Cloud services are great until there is a clear day. I don't like to use anything unless it is in my house under my control. Even that doesn't always work.
John Abshier
I'm with you. The most I use Cloud Services for is temporarily transferring things between my PC and my Phone or Tablet.
That's hard to believe about Revolv. Looks like the only thing worse than their spelling is their dedication to people-pleasin'. Seems like some third party business could have made a go at supporting existing products, but to brick their products intentionally is a new low and a dangerous precedent. I'd agree that a class action lawsuit is in order.
I like this part of the Revolv marketing: "Revolv breaks the mold with it’s future-proof, seven radio Hub and single App, allowing you to mix and match protocols, brands, devices, whatever your heart desires!" https://web.archive.org/web/20140628102610/http://revolv.com/
Yup, future proof, as long as your heart doesn't desire for the thing to keep working.
With advertising like "future-proof", I can't imagine that a judge would accept their reasoning that they can do this to conserve their resources. They took money to provide a future-proof service, now they'd like to use that money for something else.
Google's standards have declined across the board since before the IPO, when they loudly noticed that they were and advertising company and apparently dropped the word "don't" from their motto. They deprecate anything they lose interest in no matter how many people have invested in it, their search engine is capricious and unpredictable in how it scores results, and they creep ever closer to Facebook levels of privacy invasion in their monitoring of your use of their services. It's enough to make you wish AltaVista was still around.
There are worse things. Imagine if Micro$oft bought Canonical and ended Ubuntu, and then the beloved Kubuntu would fall next? Well, most companies can't be trusted these days. It was a shocker to me knowing that M$ already contributes to the Ubuntu Linux kernel. I felt betrayed by Canonical. M$ should be excommunicated and forbidden to participate in any open source projects.
At least Google is a bit more ethical, as it only keeps your personal info without your consent instead of injecting backdoors onto your system (but I wouldn't bet on it on the long haul).
Imagine if Micro$oft bought Canonical and ended Ubuntu,...
I'm imagining it now. Nothing of importance would be lost. In fact I think it would be great. After all Ubuntu is just Debian taken by Canonical and broken in many interesting ways. We would still have a thousand other Linux distros. And if the worst came to the worst we can still get what we want by building Linux systems from the upstream sources. http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ We can always start a new distribution if we like.
Seems to me that the idea behind Microsoft's new found love of Linux and all things open source is to win over developers, to make them happy to develop for the Windows platform. Of course the Windows platform is no longer Windows the operating system as such but the Azure cloud services. The plan is to get developers locked into that.
Sadly things are not as easy as you think anymore. More and more Hardware gets locked by - gosh what was the funny name MS gave it? - Sounded positive, as usual.
Ah, yes EEFI was it, and encryption, first optional now mandatory. Yes. Building your OS from scratch is possible, but you can not boot it. Not on newer things.
Building your OS from scratch is possible, but you can not boot it. Not on newer things..
Such "lock down" is a worry. On the other hand I'm not worrying too hard yet because:
1) Recently the scare was that WIFI routers would become locked down. It's not clear to me that this has happened in a big way and I'm confident it will be hacked around anyway.
2) So far one can even boot Linux on the latest Microsoft Surface Pro. There's a bunch of outstanding hardware related issues but EEFI does not seem to have been a road block, it's easy to disable Secure Boot. https://github.com/jimdigriz/debian-mssp4. That kind of surprised me
3) I'm guessing that MS is now a bit "street wise" when it comes to the new generation of developers and the open source situation. I'm almost convinced that they now realize locking down such machines would instantly lose them the credibility they have worked so hard to foster recently.
4) RISC-V. There is an ocean of hardware makers that are hungry to get away from Intel and ARM licensing hassles. There is a lot of support for the open RISC-V architecture, http://riscv.org/. That's all a bit blue sky at the moment but RISC-V has a lot of high profile sponsors, like Oracle, Google and HP.
Do you have examples of PC/laptop class machines we can't install Linux on due to secure boot?
This thread promoted me to do some reading. At the present time manufactures still have the option of providing an option to disable secure boot. Some are partitioning their market into consumer (without) and developer hardware (with), while some are removing the option. Microsoft also signed the Linux foundation bootloader, so even without disabling secure boot you can load Linux.
Chromebooks and Chromeboxes apparently have a developer moder which allows installing arbitrary Linux distributions.
Seems a bit backwards though. I would have expected the peasants get secure boot forced on them. For their own good you understand. Whilst developer hardware would be open.
Sadly things are not as easy as you think anymore. More and more Hardware gets locked by - gosh what was the funny name MS gave it? - Sounded positive, as usual.
Ah, yes EEFI was it, and encryption, first optional now mandatory. Yes. Building your OS from scratch is possible, but you can not boot it. Not on newer things.
Well, over here in Japan I bought a brand-new, top-model NEC/Lenovo notebook (13"laptop, but "lighter than air" according to the ads.. the air being a fruit I guess). Way too expensive, but I got it really cheap for various reasons. Now, the point is only that of course I removed the original SSD w/Windows and replaced it with the same brand .M2 SSD but twice the size, and installed Debian. What a painless experience. Everything inside was just plain Intel, no *r*tek or b*com rubbish. So everything simply Just Worked. Easiest laptop Linux installation I've ever done, not a thing needed to be tweaked. So I'm not worried yet. At least not as long as these kind of manufacturers are around.
...Do you have examples of PC/laptop class machines we can't install Linux on due to secure boot?...
As far as I read this, on Win7 & 8.x secure EFEI boot was optional on win 10 it is mandatory and on x86 the Vendor can allow to disable secure boot, but on ARM systems MS requires that secure boot can not be disabled.
Or the HW vendor can not participate on the program for cheap volume OEM licenses.
So the vendor has to lock down to just secure boot. And just the key provided by MS.
This thread promoted me to do some reading. At the present time manufactures still have the option of providing an option to disable secure boot. Some are partitioning their market into consumer (without) and developer hardware (with), while some are removing the option. Microsoft also signed the Linux foundation bootloader, so even without disabling secure boot you can load Linux.
Chromebooks and Chromeboxes apparently have a developer moder which allows installing arbitrary Linux distributions.
Yes on Chromebooks or -boxes, but they do not come with win10 preinstalled so do not need to lock down. Not sure if anybody ever tried to install win10 on a chrome book.
And yes on the Linux foundation boot loader, but they are not able to sign it by them self, they have every time ask MS to do this.
So for your own OS you will need a boot loader signed by MS. And I am quit sure MS will try to do this on x86 also...
In opposite to @Heater. I am usually not against MS but this is going to far.
So after all these years we are finally on the same page: Microsoft is evil. If one cannot use secure boot to run ones own operating system without a key from MS then that is an appalling state of affairs.
I think secure boot may be a bit of a good idea. Say my hardware won't boot an OS that is not signed by me. The OS in turn would not run any services or apps that are not signed by me. Sounds like a good way to ensure that your system does not get trojaned or infested with malware. It's rather like the demand for security bits on the Propeller II.
The issue is, how do I get to sign my own code or sign whatever OS I have decided to use? I certainly don't want to be beholden to any single company to do be able to do that.
Of course such secure boot does not save you from all the potential browser exploits when running JS so it's probably of marginal effectiveness.
samuell,
Seems to me that the idea behind Microsoft's new found love of Linux and all things open source is to win over developers, to make them happy to develop for the Windows platform. Of course the Windows platform is no longer Windows the operating system as such but the Azure cloud services. The plan is to get developers locked into that.
It's a trap.
Well, I further read that Micro$oft's contribution to the kernel was to provide better support for one of their products (name not mentioned here because I don't make publicity on behalf of M$). Seems not so altruistic now. Besides, their contribution was less than 1% in the single year of 2013 (not a feat to boast about).
But I agree with you. It is a trap to draw away developers. Once they are in, they will eventually have to pay for the products they purchase from M$ (if they are gullible enough).
Even I cannot fault Microsoft for developing Linux kernel patches that support their product. In fact there is a lot of that going on. Intel throws in kernel mods for it's processors, device manufacturers throw in support for their devices and so on.
In fact that is exactly what we all need, if all device manufacturers would open their specs and better still provide open source drivers that would be fantastic.
Sure it's not altruistic. That does not matter. The manufacturer gets support built into the kernel which is good for them. We get a Free and Open source OS that can work with their devices, if we want to use them. It's good for everyone.
[quote="samuell;1371236...Well, I further read that Micro$oft's contribution to the kernel was to provide better support for one of their products (name not mentioned here because I don't make publicity on behalf of M$). Seems not so altruistic now. Besides, their contribution was less than 1% in the single year of 2013 (not a feat to boast about)...[/quote]
Something is wrong, I have to agree with @Heater again about Microsoft.
IBM, HP, Samsung, Oracle, Google, Yahoo and all the other companies financing people to write driver/apps/patches for Linux are also not so altruistic. No company is. They all do it for money for the shareholders. Not that I personally like it that way, but it IS.
I am personally quite interested how well MS SQL will run on Linux. Since I am working with MS SQL since decades, I really got used to it. Tried tons of other DB engines, from firebird over mySlq, Oracle (wow, what a commercial price tag), Sql-lite and whatever I could find, in between.
But MS SQL just fits my way of working. And once you understand how to install and use the Report Service bound to MS SQL you are golden.
I have not compared the Visual Studio Community Edition (supposed to be available for Linux) with the VS versions I use, since I do not use Linux, yet.
But certainly MS is hunting for developers using Linux and is offering quite interesting tools there. Thanks to Mono most of net-framework applications can run (without recompiling) on Linux/Mac/Windows/Sun? as long as the programmer write platform independent code. (mostly path/filename related stuff)
Even 10 years ago I was already able to use apache on Linux (with mod_mono) to run a quite complex web application (www.sis-handball.de) just by pointing Apache/Mono at the windows (SMB) folder where the windows version was running from with II6-webserver.
No problem at all. GUI programs where not as easy then, but it was 10 years ago. Now windows form support is quite better. And mono is available for most editions of Linux.
But TRUSTING Google, MS, Yahoo, Oracle, Amazon, FaceBook? The only thing you can trust in is that they try to maximize their profit however they are able to. Because they have to earn money for their shareholders. And that is what they have to do, that is how stock traded companies work. It is the basic idea behind it.
Parallax for example decided NOT to get into that wall-street thing and still have the ability to be altruistic. And somehow they are. They are not bound to stock market prices, shareholders, a board of directors, but to their own decisions to do something or not.
Even if @Ken needs to threaten @Chip to feed his kids with M&Ms until some FPGA cards are tested, this is way easier then board meetings at, say Google.
Comments
I'm with you. The most I use Cloud Services for is temporarily transferring things between my PC and my Phone or Tablet.
Yup, future proof, as long as your heart doesn't desire for the thing to keep working.
With advertising like "future-proof", I can't imagine that a judge would accept their reasoning that they can do this to conserve their resources. They took money to provide a future-proof service, now they'd like to use that money for something else.
At least Google is a bit more ethical, as it only keeps your personal info without your consent instead of injecting backdoors onto your system (but I wouldn't bet on it on the long haul).
Seems to me that the idea behind Microsoft's new found love of Linux and all things open source is to win over developers, to make them happy to develop for the Windows platform. Of course the Windows platform is no longer Windows the operating system as such but the Azure cloud services. The plan is to get developers locked into that.
It's a trap.
Sadly things are not as easy as you think anymore. More and more Hardware gets locked by - gosh what was the funny name MS gave it? - Sounded positive, as usual.
Ah, yes EEFI was it, and encryption, first optional now mandatory. Yes. Building your OS from scratch is possible, but you can not boot it. Not on newer things.
Sad,
Mike
1) Recently the scare was that WIFI routers would become locked down. It's not clear to me that this has happened in a big way and I'm confident it will be hacked around anyway.
2) So far one can even boot Linux on the latest Microsoft Surface Pro. There's a bunch of outstanding hardware related issues but EEFI does not seem to have been a road block, it's easy to disable Secure Boot. https://github.com/jimdigriz/debian-mssp4. That kind of surprised me
3) I'm guessing that MS is now a bit "street wise" when it comes to the new generation of developers and the open source situation. I'm almost convinced that they now realize locking down such machines would instantly lose them the credibility they have worked so hard to foster recently.
4) RISC-V. There is an ocean of hardware makers that are hungry to get away from Intel and ARM licensing hassles. There is a lot of support for the open RISC-V architecture, http://riscv.org/. That's all a bit blue sky at the moment but RISC-V has a lot of high profile sponsors, like Oracle, Google and HP.
Do you have examples of PC/laptop class machines we can't install Linux on due to secure boot?
Chromebooks and Chromeboxes apparently have a developer moder which allows installing arbitrary Linux distributions.
Seems a bit backwards though. I would have expected the peasants get secure boot forced on them. For their own good you understand. Whilst developer hardware would be open.
Well, over here in Japan I bought a brand-new, top-model NEC/Lenovo notebook (13"laptop, but "lighter than air" according to the ads.. the air being a fruit I guess). Way too expensive, but I got it really cheap for various reasons. Now, the point is only that of course I removed the original SSD w/Windows and replaced it with the same brand .M2 SSD but twice the size, and installed Debian. What a painless experience. Everything inside was just plain Intel, no *r*tek or b*com rubbish. So everything simply Just Worked. Easiest laptop Linux installation I've ever done, not a thing needed to be tweaked. So I'm not worried yet. At least not as long as these kind of manufacturers are around.
As far as I read this, on Win7 & 8.x secure EFEI boot was optional on win 10 it is mandatory and on x86 the Vendor can allow to disable secure boot, but on ARM systems MS requires that secure boot can not be disabled.
Or the HW vendor can not participate on the program for cheap volume OEM licenses.
So the vendor has to lock down to just secure boot. And just the key provided by MS.
Yes on Chromebooks or -boxes, but they do not come with win10 preinstalled so do not need to lock down. Not sure if anybody ever tried to install win10 on a chrome book.
And yes on the Linux foundation boot loader, but they are not able to sign it by them self, they have every time ask MS to do this.
So for your own OS you will need a boot loader signed by MS. And I am quit sure MS will try to do this on x86 also...
In opposite to @Heater. I am usually not against MS but this is going to far.
Sad.
Mike
So after all these years we are finally on the same page: Microsoft is evil. If one cannot use secure boot to run ones own operating system without a key from MS then that is an appalling state of affairs.
It all seems very confused and messed up, as explained in this article : https://www.linux.com/learn/how-install-linux-windows-machine-uefi-secure-boot
I think secure boot may be a bit of a good idea. Say my hardware won't boot an OS that is not signed by me. The OS in turn would not run any services or apps that are not signed by me. Sounds like a good way to ensure that your system does not get trojaned or infested with malware. It's rather like the demand for security bits on the Propeller II.
The issue is, how do I get to sign my own code or sign whatever OS I have decided to use? I certainly don't want to be beholden to any single company to do be able to do that.
Of course such secure boot does not save you from all the potential browser exploits when running JS so it's probably of marginal effectiveness.
But I agree with you. It is a trap to draw away developers. Once they are in, they will eventually have to pay for the products they purchase from M$ (if they are gullible enough).
In fact that is exactly what we all need, if all device manufacturers would open their specs and better still provide open source drivers that would be fantastic.
Sure it's not altruistic. That does not matter. The manufacturer gets support built into the kernel which is good for them. We get a Free and Open source OS that can work with their devices, if we want to use them. It's good for everyone.
Something is wrong, I have to agree with @Heater again about Microsoft.
IBM, HP, Samsung, Oracle, Google, Yahoo and all the other companies financing people to write driver/apps/patches for Linux are also not so altruistic. No company is. They all do it for money for the shareholders. Not that I personally like it that way, but it IS.
I am personally quite interested how well MS SQL will run on Linux. Since I am working with MS SQL since decades, I really got used to it. Tried tons of other DB engines, from firebird over mySlq, Oracle (wow, what a commercial price tag), Sql-lite and whatever I could find, in between.
But MS SQL just fits my way of working. And once you understand how to install and use the Report Service bound to MS SQL you are golden.
I have not compared the Visual Studio Community Edition (supposed to be available for Linux) with the VS versions I use, since I do not use Linux, yet.
But certainly MS is hunting for developers using Linux and is offering quite interesting tools there. Thanks to Mono most of net-framework applications can run (without recompiling) on Linux/Mac/Windows/Sun? as long as the programmer write platform independent code. (mostly path/filename related stuff)
Even 10 years ago I was already able to use apache on Linux (with mod_mono) to run a quite complex web application (www.sis-handball.de) just by pointing Apache/Mono at the windows (SMB) folder where the windows version was running from with II6-webserver.
No problem at all. GUI programs where not as easy then, but it was 10 years ago. Now windows form support is quite better. And mono is available for most editions of Linux.
But TRUSTING Google, MS, Yahoo, Oracle, Amazon, FaceBook? The only thing you can trust in is that they try to maximize their profit however they are able to. Because they have to earn money for their shareholders. And that is what they have to do, that is how stock traded companies work. It is the basic idea behind it.
Parallax for example decided NOT to get into that wall-street thing and still have the ability to be altruistic. And somehow they are. They are not bound to stock market prices, shareholders, a board of directors, but to their own decisions to do something or not.
Even if @Ken needs to threaten @Chip to feed his kids with M&Ms until some FPGA cards are tested, this is way easier then board meetings at, say Google.
And it works!
Enjoy!
Mike