That takes a while: getting the specs, implementing the drivers, testing them, etc. And it usually only happens after the hardware is starting to sell. So, it may well take a year or two for Linux drivers to appear for a piece of hardware. If you want it to happen faster, volunteer yourself.
The problem with 802.11x support under Linux is that the specs are being kept under wraps. The card manufacturers say the reason is that their cards could be reprogrammed to transmit on reserved frequencies (military, air traffic control, etc.). Apparently, many of these manufacturers would like to make Linux drivers available, but they can't be free-as-in-speech without allowing any decent hacker to change the operating frequency and spy on or disrupt sensitive transmissions.
As for Linux Centrino support, Linux is not particularly important in the mobile market (excepting Linux-based embedded systems). Servers remain the primary Linux market; Linux laptops are more the domain of hobbyists. While I have no doubt that Centrino drivers will be available for Linux, if what you said about the marketing team in charge of Centrino is true, they will probably come from the hacker community rather than from Intel.
NiCds haven't been seen in the laptop industry for ages; their capacity-to-weight ratio is abysmal. While you might see NiMH (nickel metal hydride) batteries in older or off-brand laptops, the type included with pretty much every new laptop from a major manufacturer is LiIon (lithium ion), which beats the pants off NiCd and NiMH in the capacity-to-weight and capacity-to-volume ratios, but tends to be picky about how it's charged. The issue the article's author has with LiIon "refurbishers" is that they replace failed cells with new ones that have a different internal resistance than the other cells in the pack; this confuses the (calibrated) recharging circutry and can destroy the entire pack.
As for NiCd "memory," you would do well to read this article, which explains the myth and reality of NiCd memory effect. As for "nickel platinum" batteries, a Google for them didn't turn up anything; neither did "NiPl." Also, a quick check of my LaserJet IIp printer cartridge showed the two contacts to be made of steel (they're far too thin for lead; if they were lead and I applied the amount of pressure I did, they would have been flatter than pancakes. As for battery pack contacts, they're just little bits of metal. I'm sure they could be replaced for a few cents; it's the cells inside that make up most of the cost.
Those things were the biggest damned scam I ever encountered. We had a mole problem, so we decided to get one stake and put it where the problem was worst, on a trial basis. Bam! Not a day later, the mole problem around that damned thing increased by a factor of at least two. Not only did it not work as advertised, but it actually attracted moles. Soon after we stopped using them, we got a cat (not just for the moles, but for a pet as well). No more mole problem.
Your CPU probably isn't faster than your video card, unless you're using some sort of awful onboard graphics (and not an Nforce, either). Remember that GPUs are designed with 3D graphics in mind; they have all sorts of complicated math accelerated in hardware that would be near-useless in a CPU. Also, having ridiculously fast on-card RAM doesn't hurt either, while your CPU's memory architecture isn't designed to cope with massive amounts of textures. Just having lots of fairly fast memory is better for 3D graphics than having a blazing cache and comparatively slow main memory.
Besides, why worry about the price of a new video card? Unless it's a server, $40 US for an older Geforce2 or a Geforce4MX isn't much compared to the money you're dropping on a SMP motherboard and two top-of-the-line CPUs.
Remember that the belt-drive system of a vaccum cleaner can generate a lot of static electricity. In the wrong circumstances, it can act like a Van De Graff generator. I would suggest using a specialized "computer vaccum" (basically a regular vaccum cleaner with a grounding system somewhere in the hose or motor assembly) or just blowing out the shavings with some canned air (be sure to get in the PCI and RAM slots!
You're thinking of NEXT (near-end crosstalk). Also, 4 wires is not going to cause a NEXT problem; as you mentioned, it only becomes a serious problem when there are a lot of cables in one place. If even ethernet's EMI is too much, shielded cable is an option; just remember to ground it at only one end (or you get nasty ground loops).
Fiber is nice, but can be hideously expensive; the LED drive circuts might also be a problem if Ethernet is trouble. I would think that a lot of shielding around whatever is generating the signals (be it ethernet, fiber, or something else entirely) would be the best route.
Any electronic gear is going to generate some EMI; if the gear is sensitive enough, it will find it. It seems to me that the better solution would be to minimize the EMI to a reasonable degree, but then shield the heck out of everything.
Re:My experiences with Gentoo
on
Gentoo Reviewed
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· Score: 0
RPM (in its standard form) and apt have the same problem: moronic package maintainers. I can't tell you the number of times I've torn my hair out because some idiot has said their package is dependant on version=X when they should have said dependant on version>=X. While Redhat's default packages are decent in this respect, user-created RPMs and a lot of debs have this problem; it ends up having apps require two different versions of the same library, even though I can modify the packages' dependencies and make them both coexist happily.
This should never happen. I cannot stress this point enough. The version=X dependancy should be a special case that is almost never used. Instead, it's rampant throughout the Debian tree and far too many user-created RPMs.
While I haven't installed Gentoo or used it extensively, getting rid of these dependencies means absolute bliss to me (a cutting-edge desktop user; my servers tend to run Debian stable, where these problems aren't so bad as there's only one version of most libraries and programs that users can be expected to run anyway).
I would say (unless the boss is a serious asshole who should be gone anyway) that you should gently remind the boss that his files are company property and that if HR ever found out, then they wouldn't be as lenient as you. Going to HR should only happen if he is sucking up resources, causing a nusiance, or otherwise making lives difficult.
By the way, kiddie porn or anything else that is illegal should fall under the category of "Serious Asshole" or you could get in the same boat, because you didn't report what you found immediately.
Also, I make the chauvinist assumption that anyone who watches porn on the company box is male; most of the porn-watching women I've met aren't dumb enough to do something that would probably cost them their job if the wrong person found out. Deal.
Official reviews, like those at a fairly well recognized site or magazine. (As opposed to "B1FF's Houes of 31337, with teh Materix gaime!!!1!!", or user reviews on Amazon)
ACLs are extremely useful. The ability to fine-tune permissions when necessary should not be dismissed because it can be misused; if you can drop a hammer on your foot, that doesn't make it a less useful tool. ACLs, properly managed, leave UNIX's user/group/all security settings in the dust. While they can be difficult to keep under control in some situations, this is the situation with almost all useful tools.
Wouldn't it be simpler and easier to manage if users had to sign up for computer time on a mainframe? Just think: you would only have to support one system! The benefits to security and maintinence would be enormous. Letting users have their own computers seems nice, but since it requires less planning and thinking (as a mainframe timeshare system requires) it will always become unmanageable. After all, there's no way to plan for the use of advanced tools. Why do you think many larger 1970s corporations running large computer implementations have a policy of not allowing any employee to access the mainframe without signing up first?!?
(Note for the humour impaired: I'm parodying the above author's style.)
The poster wants to block spyware downloads, not spyware calling home. I've seen brand new, top-of-the-line Windows XP systems brought to their knees by loads of poorly designed and intrusive spyware and adware; in an enterprise system, filtering out incoming spyware downloads means less troubleshooting headaches, as well as no complaints from users that want to know what happened to their Bonzi Buddy. While a static block file might help things, new adware is being produced continiously. A user-maintained, moderated list of known spyware distribution sites and filenames would help get filtering serverside, where it could be much more easily managed.
Another idea I've had is re-Ghosting my Win2k clients over the network every weekend; this would obviously require some sort of daemon on a very low level (maybe have a PXE server that changes the boot image based on the day of the week, and a scheduled reboot for midnight Saturday?), but would obviously eliminate almost all problems with viruses, adware and user-installed software. Of course, users would have to be indoctrinated to save all files to the network, or disaster would result. The adware problem is one that could actually be helped by Palladium-type digital signatures; the ability for a sysadmin to specify that only certain authorized binaries could be run is something I would like to see. God knows that users are creative in finding ways to circumvent access control measures; this could be a valuable weapon against the people we're supposed to be serving.
AT&T Wireless. Cingular. Sprint PCS. Nextel. (insert your carrier here).
Enough said.
For all these products, you recieve a physical device; the games one could download it for free over the Internet and get the same product, sans manual and other in-the-box goodies. I'm suprised that Everquest, Earth and Beyond, and others don't carpet-bomb the world with their CDs like AOL; the profits from additional users "hooked" on the game would almost certainly outweigh the lost profits from selling a boxed game.
In my opinion, game distributors should adopt the extremely sucessful methods of drug dealers in this area; provide a free sample, "hook" the user, then charge a fee for users who want continued service.
While Everquest has hit upon an interesting method (charge a service fee as well as a regular $30-50 charge for expansion packs), this has also turned off many other users. If they were to charge a slightly larger monthly fee with free content expansions on a regular basis, they would be able to maintain the same cashflow while attracting new users and keeping old ones interested with new areas to explore, more monsters to fight, and graphics and interface upgrades.
It seems to me this game is simply crying out for a cel shading 3D engine. It's a fairly simple technique to create "cartoony" graphics in a true 3D environment. I've always felt that the artwork in the original Sam & Max Hit The Road was almost as important as the characters, plot and dialouge in establishing the unique "feel" of the game; I hope Lucasarts can bring that artwork into 3D without losing its wacky charm.
While Motorola may not have been able to scale up the G4s as fast as they wanted, that's not nearly as bad an error as the Itanium 2 "glitch" referenced in the article, or something like the F00F bug on the original Pentium. Why? Because Mot caught it in-house! They didn't release chips that couldn't reach their rated clockspeed in a normal operating environment, then advise their customers (who may have paid a fortune for their hot new system) to underclock until it works.
Most chipmakers don't always meet their roadmaps for whatever reason; planning for the future is never totally reliable. Shipping a defective product, on the other hand, means that either the chipmaker is not testing its products well (bad), or it's sacrificing quality for marketshare and performance (even worse, as the chipmaker is knowingly shipping defective goods). While Intel may get more flak in the press for its errors than other companies, as it's the biggest CPU manufacturer, the fact remains that the chips never should have gone out the door. Nobody's perfect, but it seems that Intel is even less perfect than many others.
Re:Cyveillance in a nutshell
on
Meet Cyveillancebot
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· Score: 4, Insightful
To me, these actions (hammering databases, getting caught in recursive loops that could be easily avoided) are much worse than ignoring robots.txt. While the whole robots.txt issue could be justifiable from their position (so people couldn't hide copyrighted info via robots.txt), bringing down servers through what amounts to a DOS attack is simply inexcusable.
There are anynumber of spiders out there that are smart enough to index whole sites, including dynamically-generated pages, without taking a site down or even hitting it harder than a couple of simeltaneous users. This behavior is not only negligent, but malicious. Any site brought down by Cyveillance would probably have good grounds for legal action (I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, talk to a lawyer if you want legal advice, etc.).
That's one of the cool things about Metroid Prime: a few powerups can only be reached by doing things like double bomb-jumps (normally in ball-mode, you can use your bombs to jump a little. If you get the timing absolutely perfect, you can lay a bomb in midair and jump really high). The amazing thing here is that the designers not only realized that something like this was possible, but even gave players little rewards for mastering the technique.
MP is really what made me a believer in console FPSs; the attention to detail in the game is simply astounding and the controls are as intuitive as a mouse and keyboard after a few minutes of practice (the standard dual-stick method has always felt a little awkward; viewpoint should not be a rate control! Halo was excellent as a game, but I never liked the controls).
That would go along very well with the Gnostic symbolism present in the first installment (no, really!). From what I remember of Gnostic Christian teachings (not all that much), they believed that the world was sort of a mass hallucination, controlled by evil spirits who want to keep humanity in the dark (think Plato's Cave, kind of). The important thing here is that humanity is actively participating in its own deception; I wish the original Matrix had kept this plot point and developed it further.
Still, nobody ever got rich overestimating the American public's intelligence. Better to have a thermodynamically impossible but easy-to-understand explanation than one that's a little harder to grasp but works better both in the philosophical and scientific cases (a brain-machine interface is at least somewhat plausible).
NAT breaks nothing except applications stupid enough to put their local IP inside the data they send. It keeps a global address space. The only thing NAT does is mangle IP headers so that an internal network address (call it 192.168.1.23) gets mapped to its own private globally-routable address (call it 65.23.45.129). Why use NAT? It can be advantageous to have a host that lives on two different networks. Although it can cause some truly hideous problems (like having a host living on two different networks), about 90% of your complaints are invalid.
After reading your list, it seems that perhaps the issues you have are with IP Masquerading, a special form of NAT where the external addresses are non-exclusive.
Sorry about the rant, but I hate it when people don't use the correct terminology.
Re:you know, he could just not save at every corne
on
Metroid Prime Done Quick
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· Score: 3, Insightful
From what I got from the article and interview, the 1:46 is the time spent in front of the Gamecube, not the time as recorded by the little time-record thingy on the "load a saved game" screen. After all, you could just redo sections over and over until they were perfect; if you screw up or die, there's the reset button right there. Also, twiddling bits in the save cart probably wouldn't be that hard; give the player a 1:00 time in the Impact Crater save point (the last one in the game for those who haven't played MP), then beat MP and get a new "world record."
Another thing to consider is that game speedruns tend to increase in difficulty exponentially; to cut a 4 hour run down to 3 hours is much easier than cutting a 1:40 run down to 1:20, as you will have already used up your tricks just getting to the 1:40 mark. Either you have to come up with a new trick or just get the timing on your old ones simply impeccable.
Finally, I'm curious as to how the heck you got a 4 hour finish time on your first run through. Mine was more like 12 hours (admittedly, I did chase down a lot more missile/energy expansions than were necessary, but a 4 hour first run seems damned quick).
I have used a SUN computer some years ago that provided something like this - I can't remember the precise details but I think that it had a forth-like command line environment available at boot time which was stored in ROM / flash RAM
It's called Open Firmware, and used on Macs as well. It provides a way to have a driver built into an expansion card that's machine independent, a complete Forth interpreter, and a really nice hardware diagnostics/debugging system (as long as you know a bit of Forth). I've even heard of people programmming games in OF. It's one thing I would really like to see ported to the PC; it makes PCs BIOS setup systems look disgustingly primitive by comparison.
But they were targeting American McGee, and his method of taking childhood fantasy (Alice in Wonderland, Oz) and adding blood, gore and a bit of S&M. I really don't see how Strawberry Shortcake was a target in this; the joke would have remained the same if it was a different character in the bondage gear. Thus, American Greetings has a leg to stand on in court: PA was not parodying Strawberry Shortcake, and could have just as easily used a different character.
The main flaw I see, is that someone might be able to pretty darn well argue that the overclocking device is useful for more than just getting the preview. Like maybe, they might say, it makes the computer generally more useful. (Duh.)
Doesn't matter. The DMCA says that if a device can circumvent the protection, it's not allowed. DeCSS was used by a lot of people to watch movies in Linux, but since the Evil Media Pirates® could use it to copy movies, it's illegal. Same deal with your "your processor must be this fast to enter" scheme, although the technical problems would certainly be a terrible pain.
As for the technical side, why not just quiz it with the same functions used in programs like wcpuid, or ask/proc/cpuinfo in *NIX? If the DRM software can't access them, then you're obviously an evil hacker who tries to keep his or her system secure by running only the things that need to be root as root, so you should be denied access in any case. And if anyone ever comes up with a mod to spoof your CPU clock speed, then it's off to jail with them!
I doubt anyone would run a backbone over a roughly 2Mbps best case system. While this might be good for rural ISPs (a little better than a T1 if conditions are good), it isn't gonna replace ~10Gbps backbone connections.
From what I understand (and I'm no expert, but I have looked into this stuff) this is a possible last-mile solution; running a fast 'net connection to the nearest electrical substation and then putting a decoder on the power pole just shy of a pole pig would get the signal to within a few hundred feet of most residences; a simple coax, fiber, or even cat5 cable would take it the rest of the way.
From what little radio work I've done (mostly in college radio stations), the equipment consists of a PC with a good soundcard (pro-level, not a soundblaster), and some software that basically rips CDs and organizes them so the DJ can find and set up playlists with blank spots for their patter, commercials and what not.
With this in mind, an "upgrade" to a DRM-based system would probably be possible, particularly if the RIAA pushed it with special incentives (upgrade your system, we'll give you some exclusive tracks 2 weeks ahead of time!). The problem for the RIAA is that the analog sound going to the transmitter is still very good quality; a dedicated tech with a laptop could probably patch his system into the link from the audio system to the transmitter and get fairly good MP3s or OGGs. Until the RIAA gets everything in the world digital and DRMed, there just won't be any way to stop a dedicated pirate. Even then, I bet someone will find a way real quick;).
Sorry, but I have to call bullshit on the "My Documents" folder slowing down the desktop. In Windows 9x, it's just not on the desktop, and on 2K/XP, it's just a shortcut that's missing the little arrow.
I could understand things slowing down if Windows has to slog through 20GB of files every time it refreshes the desktop (was this some sort of videoediting terminal) but My Documents is just thrown up on the desktop as part of the rendering process as a shortcut to whatever the registry says it should be. I would imagine that a big background pixmap would slow things down much more, and keeping the number of icons Windows has to render down in the 20-30 range is probably a good idea.
On my current Win2K box (which I am using to type this post) the desktop renders very quickly. I have a simple tiled background, 13 app shortcuts, the standard Windows shortcuts (My Computer, My Network Places, My Documents, et al), a ~2Gb My Documents/My Pictures folder, and an old ATI Rage 128 video card. My HDD is a SCSI Ultra Wide RAID-0 setup across 2 drives. Other than the hard drives, it's a fairly standard desktop system. I have no idea where you are getting your information, but I suspect there's something wrong with your system, or your assumptions are nothing more than superstition (My Documents displays on the desktop, therefore it must be inside the desktop!)
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As for Linux Centrino support, Linux is not particularly important in the mobile market (excepting Linux-based embedded systems). Servers remain the primary Linux market; Linux laptops are more the domain of hobbyists. While I have no doubt that Centrino drivers will be available for Linux, if what you said about the marketing team in charge of Centrino is true, they will probably come from the hacker community rather than from Intel.
As for NiCd "memory," you would do well to read this article, which explains the myth and reality of NiCd memory effect. As for "nickel platinum" batteries, a Google for them didn't turn up anything; neither did "NiPl." Also, a quick check of my LaserJet IIp printer cartridge showed the two contacts to be made of steel (they're far too thin for lead; if they were lead and I applied the amount of pressure I did, they would have been flatter than pancakes. As for battery pack contacts, they're just little bits of metal. I'm sure they could be replaced for a few cents; it's the cells inside that make up most of the cost.
Those things were the biggest damned scam I ever encountered. We had a mole problem, so we decided to get one stake and put it where the problem was worst, on a trial basis. Bam! Not a day later, the mole problem around that damned thing increased by a factor of at least two. Not only did it not work as advertised, but it actually attracted moles. Soon after we stopped using them, we got a cat (not just for the moles, but for a pet as well). No more mole problem.
Besides, why worry about the price of a new video card? Unless it's a server, $40 US for an older Geforce2 or a Geforce4MX isn't much compared to the money you're dropping on a SMP motherboard and two top-of-the-line CPUs.
Remember that the belt-drive system of a vaccum cleaner can generate a lot of static electricity. In the wrong circumstances, it can act like a Van De Graff generator. I would suggest using a specialized "computer vaccum" (basically a regular vaccum cleaner with a grounding system somewhere in the hose or motor assembly) or just blowing out the shavings with some canned air (be sure to get in the PCI and RAM slots!
Fiber is nice, but can be hideously expensive; the LED drive circuts might also be a problem if Ethernet is trouble. I would think that a lot of shielding around whatever is generating the signals (be it ethernet, fiber, or something else entirely) would be the best route.
Any electronic gear is going to generate some EMI; if the gear is sensitive enough, it will find it. It seems to me that the better solution would be to minimize the EMI to a reasonable degree, but then shield the heck out of everything.
This should never happen. I cannot stress this point enough. The version=X dependancy should be a special case that is almost never used. Instead, it's rampant throughout the Debian tree and far too many user-created RPMs.
While I haven't installed Gentoo or used it extensively, getting rid of these dependencies means absolute bliss to me (a cutting-edge desktop user; my servers tend to run Debian stable, where these problems aren't so bad as there's only one version of most libraries and programs that users can be expected to run anyway).
By the way, kiddie porn or anything else that is illegal should fall under the category of "Serious Asshole" or you could get in the same boat, because you didn't report what you found immediately.
Also, I make the chauvinist assumption that anyone who watches porn on the company box is male; most of the porn-watching women I've met aren't dumb enough to do something that would probably cost them their job if the wrong person found out. Deal.
Official reviews, like those at a fairly well recognized site or magazine. (As opposed to "B1FF's Houes of 31337, with teh Materix gaime!!!1!!", or user reviews on Amazon)
Wouldn't it be simpler and easier to manage if users had to sign up for computer time on a mainframe? Just think: you would only have to support one system! The benefits to security and maintinence would be enormous. Letting users have their own computers seems nice, but since it requires less planning and thinking (as a mainframe timeshare system requires) it will always become unmanageable. After all, there's no way to plan for the use of advanced tools. Why do you think many larger 1970s corporations running large computer implementations have a policy of not allowing any employee to access the mainframe without signing up first?!?
(Note for the humour impaired: I'm parodying the above author's style.)
Another idea I've had is re-Ghosting my Win2k clients over the network every weekend; this would obviously require some sort of daemon on a very low level (maybe have a PXE server that changes the boot image based on the day of the week, and a scheduled reboot for midnight Saturday?), but would obviously eliminate almost all problems with viruses, adware and user-installed software. Of course, users would have to be indoctrinated to save all files to the network, or disaster would result. The adware problem is one that could actually be helped by Palladium-type digital signatures; the ability for a sysadmin to specify that only certain authorized binaries could be run is something I would like to see. God knows that users are creative in finding ways to circumvent access control measures; this could be a valuable weapon against the people we're supposed to be serving.
In my opinion, game distributors should adopt the extremely sucessful methods of drug dealers in this area; provide a free sample, "hook" the user, then charge a fee for users who want continued service.
While Everquest has hit upon an interesting method (charge a service fee as well as a regular $30-50 charge for expansion packs), this has also turned off many other users. If they were to charge a slightly larger monthly fee with free content expansions on a regular basis, they would be able to maintain the same cashflow while attracting new users and keeping old ones interested with new areas to explore, more monsters to fight, and graphics and interface upgrades.
It seems to me this game is simply crying out for a cel shading 3D engine. It's a fairly simple technique to create "cartoony" graphics in a true 3D environment. I've always felt that the artwork in the original Sam & Max Hit The Road was almost as important as the characters, plot and dialouge in establishing the unique "feel" of the game; I hope Lucasarts can bring that artwork into 3D without losing its wacky charm.
Most chipmakers don't always meet their roadmaps for whatever reason; planning for the future is never totally reliable. Shipping a defective product, on the other hand, means that either the chipmaker is not testing its products well (bad), or it's sacrificing quality for marketshare and performance (even worse, as the chipmaker is knowingly shipping defective goods). While Intel may get more flak in the press for its errors than other companies, as it's the biggest CPU manufacturer, the fact remains that the chips never should have gone out the door. Nobody's perfect, but it seems that Intel is even less perfect than many others.
There are any number of spiders out there that are smart enough to index whole sites, including dynamically-generated pages, without taking a site down or even hitting it harder than a couple of simeltaneous users. This behavior is not only negligent, but malicious. Any site brought down by Cyveillance would probably have good grounds for legal action (I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, talk to a lawyer if you want legal advice, etc.).
MP is really what made me a believer in console FPSs; the attention to detail in the game is simply astounding and the controls are as intuitive as a mouse and keyboard after a few minutes of practice (the standard dual-stick method has always felt a little awkward; viewpoint should not be a rate control! Halo was excellent as a game, but I never liked the controls).
Still, nobody ever got rich overestimating the American public's intelligence. Better to have a thermodynamically impossible but easy-to-understand explanation than one that's a little harder to grasp but works better both in the philosophical and scientific cases (a brain-machine interface is at least somewhat plausible).
After reading your list, it seems that perhaps the issues you have are with IP Masquerading, a special form of NAT where the external addresses are non-exclusive.
Sorry about the rant, but I hate it when people don't use the correct terminology.
Another thing to consider is that game speedruns tend to increase in difficulty exponentially; to cut a 4 hour run down to 3 hours is much easier than cutting a 1:40 run down to 1:20, as you will have already used up your tricks just getting to the 1:40 mark. Either you have to come up with a new trick or just get the timing on your old ones simply impeccable.
Finally, I'm curious as to how the heck you got a 4 hour finish time on your first run through. Mine was more like 12 hours (admittedly, I did chase down a lot more missile/energy expansions than were necessary, but a 4 hour first run seems damned quick).
But they were targeting American McGee, and his method of taking childhood fantasy (Alice in Wonderland, Oz) and adding blood, gore and a bit of S&M. I really don't see how Strawberry Shortcake was a target in this; the joke would have remained the same if it was a different character in the bondage gear. Thus, American Greetings has a leg to stand on in court: PA was not parodying Strawberry Shortcake, and could have just as easily used a different character.
As for the technical side, why not just quiz it with the same functions used in programs like wcpuid, or ask /proc/cpuinfo in *NIX? If the DRM software can't access them, then you're obviously an evil hacker who tries to keep his or her system secure by running only the things that need to be root as root, so you should be denied access in any case. And if anyone ever comes up with a mod to spoof your CPU clock speed, then it's off to jail with them!
From what I understand (and I'm no expert, but I have looked into this stuff) this is a possible last-mile solution; running a fast 'net connection to the nearest electrical substation and then putting a decoder on the power pole just shy of a pole pig would get the signal to within a few hundred feet of most residences; a simple coax, fiber, or even cat5 cable would take it the rest of the way.
With this in mind, an "upgrade" to a DRM-based system would probably be possible, particularly if the RIAA pushed it with special incentives (upgrade your system, we'll give you some exclusive tracks 2 weeks ahead of time!). The problem for the RIAA is that the analog sound going to the transmitter is still very good quality; a dedicated tech with a laptop could probably patch his system into the link from the audio system to the transmitter and get fairly good MP3s or OGGs. Until the RIAA gets everything in the world digital and DRMed, there just won't be any way to stop a dedicated pirate. Even then, I bet someone will find a way real quick ;).
I could understand things slowing down if Windows has to slog through 20GB of files every time it refreshes the desktop (was this some sort of videoediting terminal) but My Documents is just thrown up on the desktop as part of the rendering process as a shortcut to whatever the registry says it should be. I would imagine that a big background pixmap would slow things down much more, and keeping the number of icons Windows has to render down in the 20-30 range is probably a good idea.
On my current Win2K box (which I am using to type this post) the desktop renders very quickly. I have a simple tiled background, 13 app shortcuts, the standard Windows shortcuts (My Computer, My Network Places, My Documents, et al), a ~2Gb My Documents/My Pictures folder, and an old ATI Rage 128 video card. My HDD is a SCSI Ultra Wide RAID-0 setup across 2 drives. Other than the hard drives, it's a fairly standard desktop system. I have no idea where you are getting your information, but I suspect there's something wrong with your system, or your assumptions are nothing more than superstition (My Documents displays on the desktop, therefore it must be inside the desktop!)