Just wonderful - Microsoft dictating to hardware vendors

From BoingBoing:

Windows 10 announcement: certified hardware can lock out competing OSes
Microsoft has announced a relaxation of its "Secure Boot" guidelines for OEMs, allowing companies to sell computers pre-loaded with Windows 10 that will refuse to boot any non-Microsoft OS.

At issue is UEFI, a security toolkit that allows computer users to verify operating systems before they are loaded. Like many security measures, the devil is in the details: if you get to tell your computer which OSes you trust, this is a powerful defense against malware. If someone else gets to decide whom to trust, you are totally at that entity's mercy. If, for example, they capitulate to state requests to install back doors (as Microsoft did with Skype), you can't protect yourself by finding a vendor with more integrity.

This kind of lockout magnifies existing power imbalances. Take Microsoft's relationship to China: the company has already cooperated with the Chinese government's online censorship and surveillance efforts. If China mandates that Microsoft OEMs must ship PCs that will only boot surveillance-backdoored versions of Windows, it will be that much harder to push back against the state -- by dramatically lowering the cost of spying by an autocratic regime, Microsoft would enable much more surveillance at the same price.

Makes it harder for people to run Linux as well. Nice way to keep people hooked on the MSFT teat.