCPA is not bad as long as you (the user) remain in control of turning it off.

Besides, there is no practical way to sign mainstream Linux kernels unless the owner of the machine signs the kernel themselves (which is one legitimate use of TCPA, e.g. to prevent physical tampering with company or public machines).

Re:this wont kill Linux

[BlueStrat]

"It's been said a thousand times, but TCPA will NEVER stop booting whatever operating system and programs you want. Anything else would be a stupid business decision (for customized Windows installs too, not just Linux) and would kill the business PC, server and embedded market for anything touching TCPA, even if typical consumers don't care. This fact was well documented by IBM and even Linus Torvalds himself said TCPA is not bad as long as you (the user) remain in control of turning it off.

Besides, there is no practical way to sign mainstream Linux kernels unless the owner of the machine signs the kernel themselves (which is one legitimate use of TCPA, e.g. to prevent physical tampering with company or public machines)."

Of course, at this point at least, from what I've been able to learn, TCPA/TC functionality is optional, and you can boot into an untrusted OS or use untrusted software, but in untrusted mode. When a majority of users are using TCPA/TC-enabled computers and ISPs start to refuse to connect a non-trusted computer, and e-commerce websites refuse to work with non-trusted computers, that's when the problems arise. I'm sure the likes of IBM or Novell or even Red Hat can afford the certification/licensing costs to get their OSes and applications signed, but other non-corp.-backed distributions and software application creators will be unable to afford the costs.

This will mean that you're absolutely free to run anything you like, you just won't be able to connect to the internet or run any TCPA/TC-enabled and licensed software on a non-trusted platform in trusted mode, or access any data that was created by those apps or OSes while in trusted mode with any non-trusted app or OS.

What these people consider "mainstream" and what you or I consider mainstream are 2 different things. "Mainstream" to them are OSes and apps that are corporate-backed, with money to get their software authorized and someone to sue.

Anything else they consider a threat, and is precisely why IMHO TCPA/TC was created.

Strat

Re:Hmm... wolves among the sheep...

[Shadowsinger]

True, Dell tends to meander along behind whatever the crowd has already done, but IBM and HP both have vested interests in Linux. Somehow, I can't see them allowing MS bully-rights on this one.

Ignorance is bliss....

[Manip]

I'm sorry but do you people take the time to read up before you complain? This is a wonderful opportunity for the open source movement. EFI makes booting multiple operating systems like a thousand times easier. Instead of having a single boot record on the hard disk boot information is stored in a data table and given as an option to the user who selections the OS they want.

This means that Linux can be installed without breaking the existing installations or screwing with the boot loader at all. The DRM is a problem but there is not too much information about if there is going to be a lot of DRM in this new bios replacement.

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[ckaminski]

I love these DRM chicken littles. If you don't want DRM, just keep buying your meatspace products, and don't buy that latest ebook, or that latest track on iTunes. Get over yourselves.

As much as Microsoft would love a BIOS/Firmware that permits only Windows to boot on a PC, it will never happen. Maybe on a MicrosoftPC, and maybe on a Dell, but nowhere else.

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[wirerat1]

Who are you kidding? While you dismiss the DRM portion by consoling yourself with the notion that there might not be much of it because its not talked about in detail is ludicrious. Of course they aren't going to flail their arms about and go "LOOK HERE! WE ARE GOING TO TAKE YOUR ABILITY TO DO STUFF WITH YOUR PC AWAY!!!" Come on, get real. It will be mentioned as little as possible.

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[hacker]

This means that Linux can be installed without breaking the existing installations or screwing with the boot loader at all. The DRM is a problem but there is not too much information about if there is going to be a lot of DRM in this new bios replacement.

Lets not forget that Intel's Project LaGrande (review here) is all about DRM, and its one of the reasons Apple is moving that direction. They want to work with the media companies as they begin to control the entire media space (except media created by their users, of course).

Trust me, Linux might work on it, but copying other software created or installed on those other operating systems will NOT be easy. This time, the DRM is in the silicon.

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[Mac Degger]

Oh? Where can I find a PCI(non-e) 6800/x800 gfx card? What? There isn't a current model PCI implementation available, only cards which are years old?

Hmmmm. Makes you think, doesn't it.

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[The Warlock]

Because AGP is eight times faster than PCI, and PCIe is twice as fast as that? If you put a 6800 into a PCI board, the PCI bus would become the bottleneck. Grow a brain.

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[SilverspurG]

This time, the DRM is in the silicon

And somewhere in memory is the code to make it work.

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[hacker]

And somewhere in memory is the code to make it work.

True, it could be in L3 or L4 cache.

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[SilverspurG]

True, it could be in L3 or L4 cache.

Then there must be complimentary code, stored in more readily accessible memory, in the OS to make it work.

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[atokata]

I'm sorry but do you people take the time to read up before you complain? This is a wonderful opportunity for the open source movement. EFI makes booting multiple operating systems like a thousand times easier. Instead of having a single boot record on the hard disk boot information is stored in a data table and given as an option to the user who selections the OS they want.

A thousand times? Is it really *that* hard right now? It seems like EFI is basically just moving GRUB from the MBR into a bit of flash rom, then adding DRM to make sure I'm not trying to boot an OS the EFI chip doesn't approve of.

This means that Linux can be installed without breaking the existing installations or screwing with the boot loader at all. The DRM is a problem but there is not too much information about if there is going to be a lot of DRM in this new bios replacement.

I can do all of this with existing technology. And without DRM. You imply that people having doubts in regards to this technology have those feelings out of ignorance, yet you yourself say that "...there is not too much information...there is going to be a lot of DRM..."

So, basically, we should be exicited that a number of tech companies want to replace a working technolgy with a version, which while it may work marginally better, will also prevent us from using and controlling the use of our machines as we see fit? Now *that's* ignorance.

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[Anonymous Coward]

This time, the DRM is in the silicon

And somewhere in memory is the code to make it work.

It's stunning that people keep forgetting that.

The rule is simple; 'lack of physical security means lack of assurance of any security'.

This doesn't mean that all security will be broken. It does mean that certianty of security is eliminated.

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[Rich0]

Not necessarily.

You could have an encryption key burned into the CPU, and that could be used to decrypt a hard drive partition containing session keys for various files on the drive.

Yes, the key is stored somewhere, and yes, in theory you can retrieve it.

However, if properly implemented it will only be possible to obtain the key using hardware-level attacks. Forget downloading some program and executing it - you'll probably need $15k worth of high-end equipment.

In theory a DirecTV box has the decryption key in it, but look at how hard it is to obtain black-market smart cards for them. It is very difficult to crack a smart card, and so very few people are able to do it.

Now, DirecTV is actually far easier to crack than PC-DRM. DirecTV uses one key for their entire stream for a long period of time, so you crack one key you can unlock any unit.

Suppose on the other hand that each unit had a unique key (as envisoned with PC DRM)? Now you need to crack an individual PC. We're talking about pulling out your CPU and mailing it to some underground outfit so that they can mail you back your CPU and the embedded key. How much of a market will there be for that? The 2-way mailing required by this would also make it VERY easy to bust.

Now, it may be the case that the DRM scheme that gets implemented has some weakness which allows less drastic measures to bypass it. However, in theory such a system can be made VERY difficult to defeat.

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[ckaminski]

As the warlock so eloquently posits, you'll be wanting that 6800 in ISA next?

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[Anonymous Coward]

I think DirecTV uses distributed keying, where the master key (only valid for a few days) is encrypted with every valid receiver key and the whole list is broadcast daily IIRC. That's how they grant and deny access to specific receivers. The same scheme is used by most broadcast encryption schemes, and it works very well since the master key expires regularly.

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[edunbar93]

As much as Microsoft would love a BIOS/Firmware that permits only Windows to boot on a PC, it will never happen.

Oh yeah. Who in this consortium would stop them from doing that? Intel? IBM? HP? Dell? They're all in bed with Microsoft, whether willingly or not. Oppose Microsoft in this and suddenly the new version of Windows doesn't support Dell hardware. They've made threats like that before and for some odd reason, Dell and Intel and HP all fell back in line.

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[ckaminski]

If you think Intel is going to kowtow to Microsoft, I think you're delusional. Personally, I think every single company you named has the volume and purchasing power to make Microsoft do what THEY want, and out of those four, three have a vested interest in making sure software other than Windows can run on their boxes.

I won't argue the point that Microsoft weilds enormous power. I just don't think it's as great as you seem to think it is.

But I'll revise my prior statement. You might indeed see a Windows-only computer from Dell. I could see that. But even there I think they're going to continue getting pressue on some lines (Optiplex) to support Linux

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[Mac Degger]

Wow...what a way to RFTA (realy fuck the analogy). Of course we want PCIe and we don't need ISA anymore. Of course new tech requires a new bus. But that's missing the point entirely. Frankly, I'm really surprised I have to explain this, and had half expected you to slam Warlock on this. Oh well.

The point, which you yourself have so very clearly elucidated, is this: the hardware/software industry can very easily force a standard, and in doing so replace the old hardware, in echange for new features.

By your lack of understanding, I see I'll have to paint the picture explicitly with the following hypothetical. Imagine the newest mobo's and cpu's have mandatory standardised DRM. All new mobo's and cpu's include this (at least all AMD and Intel cpu's, and thus their corresponding cpu's). The old cpu's (and thus mobo's) production is ceased. As soon as that stock is sold, there are no more high end cpu's without DRM. If you want a cpu in a couple of years time, you are now therefore forced to get a DRM'd cpu, or get a cpu which is years old. This is how pci replaced isa and how pci-e is replacing pci/agp; only now it's EFI/TC/DRM'd cpu's. And you have no choice, except by forfeiting the latest tech. So "you'll be wanting that 6800 in ISA next" turns into 'you'll be wanting that 5 core, 10 ghz, EFI/TC/DRM'd cpu in non-drm'd socket 478 next?'.

Gettit now?

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[ckaminski]

No, I understood your point. My point was that DRM isn't the end of the world, not even close. It wouldn't even be a topic of conversation if the world had just taken the hit from the first Napster boyz, and ceased the incessant and highly illegal file trading. Then today, we might have Internet movie delivery (if bandwidth had kept up, of course). Of course, the big boyz would make a big deal out of time shifting, like they did Tivo, but in the end, they'd shut up because they got their money, and their content wouldn't be on zero-hour websites and bittorrent three days before release.

Face it, DRM is coming, here to stay, fighting it is pointless, and I think so more because I agree with the media companies than I do out of apathy. I think it's a way for the little guy to make money, to punch into the markets the big guys control. Steven King proved with his aborted online book project that you cannot count on the goodwill of others if you want remuneration for your product. Some people will want this, in the form of micropayments or pay-per-use. It is as it should be.

The only thing we should be concerned about is making sure that it's open. Accountable maybe, but open. I want to continue using Linux, even on a DRMd Pentium 12. Hell, even Linus agrees with me. Or I agree with Linus, because he's definitely smarter than I am...

That, and you can always get your DRMd product in meatspace, and suffer none of the limitations, other than it's not digital and you have to go through that step all by your lonesome. I concede this could change, but it think it's irrelevant.

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[SilverspurG]

The suggested security model which you suggest is valid as long as the number of third party software vendors is kept to an absolute minimum. Admittedly, MS has attempted to corner the entire market on media delivery...

But it's going to be a long time until every third party music player is rendered invalid by end-to-end hardware encryption. Until then, the software code will always be someplace where it can be found and cracked.

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[Rich0]

Actually, you could handle 3rd parties easily enough with this sort of model.

Just have the OS keep track of which program created which file, and allow it to decrypt files on request for that program only. You could get at a file if you could find an exploit in that program, of course, or in the OS.

That is the nature of trusted computing. The TCPA-chip hashes the BIOS on boot and gives it access to its protected storage if it hasn't changed. The BIOS hashes the OS and gives it access to its protected storage if it hasn't changed. The OS hashes each running program and grants it access to its protected storage if it hasn't changed. When you're doing a software/OS update the unchanged OS will inspect the update files, and if they're OK it will extract from the update files the expected new hash and send it to the BIOS/TCPA chip with a message stating that this new hash will be acceptable for accessing the old protected storage, then it will patch itself and on reboot the old key will get revoked if the patch worked.

Nothing would stop you from installing linux on such a PC. It just wouldn't be able to access any protected areas on the drive (which is likely to be the entire windows partition). There would need to be some mechanism for handling removable media (probably storing it in an unprotected fs, sans any DRMed content) - otherwise you couldn't read it on another PC unless MS wants to keep some online repository of encryption keys for every floppy that was ever formatted (which actually isn't as hard as it sounds).

Near-perfect DRM / TCPA is actually quite feasible with today's technology. It just has to be built as a well-designed platform from the ground up to be bulletproof. That doesn't mean it will stop the atomic bomb (ie somebody with an electron microscope and a PhD in microprocessor design), but not too many people have those, and if the music industry has to live with them being able to listen to their music in their car CD players I'm guessing they won't lose much sleep over it. In any case, the files will still be watermarked, so they won't be going anywhere...

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[SilverspurG]

Just have the OS keep track of which program created which file, and allow it to decrypt files on request for that program only.

That would work if the OS was in the hardware. But the OS is on the HD these days, not in a chip.

Nothing would stop you from installing linux on such a PC. It just wouldn't be able to access any protected areas on the drive

That's the theory, but it really wouldn't be terribly difficult to create a partition with a single "a" on it and then brute-force the BIOS until it returns an "a". After 15-20 seed characters have been deciphered the encryption scheme should become apparant.

Granted, this isn't as easy as drinking water, or even as easy as washing the car, or even as easy as installing Debian... but it's easier than building a house. The hardware market is still a long way off from forcing every company in the world from turning in their old non TCPA mobos. As long as backwards compatibility is profitable there will be workarounds. The industry can't turn dimes that quickly.

Near-perfect DRM / TCPA is actually quite feasible with today's technology.</i>

So are fusion, optical processors, and asynchronous logic structures. I'm not holding my breath for the rollout, though.

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[Rich0]

That's the theory, but it really wouldn't be terribly difficult to create a partition with a single "a" on it and then brute-force the BIOS until it returns an "a". After 15-20 seed characters have been deciphered the encryption scheme should become apparant.

Uh, you do realize that this is the exact scheme employed to crack the RSA challenges, right? Well, not exactly - what you describe is a chosen plaintext attack. The RSA challenges are a known plaintext attack (they picked the encrypted text).

Note that all of the RSA challenges that use even moderately-difficult ciphers are still unbroken. Distributed.net is working on RC5-72. Nobody uses less than 128 bits for anything important.

The fact is that brute-forcing a modern cipher even when the plaintext is known is VERY difficult. The cipher will almost certainly be a block cipher, so the plaintext will be padded to the nearest block length - so you aren't really just cracking an "a".

Modern ciphers are designed to defeat both known-plaintext and chosen-plaintext attacks. Even if you can get the chip to encrypt text of your choosing and can examine both the input and output of the algorithm freely, it should still take a full brute-force attack to obtain the key. And that key will be VERY long - well beyond the ability of anyone to brute force even with specialized hardware.

Maybe the NSA knows differently, but that would be about it...

That would work if the OS was in the hardware. But the OS is on the HD these days, not in a chip.

Actually, it can work with an OS on the hard drive. At boot time the BIOS would hash the OS that it is loading, and store the hash. The TCPA chip would then use this hash to decide whether to give the OS access to its encryption keys (which are stored on the hard drive, but using a key known only the chip). The same applies to software. The idea is that TCPA is a framework - you don't have to use it, but any software which does use it can protect its memory/storage. Of course, you still have the weakest link principle - if the OS has a buffer overflow you could probably obtain the session keys of the OS and any apps that reside under it, but not keys at the BIOS level and above. A buffer overflow in an application could give you its session keys, but not those of the OS or other apps. Also, there would undoubtedly be decrypted stuff sitting in RAM, and that would be more susceptible to hardware-level attacks. You may or may not be able to get keys, but you might be able to get the protected information itself. That won't be something the average person would try at home, though.

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[SilverspurG]

Ideally one gets a group of computer engineers together to take apart the mobo, identify the offending chips, put them on a separate breadboard, and map them pin by pin by pin.

As long as there are multiple OSs in existence, and multiple media players, then the hardware industry is not going to be able to implement 100% end to end hardware encryption. As long as there's that crack in the door there will always be a way around TCPA. It'd be nice if TCPA zealots would quit forcing their horrid implementation of insecurity on us. This same cat and mouse game has been going on for 50 years or more.

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[Rich0]

Well, sure, that may work (assuming they didn't put the TCPA into the CPU itself).

However, that only would retrieve the private key for that particular computer. So, that one PC would be able to rip protected content, and post it online. At least, until the key for that PC gets blacklisted, and then all new content will refuse to download to it.

This is the problem with the TCPA - it can in fact be done in a manner that keeps 99% of all computer users under wraps. Sure, it won't stop the hard-core counterfeiters, but there are so few of those that traditional law enforcement can keep up with them...

why not just add to the bios?

[tomstdenis]

Want scripting? Want drivers?

Why not just add those to the BIOS?

I mean the interrupts are a standard but the interface you see when you hit F2 or DEL or whatever is not.

Nothing is stopping AMI from putting a tiny busybox linux image in the BIOS other than available space [perhaps?] and the will to do it.

If you goto the uefi website you'll cleverly see "members only" on all the specification pages... interesting...

Tom

Re:why not just add to the bios?

[PygmySurfer]

Why not just add those to the BIOS?

Why add more cruft to this horribly outdaged kludge that's been with us for far too long?

I'd rather see OpenFirmware embraced than this Intel designed strategy though..

Re:why not just add to the bios?

[tomstdenis]

My experience with openfirmware hasn't been that good. Or at least if the MacOS does use OF it sucks. I couldn't get into the OF prompt no matter what magic key combo I hit.

To me the BIOS "just works".

And the thing is you don't usually use most of the interrupts in the bios anyways. I seriously doubt Linux switches to real mode to call int 13h to write to disk. I'm certain it just issues IDE commands directly.

So yeah you have some code you're not using but no sense on sinking the ship if it's just painted the wrong colour.

And the thing is there are still things that use BIOS interrupts (hint: boot loaders) so scrapping it alltogether is not trivial [it's not impossible, you can always replace your bootloader].

Tom

Re:why not just add to the bios?

[the_greywolf]

I seriously doubt Linux switches to real mode to call int 13h to write to disk. I'm certain it just issues IDE commands directly.

you're right - but it does use int 13h (where available) to read from disk to load the kernel. you gotta start somewhere.

Re:why not just add to the bios?

[tomstdenis]

That's just to make the code smaller. There is no technological reason why you must call int 13h to read the disk.

Tom

Re:why not just add to the bios?

[Anonymous Coward]

You couldn't get to the prompt?

Command-option-O-F.

Re:why not just add to the bios?

[PygmySurfer]

My experience with openfirmware hasn't been that good. Or at least if the MacOS does use OF it sucks. I couldn't get into the OF prompt no matter what magic key combo I hit.

I've entered it before. It's Command-F or Option-F I think. The problem with the Mac is that it doesn't display any messages while it POSTs. On Sun boxes, you get nice pretty text messages (and STOP-A enters OF right away, the Mac seems to make you hold it down for some time and wait til it enters OF).

You can also manipulate it with the "nvram" command..

Todays BIOS

[BigDuke6_swe]

Please correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the BIOS of today backwards compatible with a lot of obsolete hardware that require the BIOS to still behave in a certain way? I belive there were hardware components that for example required that BIOS waited for a certain amount of time before processing some commands due to their startup time. And as years has passed by new features have been added while the old ones are kept and at some point it's a unnecesarily messy code.

Re:Todays BIOS

[ckaminski]

Yeah, exactly how much of this obsolete hardware is going to work in machines that have only PCI Express slots? It's a non-concern.

Re:Todays BIOS

[Anonymous Coward]

We do not really need a real "BIOS" any longer... even MS (as the last user of BIOS) has left. We just need something to start the bootload.
So what are all that EFI about ?
The only reason I can see for it is the whole "Trusted Computing" and DRM... and that is in fact only for making your PC traceable and managable...

Re:Todays BIOS

[adolf]

You're not wrong.

In fact, you're very right. I was reminded of this recently, when I was assembling a fast, SATA P4 Linux box and accidently gorfed something or other.

What happened was something so anachronistic that I thought it should well be impossible:

I turned the computer on, and the video card switched to its all-but-forgotten 40x25 wide-character textmode and loudly proclaimed "NO ROM BASIC - SYSTEM HALTED".

I nearly died laughing from the insanity of having BASIC bootstrap code still laying around in BIOS.

It's sad, really.

Here it comes

[Particle010]

Am I the only person thinking that this is where they're going to slip in the BIOS "trusted computing" without the common person suspecting a thing because "We're uhh just making changes to the BIOS because it's outdated.... nothing to worry about... nothing to see here... it'll be better... we promise."

Granted the BIOS has needed better functionality, but... better be on your guard people.

Re:Here it comes

[jurt1235]

Do hardware people even care about DRM. They sell their machines anyway, DRM or no DRM. So what is their incentive? Really just making something better? There is a good chance of that (OK, MS is in the picture, which makes it a bit murkier).

Re:Here it comes

[KwKSilver]

If MS's dirty fingers have been in a pie, I don't want any of it.

Best of all this will be Open Sourced by Intel!

[Anonymous Coward]

The source code for Intel's implementation of EFI can be found at http://www.tianocore.org/

Also, this standard should finally allow seemless integration of new hardware onto the linux desktop. The main hurdle for desktop linux has always been lack of seemless driver integration.

Re:Best of all this will be Open Sourced by Intel!

[oneandoneis2]

Wow, RMS might finally get that OpenBIOS (well, at least an equivalent thereof) he wants!

drm on the ground level

[l3v1]

I don't want no drm'd bios. Or if they do it, let's start thinking about ways of replacing with custom bios chips/flashes with openfirmware. If they see that people don't like the idea of drm on the application level, well, they take it down to the bios, where most people won't be able to do anything about. No matter if one doesn't do anything illegal on their machines, drm'ing it is still not any a likeable concept on any level. Looks like the hackers of tomorrow will turn out to be really some digital freedom fighters.

Re:drm on the ground level

[oxygene2k2]

www.openbios.org - together with linuxbios we could make this work..
except that programming the lowlevel setup is non-trivial, because it's usually undocumented, and if you can get to documentation, under NDA or not, it tends to be bug-ridden in that area

No Linux Support?

[oostevo]

Sorry if this spoils your conspiracy theories, but there's already a project on SourceForge (called ELILO) to support the EFI standard.

And there's a link on the main page of the Intel EFI page.

Re:No Linux Support?

[Stephen Williams]

Also, IBM is involved in UEFI. With the amount of time and money IBM has invested in Linux, there's no way they're going to support a BIOS replacement that would intentionally lock Linux out.

-Stephen

Re:No Linux Support?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is because current EFI implementations don't check to see if the OS is approved/trusted before booting it. That is, current EFI implementations either do not support TC or don't use it for anything and silently disable it if the OS isn't trusted.

Re:No Linux Support?

[SPY_jmr1]

E-I-E-LILO? That has to be the easiestly written OSS song i've ever heard.

Amiga Kickstart to replace BIOS!!!

[Smuttley]

just so that when the OS crashes I get to see a Guru Meditation :)

Nail on the head right there...

[Pollux]

What's wrong with the PC BIOS anyway? ... On a more sinister note, there's no mention in TFA of DRM and the idea of "trusted" computing.

According to the Overview page, Microsoft's listed as the only OS maker. First, why isn't Apple among the lineup? Novell? Red Hat Linux? Perhaps it's because they're not part of the real circle of friends...

Enter Microsoft's Trusted Computer Platform. According to the TCPA FAQ, the companies belonging to the alliance are: "Microsoft, Intel, IBM, HP and AMD". And let's take a look here...yep, they're all there. But what are they really planning?

According to the specifications page, nothing's listed as far as features that are to be included (" The UEFI specification is in development"). But currently, since there is no mention as to the true intent of this new technology, and right now the BIOS isn't broken, why reinvent the wheel? Load times are now less than three seconds, which is a tremendous step from BIOS beginnings. New equipment continues to be supported through new BIOS updates. So what do these companies need that the current BIOS can't give them?

Enter DRM. According to Microsoft's Patent on their DRM-supported OS, Microsoft has a few issues with the current BIOS...This AEGIS model requires a tamper-resistant BIOS that has hard-wired into it the signature of the following stage. This scheme has the very considerable advantage that it works well with current microprocessors and the current PC architecture, but has three drawbacks.

1) First, the set of trusted operating systems or trusted publishers must be wired into the BIOS.

2) Second, if the content is valuable enough (for instance, e-cash or Hollywood videos), users will find a way of replacing the BIOS with one that permits an insecure boot.

3) Third, when obtaining data from a network server, the client has no way of proving to the remote server that it is indeed running a trusted system.

So, Microsoft admits that there are flaws that prevent them from using the BIOS in their Trusted Computing platform. But create a new way of booting a computer, protect the technical details from public view, and put the power of the DMCA behind it, and you have a nice foundation into the DRM frontier.

Re:Nail on the head right there...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is also another problem from Microsoft's perspective: Trusted Computing that prevents "unauthorised" software from running breaks the "mostly backwards-compatible" guarantee that has helped MS maintain a virtual stranglehold on operating systems. One of the things that keeps people on Windows instead of migrating to the Mac, Linux, etc. is the fact that they can usually re-install their existing software and data on a new machine, and begin using it straight away. When they break this with things like XP Service pack 2, the result is that business users especially stay away in droves, and business users are very important to MS.

This does not of course mean that MS won't try and foist DRM onto everyone, but like some other unpopular things that they came up with (software rental, changing bulk business licensing terms for more complex and expensive ones, Clippy, etc.), it probably won't last because it will adversely affect their bottom line in a big way once the word gets around that you have to buy new software that won't work with some existing data.

And if DRM looks grim on the desktop, it's even more so on servers. There are a surpising number of Windows-based servers that run FOSS software such as Apache, Python, Perl, PHP, FOSS DBMS, etc., and few if any of these programs will end up being authorised. This means not only replacing the entire infrastructure for what are in some cases large and complex web systems, but also rewriting the whole lot to run under ASP.NET on SQL-Server. The sheer cost and time-scales involved would mean that replacing DRM-infested Wintel servers with Linux on a nice IBM PowerPC box that will run your existing web infrastructure without change would be cheaper and quicker by several orders of magnitude (IBM would not be silly enough to DRM-encumber servers that are specifically designed to run Linux).

With the above in mind, I believe that operating systems and software that require hardware DRM authorisation will be a short-lived phenomenon if they ever appear (which is by no means certain). IMO it's more likely that DRM will be used to progressively replace today's software code-signing, e.g. for certain types of embedded web applets, signed drivers that are guaranteed virus-free, and content that already carries intrusive and annoying DRM schemes.

Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is a software company on the board of an organization founded to replace a hardware component?

Re:Question

[maxwell demon]

Since when is a BIOS hardware?

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they have like $40 billion in the bank and that can pretty much buy you whatever* you want: monopolies, patents, etc. and a voice in whatever you want. Maybe they can get Dubya to get rid of Anti-Trust laws since they hurt big business.

* (well, almost whatever since it doesn't seem to help their ability to write quality software)

I'm confused?

[Kelbear]

IANA, I Am Not Anything. I'm seeing a lot of negative responses to this. I'm a bit of an idiot and I'm guessing there may even be more than one idiot reading slashdot as well. Could somebody explain to me why this is so bad?

Is it that BIOS is better, or EFI has no improvements to offer? Or is it that you want Open-source firmware instead and are afraid these companies will actively try to make open-source firmware impossible?

My first take was that a group of companies, even competitors, are joining together to try to make a standard for computers. I've always hated when I get screwed because two products from different companies refuse to work together. My thought was that standards would help establish a baseline so that companies know how to make their products work with noncompeting products.

Are slashdotters afraid of possible attempts to throttle a user's flexibility hidden in EFI? Is this fear of DRM based on something mentioned on the sites, or a potentiality?

Re:I'm confused?

[MisterMurphy]

It seems to be a fear of control. When you have complete co-operation between every single layer of a machine, the ability of those in co-operation to dictate terms increases dramatically. If the new CPUs and Mobos only work with EFI, and EFI only lets you boot into DRMed material, and they refuse to license their DRM methods for reasonable amounts, then they can functionally decide what can be done with the computers they create and sell.

Re:I'm confused?

[Anonymous Coward]

Undoubtedly this fear of DRM is based on past performance (sometimes illegal) by certain of the companies involved, and by their stated intentions in other matters.

Re:Get rid of plug and play and bring back jumpers

[maxwell demon]

You'd really prefer jumpers to DIP switches?

Time to stock up...

[slashname3]

Time to stock up on BIOS based systems. Once they get this change pushed through all new systems will be forced to ship with EFI. And the bets are running toward them incorporating some kind of DRM which will prevent alternative OSes from running on these new systems.

20 years from now there will be a huge market for "free" computers that don't have EFI/DRM built into the system. Of course by then it will be illegal to connect a non EFI/DRM system to the Internet. But a persitant group of hackers will devise numerous methods to mask "free" computers from the corporate Internet police (CIP) which routinely scan all systems connected to the Internet looking for non-compliant systems. And in further efforts to eliminate the hacker menace the new EFI standards will be designed to scan a computers hard drives looking for signs of any activity deemed illegal by the CIP. This of course leads to several people having their doors knocked down and flash bangs thrown through the windows as the CIP confiscates their systems when they find more than a few dozen mp3 files on the users computer systems which don't have proper DRM tags.

Many more people will have their systems confiscated and accounts frozen when their computers report back that they used certain terms in IM sessions and email such as "she was the bomb last night!"

Of course the system will omit everything but the term "bomb".

Re:Time to stock up...

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM has nearly nothing to do with EFI. If the large companies really want to push DRM they will do it with or without EFI.

Re:Time to stock up...

[DeathPenguin]

Modern PC BIOSes are in no way free in any sense of the word. Just try to get the source code to PhoenixBIOS.

If you want free, then check out LinuxBIOS.

Re:Time to stock up...

[oneandoneis2]

Yeah, because all the government agencies that are switching to FOSS won't mind at all that they have to cough up cash to switch back to proprietary software.

And all the corporations with webservers that run the most common software (BSD or Linux with Apache) will see no problem with throwing it all away and going over to Windows instead, I'm sure.

Linux isn't a "hobbyist" OS any more; there are many powerful organisations that have invested a great deal of time & money in it. Any measure that makes FOSS difficult or impossible to run will fail: Alternatives will spring up; hacks will be discovered; upgrades to the new stuff will be refused.

And that's without all the "Joe SixPack" end-users taking their shiny new PCs back to the store because "My MP3 collection doesn't work on it, it's rubbish: I want a PC that just works!"

Ah, the irony. . .

Re:Time to stock up...

[slashname3]

Won't this depend on the laws that get passed? Microsoft saw the error of their ways during the anti-trust suits. Most likely they now own more congress critters than anyone else. As they slowly push the grand plan forward laws will be passed making it illegal to sell systems that don't have various hooks in them that requier some proprietary protocol or key to make the system boot. And if it costs the government more to buy such systems they will see it as an economic recovery program, spending lots of money to jump start the economy.

The government will just tax us more pay for such changes. Rarely if ever does the over all tax rate go down. And if it does it is for a short period of time.

Re:Time to stock up...

[proteonic]

This would be an interesting story line for a video game.

Re:Time to stock up...

[slashname3]

Actually I'm hoping for a series of movies depicting how this unfolds over the next few decades.

The series will be called "Free Hack".

:)

Re:Time to stock up...

[oneandoneis2]

Oddly enough, there's a world outside of America that really won't care about Congress. Remember the recent stories about Brazil & FOSS. . ?

Re:Time to stock up...

[slashname3]

True, but the big companies are exporting this stuff to Europe and other countries. Take the software patent stuff. It was great that the EU appears to have blocked it temporarly but they will keep trying until it passes. The same will happen with this other stuff. Microsoft is figuring out how to get everyone in India to buy a copy of Windows. They will get it wrong the first few times but the market is just to big for them to ignore. And if they can't get the consumer on the hook by them selves they will enlist the governments to force it on the populations.

Use a Mac

[phillymjs]

...to find out why BIOS is antiquated crap. Apple didn't invent Open Firmware, but they make very good use of it.

Four examples:
-Hold down a key at startup to boot from CD/DVD.
-Hold down a different key at startup to boot from a network volume (if available).
-Hold down another different key at startup to give you a menu of all bootable volumes, and boot from the one you want-- external, internal, it doesn't matter.
-Hold down yet another different key at startup to have the machine act as an external hard drive.

The features above make troubleshooting a wayward, non-booting Mac a breeze, and they come in very handy at other times as well. If you encounter a non-booting Windows PC, you almost always need another computer nearby to effectively troubleshoot and fix it.

Ever since Apple announced the move to Intel, I've been a little worried about losing those features-- but I'm hopeful that they will find a way to keep them alive on Intel-based Macs.

~Philly

Re:Use a Mac

[Lorkki]

With my PC, if I press a key, I get to a menu where I can choose from a number of boot methods, including network boot. My laptop's BIOS also has a special feature that allows me to boot straight off a CD/DVD by pressing a different key. With the right boot disk it's a breeze to, say, save files from affected partitions to USB/CD/DVD media, (re)install a bootloader or fix the partition table, without having to touch another computer.

So no, that's not really the key functional difference. It's the internals and their flexibility that counts far more. For starters, the PC BIOS requires some of the hardware to initialise to what's essentially a legacy mode, retained for compatibility with the IBM PC circa 1983 and resulting in some rather useless weight in modern operating systems.

Re:Use a Mac

[jridley]

New machines also do all that from BIOS, with the added feature that they give you a menu. I was trying to install an OS on an old G3 box I got out of the closet at work, and it took a bit of googling to figure out that I needed to hold down a key to boot from CD. On a PC, at boot time it says "press Fxx for boot menu" - you press that, it shows what things are there to boot from, you pick one. Nothing to remember, one key to press.

I'm seriously thinking about switching to Mac, but since the Mac came out, I've been amused by people saying things like "See, no difficult menus and words to read, you just press System+Open-Apple+backspace+q to switch modes! So much easer and intuitive!" People can convince themselves of anything, especially if they're trying to be counter-culture or are defending their choices.

As far as features working on intel-based machines, anyone who's had even a little programming experience should know that the processor doesn't matter; you can do whatever you want on whatever CPU you have, the only difference will be suitability to certain tasks (as in, how fast can it do the things that make what you want to do fast and efficient, like matrix transforms, vector math, fast I/O, memory blitting, etc). Any modern CPU can do anything any other modern CPU can do, just at different speeds for different tasks.

Re:Use a Mac

[moonbender]

I don't understand. How does switching the active boot drive by holding one of four keys make macs easier to troubleshoot than PCs? And what do you think could possibly be lost in the Intel transition? PCs can easily boot from internal or external storage or via network. I can see how making the computer act as an external drive aids troubleshooting a lot, and I've marveled when I saw it in action for the first time. I don't think PCs can do that, so that's okay.
But whether it takes holding a key or configuring a BIOS setting to do it is largely irrelevant as far as I can see. Sure, the former is faster by maybe 10 seconds, but on the other hand you don't have to memorise the keys for the latter. And besides, with some modern boards you don't have to go into the BIOS config to switch the booting drive - I think holding F8 displays a menu on mine.

Re:Use a Mac

[atokata]

You don't need another machine nearby to troubleshoot a non-booting PC. Aside from swapping out actual hardware, what good would it do?

If the choice is between buying a $30 simple LED debug card which plugs into a PCI slot and indicates where the boot is failing, or being required to use a DRM-enforcing BIOS-replacement, I think I'll pop the thirty bucks.

Re:Use a Mac

[Craig Ringer]

There are lots of nice things in Apple's OpenFirmware, even though it's apparently crippled and butchered compared to the Sun ones. Those examples, however, are bad ones - you have all but the last in any PC BIOS worth its salt.

Even the last is probably possible, but too few PCs have FireWire built in for it to be interesting, and USB requires different hardware for host and "gadget" (client) mode.

Re:Use a Mac

[phillymjs]

Yeah, but that's with that particular PC and laptop model. Abilities can vary wildly from one manufacturer and model to the next. Even if some PCs share the same BIOS features, they can still differ in the implementation.

It's the 21st century, and IMHO those features need to be standard across the board-- hell, until a few years ago I couldn't even count 100% on every PC I encountered in the field being able to boot from a CD, much less do any of the other stuff I mentioned in my previous post.

And like you said, having the right boot disk matters for you. For me, I can put a hosed Mac into target mode and connect it as an external drive to any Mac with a FireWire port, to attempt to repair it and/or retrieve data. With a PC you've still got to crack it open and recable at best, or take the whole drive out and put it in a new machine at worst. I've tried out BartPE and a couple other useful boot disks, but having to chase down all the components I need is a pain, and it's hard to make one that is truly universal when it comes to NIC drivers, etc (my company supports a *lot* of different machines).

Blowing the twenty year-old cruft out would be nice, like you said, but I still say the addition of useful features as a standard is what's needed the most.

~Philly

Re:Use a Mac

[phillymjs]

How does switching the active boot drive by holding one of four keys make macs easier to troubleshoot than PCs?

The ability to boot from any bootable drive attached to the computer makes troubleshooting a messed-up volume easy, because you can dig around in the files in the normal GUI. The PCs I currently encounter in the course of my job don't have the ability to boot a Windows installation from any old drive I plug in. I'm stuck with Recovery console or trying to coax some hacked-up boot disk to work so I can fix something or pull data off to another drive.

~Philly

Re:Use a Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

for one I had a S.M.A.R.T status fail on a harddrive so I cloned the hdd to the second hdd (blank) and then rebooted holding down "Option" and chose the new HDD. And the hdd scheme is Master/Slave and now my booting HDD is the slave drive. Macs don't need a "boot" loader to boot. Sure going to the Unix based OSX has introduced some hidden files, but it's still easier than Linux or Windows booting - both requiring a boot sector on the HDD. Hell, all OS9 needs is a folder named "System" and it'll boot.

With PCs - All I've ever seen in BIOS is the boot order sequence - and sleep info (sleeping on a Mac is handled by the OS and not the boot chip).

The only "long" keystroke is option-cmd-p-r which resets the programable RAM which is like resetting the CMOS on a PC.

Re:Use a Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but this is another proof that most Mac users are ignorant when it comes to technology.

Re:Use a Mac

[drewm1980]

Having your debugging be dependent on having a working display (so you can see said menu) is emphatically ~NOT an advantage. If the screen dies on your mac laptop, you can boot while holding 't' (stands for "target disk mode") to turn it into a firewire drive. Plug it into another mac, power up holding the 'option' key (stands for "option") and you can select to boot from the broken machine's drive. Copy your files over to the second machine or even just keep working like nothing happened until you can get your broken machine repaired. What will you do when the graphics break on your wintel laptop? Will retrieving your files be as easy as holding down a key and plugging it into another machine?

Re:Use a Mac

[moonbender]

With PCs - All I've ever seen in BIOS is the boot order sequence - and sleep info (sleeping on a Mac is handled by the OS and not the boot chip).

Well, my BIOS does offer selecting the drive to boot from manually. I assume what you describe for the Mac, ie booting from a cloned HD would easily work the same way. I do agree that getting rid of boot loaders in favor of the Apple approach is great, although I have nightmares about "System Folders" on System 7 that weren't recognized as such.
And I'm not sure what you mean by "sleep info" - I'm pretty sure the power management settings you make in the BIOS are irrelevant, since all modern operating systems override them. The same goes for a number of other settings ("typematic rate" etc.).

Re:Use a Mac

[Lorkki]

Yeah, but that's with that particular PC and laptop model. Abilities can vary wildly from one manufacturer and model to the next.

Indeed, but I wouldn't say that a setup menu and boot device selection are manufacturer specialties since the mid-90's at least. Things like network boot are also increasingly more common in newer (in scope of a few years) motherboards.

The logical way to go is indeed to make them standard, we're not really disagreeing here. I'm just more happy to see hardware vendors finally get closer to ditching useless, obsolete parts of the PC architecture.

And like you said, having the right boot disk matters for you.

Pretty much any Linux Live-CD, and UBCD (for more arcane tasks, like remaking a partition table you accidentally erased... d'oh!) are a good combination for me. The latter also comes in a form with an included live Linux boot option so there's only need for one emergency boot disk.

For me, I can put a hosed Mac into target mode and connect it as an external drive to any Mac with a FireWire port, to attempt to repair it and/or retrieve data.

Maybe I'm mistaken, but didn't you imply earlier that you don't need another Mac for troubleshooting?

Granted, I can't turn my PC into a NAS box with the press of a button, but I can count without hands the times I've really had to swap drives around to solve some problem. I've probably been lucky too, but are you sure you're not just making things needlessly difficult for yourself?

Re:Use a Mac

[phillymjs]

Maybe I'm mistaken, but didn't you imply earlier that you don't need another Mac for troubleshooting?

I don't-- When I'm on the job, I carry a large FireWire drive with a bootable utility partition, and I always have my iBook with me. I could just boot the ailing machine with the OS on the FireWire drive, but I prefer to use the iBook because I don't have to plug it into AC power. Either way, when booted from another volume the ailing drive shows up as a normal mounted volume (unless it's *really* hosed or dead) and I can go to work on it.

~Philly

Re:Use a Mac

[tricorn]

And option-cmd-o-f which goes into the Open Firmware console.

Also, the folder name isn't significant, it is a "blessed" folder setting (pointed to in the master directory of an HFS disk) with a file called System (which used to be able to be modified by changing sector 0 of the disk or partition, back when sector 0 was actually a bootstrap sector with 68000 code in it - I don't know if the boot sequence still looks at the fields in that sector for the file names for System, Finder, Debugger, and a few other settings).

Re:Use a Mac

[tricorn]

With System 7 (and earlier), the last folder to have had both System and Finder (both of the correct file types, not just any file by those names) placed in it becomes "the" system folder. There were also some simple applications that would let you set which was the "blessed" system folder. This is similar to the way the default application was chosen - if you had multiple applications with the same creator, the last one to be moved into a folder (or renamed) was the default, so just move it to the another folder, then back.

With OS9, they made Startup Disk a lot smarter, and it would show you all of the folders with a system in it, and let you choose (which it did by using the same "blessed folder" mechanism). Startup Disk also has to set the preferences for which disk to boot from, and set the partition map to set which partition on that disk to boot - and details are different depending on if you're "old world" or "new world" boot ROM. Even with OSX, which doesn't allow multiple systems on one partition (because the boot partition becomes root, and too many things have fixed paths), there's still a blessed folder - normally /System/Library/CoreServices with a configuration file containing an Open Firmware script (along with some icon information and a binary loader that the script loads and runs) in BootX, which then loads the mach kernel.

Re:Use a Mac

[jridley]

I dunno. I've been using PCs since 1984 and have not had this happen yet. Does this happen often with Macs?

I suppose if my graphics card died, I'd go to the basement and grab another one and be back up and running in 5 minutes.

If my monitor died, I'd go buy another. I need another anyway, right?

I'm much more likely to have an old crusty backup video card lying around than I am to have another machine to plug into.

I've heard of 3 different friends who have had Mac laptops die and lose all their data from their hard drives in the last couple of months. I haven't heard of anyone who lost their display recently, on any kind of machine. Doesn't seem that useful of a feature to me.

Re:Use a Mac

[jridley]

What will you do when the graphics break on your wintel laptop?

Sorry, I see that you were specifically referring to laptops.

First off, do you seriously keep non-backed-up files on a portable, easily dropped, easily stolen device?

Anyway:
I'd take out the one screw that holds the hard drive in, plug in a $5 ATAPI adaptor, drop it into an external case, and plug it on to any machine lying around and go back to work. Should take about 10 minutes and cost $40 total. Only $5 if I want to install it internally in a desktop.

Re:Use a Mac

[drewm1980]

I had a dell laptop display die on me twice, and I just had a logic board replacement on my ibook because of a bad video chip. (for free, outside of warranty, yay apple!)

I agree that this feature will find more use on computers with built-in displays (ibooks, imacs, powerbooks)

Remembering the keys for 't'(target disk mode) and 'option'(boot option menu) and 'c'(boot from cd) are partly easier to remember since they are simple and have not changed in a long time (ever?)

Re:Use a Mac

[drewm1980]

So, there are few inter-related mac vs. wintel differences in paradigm at play here...

Most mac users never want to tear apart their machines. They see hardware repair as someone else's problem. Along these lines, mac laptops are not designed to be easily servicable by the user, but more optimized for size, weight and durability.

It will take you something like ten screws, popping open of a thick lexan case and careful handling of shielding to get to an ibook's hard drive, but when you get there you will find that it is shock mounted in a clever way, and that it is probably the most reliable make/model of its day (for a while this was IBM/Hitachi travelstar).

Most mac users (and probably most PC users for that matter) do not want to know anything about ATAPI, IDE, serial vs. parallel, master/slave drive jumper settings, etc...

You know the old saying.....

[mkw87]

If it ain't broke....

tear apart until it is.

UEFI Formed to Replace BIOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this somehow related to the "... to replace floppies" story a while ago?

Free BIOS Project

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/free-bios.html

Intel have been trying to kill this off ...

standards

[chrisranjana.com]

Bringing in standards to anything is good news in my opinion !

Re:Get rid of plug and play and bring back jumpers

[Eleazer]

DIP switches > Jumpers

Good that the BIOS is finally going away

[jonwil]

One thing I want to see in a BIOS replacement is for the new firmware to go into protected mode directly as one of the first things it does after setting up whatever it has to set up in real mode.
Then OS's that run on the new firmware standard would come in with a pre-defined protected mode setup ready to go and not have to mess around with switching into protected mode (OS's like windows and linux will need to be ported anyway)

I am not a systems programmer (I have programmed assembly but only as a userland programmer) so I dont know if doing this is actually possible or not.

Something else I want to see is a complete end to all limitations on what storage devices you can boot from and where on those devices you can boot from. (for example, any limitations on not being able to boot from partitions starting later than on the disk which I seem to remember used to be a problem)

You could even add a complete bootloader into the BIOS that would be able to read the boot sector from any hard disk partition, floppy disk (although in the ideal world, the floppy would disappear from the PC just like it has from the mac), optical media, USB storage device or whatever and boot that directly without the need for programs like GRUB and LILO and others to let you pick what to boot with.

By removing all the other legacy crap no-one really uses anymore (e.g. serial and paralel ports) you could create a new PC system without any legacy stuff. Done right, the only things that should care about the changes are operating systems like linux and windows plus device drivers for certain kinds of hardware.

Re:Good that the BIOS is finally going away

[VENONA]

"By removing all the other legacy crap no-one really uses anymore (e.g. serial and paralel ports)..."

I really get tired of all the people who think their computing environment is the only computing environment. That's exactly the attitude which has lead to half the world believing that the Windows PC is sysnonymous with computing.

For instance, I use the serial port on my workstation. Like many others, I have an external modem hanging from it. 4-5 years, that was the most reliable means of home Internet access for Linux users. Avoid Winmodems, and all that.

Secondly, it's still useful to be able to dial into client servers--some have a service modem. Thirdly, it's pretty much a requirement in setting up Linux or a BSD on the small appliance machines from Soekris engineering, etc.

Repeat after me, "There are other computing environments than my own."

Re:Good that the BIOS is finally going away

[sploxx]

Secondly, it's still useful to be able to dial into client servers--some have a service modem. Thirdly, it's pretty much a requirement in setting up Linux or a BSD on the small appliance machines from Soekris engineering, etc.
4th, it is a great way to tinker with hardware. But maybe removing the ttyS's and lp's is for more DRM compliance, to make the PC more and more like a television with attached keyboard and mouse.
People are so ignorant. SIGH.

Re:Good that the BIOS is finally going away

[jonwil]

As someone doing a Cisco CCNA (and finding out how to talk to Cisco gear using a terminal cable and a serial port), I can see that there is still use for serial ports.

But the rest of my point about getting rid of cruft is valid, like "move into protected mode directly at boot" and "eliminate all limitations on what and where you can boot from" and "fully customizable bootloader directly into the firmware" and stuff.

Re:Good that the BIOS is finally going away

[VENONA]

Well, that assumes your CPU *has* a 'protected mode'. I'd like to see an open solution that could do Power, Intel, PA-RISC, SPARC, etc. Unless it's very broad, I'm afraid it won't get traction. And without traction, the mobo people might ignore it.

I'd hate to see that happen. Some are doing noticeably better than others. I almost wonder if they're looking at Dell PowerEdge machines (decent enough, inexpensive server, but from what I've seen they fail more often HP's Proliant line) and thinking that it would be a Good Thing to add reporting an managability features. Doing this at a pre-boot level is definitely a Good Thing, saving only that every server vendor does it differently, and IMHO that keeps cost of ownership higher than it could be.

It also misses opportunities to do some really nice-to-have stuff, such as having servers boot directly into their intended roles, but only if they have their intended security policies in place, etc.

Scripting at the boot level could be astoundingly cool, if done corectly.

I agree 100% with your, "fully customizable bootloader directly into the firmware," statement.

Re:Good that the BIOS is finally going away

[jonwil]

All of the CPUs you mention run (when modern OS's like linux etc are run on them anyway) in a flat memory mode of some kind much like x86 protected mode.

So, what would happen is that on x86, there would be a piece of code to go into protected mode (which would mean the bootloader and most of the firmware could operate in 32bit flat protected mode).

Such "open firmware" would need to contain lots of platform-specific bits anyway to talk to the chipset, Plug & Play BIOS etc etc. Plus, if it really IS something that could be made universal for all those architectures, all of them except x86 (AFAIK) boot into a 32-bit or 64-bit type flat memory space mode ala x86 32-bit flat protected mode anway. So, having extra code to make x86 go from the old segment:offset architecture straight to flat protected mode before doing anything would make x86 look from a C code point of view MORE like PPC etc.

+5, Funny

[Jesus_666]

...although I'll always prefer OpenDoomware.
So you can't see the interface without a flashlight. So you can't use the flashlight and change the settings at the same time. Who cares? It's got the Big Fucking Bootloader!

Remember USB?

[theolein]

It was Apple that popularised it. I can imagine that Apple will be one of the first to EFI as well, since the others have major legacy problems to contend with.

Apple and EFI

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is that Apple will use EFI in their x86 based offerings as both Quanta and Asustek (see the press releases) have recently announced that they will use the AMI EFI implementation (Aptio) in their products. If my memory serves me correct, both these companies have manufactured, or are currently manufacturing Apple hardware.

Re:Who gives a FUCK

[justforaday]

That's why I always make sure to buy a separate NIC for my Macintoshes...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

DRM blocking legit media?

[cyclomedia]

just wandering how long it might be until DRM systems simply refuse to play ANY non drm enabled media...i.e. install open source software from cd, play my friend's bands new demo CD, the DVD of my wedding, the photo CD of my daughter as a baby etc...

You can simply circumvent it...

[CdBee]

It's irrelevant if the OS has DRM or needs it - it's a very simple choice you have as a user to refuse to ever have DRM content on your machine

I keep text docs in RTF, Music in Mp3, video in AVI or MPG, emails on a web-based server.. I'll never install DRM-aware applications such as Office 2003.. I have Windows Media Player disabled, and I'll never allow DRM content onto my machine under any circumstances.

Hence, I'm not really bothered if the OS has DRM capability or not. I'm going fully Mac when the x86 powermacs come out anyway so Windows is just going to be something I use for emulation purposes.

Re:You can simply circumvent it...

[garcia]

As with everytime I post a comment about DRM, someone has to come along and say, "but see, there's a way around it!" Wrong.

DRM'd OSs will not work if the hardware they run on isn't DRM'd as well. This initiative (along with others that may flurish if this doesn't work -- i.e. Phoenix BIOS) is to make certain that the hardware is protected as well so that people won't be able to easily circumvent the restrictions.

Why would they bother to go through all of this if it didn't matter?

I'm going fully Mac when the x86 powermacs come out anyway so Windows is just going to be something I use for emulation purposes.

An obvious troll but I'll respond anyway: Windows will not run in emulation because of DRM. Sure, they might get an emulation layer up and running but it certainly won't be able to do anything that you would be able to do w/the "appropriate" hardware/software... Software will be trusted. Trusted software will not run on emulation layers.

Sorry, welcome to the future.

Re:You can simply circumvent it...

[prefect42]

Trusted Software could be allowed to run on TS VirtualPC on TH mac though couldn't it?

Re:You can simply circumvent it...

[garcia]

Trusted Software could be allowed to run on TS VirtualPC on TH mac though couldn't it?

With an emulation layer of DRM'd hardware it is possible that an attacker might be able to gain access to the keys that are negotiated thus rendering the DRM worthless.

The software and hardware communities watched the debacles that plagued the movie and music industry and they are going to try and do what they can to limit those same issues from occuring again.

Re:You can simply circumvent it...

[CdBee]

If you actually read my comment you'd see that I'm saying I don't mind DRM hardware and DRM software because I will not use any application that uses DRM. That also applies for when I go Mac - maybe my Mac will have DRM built in to protect iTMS purchases. So what. I don't buy music online. Or any other media thats subject to DRM.

Nor will I use any app that DRM's its files..

Re:You can simply circumvent it...

[labratuk]

Hence, I'm not really bothered if the OS has DRM capability or not. I'm going fully Mac when the x86 powermacs come out anyway so Windows is just going to be something I use for emulation purposes.

That's funny because MacOS is going to be the most restrictive DRM'd environment available. Have fun.

Re:You can simply circumvent it...

[CdBee]

will it stop me using my mp3s? No.
will it stop me running openoffice and creating sxw files? No
will it stop me playing mpg files? no
will it stop me surfing the web or using gmail? no

So explain to me how DRM is going to inconvenience me?

Re:You can simply circumvent it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone explain to me what is so bad about DRM?

Re:You can simply circumvent it...

[KwKSilver]

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--forever." -George Orwell.

Interesting, out of date but not too far-off topic link at The Guardian

Re:You can simply circumvent it...

[Atario]

Trusted software will not run on emulation layers.

Why? Is there something magic about the numbers a real chip returns versus what an emulated chip returns? Are they shinier 1s and 0s? And the software can measure that reflectivity?

No. This can and will be subverted, as all DRM is.

Re:You can simply circumvent it...

[tricorn]

Only if you can find the private key used to sign the chip's public key - think of it as a proxy for a signing authority running inside a black box inside the processor. An application (either local or over the network) that wants to determine if your processor is "trusted" will basically initiate a secure communications channel with that black box - your emulation layer is now effectively a man-in-the-middle, and if the protocol is resistant to MITM attacks, you can't do anything about it. If the black box has been disabled because your emulator isn't "trusted", then you can't establish trust for the emulated OS either.

Re:You can simply circumvent it...

[Atario]

But processors can be (and are) emulated too. All you have to do is set up your own emulated public/private key pair in that emulation, and you're good to go. This doesn't work if there is only one correct key pair in the world and all software looks for that; but in that case it wouldn't be too long before someone or some group in the world figures out that single pair and publishes it, at which point you're back to square one.

Re:You can simply circumvent it...

[tricorn]

Your public key has to be signed by a valid key belonging to "The Trusted Computing Authority" or whatever it will be. Barring major breakthroughs in quantum computing or other means of doing prime factorization, the only way to break that would be physical theft or espionage. You can be pretty sure that security for those keys, and the process where they generate the key signature and burn it into each individual chip, will be extremely high. After all, if someone manages to get one of those keys, all processors that are validated using it will become non-trusted when the key gets revoked.

Could you noodle the private key out of an individual processor? Possibly - power attacks, timing attacks, physical attacks are all possible, but it remains to be seen if they will be effective. There are countermeasures for all of those. You wouldn't be able to release a broken private key, though - it will be revoked as soon as it becomes known that multiple systems are using it.

It will probably be easier to crack an individual work (software or content) through physical means, but "trusted systems" will be hardened against that as well (all "protected" content must not be exposed except between "trusted components" that have been authenticated). Finding one component of the chain which has a flaw might be possible, and once you've done that, you might be able to interfere with the authentication process (add in a new "trusted signing key", for example). That still won't get you on the Internet. Part of the signature of a key will certainly include what type of hardware it is, so breaking a sound chip won't let you pretend to be a memory controller or CPU or RAM chip.

You'll have to be a big vendor to get your application signed as trusted - if someone manages to sneak an emulator Easter Egg into it, the application will be revoked and users will be forced to upgrade immediately. Good luck getting an emulator into the next version.

I agree that the whole process is going to be complex enough that flaws are inevitable, either in the software or in the hardware, and cracked content will become available - but it will up the effort required to crack something enormously, and up the stakes as well. Possession of any of the equipment or keys necessary will be illegal. Currently, all you need is a debugger and a compiler, and making those illegal is problematic. Very few people will have legitimate need for the physical equipment necessary, and even hardware developers won't need to be able to crack codes (such equipment could have a well-known (non-trusted) private/public key/signature for development purposes - possession of hardware with a different key, or where the key can be easily modified, will be presumptive of guilt).

The big flaw of the whole scheme is that when flaws are found, people's equipment will be disabled by having keys revoked, and if that happens enough the outcry will sink the whole thing.

cupieDoll man give

[crovira]

I totally agree. You can write an absolutely tiny Forth interpreter and define the rest in Forth words.

I don't think we need to get too fancy and, it could even support multiple machine architectures, since once the interpreter is loaded, you're running in Forth.

Re:cupieDoll man give

[lgw]

Driver devopers mostly know C. I suspect this is why OF went no where. Forth is cute and all, but it's not like a modern PC still has the ancient resource limitations that made BIOS crap in the first place.

Unless the driver that you *have* to develop for Windows will work in the BIOS-replacement environment (with mabye a few #ifdefs), that environment is just not very useful in a world where driver development costs money. And that means a Windows-style network abstraction layer (NDIS or whatever).

Who does Apple need to convince?

[Rufosx]

Seriously, why would they need to join the group promoting EFI? Apple just has to decide to use it, put it in every Mac and that's it. There's not a bunch of motherboard and chipset makers to convince.

Re:Microsoft?

[snorklewacker]

Yeah, because they'll all run windows and windows sucks and stuff and OMG MICRO$SUX BILL GATES SUX0RZ LOL LOL!!!!!!!111

Grow up. Besides, the only hardware Microsoft controls has a green screen of death.

Re:Get rid of plug and play and bring back jumpers

[cyclomedia]

"It Just Works" > DIP switches

All your data are belong to us!

[Grandmaster Mort]

Trusted Computing owns you now!

Re:Get rid of plug and play and bring back jumpers

[Lost Found]

Nah nah nah, fuses are where it's at.

Bah

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything that aims to remove the rubbish PC bios which is 20 years past it's used by date can't be anything other than a good thing.

And AMD / Intel / Dell / IBM make far too much money selling linux servers or chips that run OS OSes to try and curb that market.

Re:Bah

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct, although HP is by far the largest supplier of Linux servers.

But... there is just one little complication...

[Anonymous Coward]

...an EFI computer is NOT a PC and is NOT PC-compatible !!
It will be a freak-puter just like the PS2...

EFI?

[Is0m0rph]

How do they intend to put Electronic Fuel Injection in a computer in place of the BIOS?

Bad acronym!

[TheGSRGuy]

EFI = electronic fuel injection

I sense a conspiracy with computers taking over cars, then the world. Skynet ain't too far behind I guess.

EFI != DRM

[SalesEngineer]

Go check out the EFI spec, note the lack of any DRM/TPM/security requirements on the platform.

EFI doesn't mandate DRM ... period.

The Otherside of DRM

[transami]

I agree, the main drive here is DRM. And for a long time I've been anti-DRM (seeing how poor I am and all) But I've recently had a new outlook. I think DRM is important. It's important for people to have certain safeguards. That's only fair. BUT (and its a big BUT) DRM is also ripe for abuse. For the consumer, potential abuses such as region and device differntiation that requires paying for the same contant multiple times, or not being able to protect against data loss w/ backups. For the artist, in that the recording companies will control the DRM technology and set the entry bar too high driving independent artist out of the market. Not to mention OSS being left out in the cold too.

I think what the anti-DRMs need to do is change their focus. Compromise with the big companies over DRM ensuring us common folk good Fair-Use laws. Then everyone will be happy.

Re:The Otherside of DRM

[Salsaman]

DRM CANNOT ensure Fair Use rights, it is simply NOT POSSIBLE for any software/hardware DRM to tell if what is being done is within Fair Use or not. There is NO advantage to the consumer from DRM, it is solely for the benefit of a few big corporations.

Re:The Otherside of DRM

[transami]

Of course, DRM is not designed for consumers but for content creators. Yet, DRM does provide some advantages to the consumer. Primarily, if big companies are being fair prices will in fact be lower. Also it can help authenticate content from trusted sources. It's important to understand that as technology improves DRM becomes more important. Eventually there will no longer be CD and DVDs, internet connections will run at 1gbs and P2P will be transparent. Under these circumstance "pirating" becomes automatic, less safegaurds are put in place.

Re:Get rid of plug and play and bring back jumpers

[pentalive]

No, not jumpers...

Each Buss plug has an address. Each card has flash memory to keep it's settings and a ROM with a program to set them onscreen.

At boot time there is a short pause (like for current BIOSes) to allow the user to select and run the ROM setup program.

Then all the flash memory is read and the cards are setup.

Once the computer is running there is also a utility to run the ROM setup programs. The settings take effect at the next reboot.

No jumpers to loose, No manuals to have to look up (the ROM setup program prompts in "Human"

BIOS vulnerabilities

[Anonymous Coward]

As BIOS' "evolve" we may start to see vulnerabilities in them. And how to fix that? firmware updates? Maybe windows will have features to update the firmware? but then will it be secure?

Um ... no

[SalesEngineer]

EFI/UEFI is just a more modern firmware-to-OS interface. It doesn't require any more computing requirements than a BIOS on the same platform. I've seen it run on headless servers, notebooks, desktops & media PCs.

Sorry, but that won't happen ...

[SalesEngineer]

With IBM & HP on the board of directors, I don't see a total lock by Microsoft in this organization when it comes to the OS.

Depends on the implementation

[SalesEngineer]

Check the BIOS folks out ... you'll see their EFI products support the PC BIOS interfaces & the EFI boot/runtime interfaces.

Re:Get rid of plug and play and bring back jumpers

[indifferent children]

If you aren't cutting traces on the PCB with an X-Acto knife then you are a prime candidate for an AOL account.

Re:???

[vertinox]

So I'm a bit bitter about this: if we can't get enough people to talk with their wallets, we will soon truly have two internets: one for the masses, all EFI'd and bright-shiny-new, and one for the geeks who run ten year old hardware, because that's the last pieces which rolled off without EFI.

Wait a minute... Isn't it us geeks who buy the "bright-shiny-new" hardware before everyone else does? Or maybe are people being duped into buying 256mb $500 video cards to do word processing (hell from my understanding perhaps they are).

So if no one is taking the "first buy" leap then what will happen? Will someone come along and fill in the gap?

You know.... This might make the internet just like the TV was in the 90's and we'll have to come up with another BBS type of system.

Odd man out

[93 Escort Wagon]

I'm curious as to why Dell is involved - what have they got to do with it? Don't they just buy other companies' (e.g. Intel's) motherboards, BIOS chips, and the like? Do they actually have something to offer to this consortium?

Re:Odd man out

[Bassman59]

"I'm curious as to why Dell is involved - what have they got to do with it? Don't they just buy other companies' (e.g. Intel's) motherboards, BIOS chips, and the like? Do they actually have something to offer to this consortium?"

They buy a zillion motherboards a year, and one would assume that they specify what they want on those mothersboards. That would include what's in the firmware. Not a suprise at all that Dell is involved.

Re:Odd man out

[overshoot]

I'm curious as to why Dell is involved

Intel and Microsoft told them to.

Answered your own question

[mattcoz]

"OF believes in computers being controlled by their owners." Computer manufacturers don't.

EFI

[StupidStan]

read more about EFI here!!!

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-injection.htm

Microsoft products will not boot

[hosecoat]

1) New Microsoft products will not boot on machines not installed with a DRM'd loader.

Huzzah!!

IEEE is DEAD!!!

[queenb**ch]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong,but isn't the IEEE supposed to be overseeing stuff like this. Given the fact that most BIOS is horribly outdated for the hardware it's operating and the whole concept of a 33mhz PCI slot is on a motherboard that otherwise capable of running at well over 500mhz is completely laughable, you'd think they'd remove their heads from their behinds. The IEEE needs to get cracking on a new standard for a LOT of things. They were formed to take care of this and seem to be rather inattentive to their responsiblities.

Given the fact that those who are supposed to be handling them are ignoring them, someone must step in to fill the gap. However, my expereince in working groups where "The Borg" have membership is that they either get booted from the group for bad behaviour or the standard comes out skewed in favor of "The Collective".
My concern here is that "The Borg" will attempt to divert any efforts at an open standard that any OS can use into something that only M$ products will work well on.

2 cents,

Queen B

That works while you still have a choice

[Anonymous Coward]

We may wind up in a situation where only DRM hardware is available, and the hardware will only run DRM software. You will be able to keep using your current computer, of course, but it won't be so useful once ISPs start requiring you to have a "Trusted" machine to connect to their network.

This is a huge threat, and if you "don't mind", you have your head buried in the sand. Trusted/Treacherous Computing and software patents are the two "nuclear options" left to the proprietary software industry that could make free software both illegal and nearly technically impossible.

Puhleeez

[nsayer]

Ahem.

Open Firmware!!!!!!

Thank you.

Re:Puhleeez

[DeathPenguin]

Open Firmware is a specification, not an implementation. In case you want an open-source implementation of Open Firmware, check out OpenBIOS. OpenBIOS can also be used as a payload for LinuxBIOS.

more information on EFI

[Anonymous Coward]

This page does a fairly good job of describing the limitations of the current legacy PC BIOS, and the ways EFI aims to improve the situation

http://www.kernelthread.com/publications/firmware/

suckers

[rupert0]

/me puts on aluminum foil hat.

Is anyone else scared? Cause I'm not.

[The Real Nem]

The way I see it, DRM will be Microsoft's downfall. What do most people do these days on their computer (besides games)? Internet, email, music, movies, instant messenger etc. When EFI takes off and DRM goes hardware (as it inevitably will) and companies like Microsoft enforce it (blocking music, movies, applications etc.), many of my friends, which are fairly adapt at the above list, will ask me to "make it work".

Hardware DRM will take time to catch on. In this time Linux will continue to grow and improve and become more and more production ready (and if it doesn't, I'll be there coding away to make it so). What will I recommend to my friends? Linux. I'll even set it up and everything (EFI should make that easy). If anything, my friends have shown that they are ready for change. I've converted many of them to Firefox, Thunderbird, Open Office, Azureus, GAIM and so forth. They have embraced all these programs and even recommended them to friends.

When Windows becomes too restrictive my friends will convert. They will want the free music and movies and (lets be honest) porn to which they've become accustomed. They won't find it too scary either. Why? They are already used to a lot of the above software. They will start to use Linux more and more, and why not, it has everything they need. They will also inevitably find that all of a sudden they are less susceptible to viruses and adware and learn to love it all the more. What will happen to games is anyone's guess, maybe next generation consoles will take off, maybe certain companies will shun Linux, and embrace Windows, or maybe the opposite. Whatever the case it will open a lot of eyes to other alternatives.

This may be an ideal outlook, but one can't help but be optimistic that not all people are sheep and cooperations don't own the world.

Mod Parent Up

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have any mod points, or I'd do it myself.

$2500 WHAT!

[crashelite]

wow a $2,500 annual membership is huge for a non profit organization...

He Who Controls the Bootloader

[SpaceLifeForm]

http://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/30-bootloader/

USB - It's not driverless storage

[vlad_petric]

The USB Mass storage class doesn't need additional drivers because it's a well-defined, well-supported communication interface. IOW, there's one driver in the kernel, handling

As for the hardware/software RAID hybrids - it's really just cost. A fully-hardware interface needs a dedicated I/O processor, and it's generally 3-400$+. Sure, it beats hybrid RAID, but it's also much more expensive and not really worth it for desktop stuff.

Re:USB - It's not driverless storage

[ckaminski]

I think that was my point wrt usb-storage.

As for the hardware/software raid: you don't need a dedicated hardware processor, you already have one in the southbridge with your IDE interface already. Just create a virtual disk made out of two, either striped or mirrored and get out of the Software raid business altogether.

It's not a difficult or costly thing, although it may cost enough that it turns a $20 part into a $25 part, and that is indeed costly.

Re:???

[menkhaura]

Or maybe are people being duped into buying 256mb $500 video cards to do word processing

You would be amazed, if you ever worked at a computer shop, on how easily people with more money than brains can be duped into buying $500 video cards to do internet surfing.

"Linux Supporters"

[overshoot]

Funny, cause Intel, AMD, HP, and DELL are all four linux supporters. Seems to me that Microsoft is the only one that is anti-linux.

All five would be more than happy to have "Linux" be redefined as a cryptographically-signed binary supported by a "responsible" company such as Novell or Red Hat.

The first four, because it suits their corporate customers. Debian, Gentoo, etc. just divert efforts away from supporting the two major distributions that Really Matter.

Microsoft, of course, because they know how to "deal with" corporate entities.

From Microsoft's point of view, F/OSS really is like terrorism. Honest. Like national armies, they know how to wage war against similar entites with known addresses, but have a hard time getting traction against amorphous movements which won't stay put for the ICBM treatment.

BSD license considered harmful

[0xABADC0DA]

This is a good reason why NOT to support *BSD and other non-gpl open-source software. Don't use it and don't contribute to it, because any company could take a BSD and add the so-called trusted computing code to it and close that part. We could be left with companies using our software when we can't even use it on our own computers if we use the BSD license! With GPLed software if they add a private key to make it boot/run with a bios then they have to publish the private key and then anybody can recompile the OS to do whatever they want.

Re:BSD license considered harmful

[mrchaotica]

With GPLed software if they add a private key to make it boot/run with a bios then they have to publish the private key and then anybody can recompile the OS to do whatever they want.

You'd better hope a clause like that gets put in GPL v.3, because it's not in GPL v.2. All they have to do is make the key a separate file (or rather, a location in ROM or something, which this EFI would really be) and they can release the code that uses the key without releasing the key itself, because it's not linked into the same executable.

Moreover, they can also release a signed binary along with source code, but if you compile the source code it'll only be able to be signed if it's bit-for-bit identical to the binary they distributed. You'll be able to see the code and change the code (i.e., it'll comply with GPL v.2) but you won't be able to use the changed code in any meaningful way.

Of course, it's also possible that I don't know WTF I'm talking about (and in this case, I hope that's true)!

Re:BSD license considered harmful

[DarkHelmet433]

Bingo! There is no such GPL clause. Take tivo hardware for example. They publish the modified kernel source that they use, but its near useless because the firmware checks for the signatures for authorized kernels. If you dont have the signature, you don't get to play. (Or you have to hack/subvert it somehow).

And the GPLv2 has nothing to stop this situation.

Re:BSD license considered harmful

[tricorn]

The GPL requires that you be able to produce the binary, including all tools required to do that. A signing tool (including the key) would seem to be included. Separating the key file would seem to go beyond "mere aggregation", as well - thus, the key file is one of those "binary files" that requires you distribute source and all tools (even if it is part of a boot loader - that the boot loader has enough knowledge to have a specific key for a Linux kernel would seem to make it go beyond the mere aggregation exception).

Has this argument been used with regard to the TiVo situation, and if so, what were the counter-arguments?

Even if they move the security check to the application level (e.g. boot loader generates a checksum, makes it available to the application that checks for proper functioning), I think the same thing would happen - it goes beyond mere aggregation. In addition, that seems pretty easy to hack (figure out what checksum a valid kernel would have, and then set it for the application layer to see.

Re:BSD license considered harmful

[DarkHelmet433]

Tivo give you the source of the kernel, the source of the tools, the source of the packaging tools including the signature generator. The signature of the virgin kernels are there for the taking too.

So, you can use their tools to produce a kernel and it comes out identical. You have the signature and the tools to insert the signature in the .px file. You have everything that you need to produce the binary that tivo distribute. This is what the GPL requires.

But you don't have the private key to generate a signature. So if you modify what tivo gives you, you can't generate a signature.

But nobody has thought of a legal argument to compel tivo to give out the private key.

Or, from a completely different perspective. Suppose you take a linux.tgz file and sign it with your private gpg key. You then distribute the kernel, the source and the signature. Should you be compelled to distribute your personal private key too so that anybody can produce your signature saying its a good kernel?

Tivo's hardware just happens to insist that there is a recognized signature on anything that it'll run. That's not a GPL issue.

Whether it should be is a different issue. GPLv2 predates the whole DRM and signature issue. It just never occurred to the authors that signatures would be used this way. You can bet the GPLv3 will have something to say about this oversight.

Re:BSD license considered harmful

[tricorn]

You don't quite have all the sources, then - you don't have the private key, without which you can not generate the signature, which is a part of the binary. The GPL requires that you be able to modify the sources and be able to produce the binaries. The original signature file is not "source", and they haven't included all of the source needed to produce it.

In the example you give of the signed .tgz file, I would argue that the signature is not a part of the binary - it is accompanying the binary, but is never referenced, thus there's no requirement to be able to reproduce it.

In the case of the TiVo loader, given that it requires the signature, and given that it is NOT distributed independently of the GPL binary, it is NOT a "mere aggregation". One could even argue that such use means that they should be distributing the sources to the boot loader as well.

Seamless integration

[overshoot]

The main hurdle for desktop linux has always been lack of seemless driver integration.

Funny, I always thought it was lack of applications.

As for "seamless driver integration" I don't see how a different BIOS is going to help when I plug in a USB device. Never mind that different operating systems have different driver semantics and will thus tend to use specialized drivers for all but the most trivial functions.

Matters not

[overshoot]

You apparently misunderstood.

There was never a question of whether Linux would support EFI; of course it can and will.

The question was whether EFI/DRM systems would allow Linux to boot and run. For the first acts in this drama, see Microsoft's efforts to prevent Linux and other "unapproved" software from running on the XBox.

Re:Matters not

[oostevo]

I should have been more clear.

It looks like an Intel-supported project, with Intel developers working exclusively on it.

Brett Johnson works for HP (as far as I can tell), and Matt Tolentino works at Intel.

If Intel's going to go through the trouble to assign developers to set up and maintain the project if they're going to purposely lock out Linux.

Re:Matters not

[overshoot]

If Intel's going to go through the trouble to assign developers to set up and maintain the project if they're going to purposely lock out Linux.

That doesn't parse, but I think I understand what you meant.

Anyway, I know from close contact that the left hand at Intel often doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Parts of the company don't even know that non-Microsoft systems exist. As a result, they aren't in the least concerned that they're creating a system that's open to abuse.

The scenario, as MS has pointed out, is that later MS operating systems refuse to boot on hardware that doesn't insist on signed software. Needless to say, the mobo makers comply.

Problem solved, since that narrows the field to Red Hat and Novell, maybe Mandriva. Official releases only. Anyone else either has to do development on custom hardware or forget about it -- no more custom kernel builds.

Voila! Microsoft knows how to deal with corporate entities. The future is bright.

OpenFirmware does multi-boot very nicely

[Anonymous Coward]

This point is addressed here.

Greaaaat..

[bored]

Now my PC can take 10 min to POST like the itanic we have? Plus it can have three diffrent "BIOS" menus i have to scroll through before the OS starts to boot?

Again, who gives a shit. The current BIOS is working just fine, old, clunky, yes. But its well understood and its working.

Re:Is anyone else scared? Cause I'm not.

[quarkscat]

"When Windows becomes too restrictive my friends will convert."

And what, exactly, will your friends convert to -- insurgents?

With the exception of those OEMs that build computers on spec & to order, all the major PC OEMs pay the MSFT tax, and ship with MSFT OS preinstalled. MSFT, through Trusted Computing & Intel DRMed processor/chipsets & EFI, will have their OEMs safeguard MSFTs revenue stream by forcing limits on their customers. Considering MSFT's market share, there will be very few MB OEMs that will produce anything but MSFT's approved Trusted Computing platform. The BYO (Build Your Own) computer OEMs will be using the same/similar motherboards as their larger competitors -- motherboard and BIOS design require substantial financial resources that can only be recouped through volume sales.

The EFI bootstrap is the cornerstone of Trusted Computing -- without it Intel and other processor/chipset manufacturers embedding DRM would be vulnerable to actually being turned off. Any hacking of the Trusted Computing platform will require enough resources to attract the ire of not only the MB manufacturers and MSFT, but also the government. And the US government already considers violations of the DMCA to be "acts of terrorism".

In 18 months, when MSFT's Windows Vista hits the streets, their TC platform will already be there, already waiting for the preimaged harddisks. I suspect that MSFT's new security motto will be "Break our trust if you can, and win an extended vacation at Gitmo."

Re:Get rid of plug and play and bring back jumpers

[Imposter_of_myself]

Oh, all right - I'll cede to that danged newer technology - DIP switches ;-) Seriously, you are right, switches would be easier, but either way I WANT THE CONTROL. I don't want some stupid plug and play BIOS to have the control. A few posts down, and the individual seems to have a fairly cool idea about addresses on the bus.

EFI's here already

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel has been implementing EFI in all it's high-end servers already. Itanium2 and Blade servers have it built in, and it's making it's way to the desktop. Personaly, I like the current ver. of EFI, but if DRM find's it's way in there, to hell with it.

Re:EFI's here already

[Shag]

Yep. Intel announced EFI something like five years ago. The fact that other people seem to be finally getting onboard is nice and all that, but geez. Don't all rush in at once!

Re:???

[maxpublic]

Isn't it us geeks who buy the "bright-shiny-new" hardware before everyone else does?

That's hardly an argument for the buyer being intelligent and well-informed. In fact, I'd say it's a pretty good argument *against* these things.

Max

Whoah there.

[Aldric]

A lot of embedded devices do local communication serially, not to mention other stuff like GSM/GPRS modems. Lots of us use the serial port every day.

Re:???

[MBGMorden]

You know.... This might make the internet just like the TV was in the 90's and we'll have to come up with another BBS type of system.

That's not something I had thought about, but it could definately become a reality if this stuff comes to pass.

BBS's worked quite well back in the day (most of the shareware games and such that I played "back in the day" were obtained from a BBS).

Of course with the coming of Voice over IP: might even our phones be DRM'd in the future?

i for one....

[KillShill]

say a big FUCK YOU to our new DRM/INSIDIOUS Computing overlords.

even when someone says "EFI != DRM, which is true... what isn't true is that any EFI for x86 will be married to DRM without exception. it IS a requirement for windows VISTA. go check, i'll wait.

on another note, i guess that the new x86 macs won't be booting VISTA on their systems... since it requires a DRM BIOS.

Deserves Mod Up

[Khyber]

Everytime I see a new program that has bugs in it, I have to think, "What are you going to blame? The compiler, for fuck's sake? It's doing what YOU TOLD IT TO DO AND NOBODY ELSE."

Seriously, people. Let me throw out an example. Anyone remember why the Voodoo4 and 5 never seemed to work right except under Linux? Some dolt boffed the code for the Windows drivers. It took 3rd party people to correct the issue, and by then, it was too late. nVidia btained 3Dfx and still keep most of their driver issues under control thanks to SMART programmers. There is NO reason for there to be ANY blame on ANYONE except for their programming ability. (aybe higher-up management, but they rarely have the ability to go looking thru code for errors. That's a possible excuse there, if you were rushed and never got a full chance to test the stuff you're producing, all thanks to the ignorant higher-ups. But that's the only other reason that I can seriously think of asides from the obvious and almost universally default PEBCAK reason.

You must not watch any TV...

[Khyber]

.. otherwise you'd see the HUGE advertising campaign HP has going on with their servers, almost exclusively advertising Linux being installed on them. Dell doesn't advertise Linux, but they're still selling, and the demand is rapidly increasing. Hrm, must be because open source gets more free programming/ideas/points/potential than a proprietary OS? Oh, and fixes are usually (not always) released faster, and end up being usually more stable? And, if a programmer of said fix screws it up, at least the code is wide open so someone with brains can fix the problem instead of relying upon internal employees?

Yea, no real interest, my ass. Even the chipset makers have a vested interest in making sure Linux runs with their processors/architecture. After all, losing 10% of their user marketshare because they won't support an OS is a stupid business decision that can bite them in the ass later on, especially when that OS has the potential to knock everything else off of the planet if it could be made easier to use.

mod parent up

[stefanPryor]

I know perhaps not everyone on slashdot believes in the benifits of Freedom software, however if you look at the parent link you will see that firmware which stores the bios is programmable these days. Many people have said in response to this article "good now we can finally have a proper BIOS that does what it should". However there are already several open BIOS alternatives available. LinuxBIOS and OpenBIOS are both mentioned in the discussion here.

The obstacle to a free BIOS is the reluctance of manufacturers to releast the necessary information to allow the BIOS to control the hardware.

Perhaps if they allow their hardware to be freely programmable they will be excluded from the "trusted computing" allowable hardware?

I have a question, if anyone is familiar with this. Do hardware manufacturers take the specs for a BIOS and port it to their hardware when installing it, or do they release their specifications to the BIOS developers?

Perhaps we are needing freedom hardware manufacturers. I wonder, if the F/OSS community was to design specs for free hardware would there be any incentive for someone to manufacture it?

I suppose it depends on how much of a market there is for a totally free/customizable computing system.

What do you get out of it?

[UnapprovedThought]

So explain to me how DRM is going to inconvenience me?

These companies have just spent millions or billions developing DRM and TC technologies. On motherboard chipsets, network cards, video cards, sound standards, drivers, bioses, a zillion things. They are not charities, so they will be passing these costs to the consumer one way or the other. I leave it to your imagination to figure out how they will recover these costs...

So, maybe you shouldn't be asking how it's going to inconvenience you, as much as how you will be convenienced, how your life will be improved by them (IMHO).

What do you or I get out of it? If it's for someone else, why are we going to be paying for this extra stuff?

Re:What do you get out of it?

[CdBee]

As with everyone else who's replied to me, it's very fashionable to spread FUD on slashdot but a little investigation will show you that you'll only be "convenienced" by DRM if you use DRM applications, which I do not do and never will...

To an end user like me DRM will be entirely without impact. I won't even know its there most likely.

Re:What do you get out of it?

[UnapprovedThought]

you'll only be "convenienced" by DRM if you use DRM applications, which I do not do and never will...

So you're claiming that the big bucks spent on TCG/DRM compliance will be recovered from someone else, but not you, because you will not be using DRM apps. And what do you do if your current apps (e.g. internet connection, IP stack, etc.) no longer start on such a computer ("update needed..."), and the only alternative is a DRM app? What if the only firewall that will run is one that monitors and records all of your internet accesses for marketing purposes? Do you really think they will not try to use this tight level of control to pull out from you whatever they can?

...a little investigation will show...

So you have a link proving that this unprecedented new level of micro-management of your computing activities is impossible to abuse to constrain your current computing activities? You are basically trusting that it won't be abused.

These days, you have to read more than the technical spec, you have to predict what the usual EULA-crafting suitwankers are going to use it for. If the market will bear it, they will use it. Case in point: there was no mention of spam in the original RFCs but that didn't mean that the opportunity to spam you wasn't allowed by the spec.

Re:What do you get out of it?

[CdBee]

Do you not actually see how paranoid that is?

Like anyone's going to re-write TCP/IP to rely on DRM - thus making obsolete every router ever created... Yeah. Likely. NOT

I have had quite enough slashdot paranoia about DRM - if you want an honest debate provide honest examples. I expect that degree of FUD from Darl McBride or Donald Rumsfeld, not from a genuine geek on a discussion site.

Re:What do you get out of it?

[UnapprovedThought]

Nope, it isn't paranoid, it's a prediction based on past abuses. That the spam and popups exploits exist is a fact, backed up by hard evidence. The RFCs are still available for anyone to read who has basic googling skills.

In turn, where is your link? Where is your reference to industry standards? You provide no evidence to back up your claim, only blind observations based on hopes that the vendors won't use their newfound level of control to screw you with.

And... I didn't say TCP was going to be rewritten, so you're just knocking down a straw dummy there. A vendor "trusted" system can prevent a non-vendor IP stack from starting on your machine in the first place (if they want to...) The gatekeeping doesn't even need to be on the router in order to "inconvenience" you. You're having to cede total control of your system to an absolute stranger. How convenient is that?

Dilbert

[DragonHawk]

"Tools can be used for good or for evil."

Dilbert: Stupidity is like nuclear power. It can be used for good or evil.

Wally: And you don't want to get any on you.

The proper geek saying.......

[One_6453]

i belive the saying is : It it ain't broke, tweak it.

But for M$ it's...

[Anonymous Coward]

If it ain't broke your not trying hard enough

Just get rid of it altogether....

[sillybilly]

Yeah, like the DVD intellectual property folks face huge technological and legal problems these days? Come on, they are the only ones suing, they are not getting sued over not allowing to freely encode, backup, or break region codes in their crap?

You think it's gonna be different with any DRM, that's not even inside winblows, but inside the bios? Why don't we just get rid of the bios altogether, put a simple chip that checks whether you run MS Windows, and if so, then we hand over trust to the OS? It's easier to implement it all in the OS, why must we jump these hoops and pretend?

The only linux that will run is the linux that purchased a patented "trust" license. The fee? A low $399.99, after a $999.99 rebate (that you get back in 8 months), obtained by signing up for a lifetime, unlimited MSN broadband account, for a low introductory rate of $9.99 for 3 months. After the introductory period the then current applicable rate applies (?). A contract cancellation before you die will cost you the remainder of what you would have paid til the rest of your life was over, estimated of your longevity by am MCSE licensed doctor. This doctor's estimate is nondisputable, but in case you succeed disputing it somehow before you get shot like Kennedy in the head, you agree it will not be done in a court, but arbitration-decided in a Redmond, WA jurisdiction of plaintiff's choice.

Oh, by the way, this bios trust license is the only major cost, the Windows OS license will cost you $1.99, or you can run Linux for free, but you still have to buy your patented, nonresellable, nontransferrable and nonnegotiable, fully disclaimed against any kind of responsibility, bios license.

Soon after information is fully locked up, you'll be disallowed to know anything, unless you can show a receipt, payment method for how you obtained that knowledge. Because knowledge is power, knowledge is wealth, and you shouldn't have any for free. There will be anti-terrorist raids, where they catch you not being a complete idiot, but actually knowing something, you'll be automatically jailed. Only properly authorized people will be allowed to know, everyone else mandated to stay imbecile and dumb. A basic license for using the english language, with patented, "revolutionary" grammatical constructions, will cost you a low low 3.99 a month intro rate, for 2 years. Good luck hiring lawyers trying to prove it's prior art, nothing revolutionary about saying "Yo, shizzle muh nizzle," because we gots 10,000 lawyers plus a commando to either eat your single lawyer up in court, or shoot him. By the way, it was illegal to have any money, and not be sunk in a 60 year mortgage over a $799,999.99 2-bedroom, 7 bathroom home at the current prime rate(?)+3.99%, currently owning -649,974.89, and having only 42 years left to repay. Your bank is the only one who can decide how you get to spend your money, if you misbehave, automatic foreclosure on your ass, a bankruptcy stamp on your credit record, barring you from getting any job because of a low credit score. Good luck, starting over, when you have 2 kids to feed, a wife and an ill elder parent to support. Better stick with the system, buddy.

After knowledge is fully locked up, the "authorities" on a mission to protect your security by hunting witches - excuse me, terrorists - will look at other things you consume that are valuable to you - such as water, air/oxygen, and sunshine.

You already get to purchase your bottled water, because it's 'distilled' through reverse osmosis, but it's also fresh from the mountain waterfall picture you see on the bottle (?), and it's got a hint of cherry taste. Unfortunately your public water supplier utility company can no longer provide you with quality water, because it is run by the bankrupt city. Bankrupt, because there isn't enough tax money after letting 150,000 workers go, 200,000 people left without pension whose tab the city must pick up, and all the youth is unemployed, because they are unable to compete with the malaysian child laborers earn