DRM's more or less open goal is to prevent "casual theft" in the form of playground CD swapping, but it's much easier to sue someone who took deliberate, non-obvious steps to circumvent a protection than sueing someone who just copied something. For infringers, it takes away the "oops I didn't know it was forbidden" excuse.
Actually, I suspect that, for the content producers at least an equally important purpose for DRM is to inhibit people's ability to exercise their fair use rights for the content they supposedly purchased.
How many times as a Disney video been sold to the same family more than once because the kids (being kids) destroyed the first one? Most consumers don't have the knowledge or tools to copy a Macrovision "protected" video or CSS encrypted DVD. Sure, for the technically savvy this is a non issue, whenever I get a movie I can make a copy and lock the original away from my kids but I'd be surprised if anyone else on my block could do the same.
Or with DRM'ed music, You know that there are more than a few people who have bought the same song more than once after they reformatted their hard drive or got a new computer and found they could no longer open the music they previously "purchased"
Both Disney & Apple are well aware that even with no so-called "backyard piracy" (or any other copyright violations) going on that they will lose sales if their media can be easily copied.
One DRM scheme I would actually be OK with is one that doesn't restrict copying but imparts a digital "watermark" in the media that makes it traceable to the original purchaser. This is sorta-kinda how TiVo handles videos that you copy off if your TiVo DVR (using approved methods anyways). If I were an idiot and put my TiVo media files on BitTorrent or something it would be easily traceable back to me.
Of course the main flaw in the TiVo system is there is only one application that is "approved" for burning your TiVo files to DVD and it's as expensive as it is lousy. So the result is that I have to use unapproved of methods for converting the TiVo file to MPEG so I can burn it to DVD using the tool I want to. Honestly I'd love to skip that step because it more than doubles the time involved in putting a show on DVD.
This seems like a rather obvious case of extortion if you ask me. I can picture the "negotiations" now.
Click Defense: Buy our software
Google: No thanks, we're good
Click Defense: Buy it or we'll file a lawsuit and make lots of public statements saying you are allowing your customers to be ripped off (reminding them that people beleive anything they read on the IntArweb)
Google: Pack Sand
Click Defense: You'll regret this, it'll now cost you 10x as much as our shitty software
Why don't we hold companies and individuals criminally resposible for this kinds of abuse of the legal system?
Given the ease with which viewer can ignore advertising on a TiVo, wouldn't you, as an advertiser, steer far clear of shows that are disproportionately popular with TiVo users.
That's a good point, while I don't skip every commercial (I have even been known to rewind to watch a commercial if it looks interesting as I fast forward through the commercial breaks) certainly it's safe to say that most TiVo (& other DVR) owners skip most commercials..
I think that TiVo viewers attract a different kind of advertiser and advertisement, from your product placement types (not really easily done in a Science Fiction show like Firefly) to the banners across the bottom which are becoming more and more common.
IMO the overall demographics of the typical TiVo owner, being affluent, younger, gadget buyers is more attractive to advertisers in general, enough to outweigh the negative that most TiVo buyers will be skipping most of the commercials.
So everyone with a Neilson device, make sure you turn on every episode of FireFly! We need to make Sci-Fi think that FireFly is the hottest show since the original Star Trek got cancelled!;-)
If there's even a single person with a Neilsen device who is a regulary visitor on/. I'd be surprised
What we need is for TiVo users to give this show three thumbs up and set their season passes to record the show. And of course not opt out of the anonymous data aggregation that TiVo does.
Networks are fast discovering that this data is just as if not more valuable than the Neilsen data because it has a MUCH larger sampling pool combined with the fact that TiVo users are more likely to have disposable income (more valuable for advertisers)
Just stored thermal energy (cold water) and a thrown together heat exchanger.
Me thinks some efficiency improvements can be had would raising the cost substantially.
Instead of a big open garbage can, what about an insulated ice chest? This is also considerably more spill resistant.
Instead of cold water in a container running through the coils to discharge you could have warm water running through coils which run through REALLY cold water (ice+salt+water =
Cheaper still on bookpool
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Linux Cookbook
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What a bunch of whiners, most of which don't even own a TiVo nor have used it for any significant length of time.
I'm a mostly happy TiVo Subscriber, while it's a far from perfect product from a far from perfect company it is IMO the best product out there overall. Of all the commercially available DVRs out there the only one that comes close is ReplayTV. Sure a MythTV or other DIY PVR offers better control (that I would like) but is not viable for 95% of American consumers (probably a conservative estimate).
TiVo has , and will continue to make compromises in the services they provide that while detrimental to the users have kept TiVo operational (if not profitable). ReplayTV tried to give the consumer everything and it put them into bankruptcy TWICE.
Admittedly I've yet to see these new ads on my TiVo but as long as they don't interfere with my ability to fast forward (which it doesn't sound like they do) than my core functionality is not impacted and I'm still a happy customer. I think the number of people who find the idea of commercials patently offensive (as is the general theme from non TiVo owning people rushing to decry this) is small compared to the number who won't care what's on the screen while they FF as long as they can get back to the O.C. in 10 seconds.
While I'd never be happy with DRM I'd probably accept it if it didn't include restrictions on (legal) copying or use.
The stated purpose for DRM schemes is so you can't buy a song from iTMS and upload it on KaZaA or whatever. Of course it's my suspicion that an equal or larger purpose is to sell the same song more than once after your HD crashes or whatever and you can't use your DRMed backup of your music anymore.
What if the DRM only identified who the original "purchaser" so if the software was found in an illegal distribution channel they could track it back to the purchaser and potentially hold them accountable.
Now the big problem with that scenario is what if your PC is stolen or hax0red and someone takes your stuff and uploads it, possibly even to get you in trouble. Still IMO it's a better system than the current DRM schemes that are out there and might be enough to get people like me to adopt it.
Of course I may be an anomaly. I have a stack of CDs, still shrink wrapped that I purchased just to legitimize the MP3's I had downloaded off of P2P.
This problem could be reduced dramatically if WAPs shipped from the factory with complex random passwords WEP enabled and complex random WEP keys.
As an example on a new HPaq server the iLO remore management interface has complex random password, printed on a label on the device.
Imagine if Linksys, etc. did the same thing with WAPs, where no 2 WAPs with the same WEP key or password.
Sure some users would just disable the protection but I'm betting if you made it halfway convienient that most won't. Make it more work to be insecure and the security will win most of the time. You might even be able to reduce this further by having the admin interface give you lots of warnings and make you jump through hopps to disable the security funcions.
Of course secrity could be improved upon even further if the default security was better than WEP but I think that's too high a barrier for the average user to tolerate. WEP may suck but it's considerably better than wide open.
As long as I was buying it as opposed to renting it as the current online music stores offer you.
The DRM, for me at least is the deal breaker. With a limited amount of downloads of a "purchased" song and no option for just copying it from one computer to another after a period of time I would no longer have access to the song, and that's why I don't use any of those services.
I think this is no small part of Dell's decision to stick with Intel.
In the past when AMD's chips were merely "knock-off's" of Intels they had a lot of relibility problems, mostly related their their heat generation.
IMO this was caused by them designing chips that had to function like Intel chips but be different enough architecturally to keep them from getting sued (more than they already were). These contradictary requirements resulted in bass-ackwards chip designs that were inefficient. This then caused AMD to push the envelope of what the chips could handle clock speed wise. With the final result being chips with a much higher failure rate (several hundred times higher in my professional career).
I remember back in 98 or 99 (yes I know ancient history) one coustomer of mine had several thousand HP Vectra PCs, all with Intel chips. They decided to buy a batch of AMD equipped Vectras as each PC was about $30 cheaper with an AMD over an Intel CPU. Out of the 80 or so AMD equipped HP Vectras 11 of them were DOA and another 4 had their processors go out in less than a month. I know that experience left an extremely strong impression in the customers mind and mine as well.
Now things are definitely different, AMD is doing it's own thing (rather than just copying Intel's chips), doing it extremely well and using their technology and performance as selling points (not just a Still I can see how someone who has been burned (pun intended) by AMD in the past, even the very distant past would be reluctant to try it again. With Intel you know that you are paying too much but you also know nothing is going to go wrong.
From Dell's position, it's hard to screw up sticking with Intel as long as the number$ add up.
Right A read an artcile (linked from/. IIRC) that analyzed that if you take out the complaints filed from this SINGLE ORGANIZATION that the number of complaints is barely higher than before the "nipplegate" incident.
StreetTalk > AD or NDS (and arrived many years earlier)
Another example of how having a superior product won't make you successful in the long run if you don't know how to market it.
BITD there was talk of Microsoft buying Banyan for StreetTalk instead of developing AD, but was told by their lawyers that it wouldn't pass antitrust muster (at the time Banyan still had like 15% of the market)
Exactly, the "technologies" that Macrovision creates do almost nothing to thwart wholesale commercial piracy, the big operations can afford the equipment & tools necessary to render any copy protection technique pointless.
What this stuff does, indeed what it's designed to do is stop people from exercising their Fair Use rights, and to a lesser extent prevent casual copying/sharing between friends.
The MPAA and their ilk can't make Fair use go Away as much as they would like to. What they can do is make it harder to exercise your fair use rights and make them practically hollow for most consumers.
TFA doesn't really get into it but I suspect the cost is either:
The cost of veveloping robots capable of the repair
The extra cost of safety if a shuttle mission.
In either case it seems much of this technology would be, or could and should be resusable for future sattelite repair missions (or shuttle missions not going to ISS) so some, perhaps a lot of the extra cost can be "capitalized" (to probably misuse an accounting term) and not just considdered as part of the cost of the HST.
Example: if they need and extra billion to develop an escape pod/reentry vehicle for the shuttle you can keep that thing around in case you need it.
Same thing for developing robots with dexterity. Maybe they could have a soyuz type of reentry craft of their own so they could be re-used later, I'd imagine if they have the ability to replace a gyroscope inside the HST they can probably dock with or climb inside a simple space capsule, which should be cheap since it doesn't need life support.
Re:Can't see a TiVo user switching to an ordinary
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Certianly I understand your passion for HD (though I don't share it myself).
FTR you don't need a phone line with a TiVo, mine gets its updates over broadband and has never once been hooked up to a phone line, not even for it's initial setup.
Can't see a TiVo user switching to an ordinary DVR
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The cable companies have an edge with new DVR customers, since someone who has never used a DVR before won't know the difference between a generic "DVR" and one with advanced features like a TiVo (or even ReplayTV) DVR.
I Don't see many TiVo users dumping their TiVo's for the cable company offerings. Maybe a few who are obsessed over HD (even less households have HD capabale TVs than have TiVos) might but they would probably be more likely to get the cable company DVR and keep their TiVo.
As a TiVo subscriber myself I can't imagine life without it. I'd give up subscriber TV (go with over the air only) before I'd give my TiVo up. I'd also gladly pay for a TiVo rather than have a free DVR (in fact I did when I passed up the mostly free ($50 with no montly fees) DishPVR that Dish Network offered me when I signed up for Dish and bought a TiVo instead.
Especially since it uses Memory $tick for capacity expansion.
While TFA sasy that MS is "slightly" more expensive than other kinds of flash memory as someone who's owned a Sony digital camera I can say that only counts if you consider 20%-40% more expensive to be "slightly"
Still an interesting idea, and could be a lot more viable if the cost of flash memory drops significantly. One would think that not having a HD might improve battery life. (shrugs)
Exactly what I was thinking. When I read the headline I was imaginging that cellular data use was way more popular than I imagined and that WiFi hotspots are eating into that side of the business.
Just because the wireless carriers projected ridiculous revenue from their own WiFi hotspots that they won't make doesn't mean the carriers are "losing" anything since they never had the money in the first place.
I have a suggestion for the wireless carriers to "regain" some of the money they never had to begin with. Charge competitive rates for your WiFi services and you will get more of that business.
As the article points out the Mac Mini isn't a new idea but I see it as a better fit for the Mac community than the PC community.
My moms small business has several Dell SX270 small form factor desktops (similar to this) and they work well.
Decent little boxes, basically uses laptop technology with an external power supply, even uses notebook CD/DVD/Floppy drive modules, letting us do thing like buying only one floppy drive module for the whole office.
Upgrading the RAM is easy as is relplacing the hard drive though you couldn't add a second, let along a third hard drive. And of course there are no PCI or other expansion slots, which is fine since all the components are built in and if you ever did need to add something it's probably available as USB.
It wouldn't be a good choice for me or most geeks but for a lot of people who don't tinker with their PC beyond upgrading the RAM and maybe HD it fits the bill well.
As it is unless you are willing to tweak the code and recompile you don't have a lot of options for customizing Firefox (at least not that I have found, I'd LOVE to be shown that it's doable).
I think that corporations, that are struggling with spyware on a regular basis would be willing to switch to Firefox more readliy if they could easily tailor it to their needs, choosing default home page, links, install internal CA root certificates etc.
For it's faults IE makes it pretty easy to do this, with the IEAK you can customize just about everything.
Slashdot Mirror
DRM's more or less open goal is to prevent "casual theft" in the form of playground CD swapping, but it's much easier to sue someone who took deliberate, non-obvious steps to circumvent a protection than sueing someone who just copied something. For infringers, it takes away the "oops I didn't know it was forbidden" excuse.
Actually, I suspect that, for the content producers at least an equally important purpose for DRM is to inhibit people's ability to exercise their fair use rights for the content they supposedly purchased.
How many times as a Disney video been sold to the same family more than once because the kids (being kids) destroyed the first one? Most consumers don't have the knowledge or tools to copy a Macrovision "protected" video or CSS encrypted DVD. Sure, for the technically savvy this is a non issue, whenever I get a movie I can make a copy and lock the original away from my kids but I'd be surprised if anyone else on my block could do the same.
Or with DRM'ed music, You know that there are more than a few people who have bought the same song more than once after they reformatted their hard drive or got a new computer and found they could no longer open the music they previously "purchased"
Both Disney & Apple are well aware that even with no so-called "backyard piracy" (or any other copyright violations) going on that they will lose sales if their media can be easily copied.
One DRM scheme I would actually be OK with is one that doesn't restrict copying but imparts a digital "watermark" in the media that makes it traceable to the original purchaser. This is sorta-kinda how TiVo handles videos that you copy off if your TiVo DVR (using approved methods anyways). If I were an idiot and put my TiVo media files on BitTorrent or something it would be easily traceable back to me.
Of course the main flaw in the TiVo system is there is only one application that is "approved" for burning your TiVo files to DVD and it's as expensive as it is lousy. So the result is that I have to use unapproved of methods for converting the TiVo file to MPEG so I can burn it to DVD using the tool I want to. Honestly I'd love to skip that step because it more than doubles the time involved in putting a show on DVD.
Interestingly, ClickDefense.com no longer seems to be showing up as a sposored link for that search.
Could Google have removed the link to protect them from click fraud?
This seems like a rather obvious case of extortion if you ask me. I can picture the "negotiations" now.
Click Defense: Buy our software
Google: No thanks, we're good
Click Defense: Buy it or we'll file a lawsuit and make lots of public statements saying you are allowing your customers to be ripped off (reminding them that people beleive anything they read on the IntArweb)
Google: Pack Sand
Click Defense: You'll regret this, it'll now cost you 10x as much as our shitty software
Why don't we hold companies and individuals criminally resposible for this kinds of abuse of the legal system?
Given the ease with which viewer can ignore advertising on a TiVo, wouldn't you, as an advertiser, steer far clear of shows that are disproportionately popular with TiVo users.
That's a good point, while I don't skip every commercial (I have even been known to rewind to watch a commercial if it looks interesting as I fast forward through the commercial breaks) certainly it's safe to say that most TiVo (& other DVR) owners skip most commercials..
I think that TiVo viewers attract a different kind of advertiser and advertisement, from your product placement types (not really easily done in a Science Fiction show like Firefly) to the banners across the bottom which are becoming more and more common.
IMO the overall demographics of the typical TiVo owner, being affluent, younger, gadget buyers is more attractive to advertisers in general, enough to outweigh the negative that most TiVo buyers will be skipping most of the commercials.
I highly doubt that they're going to give out plans on building your own nuke
Of course thy won't be giving them away, the gift shop is planning boming revenues from these plans along with several other key products:
So everyone with a Neilson device, make sure you turn on every episode of FireFly! We need to make Sci-Fi think that FireFly is the hottest show since the original Star Trek got cancelled! ;-)
If there's even a single person with a Neilsen device who is a regulary visitor on /. I'd be surprised
What we need is for TiVo users to give this show three thumbs up and set their season passes to record the show. And of course not opt out of the anonymous data aggregation that TiVo does.
Networks are fast discovering that this data is just as if not more valuable than the Neilsen data because it has a MUCH larger sampling pool combined with the fact that TiVo users are more likely to have disposable income (more valuable for advertisers)
Just stored thermal energy (cold water) and a thrown together heat exchanger.
Me thinks some efficiency improvements can be had would raising the cost substantially.
$25.50 /shill
What a bunch of whiners, most of which don't even own a TiVo nor have used it for any significant length of time.
I'm a mostly happy TiVo Subscriber, while it's a far from perfect product from a far from perfect company it is IMO the best product out there overall. Of all the commercially available DVRs out there the only one that comes close is ReplayTV. Sure a MythTV or other DIY PVR offers better control (that I would like) but is not viable for 95% of American consumers (probably a conservative estimate).
TiVo has , and will continue to make compromises in the services they provide that while detrimental to the users have kept TiVo operational (if not profitable). ReplayTV tried to give the consumer everything and it put them into bankruptcy TWICE.
Admittedly I've yet to see these new ads on my TiVo but as long as they don't interfere with my ability to fast forward (which it doesn't sound like they do) than my core functionality is not impacted and I'm still a happy customer. I think the number of people who find the idea of commercials patently offensive (as is the general theme from non TiVo owning people rushing to decry this) is small compared to the number who won't care what's on the screen while they FF as long as they can get back to the O.C. in 10 seconds.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000229/
E.T, Jurassic Park Series, Back to the Future Series, Batteries Not Included, Men In Black just to name a few.
All of those are classics or wee massively popular, some are both (not going to categorize here)
Not the greatest contributor ot SciFi of all time but definitely certianly a candidate for the hall of fame.
While I'd never be happy with DRM I'd probably accept it if it didn't include restrictions on (legal) copying or use.
The stated purpose for DRM schemes is so you can't buy a song from iTMS and upload it on KaZaA or whatever. Of course it's my suspicion that an equal or larger purpose is to sell the same song more than once after your HD crashes or whatever and you can't use your DRMed backup of your music anymore.
What if the DRM only identified who the original "purchaser" so if the software was found in an illegal distribution channel they could track it back to the purchaser and potentially hold them accountable.
Now the big problem with that scenario is what if your PC is stolen or hax0red and someone takes your stuff and uploads it, possibly even to get you in trouble. Still IMO it's a better system than the current DRM schemes that are out there and might be enough to get people like me to adopt it.
Of course I may be an anomaly. I have a stack of CDs, still shrink wrapped that I purchased just to legitimize the MP3's I had downloaded off of P2P.
This problem could be reduced dramatically if WAPs shipped from the factory with complex random passwords WEP enabled and complex random WEP keys.
As an example on a new HPaq server the iLO remore management interface has complex random password, printed on a label on the device.
Imagine if Linksys, etc. did the same thing with WAPs, where no 2 WAPs with the same WEP key or password.
Sure some users would just disable the protection but I'm betting if you made it halfway convienient that most won't. Make it more work to be insecure and the security will win most of the time. You might even be able to reduce this further by having the admin interface give you lots of warnings and make you jump through hopps to disable the security funcions.
Of course secrity could be improved upon even further if the default security was better than WEP but I think that's too high a barrier for the average user to tolerate. WEP may suck but it's considerably better than wide open.
As long as I was buying it as opposed to renting it as the current online music stores offer you.
The DRM, for me at least is the deal breaker. With a limited amount of downloads of a "purchased" song and no option for just copying it from one computer to another after a period of time I would no longer have access to the song, and that's why I don't use any of those services.
I think this is no small part of Dell's decision to stick with Intel.
In the past when AMD's chips were merely "knock-off's" of Intels they had a lot of relibility problems, mostly related their their heat generation.
IMO this was caused by them designing chips that had to function like Intel chips but be different enough architecturally to keep them from getting sued (more than they already were). These contradictary requirements resulted in bass-ackwards chip designs that were inefficient. This then caused AMD to push the envelope of what the chips could handle clock speed wise. With the final result being chips with a much higher failure rate (several hundred times higher in my professional career).
I remember back in 98 or 99 (yes I know ancient history) one coustomer of mine had several thousand HP Vectra PCs, all with Intel chips. They decided to buy a batch of AMD equipped Vectras as each PC was about $30 cheaper with an AMD over an Intel CPU. Out of the 80 or so AMD equipped HP Vectras 11 of them were DOA and another 4 had their processors go out in less than a month. I know that experience left an extremely strong impression in the customers mind and mine as well.
Now things are definitely different, AMD is doing it's own thing (rather than just copying Intel's chips), doing it extremely well and using their technology and performance as selling points (not just a Still I can see how someone who has been burned (pun intended) by AMD in the past, even the very distant past would be reluctant to try it again. With Intel you know that you are paying too much but you also know nothing is going to go wrong.
From Dell's position, it's hard to screw up sticking with Intel as long as the number$ add up.
Right A read an artcile (linked from /. IIRC) that analyzed that if you take out the complaints filed from this SINGLE ORGANIZATION that the number of complaints is barely higher than before the "nipplegate" incident.
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/ 06/231234&tid=153&tid=219Found it
StreetTalk > AD or NDS (and arrived many years earlier)
Another example of how having a superior product won't make you successful in the long run if you don't know how to market it.
BITD there was talk of Microsoft buying Banyan for StreetTalk instead of developing AD, but was told by their lawyers that it wouldn't pass antitrust muster (at the time Banyan still had like 15% of the market)
Exactly, the "technologies" that Macrovision creates do almost nothing to thwart wholesale commercial piracy, the big operations can afford the equipment & tools necessary to render any copy protection technique pointless.
What this stuff does, indeed what it's designed to do is stop people from exercising their Fair Use rights, and to a lesser extent prevent casual copying/sharing between friends.
The MPAA and their ilk can't make Fair use go Away as much as they would like to. What they can do is make it harder to exercise your fair use rights and make them practically hollow for most consumers.
TFA doesn't really get into it but I suspect the cost is either:
In either case it seems much of this technology would be, or could and should be resusable for future sattelite repair missions (or shuttle missions not going to ISS) so some, perhaps a lot of the extra cost can be "capitalized" (to probably misuse an accounting term) and not just considdered as part of the cost of the HST.
Example: if they need and extra billion to develop an escape pod/reentry vehicle for the shuttle you can keep that thing around in case you need it.
Same thing for developing robots with dexterity. Maybe they could have a soyuz type of reentry craft of their own so they could be re-used later, I'd imagine if they have the ability to replace a gyroscope inside the HST they can probably dock with or climb inside a simple space capsule, which should be cheap since it doesn't need life support.
Certianly I understand your passion for HD (though I don't share it myself).
FTR you don't need a phone line with a TiVo, mine gets its updates over broadband and has never once been hooked up to a phone line, not even for it's initial setup.
The cable companies have an edge with new DVR customers, since someone who has never used a DVR before won't know the difference between a generic "DVR" and one with advanced features like a TiVo (or even ReplayTV) DVR.
I Don't see many TiVo users dumping their TiVo's for the cable company offerings. Maybe a few who are obsessed over HD (even less households have HD capabale TVs than have TiVos) might but they would probably be more likely to get the cable company DVR and keep their TiVo.
As a TiVo subscriber myself I can't imagine life without it. I'd give up subscriber TV (go with over the air only) before I'd give my TiVo up. I'd also gladly pay for a TiVo rather than have a free DVR (in fact I did when I passed up the mostly free ($50 with no montly fees) DishPVR that Dish Network offered me when I signed up for Dish and bought a TiVo instead.
Especially since it uses Memory $tick for capacity expansion.
While TFA sasy that MS is "slightly" more expensive than other kinds of flash memory as someone who's owned a Sony digital camera I can say that only counts if you consider 20%-40% more expensive to be "slightly"
Still an interesting idea, and could be a lot more viable if the cost of flash memory drops significantly. One would think that not having a HD might improve battery life. (shrugs)
Exactly what I was thinking. When I read the headline I was imaginging that cellular data use was way more popular than I imagined and that WiFi hotspots are eating into that side of the business.
Just because the wireless carriers projected ridiculous revenue from their own WiFi hotspots that they won't make doesn't mean the carriers are "losing" anything since they never had the money in the first place.
I have a suggestion for the wireless carriers to "regain" some of the money they never had to begin with. Charge competitive rates for your WiFi services and you will get more of that business.
As the article points out the Mac Mini isn't a new idea but I see it as a better fit for the Mac community than the PC community.
My moms small business has several Dell SX270 small form factor desktops (similar to this) and they work well.
Decent little boxes, basically uses laptop technology with an external power supply, even uses notebook CD/DVD/Floppy drive modules, letting us do thing like buying only one floppy drive module for the whole office.
Upgrading the RAM is easy as is relplacing the hard drive though you couldn't add a second, let along a third hard drive. And of course there are no PCI or other expansion slots, which is fine since all the components are built in and if you ever did need to add something it's probably available as USB.
It wouldn't be a good choice for me or most geeks but for a lot of people who don't tinker with their PC beyond upgrading the RAM and maybe HD it fits the bill well.
As it is unless you are willing to tweak the code and recompile you don't have a lot of options for customizing Firefox (at least not that I have found, I'd LOVE to be shown that it's doable). I think that corporations, that are struggling with spyware on a regular basis would be willing to switch to Firefox more readliy if they could easily tailor it to their needs, choosing default home page, links, install internal CA root certificates etc. For it's faults IE makes it pretty easy to do this, with the IEAK you can customize just about everything.
It's a Uranium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator of course.
Heck it's even on the right planet