...but not too easy or the zombie PCs would just automate this step and continue on.

If we can define "long" as "couple months" if that. I gave up on the one Google Groups list I had been following due to all the spam it suddenly started receiving.

Much like the mythical Comcast bandwidth usage meter which we have been hearing about for over half a year now, I will believe it when I see it. And I am certainly not seeing it now.

Have you considered getting a cheap router (with USB ports) that will run OpenWRT/DD-WRT?

This seems like the obvious choice to me.

1. Wait for newer generation consoles to become popular
2. Scoop up tons of games for bargain prices
3. ???
4. Profit!

I'm sure the missing step involves console exploits, a hard drive, and dumping all of games to said drive for much quicker loading times. At least for more recent consoles. But shhhhhh. ;-)

I tried that once with my father. It did not go over so well. He quickly realized the browser was "different", went back to IE, and then started blaming FF for trying to trick him into using it.

If anything, I'd say it's better to tell them up front you've switched browsers, and then change the icon.

Have you tried YesScript? It's about the opposite -- a blacklist for sites that you do not want executing JavaScript.

I recently set up a secondary gaming box with a limited user account for a MMO that has to be constantly updated else it won't run. It was a bit of a pain since it insists on writing a cache file in %WINDIR%. Then it has a registry setting that, by default, limited users cannot change. After a few more bumps, it has worked flawlessly.

For the most part, it's just lazy development teams who can't be arsed to "fix" their code. There's probably a moral here about open source. Who knows.

Most of my hacking is done on my Windows desktop PC. However, all my server environments are Linux. These days, my code hacking/testing is commonly done within a VM. Having using Notepad++ for years, I finally discovered there is a win32 version of the package I find myself commonly using in the 'nix environments -- Geany. The consistency of a single editor on multiple platforms is, without a doubt, very nice. That said, Geany's search dialog annoys me a bit.

For the console, however, vim.

& is also your friend.

Now you have two!