And the OEMs provide a switch to turn it off.
That's not true any more. That's the news. People will install Linux on their laptops, find out that hibernation isn't working because of the so-called Secure Boot restrictions, get angry, and just give up Linux and go back to Windows and its world of post-boot malware.
That is the OEMs choice, just like is their choice whether to even give you access to the BIOS.
Impossible, no machine could ever be sold without the capability to boot from an external device, as this would prevent installing Microsoft Windows on it.
We've seen the same thing with default BIOS passwords before too, the hysterical idiots crying "what if the OEMs dont tell us the passwords?!".
Actually, what we have seen is that people saw the so-called Secure Boot as the unuseful and harmful thing that it is, and a limited number of Microsoft supporters labeled them as hysterical idiots pointing at the fact that it could always be disabled. Well, now it's no longer true, as widely expected by the hysterical idiots.
Blaming Microsoft when the onus is on the OEM is obvious stupidity or intentional malicious misdirection.
Leaving aside the fact that "leaving the onus on the OEM" already is an anti-competitive, anti-consumer and anti-free software behaviour, since you are less malicious than me, can you give a non-malicious explanation about why the requirement of being able to disable the so-called Secure Boot is being lifted now? What problem are MS trying to solve? The rising wave of hypno-malware that induces users to enter the firmware setup utility on their machines and disable boot restrictions?
What's my complaint, you ask. My complaint, I'm sorry if it wasn't clear, is not being able to install the software that I want on the PC that I own. Everyone around here has understood perfectly what's going on: the so-called Secure Boot adds no security on a system where the user is able to install third-party software (or his own) and therefore it is merely an obstacle put in place by Microsoft (not the UEFI forum, not the OEMs, not anyone else) to make it harder for end users to replace Windows with something else. Being upset for this is not an "emotional problem against Microsoft", it is a very pragmatic stance. If anything, if you want to see something emotional, it's calling a company which behaves this way as "the new Microsoft that supports Linux", which is the reason I bothered to write my original comment. And that's, of course, a perfectly acceptable emotional behaviour; we'd be robots without emotions. A less laudable kind of emotional behaviour is making personal attacks about the richness of my vocabulary. Yes, my English skills are limited. But being able to master a wider portion of the English language won't help me when I get a blinking cursor because I tried to remove Windows, or because a malware has modified some image measured by the so-called Secure Boot infrastructure.
VS 2015 supports android and linux development with cordova. No really you did not miss read that. I like this newer Microsoft
The all new Microsoft that, as expected, is conspiring to lock Linux out of people's computers by means of the so-called SecureBoot?
Why do I need a union?
Unions lobby the government to make them pass laws that make your work life more enjoyable even if you don't belong to one. This is needed to counter balance the lobbying power of the employers. For example, if fire breaks out at the place where you work, most probably you'll find fire extinguishers and emergency exits, and this fact is not due to your employer's benevolence or your professionality: your employer would be compelled by market forces to make you work in a dangerous place, if there weren't laws in place preventing malevolent employers from competing with him.
I'm not impoverished, despite you saying I should be without a union...
You don't need to be a communist to actually believe in the role of unions: the IMF, certainly not a lair of leftists, found out that inequality and poverty rise when the power of unions falls.
The use of "was" as in past tense and "was" as in the subjunctive are actually in mutually exclusive use. That's why English even bothered to lose the subjunctive in the first place.
Hello, English learner here, what about the case of a sentence that *was* true in the past (not "might have been true" as the GP suggests)?
"If I was fooled, that's because I wasn't careful enough."
"If I were fooled, I'd be sorry now."
That is the language that most of the world learns as english, not "british" english.
Actually, in Europe (at least where I live) we do study British English in schools. But then people learn American English because of America's cultural supremacy.
I think there's a world market for about five computers. -- attr. Thomas J. Watson (Chairman of the Board, IBM), 1943