Geeknights Monday -- Hardware Lockdown and Secure Boot

Greg

Tonight on GeekNights, we consider all of the awful concerns around UEFI's SecureBoot, which is bad, but not as bad as the evils of the past, as well as Cisco's dubious command and control firmware updates and problems stemming from the leap second that gave us a long weekend. Google Plus also now has developer-facing functionality that is ripe for some low-hanging-fruit execution of ideas! Rym, after a week without a smartphone, is finally back in the cyber fold. ConnectiCon 2012 is coming NEXT WEEKEND, and you should be there if you live within a few hours drive of Hartford!

The electric rise and fall of Nikola Tesla
Paper Rock Scissors Robot Cheater

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Also, listening to you guys try to talk about Roman history is painful.

Coldguy

Mr. Period beat you to this thread, it exists.

Greg

I couldn't find it (assumed there was an err of somesort in Mr Period's script), but then I used the forum search, so I got what was coming.

MATATAT

Explain to me, Rym, why you consider Cisco's TOS agreement to be applicable but you question the legal power of agreements like Blizzard's EULA?

Rym

Explain to me, Rym, why you consider Cisco's TOS agreement to be applicable but you question the legal power of agreements like Blizzard's EULA?

Who says they're applicable? The terms might well not hold up in court in many arbitrary situations in both cases.

The point is that Cisco has the power to shut you down, irrespective of any legal challenge you could bring against them. Blizzard can also shut you down, again irrespective of any legal challenge you could bring against them.

But, while Blizzard fucking you means you lose access to Blizzard software, Cisco fucking you denies you access to your own hardware, and by extension, the Internet.

MATATAT

I feel like you're saying that agreements are letting you know what's up but they don't actually apply? Why haven't a bunch of people just filed lawsuits against these companies then?

I will agree however that Cisco is clearly in the wrong considering (I assume) you automatically agree to any new TOS by using their hardware.

ThirdWorldMan

I really was hoping to hear you guys talk about Restricted Boot; hurrah.

Wanted to throw two links your way related to what you guys discussed:
"The Black Boxes" - How Teliasonera Sells to Dictatorships
"Why Freedom Of Thought requires Free Media & Why Free Media requires Free Technology

The second one has a small war story from the CLIPPER chip days, but involving the other fight for PGP.

RABBLERABBLE!