[lug] insane Gigabyte issue

[Paul E Condon]

On 20120607_214023, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
> On Thu, 07 Jun 2012 21:36:44 -0600
> "David L. Anselmi" <anselmi at anselmi.us> wrote:
> 
> > Anthony Foiani wrote:
> > > Good luck; my recollection is that the ARM boards *will* be locked
> > > to Win8 only.  It's the x86 boards that wintel is grudgingly
> > > opening up.
> > 
> > Matt Garrett thinks some will be but many will not:
> > 
> > http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/12368.html
> 
> Yeah, to quote: 
> 
> "Microsoft's certification requirements for ARM machines forbid vendors

<snip>


I don't understand this secure boot stuff and I don't understand
digital certificates. But if this concern is real, and I'm not
doubting that it is, then who will be the supplier of PCs to the CIA
and the NSA, surely they do not trust Microsoft and/or Verisign with
national security secrets? Or do they simply not use personal
computers? Or what? Surely, Microsoft doesn't expect to be able to
treat the Navy Seals the way it hopes to treat Linux users. What is
happening seems so unreal.

Also, isn't there some way the digital certificates can be canceled?
What is their recourse is someone misuses his signing certificate?
Who decides what actions constitute misuse vs. innovation? I
understand that Microsoft is a very supportive of innovation.

If there is a way that certificates can be canceled, then how can the
CIA and company live with the possibility of being locked out of
rebooting its computers even for a few seconds during a national
security alert? This smacks of a piece of tea-party legislation design
to make absolutely certain that the Government cannot work.  Very nice
for our national security if we can sell it to the Iranians, but why
should we buy it for ourselves? But if the secure boot does no more
than issue warning messages that can be ignored by the user --- isn't
that what /dev/null was designed to handle?

Help me understand
-- 
Paul E Condon           
pecondon at mesanetworks.net