Microsoft allowing certified hardware to lockout all other OSes.

[john_smith_account]

I'm sure many of remember when people freaked out when Microsoft  added the ability to lock out operating other than Windows 8 to new hardware.  Most people calmed down when Microsoft backed down a little and required manufactures to allow the option to be disabled by users.

 

No more.

 

http://boingboing.net/2015/03/21/windows-10-announcement-certi.html

 

Now manufactures are allowed to include lockout, but give the user no way to turn it off.  What does that mean to us?  It means very soon you might not have the option of what OS you want.  Want to try Ubuntu?  Tough.  Want to make a dual boot with Chrome OS?  Too bad, Microsoft says nope, we will not let you.

 

Punk7890 summed up what's at stake pretty well on skype:

 

"Take Microsoft's relationship to China: the company has already cooperated with the Chinese government's online censorship and surveillance efforts." I don't like that bit. I assuming that means they can lock out anything they want to in the future.

 

Microsoft is crossing a line.  They don't want to have to compete with other companies anymore.  Just imagine if Microsoft had this power a few years ago.  Maybe we'd be stuck running Windows 8 and Windows RT on phones and tablets.  Android and Chrome OS shut out.

 

I'll end with this quote taken from the article:

 

It's an instance of Doctorow's first law: "any time someone puts a lock on something that belongs to you, and won't give you the key, that lock isn't for your benefit." It's a predictable and dismal salvo in the war on general purpose computers.

 

Don't let makers of the  world's current worst Operating Systems ever tell you what they will and won't allow to do with your personal property.  Let people know what is happening.

[Airikita]

This is what I was trying to explain to others. Look @@mzxrules! See what I mean?

They will likely go full 64-bit after this and premenantly prevent legacy systems from being used on newer computer models.

 

This is one of the steps for sure... I hope people protest this issue, it's just so bigoted otherwise.

 

However it does leave marketing issues up to the manufacturers, so then it will be up to public census.

 

There could always be an uprising of fresh computers made to run older systems too, this may not negate Linux distros at all but cause a new line of computers to make for free use.

[haddockd]

This looks like its only affecting the OEM computers. Anything custom built looks like it will have freedom. Of course, you need to install Windows first and then Ubuntu because Ubuntu plays nice with other OS'es and windows...well...you know

 

Am I biased to Ubuntu...perhaps ~

[Arcaith]

If it does eventuate that non-OEM hardware starts getting lockouts implemented, I see one of two things happening here. 1) BIOS flashing will go through the roof. 2) New hardware manufacturers will emerge.

[haddockd]

Assuming we are talking about non-OEM mobos, then the only market that is affected are those who aren't savvy or those who cannot afford to build their own rig. Its hardly a death sentence as I understand it.

 

Am I surprised MS tried this? Oh God no! Will it be legal? I highly doubt it. I am not pretending to be a judge or lawyer but my career is in Litigation technology and I doubt this will stand for long. It is a HUGE fault for antitrust litigation and I cant imagine that folks will stand for lockouts. Hardware and software arent the same thing and Microsoft will learn that. They tried the same crap with Vista and it got them nowhere.

[!Tommy]

As far as I'm concerned, the newer Windows OSs suck anyway. In my personal opinion, Windows 2000 was the last great OS that Microsoft created and that's why I still use it as my main OS. Windows 7 while being popular is bloated beyond necessity and only runs well on hardware that's at least 2007 or newer and Windows XP was basically a buggier version of Windows 2000 that incorporated more compatibility. But now that MS is making it so hardware can lock out OSs that you want to use is basically communism. It seems companies really don't want us to have freedom anymore, thats for dang sure.

[haddockd]

I will always be an XP fanboy. Its the last OS that was awesome and didn't tell me what I wasn't allowed to do. God that pisses me off.

[Airikita]

I keep Windows 7 because of modding. I don't trust new OS's with their updates, which can potentially make the tools designed obsolete.

I intend to hang onto this OS for learning, and skill-building, reasons.

[!Tommy]

I don't really have a problem with Windows XP perse but I prefer Windows 2000 now because of the unofficial updates the MSFN community puts out which does bring it up to a bit of Vista/7 standards and one of the members also modded it so all versions of .NET Framework up to version 4.0 work on Windows 2000, so any mod tools like SharpOcarina that requires .NET 4.0, it works on Windows 2000 which is really nice. The only thing that's slightly starting to become a problem is drivers but unless you have a super new machine, it's not generally a great big problem. Otherwise Windows 2000 is lightning fast on newer hardware and still does quite a bit of stuff and since I'm behind the router firewall and scan with MalwareBytes once a week, I'm almost always clean from infections. Even AVG 9.0 still works with 2000 and is still being updated so for now, I feel I'm set for quite a while. I know some of the diehard computer people would disagree with me but that's their problem, not mine. Any computer system will have a bug or hole in it somewhere, if it didn't, then what's the point of updates/hotfixes exactly?

[Keanine]

Well I was looking forward to seeing what Windows 10 was like. Not anymore. Damnit Microsoft, stop making me hate you in every single way. Thankfully I'm on a custom-built so it wouldn't be an issue, but I won't upgrade to Win10 out of principle. If Linux had more compatibility (Particularly with Steam games) I'd be on there in a heartbeat. As it stands, I rarely go on my dual boot of linux.

 

Can you imagine their reaction if no-one were to upgrade when it is a free upgrade? Priceless.

[Netsrac]

Assuming we are talking about non-OEM mobos, then the only market that is affected are those who aren't savvy or those who cannot afford to build their own rig. Its hardly a death sentence as I understand it.

 

Am I surprised MS tried this? Oh God no! Will it be legal? I highly doubt it. I am not pretending to be a judge or lawyer but my career is in Litigation technology and I doubt this will stand for long. It is a HUGE fault for antitrust litigation and I cant imagine that folks will stand for lockouts. Hardware and software arent the same thing and Microsoft will learn that. They tried the same crap with Vista and it got them nowhere.

 

As a student I'm also obviously not a lawyer either, but as far as I know, with the current legal system here in Germany, I doubt that they'll be able to pull this off either. The fact that the German Telekom was reducing the dsl speed after a certain limit a month gained quite a bit of critiscism by the state. So if Microsoft were to pull this s**t here, then there's definately going to be some protesting. @xdaniel, what do you think?

[xdaniel]

As a student I'm also obviously not a lawyer either, but as far as I know, with the current legal system here in Germany, I doubt that they'll be able to pull this off either. The fact that the German Telekom was reducing the dsl speed after a certain limit a month gained quite a bit of critiscism by the state. So if Microsoft were to pull this s**t here, then there's definately going to be some protesting. @xdaniel, what do you think?

Not sure how the situation with Telekom in particular turned out, but isn't there at least some ISPs who do reduce the connection's speed when certain criteria are fulfilled? I believe I had read on o2's website (when I was looking to maybe change to a different plan, as I am with them on an old, former Alice DSL contract) that they do have some sort of speed reduction in place... Like if you're over X GB of traffic for 3 months straight, your maximum speed will be permanently(?) limited to Y Mbps...?

 

Regardless, I do hope that this will cause an uproar, and draw criticism from states and other organisations directed at Microsoft. I was positively surprised and in favor of MS recently, such as when they decided to open-source the core .NET Framework and some related projects, or with the feature set of Visual Studio 2013 Community Edition, but this is a step in the wrong direction again. At the same time, I don't see this being an issue for myself in the short term - mind you, for me personally. I won't be upgrading my system(s) substantially anytime soon, and I won't be switching away from Windows 7 anytime soon, so I'm "safe" for now. Of course, this is still quite a bad situation, and it will affect me eventually as well, so, again, I do hope that this will raise enough of a stink for MS to reconsider.

[Airikita]

Microsoft trying to become Apple.

[SoulofDeity]

This article has no idea what it's talking about. UEFI is not a security toolkit. it's a Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (in other words, it's does the job of the traditional BIOS, and it can be flashed) The security check they're talking about won't prevent you from installing Linux or w/e third party OS you want, it just won't let you install a pirated version of Windows.

[john_smith_account]

This article has no idea what it's talking about. UEFI is not a security toolkit. it's a Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (in other words, it's does the job of the traditional BIOS, and it can be flashed) The security check they're talking about won't prevent you from installing Linux or w/e third party OS you want, it just won't let you install a pirated version of Windows.

I'm afraid that's not right either.  Secure boot *will* prevent all unsigned boot-time code from working.  There have been countless articles on the topic since the feature was announced with Windows 8.

 

Secure Boot requires that all boot-time code be signed by a private key whose public counterpart is known to the boot firmware. Currently the only key that is guaranteed to be present in any given system is Microsoft's.

 

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/18/html/UEFI_Secure_Boot_Guide/chap-UEFI_Secure_Boot_Guide-What_is_Secure_Boot.html

 

To clear the definitions up for everyone:

 

Secure Boot is a technology where the system firmware checks that the system boot loader is signed with a cryptographic key authorized by a database contained in the firmware.

 

UEFI Secure Boot is the boot path validation component of the UEFI specification (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface)as of version 2.3.

[SoulofDeity]

Well, regardless, UEFI is a merely a way of standardizing hardware interfaces, is flashable, and most (if not all) pc's still support BIOS for legacy mode. So Linux won't be locked out.