New SecureBoot Concerns Arise With Windows 10

[chithanh]

No, it was precisely what many in the community predicted when secure boot was introduced. Namely, that the requirement for deactivatable secure boot was only a temporary measure to placate critics, and would surely go away some day. Now that day has arrived, it appears.

I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.

[Godzilla]

Better to fear than to regret.
Better expect conspiracy than have blind faith.
Better to woe that to be in despair.

Hmm.. whatever your preferences are, I guess. I know some of those are the the wrong way around for some people.

If you want to invest your time fearing and developing conspiracies and nurturing woe over locked-down motherboards with that don't exist yet, and assert that equipment made for someone else's commercial purpose should be re-purposed as you see fit, and assert that this ability is the natural way of things like some law of physics, then feel free.

Seems to me to be as much a waste of time as what I'm writing

[ossuser]

I've read the discussion.

The subject is a change in one vendors commercial requirements of equipment manufacturers that run their particular software.

The discussion is about conspiracy, fear, outrage and woe.

Not a change, but the next step in the implementation of several coorporations view of "trust", Palladium.

Which most probably will result in the lockdown of our hardware, and not being able to run Linux anymore.

An implementation that needs several parties to work together, which one could call a conspiration if the results are not in the public interest.
Which creates fear, outrage and woe.

So yes, I agree.

[ossuser]

I've read the discussion.

The subject is a change in one vendors commercial requirements of equipment manufacturers that run their particular software.

The discussion is about conspiracy, fear, outrage and woe.

Not a change, but the next step in the implementation of several coorporations view of "trust", Palladium.

Which most probably will result in the lockdown of our hardware, and not being able to run Linux anymore.

An implementation that needs several parties to work together, which one could call a conspiration if the results are not in the public interest.
Which creates fear, outrage and woe.

So yes, I agree.

[ossuser]

I've read the discussion.

The subject is a change in one vendors commercial requirements of equipment manufacturers that run their particular software.

The discussion is about conspiracy, fear, outrage and woe.

Not a change, but the next step in the implementation of several coorporations view of "trust", Palladium.

Which most probably will result in the lockdown of our hardware, and not being able to run Linux anymore.

An implementation that needs several parties to work together, which one could call a conspiration if the results are not in the public interest.
Which creates fear, outrage and woe.

As I see it, rightfully so.

[gamerk2]

Nice one by Microsoft.

If OEMs remove the option MS can turn around and say "I never made them remove it; they chose to do so themselves."

In the past people complained that MS often forced OEMs to do things their way. Now that MS has done the opposite by refusing to mandate what is allowed in the firmware, OEMs have the freedom of choice to determine whether they want to leave the On/Off option for Secure Boot in the EFI menu.

We can finally see for ourselves how many OEMs really care about letting their hardware boot alternative operating systems.

And to all of those whining; put your money where your mouth is and get a notebook from Linux OEMs like System76. Otherwise you don't deserve to call yourself a true Linux user and should just keep quiet.

A bit touchy, but true to the point. OEMs have the choice of supporting Linux or not, and I'm kinda interested to see how many don't even bother, now that they have the option to.

[SystemCrasher]

First if all, I have ALWAYS been an "outcast and half-criminal" to the kind of people who produce proprietary hardware, patented drugs, genetically modified foods, etc. Hell, I use computers to produce videos of protesters doing things like storming their conventions! Suppose smartwatches become able to edit 4K video-but are ALWAYS shooting 4K video of everywhere you go and forwarding it to ad agencies? That is a very likely future.

First of all, I would agree I always has been unhappy about proprietary software as well.
Then I never had issues to reverse engineer some proprietary misbehaving shit and enforce my will with hex editor.

Yet, opensource (or to be exact, libre software) shown me there could be better way. And maybe you failed to notice, but powerful processes were launched, mostly by RMS. Now what? Recently I bought router. It came with GNU GPL printed. And of course I can go get "GPL tarball" if I want to. That's what I like. That's how it should be. World has changed and actually, in many areas proprietary software got either unwelcome or obsoleted. But as you can see, very same thing should now happen with hardware. Because as you can see, some wintel faggots haven't got idea and started to lock us out using their BootLocks. That's why they should face open hardware just as well as proprietary companies faced open software some years ago.

As for shoting video... technically, watches are just CPU, memory, screen, buttons, maybe some camera and other misc stuff. On its own it is not something inherently evil - it is all about software it runs and whom it serves. Here we come to question if boot loader locked, etc. Furthermore, there is no problem to make own system of comparable size, if desired. So I think there're reasons to be picky about software and about hardware letting to run arbitrary software, but no reasons to completely lock myself out of progress.

All those smartphones,smartwatches, and tablets are a sector I do not interact with due to the prevalence of locked-in spyware. They are not even allowed in my life for reasons of trust, just as I am not on Facebook. The "outcasts and outlaws" I work with use computers for encrypted communications and storage.

And except everything else, all devices you've listed are just small computers with enhanced communication capabilities. Though sure, there are problems with spyware and, say, if you use cellular network, network is aware of your location and it also knows whom you've contacted (at least via calls, SMS and so on). And cellular modem part inherently runs some troublesome firmware (in fact, even "dumb" phone could be not so dumb and can technically conduct same unwanted activity smart phone could do).

If the supply of computers sold new that can be used in this way is in danger, it makes sense for my community to use its own existing resources and keep a stockpile instead of betting everything on the ablity of the Linux community to defeat corporate power.

As I can see on software level, it is very well possible to change the world for good, putting pressure on proprietary fags. There are no reasons why it would not work for hardware as well. And IMHO you're being silly by sticking to old shit rather than trying to define your own future. This way you'll never win. On other hand RMS has been smartass enough to launch process which is unable to lose. That's where you can feel difference between powerbrain who changes future in global ways and mere mortals who do not change anything.

During WWII, Winston Churchill wisely did not bet the survival of his island and his people on defeating the Germans in France. He held enough back to fight on alone if defeated in France, as in fact happened. Had he not we would be having this discussion in German, hidden in parks accessing wifi by Pringles can antenna, and on an encrypted forum only.

I'm sorry to inform you, but it were joint efforts of allies what stopped germans. If we assume there was only UK and Germans, most probable fate of UK would be "bombed to the ground" and then either giving up fight (on very poor terms of course) or facing extermination. You see, huge landmass areas had far more resources and people to conduct warfare and nazi had fairly advanced warfare techs allowing them to bomb UK if there was no other major problems around. Europe and so on got than enough resources on mainland to completely eliminate some (relatively small) island. So it has been about joining efforts by several parties to drive nazists away. So they faced huge USSR army, USA supplied allies with weapons and has been too far to suffer from bombings, etc. Can you imagine that: USSR and USA had to ally to deal with problem. Both had plenty of resources, yet were not sure it would do without alliance. As the result Germans faced most of planet working against them. Then they failed resources competition and were unable to hold large armies. And once they lost more facilities and resources, they had even harder times and eventually they've collapsed. In fact they fought well in some areas. But it had no future. Once allies got seriously better on resources, defeat of Germans has been just matter of time. In fact Germans defeated some cities really well. But the only result has been city flattened to ground and numerous deaths. That's what happen when you do not have resources to hold all attackers. If there was no joint efforts of all allies, UK would likely face same fate from hands of nazi I guess.

So, about future: you offer us to rely on finite, no longer manufactured resource, ignoring techs? Sounds kinda silly to me. IMHO this sail set for fail.

Btw, on side note: we better to create independent, mesh based, decentralised nets anyway. Because as you can see, there're so many power hungry fags who want to have exclusive right to control what we can do in networks, even without German nazi. Governments, special services and so on proven to be not anyhow better than others. If you want to see how Internet should look PROPERLY, [here we have some early preview on how to do it right]

[SystemCrasher]

A bit touchy, but true to the point. OEMs have the choice of supporting Linux or not, and I'm kinda interested to see how many don't even bother, now that they have the option to.

I bet MS would eventually pay them or give them some bonus for locking competitors out. That's what MS did all the time on notebook market. Especially when netbooks appeared, Win Vista has been too slow to run on netbooks and vendors started supplying Linux. Eventually, Linux market share reached about 30% of new notebooks. MS started to shit bricks and then quickly revived Win XP, made huge discounts, and gave some bonuses to those vendors who would abandon Linux in favor of Windows, threating to stop making "discounts" on Windows price for desktops/laptops if vendor refuses to do so. So you know what to expect: should Linux become a threat, MS will just lock it out, as they already did on netbooks market. So with all this "secure" lock shit you can enjoy by being securely screwed up in way nobody can pose competition to MS, so you'll be able to "enjoy" their monopolistic attitude even further. I bet that's not what most of us want, eh?

[duby229]

After reading through many similar reports on various sites I'd like to ask a question to anyone who is in the know: given that this plan comes to fruition in its worst possible version (as in "Microsoft makes secure boot optional, then buys OEMs' desire to remove the off switch completely by discount promises or threats" - I know some people dismiss this as silly but I think it's silly not to account for this eventuality, especially since it's M$ we're talking about), I'd really like to know what exactly is being labeled as "Microsoft certified" - only OEM-built personal computers or individual hardware components as well (read: mobos)? In other words, I'd really like to know if this potential lockdown is only true for pre-built computers that have the "Windows 10 certified" label on them, or if it's possible to buy a motherboard (when building a PC yourself) and be screwed because the said mobo has the Win 10 label and happens to have no off switch for Secure Boot. I'm *assuming* that it most likely affects only the OEM-built personal computers, but what has me worried is that I've seen (more than once) some motherboards that had e.g. "Windows 8 ready" written on their boxes, and their initial UEFI setup was a bit strange - for instance, some Asus motherboards I've dealt with that had the aforementioned "Win 8 ready" label did not have the "Secure Boot On/Off" switch, but instead they had the "Operating System: Windows (UEFI) / Other" switch which acted the same as the On/Off switch. It's practically as if those motherboards were already intended to be used with Win 8 and as such were preconfigured with use with that particular OS, labeling everything else as "Other". So, *that* is what I would like to know - provided that I don't buy prebuilt desktop PCs (which I pretty much never did and don't intend to do), will I be OK or will I have to be selective with individually bought motherboards as well? Does anyone know?
Thanks in advance.

I don't think it's silly at all. That's exactly what Intel does with their ICC compiler. That type of behavior certainaly has precedent.

[brosis]

Hmm.. whatever your preferences are, I guess. I know some of those are the the wrong way around for some people.

If you want to invest your time fearing and developing conspiracies and nurturing woe over locked-down motherboards with that don't exist yet, and assert that equipment made for someone else's commercial purpose should be re-purposed as you see fit, and assert that this ability is the natural way of things like some law of physics, then feel free.

Seems to me to be as much a waste of time as what I'm writing

Fear is impulse to probability, a prediction, not a magnet for self-lock in. That would be terror or dispair. You misunderstand.