There are huge areas for improvement in web apps. There is no good way to do 3D. A web app should have direct access to an OpenGL.
Yes let's give web apps direct access to the hardware, uploading shader code directly, access to the framebuffer, ease of performing a DOS attack, etc... WebGL is what you describe but it isn't in the HTML standard because it has a lot of problems that would need to be addressed first.
And do you know that it is perfectly legal for a carrier to deny service to a jailbroken device ?
It's perfectly legal for them to deny service to any device, so what's your point? Anyway it seems you don't understand the concept of jailbreaking as carriers can't tell if a device is jailbroken.
What woudl you say if ISPs mandated the use of Windows to connect to internet ?
I don't know, what's that got to do with anything? What if ISPs mandated the use of OSX to connect to the internet? Or said you couldn't connect to the internet from anything but an iPad? Or from anything but Android? Or only allowed Nokia phones? I'm not sure where you're going with this.
The OS requires the firmware to CLAIM to be authentic. The firmware validates the bootloader which validates the OS which validates the app. If you can get the firmware to load anything it wants, all bets are off.
Well that would be circumvention of copy protection, that's something that would not be applicable under the license agreement for the OS and would likely violate the DMCA. What you would do instead is flash the UEFI firmware with one that allows disabling of SecureBoot such that you could install a linux distro or whatever...again, something virtually no one actually wants to do (the ability to do it has been around in current devices for years).
No, RT requires SecureBoot and the Microsoft key, if you were hacking their software to work around their security measures then that would maybe violate the DMCA (maybe, because jailbreaking/rooting is legal), but that's way off the topic anyway.
If it were breaking it such that unsigned binaries were running on Windows RT then Microsoft might have claim to you breaking their software restrictions if you were distributing that material, however the key difference is that we are just talking about flashing the UEFI chip and it won't run Windows RT at all.
Why do you want them to be the master of less wary people?
They aren't the master of anyone any more than Intel or AMD are your master when you buy a CPU with a locked clock multiplier or locked cores, or a GPU with locked shader cores or ROM chips, or motherboards with ROM chips and locked clock multipliers. The fact is in the component world each component has many locked elements, in terms of a PC you just replace that device, in the SoC world things aren't as componentized but that doesn't really matter because where you would spend a couple hundred $ to replace your CPU in a PC you spend a couple hundred $ and replace your whole device in the ARM SoC world. Alternatively you get in there and replace the offending component, no one stops you from doing that if you really want to.
And people absolutely have had DMCA trouble in other cases of hacking firmware to disable "security checks". Search 'modchip'
No, that's different, that's about circumventing the OS DRM and copy-protection elements, this is replacing the OS entirely.
"Clearly false if it were written by a woman"... I think it's *you* who's making an assumption here.
So what you're saying is you believe it could have been written by a woman denigrating women whereby it is somehow an indictment against women? In fact it isn't, which is the reason it is inappropriate but not sexist.
I suppose the question of whether "0xFA7C0C45" is sexist or just inappropriate/unprofessional is a fairly subjective one. Is there really that much of a distinction there in your mind?
It's not subjective, it's clear that it is not an indictment on either sex and that either sex could equally find it offensive.
Precisely what part of my actual comment did you interpret to mean that I made the assumption that a male inserted that constant?
Your whole post is about women feeling oppressed by such a comment, which is clearly false if it were written by a woman, that would prove it is not by and large offensive to women in general and that the reality is anyone might be offended by it regardless of their gender, it's inappropriate, not sexist. The constant 0xFA7C0C45 might make men or women feel uncomfortable, does that make it sexist or just inappropriate?
Personally, I do choose to support vendors that don't lock things down like that. My objection is MS trying to force vendors to lock down.
No one is forcing anyone to do anything, a market for Windows RT doesn't even exist (in fact it can't even run any Windows apps that exist today), it will be created (maybe) by vendors who choose (not being forced) to produce such devices. No one is being forced to do anything.
I believe that in general, the public bnenefits from the openness, much as it did with the PC (just look at what a vibrant market that produced).
And we have openness, that's not to say we should force it to be everywhere. If openness provides a better product than a closed one then naturally people will choose it.
Perhaps when I flash the firmware, I'll package it up for others so they can do the same. OH! Wait! What's that knock at the door? (music video starts, lawyers dancing "Its fun to sue with the Deeeee Em Cee Ayy". I guess that's what's stopping me.
No, there's absolutely no reason wrt the DMCA that you couldn't do that, i don't think you understand the DMCA. This is no different to flashing your car's ECU.
Wouldn't it be better if they simply respected (or were forced to respect) the basic principles of ownership?
It's your device, do whatever you want with it. Otherwise choose a device that respects your freedom, the choice is yours.
Why do you want them to be your master?
Nice reductio ad absurdum there, but for the record I don't, that's why i wouldn't buy it, instead i would support freedom-respecting manufacturers.
It's sexist in that if a very talented woman programmer was going around hacking in the kernel and found it, it might make her feel uncomfortable.
Bullshit, what's sexist here is that you immediately assume it was a male who wrote it. Oh shit let's get all PC and outlaw codes like 0xDEADBEEF for fear of offending vegans...under the assumption that only non-vegans would ever use such a thing.
Of course there's the ARM bit but why worry about that? There are a myriad of freedom-respecting devices on the market where Windows RT devices don't even exist yet. And even when they do exist what reason is there to buy them? They can't run any existing Windows applications - so there's no advantage there - and there are alternatives that are well-established with large app catalogs already. I don't see any reason they would be any more successful than Windows Phone (FWIW i'm not saying WP is bad, just that it isn't good enough to lure people away from existing platforms).
Computers have this thing called 'firmware' that loads the OS. Some, like the PC all load the OS the same way (or at least the next stage bootloader), so that the same installation media can work on all machines of the same architecture.
Yes i'm aware of that, that's generally referred to as the firmware, not the bootloader (or if you want to be specific it's the stage 0 bootloader) as this is generally used to refer second-stage loaders like NTLDR, GRUB, LILO, etc...
That's not quite how it works currently on smartphones and tablets. You have to use a different procedure on each one to load an OS and if you do it wrong, you brick it.
No, they all have a basic I/O system in place to load the OS bootloader, that's the very reason you could load Android on a WebOS tablet for example or Android, Maemo or Meego on an N900.
Make the latter more like the former, and suddenly you have a new boot only market.
To what end? The reason for the boot only market is to save money by not loading on an OS after wiping it, with these tablet devices you can wipe them without erasing the OS, so there's no advantage to boot only. No one wants a boot only tablet, they could have been doing them for years, there's nothing stopping them, but no one does it because there is no reason to. You want something that has no purpose.
What matters is whether or not a standard interface is presented by the device specific firmware to load a more general purpose OS. That condition is true on PCs and not on tablets and phones so far.
Of course it's on tablets and phones, how do you think devices like the HD2 boot multiple OSes? How do you think Android can boot on a WebOS tablet? How do you think you can run Android, Maemo and Meego on an N900? The fact is you can do all of these things and have been able to for years, but of course there's no boot only market because there's no reason for it.
What i really don't understand is why you want this for Windows and Apple tablets, why not support existing freedom-respecting device manufacturers instead? You just want to force everyone into your way of thinking - which evidently has to benefit to anyone whatsoever - instead of supporting a huge market segment that already supports your way of thinking. If you really want to load alternative OSes onto a device with UEFI firmware then flash the firmware chip, you know, like you would on a car ECU, nothing stopping you from doing that.
A standard bootloader (even UEFI) is a game changer.
What are you talking about? There is no standard bootloader.
That immediately makes the devices more like a general purpose computer as far as loading an OS is concerned (except that MS is demanding lockdown).
No it doesn't, because different OSes use different bootloaders.
If they want to lock in the user, that's not so fine.
How so? Smartphones have been doing this for the better part of the last decade.
It's not like PC's are totally standardized, though there are some standards in play, including the boot that make them work with a variety of OS options.
Those haven't really been out that long (the endless press coverage just makes it SEEM like decades).
It's certainly been a few years.
They are a different class of device as well using older bootloaders and not a general purpose OS.
To what? Windows RT tablets are basically the same hardware.
Surely though, in that market you can't be unaware of the significant modder community building up around the Android devices.
Of course i'm aware of that, and i don't see any reason that will go away, moreover the hardware is effectively the same.
The fact that each model of device has a slightly different procedure, different caveats and some chance of bricking the device has kept them out of the boot only market.
These are much more like phones than general purpose PCs, they are fixed-hardware devices, you can't even buy a Windows RT or iOS license so really the hardware and software are tied together in those instances. Smartphones generally run basically the same OS on the same hardware, just with a smaller screen but how many phones are sold as "boot only"? None, there's no reason to do it, no benefit to anyone.
There are heaps and have been for quite some time! Virtually all tablet devices (iOS or Android) are ARM devices and are end-user products. iOS and Android aren't supplanting the PC in the business model of places like RE-PC and i hardly see Windows RT being so much more successful that it will do it.
I think we'll see plenty of ARM devices. Many will be Android or Linux, but some poor suckers are going to get fooled by marketing and end up with Windows.
We already do see plenty of ARM devices, we have for years, but i still haven't seen any place reselling them "boot only", or with an OS other than the original for that matter.
Well again it depends on what you want it for, pretty much all the popular linux tablets have keyboard accessories for them. Im sure x86 Surface would be fine hardware but unless you have some specific requirement for it most people would be better off with existing linux tablets.
I wonder if the UEFI unlocking mandate extends to MS' own x86 hardware. The Surface might be a sweet machine to run Linux on!:)
Who knows...if i had to guess i'd say probably not, but then again there are better tablets to run linux on...unless you have some sort of x86 requirement.
At least LaunchPad is a separate application, you don't have to use it (personally i find it pointless) and that's what the Metro start screen should have been on x86 PCs, an optional thing!
If the 'success' of Windows Phone is anything to go by they will be channel-stuffing their Surface tablets like there's no tomorrow...i don't see this going well.
Why? The discussion was about RE-PC and Windows 8, there have been a myriad of ARM systems out for many years now - basically the entire tablet and smartphone market - so again how many places like RE-PC sell them "boot only"?
That's still a lot of devices that are rendered landfill because they won't boot anything but Windows. At one time there weren't ANY x86 PCs in the world, then there were a lot.
Oh come on, have you seen Metro? You really actually believe that a device effectively locked to that experience is so brilliant that it will dominate ARM, taking over iOS and Android as well as destroy the market for x86? Have you seen the success of Windows Phone?! Its marketshare is abysmal! Microsoft isn't some all powerful entity capable of dominating any market it enters, in fact outside of x86 systems and the XBox it's done quite poorly.
It is very possible that the x86 architecture will die out in favor of ARM systems. If so, saying "well, ARM systems are locked, that's ok, I have x86" will be the grave oversight that will make open computing technically hard to begin with, then to be considered like a vreach of contract and then like a crime.
Not all ARM systems are locked, and judging by the frosty reception to Metro Windows tablets aren't exactly going to monopolize the ARM space that is already dominated by iOS and Android.
I don't want to be considered like the consumers that jailbroke their iPhones because I installed a linux on my main computer.
Do you not know that jailbreaking is perfectly legal?
Yes it is part of the issue, it isn't actively competing with the other available products because the products is not even remotely comparable in capability.
What are you talking about? Of course they are.
No, competitors is complaining because bundling something with Windows gives MS an unfair advantage, their product just has to be good enough that users does not actively want to replace it, as long as that requirement is met then those customers will not be looking for a replacement and therefore is much more unlikely to notice a competitor no matter how much better they are.
So the competitors offering isn't really any better - but of course with IE usage slipping and Firefox and Chrome gaining we see that in fact the competitors are better and people are actively changing.
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There are huge areas for improvement in web apps. There is no good way to do 3D. A web app should have direct access to an OpenGL.
Yes let's give web apps direct access to the hardware, uploading shader code directly, access to the framebuffer, ease of performing a DOS attack, etc... WebGL is what you describe but it isn't in the HTML standard because it has a lot of problems that would need to be addressed first.
So if you found NIGNOGS written in your code. Is that racist or just inappropriate? What about if written by a black programmer?
If racist, ask yourself what the difference is between this and BIGBOOBS.
How would that even be considered racist? These things obviously need context for them to be racist or sexist or whatever.
And do you know that it is perfectly legal for a carrier to deny service to a jailbroken device ?
It's perfectly legal for them to deny service to any device, so what's your point? Anyway it seems you don't understand the concept of jailbreaking as carriers can't tell if a device is jailbroken.
What woudl you say if ISPs mandated the use of Windows to connect to internet ?
I don't know, what's that got to do with anything? What if ISPs mandated the use of OSX to connect to the internet? Or said you couldn't connect to the internet from anything but an iPad? Or from anything but Android? Or only allowed Nokia phones? I'm not sure where you're going with this.
The OS requires the firmware to CLAIM to be authentic. The firmware validates the bootloader which validates the OS which validates the app. If you can get the firmware to load anything it wants, all bets are off.
Well that would be circumvention of copy protection, that's something that would not be applicable under the license agreement for the OS and would likely violate the DMCA. What you would do instead is flash the UEFI firmware with one that allows disabling of SecureBoot such that you could install a linux distro or whatever...again, something virtually no one actually wants to do (the ability to do it has been around in current devices for years).
It doesn't require it anymore if I modify and reflash the firmware as you suggest.
Wrong, you're modifying the firmware, not the operating system, the operating system has the requirement of the firmware, not the other way around.
No, RT requires SecureBoot and the Microsoft key, if you were hacking their software to work around their security measures then that would maybe violate the DMCA (maybe, because jailbreaking/rooting is legal), but that's way off the topic anyway.
If it were breaking it such that unsigned binaries were running on Windows RT then Microsoft might have claim to you breaking their software restrictions if you were distributing that material, however the key difference is that we are just talking about flashing the UEFI chip and it won't run Windows RT at all.
Why do you want them to be the master of less wary people?
They aren't the master of anyone any more than Intel or AMD are your master when you buy a CPU with a locked clock multiplier or locked cores, or a GPU with locked shader cores or ROM chips, or motherboards with ROM chips and locked clock multipliers. The fact is in the component world each component has many locked elements, in terms of a PC you just replace that device, in the SoC world things aren't as componentized but that doesn't really matter because where you would spend a couple hundred $ to replace your CPU in a PC you spend a couple hundred $ and replace your whole device in the ARM SoC world. Alternatively you get in there and replace the offending component, no one stops you from doing that if you really want to.
And people absolutely have had DMCA trouble in other cases of hacking firmware to disable "security checks". Search 'modchip'
No, that's different, that's about circumventing the OS DRM and copy-protection elements, this is replacing the OS entirely.
"Clearly false if it were written by a woman"... I think it's *you* who's making an assumption here.
So what you're saying is you believe it could have been written by a woman denigrating women whereby it is somehow an indictment against women? In fact it isn't, which is the reason it is inappropriate but not sexist.
I suppose the question of whether "0xFA7C0C45" is sexist or just inappropriate/unprofessional is a fairly subjective one. Is there really that much of a distinction there in your mind?
It's not subjective, it's clear that it is not an indictment on either sex and that either sex could equally find it offensive.
Precisely what part of my actual comment did you interpret to mean that I made the assumption that a male inserted that constant?
Your whole post is about women feeling oppressed by such a comment, which is clearly false if it were written by a woman, that would prove it is not by and large offensive to women in general and that the reality is anyone might be offended by it regardless of their gender, it's inappropriate, not sexist. The constant 0xFA7C0C45 might make men or women feel uncomfortable, does that make it sexist or just inappropriate?
Personally, I do choose to support vendors that don't lock things down like that. My objection is MS trying to force vendors to lock down.
No one is forcing anyone to do anything, a market for Windows RT doesn't even exist (in fact it can't even run any Windows apps that exist today), it will be created (maybe) by vendors who choose (not being forced) to produce such devices. No one is being forced to do anything.
I believe that in general, the public bnenefits from the openness, much as it did with the PC (just look at what a vibrant market that produced).
And we have openness, that's not to say we should force it to be everywhere. If openness provides a better product than a closed one then naturally people will choose it.
Perhaps when I flash the firmware, I'll package it up for others so they can do the same. OH! Wait! What's that knock at the door? (music video starts, lawyers dancing "Its fun to sue with the Deeeee Em Cee Ayy". I guess that's what's stopping me.
No, there's absolutely no reason wrt the DMCA that you couldn't do that, i don't think you understand the DMCA. This is no different to flashing your car's ECU.
Wouldn't it be better if they simply respected (or were forced to respect) the basic principles of ownership?
It's your device, do whatever you want with it. Otherwise choose a device that respects your freedom, the choice is yours.
Why do you want them to be your master?
Nice reductio ad absurdum there, but for the record I don't, that's why i wouldn't buy it, instead i would support freedom-respecting manufacturers.
It's sexist in that if a very talented woman programmer was going around hacking in the kernel and found it, it might make her feel uncomfortable.
Bullshit, what's sexist here is that you immediately assume it was a male who wrote it. Oh shit let's get all PC and outlaw codes like 0xDEADBEEF for fear of offending vegans...under the assumption that only non-vegans would ever use such a thing.
Of course there's the ARM bit but why worry about that? There are a myriad of freedom-respecting devices on the market where Windows RT devices don't even exist yet. And even when they do exist what reason is there to buy them? They can't run any existing Windows applications - so there's no advantage there - and there are alternatives that are well-established with large app catalogs already. I don't see any reason they would be any more successful than Windows Phone (FWIW i'm not saying WP is bad, just that it isn't good enough to lure people away from existing platforms).
Computers have this thing called 'firmware' that loads the OS. Some, like the PC all load the OS the same way (or at least the next stage bootloader), so that the same installation media can work on all machines of the same architecture.
Yes i'm aware of that, that's generally referred to as the firmware, not the bootloader (or if you want to be specific it's the stage 0 bootloader) as this is generally used to refer second-stage loaders like NTLDR, GRUB, LILO, etc...
That's not quite how it works currently on smartphones and tablets. You have to use a different procedure on each one to load an OS and if you do it wrong, you brick it.
No, they all have a basic I/O system in place to load the OS bootloader, that's the very reason you could load Android on a WebOS tablet for example or Android, Maemo or Meego on an N900.
Make the latter more like the former, and suddenly you have a new boot only market.
To what end? The reason for the boot only market is to save money by not loading on an OS after wiping it, with these tablet devices you can wipe them without erasing the OS, so there's no advantage to boot only. No one wants a boot only tablet, they could have been doing them for years, there's nothing stopping them, but no one does it because there is no reason to. You want something that has no purpose.
What matters is whether or not a standard interface is presented by the device specific firmware to load a more general purpose OS. That condition is true on PCs and not on tablets and phones so far.
Of course it's on tablets and phones, how do you think devices like the HD2 boot multiple OSes? How do you think Android can boot on a WebOS tablet? How do you think you can run Android, Maemo and Meego on an N900? The fact is you can do all of these things and have been able to for years, but of course there's no boot only market because there's no reason for it.
What i really don't understand is why you want this for Windows and Apple tablets, why not support existing freedom-respecting device manufacturers instead? You just want to force everyone into your way of thinking - which evidently has to benefit to anyone whatsoever - instead of supporting a huge market segment that already supports your way of thinking.
If you really want to load alternative OSes onto a device with UEFI firmware then flash the firmware chip, you know, like you would on a car ECU, nothing stopping you from doing that.
A standard bootloader (even UEFI) is a game changer.
What are you talking about? There is no standard bootloader.
That immediately makes the devices more like a general purpose computer as far as loading an OS is concerned (except that MS is demanding lockdown).
No it doesn't, because different OSes use different bootloaders.
If they want to lock in the user, that's not so fine.
How so? Smartphones have been doing this for the better part of the last decade.
It's not like PC's are totally standardized, though there are some standards in play, including the boot that make them work with a variety of OS options.
The boot? What are you on about?
Those haven't really been out that long (the endless press coverage just makes it SEEM like decades).
It's certainly been a few years.
They are a different class of device as well using older bootloaders and not a general purpose OS.
To what? Windows RT tablets are basically the same hardware.
Surely though, in that market you can't be unaware of the significant modder community building up around the Android devices.
Of course i'm aware of that, and i don't see any reason that will go away, moreover the hardware is effectively the same.
The fact that each model of device has a slightly different procedure, different caveats and some chance of bricking the device has kept them out of the boot only market.
These are much more like phones than general purpose PCs, they are fixed-hardware devices, you can't even buy a Windows RT or iOS license so really the hardware and software are tied together in those instances. Smartphones generally run basically the same OS on the same hardware, just with a smaller screen but how many phones are sold as "boot only"? None, there's no reason to do it, no benefit to anyone.
There are heaps and have been for quite some time! Virtually all tablet devices (iOS or Android) are ARM devices and are end-user products. iOS and Android aren't supplanting the PC in the business model of places like RE-PC and i hardly see Windows RT being so much more successful that it will do it.
I think we'll see plenty of ARM devices. Many will be Android or Linux, but some poor suckers are going to get fooled by marketing and end up with Windows.
We already do see plenty of ARM devices, we have for years, but i still haven't seen any place reselling them "boot only", or with an OS other than the original for that matter.
Well again it depends on what you want it for, pretty much all the popular linux tablets have keyboard accessories for them. Im sure x86 Surface would be fine hardware but unless you have some specific requirement for it most people would be better off with existing linux tablets.
I wonder if the UEFI unlocking mandate extends to MS' own x86 hardware. The Surface might be a sweet machine to run Linux on! :)
Who knows...if i had to guess i'd say probably not, but then again there are better tablets to run linux on...unless you have some sort of x86 requirement.
At least LaunchPad is a separate application, you don't have to use it (personally i find it pointless) and that's what the Metro start screen should have been on x86 PCs, an optional thing!
If the 'success' of Windows Phone is anything to go by they will be channel-stuffing their Surface tablets like there's no tomorrow...i don't see this going well.
I DID specify the problem is for ARM devices.
Why? The discussion was about RE-PC and Windows 8, there have been a myriad of ARM systems out for many years now - basically the entire tablet and smartphone market - so again how many places like RE-PC sell them "boot only"?
That's still a lot of devices that are rendered landfill because they won't boot anything but Windows. At one time there weren't ANY x86 PCs in the world, then there were a lot.
Oh come on, have you seen Metro? You really actually believe that a device effectively locked to that experience is so brilliant that it will dominate ARM, taking over iOS and Android as well as destroy the market for x86? Have you seen the success of Windows Phone?! Its marketshare is abysmal! Microsoft isn't some all powerful entity capable of dominating any market it enters, in fact outside of x86 systems and the XBox it's done quite poorly.
It is very possible that the x86 architecture will die out in favor of ARM systems. If so, saying "well, ARM systems are locked, that's ok, I have x86" will be the grave oversight that will make open computing technically hard to begin with, then to be considered like a vreach of contract and then like a crime.
Not all ARM systems are locked, and judging by the frosty reception to Metro Windows tablets aren't exactly going to monopolize the ARM space that is already dominated by iOS and Android.
I don't want to be considered like the consumers that jailbroke their iPhones because I installed a linux on my main computer.
Do you not know that jailbreaking is perfectly legal?
Yes it is part of the issue, it isn't actively competing with the other available products because the products is not even remotely comparable in capability.
What are you talking about? Of course they are.
No, competitors is complaining because bundling something with Windows gives MS an unfair advantage, their product just has to be good enough that users does not actively want to replace it, as long as that requirement is met then those customers will not be looking for a replacement and therefore is much more unlikely to notice a competitor no matter how much better they are.
So the competitors offering isn't really any better - but of course with IE usage slipping and Firefox and Chrome gaining we see that in fact the competitors are better and people are actively changing.