I have performed the experiment: Install Windows on a computer and hook it up to the Internet. Leave it hooked up without downloading one bit of software from anywhere! and the machine will be compromised.
Have you done the same experiment with win2k pro with either SP1 or SP2? It's only fair since boxes are shipping with both service packs. I don't disagree with you, i've noted that buying a PC equiped with winxp home edition to this day still will get infected right out of the box. I've not observed this under SP2.
Why is {[virus proection something]You have to offer a service} Mr. Gates? I would have thought that you would offer a secure environment as part of your product out of the box?
I have to agree with Bill on this one. Even if you are not paying a fee for your virus proection, it is a service that someone provides. This is diffrent from an automobile with airbags because you typicaly don't have to update/replace your airbags. You do have to pay to get your car serviced and you do have to update your virus definations. Now given that windows will auto update, you could argue that this is something that microsoft should provide out of the box. Frankly I'm glad they don't as compitition is good motive for the virus software companies to improve their product, and there are a number of free solutions that are really good. Avast and AVG come to mind.
Well, what do you expect... it was a MERCEDES! Buy a Kia and find out how nice the factory stereo is.
I don't know about Kia, but I can speak for Hyundai cassette decks. I was most impressed after they e-mailed me the unlock code (2211). We're talking good construction, easy enough to jack into a cd-changer or aux source. Never ate a tape, nor got jammed. I'm not saying that there wasn't better out there, but the factory cassette deck was on par with what i'd expect from an average $150 unit. If I bought a car with one of those installed I would likely just go with changer and keep the existing tape deck. I know most people want CD players, but most people I know ask the infamous question "what do I buy so I can jack my thingie in".
If you're the type to shell out $500 for a head unit, then chances are you are not going to be happy with the factory stereo, esp the base one. Your actual milage will vary, but keep in mind that car stereos are things put in to sell the cars, or to squeeze a few extra bucks out of you before you sign the papers. This means there are cheap ones, average ones, and some pretty nice once depending on make, model, target market, etc... etc....
Generally a factory head unit will cost you more than after market, and after market you can actually hear them in action and make an informed choice.
Can someone please make a car with a stereo that has an audio input? Does such a thing exist even in aftermarket?
Many do. Most stereos I have seen have some sorta odd connector on the back. This is often poorly documented, or if it's documented it's labled as a "cd-changer" or "equaliser" connector. My stereo for example takes a 13pin din connector, and I can easily spend $20 for it to line outs, or order the plug from digikey for a good deal less.
To each their own pretty much. A good reason to go with an aftermarket deck is simply because they are often cheaper than factory ones. This is assuming that you are *picking* extras after you pick a car.
Another good reason is you *might* be able to choose what you like. I'm not going to get into this whole better/worse thing. In my experence factory decks are pretty good. I know I installed a Honda deck in my old toyota before I gave it to my niece. It sounded like my Alpine actually.
There are those who believe that a factory deck has a higher value than an aftermarket one. I personaly wouldn't really care one way or another. I buy used cars and I wouldn't pay extra for a factory deck.
Now... all of this is very accidemic. This is making the assumption that a dash player is going to have it's own amp. Given how popular cd-changers are it's a safe bet that someone would take this into account and make a damn dash mount media player designed to jack into your existing stereo, and take the place of that stupid map holder under your existing deck that you never use.
Civil disobedience? You spit on everyone that has risked life and limb for actual social problems.
What about the concept of ownership. Let's say my John Denver Greatest hits volume two broke and I could no longer enjoy "Thank God I'm a Country Boy"? Would it be wrong of me to get a copy from a friend and make another copy onto 8-track? After all I bought it on 8-track, and you can't buy it on 8-track anymore. Or am I required to...
1. Buy a cassette / CD player for my pickup truck 2. Buy another copy of John Denver Greatest hits volume II on cassette / CD. 3. Replace all my music cause I don't actually have an 8-track anymore?
How many times must I buy something before I actually "own" a copy of the song?
Sure this isn't about food, suffrage, or war, but make no mistake, fair use is a civil right. To think otherwise will doom our children to a world of big brother DRM and shelling out dough everytime they hum a tune. It's a far better way to honor the memory of those to fought and died for social change by following their example then speaking their names to silence the masses and forcing conformity.
It's the responsibility of a surgeon to remain contactable when on-call.
Most surgeons carry old style one way pagers. There is a fear that cell phones might affect certain medial equipment. I've not actually seen it happen, and most people who work in a hospital just use their mobiles out of site. Unless they plan to block those frequencies as well it's not an issue.
There is no need to take along a laptop on a vacation.
I don't know. I've always wanted to go into the back woods of oregon and have a quake lan party, but I guess it would probally be more cost effective to use paint guns.
If I really wanted music in my bathroom, there are two systems that I'd seriously consider.
1. Radio Simple low watt FM transmitter. For some this would be as simple as attaching it to the tape monitor output of their AMP/Reciever. Radio recievers are cheep, and many are small.
2. Line out to a small radio Quality better than radio, but requires household wiring. Can be done over cat5.
3. Speaker wire & cieling mount speakers Requires heavier wire depending on your watt requirements.
But presently.... if I really want music on the crapper... if I really gotta have sound in my shower.
Atleast if Frankentop dies, just take all the parts and move on to the next laptop to be revied. When the cheapo Walmart laptop dies, you'll just be screwed.
As screwed as people get when their Sony Vaios died and discovered that cost of replacement screen or motherboard is roughly equal to whole replacement notebook?
I don't know if this has been said, but the best way to get rid of strays is to do the e-bay thing. Seriously, there is always someone out there that is going to need bits of trivial parts, and you might be doing a service and earning a buck or two. For example, I busted a friends cd-rom connector, the person told me specificly that the floppy went in the right bay when it clearly did not. $50 or so odd bucks later I get a replacement with the right part. Ok, now I have a stray, but that's not the point. The point is it was cool I could find an exact match.
But so long as there is a useful application for a POStop, there is going to be someone in need of parts to make their very own frankentop.
I don't get the point of these portable DVD players... most of the time, they're the price (or cost more!) than a laptop that you could use to do MORE than listen to video
If you've ever taken a laptop on a plane just so the kids could watch a Disney(tm) flick you'd understand that 2 hours on a modern laptop is pretty good, 4 hours is you happen to have a pair. This device claims 12hrs of battery life. If you were on an extended flight and trying to keep the kids amused which would you rather have?
Is Bill telling his employees in the Mac Business Unit that all their hard work is going to be for nothing? Is he planning on shutting down the MacBU, an that's why he's saying Mac OS won't be around?
We are after all talking about the same mac that made the switch from the 680x0 to power pc and then an os switch to BSD. Not that these were not good choices, but they sorta expect the mac users to be buying new computers, macs or otherwise every 3 years.
.. except maybe that Tacoma doesn't have an evacuation plan in case Mt. Ranier goes...
Is there a viable solution to evacuate Tacoma in the event of a natural disaster? Seriously... Tacoma is bordered by puget sound on the west, so unless you have a boat that's not an option. If you do have a boat you still have to get to it. You have I-5 which i'm sure you've noted is generally a pain in the tookus during rush hour. Narrows down to about 3 lanes or so between milepost 133 and milepost 131, city center / i-705 and highway 16 exits. You have highway 16 over the narrows bridge, which presently is 4 lanes being expanded, which again is totally inadquate for the morning rushhour needs. There is always going through Steilacoom and taking the Steilacoom Dupont road which will take you back to i-5 which would likely be conjected by all those other folk trying to evacuate. Besides, Chambers Creek road is just a two lane highway, and I believe also it's just two lanes all the way to the freeway.
The general attitude is if Mt. Ranier blows, we're fucked. We have neither the roads nor the public transportation to evacuate cities in the kill zone.
If you want to add a remote control to a homebrew PC, you have a dozen different choices with 3 or 4 different technologies, some of which are supported directly by your software and some of which require extensive configuration. Some will never work at all, though you have no way of knowing this until you've spent $$ and hours of your time.
Call me silly, but I just use a wireless keyboard and mouse. $50 on the closeout circuit and do the job quite well.
So, people are always wanting to use these things as general purpose computing devices. Is the math still such that it is a good decision (as compared to purchasing standard PCs).
You would get more bang for the buck with a true blue PC. This is true, can't argue this. The only xbox benifit is that it's small, and has good tv output.
A laptop is also small, often has TV output, but would likely cost you $300-$400 or so on e-bay for the same CPU class as xbox.
The x-box I believe is $150 new.
Someone else will have to find prices for things like the shoebox sized flex-atx style PCs, but for a new device the x-box is still reasonably priced.
How about that technologies like these let people spend less time watching TV and pick out those few shows that _are_ worth watching without being force to adapt their lives to the networks schedules?
You mean like P2P downloads of popular shows? That franky is one of my favorites. Expect for the pesky issue that it does interfear with the broadcast rights of local stations, and everyone trims out the comercials for obvious reasons.
Now... if local broadcast stations were able to service their broadcast area with on demand downloading, i'd gladly wait through the comercials that fund the media I enjoy. As a bonus, they actually will get accurate feedback on what pepole are taking the time to get. On the surface it doesn't sound so hard, a subscription based service the requires the end user to prove they are living in the broadcast range.
How well does 911, or your local countries' equivalent, work with it? When you dial 911 from a voip phone, does it report the location of the phone, or the billing location of the phone?
Your standard land line only reports the address the telco has entered in for a phone number. For residental this would just be the billing address. The diffrence is the fact that these land lines are fixed and generally don't move about too much. Not to say it never happens, it's possible to hook up the wrong wires to the wrong location, it's possible that the data entry was incorrect, and phone numbers change. A good operator will ask you where you are at, but assume the address on their screen if you can not tell them. Odds are this is just the billing address.
Mobile phones move around alot, so the billing address isn't good, which is why there is a system to locate the phones via the tower information. Also, at least in America, carriers are required to provide 911 access even from deactived phones. This means that in theory you can go to goodwill and buy an old phone and have a good chance of getting 911 access.
VoIP I don't believe has matured to this level. It could with the co-operation of the ISP relaying physical location based on ip address on demand. This would fall to pot with satellite, something that could be moved about if needed. Further... I believe you are also routed to a fixed call center, a factor decided by your billing address. This would be NO good if you happened to use your VoIP to call 911.
But you being up the most valid point why one might not consider VoIP as a viable option. If you want 911 access one should consider the following....
1. Land line... will report your phone number, which has an address associated with.
2. Mobile phone... can be trianglated, free 911 access unlike landlines.
I've heard a few people say they didn't care for their CD systems' sound. Turns out, they aren't using their equalizers for anything.
Really?
I thought the nice thing about the analog age was the RIAA set standards for recorded music so you didn't have to tweek with your equalizer so often. But this has nothing to do with technology, but rather has to do with the fact that some joker using pro tools isn't following the standard. Nothing worse than a CD with the bass maxed out to the point that your cones are jumping out of your woofers cause some hoghead wanted beefy sound on his headphones when mastering it.
Only the police (via state law) have the capability to transfer ownership after loss and mandatory waiting limits.
I've been told that before. I admit I have to check with the actual laws in my state, but comming from my local police department they say specificly, "Put an ad in the paper, wait 30 days, if no answer it's yours". I've tried to return lost pagers, cost cell phones, lost bikes, lost boats. The police refused to accept the goods in question, though they did take down my name and number and description of the items. As a result of my trouble, i've had to get rid of pagers, cell phones, bikes, and boats.
This was left in a Taxi, and most Taxi companies have a disclaimer that they are not responcible for your stuff. Generally speaking, a good company has a lost and found, and will be nice enough to hold on to your goods for a set period of time, and then get rid of them. I don't see this as being a case of theft if the cab company took it upon them selfs to hold on to the stuff for the required period.
Now copyright infringement is a diffrent story, but that would be a civil matter not a criminal one. If they are making a profit from someone else's work, i.e. digital photographs, that would be a legit complaint. But theft, well that's far fetched.
This is a perfect example of why my everyday driver car is an old beater that no one in their right mind would want to steal. If you're going to drive fancy stuff, then you have to accept that you are going to be a target.
Not exactly true. While yea, it's unlikely that someone is going to take your beater to a chop shop. But some beaters, esp japanese imports, have locks that can be opened with a screw driver after only being a few years old. While your beater idea makes it far more likely your car will be recovered, joy ride to the next town sorta deal, it doesn't nessicarly mean that it won't be stolen.
Clearly Microsoft is guilty of distributing P2P software now. In fact, by now they're probably the biggest P2P supplier out there.
Why would this be any diffrent than using archie back in the good-old days, where you could even download complete comercial unix distros if you so desired.
Slashdot Mirror
yea, I was thinking xp, typed in 2k :P
I have performed the experiment: Install Windows on a computer and hook it up to the Internet. Leave it hooked up without downloading one bit of software from anywhere! and the machine will be compromised.
Have you done the same experiment with win2k pro with either SP1 or SP2? It's only fair since boxes are shipping with both service packs. I don't disagree with you, i've noted that buying a PC equiped with winxp home edition to this day still will get infected right out of the box. I've not observed this under SP2.
Why is {[virus proection something]You have to offer a service} Mr. Gates? I would have thought that you would offer a secure environment as part of your product out of the box?
I have to agree with Bill on this one. Even if you are not paying a fee for your virus proection, it is a service that someone provides. This is diffrent from an automobile with airbags because you typicaly don't have to update/replace your airbags. You do have to pay to get your car serviced and you do have to update your virus definations. Now given that windows will auto update, you could argue that this is something that microsoft should provide out of the box. Frankly I'm glad they don't as compitition is good motive for the virus software companies to improve their product, and there are a number of free solutions that are really good. Avast and AVG come to mind.
Well, what do you expect... it was a MERCEDES! Buy a Kia and find out how nice the factory stereo is.
I don't know about Kia, but I can speak for Hyundai cassette decks. I was most impressed after they e-mailed me the unlock code (2211). We're talking good construction, easy enough to jack into a cd-changer or aux source. Never ate a tape, nor got jammed. I'm not saying that there wasn't better out there, but the factory cassette deck was on par with what i'd expect from an average $150 unit. If I bought a car with one of those installed I would likely just go with changer and keep the existing tape deck. I know most people want CD players, but most people I know ask the infamous question "what do I buy so I can jack my thingie in".
If you're the type to shell out $500 for a head unit, then chances are you are not going to be happy with the factory stereo, esp the base one. Your actual milage will vary, but keep in mind that car stereos are things put in to sell the cars, or to squeeze a few extra bucks out of you before you sign the papers. This means there are cheap ones, average ones, and some pretty nice once depending on make, model, target market, etc... etc....
Generally a factory head unit will cost you more than after market, and after market you can actually hear them in action and make an informed choice.
Can someone please make a car with a stereo that has an audio input? Does such a thing exist even in aftermarket?
Many do. Most stereos I have seen have some sorta odd connector on the back. This is often poorly documented, or if it's documented it's labled as a "cd-changer" or "equaliser" connector. My stereo for example takes a 13pin din connector, and I can easily spend $20 for it to line outs, or order the plug from digikey for a good deal less.
To each their own pretty much. A good reason to go with an aftermarket deck is simply because they are often cheaper than factory ones. This is assuming that you are *picking* extras after you pick a car.
Another good reason is you *might* be able to choose what you like. I'm not going to get into this whole better/worse thing. In my experence factory decks are pretty good. I know I installed a Honda deck in my old toyota before I gave it to my niece. It sounded like my Alpine actually.
There are those who believe that a factory deck has a higher value than an aftermarket one. I personaly wouldn't really care one way or another. I buy used cars and I wouldn't pay extra for a factory deck.
Now... all of this is very accidemic. This is making the assumption that a dash player is going to have it's own amp. Given how popular cd-changers are it's a safe bet that someone would take this into account and make a damn dash mount media player designed to jack into your existing stereo, and take the place of that stupid map holder under your existing deck that you never use.
Civil disobedience? You spit on everyone that has risked life and limb for actual social problems.
What about the concept of ownership. Let's say my John Denver Greatest hits volume two broke and I could no longer enjoy "Thank God I'm a Country Boy"? Would it be wrong of me to get a copy from a friend and make another copy onto 8-track? After all I bought it on 8-track, and you can't buy it on 8-track anymore. Or am I required to...
1. Buy a cassette / CD player for my pickup truck
2. Buy another copy of John Denver Greatest hits volume II on cassette / CD.
3. Replace all my music cause I don't actually have an 8-track anymore?
How many times must I buy something before I actually "own" a copy of the song?
Sure this isn't about food, suffrage, or war, but make no mistake, fair use is a civil right. To think otherwise will doom our children to a world of big brother DRM and shelling out dough everytime they hum a tune. It's a far better way to honor the memory of those to fought and died for social change by following their example then speaking their names to silence the masses and forcing conformity.
It's the responsibility of a surgeon to remain contactable when on-call.
Most surgeons carry old style one way pagers. There is a fear that cell phones might affect certain medial equipment. I've not actually seen it happen, and most people who work in a hospital just use their mobiles out of site. Unless they plan to block those frequencies as well it's not an issue.
There is no need to take along a laptop on a vacation.
I don't know. I've always wanted to go into the back woods of oregon and have a quake lan party, but I guess it would probally be more cost effective to use paint guns.
If I really wanted music in my bathroom, there are two systems that I'd seriously consider.
1. Radio
Simple low watt FM transmitter. For some this would be as simple as attaching it to the tape monitor output of their AMP/Reciever. Radio recievers are cheep, and many are small.
2. Line out to a small radio
Quality better than radio, but requires household wiring. Can be done over cat5.
3. Speaker wire & cieling mount speakers
Requires heavier wire depending on your watt requirements.
But presently.... if I really want music on the crapper... if I really gotta have sound in my shower.
4. Turn up the volume... really really loud!
Atleast if Frankentop dies, just take all the parts and move on to the next laptop to be revied. When the cheapo Walmart laptop dies, you'll just be screwed.
As screwed as people get when their Sony Vaios died and discovered that cost of replacement screen or motherboard is roughly equal to whole replacement notebook?
Laptop battery, about $100 (depending)
144-pin sodimms $113.99/256 (costs may be higher for EDO or propriority memory)
16bit PC card ethernet adapter $30
WIFI to Ethernet Bridge $93 (in case you can't do cardbus)
Laptop DVD rom drive $50 on ebay.
Cost to make that laptop modern $386.99
Knowing you can from Walmart for $598 + tax with all that crap already, priceless.
Sure you can frankentop, just so long as you don't cross the bottom line.
I don't know if this has been said, but the best way to get rid of strays is to do the e-bay thing. Seriously, there is always someone out there that is going to need bits of trivial parts, and you might be doing a service and earning a buck or two. For example, I busted a friends cd-rom connector, the person told me specificly that the floppy went in the right bay when it clearly did not. $50 or so odd bucks later I get a replacement with the right part. Ok, now I have a stray, but that's not the point. The point is it was cool I could find an exact match.
But so long as there is a useful application for a POStop, there is going to be someone in need of parts to make their very own frankentop.
I don't get the point of these portable DVD players... most of the time, they're the price (or cost more!) than a laptop that you could use to do MORE than listen to video
If you've ever taken a laptop on a plane just so the kids could watch a Disney(tm) flick you'd understand that 2 hours on a modern laptop is pretty good, 4 hours is you happen to have a pair. This device claims 12hrs of battery life. If you were on an extended flight and trying to keep the kids amused which would you rather have?
Is Bill telling his employees in the Mac Business Unit that all their hard work is going to be for nothing? Is he planning on shutting down the MacBU, an that's why he's saying Mac OS won't be around?
We are after all talking about the same mac that made the switch from the 680x0 to power pc and then an os switch to BSD. Not that these were not good choices, but they sorta expect the mac users to be buying new computers, macs or otherwise every 3 years.
.. except maybe that Tacoma doesn't have an evacuation plan in case Mt. Ranier goes...
Is there a viable solution to evacuate Tacoma in the event of a natural disaster? Seriously... Tacoma is bordered by puget sound on the west, so unless you have a boat that's not an option. If you do have a boat you still have to get to it.
You have I-5 which i'm sure you've noted is generally a pain in the tookus during rush hour. Narrows down to about 3 lanes or so between milepost 133 and milepost 131, city center / i-705 and highway 16 exits. You have highway 16 over the narrows bridge, which presently is 4 lanes being expanded, which again is totally inadquate for the morning rushhour needs. There is always going through Steilacoom and taking the Steilacoom Dupont road which will take you back to i-5 which would likely be conjected by all those other folk trying to evacuate. Besides, Chambers Creek road is just a two lane highway, and I believe also it's just two lanes all the way to the freeway.
The general attitude is if Mt. Ranier blows, we're fucked. We have neither the roads nor the public transportation to evacuate cities in the kill zone.
If you want to add a remote control to a homebrew PC, you have a dozen different choices with 3 or 4 different technologies, some of which are supported directly by your software and some of which require extensive configuration. Some will never work at all, though you have no way of knowing this until you've spent $$ and hours of your time.
Call me silly, but I just use a wireless keyboard and mouse. $50 on the closeout circuit and do the job quite well.
So, people are always wanting to use these things as general purpose computing devices. Is the math still such that it is a good decision (as compared to purchasing standard PCs).
You would get more bang for the buck with a true blue PC. This is true, can't argue this. The only xbox benifit is that it's small, and has good tv output.
A laptop is also small, often has TV output, but would likely cost you $300-$400 or so on e-bay for the same CPU class as xbox.
The x-box I believe is $150 new.
Someone else will have to find prices for things like the shoebox sized flex-atx style PCs, but for a new device the x-box is still reasonably priced.
How about that technologies like these let people spend less time watching TV and pick out those few shows that _are_ worth watching without being force to adapt their lives to the networks schedules?
You mean like P2P downloads of popular shows? That franky is one of my favorites. Expect for the pesky issue that it does interfear with the broadcast rights of local stations, and everyone trims out the comercials for obvious reasons.
Now... if local broadcast stations were able to service their broadcast area with on demand downloading, i'd gladly wait through the comercials that fund the media I enjoy. As a bonus, they actually will get accurate feedback on what pepole are taking the time to get. On the surface it doesn't sound so hard, a subscription based service the requires the end user to prove they are living in the broadcast range.
How well does 911, or your local countries' equivalent, work with it? When you dial 911 from a voip phone, does it report the location of the phone, or the billing location of the phone?
Your standard land line only reports the address the telco has entered in for a phone number. For residental this would just be the billing address. The diffrence is the fact that these land lines are fixed and generally don't move about too much. Not to say it never happens, it's possible to hook up the wrong wires to the wrong location, it's possible that the data entry was incorrect, and phone numbers change. A good operator will ask you where you are at, but assume the address on their screen if you can not tell them. Odds are this is just the billing address.
Mobile phones move around alot, so the billing address isn't good, which is why there is a system to locate the phones via the tower information. Also, at least in America, carriers are required to provide 911 access even from deactived phones. This means that in theory you can go to goodwill and buy an old phone and have a good chance of getting 911 access.
VoIP I don't believe has matured to this level. It could with the co-operation of the ISP relaying physical location based on ip address on demand. This would fall to pot with satellite, something that could be moved about if needed. Further... I believe you are also routed to a fixed call center, a factor decided by your billing address. This would be NO good if you happened to use your VoIP to call 911.
But you being up the most valid point why one might not consider VoIP as a viable option. If you want 911 access one should consider the following....
1. Land line... will report your phone number, which has an address associated with.
2. Mobile phone... can be trianglated, free 911 access unlike landlines.
I've heard a few people say they didn't care for their CD systems' sound. Turns out, they aren't using their equalizers for anything.
Really?
I thought the nice thing about the analog age was the RIAA set standards for recorded music so you didn't have to tweek with your equalizer so often. But this has nothing to do with technology, but rather has to do with the fact that some joker using pro tools isn't following the standard. Nothing worse than a CD with the bass maxed out to the point that your cones are jumping out of your woofers cause some hoghead wanted beefy sound on his headphones when mastering it.
Only the police (via state law) have the capability to transfer ownership after loss and mandatory waiting limits.
I've been told that before. I admit I have to check with the actual laws in my state, but comming from my local police department they say specificly, "Put an ad in the paper, wait 30 days, if no answer it's yours". I've tried to return lost pagers, cost cell phones, lost bikes, lost boats. The police refused to accept the goods in question, though they did take down my name and number and description of the items. As a result of my trouble, i've had to get rid of pagers, cell phones, bikes, and boats.
This was left in a Taxi, and most Taxi companies have a disclaimer that they are not responcible for your stuff. Generally speaking, a good company has a lost and found, and will be nice enough to hold on to your goods for a set period of time, and then get rid of them. I don't see this as being a case of theft if the cab company took it upon them selfs to hold on to the stuff for the required period.
Now copyright infringement is a diffrent story, but that would be a civil matter not a criminal one. If they are making a profit from someone else's work, i.e. digital photographs, that would be a legit complaint. But theft, well that's far fetched.
This is a perfect example of why my everyday driver car is an old beater that no one in their right mind would want to steal. If you're going to drive fancy stuff, then you have to accept that you are going to be a target.
Not exactly true. While yea, it's unlikely that someone is going to take your beater to a chop shop. But some beaters, esp japanese imports, have locks that can be opened with a screw driver after only being a few years old. While your beater idea makes it far more likely your car will be recovered, joy ride to the next town sorta deal, it doesn't nessicarly mean that it won't be stolen.
Clearly Microsoft is guilty of distributing P2P software now. In fact, by now they're probably the biggest P2P supplier out there.
Why would this be any diffrent than using archie back in the good-old days, where you could even download complete comercial unix distros if you so desired.