Ballmer fired.
New CEO coming in a few months time.
Share-holders are demanding sweeping changes across the board.
MS's Skype division "Look at us, we're doing stuff. We're still relevant. Please don't axe us."

Actual link to indiegogo page, which is missing from FTS
http://igg.me/at/ubuntuedge

The issues here is one of PR and perception by non-technical users

Microsoft requires x86 machines to be unlockable

But it's not called "Locked boot", is it?
It's called "Secure boot"
and disabling "secure boot" is surely, by definition, insecure.

Asking new users to disable secure boot is not what distros want to do.

Seriously. Call the program
"screener-720p"

and when will it become relevant to you?

When they push Windows-only "secure boot" on laptops?
When they push Windows-only "secure boot" on servers?
When they push Windows-only "secure boot" on desktop machines?

When, exactly, will this obviously evil and anti-competitive move be of relevance to you?

How isn't this sufficient?

It's not sufficient, because it doesn't solve the problem.

The problem is that MS's implementation of secure boot allows them to control what can and cannot boot on a device.
It is entirely at their discretion.

This is already in practice with the surface tablets
See Mathew Garrett's recent blog post
http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/21189.html

As you can see, locking out other OSs is already in place for the Surface tablet, which is unable to boot any other system (even with the boot-loader shims done by RedHat, Ubuntu and the Linux foundation.)

A rather literal take on the first step.
Hopes are high for the 'extend' part, but swiftly dwindle at the thought being virtually extinguished

No point supporting i386 anyway
As far as I'm aware, GNU binutils won't work on anything less than a 486

I guess you could be affected if you're using some other toolchain, but realistically is pointless keeping support for 386

the ending's disappointing, though...

But the local computer shop or data recovery firm sure cares, as secure boot eliminates their ability to bypass windows to recover data direct from storage.

Joe Shmoe will care that the latest virus to infest his system leaves his data corrupted and secure boot prevents any remedial actions.

Oh, wait. Bad example.

Actually, it's a perfect example.

"Look at Windows 8. Don't like the unterface? tough, there's nothing you can do about it.
Now look at Unity. Don't like the interface? Well try these others, there's plenty to choose from."

town of apps

So that's why they called their UI Metro.
Always wondered about that

This ain't Windows, boy.

go back to your remote desktop, everything-has-to-interact-with-the-GUI-scripting, and other such nonsense...

Playing devil's Advocate here, as personally I agree with this (and don't let the proprietary nVidia driver anywhere near my system).
But just for kicks, how does the recent case of Oracle trying (and failing) to claim copyright on the Java APIs affect this.

If you cannot copyright an API, then you cannot apply a copyright license either.

What if nVidia challenged this with exactly the same arguments that Google used with Dalvik.