BTW, so far thousands of people have 'disagreed' with Matt and have not, so far as I can tell, been subject to 'personal attacks on his blog'. In fact, the few people Matt 'attacked' on his blog did not directly 'disagree with Matt' at all. They aired views that Matt found unacceptable, using their freedom of speech, so Matt used his freedom of speech to say that he found their views unacceptable. Do try and keep up.
Oh, goody, once again with the 'ad hominem' canard.
An 'ad hominem' argument is only intrinsically a bad thing if you are attempting to debate a topic using strict formal logic.
If what you are attempting to do is point out that someone holds repugnant personal views, then 'ad hominem' is the only way to do it. Saying that a racist is a racist is an 'ad hominem' attack. Does that make it wrong?
"Why shouldn't I be able to put Linux or any other OS compiled for ARM on an ARM machine? An ARM laptop running Linux would be a nice thing with longer battery life than what can be found with Intel processors. Why do I have to supplicate and offer $$ to Redmond, from where I did not acquire the OS?"
You don't. Microsoft's requirements for Windows RT only apply, pretty obviously, to Windows RT machines. Don't agree with them? Don't buy a Windows RT machine. Same way that, if you don't agree with Apple's restrictions, you don't buy an iPhone, or Motorola/Droid, or etc etc.
Microsoft has no kind of monopoly in the ARM market, in fact they're a minor player. You can buy more ARM hardware with a non-Microsoft OS than ARM hardware with a Microsoft OS.
This incarnation of shim isn't intended for the big folks like Fedora, SUSE and Debian, it's for small distros. It's basically a process hack.
The big folks will build a shim package which inherently trusts their own signing key, and then work with Microsoft to have that signed. All the major distros are currently going through that process. In this version of the process, Microsoft essentially says 'we trust the Fedora project / the SUSE project / the Debian project / whatever to competently manage a bootchain'. They sign each distro's build of shim to declare that. From then on, the distro can manage everything above the shim level - grub2, the kernel, and userland - independently, as all of that stuff is signed with *their own* key, not with Microsoft's key. Microsoft signs the 'shim' layer. shim itself is a neat process hack that allows trust to be reposed in distro vendors without them actually having to get their own SB firmware keys distributed with systems.
This incarnation of shim is similar, but slightly different. It doesn't trust any particular key inherently. It is designed such that a small distro can package it with their own signing key, and then on boot, it requires the user to explicitly state that they trust that signing key. So it provides a mechanism by which you can securely state that you trust the authors of Bob's Little Linux Distro to securely manage a bootchain. So long as there is a mechanism by which you explicitly state that, Microsoft is happy. So it's similar to the 'big folks' process, but with the added wrinkle that this build of shim doesn't just trust one 'big folk' key inherently, it requires that the user explicitly state that they trust whichever key it is bundled with.
If you're an OS provider and you're willing to go through the trouble of working with Microsoft directly to have a shim build that trusts your own key signed - which involves proving to Microsoft's satisfaction that you're a competent OS vendor - you can go with that process, and your users won't have to explicitly trust your key, because Microsoft 'trusts it for them'. If you don't want to go to that trouble, you can use this version of shim, which saves you having to work directly with Microsoft, but requires your users to take a couple of manual steps which have the effect of declaring that they explicitly trust your key (i.e. you).
Except that major distros will have their bootchain signed by Microsoft directly, and small distros can use this version of shim, which is precisely designed - with the co-operation of Microsoft, it is *signed by Microsoft* - to allow small distros which don't want to go to the trouble of directly working with Microsoft to have their bootchain signed to boot on SB systems with the Microsoft key.
You might try reading the OP to understand what this is for, how it works, and who was involved in designing it.
This is a build of shim that's signed by Microsoft. It has particular properties. It is intended to be distributed by small Linux distros, with their own key as config data. When you boot it, it offers you the option to trust a single specific key - the key it was provided to you with. You have to specifically perform a certain operation to trust the key.
What all this wiggling achieves is allow to say 'I trust the entity that provided me with this key to provide an operating system for my machine'. The safeguards prevent it from being used for malware, unless you're _really_ dumb and, when this screen pops up on your system after you install something you didn't think was an operating system, you carefully jump through all the hoops to allow it to nerf your system.
So Microsoft is happy because the malware path is very unlikely to occur, and the Linux distributor is happy because if the person really is installing an alternative OS, all they have to do is navigate a menu once in order to say that OS's key is trusted, and from then on, that OS can function with SB enabled indefinitely.
Fedora has cinnamon, LXDE, Xfce and Sugar (Fedora is the basis of the official Sugar Labs builds, actually), and a bunch of others. MATE just happens to be getting some press at the moment.
That's the whole point of this effort: blessing a specific set of extensions means that special effort will be taken to make sure they don't break from release to release.
It seems like some people in this thread have a really weird image of Belize.
It's a former British colony with a decent economy, functioning parliamentary democracy and British style independent judiciary. It is not a 'third-world hellhole' into whose prisons one disappears and never returns. It has issues with drug-related gang violence and corruption, but then so do other developed countries with independent judiciaries, like for instance _Britain_. And the U.S.
It's not like it takes long to look it up, sheesh. Half the stuff about how sketchy Belize is came from McAfee in the first damn place.
Belize isn't a third world country, but apart from that, nice rant. It's a former British colony with a somewhat more developed and stable economy than many surrounding countries, and most people wouldn't count *those* as 'third world'.
I only read the summary and I still figured out exactly what had happened here. It's not very difficult, seeing as how a 'rate' and a 'score' are fundamentally different things. But it still appears to have escaped the summarizer and most of the commenters. Sigh.
The majority party in a parliamentary democracy are not 'essentially dictators'. Such hyperbole is absurd and only tends to make people not want to take you seriously.
I'm well aware of the advantages and limitations of various electoral systems, thanks. Personally I favour proportional representation, but it has its own drawbacks and one can certainly reasonably sustain an argument in favour of various other systems. I don't think anyone's invented the perfect democracy yet.
Well, Ohio voted for Obama. So perhaps that's an indication that they *should* have played to the centre. You make a decent point, but it would only have been a _good_ point if Romney had actually won Ohio...
Because sometimes it doesn't happen that way, viz 2000. It works fine if the votes in every state of 49% for A and 51% for B, but if the votes in 26 states are 51% A and 49% B and the votes in 25 states are 99% B and 1% A, A wins (simplification, but you get the point). That seems a problem.
(of course the problem in 2000 was more to do with over-representation of under-populated states, but eh. that's a separate effect.) it is clearly shown that your system does not always result in the guy with the most votes winning.
That's the most ridiculous post in this thread, and in a Slashdot politics thread, that's saying something. What comparison would you like us to make? That the approval rating of Bush's left testicle was actually quite high?
to be fair, reading the site now, I see a fairly sincere apology to Nate Silver and an article where he acknowledges his methodology was wrong, congratulates Nate Silver on being right, and seems to say he won't be continuing with the site in future.
so in marked contrast to many political nutbars of various stripes, he actually appears to acknowledge when he's wrong, instead of frothing at the mouth about media bias and whatnot.
well, they call California and New York one minute after the poll closes too. they don't do it one minute before to avoid charges that they could affect the result.
Slashdot Mirror
You have to explicitly state that you trust the key it is bundled with. This doesn't happen automatically.
BTW, so far thousands of people have 'disagreed' with Matt and have not, so far as I can tell, been subject to 'personal attacks on his blog'. In fact, the few people Matt 'attacked' on his blog did not directly 'disagree with Matt' at all. They aired views that Matt found unacceptable, using their freedom of speech, so Matt used his freedom of speech to say that he found their views unacceptable. Do try and keep up.
Oh, goody, once again with the 'ad hominem' canard.
An 'ad hominem' argument is only intrinsically a bad thing if you are attempting to debate a topic using strict formal logic.
If what you are attempting to do is point out that someone holds repugnant personal views, then 'ad hominem' is the only way to do it. Saying that a racist is a racist is an 'ad hominem' attack. Does that make it wrong?
"Why shouldn't I be able to put Linux or any other OS compiled for ARM on an ARM machine? An ARM laptop running Linux would be a nice thing with longer battery life than what can be found with Intel processors. Why do I have to supplicate and offer $$ to Redmond, from where I did not acquire the OS?"
You don't. Microsoft's requirements for Windows RT only apply, pretty obviously, to Windows RT machines. Don't agree with them? Don't buy a Windows RT machine. Same way that, if you don't agree with Apple's restrictions, you don't buy an iPhone, or Motorola/Droid, or etc etc.
Microsoft has no kind of monopoly in the ARM market, in fact they're a minor player. You can buy more ARM hardware with a non-Microsoft OS than ARM hardware with a Microsoft OS.
This is mostly correct but not quite.
This incarnation of shim isn't intended for the big folks like Fedora, SUSE and Debian, it's for small distros. It's basically a process hack.
The big folks will build a shim package which inherently trusts their own signing key, and then work with Microsoft to have that signed. All the major distros are currently going through that process. In this version of the process, Microsoft essentially says 'we trust the Fedora project / the SUSE project / the Debian project / whatever to competently manage a bootchain'. They sign each distro's build of shim to declare that. From then on, the distro can manage everything above the shim level - grub2, the kernel, and userland - independently, as all of that stuff is signed with *their own* key, not with Microsoft's key. Microsoft signs the 'shim' layer. shim itself is a neat process hack that allows trust to be reposed in distro vendors without them actually having to get their own SB firmware keys distributed with systems.
This incarnation of shim is similar, but slightly different. It doesn't trust any particular key inherently. It is designed such that a small distro can package it with their own signing key, and then on boot, it requires the user to explicitly state that they trust that signing key. So it provides a mechanism by which you can securely state that you trust the authors of Bob's Little Linux Distro to securely manage a bootchain. So long as there is a mechanism by which you explicitly state that, Microsoft is happy. So it's similar to the 'big folks' process, but with the added wrinkle that this build of shim doesn't just trust one 'big folk' key inherently, it requires that the user explicitly state that they trust whichever key it is bundled with.
If you're an OS provider and you're willing to go through the trouble of working with Microsoft directly to have a shim build that trusts your own key signed - which involves proving to Microsoft's satisfaction that you're a competent OS vendor - you can go with that process, and your users won't have to explicitly trust your key, because Microsoft 'trusts it for them'. If you don't want to go to that trouble, you can use this version of shim, which saves you having to work directly with Microsoft, but requires your users to take a couple of manual steps which have the effect of declaring that they explicitly trust your key (i.e. you).
Except that major distros will have their bootchain signed by Microsoft directly, and small distros can use this version of shim, which is precisely designed - with the co-operation of Microsoft, it is *signed by Microsoft* - to allow small distros which don't want to go to the trouble of directly working with Microsoft to have their bootchain signed to boot on SB systems with the Microsoft key.
You might try reading the OP to understand what this is for, how it works, and who was involved in designing it.
You are missing that it does not automatically trust anything: it requires user interaction to trust a key.
It is signed with Microsoft's key.
Try reading the OP.
This is a build of shim that's signed by Microsoft. It has particular properties. It is intended to be distributed by small Linux distros, with their own key as config data. When you boot it, it offers you the option to trust a single specific key - the key it was provided to you with. You have to specifically perform a certain operation to trust the key.
What all this wiggling achieves is allow to say 'I trust the entity that provided me with this key to provide an operating system for my machine'. The safeguards prevent it from being used for malware, unless you're _really_ dumb and, when this screen pops up on your system after you install something you didn't think was an operating system, you carefully jump through all the hoops to allow it to nerf your system.
So Microsoft is happy because the malware path is very unlikely to occur, and the Linux distributor is happy because if the person really is installing an alternative OS, all they have to do is navigate a menu once in order to say that OS's key is trusted, and from then on, that OS can function with SB enabled indefinitely.
Clear?
If you have high-value coins you start carrying them around.
I carry toonies, loonies and quarters, everything else goes in the change jar. Or rather, money pig.
Neither. Both GNOME 2 and GNOME 3 can handle high DPI pretty well, I just think the questioner failed in finding out how to do it.
mod parent up as 'informative', it is correct in all particulars. I've been running GNOME on high-res displays for years, it can handle it fine.
This story is about the UK, which is a member state of the EU. It is not about the US.
Fedora has cinnamon, LXDE, Xfce and Sugar (Fedora is the basis of the official Sugar Labs builds, actually), and a bunch of others. MATE just happens to be getting some press at the moment.
That's the whole point of this effort: blessing a specific set of extensions means that special effort will be taken to make sure they don't break from release to release.
It seems like some people in this thread have a really weird image of Belize.
It's a former British colony with a decent economy, functioning parliamentary democracy and British style independent judiciary. It is not a 'third-world hellhole' into whose prisons one disappears and never returns. It has issues with drug-related gang violence and corruption, but then so do other developed countries with independent judiciaries, like for instance _Britain_. And the U.S.
It's not like it takes long to look it up, sheesh. Half the stuff about how sketchy Belize is came from McAfee in the first damn place.
Belize isn't a third world country, but apart from that, nice rant. It's a former British colony with a somewhat more developed and stable economy than many surrounding countries, and most people wouldn't count *those* as 'third world'.
"The State has these kids from Kindergarten to ~ age 17"
For about a third of half of the days of the year...assuming they actually show up.
The rest of the time, their life experiences are likely to differ substantially.
I only read the summary and I still figured out exactly what had happened here. It's not very difficult, seeing as how a 'rate' and a 'score' are fundamentally different things. But it still appears to have escaped the summarizer and most of the commenters. Sigh.
The majority party in a parliamentary democracy are not 'essentially dictators'. Such hyperbole is absurd and only tends to make people not want to take you seriously.
I'm well aware of the advantages and limitations of various electoral systems, thanks. Personally I favour proportional representation, but it has its own drawbacks and one can certainly reasonably sustain an argument in favour of various other systems. I don't think anyone's invented the perfect democracy yet.
Well, Ohio voted for Obama. So perhaps that's an indication that they *should* have played to the centre. You make a decent point, but it would only have been a _good_ point if Romney had actually won Ohio...
Because sometimes it doesn't happen that way, viz 2000. It works fine if the votes in every state of 49% for A and 51% for B, but if the votes in 26 states are 51% A and 49% B and the votes in 25 states are 99% B and 1% A, A wins (simplification, but you get the point). That seems a problem.
(of course the problem in 2000 was more to do with over-representation of under-populated states, but eh. that's a separate effect.) it is clearly shown that your system does not always result in the guy with the most votes winning.
That's the most ridiculous post in this thread, and in a Slashdot politics thread, that's saying something. What comparison would you like us to make? That the approval rating of Bush's left testicle was actually quite high?
to be fair, reading the site now, I see a fairly sincere apology to Nate Silver and an article where he acknowledges his methodology was wrong, congratulates Nate Silver on being right, and seems to say he won't be continuing with the site in future.
so in marked contrast to many political nutbars of various stripes, he actually appears to acknowledge when he's wrong, instead of frothing at the mouth about media bias and whatnot.
well, they call California and New York one minute after the poll closes too. they don't do it one minute before to avoid charges that they could affect the result.