I just finished rolling out my Windows Media Center with a InfiniTV 4 & the CableCard setup as well, it rocks. I haven't turned in my DVR & Cable Box yet, probably in a few weeks, but it will end up saving me $30+ a month, enough to pay off the InfiniTV 4 card & other parts in under a year.

I'm using a free Xbox360 as a media center extender, which works well. The thing that pisses me off is Microsoft requires me to spend $60 a year or something on an Xbox Live Gold account if I want to watch Netflix, onto of the Netflix account I already pay for. Netflix is great on my Media Center already, I just refuse to be gouged to watch it on a different device.

I believe you are talking about Datamancer's steampunk laptop. http://www.datamancer.net/steampunklaptop/steampunklaptop.htm

I wonder what this will finally do to the worthless security theater at our airports. Maybe they will finally realize corralling thousands of people together to go through useless screenings makes for a bigger juicer target than the airplanes on the other side. Dam bureaucrats always trying to put on a show about the last attack and not thinking about the next attack.

Actually, carriers should be making more money off of you in that situation. Their rates are structured around subsidized phones. You get a $600 phone for $200, and pay back the remaining over the course of your monthly bills for the duration of your contract. If you don't buy a new phone (and don't change carriers), you'll still be paying the same monthly bill, only this time the portion set aside to subsidize your phone is pure profit.

Not so much for the hardware vendors, they want you upgrading early & often.

I completely agree.... However I get these from Symantec, McAfee and other "good" vendors. Not that this discounts your theory about it being a scam, it's just not a flat out 100% scam, only a partial scam.

I don't understand all the hate for Comcast, at least here in Colorado Springs. In the past year and a half I've had service with them I've had less than a couple of hours of downtime (at least that was their fault and not me fiddling with my router). Good bandwidth & pings, who could as for more. It really blew me away after spending the past decade on military bases in the middle of nowhere overseas or downrange (1 second+ ping times, 10-30% packet loss, modem class bandwidth).

I agree completely both from the corporate end of things & build your own home PC. I still build my own home desktop because I can get EXACTLY what I want, but it's more expensive even before I start figuring in my time.

It may (doubtful, but possible) be possible to build an equivalent PC to a Dell for cheaper, but only if you don't factor in your time, which will add up very quick. Don't forget your time isn't just your salary. It's double to triple your salary to count for benefits facilities and stuff.

Add on top of that, the prospect of some little incompatibility and you have to replace a component in every single machine, there go the savings you didn't actually have.

Actually according to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_field we have field of view that is noticeably wider than it is tall.

FOB's are not hidden locations. Pretty much everybody that cares knows where they are located... Follow the masses of troops & trucks. And military bases of any sort tend to stick out with all the fortifications.

"I can see how Childs might have been convicted by a largely nontechnical jury." That doesn't jive at all with one of their previous articles "Terry Childs juror explains why he voted to convict" http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/terry-childs-juror-explains-why-he-voted-convict-212 . I'd hardly say a jury containing a CCIE non-technical.

Ya Terry is getting screwed way more than he should be, but he is not innocent.

<quote><p>What are you all on about? He <a href="http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1739636&amp;cid=33102880">said</a> he <em>disabled</em> administrative access from outside. No matter the password, there's intrusion going on here, so there <em>is</em> something to talk about.</p><p>If a password was all there is to protect your router from outside, all hell would break loose for simple brute forcing. </quote>

There was a nice talk at DEFcon here the other day showing how to easily get around the fact that the interface is disabled on the outside using a DNS rebinding attack. If your router had the default password, it could get owned not matter what you had disabled...

Ya, not the most kosher thing Verizon has ever done, but still infinitely better than letting most of their customer base get owned by a very proven attack that was just released.

Actually most modern cars have rev limiters, so it is a pretty good analogy. Mash on the gas and the electronics kick in and stop the engine from destroying itself when the RPMs top out. I know CPU's have had thermal diodes for throttling down voltage/speed when things get too hot.

<quote>The thing about this is that this is not really a question about badly written software. I think the current regulatory system provides a high enough level of protection against badly written software that making the software open source would not add a significant amount of increased security. However, a greater concern is the possibility that someone could insert code with specific triggers which could be used for malicious purposes. It is not that I believe that they would, it is that the implications for our society if someone did are so severe that some effort must be made to reduce the chances of that happening.</quote>

I have several diabetic friends with insulin pumps... It's been found that the wireless protocols used by these pumps to communicate with sensors & other devices is plain text and completely unauthenticated. That makes the very real possibility somebody can hack the pump and kill my friends with very little defenses in the way to stop them. A lot of implanted devices are no different, wide open just relying on people not bothering to try. Very poor security that I wouldn't want to stake my life on. What regulatory system has caused the devices to be secure so far? None.

A heavy key ring can mess up the ignition of your car over time, among other things.

I realized I never really used my house key, so I took it off. The garage door opener in my truck did 90% of the work when I got home, and for the few other times, the numeric keypad remote on the wall for the garage door opener did the remaining 9%. I've got a key lockbox in the event the garage door opener or something fails. I suppose this is theoretically marginally less secure than a key that is in my possession at all times, but having a dog means anybody who's breaking in is already very determined & wouldn't be slowed down by that anyway.

I ditched the car alarm fob for my wife's car as I rarely drive it & can just use the key.

I have my truck key, truck key fob, wife's car key & the mailbox key. Work keys are on a separate ring & mostly stay at work.

Try and get your locks re-keyed to use the same key, so you can replace multiple keys with 1 key. Also get rid of decorative junk on your keyring, they don't serve much in the way of a technical purpose, but add weight & bulk.

And actually writing a small game, or really nicely implemented mod/addon/map/level/etc. for an existing game is probably included as a senior project, if not earlier. I'd highly doubt your coming out of that degree with nothing that could be used as some kind of portfolio.

Most software/electrical/mechanical 4 year degrees from a good school will have a senior project you can use for a portfolio piece to prove your basic competence when you graduate.

What degree you have (in the IT world at least) matters very little, except for your first job. After that it's all based on your skills. Some jobs require a degree, but as long as you have one (even in underwater basket weaving or something) your fine, it's just a checkbox for a qualification.