Bypass Windows With Fast-Boot Technology 348
thatnerdguy writes "Phoenix Technologies, a developer of BIOS software, is working on a new technology called Hyperspace that will allow you to instantly load certain applications like email, web browser and media player, without loading windows. It could even lead to tailoring of computers to even more specific demographics, like a student laptop preloaded with word processor, email and an IM all available at the press of a button." Why is this story setting off alarms in my brain?
Whoah (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Whoah (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=885&num=1 [phoronix.com]
It does use Linux BTW and the Motherboard is very Linux Friendly.
Re:Whoah (Score:5, Interesting)
I was thinking that building apps directly into the BIOS is just like having single purpose Word Processors back in the day, but the technology in the article does sound excellent, and for example talks about running an antivirus scanner in the BIOS to save on overhead even while you're using another OS for your applications, so it could actually be very handy. I think it makes use of virtualisation to help get around the whole driver thing, not very sure at this point though, as I dont know much about virtualisation, especially on the hardware side.
your sig (Score:5, Informative)
Wild turkeys can fly. Domestic turkeys are too fat.
http://www.kidzone.ws/animals/turkey.htm [kidzone.ws]
(search for "unable to fly")
As someone who's had flocks of wild turkeys fly over his head, I can attest to their ability to fly first hand. I've also seen them fly away after being shot. That's why you always aim for the head; their feathers are too tough for shotgun pellets.
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Wow! A new material to replace Kevlar - turkey feathered body armor.
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Not really, pellets will penerate their feather just fine. The problem is that their vital organs are both well padded by non-vital tissue and they are fairly small. Their head and neck offer much more direct routes to inflict fatal damage. A gut shot wild turkey can run for miles before expiring and bleed very little in the process, rendering it untrackable.
As for their ability to fly it is limited. In the sig joke you
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wow! Run one app at a time that boots instantly! Reminds me of my Apple 2, the only technology that 1-12th graders still need.
Agreed. I've often felt that, in terms of sheer usability, computers have mostly been downhill from the Apple II.
You put the disk in, you turn it on. When you're done, you save and turn it off. If you want to use a different program, you wait for the light on the disk drive to be out, then you swap disks and give it the three-finger salute.
I've seen kindergarteners and first-graders working Apple IIs without any problems, supervision, or assistance at all. All you have to do is reinforce to them that they'
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Rootkit applications? (Score:2)
Re:Rootkit applications? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Well you see, every time we point out something else that can be used for territory, that's another bill that has to go through congress to mandate registration of it. We're hoping that we can get the US government to simply busy itself to death.
Re:Rootkit applications? (Score:5, Insightful)
We hold this truth to be self-evident, that those in Congress who vote on legislation they have not read, have not represented their constituents. They have misrepresented them.
Sadly, I think that signing something they haven't even read is rather strongly representative of their constituents.
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How would that be different (Score:2)
"Technology" (Score:5, Insightful)
Could be firmware, too (Score:2)
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advantages you get are speed in loading, and increased security. software hacking it becomes difficult as a reboot would wipe the memory.
OS X, linux, and other *nixes can do this today with little to no modification.
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Not to mention it's not even new technology.
PCs (especially laptops) have long had special "media boot options" for years now. All it does is tell the BIOS to boot into a different partition to run the media player. My palmtop (Toshiba Libretto) has a button on its DVD dock. If it's off, it'll turn on and boot into a special locked partition on the disk that runs th
Hot on the heels of recent bootloader stories (Score:5, Funny)
Where BIOS == OpenBoot PROM (Score:2)
Wait! Wait! We're still relevant. x86 BIOS is still useful for some things!
The Sun 4[c,m,u] workstations had a very useful OpenBoot PROM. I've not seen the same sort of functionality in an X86 BIOS, even in machines from the last year or two. I haven't tried any of the X86 Apple hardware, though.
x86 BIOS (Score:2)
"With the exception of Apple" (Score:5, Funny)
Because (at the risk of being accused of Trolling), Apple will eventually bring out iRightNow which will pretty much do the same thing but in White only and at three times the price?
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Troll! (Score:2)
Re:"With the exception of Apple" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Just make sure you don't do this with your iPhone if you're outside the US [slashdot.org].
MacIntels use OpenBIOS? (Score:2)
MacIntels don't use OpenBIOS, do they?
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Still though, it'd be nic
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No. The latest openSuSE's have gotten much, much faster (comparable to OS X or Windows).
The real issue, however, is not having to boot at all. Linux is getting there, but OS X has it spot-on. The new Intel mac's simultaneously suspend to ram and disk, so even if your battery dies, the resume only takes 10 or so seconds, at most (compared to 1-2 seconds for a ram resume).
10 seconds is not bad to
Re:"With the exception of Apple" (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:"With the exception of Apple" (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah yes, eventually I figured out how to do it with my old Toshiba, considering how the default mode was hibernate, and nowhere does it recommend or even mention that an alternate, faster sleep mode was available, and indeed the option was hidden deep within the guts of the OS.
Apple's "it just works" mantra isn't rocket science, among other things it's about being non-stupid with your default settings, and exposing features in a usable, easy to find manner.
Joe user isn't going to know the difference between hibernate and sleep, he just wants his machine to be snappy and work. So while the underlying technology is no different, one machine gets a much more favorable impression.
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It's not new. As I said, Mac laptops have done this for a decade or more. One of the differences is that it's a 'safe sleep.' It effectively hibernates in the background, but only writes out a copy of memory. If the battery goes flat, you can still resume from the state on disk, it just takes a little longer (not too much though, since it demand-pages it back in, rather than loading the whole thing at once, which takes a long time on a laptop with 2GB of RAM and a disk that peaks at 30MB/s).
The big d
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Re:"With the exception of Apple" (Score:5, Interesting)
If I close the lid and put it away, it's dumb enough to run its battery completely dead. I even have "Critical Battery Alarm" set to Hibernate at 3%. But if I close my lid and put it in my desk drawer, the next morning the battery is completely dead. Even after I plug it back in I have to go through the 'reboot' sequence all over again.
My Macbook pro is the exact opposite. If I forget about it it'll hibernate itself. I don't see why this isn't part of any OS as is. If my battery runs low enough it'll hibernate itself. Next time I plug it in, it automatically comes back from where it was. XP allows me that extra 30 seconds of run time but then again when I do find power I have to start from scratch. My Macbook Pro has an "uptime" of a little over a week (Since the Leopard install) even though I've run the battery 'dead' twice because the OS is smart enough to shut itself down properly
I would be willing to bet that Linux has all of these features too. But I would also be willing to bet that they don't work as seamlessly as OS X.
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Close, but not quite. It won't be called iRightNow, it will have a stupid French name. Also, you didn't mention that unlike the competition, Apple's implementation will be useful.
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"k" will be the new "i"
nice (Score:2)
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Think Pine with a GUI and AbiWord, rather than Outlook/Thunderbird and MS Word/OpenOffice. AbiWord can be installed in 5mb if you don't choose any options, and it's bloated compared to some of the options out there. Pine comes in *well* under 1mb. Add in a couple of MB for the actua
Um.. (Score:5, Funny)
Isn't this called Linux?
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I love my MAC, I need my windows box for school.
There is no version of Multi-Sim, Not to mention one of my project servers at school suck donkey-nuts, it only allows IE. Grumble.
See the above posts for that whole sleep mode. It rocks. The only time that I was frustrated was because, the wireless needed a moment to re-acquire. I can probably wake up my Imac, do check Slashdot and put it back to sleep in the time it takes for windows to wake.
Similar to Virtualization technologies (Score:5, Insightful)
My concern would be data security, as if you wanted to run a word processor or any app that needs access to your hard drive or thumb drive, you would have to have appropriate security built into the miniOS to handle reading and writing. An option would be to provide some onboard flash storage for Hyperspace to use. How much can you enable the end user to customize the user experience without opening up the system to security risks?
Sounds familiar... (Score:2)
Didn't they sell a device like this years ago? It had a stylish design, and a below-cost price with monthly subscriptions, it got hacked almost instantly to run Linux, it prompted a few hundred "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!" comments and then disappeared...?
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No brainer. (Score:5, Interesting)
People always say, "Well all this person does is check email! Why do they need a fancy computer/operating system/office suite." The real question should be, why do they need an OS at all?
I love my desktop, and I'll probably keep one until they get something that I can wear that does all the same stuff, but I'm fricking sick to death of dealing with people's computer issues, when they only really need a web browser. Handing out knoppix disks works well enough, as a stopgap, but reducing things to a more simple state is highly desirable.
Re:No brainer. (Score:5, Insightful)
By the time all is said and done, they do a heck of a lot more than just email and more than what probably makes sense for some trimmed down applications.
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But I suppose if the O/S is not capable enough to s
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I'm tempted to get one myself.
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and this is why whenever the geek's "net appliance" re-enters the market it sinks like a rock.
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Your "real question" should be why do we need a *bloated* OS? The answer, of course, is that we've never needed it, and would probably be better off without it...
Bypassing Windows and... (Score:3, Insightful)
Similarly I don't think there's ever a time when I want to run just a word processor. I want an MP3 player for some tunes. I want a web browser for fact checking. I want Freecell because I'm lazy and rarely do any actual word processing.
Basically what I'm saying is that I want a proper OS, not something that runs one app at a time. I doubt I'm alone in that. Now, give me a decent OS that runs lots of things loaded into an area of Flash memory so it starts up quickly and I'm yours.
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Things like a firewall and anti-virus. Quite necessary if Phoenix are suggesting you might run an email client on this thing.
Really? Why? The article doesn't give many specifics. It's possible that this "new technology" won't even have access to the hard drive. If it's limited to ROM and RAM, is there really anything a hacker or a virus could do, even if they somehow managed to get in? Reboot and you're back to normal.
Similarly I don't think there's ever a time when I want to run just a word processor. I want an MP3 player for some tunes. I want a web browser for fact checking. I want Freecell because I'm lazy and rarely do any actual word processing.
Basically what I'm saying is that I want a proper OS, not something that runs one app at a time. I doubt I'm alone in that. Now, give me a decent OS that runs lots of things loaded into an area of Flash memory so it starts up quickly and I'm yours.
Then clearly this stuff is not for you. I'd gladly take it, until we get a full-blown OS that loads quickly or instantly. Remember, this is being designed with portable laptops in mind. The kind of thing they expe
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Basically what I'm saying is that I want a proper OS, not something that runs one app at a time. I doubt I'm alone in that. Now, give me a decent OS that runs lots of things loaded into an area of Flash memory so it starts up quickly and I'm yours.
It's things listed in your post that popular OS vendors have forgotten about... We need to be pandered to. There's a reason that Vista sales are in the toilet, Linux hasn't been able to break into the market in a decade and why Apple is a cool, but small niche
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What does this mean?
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Ah-HAH! So that's why Microsoft had it's best Q1 in eight years and the stock is up 10%. It all makes sense now.
Let me guess - you get your news about Microsoft from Slashdot?
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Actually... If I understand what this thing is doing correctly... I don't think you'd really need a firewall. The idea is that it would run just the email client, nothing else. Not even the OS. There would be literally nothing listening for incoming connections. Just the occasional outgoing connection on 110 or 25 to send/receive mail. This could actually dramatically increase
This is so cool (Score:2)
Bypass Windows boot-up... (Score:2)
Great Idea (Score:2)
Really, all we users want are day to day applications.
It's high time we got rid of all of this unnecessary bloat, like VM systems and network protocols. What did they ever do for us anyway?
Sleep works for me (Score:2, Interesting)
Sleep mode takes care of this while preserving the full functionality of your setup. Why have a hobbled OS?
My cheap Dell box boots in under 40 seconds (Score:2)
3+ minutes to boot a computer? What sort of mandatory crap-ware does that guy's company require? Granted I have seen companies get overzealous with security (or rather "over-stupid" in some instances...) and install 10+ background apps, but it isn't any given OSs fault if a company's IT department stinks!
Tag this: (Score:2)
In BIOS? What the...?
This is a way to undermine the most useful feature of todays PCs that is, they can be used for almost anything.
Toy (Score:5, Interesting)
For example:
- Ancient versions of AMIBIOS had a Windows 3.11-like mouse-operated GUI (I had one on a 486 PC purchased in 1995). It was a lot easier to use than "modern" text-based BIOSes in 2007. And if the computer had no mouse, you could use the keyboard for navigation.
- I bought an ASUS motherboard about six years ago and it had a feature that spoke about any failures, e.g. no video card or bad memory, instead cryptic beeps that are common today.
Besides, phones and PDAs are "boot" faster not because the initialization procedure is faster (my PDA boots in about 30 seconds) but because they sleep instead of powering off.
Followup (Score:2)
And besides, it seems that BIOS is going to be replaced with EFI.
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My laptop boots from cold in about 25 seconds. It's running Vista Home Premium edition on it. (yah, yah, I know. call me when the ALSA driver supports my sound card. I have tried repeatedly, with multiple distros and multiple kernel versions. Every time it identifies/loads the driver, then the driver crashes claiming there's no codec
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The verbal POST sounds both amusing and useful, though
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No one really needs an everything-is-OK alarm. It's silly if they didn't have a feature to be silent on success
~ EVERYTHING IS OK! EVERYTHING IS OK! BEEEEP BEEEP BEEEP!! ~
What is this 'booting'? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nasty issues to be handled in embedded BIOS applications:
I guess you can cram this in 4M of flash if you are top notch programmer, 128M if you are not. Either way the hardware won't add more than $20 to the cost of the laptop, so I suppose it is a good thing, as long as you can disable it.
It does open an interesting option: If a user only needs email and web access, they don't need to install an OS at all.
nasty issues to be handled .. (Score:2)
Do you mind informing the rest of the IT world as to what secret sause you use, an OS that never requires a reboot during the lifetime of the laptop. The world would beat a path to your door
'# Enter all my wifi access data again' etc
Well if the app runs identically to a version running on the harddrive then that should be no problem. All the harddrive would be used for is storing data and none of those nasty virus type
Virtualization and Applications (Score:2)
No OS? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sorry, I can't use that word processor. It doesn't support my video card?
evolution (Score:2, Funny)
INCLUDING your BIOS!
it's called a dedicated-function system (Score:2)
run Linux (Score:2)
off topic alternative (Score:2, Interesting)
Seems more retro than advanced (Score:4, Interesting)
It was commonplace for early home computers to come with applications in firmware. BASIC programming was provided in ROM on all Commodore coputers except their IBM compatibles, Apple II series did as well as did many Radio Shack models and the Atari XL and XE 8-bit computers. Even the original IBM PC had BASIC in the firmware. Early 16-bits like the Atari ST had a highly modified variant of CP/M ported to the 68000 architecture upon which the GEM graphical interface resided--and on all but the earliest models it was all resident in ROM (can you imagine trying to get Vista on firmware cost-effectively?).
The example you give is even more ironic because the Coleco ADAM our family bought in 1984 had--you guessed it--a word processor preloaded in ROM (it bank-switched between the BIOS it had called "EOS" and the "SmartWriter" word processor depending on whether a bootable cassette or floppy was found in any of the drives). The idea is not new at all--it is a very OLD idea being resurrected because for end users it WAS a good idea to put the software you used the most to get you going faster, especially given that hard drives were rare on home computers and slower floppies and even slowere cassettes were the only practical alternative.
The biggest disadvantage was that firmware was not easily updatable. When software was simpler people just lived with the bugs until an updated hardware revision was out but with todays complex software (in some cases poorly written and poorly architectd at that) requires frequent updates as bugs are more numerous and more dangerous to your data (since we now have to deal with the internet). Now with flash memory technology having matured the updating problem is gone...the only thing left to contend with is cost (much more than a hard drive, plus software is so bloated).
There is another factor too--hardware has become more intelligent, as have operating systems and over time the traditional BIOS in the PC platform has become almost irrelevant beyond reverse compatibility. New hardware and current OSes use next to nothing in the BIOS anymore. So, creating applications in the "BIOS" is the way these companies try to stay relevant. It's important to note, however, that BIOSes are mostly proprietary to the point that it could be difficult to write Free software on the platform, and in juristictions with DMCA-like copyright regulations even illegal (as the DMCA is often used to restrict the ability to reverse-engineer). That's why Free software BIOS projects are important, and why Free hardware is something that must get more attention, because the parts of the BIOS that remain relevant happen to be the parts that make the wide variety of motherboards out there software-compatible with each other.
It must have been tough... (Score:2)
Linux (Score:2)
The "OS" concept is so arbitrary, anyway (Score:2)
The name "operating system" was invented by IBM for a software system that would automate the tasks of the human operator that preceded it: loading programs, killing programs that got caught in loops, directing device 6 output to the printer if approp
What an innovation! (Score:3, Informative)
A simple yet functional OS and applications on a chip! Why didn't someone think of doing this before!?
OH WAIT, THEY DID AND MICROSOFT PUSHED THEM OUT OF THEIR MARKET AND SENT THEM OUT OF BUSINESS [wikipedia.org]
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Re:old technology (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.linuxbios.org/ [linuxbios.org]
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2. Phoenix made the BIOS for Tandy computers. Go fig.
-uso.
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Perhaps their proposal can do a better job, but it doesn't appear to be new ground.
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Indeed, my Dell laptop has a button specifically for booting into a mini-OS to directly access files in this manner. Unfortunately, there isn't enough difference between this limited boot and a regular boot to justify its use.
Perhaps their proposal can do a better job, but it doesn't appear to be new ground.
You are talking about the MediaDirect feature. It actually uses Windows XP embeded. The first time its loaded it loads fully. Then it writes what is basically a hibernation file. So all subsequent boots load this hibernation file which brings the system to a fully running state faster than booting Windows XP Embeded, and much faster than booting all of normal Windows from scratch. (But there is not enough difference in loading speed to justify loading MediaDirect instead of hibernated Windows XP.)
The mai
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Vista Forever Everywhere Ultimate Platinum Edition, GO!
And we already have vendor lock in of the BIOS, although that situation is starting to change, I can't just pop an open source BIOS in my PC and expect it to work yet.
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Later on, some (small) fraction of these users might consider switching to some other operating system (which could be good for Linux & opensource).
At last, I think it opens a very interesting can of worms: finally the BIOS is evolving (yes I do know about EFI for Apple, OpenFirmware for some old Suns, OpenBIOS or LinuxBIOS for some happy few motherboards).
What
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Sounds possible (Score:5, Insightful)
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um, linux, windows and osx aren't the only operating systems out there. i thought you dumbasses should know.
True, but who is going to be running AIX on their home pc?
anyway, having a subset of features running without windows is likely to be a miserable failure. Most consumers probably turn on their PCs about once per day, and once it is booted, all of their applications are available for use. Why would these people then want to reboot, to get a subset of these applications (or vica versa, rebooting to open some pdf/flash file that the bios rom doesn't have a reader for, etc)?
If these people wanted to be u
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