So... genuine question...

What does SecuROM actually do to your system and what are the implications?

The wikipedia article, beyond a floating comment that SecuROM isn't uninstalled when the game is uninstalled, is basically silent on this. In fact, let's break it down into a series of further questions?

- Does SecuROM cause security vulnerabilities on PCs on which it is installed?

- Does SecuROM prevent applications - other than pirated copies of the game it is supposed to "protect" - from functioning on PCs on which it is installed?

- Does SecuROM create any kind of "always on" background process that consumes resources and potentially reduces performance on PCs on which it is installed?

If the answer to any of the above is "yes" then obviously there is a fairly major problem here. If the answer to all of the above is "no", then I'm not quite sure what people are getting upset about given that we are talking about a free game (SecuROM being bundled with paid-for games is another issue entirely).

And to emphasise, I genuinely don't know the answers to the above and can't work them out from the links in TFA.

I have no way of knowing what DRM software is on my PC, with the exception of the three I explicitly agreed to (Kindle, audible, and Steam).

I strongly suspect that other apps may have added unwanted crap but how do I find out?

I see at least three common approaches museums are taking to images of their collections:

1. Maximum lockdown: no photos of the collection on the internet, or at most some very low-res ones on the museum's website. The physical museum itself will typically have anti-photography policies to try to enforce this. The goal is to de facto exercise exclusive rights to reproductions of the work (even where the copyright on the work itself has expired), as a revenue source, through e.g. high-quality art books, licensing of images, etc.

2. Disseminate through museum-owned channels. The museum digitizes its works and makes them available to the general public free of charge, via its own website, in at least fairly high-resolution images, a "virtual collection" that anyone can visit. Third-party dissemination may be possible in certain jurisdictions, but the museum either doesn't encourage or actively discourages it. The goal is to fulfill its public mission of dissemination/education, but while maintaining some control/stewardship of the work even online.

3. Maximum dissemination. The museum digitizes its works and makes them available in as many places as possible under a permissive license: its own website, archival repositories run by nonprofits and state institutions, Wikimedia, archive.org, news agency file-photo catalogues, etc. The goal is to fulfill its public mission of dissemination/education as widely as possible, and perhaps also achieve some advertising for the museum's collections and the works/artists it conserves, by ensuring that its works are the ones most likely to be used as illustrative examples in Wikipedia articles, books, newspaper/magazine articles, etc.

Take a look at some Palm code.

If the hideous restrictions and limits there don't put you off, then find out what they recommend to compile.

Flashy IDE's probably aren't going to be easy to find, there weren't many around in the first place and the majority of stuff I know is just command-line compilers which can plug into any IDE (if you're brave enough).

All I remember of Palm coding was having to break C files into tiny parts, jam them together and hope the individual object files never went over a certain size because the linker had to play all kinds of tricks to load them.

Take a look at something like this:

http://www.chiark.greenend.org...

The base code of which is generally easy to port (Simon Tatham's PORTABLE Puzzle Collection). That Palm version is quite a pain to compile even with the right tools.

Where Can I Find Resources On Programming For Palm OS 5?

I'm pretty sure they were written in cuneiform on clay tablets, so you might want to learn the language of the Anunnaki

I might be wrong. Maybe they were written in Middle Egyptian on papyrus.

Either way, you could start by asking a very very old nerd. If you can find an old pay phone, wait for someone with long greasy grey hair to pick it up and start whistling into it. Make sure you have some jelly worms on hand, but not the green ones.

But slander and libel are notoriously hard to prove, and both Comcast and AT&T have very good lawyers to vet the message so that there was a very fine line they did not cross.

It's not their lawyers that are protecting them. It's their lobbyists and officers who decide on political donations.

We're in a brave new Citizens United world now. Makes no difference that a very large majority of people disagree with Citizens United and corporate personhood. Until Antonin Scalia and/or Clarence Thomas go to meet their judgement, we're stuck with it.

They were not stating *facts*, but rather their opinion.

Did you look at the fliers?

There's this quote:

"internet service [is] already offered by two respectable private businesses?"

I'm pretty sure referring to Comcast as a "respectable business" is about as fraudulent as it gets. I'm surprised these fliers didn't burst into flames before the shills could hand them out.

I'm an avid gamer, but at my age, for me to play this thing, I'd need bifocals for my bifocals. What is that, like quadfocals?

I blame online porn.

It's a nice solution idea, but leaving Bluetooth on all the time must eat quite a lot into your battery runtime. I have a hard time using a phone when the battery is drained. I can run for maybe an 3-4 hours on a charge if I'm actively using my phone, and that's with all manner of power saving options turned on, doing their best to maximize my *useful* runtime. The industry insists on super thin, but large surface area smartphones, but I'd give just about anything for something pocket size, 90% battery by mass, and with a slide-out physical keyboard. If it were an inch and a half thick, but could provide a solid 14 hour active use time on a single charge, I'd be in love with it.