http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/11/20/025254/in-the-eu-water-doesnt-officially-prevent-dehydration is the discussion of that recent event, right here on slashdot.

Just a note, for clarification:
"clean room" reverse engineering can legally be used to implement a functional replacement for a piece of software.
As an example:
Person_A creates a piece of software.
Person_B studies that piece of software, noting what it does (but not how it does it).
Person_C receives Person_B's description, and implements the functionality therein described.

As a real-world example:
Google used this process for their Dalvik engine (a clean-room reverse-engineered implementation of the Java interpreter). Copyright-wise, they were OK.

Patents, on the other hand, are a different subject entirely. Google was not in the clear patent-wise in this particular instance, until it was discovered that the Sun CEO had expressly given consent for them to do so in the company newsletter, when he welcomed them to the development community.

The finer details of this incident are available to anyone with a modicum of google-fu.

... except the USPTO.

Oh, how quickly our memory fades.

It should be noted that the drives are unusable after this process, as it also destroys the controller interface.

Or a sign that someone is not necessarily a native English speaker.. perhaps they normally speak German?

On the other hand, having the demonstrated ability to repurpose a machine "on-the-fly" is potentially useful, especially if you can convince your users to store their data on the network somewhere. With a fast enough network connection, the "remote" data should be nearly as quick to access as if it was on a drive in the system, and you can tailor the new OS images to suit individual classes of users - the beancounters may not like it that they can't surf the web without a browser installed, but they don't need the internet to count those beans, do they? Kill two birds with one stone - increase accounting's productivity, and free up all kinds of bandwidth for gami... errr... network stress testing.

or g4u
or CloneZilla
or dd > gzip > ftp (which is what g4u does, actually).

http://destructdata.com/blog/?page_id=27

DBAN is no longer the most secure method of non-recoverable data destruction short of destroying the drive. According to the linked article, CPR's "Hammer" is the best. The article contains a link to free softwares that operate in the same fashion.

... and it also foils keyloggers, if it moves around on the screen and shuffles the letters/numbers randomly while you "type"!

Bummer. Guess I won't be buying any more Valve games, then. Out of curiosity, can you provide a link with supporting information?

At some point, you're going to have to admit that you're not loaning anything - you're handing your friend an additional copy of a file containing copyrighted content, and thus violating the copyright legislation.

File storage devices are too large to be "wasting" by sticking a dozen songs on them and handing them to a friend. Unless and until I can get my hands on 640MB USB drives for $0.50 each, furthering this discussion is futile.

How inept are your reading skills, that you can't even see the word dual-boot in my query?

Yes, PCs exist that ship with Linux on them - but none of those have Windows on them... which was part of my original point.

Part of the reason the Linux-equipped machines haven't sold well is that they have been crippled, hardware-wise, compared to the "equivalent" Windows system. "Half the ram" and "smaller processors" have been the norm, probably because Microsoft is afraid to compete on an even field - or perhaps it is due to over-estimating the efficiency of Linux in a desktop environment.

1: "not legally-binding". That pretty much sums it up.
2: I shouldn't have to break the law to play a game I legally purchased.
3: I still play games that are nearly 20 years old. I'm not saying I'm normal, or that this behavior is anywhere near "prevalent", but it is a fact.
4: So you're saying that a large number of people would need to break the law? See #2.
Oh, and by the way - If you are any kind of serious about certifications, ethics, or legalities, then you don't do things that can land you in court (nevermind jail). There is a provision in the DMCA for software interoperability, but I wouldn't want to be the test-case for "cracking" XP's activation once the servers go down (for example).

tl;dr - Technical possibility, with or without ubiquity of method, does not indicate legality. See "P2P Piracy", "mp3 controversy", and/or "Jammie Thomas". I'll ignore the many ethical concerns associated with this topic at this time.

Sure, i could hand my friend my PC, or my mp3 player, or what have you. Should I have to hand my friend a stack of several hundred music CDs, if I just wanted to loan him a particular album by a particular artist? "The entire collection" is not exactly a convenient package size, nor is it consumer-friendly to lose access to my entire library of media because I want my friend to listen to a dozen songs from a particular artist.

"My entire media library, as well as the viewing/listening device" should not be the only method I have of sharing my media. This is one of the reasons I like to purchase physical media, and one of the reasons I dislike purchasing digital media without a physical format to go with it.