For whatever reason, most of the "serious" discussion groups I'm in (working groups, academic discussions, etc.) don't seem to have moved from listservs to webforums
Probably because the interface to web forums is so terrible when compared to a well developed mail client. I have seen serious discussion lists try to switch to web forums, and the result has usually been on of the following three outcomes:
The entire group falls apart because they prematurely kill the mailing list, and nobody is motivated to rejoin.
Nobody ever goes to the forum, everyone keeps posting to the list.
The forum becomes a place for people who are less serious, while the serious discussions remain on-list. This is basically what happened with the Fedora mailing lists; Fedora Forum has a few serious discussions but is mostly new users asking for help (and thankfully receiving it) while the mailing lists are where highly technical discussions tend to occur.
What we really need is something like Google Groups, which allows less serious users to read and post to Usenet newsgroups. If there were a way to get mailing lists and web forums to interoperate, people who just prefer to use web interfaces would not be excluded from the discussions.
It is not that they want a separate line, but rather that they want to have the software on the two seemingly separate lines converge. There will be an increase in the software capability of an iPad, and a decrease in the capability of a MacBook. Apple's consumer strategy is based around the idea that people are passive consumers of entertainment and software written by others, and the App Store enforces that model of behavior. A MacBook that was locked down and designed for passive consumption would probably be highly successful, if people were still able to write their emails and essays on it (and that is the extent of production that is expected of consumers who use MacBooks).
Why would Apple want to maintain separate operating systems, when they could have one operating system that is configured at install time for two lines of computers (i.e. the consumer installations are configured for lock-down, and "pro" installations are not)?
To be honest, it was not my Mac, and I have little knowledge of what its owner had done before I touched it (but he seemed equally annoyed). The point was more about features that stop you from overwriting files than about Mac OS X.
That's why you don't get mad when a dialog comes up asking you if you want to overwrite that file.
Ironically, the fact that bash on Mac OS X does not let you overwrite files when you redirect a program's output was an annoyance yesterday. Before anyone asks, yes, we did read the manual and found out how to disable that feature.
You'd look forward to SSH-ing into your toaster to tell it to make toast? Really? If not, you must be an idiot by your argument.
My toaster has two inputs. One is a knob that determines how long the bread is toasted, and the other starts the process of toasting. Now, would you prefer that, which requires you to understand how far to turn the knob in order to get the sort of toast you want, or would you prefer if someone removed the knob, created a toaster that "just works" and told you that if you want a different sort of toast you need to pick the lock on the back of your toaster?
Most people do not really lack intelligence. What most people lack is a motivation to make use of their intelligence; they would rather have other people do their thinking for them. Why spend time reading a manual and learning how to use your computer, when all you really wanted to do was go to Youtube and watch cool videos that other people created?
"Idiot Ready" actually means 'thoughtfully designed'.
No, it means "designed for people who know nothing and who are unwilling to learn." The history of the PC industry has shown everyone that despite the initial optimism of hackers like Lee Felsenstein, the majority of people are simply not interested in learning about their computers. Most people want to use their computers to be passive consumers of music and movies or to spread their intimate details on social networking sites, and they just get aggravated by the notion that they might have to learn more than the location of the power button in order to do so.
To put it another way, Apple's current design methodology is centered around the notion that people should not have to think about how to use their computers. Let me emphasize the important part: people should not have to think. If the term "idiot" does not properly convey the notion of someone who is not willing or able to think, I am not really sure what would.
OS X is a full fledged UNIX and as such, you'll always be able to do *Nixy things such as wget/curl a file, gunzip, configure and make.
Is there any particular reason to think that Mac OS X, or some future "consumer version" of it, will always allow you to get to a terminal? I see no reason to assume that Apple will always be so friendly, and every reason to conclude that they will not.
What Apple does with their CoCoa Framework and native apps is up to them, but as long as they are a UNIX, they'll never have the ability to stop apps written in C, Java, Python, Bash, Perl, PHP or Ruby from doing whatever the hell they please.
Actually, we already stop programs written in all of those languages from doing "whatever the hell they please" with SELinux, which intercepts system calls and enforces security policies. Mac OS X does have a mandatory ACL framework in place that could be used to isolate programs or prevent unapproved programs from running.
The day they do, is the day OS X leaves the Unix fold and becomes something else
You clearly think that redefining the work "Unix" is an acceptable thing to do. Unix is not defined by user freedom or by a lack of mandatory ACLs, and in fact a great number of Unix systems restrict what the user is allowed to do.
if that happens, you can bet your sweet ass that Apple will be dead within 3 years.
It's not like they made a boatload of money marketing consumption oriented devices over the past few years. What reason does Apple have not to lock down the lower-end consumer-oriented laptops that they make, and only allow users to run uncertified code on the highest end workstations (which e.g. might be marketed to developers)?
if Apple ever locks down the Mac to allow only applications from the Mac App Store (they won't),
Is there some reason to think that they would not do such a thing? I have said it before, but my prediction is that the Mac line is going to be split into two separate lines, one which targets professionals and one which targets consumers. The consumer line will be locked down and marketed as "appliances," while the professional line will be high-priced but permit the installation of unapproved software. We are watching a steady buildup toward that situation.
The stupidity of ebook "lending" is that there is nothing actually on loan. What this should really be called is "timed reading," or perhaps "controlled reading," or even "restricted reading." I guess those terms are less marketable, but at least they are honest.
As a corollary, the fact that something vaguely similar has happened in a not-entirely-related arena is not a reason to believe that the event will occur
Not entirely related? Let's see...
Gaming is a billion dollar industry on both consoles and on PCs.
The business strategy surrounding PCs is based on media consumption, for which DRM has never been taken off the table.
In general, when large companies with entrenched interests in marketing their platforms to music and movie studios talk about security, it is safe to assume they are talking about the security in the context of preventing people from doing certain things with their computers. Blizzard has invested significant resources in this sort of security, to enforce the rules of their video game and ensure that people have paid the appropriate fees.
There's no evidence to suggest that they will start doing so now.
"In response to criticism from the US government and the open source community, our secure boot loader will now allow users to run Linux! You will, of course, be running in a hyperviser to ensure that you do not attempt to access the Windows partition or overwrite the bootloader, which is necessary for your security!"
The purpose here is to ensure that the user cannot modify Windows, and the purpose of that is to ensure that DRM systems become effective (i.e. because if you can modify Windows you can extract keys or use cracks or whatever). If Microsoft were legally required to allow dual-booting, they would do it in a way that does not really give you control of your computer, much like Other OS on the PS3.
I get the feeling that, come your next server RFP, your HP and Dell sales reps are going to ask you which secure boot version you want - Windows, ESXi, RedHat, or SuSE (maybe, but only because Intel has a hard-on for it as their own preferred server distro). You really won't have any other alternative.
I doubt it, there are too many businesses that need to be able to run whatever they want on their servers. Right now businesses want more flexibility, not less.
What you can bet on, though, is that you will never be allowed to use any of those servers to play movies, music, or video games. The split between "consumer" systems and "enterprise" systems is going to be enforced with secure boot. Consumers will not be able to install their own OSes, or if they do disable or modify secure boot, they will permanently lose the ability to run movie or music playing software. My system has an option to disable the TPM...but once disabled, it can never be reenabled, and there is no reason to think that the new boot process will be any different.
Hackers enjoyed a 30 year victory period, where PCs were available to all and controlled by their users. That period appears to be ending, with the same entrenched media interests reasserting their control. At the end of the day, the secure boot process is about marketing PCs as media consumption platforms. You cannot run whatever software you please on your cable TV box or satellite receiver, nor can you run any software you please on your DVD/Bluray player, nor on your video game consoles. The goal is for your PC to act as a replacement for all of that, and the loss of control is a key step in that process.
If your computer is going to run consumption-oriented software, then a priori its owner is assumed to be untrustworthy. This is indeed a security engineering problem: they want to prevent a repeat of the CSS key leak, which was only possible because DVD playing software could be examined. If you choose not to forfeit that sort of control over your computer, you will simply not be allowed to play new movies (not immediately; think 20 years into the future).
"If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them." -- George Orwell
Let us not forget that media consumption is widely considered to be a strategic area for personal computer vendors to move into. We are going to be seeing more and more entertainment moving to PCs, and hardware and software makers can make their systems more competitive in the entertainment marketplace by locking down their products. Remember how the CSS keys were obtained? That is the sort of thing that movie studios want to prevent people from doing in the future, and that means that they are going to fight to ensure that people do not control their own computers.
Just you wait. It won't be the first generation of UEFI systems, it will be a subsequent generation; the feature will be quietly slipped into consumer systems. Companies will advertise to consumers how their systems support some new video distribution system or format, and most people will never even question the loss of control (or notice it). The free software community will be forced to buy high-end workstations or systems from lesser known PC makers, and will be left out of the loop on new media formats as we already are with mainstream gaming.
even normal people will look for "just in case" they want to try out this Linux thing or whatever
The last time I dealt with a "normal person" buying a computer, the conversation went like this:
Me: "...this has 2 gigabytes of ram, which should last you a few years."
Her: "It's so ugly! What about that one, that one looks prettier!"
Me: "That one has a lower end processor and less memory. Are you sure you want something that is less capable?"
Her: "Look they are letting me pick the color!"
Non-technical people are just that: non-technical. Computer makers and especially Apple know exactly how to take advantage of such people, which is what "secure boot" is all about. This is about ensuring that customers can be locked into DRM-laden platforms, plain and simple. Dell will probably have the option described in TFA...in their high end workstations, that are prohibitively priced, with the option disabled for "consumer" systems. My guess is that this will not happen in the first generation of systems with "secure boot," but more likely in the second or third generation, when more "strategic" platforms are deployed out of the box for which DRM is a key part of the control.
The point was about the psychological effect of the app store. Do people see the success of Walmart and think that they will be equally successful by opening a supermarket? I know someone who literally threw his life away because he wanted to make millions writing iPhone apps; he did not take a close look at the risks, and his apps didn't even sell enough enough copies to cover the $99/year charge. The mentality surrounding the App store is very similar to a casino: people see a big jackpot and think that they are going to be the ones who win it.
I think the point of the study was that people were seeing a few millionaires emerge from the app store, and completely forgetting about the risks associated with quitting their day jobs and spending all of their time developing for the iPhone. Business is risky, but usually people who enter a business take the time to think through the risks; people who go to a casino often ignore the risks when the see the size of the jackpot.
I still agree that people should have more sense than to pour their resources into such a venture (they are practically guaranteed to see no profits whatsoever), but that is equally true of casinos.
I have a friend who was looking at a promising career in academia (he was just starting out in grad school). He was a really smart guy and could probably have done pretty well as a researcher.
He opted to quit grad school and try to make it big developing iPhone apps, and when last I spoke with him it was his girlfriend who was paying his bills while he continued to hope people would buy his apps.
Slashdot Mirror
For whatever reason, most of the "serious" discussion groups I'm in (working groups, academic discussions, etc.) don't seem to have moved from listservs to webforums
Probably because the interface to web forums is so terrible when compared to a well developed mail client. I have seen serious discussion lists try to switch to web forums, and the result has usually been on of the following three outcomes:
What we really need is something like Google Groups, which allows less serious users to read and post to Usenet newsgroups. If there were a way to get mailing lists and web forums to interoperate, people who just prefer to use web interfaces would not be excluded from the discussions.
Fidonet is still operation, and there are still dialup and shortwave links between BBSes. It is particularly popular in rural regions of Asia.
Funny how virtualization was started on mainframes...
It is not that they want a separate line, but rather that they want to have the software on the two seemingly separate lines converge. There will be an increase in the software capability of an iPad, and a decrease in the capability of a MacBook. Apple's consumer strategy is based around the idea that people are passive consumers of entertainment and software written by others, and the App Store enforces that model of behavior. A MacBook that was locked down and designed for passive consumption would probably be highly successful, if people were still able to write their emails and essays on it (and that is the extent of production that is expected of consumers who use MacBooks).
Why would Apple want to maintain separate operating systems, when they could have one operating system that is configured at install time for two lines of computers (i.e. the consumer installations are configured for lock-down, and "pro" installations are not)?
To be honest, it was not my Mac, and I have little knowledge of what its owner had done before I touched it (but he seemed equally annoyed). The point was more about features that stop you from overwriting files than about Mac OS X.
That's why you don't get mad when a dialog comes up asking you if you want to overwrite that file.
Ironically, the fact that bash on Mac OS X does not let you overwrite files when you redirect a program's output was an annoyance yesterday. Before anyone asks, yes, we did read the manual and found out how to disable that feature.
Why on earth would anyone want ... to think ... and learn
Indeed.
You'd look forward to SSH-ing into your toaster to tell it to make toast? Really? If not, you must be an idiot by your argument.
My toaster has two inputs. One is a knob that determines how long the bread is toasted, and the other starts the process of toasting. Now, would you prefer that, which requires you to understand how far to turn the knob in order to get the sort of toast you want, or would you prefer if someone removed the knob, created a toaster that "just works" and told you that if you want a different sort of toast you need to pick the lock on the back of your toaster?
Most people do not really lack intelligence. What most people lack is a motivation to make use of their intelligence; they would rather have other people do their thinking for them. Why spend time reading a manual and learning how to use your computer, when all you really wanted to do was go to Youtube and watch cool videos that other people created?
That sort of terminology ("idiot-ready") is why geeks are still despised and laughed at by everyone else in the world.
Allow me to introduce you to one of the most successful lines of books ever published:
http://www.dummies.com/
Sandboxing applications is a common security model on Unix systems, so why is this a bad thing on desktop apps as well?
The App Store apps already had restrictions
"Idiot Ready" actually means 'thoughtfully designed'.
No, it means "designed for people who know nothing and who are unwilling to learn." The history of the PC industry has shown everyone that despite the initial optimism of hackers like Lee Felsenstein, the majority of people are simply not interested in learning about their computers. Most people want to use their computers to be passive consumers of music and movies or to spread their intimate details on social networking sites, and they just get aggravated by the notion that they might have to learn more than the location of the power button in order to do so.
To put it another way, Apple's current design methodology is centered around the notion that people should not have to think about how to use their computers. Let me emphasize the important part: people should not have to think. If the term "idiot" does not properly convey the notion of someone who is not willing or able to think, I am not really sure what would.
OS X is a full fledged UNIX and as such, you'll always be able to do *Nixy things such as wget/curl a file, gunzip, configure and make.
Is there any particular reason to think that Mac OS X, or some future "consumer version" of it, will always allow you to get to a terminal? I see no reason to assume that Apple will always be so friendly, and every reason to conclude that they will not.
What Apple does with their CoCoa Framework and native apps is up to them, but as long as they are a UNIX, they'll never have the ability to stop apps written in C, Java, Python, Bash, Perl, PHP or Ruby from doing whatever the hell they please.
Actually, we already stop programs written in all of those languages from doing "whatever the hell they please" with SELinux, which intercepts system calls and enforces security policies. Mac OS X does have a mandatory ACL framework in place that could be used to isolate programs or prevent unapproved programs from running.
The day they do, is the day OS X leaves the Unix fold and becomes something else
You clearly think that redefining the work "Unix" is an acceptable thing to do. Unix is not defined by user freedom or by a lack of mandatory ACLs, and in fact a great number of Unix systems restrict what the user is allowed to do.
if that happens, you can bet your sweet ass that Apple will be dead within 3 years.
It's not like they made a boatload of money marketing consumption oriented devices over the past few years. What reason does Apple have not to lock down the lower-end consumer-oriented laptops that they make, and only allow users to run uncertified code on the highest end workstations (which e.g. might be marketed to developers)?
if Apple ever locks down the Mac to allow only applications from the Mac App Store (they won't),
Is there some reason to think that they would not do such a thing? I have said it before, but my prediction is that the Mac line is going to be split into two separate lines, one which targets professionals and one which targets consumers. The consumer line will be locked down and marketed as "appliances," while the professional line will be high-priced but permit the installation of unapproved software. We are watching a steady buildup toward that situation.
The stupidity of ebook "lending" is that there is nothing actually on loan. What this should really be called is "timed reading," or perhaps "controlled reading," or even "restricted reading." I guess those terms are less marketable, but at least they are honest.
As a corollary, the fact that something vaguely similar has happened in a not-entirely-related arena is not a reason to believe that the event will occur
Not entirely related? Let's see...
In general, when large companies with entrenched interests in marketing their platforms to music and movie studios talk about security, it is safe to assume they are talking about the security in the context of preventing people from doing certain things with their computers. Blizzard has invested significant resources in this sort of security, to enforce the rules of their video game and ensure that people have paid the appropriate fees.
There's no evidence to suggest that they will start doing so now.
Does this count?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Entertainment_Content_Ecosystem
Quick fix from Microsoft:
"In response to criticism from the US government and the open source community, our secure boot loader will now allow users to run Linux! You will, of course, be running in a hyperviser to ensure that you do not attempt to access the Windows partition or overwrite the bootloader, which is necessary for your security!"
The purpose here is to ensure that the user cannot modify Windows, and the purpose of that is to ensure that DRM systems become effective (i.e. because if you can modify Windows you can extract keys or use cracks or whatever). If Microsoft were legally required to allow dual-booting, they would do it in a way that does not really give you control of your computer, much like Other OS on the PS3.
I get the feeling that, come your next server RFP, your HP and Dell sales reps are going to ask you which secure boot version you want - Windows, ESXi, RedHat, or SuSE (maybe, but only because Intel has a hard-on for it as their own preferred server distro). You really won't have any other alternative.
I doubt it, there are too many businesses that need to be able to run whatever they want on their servers. Right now businesses want more flexibility, not less.
What you can bet on, though, is that you will never be allowed to use any of those servers to play movies, music, or video games. The split between "consumer" systems and "enterprise" systems is going to be enforced with secure boot. Consumers will not be able to install their own OSes, or if they do disable or modify secure boot, they will permanently lose the ability to run movie or music playing software. My system has an option to disable the TPM...but once disabled, it can never be reenabled, and there is no reason to think that the new boot process will be any different.
Hackers enjoyed a 30 year victory period, where PCs were available to all and controlled by their users. That period appears to be ending, with the same entrenched media interests reasserting their control. At the end of the day, the secure boot process is about marketing PCs as media consumption platforms. You cannot run whatever software you please on your cable TV box or satellite receiver, nor can you run any software you please on your DVD/Bluray player, nor on your video game consoles. The goal is for your PC to act as a replacement for all of that, and the loss of control is a key step in that process.
If your computer is going to run consumption-oriented software, then a priori its owner is assumed to be untrustworthy. This is indeed a security engineering problem: they want to prevent a repeat of the CSS key leak, which was only possible because DVD playing software could be examined. If you choose not to forfeit that sort of control over your computer, you will simply not be allowed to play new movies (not immediately; think 20 years into the future).
"If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them." -- George Orwell
How about the freedom to choose an independent mechanic?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_Vehicle_Owners'_Right_to_Repair_Act
There's never been any real reason to believe that locking down of this feature would happen, apart from FUD
Yeah, because we never saw a company try to pull something like that...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playstation_3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_wii
Let us not forget that media consumption is widely considered to be a strategic area for personal computer vendors to move into. We are going to be seeing more and more entertainment moving to PCs, and hardware and software makers can make their systems more competitive in the entertainment marketplace by locking down their products. Remember how the CSS keys were obtained? That is the sort of thing that movie studios want to prevent people from doing in the future, and that means that they are going to fight to ensure that people do not control their own computers.
Just you wait. It won't be the first generation of UEFI systems, it will be a subsequent generation; the feature will be quietly slipped into consumer systems. Companies will advertise to consumers how their systems support some new video distribution system or format, and most people will never even question the loss of control (or notice it). The free software community will be forced to buy high-end workstations or systems from lesser known PC makers, and will be left out of the loop on new media formats as we already are with mainstream gaming.
even normal people will look for "just in case" they want to try out this Linux thing or whatever
The last time I dealt with a "normal person" buying a computer, the conversation went like this:
Me: "...this has 2 gigabytes of ram, which should last you a few years."
Her: "It's so ugly! What about that one, that one looks prettier!"
Me: "That one has a lower end processor and less memory. Are you sure you want something that is less capable?"
Her: "Look they are letting me pick the color!"
Non-technical people are just that: non-technical. Computer makers and especially Apple know exactly how to take advantage of such people, which is what "secure boot" is all about. This is about ensuring that customers can be locked into DRM-laden platforms, plain and simple. Dell will probably have the option described in TFA...in their high end workstations, that are prohibitively priced, with the option disabled for "consumer" systems. My guess is that this will not happen in the first generation of systems with "secure boot," but more likely in the second or third generation, when more "strategic" platforms are deployed out of the box for which DRM is a key part of the control.
The point was about the psychological effect of the app store. Do people see the success of Walmart and think that they will be equally successful by opening a supermarket? I know someone who literally threw his life away because he wanted to make millions writing iPhone apps; he did not take a close look at the risks, and his apps didn't even sell enough enough copies to cover the $99/year charge. The mentality surrounding the App store is very similar to a casino: people see a big jackpot and think that they are going to be the ones who win it.
I think the point of the study was that people were seeing a few millionaires emerge from the app store, and completely forgetting about the risks associated with quitting their day jobs and spending all of their time developing for the iPhone. Business is risky, but usually people who enter a business take the time to think through the risks; people who go to a casino often ignore the risks when the see the size of the jackpot.
I still agree that people should have more sense than to pour their resources into such a venture (they are practically guaranteed to see no profits whatsoever), but that is equally true of casinos.
I have a friend who was looking at a promising career in academia (he was just starting out in grad school). He was a really smart guy and could probably have done pretty well as a researcher.
He opted to quit grad school and try to make it big developing iPhone apps, and when last I spoke with him it was his girlfriend who was paying his bills while he continued to hope people would buy his apps.