Were it too much faster, it wouldn't be/. material...
Really, the reason it was posted to/. is because they think it'll take a week to boot. If it booted in an hour, we wouldn't be nearly as amused:)
Hell, my Apollo 3000 with 8 MB of ram took about 30 minutes from power on until it was booted up enough for me to start an xterm. All thanks to the memory-grubbing power of HP VUE on top of DomainOS -- no emulation there!
An hour tops of work if you've got a nicely tuned sysprep / ghost disc....
Assuming you've got a few hundred identical machines, maybe. Your typical corporate salvage does not fit this profile. Also, that hour does not cover time dealing with broken machines -- just because it accepted the image, that does not mean that the machine works.
And this is pretty crappy work. Few people will want to do it for $15/hr (at least not many of the people who know what needs to be done) -- and you can't very well outsource this to India. And it will probably need to be somebody that the company involved trusts, because those drives probably have corporate information on them, at least at first.
And how good exactly do you think the tech support on a $100 machine would be?
Approximately as good as the tech support on your surplus corporate PCs, except that it will be needed less.
Seriously though, do we really need a $100 disposible pc when there are so many functional used machines stacking up in corporate closets?
1) All PCs are disposable. Even your $4000 server. After all, a 10 year old $4000 server often isn't even worth $100 now.
2) To answer your question, it's a matter of labor costs. To make those corporate used machines usable, they need to be checked (half probably have at least one part broken), disks erased and a new OS installed. Once you consider the laber involved in doing this, it's not quite so cheap. To make matters worse, even if all the computers came from the same office, odds are good that each one is different from the others. Yes, a company may get the same box for every employee, but over time the favored boxes change, and so the back room is full of all kinds of old boxes. And let's hope these old boxes have enough RAM -- because buying old RAM for old boxes will cost more than an entire new box, including new RAM.
I've generally upgraded my PCs as time went on, part by part, and the old parts would accumulate in the garage. Occasionally, I'd take the old parts, and put together a PC for the relatives or friends who needed one. This worked, but I spent many many hours on it, often rememebering after many hours of frustration why I replaced that piece of hardware out -- because it was flakey! (yes, I do try to label things, but it does slip through the cracks.) And then once I gave it out, I had to support it. I may not do Windows very often, and maybe I didn't even put Windows on the machine at all, but often they end up with Windows, and so I end up supporting that.
Ultimately, it turned out to be not worth it. Now I just give stuff to Goodwill -- somebody else can deal with it. If I want my relative to have a computer, I'll give them $200 and let them buy one from Frys, already built. They even come with some tech support:) (Now, maybe if they're my favorite uncle or something, I might set them up with a computer. But I'll probably buy many of the parts news, just because it's easier than dealing with my old stuff.)
Imagine trying to get WinXP running via an emulator on a similar-spec XT machine...
To be fair, the Centris is much faster than an IBM XT and has much more memory.
A more accurate comparison would be to run XP on a 486/25 with 64 MB of ram. Of course, XP will probably refuse to run on a 486 at all, so you'll need a 686 emulator running on the 486, and you'll need at least 128 MB of ram (so the emulator will have to use virtual memory to emulate the extra 64 MB + that used in overhead.) I have no reason to expect that if the emulator is good that this won't work.
It'll probably run faster than MacOS X on the Centris too. After all, OS X needs a PPC, which is totally different than a 680x0, so it needs to be emulated at the lowest level. But a 686 isn't very different from a 486, so an emulator could take advantage of this.
That this works at all is not really a testament to the robustness of OS X, but instead a testament to the robustness of the PearPC emulator. As far as OS X is concerned, it's running on a PPC box. Just a very slow one...
Yeesh, did you *ever* try to get into the game instead of playing it as a mindless shooter?
Yes, and I found it lacking. I like my games to have a story, and the story in Doom 3 was quite weak.
Deus Ex, Half Life, System Shock 2. Those were much better.
Even the PDAs were predictable. `I hear voices. I had to fix the condensor coils AGAIN thanks to the power surges from Delta lab. We're going to stockpile some weapons just in case. Just to be safe, the new code is 622.'
More of the `the lights went out! I'll bet I'm about to be attacked!' brilliance. Joy.
Several of my friends and I bought Doom 3 almost immediately when it came out. As far as I know, none of us has finished the single player game, and I don't think anyobdy really cares. It just wasn't that good -- but it certainly *looked* good.
Let's hope HL2 is better.
You want a creepy FPS? System Shock 2. They should be trying to emulate that.:)
FCC Part 15 rules state that this device must accept any interference, including interference that might disrupt its operation.
That is true -- the FCC won't come in and save you. But there are still ways to work around it...
The 2.4 gHz band is probably toast. WiFi uses spread spectrum, as do some better cordless phones, but the cheap cordless phones just use one chunk of bandwidth and don't care what else is there too. And then any microwave ovens anywhere nearby will scramble all the 2.4 gHz stuff -- and there's certain to be a lot of them close by.
The 5.8 gHz band is probably much less lightly used. This means that 802.11a equipment is much more likely to work. And no microwave ovens to worry about.
900 mHz is another option, but it's likely to have all the same problems (except for microwave ovens), and 900 mHz networking equipment is hard to find (and generally not very good.)
Seriously, the wired ethernet cables that people have been suggesting are your best bet:)
I hope you're joking. That phrase is "acceptable" to everyone but the publisher; people who want to copy the game won't give a ham whether they're asked not to copy.
I was not joking at all.
Microsoft puts something like `Please do not make illegal copies of this software' on their CDs. If it makes even one person realize that making a copy of this might be illegal (under certain conditions anyways) and decide against it, then it's a somewhat effective copy protection method, and one I do not find it offensive at all. (I'll also happily make copies of it anyways, but I also know that backup copies of my own software are generally legal.)
Actually, I've found Microsoft to be generally quite reasonable with their game copy protection -- yes, you need the CD in the drive while you play, but beyond that it's generally transparant. They're often demonized for their OSs and business practices (and rightfully so), but their games are generally quite good, and you almost never have problems with their copy protection.
The worst copy protection I've ever encountered? Real Flight G2 R/C Flight Simulator. Here
is a list of all the things they do to protect their software -- and many are quite intrusive/inconvenient.
What is an acceptable way for companies to deal with piracy then?
You need a list? Ok then...
Acceptable forms of copy protection :
Ignore it. That's certainly acceptable, and works well for many game developers and publishers.
Add extras in the box that add value. Cloth maps, figurines, trading cards, etc.
Make a complex game that requires lots of documentation, and include it in a printed book.
Make an awesome multi-user component that requires logging into a server with a unique CD key to play online. It must be something that needs to use the Internet already, however (like a multi-user component would.)
Include the phrase: Please don't copy this game illegally.
Barely acceptable methods include :
Require use of that CD key to download patches and updates.
Having a unique CD key for each copy of the game.
Include copy protection methods that make it hard to copy, or make copies not work -- Safedisk, bad sectors, etc. These aren't very effective, but as long as they don't cause problems for legitimate users, they're acceptible -- barely.
Require that the CD be in the drive while playing the game. We don't like this, but we generally tolerate it if there's no other problems.
Hidden registry keys to keep track of previous installations and such.
Utterly unaccecptable forms of copy protection for a game :
Contacting the Internet (or requiring that you call up a phone number to get a code) for a single player game
Dongles (and other hardware keys.)
`Please enter the third word of page 25 now.' (or other sorts of code wheels, books, etc.)
Writing to the boot sector or other `off limits' part of the disk. (Turbo Tax did this recently.)
Installing Spyware that reports back to the publisher.
Programs that look for `cheating' or `cracking' programs on your disk and either refuse to run the game if found, or (worse) remove/break the offending programs. (EQ has done this, as and several programs refuse to work if programs like Daemon Tools or even Nero are even installed.)
Protections that damage the system if they feel they're being messed with (recent example: program that deleted your home directory if it detected a `pirated' CD key.)
Special device drivers that must be installed just to run the game -- like a special CD rom driver.
Unmovable files (if you put a file down, we should be able to defrag it!)
I'm sure I've missed a few in each category, but this should get you started. Game developers, you listening?
But then again, no one bitches about NEEDING a connection to play like Everquest or SWG or other online games.
Actually, some people do bitch about this. Granted, most people understand the need immediately, but not everybody. Even Grandma might want to play the Sims Online, but not understand why she needs to be dialed up while doing so.
But for a single player game, it makes no sense, beyond marketing and copy protection, things we hate (newsflash: even people who paid for their game hate copy protection. It's rarely as `invisible' as it's supposed to be. Ironically, many end up getting the pirate patches, because it makes the game better.)
In any event, MMRPG vs single player game Internet requirements -- it's hardly the same thing.
Airliners actually have quite exceptional glide ratios for powered craft
Not surprising. Airliners are all about efficiency, and high efficiency (low drag) usually means good glide ratio.
For comparison, I'll bet the flying lawnmower is doing good if it's got 5:1, judging from the very large angle of attack it's got as it flies around. Many model planes are grossly overpowered, often even having more static thrust than the plane weighs (so it can go straight up and keep going up.) This isn't really a bad thing -- it's a lot of fun having oodles of power -- but ultimately it turns out that the purpose of the rest of the plane is just to aim the engine:)
For comparison, a good full scale glider can have a glide ratio of 60:1.
By the way, from what I understand, a helicopter can only safely land if it was moving forward at the time the engine died (i.e., not hovering)
Not quite true. If a helicopter engine dies with the copter 10 feet up, it's going to land hard or crash unless the rotors were already spun up extra fast.
But outside of that, it either needs plenty of altitude *or* forward speed to land safely. Either will do. What the pilot does is adjust the pitch of the blades (the collective) so that the forward movement or the movement of the helicopter down speeds them up. Once you get close to the ground, you adjust the collective the other way to flare your approach. Requires quite a bit of practice to get right.:) (no, I can't do it yet.)
Obviously you don't fly many R/C planes. That's fine. I do.
Some glide extremely well, and others fall out of the sky the moment the engine dies. This flying lawn mower probably falls into the latter category. Running out of fuel doesn't mean you'll crash (even a helicopter can land safely with no power) but let's hope you're not far from the field, or you'll be looking for your plane.
I'm beyond baffled as to why the thing not only flies, but apparently handles pretty well.
It flies well because it's grossly overpowered. It's basically just a low aspect ratio flying wing, with some extra stuff thrown in for show.
Kill the engine, and it will be landing pronto.
Re:Doppler shifting radio waves?
on
Saving Huygens
·
· Score: 2, Informative
and doppler shifts seen by objects in low Earth orbit satellites can be a good deal larger than that.
Let me correct myself. At 440 mHz, I've seen Doppler shifts of low Earth satellites around 10 kHz. This is enough that you'll still pick up the signal, but it'll be really garbled. You definately do need to adjust for this when talking to these satellites using the 440 mHz band. (In the 2m/144 mHz band, the effect is smaller and can almost be ignored. However, many satellites transmit on one band and receive on another, so Doppler shifts are always something to keep in mind.)
Of course, in the case of the probe mentioned, the Doppler shift for the radio was considered, but the effect on the data stream received was not. Slightly different problem, but still very much related.
Ultimately, once you get into space, relativistic effects are very real and detectable, even without warp drives and impulse engines that can get you to 0.5 c. (Actually, they're often noticed on the Earth too under certain conditions. It's just a matter of having something sensitive enough...)
Re:Doppler shifting radio waves?
on
Saving Huygens
·
· Score: 4, Informative
but don't you have to me going *really fucking fast* if you want to make any noticeable doppler shift in light?
Yes and no. Ultimately, it depends on how fast you consider `really fucking fast' to be.
Certainly, satellites around the Earth qualify -- if you want to be truly successful working with amateur (ham) satellites, you
need to adjust for the doppler shifts., especially at the higher frequencies. If you don't, you'll only be successful when the doppler shift is small -- basically, when the satellite is as high in the sky as it's going to get in this pass.
Suppose your signal is at 441 mHz, and the signal is only 20 kHz wide. It only takes a 0.005% shift in the frequency to move that signal 20 kHz so you can't detect it at all, and doppler shifts seen by objects in low Earth orbit satellites can be a good deal larger than that.
But samplers who use without attribution or payment sure do. It's exactly the same.
Not quite. Samplers use only a tiny part of the original work, and it's original source is usually obvious to anybody who's heard the original song. (I assume you're talking about sampling other songs in new songs.)
I believe it's been decided in the courts that sampling does require permission (and it could have gone the other way too, as sampling could have been seen as fair use), but it's hardly `exactly the same'.
Sempron = new name for the 32 bit AthlonXP.
Athlon = `new' name for the 64 bit Athlon64.
Basically, Sempron isn't very different from the AthlonXP that we're used to (and in many cases. they're identical.) And now they'll reserve the Athlon name for the 64 bit versions. Unless I've misunderstood something...
Also BTW, HF is the only useful band for long-range communications, the higher frequencies are only good for 50-100 miles max reliably.
Not quite true. Moonbounce, meteor bounce, aurora bounce, satellites and ducting (well, you can't *rely* on ducting) can give you much larger distances. (We'll ignore repeaters for now, since they're often part of the infrastructure that tends to fail in a disaster.) And 50 mHz, which isn't really considered HF but is probably still ruined by BPL, it can have some HF style long-distance communications as well under the right conditions.
Not that all of these are as reliable as HF (which isn't reliable itself) but even if all the `disaster assistance' aspects of ham radio disappeared overnight, the hobby would still live on. Disaster assistance is a common way that ham radio tends to justify it's existence, and many hams take that to heart, but ultimately, a large part of the hobby is about tinkering and experimenting.
I'm a rarity among ham radio operators these days:
I shower often, brush my teeth, wear deodorant and don't live at home. Not to mention I'm under 30. (rimshot)
I agree with the age bit -- I'm 35, apparantly quite young for somebody to dabble in ham radio -- but most of the hams I've seen do bathe regularly. And where do you live if not home? (I own my home. You live in a van?)
But this is hardly the death of ham radio. Ham radio is not all HF. There's lots of stuff going on at higher frequencies that presumably will not be affected.
(Granted, loss of the HF bands is an almost mortal blow, but it's not quite the coup de grace.)
Oh. and you can go back to setting your clocks by hand. Atomic clocks use those frequencies too.
While I agree with your sentiment, I thought that I should mention that this statement isn't quite correct. Most of the so-called atomic clocks (`radio controlled clocks' would be more accurate) don't use the WWV/WWVH signals at 5, 10, 15, 2.5 or 20 mHz.
Instead, they use the
WWVB signal at 60 kHz, which presumably would not be affected by BPL.
This link gives more information specifically related to radio clocks.
Clocks do exist that use the 5, 15, 20 etc. mHz signals, but they're rare and expensive, and generally only used by hams, astronomers, etc. The stuff you buy at Frys, Radio Shack and Wal Mart, that's 60 kHz.
It's not a thing you build in. You have to offer a service.
To be fair, there is some truth here. You can't just give somebody a virus scanner or spyware remover and leave them alone -- they need updates, or they rapidly become useless, and then even worse than useless (as they provide a false sense of security.) Of course, the `service' required is pretty minimal, but it is a service. (Of course, it can be built in, but that doesn't mean there can't be a service that keeps it updated too.)
There are third parties who are doing a good job.
Indeed. Netscape (and Mosaic) and Staq Electronics were doing a good job providing a browser and filesystem compression...
Of course, Microsoft is probably a bit more wary of legal attention that such moves might attract if they made them today.
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Really, the reason it was posted to /. is because they think it'll take a week to boot. If it booted in an hour, we wouldn't be nearly as amused :)
Hell, my Apollo 3000 with 8 MB of ram took about 30 minutes from power on until it was booted up enough for me to start an xterm. All thanks to the memory-grubbing power of HP VUE on top of DomainOS -- no emulation there!
And this is pretty crappy work. Few people will want to do it for $15/hr (at least not many of the people who know what needs to be done) -- and you can't very well outsource this to India. And it will probably need to be somebody that the company involved trusts, because those drives probably have corporate information on them, at least at first.
Approximately as good as the tech support on your surplus corporate PCs, except that it will be needed less.2) To answer your question, it's a matter of labor costs. To make those corporate used machines usable, they need to be checked (half probably have at least one part broken), disks erased and a new OS installed. Once you consider the laber involved in doing this, it's not quite so cheap. To make matters worse, even if all the computers came from the same office, odds are good that each one is different from the others. Yes, a company may get the same box for every employee, but over time the favored boxes change, and so the back room is full of all kinds of old boxes. And let's hope these old boxes have enough RAM -- because buying old RAM for old boxes will cost more than an entire new box, including new RAM.
I've generally upgraded my PCs as time went on, part by part, and the old parts would accumulate in the garage. Occasionally, I'd take the old parts, and put together a PC for the relatives or friends who needed one. This worked, but I spent many many hours on it, often rememebering after many hours of frustration why I replaced that piece of hardware out -- because it was flakey! (yes, I do try to label things, but it does slip through the cracks.) And then once I gave it out, I had to support it. I may not do Windows very often, and maybe I didn't even put Windows on the machine at all, but often they end up with Windows, and so I end up supporting that.
Ultimately, it turned out to be not worth it. Now I just give stuff to Goodwill -- somebody else can deal with it. If I want my relative to have a computer, I'll give them $200 and let them buy one from Frys, already built. They even come with some tech support :) (Now, maybe if they're my favorite uncle or something, I might set them up with a computer. But I'll probably buy many of the parts news, just because it's easier than dealing with my old stuff.)
A more accurate comparison would be to run XP on a 486/25 with 64 MB of ram. Of course, XP will probably refuse to run on a 486 at all, so you'll need a 686 emulator running on the 486, and you'll need at least 128 MB of ram (so the emulator will have to use virtual memory to emulate the extra 64 MB + that used in overhead.) I have no reason to expect that if the emulator is good that this won't work.
It'll probably run faster than MacOS X on the Centris too. After all, OS X needs a PPC, which is totally different than a 680x0, so it needs to be emulated at the lowest level. But a 686 isn't very different from a 486, so an emulator could take advantage of this.
That this works at all is not really a testament to the robustness of OS X, but instead a testament to the robustness of the PearPC emulator. As far as OS X is concerned, it's running on a PPC box. Just a very slow one ...
Deus Ex, Half Life, System Shock 2. Those were much better.
Even the PDAs were predictable. `I hear voices. I had to fix the condensor coils AGAIN thanks to the power surges from Delta lab. We're going to stockpile some weapons just in case. Just to be safe, the new code is 622.'
Several of my friends and I bought Doom 3 almost immediately when it came out. As far as I know, none of us has finished the single player game, and I don't think anyobdy really cares. It just wasn't that good -- but it certainly *looked* good.
Let's hope HL2 is better.
You want a creepy FPS? System Shock 2. They should be trying to emulate that. :)
So it sounds like a job for Bittorrent!
The 2.4 gHz band is probably toast. WiFi uses spread spectrum, as do some better cordless phones, but the cheap cordless phones just use one chunk of bandwidth and don't care what else is there too. And then any microwave ovens anywhere nearby will scramble all the 2.4 gHz stuff -- and there's certain to be a lot of them close by.
The 5.8 gHz band is probably much less lightly used. This means that 802.11a equipment is much more likely to work. And no microwave ovens to worry about.
900 mHz is another option, but it's likely to have all the same problems (except for microwave ovens), and 900 mHz networking equipment is hard to find (and generally not very good.)
Seriously, the wired ethernet cables that people have been suggesting are your best bet :)
Microsoft puts something like `Please do not make illegal copies of this software' on their CDs. If it makes even one person realize that making a copy of this might be illegal (under certain conditions anyways) and decide against it, then it's a somewhat effective copy protection method, and one I do not find it offensive at all. (I'll also happily make copies of it anyways, but I also know that backup copies of my own software are generally legal.)
Actually, I've found Microsoft to be generally quite reasonable with their game copy protection -- yes, you need the CD in the drive while you play, but beyond that it's generally transparant. They're often demonized for their OSs and business practices (and rightfully so), but their games are generally quite good, and you almost never have problems with their copy protection.
The worst copy protection I've ever encountered? Real Flight G2 R/C Flight Simulator. Here is a list of all the things they do to protect their software -- and many are quite intrusive/inconvenient.
Acceptable forms of copy protection :
Ignore it. That's certainly acceptable, and works well for many game developers and publishers.
Add extras in the box that add value. Cloth maps, figurines, trading cards, etc.
Make a complex game that requires lots of documentation, and include it in a printed book.
Make an awesome multi-user component that requires logging into a server with a unique CD key to play online. It must be something that needs to use the Internet already, however (like a multi-user component would.)
Include the phrase: Please don't copy this game illegally.
Barely acceptable methods include :
Require use of that CD key to download patches and updates.
Having a unique CD key for each copy of the game.
Include copy protection methods that make it hard to copy, or make copies not work -- Safedisk, bad sectors, etc. These aren't very effective, but as long as they don't cause problems for legitimate users, they're acceptible -- barely.
Require that the CD be in the drive while playing the game. We don't like this, but we generally tolerate it if there's no other problems.
Hidden registry keys to keep track of previous installations and such.
Utterly unaccecptable forms of copy protection for a game :
Contacting the Internet (or requiring that you call up a phone number to get a code) for a single player game
Dongles (and other hardware keys.)
`Please enter the third word of page 25 now.' (or other sorts of code wheels, books, etc.)
Writing to the boot sector or other `off limits' part of the disk. (Turbo Tax did this recently.)
Installing Spyware that reports back to the publisher.
Programs that look for `cheating' or `cracking' programs on your disk and either refuse to run the game if found, or (worse) remove/break the offending programs. (EQ has done this, as and several programs refuse to work if programs like Daemon Tools or even Nero are even installed.)
Protections that damage the system if they feel they're being messed with (recent example: program that deleted your home directory if it detected a `pirated' CD key.)
Special device drivers that must be installed just to run the game -- like a special CD rom driver.
Unmovable files (if you put a file down, we should be able to defrag it!)
I'm sure I've missed a few in each category, but this should get you started. Game developers, you listening?
But for a single player game, it makes no sense, beyond marketing and copy protection, things we hate (newsflash: even people who paid for their game hate copy protection. It's rarely as `invisible' as it's supposed to be. Ironically, many end up getting the pirate patches, because it makes the game better.)
In any event, MMRPG vs single player game Internet requirements -- it's hardly the same thing.
For comparison, I'll bet the flying lawnmower is doing good if it's got 5:1, judging from the very large angle of attack it's got as it flies around. Many model planes are grossly overpowered, often even having more static thrust than the plane weighs (so it can go straight up and keep going up.) This isn't really a bad thing -- it's a lot of fun having oodles of power -- but ultimately it turns out that the purpose of the rest of the plane is just to aim the engine :)
For comparison, a good full scale glider can have a glide ratio of 60:1.
But outside of that, it either needs plenty of altitude *or* forward speed to land safely. Either will do. What the pilot does is adjust the pitch of the blades (the collective) so that the forward movement or the movement of the helicopter down speeds them up. Once you get close to the ground, you adjust the collective the other way to flare your approach. Requires quite a bit of practice to get right. :) (no, I can't do it yet.)
Some glide extremely well, and others fall out of the sky the moment the engine dies. This flying lawn mower probably falls into the latter category. Running out of fuel doesn't mean you'll crash (even a helicopter can land safely with no power) but let's hope you're not far from the field, or you'll be looking for your plane.
Rather interesting read, all in all.
Kill the engine, and it will be landing pronto.
Of course, in the case of the probe mentioned, the Doppler shift for the radio was considered, but the effect on the data stream received was not. Slightly different problem, but still very much related.
Ultimately, once you get into space, relativistic effects are very real and detectable, even without warp drives and impulse engines that can get you to 0.5 c. (Actually, they're often noticed on the Earth too under certain conditions. It's just a matter of having something sensitive enough ...)
Certainly, satellites around the Earth qualify -- if you want to be truly successful working with amateur (ham) satellites, you need to adjust for the doppler shifts., especially at the higher frequencies. If you don't, you'll only be successful when the doppler shift is small -- basically, when the satellite is as high in the sky as it's going to get in this pass.
Suppose your signal is at 441 mHz, and the signal is only 20 kHz wide. It only takes a 0.005% shift in the frequency to move that signal 20 kHz so you can't detect it at all, and doppler shifts seen by objects in low Earth orbit satellites can be a good deal larger than that.
I believe it's been decided in the courts that sampling does require permission (and it could have gone the other way too, as sampling could have been seen as fair use), but it's hardly `exactly the same'.
Sounds like a job for Bit Torrent to me ...
Sempron = new name for the 32 bit AthlonXP.
Athlon = `new' name for the 64 bit Athlon64.
Basically, Sempron isn't very different from the AthlonXP that we're used to (and in many cases. they're identical.) And now they'll reserve the Athlon name for the 64 bit versions. Unless I've misunderstood something ...
Not that all of these are as reliable as HF (which isn't reliable itself) but even if all the `disaster assistance' aspects of ham radio disappeared overnight, the hobby would still live on. Disaster assistance is a common way that ham radio tends to justify it's existence, and many hams take that to heart, but ultimately, a large part of the hobby is about tinkering and experimenting.
But this is hardly the death of ham radio. Ham radio is not all HF. There's lots of stuff going on at higher frequencies that presumably will not be affected.
(Granted, loss of the HF bands is an almost mortal blow, but it's not quite the coup de grace.)
Instead, they use the WWVB signal at 60 kHz, which presumably would not be affected by BPL. This link gives more information specifically related to radio clocks.
Clocks do exist that use the 5, 15, 20 etc. mHz signals, but they're rare and expensive, and generally only used by hams, astronomers, etc. The stuff you buy at Frys, Radio Shack and Wal Mart, that's 60 kHz.
And yes, I'm a ham. AD5RH.
Of course, Microsoft is probably a bit more wary of legal attention that such moves might attract if they made them today.