And when Microsoft refuses to 'Windows certify' motherboards that don't allow you to turn it off...?
Your conspiracy theory doesn't match with the certification guidelines that state that it has to support UEFI Secureboot, not make it a mandatory feature that cannot be turned off.
Without a UEFI computer that is configured to boot only signed boot-loaders, this is not a valid test of the Secure Boot technology.
... except that the Windows SecureBoot technology was tricked into thinking it was booting on a UEFI computer that was configured to boot only signed bootloaders. The headline is accurate.
Create a unique signature upon installation. Have validation gathering throughout boot-up and check. There's endless variations on this sort of scheme they could employ. Ultimately, if throughout the boot processes the OS identifies something is amiss it could lock the system down, affect repair, a number of things.
... and what happens when the boot sector needs to be updated, perhaps due to some previously-undetected security hole? Now MS Office doesn't work, because the user allowed Windows to update the security.
Alternatively, MS Office does work, because the security patch also updated the security check - and now there's a method for finding the security checker and disabling it, which prompts another security patch...
This "arms race" style of rights management is getting a bit out of hand.
The point is not that UEFI was broken - it wasn't.
The point is that SecureBoot can be fooled into thinking it's got a secure boot chain under it, when in actuality it doesn't. thus the headline "Windows 8 Secure Boot Defeated" - this MBR hack does a hand-wavy Jedi-mind-trick and tells Windows that everything is fine, and Windows believes it.
The hardware vendors don't have an option, because not bending over for Microsoft would (as you put it) "actively prevent sales of their products". If they don't do what Microsoft says, then their license to sell Microsoft products goes away... and Microsoft still owns the vast majority of the market.
Because there's no reason to believe it would be done.
Yeah, because Microsoft hasn't been caught threatening OEMs over selling non-Windows equipped PCs... oh, wait.
What makes you think Microsoft won't offer better terms to companies who refuse to let other operating systems run on their hardware?
Why do you trust these people?
Better terms to companies for what? And what companies?
Better terms (or perhaps any terms) for OEMs who wish to sell PCs pre-installed with Windows.
You think Microsoft is going to pay all manufacturers to lock out competitors and that this is going to be seen as legal in anti-trust law?
Yes, Microsoft can, has, and will either pay manufacturers, or threaten and coerce them, to forbid any viable competition in the PC desktop OS market. They've done it before. It has been shown to work. The paltry fines they incur when they get caught indicate that it will continue to work, and the legal aspects simply become a financial aspect to "doing business as usual".
Nice conspiracy theory, bit too light on any kind of basis though.
It's not a conspiracy theory, it's established fact.
Microsoft has been caught red-handed telling OEMs not to sell machines with operating systems other than Windows pre-installed. What in the world makes you think they would hesitate to require the OEMs to disable the ability to disable secureboot?
Agreed - that's my first question.. looks like they "defeated" secure boot by not using it to start with.
The part you're missing is "... while making it appear to the OS as if secure boot is enabled and functioning as intended". This is still a defeat of secure boot, just in a roundabout fashion.
Perhaps windows 8 doesn't require it, but windows 9 might have... if this is so ineffective that it has been broken before the first os that even supports it is released, maybe it'll get treated like the ridiculous garbage it is, and round-filed before it becomes an industry standard, and thus a potential security hole.
Suicide bombers did not exist before Israel, US and some other countries effectively occupied middle east. Islamic extremism came to existence after Islamic countries got raped. Some of their people could not bear it and reached a state that they would explode themselves to force occupiers out.
I know some suicide bombers who might have taken exception to that.
The problem here would be that you're assuming there's any kind of sanity over there. What happens when Iran suddenly has a few dirty bombs to toss around?
"Hey, we have 3 of these things, let's send one or two off to rid us of some infidels. Allah says we'll get 72 virgins and stuff when we get creamed in retaliation."
Just give me a debian build for my phone including dialer, messaging, etc..
Then I can play REAL games on my phone.. Or as real as they get in Linux!
Games aren't real on Linux? Yeah, PenguSpy and Linux Gamers don't have real games, really written for real Linux. You know, like Quake 4, Doom 3, Vendetta, and X3 - those aren't real games... oh, wait.
After months of spending hours on IRC as an adolescent, I found myself wishing "real" (spoken) conversation had a scroll-back buffer... does that count?
I had to buy an entire second hand server just to upgrade the server at my old work. it was cheaper to buy the whole server than an extra 1GB ram. We then had to throw out the extra 2 processors and motherboard
... and here I was about to mention that the "upgrade path" available a few years ago for one of my customer's system when he wanted to make his Dell/Intel/Rambus machine better was a choice between buying $600 worth of Rambus, or $600 worth of new machine (dual-core instead of single-core, 10x the hard drive space, twice the DDR of the "upgraded" Rambus, with a DVD burner instead of a cdrom, and a fairly nice graphics card)... guess which he purchased?
"... There are several missed aches your spell checkhov can't can't catch catch; for instant: if you leave out word, your spell checker won't put it in you..."
Patents already only last 20 years. I'd rather it were 2, as quickly as the industries are moving these days. 50 years for copyright is 10 times my posts' proposed limits (which were some of the original limits).
The original concept of these legal structures is to allow the original creators to profit from their creations, and then have those creations move into the public domain after a reasonable amount of time. 50 years is not really any more reasonable than 120.
I think people are already pursuing the sanest course of action: piracy of any and all IP as a form of civil disobedience, in an attempt to get the laws changed to something resembling reasonable.
Any idea where I can get some "bank robbery" insurance? I have this fool-proof plan for making millions in minutes, if I could only get around that "going to jail for decades" bit...
I used to consider the eyecandy in Gnome2 as the perfect addition to the desktop experience. I have since discovered that Compiz works just fine in XFCE, and uses less resources than a non-eyecandy Gnome2 session. It's a wonderful feeling, having a responsive desktop that feels almost like the one I've been using for years (which I switched to when Windows decided to not look/act/feel like the one I had been using for years).
Call me old-fashioned, but having stuff "just work" is a nice feeling - especially when my original purpose in turning on the computer is to "just do stuff", not "fight with my user interface to figure out how to get the things done that I bought the computer to do in the first place".
Fix all your Unity woes, without worrying about whether Gnome2 (and its various forks) will stick around:
apt-get install xfce4
Next time you log in, select XFCE as your session (in the dropdown menu at the bottom of the login screen). Much happiness will ensue, I promise.
As a side effect, you'll use less than half the memory for your new desktop environment than you did in Gnome2 (and even larger chunks, compared to Unity).
If you change your mind, you can change back to Unity at the login screen.
Canonical did ask the community what they thought of the changes - and then overruled the resounding response, as if they knew better what we wanted. It may have worked for Henry Ford, but he didn't have 50 other options chomping at the bit, just waiting for a chance to steal his users.
just because you have found a good setup doesnt mean its the best.
... it doesn't mean it sucks, either. Change for the sake of change is stagnating in a different direction - I'd rather be doing the things I purchased the computer to do in the first place than be trying to figure out my OS all over again every year.
Except we can be pretty sure that, at least in the case of GNOME3 and Unity both, the design decisions were arbitrary and based upon no consequential user studies or HCI science at all. e.g. http://lwn.net/Articles/429575/
On the contrary, Canonical has cheerfully asked the users about each of their UI changes, starting with the ridiculous "move the minimize/maximize/close buttons to the other side of the window" change, all the way up to "see how people react to Unity in 11.04"... They just completely ignore the feedback they get from the users, and ram the changes down our throats anyway.
Ironically enough, Windows Vista/7 doing exactly the same thing was what caused a mass migration to Ubuntu in the first place - it was more familiar to previous users of Windows than the new Windows was.
Slashdot Mirror
And when Microsoft refuses to 'Windows certify' motherboards that don't allow you to turn it off...?
Your conspiracy theory doesn't match with the certification guidelines that state that it has to support UEFI Secureboot, not make it a mandatory feature that cannot be turned off.
... this time.
Without a UEFI computer that is configured to boot only signed boot-loaders, this is not a valid test of the Secure Boot technology.
... except that the Windows SecureBoot technology was tricked into thinking it was booting on a UEFI computer that was configured to boot only signed bootloaders. The headline is accurate.
Create a unique signature upon installation. Have validation gathering throughout boot-up and check. There's endless variations on this sort of scheme they could employ. Ultimately, if throughout the boot processes the OS identifies something is amiss it could lock the system down, affect repair, a number of things.
... and what happens when the boot sector needs to be updated, perhaps due to some previously-undetected security hole? Now MS Office doesn't work, because the user allowed Windows to update the security.
Alternatively, MS Office does work, because the security patch also updated the security check - and now there's a method for finding the security checker and disabling it, which prompts another security patch...
This "arms race" style of rights management is getting a bit out of hand.
The point is not that UEFI was broken - it wasn't.
The point is that SecureBoot can be fooled into thinking it's got a secure boot chain under it, when in actuality it doesn't. thus the headline "Windows 8 Secure Boot Defeated" - this MBR hack does a hand-wavy Jedi-mind-trick and tells Windows that everything is fine, and Windows believes it.
Because it could have been done (much easier, since Microsoft's influence over the hardware vendors was far greater) twenty years ago and wasn't.
Because it's an additional layer of complexity and support for hardware manufacturers and vendors, for little to no benefit.
Because it would fall afoul of the same antitrust law that got them into trouble with per-PC licensing of DOS & Windows in the '80s and '90s.
I trust hardware vendors to not go out of their way actively preventing sales of their product, for little to no benefit.
It was done in the past, and it is currently being done. Microsoft has gotten sneakier about not letting anyone in on their little secret, but Microsoft requires OEMs to install Windows as the only OS on any PC with Windows pre-installed.
The hardware vendors don't have an option, because not bending over for Microsoft would (as you put it) "actively prevent sales of their products". If they don't do what Microsoft says, then their license to sell Microsoft products goes away... and Microsoft still owns the vast majority of the market.
Why is that unlikely?
Because there's no reason to believe it would be done.
Yeah, because Microsoft hasn't been caught threatening OEMs over selling non-Windows equipped PCs... oh, wait.
What makes you think Microsoft won't offer better terms to companies who refuse to let other operating systems run on their hardware?
Why do you trust these people?
Better terms to companies for what? And what companies?
Better terms (or perhaps any terms) for OEMs who wish to sell PCs pre-installed with Windows.
You think Microsoft is going to pay all manufacturers to lock out competitors and that this is going to be seen as legal in anti-trust law?
Yes, Microsoft can, has, and will either pay manufacturers, or threaten and coerce them, to forbid any viable competition in the PC desktop OS market. They've done it before. It has been shown to work. The paltry fines they incur when they get caught indicate that it will continue to work, and the legal aspects simply become a financial aspect to "doing business as usual".
Nice conspiracy theory, bit too light on any kind of basis though.
It's not a conspiracy theory, it's established fact.
Microsoft has been caught red-handed telling OEMs not to sell machines with operating systems other than Windows pre-installed. What in the world makes you think they would hesitate to require the OEMs to disable the ability to disable secureboot?
Agreed - that's my first question.. looks like they "defeated" secure boot by not using it to start with.
The part you're missing is "... while making it appear to the OS as if secure boot is enabled and functioning as intended". This is still a defeat of secure boot, just in a roundabout fashion.
Perhaps windows 8 doesn't require it, but windows 9 might have... if this is so ineffective that it has been broken before the first os that even supports it is released, maybe it'll get treated like the ridiculous garbage it is, and round-filed before it becomes an industry standard, and thus a potential security hole.
Does that mean the post should be moderated 'flamerbait'?
Sorry, I couldn't help it either.
Suicide bombers did not exist before Israel, US and some other countries effectively occupied middle east. Islamic extremism came to existence after Islamic countries got raped. Some of their people could not bear it and reached a state that they would explode themselves to force occupiers out.
I know some suicide bombers who might have taken exception to that.
The problem here would be that you're assuming there's any kind of sanity over there. What happens when Iran suddenly has a few dirty bombs to toss around?
"Hey, we have 3 of these things, let's send one or two off to rid us of some infidels. Allah says we'll get 72 virgins and stuff when we get creamed in retaliation."
Never assume the other guy is sane.
Just give me a debian build for my phone including dialer, messaging, etc..
Then I can play REAL games on my phone.. Or as real as they get in Linux!
Games aren't real on Linux? Yeah, PenguSpy and Linux Gamers don't have real games, really written for real Linux. You know, like Quake 4, Doom 3, Vendetta, and X3 - those aren't real games... oh, wait.
And nevermind that wine actually works really well, nowadays, running many top games "flawlessly, out of the box", and tons more "run flawlessly with some special configuration".
After months of spending hours on IRC as an adolescent, I found myself wishing "real" (spoken) conversation had a scroll-back buffer... does that count?
I had to buy an entire second hand server just to upgrade the server at my old work. it was cheaper to buy the whole server than an extra 1GB ram. We then had to throw out the extra 2 processors and motherboard
... and here I was about to mention that the "upgrade path" available a few years ago for one of my customer's system when he wanted to make his Dell/Intel/Rambus machine better was a choice between buying $600 worth of Rambus, or $600 worth of new machine (dual-core instead of single-core, 10x the hard drive space, twice the DDR of the "upgraded" Rambus, with a DVD burner instead of a cdrom, and a fairly nice graphics card)... guess which he purchased?
The the impotence of proofreading, by Taylor Mali
"... There are several missed aches your spell checkhov can't can't catch catch; for instant: if you leave out word, your spell checker won't put it in you..."
Patents already only last 20 years. I'd rather it were 2, as quickly as the industries are moving these days.
50 years for copyright is 10 times my posts' proposed limits (which were some of the original limits).
The original concept of these legal structures is to allow the original creators to profit from their creations, and then have those creations move into the public domain after a reasonable amount of time. 50 years is not really any more reasonable than 120.
I think people are already pursuing the sanest course of action: piracy of any and all IP as a form of civil disobedience, in an attempt to get the laws changed to something resembling reasonable.
Any idea where I can get some "bank robbery" insurance? I have this fool-proof plan for making millions in minutes, if I could only get around that "going to jail for decades" bit...
I used to consider the eyecandy in Gnome2 as the perfect addition to the desktop experience. I have since discovered that Compiz works just fine in XFCE, and uses less resources than a non-eyecandy Gnome2 session. It's a wonderful feeling, having a responsive desktop that feels almost like the one I've been using for years (which I switched to when Windows decided to not look/act/feel like the one I had been using for years).
Call me old-fashioned, but having stuff "just work" is a nice feeling - especially when my original purpose in turning on the computer is to "just do stuff", not "fight with my user interface to figure out how to get the things done that I bought the computer to do in the first place".
Fix all your Unity woes, without worrying about whether Gnome2 (and its various forks) will stick around:
apt-get install xfce4
Next time you log in, select XFCE as your session (in the dropdown menu at the bottom of the login screen).
Much happiness will ensue, I promise.
As a side effect, you'll use less than half the memory for your new desktop environment than you did in Gnome2 (and even larger chunks, compared to Unity).
If you change your mind, you can change back to Unity at the login screen.
Solve almost all of your UI issues:
ALT+F2, "gnome-terminal", enter.
"sudo apt-get install xfce4", enter.
Log out when this process completes.
At the login screen, select XFCE as your session.
Enjoy your newly functional (again) desktop environment.
Canonical did ask the community what they thought of the changes - and then overruled the resounding response, as if they knew better what we wanted. It may have worked for Henry Ford, but he didn't have 50 other options chomping at the bit, just waiting for a chance to steal his users.
--
Please pardon the pun.
just because you have found a good setup doesnt mean its the best.
... it doesn't mean it sucks, either. Change for the sake of change is stagnating in a different direction - I'd rather be doing the things I purchased the computer to do in the first place than be trying to figure out my OS all over again every year.
So what you're both saying, then, is that function should supersede form.
Feel free to make it pretty, of course... but make it work first.
The prettiest cup in the world will not hold coffee if it has no bottom.
Except we can be pretty sure that, at least in the case of GNOME3 and Unity both, the design decisions were arbitrary and based upon no consequential user studies or HCI science at all. e.g. http://lwn.net/Articles/429575/
On the contrary, Canonical has cheerfully asked the users about each of their UI changes, starting with the ridiculous "move the minimize/maximize/close buttons to the other side of the window" change, all the way up to "see how people react to Unity in 11.04"... They just completely ignore the feedback they get from the users, and ram the changes down our throats anyway.
Ironically enough, Windows Vista/7 doing exactly the same thing was what caused a mass migration to Ubuntu in the first place - it was more familiar to previous users of Windows than the new Windows was.