Have you read modern patents? They consist of dense legalese that's of no practical value to technologists. And twenty years is not "short term" in computing... our industry proceeds much faster than that.

MS Stack software developer

says it all. I almost stopped reading at that. MS stack is going bye-bye. And if there's one thing that is *not* lacking in *Seatle* it's MS 'talent'.
Try this: Advertise yourself as a Linux stack guy of same skill level, and look how many interviews you get with that. I'd bet measurably more.

Good luck.

Two parts: (1) traditionally, the availability of a readily accessible power outlet has been a cue that the outlet is available for (free) use by everyone who's authorized to be in the area. It's not a theft because--in the language of our existing social norms and conventions--the receptacle is actually an invitation unless there's specific signage to the contrary. If you don't believe that, well, then you'd better not charge your personal cell phone at work, plugin your laptop at the airport, or hookup your GPS to your buddy's lighter port without getting explicit permission.

And (2) the part about it being only 5 cents. It does society no good to saddle innocent, productive citizens with criminal records for a 5-cent infraction. That's just crazy. Seeing things in such black-and-white terms creates a user-hostile society that is focused on legalism and pedantry to the exclusion of real justice.

Mailing label. Duh!

You know, ever since i started asking people, i realized how smart other people were. :)

Thanx.

And here i thought it was stage left, exit.

The dumpster is your friend. Core2Duo class machines with 4GB RAM are starting to show up. My computer at work is a Core2Duo and is 5 years old. My boss sees no need in spending money for something that works. (And it does, so I'm not complaining)

I remember and have seen DOS bootsector viruses, which were still occasionally seen in the 9x days, but I was ignoring those because they wouldn't be able to infect a Windows NT based system if they tried to.

Interesting. Given I always booted to Linux for data recovery, before a nuke/reinstall, I've never seen anything like this. Happens often in the wild? I remaining of the opinion they are exceedingly rare. The cure is most likely worse than the disease.

While I do realize I'm just one data point. In the 15 years, I've been doing IT professionally and helped many people with their computer woes in my free time, I have never seen a MBR or Boot Sector malware. I'm not saying SecureBoot is a cure for something that doesn't exists, but I haven't ever personally encountered one.

A cookbook?

I'm sure its nothing that a can of spray-paint and some bubble-gum can't deal with.

Don't get to cocky about your options in an orwellian/cyberpunk future.

The corps in turn are sure your spray-paint and bubble-gum tactic is nothing 99.999% reliability facial-recognition + cell-phone tracking + behavioural-and-movement-pattern-recognition + god-knows-what can't deal with by tracking you down, sueing you into next wednesday, locking your creditcards/bankaccounts for that specific mall (all all others connected to the same megacorp and data-exchange conglumerate), putting you on a special surveillance & potential terrorist threat list, ban you from accessing gated communities of type X,Y and Z until further notice and upping your rent for being a threat to society all for spraying and gumming up their new survelliance & minion control bot toy.

Just saying.