As an American, I prefer to ignore your statistic for so many of us being creationists, and I am not interested in your so-called evidence that the figure is correct. The number just feels wrong, therefore it must be a lie. My gut tells me there aren't nearly that many creationists around here, because neither I nor the people I know, are anything like that!

Furthermore, I don't understand how many people could be creationists, so that's another argument that not nearly many of them could be.

Finally, your poll is biased and invalid, because .. because .. I want it to be.

Ask my family on how that one worked out.

I tried but they wouldn't answer the phone.

retailers such as PC World and Comet will be expected to say things like "this computer is better than that one because it is Windows 8 certified".

The heart of the issue is: "expected by who?" Evidence (it was lame but at least I cited something; what have you got?) suggests it's not the people who buy the computers.

I've come to like complexity in villainous characters. I know, I know, it's all the rage now; I'm just saying this is a bandwagon I jumped on. They can't all be Saurons, give me a Jaime Lannister now and then.

Do you honestly think that retail outlets will even consider selling computers without those stickers?

That's a tough question. At first we all assume that the stickers must be pretty important, but my guess (pre-looking-at-evidence) is that most retail sellers would in fact be willing to do just that, since users never asked for those stickers in the first place; they're ads.

(What forces, other than MS's insistence, have created the need for these stickers? Have retailers, in fact, pressured OEMs for them?)

I know they're not retail outlets (exactly not what you asked about, I realize) but I can't help but notice that when you try to search for computers at newegg, MS certification isn't one of the search options. Even trivia such as 3.1GHz vs 3.3GHz CPU clockspeeds seems to be more important. (?!) At least among mail order customers, we have evidence that there exists no market force which favors certification.

At this point, yeah, I think I can honestly say that retail outlets will sell computers without those strickers. Sure, I could be wrong, but all intuition and evidence points me that way.

I wonder if I ought to visit a retail outlet and peel the stickers off all their computers. Then monitor how it effects the sales at that particular outlet. That would be a good experiment..

..if only it weren't so absurd. Just imagining the experiment, makes me think even more that the stickers don't matter a bit.

That would probably make for good website poll, alas at sites other than slashdot: "do you look for a MS certification sticker prior to buying a computer?"

My solution is better. My solution will allow you to to load Linux via secure boot, and effortlessly update grub or the kernel from your distribution, no matter which distribution that is (it doesn't have to be Red Hat) -- or you can compile the kernel or grub yourself, if you like, and it'll still get signed. My solution works for everyone. Just make me responsible for the root signing key and I will solve all the problems to almost everyone's satisfaction.

For maximum security, though, I do still need offsite backup volunteers. Wanna be one?

Has Linux sudenly been infected by rootkits? Did I miss a memo?

In all honesty, give us any UEFI-signed Linux kernel, and yes, Linux will be infected by rootkits (or rather "kernelspacekits"). It will be done on purpose, by the people who own the machines upon which Linux is installed, so that they can maintain their systems.

A UEFI-signed Linux kernel, like any other Linux kernel will start to become obsolete within a week or two, because Linux is without a doubt that fastest-improving and best-maintained OS in the history of computing, whether you think it's a good OS or not. (That's a fact, Jack. Sorry FreeBSD fans. I'm not dissing your OS, just saying you're not the mainstreamiest of the Free OSes and you don't have a Red Hat or Canonical or IBM paying its employees to work on your project full time.) Part of why you use Linux, is that you want to take advantage of the awesome maintenance that popular Free Software projects get, and Linux happens to be one of the most popular and well-funded ones. So you probably are going to sometimes want to install kernel updates.

Your UEFI-signed-for-$99 kernel will be that kernel's bootloader, and the loading will be accomplished via some exploit, possibly a deliberately-created one for that very purpose.

It would be a PITA to have to go into BIOS every time I wanted to switch to the other OS.

I'm pretty sure the way it works is that you would be doing that once, at the time you install your OS (or your Linux-based Dom0 or whatever virtualizer your're using).

That in itself is somewhat anti-competitive, and I think some people are concerned about that, but to techies it's just not a big deal. Their ARM stance is much more evil, and of course people are going to be suspicious that MS will try to bring their ARM evil to x86 on the next iteration, so 5-10 years from now they might really try to make it so that you're not allowed to run non-MS OSes.

Get all Linux distros to coordinate on a single Linux key and have the OEMs add it to their hardware. This is undesirable because nobody wants to be responsible for maintaining the One True Key, and even then there would still be OEMs who don't ship with it.

I'll do it. I hereby volunteer. Give me the key. I will take on this responsibility.

I know I can do this job quite effectively, too, without the "millions of dollars" in security and signing practices that Matthew Garret spoke of.

BTW, along the aforementioned line of saving money, I will need some help with offsite backups. Anyone want to help me? In order to keep this root signing key Absolutely Safe from loss, I intend to share it with at least One Million helpers. You won't catch me keeping all my eggs in one basket, no sir.

Why wouldn't this approach work? Why does Red Hat give a damn about the security of the key or loadable modules or drivers or anything else, at long as this approach makes their OS bootable?

So does this mean I can put a sticker on my car that says: "By Reading this Bumper Sticker you agree ...

No, but I think the Blizzard judge pretty much established that you can bind someone to a EULA if you sell your car to them. Furthermore, you don't need to disclose the contents (or existence!) of that EULA, until after you already have their money.

If you hate people who buy things from you, then you can probably have some good fun with that.