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On 06/01/2012 04:45 PM, Martijn Grooten wrote:
have just sent an email to my mp hugo swire,i will keep you updated if i get a reply.On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 11:35 AM, paul sutton wrote:http://boingboing.net/2012/05/31/lockdown-freeopen-os-maker-p.html this was posted to the Ubuntu forum, I have contacted my Local MP on this, if others do the same then it may show that a number of people are concerned about the issues and anti competition. We should have the right to choose what Operating system we use / install.I'm not sure if this is a much a problem as people make it out to be. With the right access, someone could change the boot loader. So can malware. So it could change the boot loader to load a modified version of the operating system, with malware hidden deep inside it. That is bad. So the idea that you would want to only boot operating systems that have permission to do so is a sound one and that in itself has nothing to do with Microsoft wanting to ban other operating systems from being installed. Making people pay a small amount of money - $99 is hardly the end of the world - to have their OS signed makes sense as well - it prevents malware authors from just signing the hundreds of versions of their malware they release every day. Fedora has also paid GeoTrust -- owned by Symantec -- some money for a digital certificate that allows it to run a secure website on https://fedoraproject.org/ (note the 's'). The idea behind that is not too different. What does sound odd to me, however (and by 'odd' I really mean 'wrong'), is that they'd have to pay the money to a company that makes another operating system and not to some third party, as is the case with SSL certificates. But then, the certificate model for SSL has proven to be pretty broken, so I'm not saying I know of an easy solution. Martijn.
alex the grrrrrr noob -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq