They don't need to do that. Each MS drive is "programmed" at the factory, and as long as the signature on that sector is valid it's all good to go. The drive contains the serial number *and* the signature (in a sector), this way the MS drive is a self-contained unit that will work in any XBox.

Oh, duh. I knew I should have read your post a 4th time. You already said it might be on the MBR (or another HD lcoation) which of course, is on the hard drive which I still have in my hand when I get my "new" XBox back. My brain is obviously not functioning very well now. I had this idea in my head that you were saying that the HD Serial # and the XBox were somehow "paired", but that's not what you said at all.

I'll just be moving along now...

Take the serial number of the drive, sign it with Microsoft private key and put the signed text into the MBR or somewhere else where it will be not touched by the filesystem. Anyone with the Microsoft public key (and certainly any Xbox) can verify who signed the drive.

But when you send your XBox in for repair, they ship you a different console as a replacement (this has happened twice to me). Each time MS has made it clear that the hard drive is NOT to be shipped with the unit so therefore the repair center has no access to the hard drive serial number. This would mean that when I plugged my hard drive into the new console, it would not pass verification as a legitimate, MS approved hard drive because the hard drive signature on the console would not match my original HD.

What a twist!

"...it's no surprise that the city with the highest level was Washington DC,..."

That's a surprise to me, but perhaps I live a sheltered life. Is the implication that being involved in politics makes you more likely to indulge in cocaine use or that being involved in politics causes you to exude cocaine through the pores in your skin? Neither of these thoughts are pleasant.

I don't have a problem with it. People can do what they want, but if they do it outside, then they don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy. I like the idea of BM, but it's simply not private and to believe that your activities will not be noticed, reported, photographed, recorded or video taped simply because the organizers tell you that at BM you are free to do what you want is simply ignorant.

"I personally wouldn't care if there's a photo of me smoking a joint at an event like Burning Man, but I imagine for some other people this could be a disaster. Plus there's always the exploitative assholes that come to events like this just to take pictures of naked people and post them on their blog."

If people are doing something that they wouldn't want someone to take a picture of them doing, then they should probably do it behind closed doors and not out in plain sight.

My wife was served with court papers (for me) in Washington state while I was in Nebraska for an extended period of time (hadn't been home for over 7 months). I talked to a lawyer here in Nebraska. He advised several things:

1) I was not properly served and did not have to respond
2) They would not issue a bench warrant for my arrest (which I think was more because it was just a debt matter and not a criminal matter)
3) I was not in the courts jurisdiction
4) Sending a letter to the court explaining why I couldn't attend would put me in the courts jurisdiction and then I would be in trouble if I didn't show up.

This gave me great leverage over the creditor and I was able to negotiate down what they wanted to collect (which included exorbitant fees) to an amount just over how much I actually did owe them

Damn kids and their new-fangled "clouds" anyway... Why in my day, if you wanted clouds you damn well hiked you ass up a mountain! Regarding the electricity "rant", I wonder if that's what the people in Texas were thinking when they put Texas on their own electrical grid.

"This allows the spotlight to focus on online applications."

Who has been asking for all these online applications? I keep reading about the freakin' "CLOUD!!!" and am just not impressed. I wouldn't trust anyone's Cloud platform with my company's data.

As many people have mentioned, once the network goes down, no more online anything. I want my apps, my data and my work all under my control on my local machine/network. There are uses for online applications but to rely on them for business, private data or to store anything that lack of access to would cause a work stoppage is a bad idea.

Hey-Do live near me? That sounds like my apartment door!

Here at US Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force base in Omaha, Nebraska (a joint command), we don't need no stinkin' Windows XP! Why, Win2k is just fine for all us folk here. In fact, we are going to SKIP windows XP and move straight to Windows Vista last year... uh I mean this year (major roll-out keeps getting pushed back-can't understand why). Yep! In the works right now. What's that? Win 7 is coming out this year? Nah. We don't need that either. We'll go to Vista instead! Keep in mind that 98% of all the machines there are still on Win2k and the Vista migration still hasn't happened in force, but there are no plans yet to skip Vista and wait for Windows 7. My guess is that they already bought the licenses for Vista, but I can neither confirm or deny that.