[ge-talk] Get login details while booting

[Jared Eldredge]

seems to me that getting the login info before a full boot requires  
some logical thinking about what system services are needed to  
prevent a spoof of the login resulting in typing the user/pass into a  
simple graphic brought up by, possibly, a bootp network startup.

lets just say that we might remove a portion of the intent behind  
having a user/pass by pushing the process too early in the boot cycle  
(security)
i also feel that 10 seconds is NOT long to wait.  a simple POST takes  
almost 10 seconds on most computers, so powering up has a minimum  
time from a hardware perspective.  i think that providing a login  
screen with more interesting options, like network-login, might be  
more interesting.

just my humble opinion - based on rebooting thousands of windows  
machines over a lifetime (ex computer repair tech - 6yrs) - the OS  
side of boot-up time feels fast if it is on the same order of  
magnitude as the hardware side.  BeOS was already there, haiku is  
already there.  macosx is a little slow, but not bad.  lets not even  
mention the beast of redmond...

-jared

Jared Eldredge
CPU Design Engineer
BlueRISC, Inc.