Okay I have an HP dv6000 laptop that I recently installed Ubuntu onto, however I did not want to disturb the windows installation so I told Ubuntu to install the OS on a hi-speed 4GB flash drive. It did that without problems and after it finished I wanted to go into Windows, so I figured that removing the USB drive during start up would cause the laptop to automatically boot into Windows, however that wasn't the case. Before any operating system boots up, GRUB displays an error message and does not give you any options, you can reboot and you will only get back to the same error, you can go into BIOS but thats it. Yet if I plug the USB drive back in, GRUB loads just fine and I come to a menu that lets me pick which operating system to boot up.

So the point here is that while I at first freaked out because I couldn't see any positive side to this, this actually works very well as a security feature. Because if anyone tries to start my laptop without the USB plugged in, they won't be able to do anything with it, or at least not easily access my files. Granted that getting around this and accessing the data is easy for anyone with some experience, its does act as a fairly good deterrent, especially when the TSA guy wants to go snooping through your files.

For me this works out perfectly, because my laptop stays at home and everyone in the house tends to use it whenever they want, and instead of a password you just have what is essentially a USB key.

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War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.
- George Orwell

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