The Show taskbar notifications setting in Windows 7 Media Center (found under Settings>General>Startup and Window Behavior) toggles the appearance of a little red dot in the taskbar when a program is recording.
If DRM is unavoidable for now then Microsoft could at least take a page out of the iTunes Store playbook and allow users to authorize a certain number of computers and unlimited devices to play recorded media.
Episode 88 of Floss Weekly is an interview with Linus Torvalds and is well worth a listen. Linus is spectacularly interesting both with regard to his thoughts on programming and his opinions of the open source movement in general.
Tucked away in the Clock app that ships with the iPhone is a Timer feature. When the timer finishes, the default action is to play a ringtone, but by tapping the "When Timer Ends" button, you can change this behavior to "Sleep iPod."