That said, it still doesn't really say what you're suggesting. What the first and third comment are saying is that they think the best computer would be combination of AmigaOS and custom hardware. They think AmigaOS should be created for this custom computer.
Now, you'll note a few things. One is that that doesn't specify a CPU. The other is that pretty much rules out the crappy "Let's combine the reference-architecture PowerPC motherboards with AmigaOS" "Amigas" that have been pouring out of companies that have called themselves "Amiga" in the last few years. Because those reference architecture PCI-supporting PowerPC motherboards aren't exactly custom computers either.
I can certainly relate to someone wanting the owners of the Amiga IP to come out with a revolutionary new computer, unlike anything out today. Because that's what we got in 1985. However, I think there's a world of difference between saying that, and saying "Also - it has to have some outdated, crappy, CPU that nobody uses any more". You'd put an ix86-64 in a modern Amiga for exactly the same reason as they put a 68000 in the original Amiga 1000 - it's a powerful, commodity, CPU, the best CPU you can get for the price.
I'd be enormously surprised if the first and third poster didn't agree with that.
The Amiga wasn't PowerPC based. It was a popular upgrade, and some of the companies that called themselves "Amiga" after Commodore's downfall produced machines they called "Amigas" with PowerPCs, but those machines were basic PREP (or whatever the term is), not resembling the Amiga range in any shape or form. The only connection was the operating system.
What you have here are PowerPC snobs, not Amiga snobs.
No, it was the OS. The OS was fantastic. I'd have been much more comfortable jumping to ix86 back in the mid 1990s if AmigaOS had been available then.
The hardware was fantastic in 1985. In 1990, it was OK but looking a little odd. By the time AGA finally rolled out, there were serious concerns amongst many in the Amiga community that the Amiga hardware was already way behind the PC and Mac. And, of course, infamously, it was about that time that Carmack made it clear that Doom would never be ported to the Amiga due to hardware concerns, despite it running on the lowest end PCs of that era.
Why? Because if it had been completed fifteen years ago, it'd have been something I'd (and millions of other Amiga enthusiasts) would have been able to jump on, and over time it would have grown. The issues with Exec's lack of MMU support would have been, as time progressed, dealt with in an evolutionary way (I have no idea what the solution would have been, but I'm pretty sure it would have come about.) And so the platform would have lived on.
Unfortunately it wasn't completed then, and the mindshare has moved to GNU/Linux. The problems with AmigaOS back in 1994 are still present in AROS. There's no easy way to fix the issues any more, because the people interested aren't tight knit and large enough to actually agree upon a way forward.
Which is NOT, absolutely NOT, to diss the efforts of the AROS crew. What they've produced is impressive, and anyone who thinks all operating systems should either be POSIX or Windows based should, absolutely should, download this and play with it.
What upsets me is that I can't, any longer, jump on something so wonderful. There's no point.
I'm guessing they've looked over at Google, and noticed the only really, really, good Android devices are those with Google's name on it (or, more specifically, the word "Nexus".) Even Google's decision to be careful about who it gave Honeycomb to didn't result in an actual useful tablet coming out.
I think Microsoft wants an official Windows tablet, one that says "This is our vision of how this stuff is supposed to work", rather than see dozens of Galaxy Tab clones with Android swapped out with RT introduced.
Let's face it, tablets suck. Really suck. I have two of the things, a Kindle Fire, which is a nice games console, and a generic 10" Honeycomb thing, and the latter only started to actually become useful (and even that's a stretch) once I found a case with a built in keyboard. The concept of a general purpose computer sans keyboard is utterly stupid.
And this is Microsoft's attempt to rectify that. Put something out that's not another 10" slate. Give it a secondary touch surface that's tactile enough to be used as a real keyboard.
If they can get Windows RT to be decent (and I think the biggest problem right now with Windows RT is the name - seriously, "Windows", coupled with a failed IBM RISC PC from the 1980s?), they might be the first out there with a useful 10" tablet.
Those of us in the FOSS communities might want to ponder whether we actually want to give the "serious tablet" market to Microsoft, and the "Toy tablet" market to Apple.
(That was simply the next manufacturer I plugged into Google after assuming Samsung and Motorola will probably not, because of their ties to Android. So that's at least two current tablet makers who have announced Windows RT tablets. So if you respond with "Only two", you can safely assume I'll come up with others. I seem to recall HP and Dell have expressed an interest too, just off the top of my head, making me think you'll probably see RT tablets from most major PC makers.)
A PCMag opinion piece titled 'A Microsoft Tablet Would Be Dumb' says 'The only real reason to introduce a Microsoft-branded tablet is because Microsoft couldn't get anyone else to make a Windows RT tablet.'
Looks like knee-jerk anti-Microsoftism to me. Nobody has said the same thing about Google branded tablets, despite the reports Google intends to release one in the next month or two. Moreover, several PC makers, noteably Asus, have already announced Windows RT tablets.
Microsoft have engaged in some sordid business practices, and prior to Windows 7 their desktop operating systems were terrible. But just making up any old crap about them makes you look stupid, not Microsoft.
Amazing how the GP is wrong but both the "correctors" choose the wrong thing to correct.
The GP is entirely free to send a letter by any means he or she chooses.
However, the statement "It just happens that the US Postal Service is the most economical and, statistically based on sheer volume, reliable method of doing so." is wrong. Current law sets minimum prices (and service levels!) for Fedex and others, making their prices uncompetitive for anything but express (in practice, express interstate) mail.
This was actually explained at the link you posted!
Given the spec of most mobile phones coming out right now isn't far from the spec of PCs that were mainstream five years ago (maybe a lower GHz, but 1G RAM, two or more cores, a GPU, etc), and how far forward that is compared to, say, two years ago at around this time, I'm inclined to think that there's little reason to avoid going 64 bit for mobile phones in the near future. Certainly, anyone designing new smartphone silicon right now should be thinking in terms of how they can make a 64 bit smartphone that has a decent battery life.
I find all the comparisons with x86-32 to be a little off to be honest for that very reason. I don't think Intel is talking about 32-bit ix86 vs ARM. I think they're talking about ix86 TODAY vs ARM - and that's almost all 64 bit. Modern Atom sets are 64 bit. The last 32 bit Atom was launched two years ago with the exception of one very-very low end Cedarfield variant in late 2011.
Disclaimer: things may have changed a lot since the "Preview" MS released last year. But the main shell - which is what the Start menu ultimately was - is now a sort of full screen sideways scrolling webpage that has widgets and stuff on it. It's essentially a tablet UI.
The screens we're talking about here are things you go into, and exit out of, from that shell.
So at a guess, I'd say the start menu is gone. The IE icon is an IE launcher, and so on. Want to start an app? Go back to the tablet-style interface.
But people didn't bash Vista because of the eye candy. They bashed it because (a) the eye candy didn't work with their graphics card (which is a fair criticism - Vista came out long after OS X, which had similar compositing going on, which worked on old 4Mb ATI Rage 3D chipsets - I'm not kidding, Jaguar worked perfectly on an old Beige G3 that had that chipset); (b) because Vista was incompatible with a lot of their existing software. and (c) because Vista introduced some security changes they didn't like much.
The overall look of Vista got a lot of praise, for those who had compatible hardware. And 7 - which was a service pack for Vista - dealt with most of the criticisms and has become extremely popular. People are happily ditching XP for 7. And part of it is the look.
So I think you're possibly maybe overstating the criticisms.
I like Aero. Windows 7 is really the first version of Windows in a long time I've been happy using. I think it's a shame they're taking it out of Windows 8.
You've basically destroyed a piece of the English language if you redefine a word that meant something distinct to instead be a synonym for many existing words like "annihilated."
I was brought up to understand decimate meant "Kill one in ten" or, more generally, punish or hurt via an attack on a minority of a group being targetted. Only in the last few years (the last decade perhaps) have I heard it redefined by you idiots. You probably think "Could care less" is perfectly valid English too.
If you're so gung-ho on having all of us support it. How about you dedicate all your money, etc. to supporting it? If you're so big on it, be willing to step up to the plate and do it all the way.
Because it wouldn't be enough, because I'd miss my income if ALL of it was removed (rather than be barely affected by it like you if it was a few cents from everyone) and it wouldn't be fair to have a small part of society fund the problems of the entire society. You, like me, would benefit from living in a society with lower healthcare costs, with the removal of the need to worry about healthcare costs, with the knowledge that a future medical problem is not going to put you in the tough position of choosing between certain death and certain bankruptcy. Likewise you benefit from Welfare, from Social Security, and from all the other safety nets liberals advocate.
But you're saying we should pay for it. Because while you may benefit from its existence, you haven't put a price on it, and hey, you're fit, healthy, will never lose your job, and never get old, so you don't need the payouts of any of these services right now.
Moreover, it's hardly as if you're being consistent. You're demanding liberals do this. I don't see you offering to fund, personally, out of your own pocket, the next war that happens. I don't see you offering to pay for the police, for our prisons, and for numerous other aspects of the state that I don't particularly care for (at least, not at their current levels.)
All of which is beside the point. Looks like the Bay Area is going to put a tax on something to cover the external costs of consumption. It's not even a massive tax, it'll barely dent the price of soda. Hardly a reason for a massive outcry.
And I agree with Bloomberg's thing on the soda cups BTW. It's hardly a violation of my liberties to put me in a position where if I want a humongous, insane, amount of soda while I watch a movie, I have to use two or more cups! Oh noes! Didn't HITLER also make us use two or more cups to drink a day's caloric intake?
Everybody I know with a tablet (no matter who makes it) is using it
Somehow I doubt that.
Most people I know, including me, who have tablets are dusting them off once in a while, realizing they're useless, and then leaving them until the next time.
Yes, there are loud exceptions. Yes, there were the (largely in marketing, for some reason) people I knew who wouldn't be seen dead without their Palm Pilot and loudly told everyone how dependent they were on the damned things. But you guys really are in the minority.
Look at the number of tablets you see in airports and hotel lobbies -- a large number of people disagree with you
While I haven't been to an airport in years, I've been to numerous hotels and not seen a single tablet user. In any case, AGAIN, go back to 1999-2001. Lots of people in airports playing with their Palm Pilots.
Is QuickOffice really that much better than Google Docs?
Yeah, I know, the Google Docs app was never that great (a craptastically bad front end to their website, which would occasionally have problems logging in resulting in the HTML login box fading in and out), but I can't believe it would have been that hard to fix the major issues with it. The underlying office suite is pretty nice.
It's OK, you can still hate Oracle. They probably want to go after Lodsys because they want Oracle DB to pop up messages along the lines of "You've just gone over your licensed quota of data. Please enter a credit card to expand your licensed database size by 1G".
IIRC Lodsys was suing over in-app purchases, so Oracle are just a Lodsys lawsuit away from doing that...
For those without a Windows Live ID, apparently the usual price, from the same page, is $499.
That said, I see nothing on the page that implies that this is the right certificate to buy for the Secure Boot Initiative. I wouldn't mind seeing some clarification on this point, as Wikipedia (for one) seems hazy on this subject.
You're right. And someone might break my windows and get into my house even though I've locked the door. OH NOES FALSE SECURITY!!!?!
You know, under the right conditions I see nothing whatsoever wrong with the concepts being described here. The critical features that every "secure bootloader" ought to have are:
1. Must not be controlled by an operating system vendor. (If this really is in the hands of HTTPS style CAs then that's awesome.)
2. Must be overridable by a knowledgeable user (so they can hack their own hardware - install custom kernels, that kind of thing.)
3. Must be open and used to enforce accountability, not functionality. If someone gives me a random CD of an OS, and I install it, I want to be able to determine who to blame if it goes wrong. I don't want The Computing Establishment forbidding me from getting the CD in the first place for any reason except a refusal to link the content to a responsible group or person by the creator of the CD.
If all the above is true, then I can live with UEFI (and TC in general), hell, I'd go further and say it's a good idea. Are they true? I have no idea, I've read too much Slashdot to know what the truth is in this case.
If I want a Windows machine, and I'm looking for a machine that'll run Windows 143 which'll be released in a few weeks from now, I tend to find out what official certification means "This meets the spec required to run Windows 143 with all the bells and whistles turned on". That's pretty much the only time.
Well, the other thing is that Google or whatever can use the power of advertising to convince people with DNT turned on to allow them to opt in.
Lest you think this is impossible, remember that we're talking about multiple circles of hell here.
The outer level? Totally free content, no ads. (Outer level is, in fact, not hell at all)
Inside level: Free content, with a few ads that are actually interesting.
Inside that level: Free content, with ads that are not remotely interesting. BROUGHT TO YOU BY VAGASIL! IF ITCHINESS LINGERS, PUT CREAM ON YOUR FINGERS! VAGASIL!
Inside that level: Free content, with ads that are positively unpleasant. You know the type, the ones that use fleas bouncing on an animated dog to advertise various mortgage rates you can get with a sub-prime loan. (That make you think "Does anyone think this is a good idea for an ad?")
Remember too that the selling attraction of some stores is that they carry ads tailored towards you. That's what Amazon.com's recommendation system is, for instance, and for many of us, that's actually a selling point. Now, sure, most of us don't want to see ads when we're not shopping, but, well, you get the drift.
Finally, it's hardly a disaster for Google if Microsoft does this. Google still has:
- Android
- Chrome and Firefox
- Macs
- The ability to revert to plan B - use the website the user's on to determine an appropriate ad
My gut feeling is that whatever Microsoft's goals here, this is generally a good thing, albeit with the risk that by making it opt-in it'll undermine the concept and encourage seedier advertisers to ignore it.
Pretty bizarre test IMO. A brand new PC with Windows:
- Contains software pre-installed by the Vendor. Expect the usual Symantec/Norton pre-installed crap to be phoning home every five minutes
- Likewise, except it to phone home to HP, Dell, or whatever, to download the latest ads... uh, I mean, "alerts". Yeah, yeah.
- Will phone home to Microsoft periodically to check for updates
Ubuntu actually does that last one too. Hell, for all I know, it does the first too, but I've never checked. Actually, no, wait, I know it does, because Firefox is the default browser, and that's getting all cloudy and "I can haz update?" these days.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, I thought you were quoting one comment.
That said, it still doesn't really say what you're suggesting. What the first and third comment are saying is that they think the best computer would be combination of AmigaOS and custom hardware. They think AmigaOS should be created for this custom computer.
Now, you'll note a few things. One is that that doesn't specify a CPU. The other is that pretty much rules out the crappy "Let's combine the reference-architecture PowerPC motherboards with AmigaOS" "Amigas" that have been pouring out of companies that have called themselves "Amiga" in the last few years. Because those reference architecture PCI-supporting PowerPC motherboards aren't exactly custom computers either.
I can certainly relate to someone wanting the owners of the Amiga IP to come out with a revolutionary new computer, unlike anything out today. Because that's what we got in 1985. However, I think there's a world of difference between saying that, and saying "Also - it has to have some outdated, crappy, CPU that nobody uses any more". You'd put an ix86-64 in a modern Amiga for exactly the same reason as they put a 68000 in the original Amiga 1000 - it's a powerful, commodity, CPU, the best CPU you can get for the price.
I'd be enormously surprised if the first and third poster didn't agree with that.
The Amiga wasn't PowerPC based. It was a popular upgrade, and some of the companies that called themselves "Amiga" after Commodore's downfall produced machines they called "Amigas" with PowerPCs, but those machines were basic PREP (or whatever the term is), not resembling the Amiga range in any shape or form. The only connection was the operating system.
What you have here are PowerPC snobs, not Amiga snobs.
Because it's an operating system?
No, it was the OS. The OS was fantastic. I'd have been much more comfortable jumping to ix86 back in the mid 1990s if AmigaOS had been available then.
The hardware was fantastic in 1985. In 1990, it was OK but looking a little odd. By the time AGA finally rolled out, there were serious concerns amongst many in the Amiga community that the Amiga hardware was already way behind the PC and Mac. And, of course, infamously, it was about that time that Carmack made it clear that Doom would never be ported to the Amiga due to hardware concerns, despite it running on the lowest end PCs of that era.
Hardly. Ten years ago, maybe.
I have to say this project upsets me.
Why? Because if it had been completed fifteen years ago, it'd have been something I'd (and millions of other Amiga enthusiasts) would have been able to jump on, and over time it would have grown. The issues with Exec's lack of MMU support would have been, as time progressed, dealt with in an evolutionary way (I have no idea what the solution would have been, but I'm pretty sure it would have come about.) And so the platform would have lived on.
Unfortunately it wasn't completed then, and the mindshare has moved to GNU/Linux. The problems with AmigaOS back in 1994 are still present in AROS. There's no easy way to fix the issues any more, because the people interested aren't tight knit and large enough to actually agree upon a way forward.
Which is NOT, absolutely NOT, to diss the efforts of the AROS crew. What they've produced is impressive, and anyone who thinks all operating systems should either be POSIX or Windows based should, absolutely should, download this and play with it.
What upsets me is that I can't, any longer, jump on something so wonderful. There's no point.
I'm guessing they've looked over at Google, and noticed the only really, really, good Android devices are those with Google's name on it (or, more specifically, the word "Nexus".) Even Google's decision to be careful about who it gave Honeycomb to didn't result in an actual useful tablet coming out.
I think Microsoft wants an official Windows tablet, one that says "This is our vision of how this stuff is supposed to work", rather than see dozens of Galaxy Tab clones with Android swapped out with RT introduced.
Let's face it, tablets suck. Really suck. I have two of the things, a Kindle Fire, which is a nice games console, and a generic 10" Honeycomb thing, and the latter only started to actually become useful (and even that's a stretch) once I found a case with a built in keyboard. The concept of a general purpose computer sans keyboard is utterly stupid.
And this is Microsoft's attempt to rectify that. Put something out that's not another 10" slate. Give it a secondary touch surface that's tactile enough to be used as a real keyboard.
If they can get Windows RT to be decent (and I think the biggest problem right now with Windows RT is the name - seriously, "Windows", coupled with a failed IBM RISC PC from the 1980s?), they might be the first out there with a useful 10" tablet.
Those of us in the FOSS communities might want to ponder whether we actually want to give the "serious tablet" market to Microsoft, and the "Toy tablet" market to Apple.
Well there's Toshiba too.
(That was simply the next manufacturer I plugged into Google after assuming Samsung and Motorola will probably not, because of their ties to Android. So that's at least two current tablet makers who have announced Windows RT tablets. So if you respond with "Only two", you can safely assume I'll come up with others. I seem to recall HP and Dell have expressed an interest too, just off the top of my head, making me think you'll probably see RT tablets from most major PC makers.)
I hear they make a pretty good games console too.
Looks like knee-jerk anti-Microsoftism to me. Nobody has said the same thing about Google branded tablets, despite the reports Google intends to release one in the next month or two. Moreover, several PC makers, noteably Asus, have already announced Windows RT tablets.
Microsoft have engaged in some sordid business practices, and prior to Windows 7 their desktop operating systems were terrible. But just making up any old crap about them makes you look stupid, not Microsoft.
Amazing how the GP is wrong but both the "correctors" choose the wrong thing to correct.
The GP is entirely free to send a letter by any means he or she chooses.
However, the statement "It just happens that the US Postal Service is the most economical and, statistically based on sheer volume, reliable method of doing so." is wrong. Current law sets minimum prices (and service levels!) for Fedex and others, making their prices uncompetitive for anything but express (in practice, express interstate) mail.
This was actually explained at the link you posted!
Or vagina?
Given the spec of most mobile phones coming out right now isn't far from the spec of PCs that were mainstream five years ago (maybe a lower GHz, but 1G RAM, two or more cores, a GPU, etc), and how far forward that is compared to, say, two years ago at around this time, I'm inclined to think that there's little reason to avoid going 64 bit for mobile phones in the near future. Certainly, anyone designing new smartphone silicon right now should be thinking in terms of how they can make a 64 bit smartphone that has a decent battery life.
I find all the comparisons with x86-32 to be a little off to be honest for that very reason. I don't think Intel is talking about 32-bit ix86 vs ARM. I think they're talking about ix86 TODAY vs ARM - and that's almost all 64 bit. Modern Atom sets are 64 bit. The last 32 bit Atom was launched two years ago with the exception of one very-very low end Cedarfield variant in late 2011.
Disclaimer: things may have changed a lot since the "Preview" MS released last year. But the main shell - which is what the Start menu ultimately was - is now a sort of full screen sideways scrolling webpage that has widgets and stuff on it. It's essentially a tablet UI.
The screens we're talking about here are things you go into, and exit out of, from that shell.
So at a guess, I'd say the start menu is gone. The IE icon is an IE launcher, and so on. Want to start an app? Go back to the tablet-style interface.
But people didn't bash Vista because of the eye candy. They bashed it because (a) the eye candy didn't work with their graphics card (which is a fair criticism - Vista came out long after OS X, which had similar compositing going on, which worked on old 4Mb ATI Rage 3D chipsets - I'm not kidding, Jaguar worked perfectly on an old Beige G3 that had that chipset); (b) because Vista was incompatible with a lot of their existing software. and (c) because Vista introduced some security changes they didn't like much.
The overall look of Vista got a lot of praise, for those who had compatible hardware. And 7 - which was a service pack for Vista - dealt with most of the criticisms and has become extremely popular. People are happily ditching XP for 7. And part of it is the look.
So I think you're possibly maybe overstating the criticisms.
I like Aero. Windows 7 is really the first version of Windows in a long time I've been happy using. I think it's a shame they're taking it out of Windows 8.
You've basically destroyed a piece of the English language if you redefine a word that meant something distinct to instead be a synonym for many existing words like "annihilated."
I was brought up to understand decimate meant "Kill one in ten" or, more generally, punish or hurt via an attack on a minority of a group being targetted. Only in the last few years (the last decade perhaps) have I heard it redefined by you idiots. You probably think "Could care less" is perfectly valid English too.
Because it wouldn't be enough, because I'd miss my income if ALL of it was removed (rather than be barely affected by it like you if it was a few cents from everyone) and it wouldn't be fair to have a small part of society fund the problems of the entire society. You, like me, would benefit from living in a society with lower healthcare costs, with the removal of the need to worry about healthcare costs, with the knowledge that a future medical problem is not going to put you in the tough position of choosing between certain death and certain bankruptcy. Likewise you benefit from Welfare, from Social Security, and from all the other safety nets liberals advocate.
But you're saying we should pay for it. Because while you may benefit from its existence, you haven't put a price on it, and hey, you're fit, healthy, will never lose your job, and never get old, so you don't need the payouts of any of these services right now.
Moreover, it's hardly as if you're being consistent. You're demanding liberals do this. I don't see you offering to fund, personally, out of your own pocket, the next war that happens. I don't see you offering to pay for the police, for our prisons, and for numerous other aspects of the state that I don't particularly care for (at least, not at their current levels.)
All of which is beside the point. Looks like the Bay Area is going to put a tax on something to cover the external costs of consumption. It's not even a massive tax, it'll barely dent the price of soda. Hardly a reason for a massive outcry.
And I agree with Bloomberg's thing on the soda cups BTW. It's hardly a violation of my liberties to put me in a position where if I want a humongous, insane, amount of soda while I watch a movie, I have to use two or more cups! Oh noes! Didn't HITLER also make us use two or more cups to drink a day's caloric intake?
I think he did. I think he did.
Somehow I doubt that.
Most people I know, including me, who have tablets are dusting them off once in a while, realizing they're useless, and then leaving them until the next time.
Yes, there are loud exceptions. Yes, there were the (largely in marketing, for some reason) people I knew who wouldn't be seen dead without their Palm Pilot and loudly told everyone how dependent they were on the damned things. But you guys really are in the minority.
While I haven't been to an airport in years, I've been to numerous hotels and not seen a single tablet user. In any case, AGAIN, go back to 1999-2001. Lots of people in airports playing with their Palm Pilots.
Where are they now?
Doubt it. They were this great fad in the late nineties, and then died out as soon as people realized how useless and impractical the form factor was.
Expect the iPad to go the same way.
Is QuickOffice really that much better than Google Docs?
Yeah, I know, the Google Docs app was never that great (a craptastically bad front end to their website, which would occasionally have problems logging in resulting in the HTML login box fading in and out), but I can't believe it would have been that hard to fix the major issues with it. The underlying office suite is pretty nice.
It's OK, you can still hate Oracle. They probably want to go after Lodsys because they want Oracle DB to pop up messages along the lines of "You've just gone over your licensed quota of data. Please enter a credit card to expand your licensed database size by 1G".
IIRC Lodsys was suing over in-app purchases, so Oracle are just a Lodsys lawsuit away from doing that...
For those without a Windows Live ID, apparently the usual price, from the same page, is $499.
That said, I see nothing on the page that implies that this is the right certificate to buy for the Secure Boot Initiative. I wouldn't mind seeing some clarification on this point, as Wikipedia (for one) seems hazy on this subject.
You're right. And someone might break my windows and get into my house even though I've locked the door. OH NOES FALSE SECURITY!!!?!
You know, under the right conditions I see nothing whatsoever wrong with the concepts being described here. The critical features that every "secure bootloader" ought to have are:
1. Must not be controlled by an operating system vendor. (If this really is in the hands of HTTPS style CAs then that's awesome.)
2. Must be overridable by a knowledgeable user (so they can hack their own hardware - install custom kernels, that kind of thing.)
3. Must be open and used to enforce accountability, not functionality. If someone gives me a random CD of an OS, and I install it, I want to be able to determine who to blame if it goes wrong. I don't want The Computing Establishment forbidding me from getting the CD in the first place for any reason except a refusal to link the content to a responsible group or person by the creator of the CD.
If all the above is true, then I can live with UEFI (and TC in general), hell, I'd go further and say it's a good idea. Are they true? I have no idea, I've read too much Slashdot to know what the truth is in this case.
If I want a Windows machine, and I'm looking for a machine that'll run Windows 143 which'll be released in a few weeks from now, I tend to find out what official certification means "This meets the spec required to run Windows 143 with all the bells and whistles turned on". That's pretty much the only time.
I think I've done this precisely once in my life.
Well, the other thing is that Google or whatever can use the power of advertising to convince people with DNT turned on to allow them to opt in.
Lest you think this is impossible, remember that we're talking about multiple circles of hell here.
The outer level? Totally free content, no ads. (Outer level is, in fact, not hell at all)
Inside level: Free content, with a few ads that are actually interesting.
Inside that level: Free content, with ads that are not remotely interesting. BROUGHT TO YOU BY VAGASIL! IF ITCHINESS LINGERS, PUT CREAM ON YOUR FINGERS! VAGASIL!
Inside that level: Free content, with ads that are positively unpleasant. You know the type, the ones that use fleas bouncing on an animated dog to advertise various mortgage rates you can get with a sub-prime loan. (That make you think "Does anyone think this is a good idea for an ad?")
Remember too that the selling attraction of some stores is that they carry ads tailored towards you. That's what Amazon.com's recommendation system is, for instance, and for many of us, that's actually a selling point. Now, sure, most of us don't want to see ads when we're not shopping, but, well, you get the drift.
Finally, it's hardly a disaster for Google if Microsoft does this. Google still has:
- Android
- Chrome and Firefox
- Macs
- The ability to revert to plan B - use the website the user's on to determine an appropriate ad
My gut feeling is that whatever Microsoft's goals here, this is generally a good thing, albeit with the risk that by making it opt-in it'll undermine the concept and encourage seedier advertisers to ignore it.
Pretty bizarre test IMO. A brand new PC with Windows:
- Contains software pre-installed by the Vendor. Expect the usual Symantec/Norton pre-installed crap to be phoning home every five minutes
- Likewise, except it to phone home to HP, Dell, or whatever, to download the latest ads... uh, I mean, "alerts". Yeah, yeah.
- Will phone home to Microsoft periodically to check for updates
Ubuntu actually does that last one too. Hell, for all I know, it does the first too, but I've never checked. Actually, no, wait, I know it does, because Firefox is the default browser, and that's getting all cloudy and "I can haz update?" these days.
OMG! UBUNTU IS SPYING ON ME!