Well, I'm not too sure...

You can destroy several parts of the computer from afar, if you know what you're doing...

A couple of years ago (1999) there was such a nice virus running around taking out your motherboard and harddrive(s)... It wasn't too hard to fix, as long as you didin't reboot your computer... But then, the virus did that by itself...

Now imagine that payload being delivered by a cracker..

2 parts of the computer made non usable...

But lets think about what more than be done...

You could flash the mobo BIOS with a special version which would increase the voltage to your cpu & memory to the max amount the motherboard could supply..

2 parts more out of the game..

We all heard about what happened with the GeForce FX when it was running an OpenGL screensaver a while back... Now imagine something like that done on purpose...

Without those 5 components, I'd call the computer destroyed...

Granted it won't be easy to do, but it is possible, if you know how, and have access to the right tools...

.02$

This is the problem with fighting certain types of piracy now - its just becomming farcical. One wonders how some people from the RIAA and so forth can actually say these things and keep a straight face

Hey Phantasm66, your wish came true...kind of. Apparantly he had a link on his page to some travel advocacy site that got hacked and was redirected to a porn site. ha ha, I'll bet he keeps his head down now....INCOMING!