Photo by Thegreenj

Summary: Microsoft's business hits the bricks as the launch of Vista 8.1 meets the ugly side of UEFI 'secure' boot

Microsoft's UEFI 'secure' boot is not legal in some parts of Europe, especially in government. UEFI gives too much control to several dubious parties in the United States and they can even brick hardware remotely in some cases, essentially making it impossible to boot with anything (including GNU/Linux) by merely transmitting some packets down the wire (or wirelessly). The criminal NSA must be licking its lips. And if Stalin was still alive, then UEFI would be "Stalin's dream," to borrow a phrase from Richard Stallman. Nobody should be apathetic -- let alone sympathetic -- towards the lie and the trap which is deceivingly labeled "secure boot". When a researcher from New Zealand, Peter Gutmann, published those PDFs about DRM in Windows Vista the world was rather shocked, but for some reason we hardly see much antagonism out there towards UEFI 'secure' boot. Maybe it was better marketed and maybe it wasn't so well understood by the masses (DRM had gained notoriety among almost everyone who watch films and listen to music).

With all that said, let's explore the news and see how Vista 8.1 (rebranded and newly-marketed Vista 8) is doing when we don't look at advertisements masquearading as reports (from Microsoft's badgeless and shameless boosters like Peter Bright at Ars Technica). Well, "Microsoft yanks Windows RT 8.1 update after users report machine-bricking boot errors," according to one headline. Microsoft confirms this and Microsoft boosting sites are doing some damage control. Even IDG, which receives a lot of money from Microsoft and advertises Vista 8.1 quite a lot at the moment, covered this embarrassment. "We're at day six in the ongoing Windows/RT 8.1 upgrade debacle, and many of the problems aren't going away," IDG says.

Enjoy UEFI with 'secure' boot, Microsoft. ⬆