You can do it cheaper by using botnets rather than legitimate resources.

Yes and if the guy on the other end is a proxy server by whomever you're afraid of (criminals, good guys, mommy) then no need for the encryption part either.

The one time I want a patent issued to help retard things and the system does the right thing and rejects it on obviousness. Well maybe they just forgot they could do that and from now on obviousness *will* matter.

Building the equivalent of a nuclear plant every day is not as high a bar as it might seem. The equivalent of might some day mean harvesting a banana peal to toss into Mr. Fusion.

I've bought/built about 20 PCs for personal use over the years. I bought retail or retail upgrades for each machine (I have 3 concurrent licenses in total). Recently I got a SMART warning and swapped a data drive. I had to talk to a Microsoft support person to get a new license key as the one that came with my install CD didn't work. I since then had to swap the system drive and submitted a support request b/c it won't run windows update and they assigned me a case # a month ago and haven't called back. Fortunately for the community I know Microsoft's machines - even when patched - are a risk so I don't allow them on the public network without a firewall (openbsd in my case). However they should know better than to prevent a paying customer from applying their patches.