hypnosec writes “The Linux Foundation’s UEFI Secure Boot pre-bootloader for independent Linux distros and software developers has finally been released. Announcing the release of the secure boot system James Bottomley noted that the signed pre-bootloader was delivered by Microsoft on February 6th. Bottomley has released two validated files PreLoader.efi and HashTool.efi. Bottomley has also created a bootable mini-USB image that provides “an EFI shell where the kernel should be and uses Gummiboot to boot.” Just last week the pre-bootloader had to be rewritten to accommodate booting of all versions of Linux.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Linux Foundation’s Secure Boot Pre-Bootloader Released
snydeq writes “Microsoft’s release of Office 2013 represents the latest in a series of makeover moves, this time aimed at shifting use of its bedrock productivity suite to the cloud. Early hands-on testing suggests Office 2013 is the ‘best Office yet,’ bringing excellent cloud features and pay-as-you-go pricing to Office. But Microsoft’s new vision for remaining nimble in the cloud era comes with some questions, such as what happens when your subscription expires, not to mention some gray areas around inevitable employee use of Office 2013 Home Premium in business settings.” Zordak points to coverage of the new Office model at CNN Money, and says “More interesting than the article itself is the comments. The article closes by asking ‘Will you [pay up]?’ The consensus in the comments is a resounding ‘NO,’ with frequent mentions of the suitability of OpenOffice for home productivity.” Also at SlashCloud. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Google’s philanthropic arm, Google Giving , has awarded a grant to the Raspberry Pi Foundation to fund 15,000 U.K. schoolchildren to get their very own Raspberry Pi micro computer to learn to code . The size of the Google Giving grant has not been disclosed but the Foundation describes it as “generous”, and the Model B Pi, which the kids will be getting, retails for $35 — so taken at face retail value the grant is worth $525,000. Announcing the award in a blog post today, the Foundation revealed Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt spent the morning with Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton at a local school in Cambridge, U.K. teaching kids about coding — and doubtless geeking out over the details of building a $35 micro computer . The Foundation said it will be working with Google and six U.K. educational partners to “find the kids who we think will benefit from having their very own Raspberry Pi”. The six partners are CoderDojo , Code Club , Computing at Schools , Generating Genius , Teach First and OCR . As well as helping the Foundation identify the lucky kids who will get free Pi, they will also be providing additional help and support. For example, OCR will be creating 15,000 free teaching and learning packs to go with the Raspberry Pis. The Foundation added: We’re absolutely made up over the news; this is a brilliant way for us to find kids all over the country whose aptitude for computing can now be explored properly. We believe that access to tools is a fundamental necessity in finding out who you are and what you’re good at. We want those tools to be within everybody’s grasp, right from the start. The really good sign is that industry has a visible commitment now to trying to solve the problem of CS education in the UK. Grants like this show us that companies like Google aren’t prepared to wait for government or someone else to fix the problems we’re all discussing, but want to help tackle them themselves. We’re incredibly grateful for their help in something that we, like them, think is of vital importance. We think they deserve an enormous amount of credit for helping some of our future engineers and scientists find a way to a career they’re going to love. More than one million Raspberry Pis have been sold since launch , although it’s not clear how many of those have gone to kids — as the Pi has been especially popular among the enthusiast adult maker community. 
