This seems to be addressing a problem that doesn't exist. The only thing SecureBoot appears to be "securing" is vendor lock-in.

No thank-you, please go away.

The hiberfile.sys attack won't work with TrueCrypt full disk or system encryption for Windows: the hibernation file itself is encrypted, as it's stored in the encrypted system partion.

TrueCrypt replaces the Windows boot loader with its own and requires the key to decrypt the system upon awakening.

So, if the computer is off or hibernated, they'll access the hiberfile ... how?

Without piracy, I have a clear route for making an income from my work. With piracy, I have to hope that my work becomes a loss leader for itself, reaching a wider paying audience through a non-paying medium. Sure, sometimes it will work. I've encountered a few folks who've seen some of my work freely and wanted more. On the other hand, I've also encountered folks who have outright asked me when my latest piece will be on TPB, rather than buying it.

No, you need to find a business model that doesn't rely on creating an artificial scarcity for something that is necessarily infinite.

Complain all you will that it's not how you want to make a living, but you're no different than the vaudeville performers who bitched and moaned about those newfangled "radios" that relegated them to driving taxis and flipping burgers, because they were good stage performers but lousy musicians.

that I can't get tethering (officially...) without going to one of their crap capped plans.

This really gets my blood boiling. Any carrier that sells "tethering" (which is just virtual router software) as an added-cost feature is a lying, scamming piece of shit and they know it.

Really, you could have just said, "my uncle uses AOL," and that would have explained everything.

Joking aside, why did you use the telephone analogy? It's email, a postal mail analogy would have been perfect: it's as if someone sent him a nasty letter and printed your address in the top-left corner of the envelope.

As for what to do with his PC ... well, if he's just the typical "Facebook and email" user, install Debian or something and rename the desktop icons ("Internet", "Email", etc.). I put Ubuntu on my mom's netbook and she pesters me no more often than she does about her Windows PC.

That's modern
medicine. Advances that keep
people alive that should have died
along time ago, back when they
lost what made them people.

It's essentially the same to use as Ubuntu 10 -- the last version before all the Unity crap, crippled Gnome and spyware commercializing -- plus, the software and updates are carefully vetted and upgrades are not so annoyingly frequent. And, of course, there's none of this commercialization BS.

I've been running it in a VM to prepare for the switch and it will be soon.

Man, where's the "+1 Depressing" mod when you need it...

When I buy a hammer, the manufacturer can't charge me a royalty for every nail I hammer in, they can't limit me to building bird-houses and demand licensing fees to build a shed, they can't tell me I can only use it in the town where I bought it and make me pay for it a second time if I want to use it in the next town over and they can't come to my home and take it away from me when they release an updated model. Heck, I can even use it for business and commercial profits and they still can't do anything about it.

They've sold me a product and they are now HANDS OFF until the hammer wears out and I'm in the market for a new one.

To argue against this -- to say that "media products" don't "wear out" -- is disingenuous and simply untrue. How many times can you listen to the song or watch the same movie without wanting more, better and newer?

The demand for new content will always exist, ergo it is unnecessary and incongruous to found your business model on the assumption that it won't.

I will offer this advice to the entire media industry, free of charge, no royalties asked, in the public domain, no nonsense, no copyright, you're free to use it. Forever.

How to Single-Handedly Obsolete Piracy and Earn Record Profits without Criminalizing your Customers and Building a PR Track Record Worse than Beelzebub's: provide video files in MPEG4/DivX/whatever reasonably universal format, without DRM expropriating our computers, for a reasonable price, offer fast download speeds (at least fast enough to stream) and offer it worldwide.

That is actually a lot simpler than it sounds; certainly a whole lot simpler than all that lawyering, backroom meetings and trying to figure out how to expropriate every computer in the world.

Not only will you have millions, possibly billions-with-a-B, customers who can't give you enough of their money, but you will be opening the door to scads of businesses who will make products that increase the value of your products and have customers begging to buy more.

This is evidenced empirically by history: look at how unencumbered VCRs, CDs and MP3s exploded with infinite third-party possibilities and compare them to DVDs which ... well, can do nothing more than they did a decade ago because of crippling DRM.

Why is it so hard for these people to embrace technology? Why is every technological progression in history perceived as a threat? Is there a fundamental disconnect between them and their customers? Are they just stupid? Overly stubborn, technologically xenophobic dinosaurs? Too lazy to rework their business model? Too greedy about short-term profits too realize the long-term effects? What is it???