Why the fuck would Microsoft care? You already bought the hardware that they made, whose price includes the software that they made. It's a silly restriction.
Note: on over 95% of Secure Boot consumer devices sold, it is mandatory (by Microsoft's own requirement) that the user be able to disable Secure Boot. The Surface Pro, for example, is perfectly capable of running Linux (natively, as well as in a VM), including Android (though the driver support in the Android-for-x86 builds that I've seen is lacking). Only on Windows RT and Windows Phone did they require that it *not* be disabled. I'm really not clear as to why they did that.
Oh, and it's already been bypassed on a different Windows RT device.
Or you could use.NET versions of those libraries (which often do exist) in which case you're fine once again. Also, as you implied but didn't quite state,.NET apps can P/Invoke native code regardless of architecture, so (for example) you can invoke native system libraries just fine.
Worth noting here that on 64-bit Windows, Notepad.exe is a 64-bit program. Third-party devs may still use 32-bit everywhere, but nearly all MS software and certainly all parts of Windows itself are natively 64-bit.
Actually,.NET applications *do* work on Windows RT... so long as you remove the prohibition on third-party desktop programs. Once you've done that, most.NET apps (minus a few old ones that were written for legacy versions of.NET that aren't supported on RT) will run fine un-modified.
You have correctly identified the problem, though.
Why, what an insightful comment! You know, aside from the fact that 95%+ of consumer machines which support Secure Boot also support (per mandate from Microsoft) that you be able to turn it off. Windows RT and Windows Phone 8 are the only systems I know of where the user is not allowed to disable Secure Boot, and neither OS line is selling very well. On every Win8 device, it is *mandatory* that the user be allowed to disable it. Clearly, this is all about giving the manufacturer more control!
Look on the bright side: he didn't have to work for the GP (*shudder*). I'll occasionally give KLOCs when talking about personal projects just as a rough indicator of how much development went into it, but it really doesn't matter; 100 lines of clean abstractions can save 20000 lines of bug-riddled copy-pasta, for example. It's more impressive if it's "I coded the X, Y, and Z features, with error chacking, and I did it in only 5KLOC of C including documentation comments, plus another KLOC of unit tests.
There are actually quite a few Windows applications which have been cross-compiled to RT (Win32 desktop or console apps, not WinRT apps). They require a "jailbreak" hack to run on RT, but that has been available for months.
Surface RT is 32-bit. There aren't any 64-bit ARM systems in production yet. I presume when there are, there will be a 64-bit ARM port; Surface RT already has 2GB of RAM.
If you think that's pre-NSA, you (to borrow a term from history) need your head examined. The entire point of that post was that the government can't be trusted with such power, because it leads to tyranny. You, not the GP, are more worthy of Troll moderation (sadly, I already posted in this thread).
Fine, pay $200 for the Humble Bundle (it's not "free", it's "pay what you want") and donate 90% (or whatever portion you feel is appropriate) to the EFF. It's still a good cause to support (both DRM-free content and the EFF, for that matter).
If you support things like this, take the time to send a donation to the EFF over this! They are largely funded by concerned citizens such a ourselves. There are many ways to send such donations - obviously through their website, but also while doing things like buying Humble Bundle games or attending DEF CON in a few weeks - and this is an excellent time to show your support.
You, personally, can help fight these abuses. That's what donating to the people filing lawsuits like this does: it helps promote our position in this fight.
Federal programs and federal lawyers are paid for with taxes. Legally speaking, you don't get to decide what those taxes go toward. However, you can choose to pay a bit more to help groups like the EFF fight against such misuse of your funds!
That restriction in RT was broken long ago, although it is (temporarily - it's already been broken in another RT device) back for 8.1.
The bigger problem is finding a browser that will compile for NT/ARM. There's a very small selection for CE/ARM, all of which are outdated, but that's not going to work. Even the open-source ones for NT/x86 are phenomenally non-portable, with admittedly decent reasons (things like the JIT compiler for Javascript and the assembly that Chrome uses to detour various Win32 APIs from the sandbox to its broker). There is already a WebKit-based (with interpreted JS) browser for RT, though.
Yes, they come with a microSDXC slot. Installing apps to it isn't strictly supported (although you can do it pretty easily using symlinks or junctions) but it's fine for media or (jailbroken & recompiled) desktop applications
There's a pretty good selection of "homebrew" for RT as well, including a lot of game emulators and also older open-sourced Windows games. Also, while the kernel and bootloader are indeed more locked down than the Touchpad, the userspace is actually more permissive; elevation to Admin rights is done through UAC as usual, and the typical Windows admin tools (policy editors, registry editor, MMC snap-ins for everything from device manager to certificates, powershell, the legacy control panel, and so on) are all present.
Of course, the desktop app signature restriction is in the kernel, which makes the jailbreak hack necessary. Fortunately, it's extremely easy to find, download, and use.
The Pro already sells just fine (contrary to Slashdot's never-with-citations snide comments; I know folks who work at MS (comes of being in the tech industry in this part of the country) and they have trouble keeping the up with demand. You can't buy a big clunky laptop with the Surface Pro's SSD, CPU, RAM, and resolution for $300 (I doubt you could get it for $600); are you insane? Throw in the capacitive touchscreen and Wacom stylus digitizer, ultra-thin keyboard, lightweight but absurdly durable vapor-deposited magnesium chassis, USB3, dual webcams, etc. and... yeah, no. The total manufacturing price is probably still well under $1000, but after all the additional expences of getting a product to market, $1200 is a good deal at that price.
Obviously, it might not be a good deal that you personally are interested in, but you do not represent the whole market. For people who want a portable, durable, and powerful computer usable either as a tablet or a laptop - and they do exist, for sure - it's an excellent price. The market is bearing it admirably.
RT... not so much. The hardware is excellent, but the OS really is stupid. By changing a single flag in the kernel, they could remove the "MS-signed-only" restriction from desktop apps (there has been a hack out there for months which does it for you at bootup). They could add "desktop apps compiled for ARM" to the already-existing dekstop apps (for x86) section of the store, in addition to the Metro-style apps. They could include an x86 dynamic recompilation layer - a single volunteer developer has hacked up a pretty good basic one already, and the stuff he's having trouble with is the stuff that MS (with their access to the Windows source code) could fix trivially - for running old or simple x86 apps without recompilation (since it thunks to the native ARM system libraries where possible, the performance is much better than one might expect, though still years behind modern x86).
Microsoft seems determined to drive that platform into the ground, though.
Zune Pass, aside from being renamed to Xbox Music, is alive and well. The ability to access it is built into Xboxes (XB1 and XB360), all Windows Phone devices, and all Windows 8 / Windows RT systems (minus a few that come without the default media playback software installed per EU requirements, but they can install it for free). The Zune hardware, and most of the brand, may be discontinued, but the music pass is very much still around.
Oh, and it doesn't use PlayForSure. I realize you were going for (and got) funny mods, and at this point I'm mostly being pedantic because I really have no idea what the difference between PFS and PlayReady is, but that's the name of the new scheme.
Your other arguments are valid, but the mountain launch does actually have merits. It's the same reason Colorado itself is a less-terrible launch site than you might think (Denver cuts a nice mile off the hardest portion of the launch, though the inclination is still a pain).
I'm guessing you're not *that* familiar with space launches... the higher you launch from, the closer you are to space. The number you quoted is based on instantaneous velocity at the Earth's surface, with no additional thrust (and no drag from air). If you're already at the gravitation midpoint where the attraction from earth equals that from the moon, the velocity needed to reach the moon approaches positive zero.
It's true that the few thousand feet (or a bit more, once you factor in equatorial bulge) from launching off an equatorial mountain doesn't substantially reduce the effect of Earth's gravity - we're already a few thousand miles from Earth's center of gravity - but it's that much less distance you have to carry the fully loaded (fuel is heavy!) spacecraft up through. Also, you really can't ignore drag; starting where the atmosphere is already thinner helps (and it thins rapidly).
Oh, and to put it in terms of escape velocity, the velocity needed to reach two kilometers (not a terribly impressive mountain) from the surface is approximately 200m/s. That's a couple percent saving in launch fuel, or that much more cargo you can carry. At the start of the launch, a bit less distance is a big deal.
The year-to-year is the really interesting thing; it indicates a strong trend in their favor. A few months after Windows RT came out, it was already more popular than the 1.5-years-older ChromeOS. However, it has not been growing at the same rate. Sounds like ChromeOS (much like Android, come to think of it) had a very slow and nearly abortive start, then began picking up a lot of momentum. We'll see how it goes.
For me personally, they're nigh-useless. Too reliant on an Internet connection, too limited in software capability, and way too cloudy. If I trust them to have decent anti-tracking capabilities (I don't at this time, but maybe there's some way to do it) then they're *slightly* better at web browsing than my phone.
Well, until somebody accesses your iCloud account and wipes everything (to take a prominent news story from the last couple years). Good luck remotely erasing the hard drive sitting near (but not presently connected to) my PC... I'll make it easier for you, it's not even in a vault or faraday cage!
You don't see anything evil in a politician trying to use an unarguably morally corrupt (slavery is fine if you treat them not too badly, stoning people to death is OK, rape isn't that bad so long as you pay her dad afterward, etc.) and scientifically indefensible (differentiation of species has happened and been recorded in within the timeframe of modern science, if the climate thing isn't enough) religious text as the basis for government policy? Especially when those policies, if widely adapted, will have a seriously detrimental effect on us (as in, the human race as a whole) over the next few decades? It's not even just climate change; the EPA has already helped reverse some of the worst damages of industrialization. Had any rivers catch fire near you lately? That used to happen due to how polluted they got.
Media badges are already present and required; sneaking by without one is grounds for scathing public humiliation and a (possibly literal, physical) boot out the nearest door.
"Fed" badges are unlikely to go anywhere, though. The reason that the media badges are meaningful is because they are something you can track; by their very nature, media personalities (even just faceless authors in a magazine) are people whose jobs are public. The feds... not so much. They are people whose job invites and often requires a degree of anonymity.
Also, I think you're seriously underestimating the paranoia of the hacker community. Many people at DEF CON are unwilling to talk about their "day job" at all, much less wear their employer's name on a badge. Even at the (far more business-oriented, not to mention expensive) Black Hat conference that happens right before DEF CON, where the default is to have your company's name on your badge, many people opt out of such identification.
... Wow. I never actually thought about that song's lyrics before. Now I feel like an idiot. If it wasn't actually written about a whistleblower, it may as well have been. That's a very good description of how working a government job, and deciding you don't like what your employer is doing, goes down (for people who take a less extreme approach than Snowden or Manning).
Slashdot Mirror
Why the fuck would Microsoft care? You already bought the hardware that they made, whose price includes the software that they made. It's a silly restriction.
Note: on over 95% of Secure Boot consumer devices sold, it is mandatory (by Microsoft's own requirement) that the user be able to disable Secure Boot. The Surface Pro, for example, is perfectly capable of running Linux (natively, as well as in a VM), including Android (though the driver support in the Android-for-x86 builds that I've seen is lacking). Only on Windows RT and Windows Phone did they require that it *not* be disabled. I'm really not clear as to why they did that.
Oh, and it's already been bypassed on a different Windows RT device.
A relevant point here: the cover doesn't have any batteries. On the other hand, you can't use it as a keyboard unless it's connected to the tablet.
Or you could use .NET versions of those libraries (which often do exist) in which case you're fine once again. Also, as you implied but didn't quite state, .NET apps can P/Invoke native code regardless of architecture, so (for example) you can invoke native system libraries just fine.
Worth noting here that on 64-bit Windows, Notepad.exe is a 64-bit program. Third-party devs may still use 32-bit everywhere, but nearly all MS software and certainly all parts of Windows itself are natively 64-bit.
Actually, .NET applications *do* work on Windows RT... so long as you remove the prohibition on third-party desktop programs. Once you've done that, most .NET apps (minus a few old ones that were written for legacy versions of .NET that aren't supported on RT) will run fine un-modified.
You have correctly identified the problem, though.
Why, what an insightful comment! You know, aside from the fact that 95%+ of consumer machines which support Secure Boot also support (per mandate from Microsoft) that you be able to turn it off. Windows RT and Windows Phone 8 are the only systems I know of where the user is not allowed to disable Secure Boot, and neither OS line is selling very well. On every Win8 device, it is *mandatory* that the user be allowed to disable it. Clearly, this is all about giving the manufacturer more control!
Look on the bright side: he didn't have to work for the GP (*shudder*). I'll occasionally give KLOCs when talking about personal projects just as a rough indicator of how much development went into it, but it really doesn't matter; 100 lines of clean abstractions can save 20000 lines of bug-riddled copy-pasta, for example. It's more impressive if it's "I coded the X, Y, and Z features, with error chacking, and I did it in only 5KLOC of C including documentation comments, plus another KLOC of unit tests.
There are actually quite a few Windows applications which have been cross-compiled to RT (Win32 desktop or console apps, not WinRT apps). They require a "jailbreak" hack to run on RT, but that has been available for months.
Also, you actually can use (a subset of) the Win32 API even in legit Windows Store apps. As a random example: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa364419(v=vs.85).aspx (look under the "Requirements" section).
Surface RT is 32-bit. There aren't any 64-bit ARM systems in production yet. I presume when there are, there will be a 64-bit ARM port; Surface RT already has 2GB of RAM.
If you think that's pre-NSA, you (to borrow a term from history) need your head examined. The entire point of that post was that the government can't be trusted with such power, because it leads to tyranny. You, not the GP, are more worthy of Troll moderation (sadly, I already posted in this thread).
Fine, pay $200 for the Humble Bundle (it's not "free", it's "pay what you want") and donate 90% (or whatever portion you feel is appropriate) to the EFF. It's still a good cause to support (both DRM-free content and the EFF, for that matter).
If you support things like this, take the time to send a donation to the EFF over this! They are largely funded by concerned citizens such a ourselves. There are many ways to send such donations - obviously through their website, but also while doing things like buying Humble Bundle games or attending DEF CON in a few weeks - and this is an excellent time to show your support.
You, personally, can help fight these abuses. That's what donating to the people filing lawsuits like this does: it helps promote our position in this fight.
Federal programs and federal lawyers are paid for with taxes. Legally speaking, you don't get to decide what those taxes go toward. However, you can choose to pay a bit more to help groups like the EFF fight against such misuse of your funds!
That restriction in RT was broken long ago, although it is (temporarily - it's already been broken in another RT device) back for 8.1.
The bigger problem is finding a browser that will compile for NT/ARM. There's a very small selection for CE/ARM, all of which are outdated, but that's not going to work. Even the open-source ones for NT/x86 are phenomenally non-portable, with admittedly decent reasons (things like the JIT compiler for Javascript and the assembly that Chrome uses to detour various Win32 APIs from the sandbox to its broker). There is already a WebKit-based (with interpreted JS) browser for RT, though.
Yes, they come with a microSDXC slot. Installing apps to it isn't strictly supported (although you can do it pretty easily using symlinks or junctions) but it's fine for media or (jailbroken & recompiled) desktop applications
There's a pretty good selection of "homebrew" for RT as well, including a lot of game emulators and also older open-sourced Windows games. Also, while the kernel and bootloader are indeed more locked down than the Touchpad, the userspace is actually more permissive; elevation to Admin rights is done through UAC as usual, and the typical Windows admin tools (policy editors, registry editor, MMC snap-ins for everything from device manager to certificates, powershell, the legacy control panel, and so on) are all present.
Of course, the desktop app signature restriction is in the kernel, which makes the jailbreak hack necessary. Fortunately, it's extremely easy to find, download, and use.
The Pro already sells just fine (contrary to Slashdot's never-with-citations snide comments; I know folks who work at MS (comes of being in the tech industry in this part of the country) and they have trouble keeping the up with demand. You can't buy a big clunky laptop with the Surface Pro's SSD, CPU, RAM, and resolution for $300 (I doubt you could get it for $600); are you insane? Throw in the capacitive touchscreen and Wacom stylus digitizer, ultra-thin keyboard, lightweight but absurdly durable vapor-deposited magnesium chassis, USB3, dual webcams, etc. and... yeah, no. The total manufacturing price is probably still well under $1000, but after all the additional expences of getting a product to market, $1200 is a good deal at that price.
Obviously, it might not be a good deal that you personally are interested in, but you do not represent the whole market. For people who want a portable, durable, and powerful computer usable either as a tablet or a laptop - and they do exist, for sure - it's an excellent price. The market is bearing it admirably.
RT... not so much. The hardware is excellent, but the OS really is stupid. By changing a single flag in the kernel, they could remove the "MS-signed-only" restriction from desktop apps (there has been a hack out there for months which does it for you at bootup). They could add "desktop apps compiled for ARM" to the already-existing dekstop apps (for x86) section of the store, in addition to the Metro-style apps. They could include an x86 dynamic recompilation layer - a single volunteer developer has hacked up a pretty good basic one already, and the stuff he's having trouble with is the stuff that MS (with their access to the Windows source code) could fix trivially - for running old or simple x86 apps without recompilation (since it thunks to the native ARM system libraries where possible, the performance is much better than one might expect, though still years behind modern x86).
Microsoft seems determined to drive that platform into the ground, though.
Zune Pass, aside from being renamed to Xbox Music, is alive and well. The ability to access it is built into Xboxes (XB1 and XB360), all Windows Phone devices, and all Windows 8 / Windows RT systems (minus a few that come without the default media playback software installed per EU requirements, but they can install it for free). The Zune hardware, and most of the brand, may be discontinued, but the music pass is very much still around.
Oh, and it doesn't use PlayForSure. I realize you were going for (and got) funny mods, and at this point I'm mostly being pedantic because I really have no idea what the difference between PFS and PlayReady is, but that's the name of the new scheme.
Your other arguments are valid, but the mountain launch does actually have merits. It's the same reason Colorado itself is a less-terrible launch site than you might think (Denver cuts a nice mile off the hardest portion of the launch, though the inclination is still a pain).
I'm guessing you're not *that* familiar with space launches... the higher you launch from, the closer you are to space. The number you quoted is based on instantaneous velocity at the Earth's surface, with no additional thrust (and no drag from air). If you're already at the gravitation midpoint where the attraction from earth equals that from the moon, the velocity needed to reach the moon approaches positive zero.
It's true that the few thousand feet (or a bit more, once you factor in equatorial bulge) from launching off an equatorial mountain doesn't substantially reduce the effect of Earth's gravity - we're already a few thousand miles from Earth's center of gravity - but it's that much less distance you have to carry the fully loaded (fuel is heavy!) spacecraft up through. Also, you really can't ignore drag; starting where the atmosphere is already thinner helps (and it thins rapidly).
Oh, and to put it in terms of escape velocity, the velocity needed to reach two kilometers (not a terribly impressive mountain) from the surface is approximately 200m/s. That's a couple percent saving in launch fuel, or that much more cargo you can carry. At the start of the launch, a bit less distance is a big deal.
The year-to-year is the really interesting thing; it indicates a strong trend in their favor. A few months after Windows RT came out, it was already more popular than the 1.5-years-older ChromeOS. However, it has not been growing at the same rate. Sounds like ChromeOS (much like Android, come to think of it) had a very slow and nearly abortive start, then began picking up a lot of momentum. We'll see how it goes.
For me personally, they're nigh-useless. Too reliant on an Internet connection, too limited in software capability, and way too cloudy. If I trust them to have decent anti-tracking capabilities (I don't at this time, but maybe there's some way to do it) then they're *slightly* better at web browsing than my phone.
Well, until somebody accesses your iCloud account and wipes everything (to take a prominent news story from the last couple years). Good luck remotely erasing the hard drive sitting near (but not presently connected to) my PC... I'll make it easier for you, it's not even in a vault or faraday cage!
You don't see anything evil in a politician trying to use an unarguably morally corrupt (slavery is fine if you treat them not too badly, stoning people to death is OK, rape isn't that bad so long as you pay her dad afterward, etc.) and scientifically indefensible (differentiation of species has happened and been recorded in within the timeframe of modern science, if the climate thing isn't enough) religious text as the basis for government policy? Especially when those policies, if widely adapted, will have a seriously detrimental effect on us (as in, the human race as a whole) over the next few decades? It's not even just climate change; the EPA has already helped reverse some of the worst damages of industrialization. Had any rivers catch fire near you lately? That used to happen due to how polluted they got.
Media badges are already present and required; sneaking by without one is grounds for scathing public humiliation and a (possibly literal, physical) boot out the nearest door.
"Fed" badges are unlikely to go anywhere, though. The reason that the media badges are meaningful is because they are something you can track; by their very nature, media personalities (even just faceless authors in a magazine) are people whose jobs are public. The feds... not so much. They are people whose job invites and often requires a degree of anonymity.
Also, I think you're seriously underestimating the paranoia of the hacker community. Many people at DEF CON are unwilling to talk about their "day job" at all, much less wear their employer's name on a badge. Even at the (far more business-oriented, not to mention expensive) Black Hat conference that happens right before DEF CON, where the default is to have your company's name on your badge, many people opt out of such identification.
... Wow. I never actually thought about that song's lyrics before. Now I feel like an idiot. If it wasn't actually written about a whistleblower, it may as well have been. That's a very good description of how working a government job, and deciding you don't like what your employer is doing, goes down (for people who take a less extreme approach than Snowden or Manning).
What's Microsoft market share in phones?
Better than all of desktop Linux put together...
Still single-digit worldwide (though double digit in some markets), but that doesn't mean anything very important. Android was once tiny too.
The latter. A 920 is at least $450 off contract; I can only assume this will be more.