It's a shame that it's the de-facto standard for a file system that you can plug into anything.
If the card was formatted as ext2, it wouldn't be a patent issue any more - it's a shame about the droves of users complaining about not being able to read their SD card on Windows...
You can get ext2 file system drivers for Windows (and they've been available for some time), but MS choose not to integrate any kind of support for "foreign" file systems into their OS.
A question: does UEFI allow users to install additional keys later on?
I believe it does, but only from an OS that booted in trusted mode.
You may be able to do it from the UEFI interface,itself, but it would be kind of ironic to have to install Windows to "bless" your machine to secure-boot Linux.
What if the technical reason is "MS Office will only connect to servers which sign their RPC calls with a particular private key (that MS just happens to have)"?
I'm not saying this is the case. It's just trivially easy to ensure that your program* won't play ball with the network services of a competitor.
The reverse is true - Google had no option to bid on the project, because the RFP specified that the only product that would fulfil the requirements was Microsoft Office.
If the rules require you to have an RFP in the first place, they are intended to support competition. If you carefully phrase your RFP to only permit bids from one vendor, you are circumventing that intention.
It's like you requesting bids from paint manufacturers for white paint to paint your house with, and inserting a clause that says "Must be Dulux® brand paint"
byobu is a nice alternative. It's a wrapper on `screen`, but it gives you shortcut keys to rapidly switch between terminals and create new ones (amongst other things).
It doesn't carry all the weight of setting up a whole bunch of client libraries on the server and an X server on the client.
Yeah, I think $9 is probably reasonable, given the labour costs, having to hire people qualified as pharmacists, having to keep good stocks of a lot of medicine and thus facing a reasonably expensive wastage problem, etc. Do you need a 'scrip to get those inhalers, or is the pharmacy in Thailand just running on market forces?
Our system reinforces this point with the standard prescription charge - you're really paying for the overhead, when the drugs are that cheap. Putting the BNF list price in there really underscores what the inhaler actually costs though (not even to produce - that's the wholesale price so includes the manufacturers profits).
The worst thing Nixon did to the American people was promote HMOs.
Instead of an organisation dedicated to maintaining your health, you got organisations dedicated to trying to deny you healthcare to make as much profit as possible.
You'd pay about $11.40 in the UK - but that's because it's the standard prescription charge. You'd pay that even if the prescription had 5 inhalers on it, though.
The actual list price cost the NHS pays for them is £1.50
(yes, I'm making this comment a lot on this article. It deserves saying.)
In the UK, the cost of an albuterol inhaler to the National Health Service is £1.50 (about $2.30)
You'd pay the standard prescription fee (£7.40 or $11.30) for it over the pharmacy counter. Which is true of any medication or medical device in the UK, unless you are exempt (basically, only non-pregnant, employed, adults of working age pay for prescription drugs here. And we don't pay for contraceptive medicine.)
It doesn't. The UK BNF [1] list price (the amount it costs the National Health Service) for a 200-dose albuterol inhaler is £1.50 (about $2.30)
The manufacturer is still making a profit at that price - it's not some socialist hippy factory churning out inhalers for the state. It's just what happens when you apply the bargaining power of a whole country.
[1] Registration required, but an invaluable resource for all manner of purposes to do with drugs.
The pharmaceutical companies probably welcomed this move. The existing CFC laden medication is available over the counter, which means that it's cheaper. By banning it, they get to sell more of their prescription-only substitutes, which cost 1.5 - 3x more.
Although I have to say, you're being screwed anyway. We don't have an over-the-counter equivalent in the UK. The drug in question is an epinephrine inhaler, which is a poor choice as a bronchodilator because it has too many side effects like elevated heart rate. The prescription replacement, albuterol (we call is salbutamol) is a selective beta-2 adrenoceptor agonist - it stimulates the epinephrine receptors in the air passages, but not the ones in your heart, so fewer side effects like dry mouth and palpitations.
You're paying $20 over the internet for a "cheap" epinephrine inhaler (which as we explain, is an inferior medicine for the purpose). You'll pay a minimum of $30 for a prescribed albuterol inhaler.
Our list price (for our national health service) for a 200 dose albuterol inhaler is £1.50 ( about $2.30 )
Who's screwing you? Ah yes, the evil corporations, the ones who manufacture the fucking medicine.... the HMOs..... etc, etc, etc.
How many non-technical home users install a new OS on their hardware?
You're right, it's not many. The point is, that even all the UEFI implementations have a setting to disable secure boot, or add signing keys to the keystore, that is puts an obstacle in the way of non-technical users trying Linux out.
Currently, many systems are configured such that you can boot from a LiveCD by default. People can try it out without any risk.
If you have to turn off an option that likely has a help option that says "Don't turn this off, for security reasons", people are going to be dissuaded. They're going to be dissuaded just because they have to know that the option even exists. If they don't, what's going to happen?
Perhaps UEFI will say something like "You inserted a boot media that has an insecure bootloader. It may contain viruses or other malware. Do you really want to boot this?". And this will deter a few more (although not so many, if the number of people installing malware via extra smiley sets for their IM client is any indication..)
Those of us who see the value of Free Software are a niche market, but currently, we are a niche market who can buy commodity hardware that everyone else buys. Soon we may be a niche market that has to carefully screen our purchases. Manufacturers tend to charge more for niche products (justifiably, because they have fewer economies of scale) which means that some of us will inevitably find themselves priced out of the market, thus reducing adoption.
They didn't "force" it to be enabled. They merely require it if you want to put the "Designed for Windows 8" sticker on your PC.
And let's face it, what manufacturer isn't going to want that sticker? They're all controlled by risk-averse corporate drones who know the value of marketing. They know that people will probably choose the one with the sticker, so they MUST have the sticker themselves.
Currently you can boot your PC from, for example, a LiveCD, by default in many cases.
What this will require is that you enter your BIOS, turn off an option that may not be there to turn off [1], and is probably marked with a warning that says "Don't turn this off for security reasons!!!!". Which will put many people off. Linux adoption is a small fraction ; what this will do is whittle down that small fraction a bit more, as people who can't figure it out will just give up and possibly even badmouth Linux as being difficult [2] because they couldn't get it to work.
[1] Why leave it out? Fewer support calls when someone turns it off by accident. Or maybe someone suggested you might... I wonder who. [2] Yes, installing Linux is probably beyond many users. But then, so is installing Windows - the only difference is Windows comes pre-installed for the most part. Having installed both, I can honestly say that installing Linux is now easier and faster than installing Windows ever has been (although it was once atrociously difficult).
UEFI supports PXE ; and if the remote bootloader image is correctly signed, then it will boot, so it's not an issue to produce OS images, as long as you don't change components of the chain of trust (the bootloader, the kernel, drivers, etc).
Your point about planned obsolescence is well made ; changing the signing keys for each OS release would, in the absence of a way of loading new keys, render a motherboard unable to boot that release in secure mode. Of course, the same applies to all "other operating systems", this one just happens to be Windows 9.
While it's unlikely that secure mode will be absolutely essential for this release of Windows, you can imagine that some features might depend on it - like certain media features.
Yeah, they made a movie about that... I'm sure international governments would be really comfortable with the idea of a giant solar reflector in space...
Once you have a trusted bootloader, anything the bootloader then loads can also refuse to load anything that isn't signed. It's the foundation of a rootkit-proof system, in theory.
Windows 7 X64 already refuses to load third-party drivers that aren't signed, unless you are in a developers mode for the purpose of... developing new device drivers. This dissuades people from installing virtual devices that do things like dump audio straight to disk.
If everything that has access to ring0 has to be signed, then that is pretty rootkit-resistant. You'd only be able to have a persistent exploit via userspace, which is far less dangerous.
The thing is, a piece of tape is enough to keep most people out of, for example, a crime scene.
Any impediment to trying out Linux will reduce it's adoption.
"Say whut? I have to disable an important security feature to try out your hippy communOS LiveCD? Ain't that a bit unsafe?"
And providing a means for you to just call the OEM and get an unlock key would make THEM responsible for any cracker that just waltzed into your office, called the support line, and rooted your computers. Hardware manufacturers are not going to even think about spending the money to populate a call centre, let alone take responsibility for it.
It's a masterstroke on the part of MS - only people who *already* know about Linux will go through all the pain required to run it.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a shame that it's the de-facto standard for a file system that you can plug into anything.
If the card was formatted as ext2, it wouldn't be a patent issue any more - it's a shame about the droves of users complaining about not being able to read their SD card on Windows...
You can get ext2 file system drivers for Windows (and they've been available for some time), but MS choose not to integrate any kind of support for "foreign" file systems into their OS.
Ballmer, not Jobs.
Steve? Is that you?
You know we've told you being careful before.
yours sincerely
Microsoft Legal Department
PS : thanks for the fruit basket. The Mangos really cheered up my wife.
Like "Hey, we'll give you preferential rates for OEM Windows 8 licenses if you have a locked bootloader."
A question: does UEFI allow users to install additional keys later on?
I believe it does, but only from an OS that booted in trusted mode.
You may be able to do it from the UEFI interface,itself, but it would be kind of ironic to have to install Windows to "bless" your machine to secure-boot Linux.
What if the technical reason is "MS Office will only connect to servers which sign their RPC calls with a particular private key (that MS just happens to have)"?
I'm not saying this is the case. It's just trivially easy to ensure that your program* won't play ball with the network services of a competitor.
* Closed source and un-cracked
The reverse is true - Google had no option to bid on the project, because the RFP specified that the only product that would fulfil the requirements was Microsoft Office.
If the rules require you to have an RFP in the first place, they are intended to support competition. If you carefully phrase your RFP to only permit bids from one vendor, you are circumventing that intention.
It's like you requesting bids from paint manufacturers for white paint to paint your house with, and inserting a clause that says "Must be Dulux® brand paint"
When you don't have the GUI...
byobu is a nice alternative. It's a wrapper on `screen`, but it gives you shortcut keys to rapidly switch between terminals and create new ones (amongst other things).
It doesn't carry all the weight of setting up a whole bunch of client libraries on the server and an X server on the client.
Businesses don't care about YOUR overheads. That's an externality.
Who's to say the tyre merchants and fuel stations won't subsidise this, so you spend more with them too?
Unless it was the wealthiest 1% of us, not very much...
Such a common usage, that find has an option to make it even easier...
find _directory_ -name Thumbs.db -delete
Yeah, I think $9 is probably reasonable, given the labour costs, having to hire people qualified as pharmacists, having to keep good stocks of a lot of medicine and thus facing a reasonably expensive wastage problem, etc. Do you need a 'scrip to get those inhalers, or is the pharmacy in Thailand just running on market forces?
Our system reinforces this point with the standard prescription charge - you're really paying for the overhead, when the drugs are that cheap. Putting the BNF list price in there really underscores what the inhaler actually costs though (not even to produce - that's the wholesale price so includes the manufacturers profits).
The worst thing Nixon did to the American people was promote HMOs.
Instead of an organisation dedicated to maintaining your health, you got organisations dedicated to trying to deny you healthcare to make as much profit as possible.
And that's still a pretty good markup.
You'd pay about $11.40 in the UK - but that's because it's the standard prescription charge. You'd pay that even if the prescription had 5 inhalers on it, though.
The actual list price cost the NHS pays for them is £1.50
(yes, I'm making this comment a lot on this article. It deserves saying.)
In the UK, the cost of an albuterol inhaler to the National Health Service is £1.50 (about $2.30)
You'd pay the standard prescription fee (£7.40 or $11.30) for it over the pharmacy counter. Which is true of any medication or medical device in the UK, unless you are exempt (basically, only non-pregnant, employed, adults of working age pay for prescription drugs here. And we don't pay for contraceptive medicine.)
why does an asthma inhaler cost $60
It doesn't. The UK BNF [1] list price (the amount it costs the National Health Service) for a 200-dose albuterol inhaler is £1.50 (about $2.30)
The manufacturer is still making a profit at that price - it's not some socialist hippy factory churning out inhalers for the state. It's just what happens when you apply the bargaining power of a whole country.
[1] Registration required, but an invaluable resource for all manner of purposes to do with drugs.
The pharmaceutical companies probably welcomed this move. The existing CFC laden medication is available over the counter, which means that it's cheaper. By banning it, they get to sell more of their prescription-only substitutes, which cost 1.5 - 3x more.
Although I have to say, you're being screwed anyway. We don't have an over-the-counter equivalent in the UK. The drug in question is an epinephrine inhaler, which is a poor choice as a bronchodilator because it has too many side effects like elevated heart rate. The prescription replacement, albuterol (we call is salbutamol) is a selective beta-2 adrenoceptor agonist - it stimulates the epinephrine receptors in the air passages, but not the ones in your heart, so fewer side effects like dry mouth and palpitations.
You're paying $20 over the internet for a "cheap" epinephrine inhaler (which as we explain, is an inferior medicine for the purpose).
You'll pay a minimum of $30 for a prescribed albuterol inhaler.
Our list price (for our national health service) for a 200 dose albuterol inhaler is £1.50 ( about $2.30 )
Who's screwing you? Ah yes, the evil corporations, the ones who manufacture the fucking medicine.... the HMOs..... etc, etc, etc.
How many non-technical home users install a new OS on their hardware?
You're right, it's not many. The point is, that even all the UEFI implementations have a setting to disable secure boot, or add signing keys to the keystore, that is puts an obstacle in the way of non-technical users trying Linux out.
Currently, many systems are configured such that you can boot from a LiveCD by default. People can try it out without any risk.
If you have to turn off an option that likely has a help option that says "Don't turn this off, for security reasons", people are going to be dissuaded. They're going to be dissuaded just because they have to know that the option even exists. If they don't, what's going to happen?
Perhaps UEFI will say something like "You inserted a boot media that has an insecure bootloader. It may contain viruses or other malware. Do you really want to boot this?". And this will deter a few more (although not so many, if the number of people installing malware via extra smiley sets for their IM client is any indication..)
Those of us who see the value of Free Software are a niche market, but currently, we are a niche market who can buy commodity hardware that everyone else buys. Soon we may be a niche market that has to carefully screen our purchases. Manufacturers tend to charge more for niche products (justifiably, because they have fewer economies of scale) which means that some of us will inevitably find themselves priced out of the market, thus reducing adoption.
They didn't "force" it to be enabled. They merely require it if you want to put the "Designed for Windows 8" sticker on your PC.
And let's face it, what manufacturer isn't going to want that sticker? They're all controlled by risk-averse corporate drones who know the value of marketing. They know that people will probably choose the one with the sticker, so they MUST have the sticker themselves.
Currently you can boot your PC from, for example, a LiveCD, by default in many cases.
What this will require is that you enter your BIOS, turn off an option that may not be there to turn off [1], and is probably marked with a warning that says "Don't turn this off for security reasons!!!!". Which will put many people off. Linux adoption is a small fraction ; what this will do is whittle down that small fraction a bit more, as people who can't figure it out will just give up and possibly even badmouth Linux as being difficult [2] because they couldn't get it to work.
[1] Why leave it out? Fewer support calls when someone turns it off by accident. Or maybe someone suggested you might... I wonder who.
[2] Yes, installing Linux is probably beyond many users. But then, so is installing Windows - the only difference is Windows comes pre-installed for the most part. Having installed both, I can honestly say that installing Linux is now easier and faster than installing Windows ever has been (although it was once atrociously difficult).
UEFI supports PXE ; and if the remote bootloader image is correctly signed, then it will boot, so it's not an issue to produce OS images, as long as you don't change components of the chain of trust (the bootloader, the kernel, drivers, etc).
Your point about planned obsolescence is well made ; changing the signing keys for each OS release would, in the absence of a way of loading new keys, render a motherboard unable to boot that release in secure mode. Of course, the same applies to all "other operating systems", this one just happens to be Windows 9.
While it's unlikely that secure mode will be absolutely essential for this release of Windows, you can imagine that some features might depend on it - like certain media features.
Yeah, but what vendor isn't going to want aim at that market? They are the majority. Therefore every vendor will be striving to qualify.
Yeah, they made a movie about that... I'm sure international governments would be really comfortable with the idea of a giant solar reflector in space...
Once you have a trusted bootloader, anything the bootloader then loads can also refuse to load anything that isn't signed. It's the foundation of a rootkit-proof system, in theory.
Windows 7 X64 already refuses to load third-party drivers that aren't signed, unless you are in a developers mode for the purpose of ... developing new device drivers. This dissuades people from installing virtual devices that do things like dump audio straight to disk.
If everything that has access to ring0 has to be signed, then that is pretty rootkit-resistant. You'd only be able to have a persistent exploit via userspace, which is far less dangerous.
Build your own... motherboard? That's the level at which this is enforced.
The thing is, a piece of tape is enough to keep most people out of, for example, a crime scene.
Any impediment to trying out Linux will reduce it's adoption.
"Say whut? I have to disable an important security feature to try out your hippy communOS LiveCD? Ain't that a bit unsafe?"
And providing a means for you to just call the OEM and get an unlock key would make THEM responsible for any cracker that just waltzed into your office, called the support line, and rooted your computers. Hardware manufacturers are not going to even think about spending the money to populate a call centre, let alone take responsibility for it.
It's a masterstroke on the part of MS - only people who *already* know about Linux will go through all the pain required to run it.