UEFI - the new TCPA

[GreyGhost]

printz said:

I don't understand why users have to be controlled against using other OSes and not, say, manufacturers.

There are multiple agendas at work here, but it's all about control. Microsoft don't like sharing the PC market and the major music/movie/game/book publishers (amongst others) want tighter control over your access to their intellectual property. For intelligence agencies and law enforcement it's a handy new weapon in the ongoing War on WhateverHappensToBeTheGovernment'sPetPeeveOfTheMonth, why bother waiting for emails to intercept when you can search the suspect's computer - maybe plant some evidence.

[printz]

Well, then looks like major countries don't live under (mostly) benevolent rules any more. In the case I become such a criminal for such petty things, there'll only be the proverbial THEY'L NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE!!11 thing.

[Jodwin]

This whole "issue" is completely and totally pointless:

1. "Normal users", who account to over 90 % of home computer users I'm pretty sure, have no interest in installing any other OS on their computer or modifying their systems in any way that would violate this thing.

2. People who'd rather just use Linux will be able to buy Chinese manufactured Linux-compatible parts even if this thing came to happen. It's not like Microsoft or any other company can tell Chinese and Taiwanese sweat shops to start producing only and only Microsoft-approved components.


And as Maes said, vendor-specific hardware is nothing new. What I don't get is why MS would want something like this because it's a no-gain situation (if John Doe buys a $400 laptop they've already got Win8 as an oem os and MS has got their money even IF John installed Ubuntu at home), but whatever.

[printz]

Jodwin said:

And as Maes said, vendor-specific hardware is nothing new. What I don't get is why MS would want something like this because it's a no-gain situation (if John Doe buys a $400 laptop they've already got Win8 as an oem os and MS has got their money even IF John installed Ubuntu at home), but whatever.

Maybe it's a first step toward combating free software?

[Mr. T]

I really don't see the conspiracy here. This is exactly the kind of behavior M$ is famous for.

The most unfortunate effect of it will be endless FUD about EFI amongst the unwashed masses :-|

[Scet]

printz said:

Maybe it's a first step toward combating free software?

MS runs ]CodePlex, so I don't think so. Considering they mention ARM this is obviously to do with the mobile market, probably trying to go after Android. Although maybe if MS's mobile software and devices weren't shit they wouldn't have to do this.

[Quasar]

Keep in mind one of the only successful hacks against WGA so far is to inject some code into the bootloader.

If you think this has anything to do with security, you've drunk the kool-aid. It's the same old DRM cake with some vendor lock-in icing.

[printz]

Quasar said:

It's the same old DRM cake with some vendor lock-in icing.

What does "lock-in icing" mean?

[Quasar]

printz said:

What does "lock-in icing" mean?

Vendor lock-in is when a software (or other goods) manufacturer has managed to make it impossible for its customers to migrate away to a competing product by deliberately creating incompatible interfaces, actively behaving badly in combination with others' products, or causing their own product to disrupt or prevent installation/use of such products. Once you start using such a product, you are stuck with it forever, short of doing a complete break and throwing away all work you had previously accomplished.

Icing is what you put on top of a cake.

[printz]

What a specific term. Nasty.

[Blastfrog]

I wonder, will this become industry standard for PC hardware because MS is pushing for it? Or will normal BIOS still be the norm?

[hex11]

Microsoft already got in trouble for bundling their IE web browser, and this is anti-competitive by like several orders of magnitude. Maybe they will try to claim that other "approved" OS vendors (Apple, IBM, Sun...) also have access to the crypto keys, but long gone are the days when OS development was done only by large corporations. The OSS stuff is very widespread now, not only in data centers and intranets, but also in tons of so-called "consumer" appliances. Heck, just about every home has a router running some version of Linux/BSD...

[GreyGhost]

hex11 said:

Microsoft already got in trouble for bundling their IE web browser, and this is anti-competitive by like several orders of magnitude.

This is more like the Microsoft of old - doing deals with PC manufacturers to have MS-DOS factory installed and using "authenticity checks" to prevent Windows (3.1 & 95) from running with any non-Microsoft DOS.

[Maes]

Why do they even bother with something like that, which after all is based on relatively open and industry-standard hardware? History has shown that even obscure/closed hardware like the original PSX, XBOX and even iCrap eventually got cracked & modded, what makes them think they'll have more success with trying to implement, well, ANY kind of protection on much more mainstream hardware? Unless they start making "hardware" that's just a bunch of unmarked blob chips like those in cheap famiclones:



(not at all unthinkable, if "all" it has to do is acting like a web client). And yeah, I'm aware that the above pic actually shows a famiclone getting hacked/modded ;-)

[Mr. T]

Sodaholic said:

I wonder, will this become industry standard for PC hardware because MS is pushing for it? Or will normal BIOS still be the norm?

EFI was conceived as a BIOS replacement (due to limitations of BIOS), and it's already starting to become common on the PC side of things. Macs have used EFI since 2006.

[Maes]

But does it support booting from a floppy disk? Haven't seen it on any new mobo yet...then again the newest machine I have laid hands on is a 2010 "vintage" AMD Quad core low-end mobo, so maybe I'm not the most qualified person to answer that. I'd expect to see EFI on some big-name pre-fab desktop (which suck anyway), not on DIY mobos bought separately. The IBM PC compatibles' blessing AND curse at the same time is that they are pretty much as anonymous and generic as it gets.

[chungy]

It probably does, but who really cares about floppy disks anymore? Even DVD drives are on their way out. Maintaining perfect compatibility with being able to boot DOS 3.30 on a floppy disk and run some really old applications really isn't that important, and it can just be emulated anyhow; DOSEMU, DOSBox, VirtualBox, VMware, you name it can all run your ancient DOS software within a modern environment.

Anyhow, I seriously doubt that "Safe Boot" will ever be mandatory on PCs, or at least without any mechanism to disable it. I don't know much about it, but it does at least sound like a decent plan to stop some forms of viruses from being viable. This could even benefit some big enterprisey Linux distributions on their marketing bullet list :P

As for the ARM tablets, no big surprise. Everyone treats the software as inseparable from the hardware anyhow, and as exp(x) implied, it will never stop people from tearing apart the security measures anyway; has happened, and will continue to happen. Hell the smartphone and tablet crowds have generally had more success than the video game console crowds; probably due to brighter individuals being more interested in smartphones/tablets than video game consoles.

[Belial]

This one seems to have it:

http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=567

Their latest AMD board doesn't mention it though.

[GreyGhost]

Belial said:

This one seems to have it:

http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=567

UEFI BIOS

"Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is a brand new framework that provides a revolutionary interface. It is a modern clear and easy-to-use graphical user interface. The UEFI comes with a colorful easy-understand icons leads users into the setup layer directly."

I wonder if it's any easier to use than this one from 1993.


(650x360 - 96k)

[Aliotroph?]

People still boot from floppy disks? Yuck. I'd rather booting from a USB stick became more common. Smaller, cheaper, faster, more capacity, no mechanical bits, etc.

[DoomUK]

chungy said:

It probably does, but who really cares about floppy disks anymore?

This is Maes you're talking to. A guy with a passion preference for antiquated technology.

[Gez]

What's needed is the capacity to boot from a Vinyl-ROM drive.

[Blastfrog]

Mr. T said:

EFI was conceived as a BIOS replacement (due to limitations of BIOS), and it's already starting to become common on the PC side of things. Macs have used EFI since 2006.

I was more so referring to the "safe-boot" that you can't turn off (I know that you can if the manufacturer allows it, but that's only IF they do, and probably won't since MS doesn't want them to), not EFI in general.

[Maes]

Aliotroph? said:

People still boot from floppy disks? Yuck. I'd rather booting from a USB stick became more common. Smaller, cheaper, faster, more capacity, no mechanical bits, etc.

When the last readable floppy disk is used in the last functioning floppy disk drive as the last/only means of booting or servicing the last machine that depends on it, then I will "move on". But that day is far, far away, and a lot of low-level service tools and utilities still depend on floppies.

Also, if everything else fails, only a floppy can recover a trashed BIOS, and it is much more guaranteed to function in an emergency than a CD-ROM (too finicky about drives and media) or a bootable FAT-formatted USB with DOS upon which most service tools still depend on (too difficult to produce with normal tools, very selective about the media you can use, unusable if you have USB trouble).

They are also the only way to load SCSI/SATA drivers during Windows XP installations, if you don't have pre-slipstreamed custom installation disks.

So sorry, as long as there IS actively used technology around which still depends on them one way or the other, floppies cannot be phased out. You'd have a point if you were talking about computers that were designed to operate without them from the ground up, e.g. iMacs, Tablet PCs or certain laptops.

[Aliotroph?]

Last time I didn't have a floppy drive and needed a pre-slipstreamed, custom XP installation disc I just made one. Problem solved.

[printz]

I'd rather agree with Maes because he seems to know what he's talking about... He likely needed at one point to really use a floppy disk to salvage his computer.

[Maes]

Like it or not, the floppy disk is still designed to be minimum common denominator when it comes to booting and recovery/service tools, and so far there has really been minimal effort by part of the industry (read: authors of firmware update tools for device XYZ) to move away from it, which might become a real problem someday: people will need to RMA mobos and cards just so a technician who still owns a floppy drive can perform the upgrade.

If you ever worked in tech support/pc repair professionally, you'll soon learn that you simply can't do without a floppy drive: many of the tools you need to use will only work when booted from one, and many machines you'll need to repair won't be able to boot from anything but a floppy. You can't assume that you'll only be repairing smug 2008 iMacs. What was that? The El Torito Bootable CD-Rom standard? Sure, it works after you swapped about 10 CD-ROM drives in the shop to find one that won't refuse ;-) Bootable USB disks? Not reliable in anything made before 2005 (unless you repair only modern laptops...)

And no, I'd rather have a driver disk than making a customized XP slipstreamed CD disk for every one of the hundred or so computers I encountered that really needed it. I already have far too many Windows XP CD-Rs ;-)

Perhaps the pinnacle was That One System which could not boot from CD at all, and so the XP installation had to be initiated from the infamous XP setup floppies (yes, they are an officially supported Microsoft tool).