Not actually the case: Ving Rhames' character has sight-read the password from the analyst logging in previously (in full view of Hunt's glasses camera), and reads it back over the radio. It's actually one of the more plausible things in the film.
Not on the Natural 4000 it doesn't: sure it's a split layout, and that's a love/hate thing, but the Insert block and cursor keys are in the right place, the Shift keys are in the right place, the only annoying feature's the F-lock which in any case defaults to whatever it was set to when you last booted up (which of course for me is always on) and Print Screen works fine. It's the best keyboard I've had since the original 1995 Microsoft Natural.
It would also mean that MSN would be full of spam, scammers, trojan links and so on and Microsoft would be powerless to stop them; it would kill the service overnight. Right now it's fairly sane.
Let's actually understand what Microsoft are doing here: this is not fixing a vulnerability in MSN, as any chat client will send you a URL or can be programatically controlled (often a useful feature in real life); all these messages which the client trying to block are simple URLs, not ways to exploit the Messenger client but the user.
No, this is a badly flawed user protection measure. MSN worms don't spread across MSN as such; what they do is send trojan URLs via the MSN client to the infected user's contact list. The URL of course does not open in Messenger - when you click on it (and don't forget, pidgin has clickable URLs too) Messenger sends it to your HTTP protocol handler, which could be Firefox or Safari or Opera or IE depending on user preference, so any exploit on the server end would be for the browser. However, these are generally simple: it downloads iamatrojan.exe and then you choose to run it, and then it messages all your MSN friends with itself and installs a whole bunch of badware.
Hence the blocks on *.info (full of scammers, very little legitimate content) and download.php (generally a filename used by scammers, as they find it easy to get into servers running PHP) - it's impossible to get a lot of virus sites taken down legally as they're all either hosted in the ex-Soviet Union on certain Seemingly Dodgy ISPs or on r00ted home boxes. Worse, there's way too many of them. (The other user protection mechanism Microsoft have recently taken is user-side encryption and access protection of the contact list, but you need the newest Live Messenger for that.) This seems to be what forced Microsoft into putting this block in; it's wrong, but at least you can see the reasoning.
I really can't see how pidgin et al could actually protect against the same sort of attack without a word filter of some sort, although this one really needs to be more finely grained. Maybe a distributed, user-reported "phishing list" style system (as now used by Firefox and Opera) would be a good move.
Some of this is done in MS Office 2007 - new-style Office documents with macros embedded are indicated with a.docm,.xlsm,.pptm type extension (as opposed to.docx,.xlsx,.pptx). What's more, Office refuses to open the document if it's renamed to the non-macro containing extension, giving a "file corrupted" error. Even then, Office is set to refuse to run all macros that aren't "trusted" by default, so it gives an information bar saying that macros are disabled and giving you a chance to enable depending on the document.
Now, if they just stop hiding extensions by default in Windows we're all set, although at least macro-enabled documents have a different file icon (with a red exclamation mark in it).
One can't install an unsigned driver, even if it is the intended action, with Vista.
Only Vista64 - 32-bit editions will allow unsigned drivers to install with a Big Red Warning. Technically speaking you can also switch a Vista64 system into a developer test mode that allows for unsigned drivers to install, but you really don't want to do that.
Microsoft appears to have decided to do this because:
Driver crashes are the #1 reason for Windows instability since the switch to the NT kernel, and most drivers aren't written by msft. (Creative, NVIDIA, ATI; we're looking at you...)
64-bit Windows requires new drivers written for it anyway, so is basically a clean slate - thus few vitally important legacy drivers that will be broken.
You actually don't need to get WHQL to get signed - just pay some money for the sig. NVIDIA's current 64-bit beta drivers aren't WHQL, for example.
To get signed, thus, it at least encourages the card manufacturer to put some effort into writing a driver that doesn't suck - at least because they had to spend some money to get it out.
Hence less crashes and a bit more stable OS.
Sadly Vista 64 is still full-o-bugs, and I can't use it because it won't support my printer, but this at least wasn't a truly dreadful idea to begin with. Definitely not a great one though.
British local taxes are quite simple - 17.5% VAT. Currently, £425 in USD is $820.71. If we remove the 17.5% taxes, £425/1.175=£361.70 ($698.48). So we're still being screwed by $98.48 (£51) on the PS3 price even when we don't count taxes into account, and since the PS3 is being brought into the country by pretty much the same container ships from Taiwan that take the consoles everywhere import costs aren't an option. Sony attempted to use VAT as an excuse for why the console was costlier than the US or especially Japan, but if that was truly the case the console would be £365 not £425. And their imports lock-out especially for EU customers is abominable - you can't even buy games or accessories online from many retailers anymore, which makes the "region free" thing a total mockery.
In comparison, the 360 non-Core is £269 ($519.46), with free Pro Evolution Soccer (Winning Eleven to you). Taking VAT off that, it's £228.94 ($442.10). So Microsoft's added charge only amounts to $42.10 (£21.80), more than half that of Sony's and less than the cost of the included game, and it's a lot easier to get imported 360 games than it is PS3 ones (a lot more are region free than you think, including ones like Gears of War). That Microsoft looks better than Sony here is pretty amazing when considering their Vista pricing differential, but they do.
It's not necessary to restart the PC to turn off speech recognition - just say "stop listening" or click on the always visible recognition toolbar to turn the microphone off. It's also not on by default either, and only those interested in it will find it anyway. Not really an "exploit" that's actually exploitable.
You can in fact do the same stuff with Vista's bootloader - if you install Vista after XP, it'll migrate all the menu options across; you could just do a bit of creative googling on "bcdedit" (the procedure is the same as this one for chainloading a hacked MacOS X boot sector - look at step 13) or you could use a graphical tool like VistaBootPRO.
I don't particularly like the publicity stunt nature of this installer, but it does at least make Debian easier to install and that's a good thing for them. (Shame about the Microsoft snark on the other pages, though, makes it come off as amateur.) The Ubuntu one seems to be better, at least because of its lack of similar soul-crushing focus on ideology.
It's the laserdisc master: SD video sourced, non-anamorphic with stereo sound only (when Star Wars is 2.35 with six-track 70mm audio). That's not a proper choice, you can actually get better on bootleg. At least with E.T. Spielberg stuck an anamorphic, 5.1, remastered version of the 1983 cut on Disc 2 of the collector's edition; Lucas isn't even trying.
The DVD you already own has certain issues: it's not anamorphic (it was one of the first DVDs), is stereo, and is the 1992 DC only. Since Blade Runneris the best SF movie of all time, and was filmed for six-track Dolby, we need an anamorphic surround version badly. We should have got this set years ago, but the rights holders have blocked it until now.
The point of the new edition is quite simple: to give us BR fans a choice, in the way that Lucas won't give Star Wars fans a proper choice. The new edition should make everyone happy - do you like the voiceover? Then you've got the American theatrical and extra-violence Eurocut on disc 3. Do you prefer the 1992 DC to the new Final Cut (and some will, I'll hold off until I see it)? Then it's on Disc 2. All should be properly restored and anamorphic, and there will almost certainly be no new CGI cut into the original negative a la Coppola/Lucas. It is what Blade Runner has always needed and will, hopefully, finally get.
He didn't 'steal' the Harvard PDP time either - the machine was allowed for unlimited student use. There was apparently no written policy concerning system use at the time. (There was after Harvard found out, asking to be cut in on profits from commercial development - note, not banning commercial development.)
It is also noted (by Hard Drive, not the most complimentary Bill biography) that as soon as Harvard asked Gates/Allen to stop, they did; they used timesharing services to develop Altair BASIC after that. So 'stealing' is a bit of a strong word for this - Bill's early activities are actually very similar to those of Stallman and the other MIT hackers. After all, computer time wants to be free.
It's important to bring context to the hobbyists letter, too, while it is amazingly overvitriolic - he was getting stiffed on a royalty agreement at the time, and the pirate version of Altair BASIC was actually a full-o-bugs prerelease version (remember, it was written on an emulator) which people were asking for Microsoft's support with. It's also interesting to look at the next Homebrew issue, which contains a "Ha-ha, your work's only worth $2 an hour" response to Gates by a guy who really should have known better. Guess childishness was rampant at the time.
I, for one, find it a lot easier than the Windows method. I can never figure out how the bloody hell to get Windows to connect to a network of my choosing. It always wants to go and detect every fucking signal that's flying through the air and try to connect to it, then not let me connect to any SSID that it doesn't detect. It's one of the most irritating and aggravating things on Windows IMO.
On XP SP2, this is done using Windows's wireless-network settings (right-click on the connection, select Properties) unless overridden by something better, like Intel ProSet. Right-click your Wireless Network Options, look under "Preferred Networks", change/add order as you wish. It is a bit flaky, though, so I override Windows' settings and use ProSet instead (Centrino laptop).
Since 2000 and previous do not have native wireless support, this is done using utilities provided by your card manufacturer. If you're lucky, it'll be something like Intel ProSet. If you're unlucky, it'll be something like Ralink's utility.
The SP6100, one of which I owned, usually lasted for about three-to-six months before failing; this was certainly the case for me (four main/power-board failures in eighteen months; three severe, one total). C|net probably only had it for a couple of weeks; and, when it was working, it was an excellent laptop for its time, so I don't see that original rating as a problem.
I don't qualify for this because (a) I live in the UK and (b) due to much nagging after the fourth failure Toshiba swapped it for a Tecra M2, a machine that has now lasted for longer without trouble than its predecessor did in total. To their credit, Toshiba did service the 6100 for free outside the 12-month warranty, which is more than can be said for certain other PC vendors.
This isn't going to happen; as Raymond Chen repeatedly explains in the article, this affects only the official Windows region-checking subsystem and does not affect data reading. It was removed because it was causing playback problems for some users of RPC-2 drives and was causing benefit for very few people. (As a side note, I flashed several drives RPC-1 and it was very often hard - requiring specific DOS configurations and IDE configurations and all that - it wasn't exactly a consumer-level thing to do.)
There hasn't actually been any need to flash drives RPC-1 for some time; Linux DVD players ignore the hardware region code and read the data directly, VLC on any platform ignores the hardware region code and reads the data directly, and on Windows AnyDVD provides a nice, easy-to-use solution for those who want to use any Windows DVD player (albeit for cost). Anyone who has flashed their drive RPC-1 will find it very easy to get an official manufacturer flash that makes it RPC-2 again, or know just to use VLC instead, so the problem is pretty much moot.
This was deliberate; the international version uses Pizza Hut, the US version Taco Bell. Since the same company owns the two "restaurants", and since most non-US countries don't have TB, it was a fairly simple choice for them.
Shame they had to use dubbing and bad picture manipulation, though, but then it was 1993...
Stuff needs to be signed before it'll run on a consumer console. Devkits don't sign; Microsoft signs. It'll almost certainly be the same deal as with the original Xbox; the XDK leaked all over, but it took until the Agent Under Fire hack for anyone to get anywhere.
He's referring to Falwell vs. Hustler, in which Falwell sued Larry Flynt for publishing an ad-parody "featuring" the good reverend - one of the cases protecting the right to parody in the USA.
The Macrovision CDS "copy control" logo should be on the front of the CD as a sticky label and on the back cover printed; it definitely is on all copy-control releases I've ever seen. It's multi-language as well. I certainly will not purchase any CC CD, and advise others against it.
The good news is that they're becoming less common - I've seen some very unwelcome uses of CDS here in the UK (including a jazz CD) but most new CDs I've seen from EMI/subsidiaries, the biggest users of CDS previously, have been protection-free; and new issues of some of the previously protected CDs, like Blur's Think Tank, have been CP-free. Which is certainly a good thing.
As for the Switchfoot protection, this is almost certainly the pain-in-the-ass SunnCOMM MediaMax system as seen on a lot of Sony USA albums. It's basically a legal trojan - it will install its Windows service even if you decline the licensing agreement (illegal in the UK under the Computer Misuse Act, which may be why we haven't seen many MediaMax CDs outside the States; they usually turn up as either CDS or unprotected instead.) It may be a good idea not to load the CD as Administrator, as well as turning off autorun.
Since it's a service, it's removable from the Computer Management services screen and from a hard to find link on he SunnCOMM website, but it has an obscure name - "SbcpHid" according to the CD3 analysis here, although I suspect they've either changed it now or added a partner (can't find any info to suggest otherwise). Can't someone sue them?
There was a big problem with the Karma - its reliability. It didn't have any. Its jogwheel had the ability to suddenly break without any user intervention, and that screws up the entire player; its hard drive was prone to failure; its form factor was nice, its features wonderful, but its reliability meant that it was a really bad buy. I owned one for three wonderful months; its jogwheel caved in, and there were no replacements out there. I ended up having to get a refund and buy a Zen Touch, which sucks reliably.
Rio had the same reliability issues with the Carbon too and it annoyed a lot of people; and they never managed to launch their Karma 2 ("Chroma", was it?). It's a big reason why they've failed.
You can turn off run-Steam-on-startup from the Steam options menu. And it's not an hour, it's more like two minutes, and much of that is HL2's graphics initialisation. Since NVIDIA wouldn't dare release a driver without testing it on HL2 and/or getting it WHQLed, it's obviously either a bad driver install (which isn't all that improbable, you should uninstall previous drivers before running the NVdriver.exe) or a troll. Since this is Slashdot, and people here seem to hate Valve for creating an effective yet user-centric product activation system (as opposed to corporate-centric c/p systems like StarFORCE or SecuROM which are evil, Steam doesn't stop you from backing up the DVD) it's almost certainly a troll.
Slashdot Mirror
Not actually the case: Ving Rhames' character has sight-read the password from the analyst logging in previously (in full view of Hunt's glasses camera), and reads it back over the radio. It's actually one of the more plausible things in the film.
Not on the Natural 4000 it doesn't: sure it's a split layout, and that's a love/hate thing, but the Insert block and cursor keys are in the right place, the Shift keys are in the right place, the only annoying feature's the F-lock which in any case defaults to whatever it was set to when you last booted up (which of course for me is always on) and Print Screen works fine. It's the best keyboard I've had since the original 1995 Microsoft Natural.
It would also mean that MSN would be full of spam, scammers, trojan links and so on and Microsoft would be powerless to stop them; it would kill the service overnight. Right now it's fairly sane.
Let's actually understand what Microsoft are doing here: this is not fixing a vulnerability in MSN, as any chat client will send you a URL or can be programatically controlled (often a useful feature in real life); all these messages which the client trying to block are simple URLs, not ways to exploit the Messenger client but the user.
No, this is a badly flawed user protection measure. MSN worms don't spread across MSN as such; what they do is send trojan URLs via the MSN client to the infected user's contact list. The URL of course does not open in Messenger - when you click on it (and don't forget, pidgin has clickable URLs too) Messenger sends it to your HTTP protocol handler, which could be Firefox or Safari or Opera or IE depending on user preference, so any exploit on the server end would be for the browser. However, these are generally simple: it downloads iamatrojan.exe and then you choose to run it, and then it messages all your MSN friends with itself and installs a whole bunch of badware.
Hence the blocks on *.info (full of scammers, very little legitimate content) and download.php (generally a filename used by scammers, as they find it easy to get into servers running PHP) - it's impossible to get a lot of virus sites taken down legally as they're all either hosted in the ex-Soviet Union on certain Seemingly Dodgy ISPs or on r00ted home boxes. Worse, there's way too many of them. (The other user protection mechanism Microsoft have recently taken is user-side encryption and access protection of the contact list, but you need the newest Live Messenger for that.) This seems to be what forced Microsoft into putting this block in; it's wrong, but at least you can see the reasoning.
I really can't see how pidgin et al could actually protect against the same sort of attack without a word filter of some sort, although this one really needs to be more finely grained. Maybe a distributed, user-reported "phishing list" style system (as now used by Firefox and Opera) would be a good move.
Some of this is done in MS Office 2007 - new-style Office documents with macros embedded are indicated with a .docm, .xlsm, .pptm type extension (as opposed to .docx, .xlsx, .pptx). What's more, Office refuses to open the document if it's renamed to the non-macro containing extension, giving a "file corrupted" error. Even then, Office is set to refuse to run all macros that aren't "trusted" by default, so it gives an information bar saying that macros are disabled and giving you a chance to enable depending on the document.
Now, if they just stop hiding extensions by default in Windows we're all set, although at least macro-enabled documents have a different file icon (with a red exclamation mark in it).
- Driver crashes are the #1 reason for Windows instability since the switch to the NT kernel, and most drivers aren't written by msft. (Creative, NVIDIA, ATI; we're looking at you...)
- 64-bit Windows requires new drivers written for it anyway, so is basically a clean slate - thus few vitally important legacy drivers that will be broken.
- You actually don't need to get WHQL to get signed - just pay some money for the sig. NVIDIA's current 64-bit beta drivers aren't WHQL, for example.
- To get signed, thus, it at least encourages the card manufacturer to put some effort into writing a driver that doesn't suck - at least because they had to spend some money to get it out.
- Hence less crashes and a bit more stable OS.
Sadly Vista 64 is still full-o-bugs, and I can't use it because it won't support my printer, but this at least wasn't a truly dreadful idea to begin with. Definitely not a great one though.British local taxes are quite simple - 17.5% VAT. Currently, £425 in USD is $820.71. If we remove the 17.5% taxes, £425/1.175=£361.70 ($698.48). So we're still being screwed by $98.48 (£51) on the PS3 price even when we don't count taxes into account, and since the PS3 is being brought into the country by pretty much the same container ships from Taiwan that take the consoles everywhere import costs aren't an option. Sony attempted to use VAT as an excuse for why the console was costlier than the US or especially Japan, but if that was truly the case the console would be £365 not £425. And their imports lock-out especially for EU customers is abominable - you can't even buy games or accessories online from many retailers anymore, which makes the "region free" thing a total mockery.
In comparison, the 360 non-Core is £269 ($519.46), with free Pro Evolution Soccer (Winning Eleven to you). Taking VAT off that, it's £228.94 ($442.10). So Microsoft's added charge only amounts to $42.10 (£21.80), more than half that of Sony's and less than the cost of the included game, and it's a lot easier to get imported 360 games than it is PS3 ones (a lot more are region free than you think, including ones like Gears of War). That Microsoft looks better than Sony here is pretty amazing when considering their Vista pricing differential, but they do.
It's not necessary to restart the PC to turn off speech recognition - just say "stop listening" or click on the always visible recognition toolbar to turn the microphone off. It's also not on by default either, and only those interested in it will find it anyway. Not really an "exploit" that's actually exploitable.
You can in fact do the same stuff with Vista's bootloader - if you install Vista after XP, it'll migrate all the menu options across; you could just do a bit of creative googling on "bcdedit" (the procedure is the same as this one for chainloading a hacked MacOS X boot sector - look at step 13) or you could use a graphical tool like VistaBootPRO.
I don't particularly like the publicity stunt nature of this installer, but it does at least make Debian easier to install and that's a good thing for them. (Shame about the Microsoft snark on the other pages, though, makes it come off as amateur.) The Ubuntu one seems to be better, at least because of its lack of similar soul-crushing focus on ideology.
You can also use imgburn, which works very well for lots of disc image formats.
I assume it would be along the lines of your PC (or router) running a dynamic DNS client, pushing your current IP to OpenDNS.
It's the laserdisc master: SD video sourced, non-anamorphic with stereo sound only (when Star Wars is 2.35 with six-track 70mm audio). That's not a proper choice, you can actually get better on bootleg. At least with E.T. Spielberg stuck an anamorphic, 5.1, remastered version of the 1983 cut on Disc 2 of the collector's edition; Lucas isn't even trying.
That is the original theatrical version, which will be on this set.
The DVD you already own has certain issues: it's not anamorphic (it was one of the first DVDs), is stereo, and is the 1992 DC only. Since Blade Runner is the best SF movie of all time, and was filmed for six-track Dolby, we need an anamorphic surround version badly. We should have got this set years ago, but the rights holders have blocked it until now.
The point of the new edition is quite simple: to give us BR fans a choice, in the way that Lucas won't give Star Wars fans a proper choice. The new edition should make everyone happy - do you like the voiceover? Then you've got the American theatrical and extra-violence Eurocut on disc 3. Do you prefer the 1992 DC to the new Final Cut (and some will, I'll hold off until I see it)? Then it's on Disc 2. All should be properly restored and anamorphic, and there will almost certainly be no new CGI cut into the original negative a la Coppola/Lucas. It is what Blade Runner has always needed and will, hopefully, finally get.
He didn't 'steal' the Harvard PDP time either - the machine was allowed for unlimited student use. There was apparently no written policy concerning system use at the time. (There was after Harvard found out, asking to be cut in on profits from commercial development - note, not banning commercial development.)
It is also noted (by Hard Drive, not the most complimentary Bill biography) that as soon as Harvard asked Gates/Allen to stop, they did; they used timesharing services to develop Altair BASIC after that. So 'stealing' is a bit of a strong word for this - Bill's early activities are actually very similar to those of Stallman and the other MIT hackers. After all, computer time wants to be free.
It's important to bring context to the hobbyists letter, too, while it is amazingly overvitriolic - he was getting stiffed on a royalty agreement at the time, and the pirate version of Altair BASIC was actually a full-o-bugs prerelease version (remember, it was written on an emulator) which people were asking for Microsoft's support with. It's also interesting to look at the next Homebrew issue, which contains a "Ha-ha, your work's only worth $2 an hour" response to Gates by a guy who really should have known better. Guess childishness was rampant at the time.
Since 2000 and previous do not have native wireless support, this is done using utilities provided by your card manufacturer. If you're lucky, it'll be something like Intel ProSet. If you're unlucky, it'll be something like Ralink's utility.
The SP6100, one of which I owned, usually lasted for about three-to-six months before failing; this was certainly the case for me (four main/power-board failures in eighteen months; three severe, one total). C|net probably only had it for a couple of weeks; and, when it was working, it was an excellent laptop for its time, so I don't see that original rating as a problem.
I don't qualify for this because (a) I live in the UK and (b) due to much nagging after the fourth failure Toshiba swapped it for a Tecra M2, a machine that has now lasted for longer without trouble than its predecessor did in total. To their credit, Toshiba did service the 6100 for free outside the 12-month warranty, which is more than can be said for certain other PC vendors.
This isn't going to happen; as Raymond Chen repeatedly explains in the article, this affects only the official Windows region-checking subsystem and does not affect data reading. It was removed because it was causing playback problems for some users of RPC-2 drives and was causing benefit for very few people. (As a side note, I flashed several drives RPC-1 and it was very often hard - requiring specific DOS configurations and IDE configurations and all that - it wasn't exactly a consumer-level thing to do.)
There hasn't actually been any need to flash drives RPC-1 for some time; Linux DVD players ignore the hardware region code and read the data directly, VLC on any platform ignores the hardware region code and reads the data directly, and on Windows AnyDVD provides a nice, easy-to-use solution for those who want to use any Windows DVD player (albeit for cost). Anyone who has flashed their drive RPC-1 will find it very easy to get an official manufacturer flash that makes it RPC-2 again, or know just to use VLC instead, so the problem is pretty much moot.
This was deliberate; the international version uses Pizza Hut, the US version Taco Bell. Since the same company owns the two "restaurants", and since most non-US countries don't have TB, it was a fairly simple choice for them.
Shame they had to use dubbing and bad picture manipulation, though, but then it was 1993...
I've been spending too much time on AV forums... HD in message = high definition. MP3s and stuff played off hard drives are fine.
Stuff needs to be signed before it'll run on a consumer console. Devkits don't sign; Microsoft signs. It'll almost certainly be the same deal as with the original Xbox; the XDK leaked all over, but it took until the Agent Under Fire hack for anyone to get anywhere.
You can use the Windows Media Connect software - available free from Windows Update - for everything other than HD content, for which you need MCE.
He's referring to Falwell vs. Hustler, in which Falwell sued Larry Flynt for publishing an ad-parody "featuring" the good reverend - one of the cases protecting the right to parody in the USA.
The Macrovision CDS "copy control" logo should be on the front of the CD as a sticky label and on the back cover printed; it definitely is on all copy-control releases I've ever seen. It's multi-language as well. I certainly will not purchase any CC CD, and advise others against it.
The good news is that they're becoming less common - I've seen some very unwelcome uses of CDS here in the UK (including a jazz CD) but most new CDs I've seen from EMI/subsidiaries, the biggest users of CDS previously, have been protection-free; and new issues of some of the previously protected CDs, like Blur's Think Tank, have been CP-free. Which is certainly a good thing.
As for the Switchfoot protection, this is almost certainly the pain-in-the-ass SunnCOMM MediaMax system as seen on a lot of Sony USA albums. It's basically a legal trojan - it will install its Windows service even if you decline the licensing agreement (illegal in the UK under the Computer Misuse Act, which may be why we haven't seen many MediaMax CDs outside the States; they usually turn up as either CDS or unprotected instead.) It may be a good idea not to load the CD as Administrator, as well as turning off autorun.
Since it's a service, it's removable from the Computer Management services screen and from a hard to find link on he SunnCOMM website, but it has an obscure name - "SbcpHid" according to the CD3 analysis here, although I suspect they've either changed it now or added a partner (can't find any info to suggest otherwise). Can't someone sue them?
There was a big problem with the Karma - its reliability. It didn't have any. Its jogwheel had the ability to suddenly break without any user intervention, and that screws up the entire player; its hard drive was prone to failure; its form factor was nice, its features wonderful, but its reliability meant that it was a really bad buy. I owned one for three wonderful months; its jogwheel caved in, and there were no replacements out there. I ended up having to get a refund and buy a Zen Touch, which sucks reliably.
Rio had the same reliability issues with the Carbon too and it annoyed a lot of people; and they never managed to launch their Karma 2 ("Chroma", was it?). It's a big reason why they've failed.
You can turn off run-Steam-on-startup from the Steam options menu. And it's not an hour, it's more like two minutes, and much of that is HL2's graphics initialisation. Since NVIDIA wouldn't dare release a driver without testing it on HL2 and/or getting it WHQLed, it's obviously either a bad driver install (which isn't all that improbable, you should uninstall previous drivers before running the NVdriver.exe) or a troll. Since this is Slashdot, and people here seem to hate Valve for creating an effective yet user-centric product activation system (as opposed to corporate-centric c/p systems like StarFORCE or SecuROM which are evil, Steam doesn't stop you from backing up the DVD) it's almost certainly a troll.