Where were these kids when Tom West was forming the team for what became the Data General MV/8000?! Not many people building 32-bit CPUs out of discrete logic these days (and even in those days!).
(For those of you who don't get the reference, I highly recommend "The Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder.)
Geoff was an amazing and unique individual. His depth of knowledge of Windows was unparalleled — he and I spent many a night arguing about the merits of Dave Cutler’s design philosophy, security decisions in modern Windows, and so-forth. Usually we would be doing so over far too much Italian wine, the quality of the arguments would tracking appropriately with the amount of wine consumed. Probably how loud we were, too… weirdest argument to hear in a New York bar in SoHo on a weeknight, I’m sure.
Geoff’s love and knowledge of the Beatles, David Bowie, the Who and other 1960’s and 1970’s British pop was staggering… I love these bands, and he took that passion to another level. I’ll never forget listening to the various mixes of Bowie’s Space Oddity and noticing the subtle nuances Geoff would point out. His huge collection of singles made it easy to discover something new, especially with him curating a journey through his favourites, or even versions that he would express great disdain for! This was only matched by his love of classical music. You’ll see signs of these passions in his musings in his website.
Raise a good glass of wine with friends, have a hell of a party, listen to some great music… a great way to celebrate his life.
To be fair, while the channel rights enforcement is done "client side," the real work is likely done by an M-Card in your set-top box. This is a secure environment that contains hardware to support decrypting MPEG streams on the fly. The M-Card is able to decrypt key bundles that are sent out-of-band and in-band in the video streams.
The bar to get channels you're not subscribed to is quite a bit higher because of this mechanism, alas.
(For those of you who don't get the reference, I highly recommend "The Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder.)