...and you're right. Consider the local library's "freedom" to the public internet. You can't do squat on those machines - either legitimate or not - because they're locked-down. You're granted a small bit of "freedom" in exchange for a high level of immunity. On the other hand, not running any sort of antivirus, spam filter or firewall means you have complete, unrestricted access, but at a penalty. Sure, modern society is capable of stopping the bad guys, but at what cost? I don't want my ISP filtering my access any more than I want my government telling me who to work for.

You're absolutely correct in your thinking, but that's what keeps people like us employed. If society were concerned with their personal information, half the security companies in the world wouldn't exist. Take a look at the internet spam reports: http://www.barracudanetworks.com/ns/?L=en If people didn't OPEN that stuff, spammers/phishers wouldn't propagate it. People are ignorant, therefore I am employed.

I've been using some sort of DVR since the technology was young. I've not used every option out there, so I can't speak for the commercial offerings like Tivo, et al. What I do have some experience with are the offerings from Microsoft, MythTV (and several derivatives), and a few "install this on your XP box" software applications. It all boils down to what you want, what you're willing to do (and pay) to get it and what you're willing to put up with. Being a bit more on the tech-savvy end of the spectrum (and a cheap bastard!), I ultimately settled on MythTV in a backend/frontend configuration. I settled on Mythbuntu and MiniMyth, but I can't say it's a flawless system. In a "normal" family environment, it may not have a high WAF - something that even as a geek, I'm not thrilled with. I will say however that I feel I'm pretty close to having it reliable enough to go full-on. It takes more than a basic understanding of computers and networking, and a bit of Linux experience to boot. Certainly not mainstream. Windows simply wasn't stable enough - sure, it may take a small bit of fiddling to get the Linux solutions *working*, they're generally a bit more solid than the Windows solutions I've used. Crashing or locking up halfway through a movie or show is simply unacceptable to me - something Linux has never done. So in short, my list of factors and features in order of importance goes something like this: * stability/reliability/consistency - if it does the same thing every time and doesn't stop until it's supposed to, it's easier to resolve issues and makes for a much more enjoyable experience. * ease of use - the ten-foot UI as it's called must be just that. I (and more importantly, the members of my family) need to be able to control 100% of the system from the couch. If I have to have a keyboard, it's still a PC with a TV-out card, not a dedicated STB and nor should it be. * intuitive UI - any system will take some "getting used to", but the menu system needs to be well laid-out. A good example of a bad menu is the interface by many of the cable companies I've seen in their STB's. * sensible features - a media center should be just that - a media center. It should be able to play anything from movies to television shows to DVD's to network-shared files, whether they're images, videos or audio files. * extensibility/flexibility - nobody is going to want the exact same feature-set out of any given system, so it should be able to adapt to the environment. I personally don't play the stereo at the house so much, so my system's build wasn't built with much focus on MP3's. I do however like to pull the weather and traffic up in the morning, and that's only a few mouse-clicks, err, button-clicks on the remote away. Take some time and explore the options and the features they provide. Try some and weed out the ones that don't fit the bill. I personally don't think there's anything out there that's perfect, but if you do the research that you'd do for any other major endeavor, you'll be able to make an educated decision

I absolutely agree. I got into this field completely by accident 10+ years ago, and would honestly be doing this whether I'm doing it for a paycheck or not. Over the years, I've worked for mom-and-pop companies where the IT guy doubled as the and I've worked for Fortune 500 enterprises where IT duties themselves were very segregated and roles were very specific. Currently I'm at a company that's just big enough to have a fully-staffed helpdesk but small enough that even I as a Systems Administrator still get to talk with the users from time to time. We have a few "big toys" but I'm not managing a 10,000-node datacenter. The company I work for is publicly-traded, but we maintain that "family" atmosphere where I can call a user (or have helpdesk do it) and tell them that they're doing something wrong. However, as Voyager529 posted above, my users also know that a solution (or at least our desire to help fine one) is soon to follow. If you hate IT, budgetary constraints, backstabbing upper-management and unappreciative users, you have more options than to just jump ship completely. It's just like any other career - if you're not happy, take steps to change it. If the steps you're taking aren't helping, they're obviously the wrong steps. Consider how long you've been doing what you're doing, and how good you are at it. Now compare that to your next career - do you really want to start over? On the other hand, if you're completely burned-out and just looking for a fresh start, no amount of pep-talking is going to give you the passion you should have in ANY career. Go with your passion - after all, that's what allows me to get paid for my hobby ;)

Does anyone recall the lawsuit from 2006-ish from Sysinternals against Best Buy/Geek Squad for pirating software? Yeah, I'd say they're thieves from one end of the spectrum to the other.

I first read of this on some other site where it explains they bought various meters off ebay. At that point, nothing illegal was done as they owned the meters they were experimenting on. Granted, there was no money to be gained by doing this, but exploiting the vulnerability is probably worth quite a bit - to someone.