You do realize that by "for free" you really mean "included in your rent, which you still pay for," right?

They can also figure out the address of anywhere you go regularly. That means your workplace, your friends' homes, the bar you hang out at, your mistresses' house, your drug dealer, etc.... any of which could open you up to blackmail or worse.

That last one might -- might -- be a valid thing for the cops to care about, but the rest aren't. Yet they still have the information, and that's a problem. Remember, even if you aren't a criminal, the cop looking through the records might be.

But you don't care, because it's the control that matters to you, no the consequences.

Fundamental attribution error, much?

1) Modern diesel engines burn cleaner than gasoline.

2) Modern wood-stoves can produce 1/10th the emissions of your granddad's outdoor wood boiler.

I don't know about agriculture as a source of air pollution, though I know the runoff causes massive damage to aquatic ecosystems.

The bigger problem here, we just have too damned many humans. Not too many cars, not too many woodstoves, not fuel-X vs fuel-Y, not farming-method-P vs farming-method-Q. We don't need emissions controls (well, we do, but I consider that secondart); we need population controls.

Nothing short of that will "fix" our pollution problem, our energy needs, our water needs, our space needs. Our planet just can't handle the size of our species.

Electric vehicles themselves do not emit, but they cause power plants to emit.

Except in France, where only about 8% of their electricity comes from fossil fuels.

Considering the PM2.5 issue, I'm starting to wonder if "modern" diesels might actually be worse than older ones. At least older diesels produce big particulates that are more easily filtered or washed out by rain. Plus, they get better fuel economy, can run on biodiesel without clogging the common-rail injectors, etc.

I agree, it seems to be a 'liberal' thing - carbon credits, rather than a 'simple' carbon tax. Pollution trading, etc... Let's create MORE complex systems that don't really solve anything.

What are you, an idiot? The only reason 'liberals' talk about carbon credits instead of a 'simple' carbon tax is in an attempt to compromise with conservatives!

Then, conservative assholes turn around and blame them for it -- just like what happened with Romneycare.

Liberal: "Let's solve the problem by taxing carbon!"
Conservative: "NO! TAXES ARE EVIL!!!! We need a Free Market solution!"
Liberal: "Fine. We'll assign a value to carbon, and let it be traded on the Free Market."
Conservative: "NO! That's too complicated!"
Liberal: "..."

Apparently, what needs to happen is for liberals to stop attempting to compromise, and just tell the conservatives to go fuck themselves instead.

Would suck for kernel devs but would probably work just fine for most Linux users. Linux is not doomed.

Every user is potentially a kernel dev, ...

In exactly the same way that Bill Maher is potentially a future pope.

No, not in the same way! For the purpose of this conversation, "kernel dev" includes even people who do something as simple as `make menuconfig` or anything else that causes the checksum of the kernel to change.

That's actually a lot of people, including all Gentoo users, VMware users, anybody who needs to enable support for weird hardware, anybody who needs a non-free driver that can't be distributed already compiled in, etc.

Would suck for kernel devs but would probably work just fine for most Linux users. Linux is not doomed.

Every user is potentially a kernel dev, which is the entire point of Free Software!

What's in it for the OEM to do this?

I'll give you a hint: it's green, rectangular, and under the table.

Regarding PCs though, I can think of nothing that would generate a new anti-trust lawsuit faster than this. MS had better walk damn carefully here if they do ANYTHING that could be perceived as unfairly locking Linux and other OSes from PC hardware.

Even with Republicans having a majority in both houses of Congress?

So, that being said... Can anyone explain to me why Microsoft can use the Secure Boot feature but Linux can't offer the same as an "out of the box" experience?

Because the entire point of Free Software is that every individual user could be customizing his kernel and thus needing his own personal key.

Once a user learns enough about Linux to want to install it...

Oh, and how did they do that? By using a Live CD. And what do you call a Live CD in a world with mandatory Secure Boot? A goddamn coaster, that's what!

Why the fuck should there be a goddamn OS license key in the BIOS to begin with?!!

And what about any individual user, even one who uses Red Hat or Ubuntu, who has the audacity to actually want to exercise his rights under the GPL and recompile his kernel?

Actually, I will simply blacklist any company...

You will end up having to blacklist every company, giving up technology entirely, and going to live in a hut on a mountain.

For the vendor of a mass-market Linux laptop ---- if there is such a thing --- choosing a signed Linux OS and closing an attack vector common to both Linux and Windows makes perfect sense as well.

A Linux laptop with Secure Boot misses the point, since it prevents the user from recompiling his kernel. It's Tivoization all over again!