ISPS AT PLAY As it costs ISPs so much to get new customers, the best way to make money surely is the oldest - keep the ones you have got long term. Not by extended handcuff contracts but by providing good service at a reasonable, not necessarily lowest price. I almost left my ISP, Eclipse, when its service plummeted coincidentally after being taken over by Kingston Communications. But recently Eclipse has gone back to giving me the service I need and I have added their telephony as well and so my three years with them will continue hopefully into the future. Contrast with BT who even charge me for paying my bill and are overpriced on most products especially international calls coupled with a customer service organisation apparently paid by the email rather than any form of customer satisfaction and so I take the minimum I have to from BT, the exchange line, and will look elsewhere as soon as BT's monopoly in this village is broken. A happy customer is a profitable long-term customer. John Loader, Ely
TECHNOBILE (BANK SYSTEMS) With UK banks losing £33.5m each year to online fraud, you can understand why they are taking preventative measures. Issuing customers with cumbersome hardware however is not necessarily the answer. Far better is technology that uses behavioural analysis to weed out the fraudsters, leaving the rest of us to continue to bank unhindered. These systems are proven and widely used in many banks abroad. Maybe we should follow suit? Andrew Moloney, director, RSA, Berkshire
Having taken part in testing card readers for a large UK bank, I can say that everything Anne Wollenberg says about them is wrong. She could at least have read the literature accompanying her card before commenting and showing her ignorance. The graphic accompanying her article is misleading too, as it shows a cable attached to the card reader: the reader does not connect to the PC. Your online banking service displays a code on screen to tap into the reader (which needs to be activated by inserting your card and entering your PIN), which then displays a response code to key back into the PC. Simple; and only needed to set up new payees. Jerry Tracey, West Calder [The illustration was for illustration only; it wasn't intended to be realistic - Tech. Ed]
ITUNES AND DRM As an addendum to your piece (I work in music and advise artists/labels on how to make the most out of their content online) can I add a few points that maybe relevant: (a) Apple's iTunes DRM doesn't really protect music - it could be argued that it just protects the iPod. In other words, it stops music bought on iTunes playing back on any MP3 player device that isn't an iPod. Steve Jobs has written essays on the perils of DRM, yet he still refuses to drop the Apple iTunes DRM - despite it being declared illegal in Europe (Norwegian courts, with the backing of Sweden, Germany and France) and despite major record labels insisting on DRM Free music with their licensing agreements with Amazon and many other music shops. Apple also refuses to license the Apple DRM to MP3 Player manufacturers, so iTunes purchases will work on *any* MP3 device. In essence: The major labels don't really want it. Consumers hate it. DRM doesn't work - there's always a relatively simple workaround (as you pointed out in your article) and only Apple appears keen to keep it. A cynic might speculate that Apple's refusal to drop or especially license their iTunes DRM suggests that it's more to protect the iPod rather than the music and it is really just part of the Apple's philosophy, which appears to be geared towards locking consumers into the 'Apple ecosphere'. (b) The RIAA/BPI hasn't helped matters by creating the perception that 128kbps MP3 is *exactly* the same as what consumers get on CD. Thanks to the actions of the RIAA/BPI, who carpet-bombed kids with legal letters because their IP address showed up on an uploader/downloader hunt, the general perception is that what you buy on iTunes for $9.99 or download in MP3 format is *exactly* the same as what you buy in a shop on a CD. They even equated what kids were doing with 'shoplifting'! The reality is that a downloaded album is not necessarily a sale lost and a 128kbps mp3 files is *not* the same as what you would get on CD. The reality is, when you look at the known P2P statistics, consumers would have to spend 20 or 30 times the normal amount of money they spend on music each month and for many in the industry, the BPI/RIAA trotting out press releases spouting piracy statistics is simply a scapegoat to gloss over their shortcomings. Some pirated music does obviously hamper sales, but, no where near the level the BPI/RIAA claim and I would argue that competition on the wallet is having a bigger effect. The competition on consumer wallets is very different now than it was in 1997. Kids for example, when they get their weekly allowance now, will top up their mobile phone credit (or maybe pay their dealer) first, buy a new game for their Wii/PlayStation, buy some clothes and maybe think about buying music, later. On top of that, music is what kids listen to now, when they are doing something else. Whether it's updating their Bebo page, blogging, networking, txting, playing with their PlayStation or whatever. It's the audio equivalent of wallpaper and its value has dipped significantly - not because of piracy, but, because there is more competition in the entertainment sector. (c) On the subject of quality. It's worth noting that allofmp3.com was just behind iTunes this time last year as the leading UK music download sales shop. The allofmp3.com model was based on quality: they charged on file size, not by track. In other words, the higher the quality, the larger the file size and therefore more expensive the download. The downloads were DRM FREE and despite the handbags over royalties, it was an incredibly clever idea. It was also a jaw-dropping idea for the music industry who realised that consumers were actually willing to give their credit card details and personal details to a known-to-be-operating-on-the-edge-of-the-law Russian website to download a low quality version of an album...instead of downloading the full quality version for free on an illegal P2P site. So my two cents on the subject is that consumers *do* understand the quality thing. They *will* buy low (128kbps) quality versions of an album, at a discount, just to give it a listen, and they will also buy music by their favourite artists in high quality. As an aside, a colleague and pal who passed away a few weeks ago in Manchester, Anthony Wilson, was spot on a few years ago with his prediction way back in the early Noughties that 33 pence would be a fair and acceptable price for a downloaded song. He started music33.com back then, but, because of a lack of support from the major labels, it faded away. The point is, it's quite possible for a record label to sell songs, now, at these price/quality points, without befuddling the consumer: Low (itunes) quality: 33p Medium (320kbps) quality: 79p High (WAV/AIFF) quality, the same as you get on a CD: 99p Fergus Geraghty, Manchester
CRACKING FILTERS >> Tom Wood, unlike some of his peers, did not post the instructions on the internet for others to follow but has used his knowledge and skill to ask some rather pertinent questions of the Government: Why did they spend $84 million on a solution which was ineffectual and - more importantly - where is the current Australian research data that recommends this solution? http://www.abc.net.au/
>> Surely the secret to the best parental control is called parenting. thehermesproject.blogspot.com/
MEDIA MOVEMENT Dave Stewart is both wrong and unfair in his stolen TV analogy (Letters and Blogs 30/8/2007). His argument exposes serious misunderstandings which afflict the discussion of piracy issues and I think it is worth dissecting the matter in some detail to understand them. Before considering downloads, let us consider the purchase of music on LP, tape or CD and ask what is being paid for. Clearly there is a physical product being purchased; however the price charged is far greater than the manufacturing and retailing cost of the physical product. The extra cost is for the licence from the copyright owner to use the music stored on the physical product, subject to restrictions on copying and public performance. This licence is what separates genuine music products from pirate ones. Downloads are the same except that they lack a physical product (and that the licensing element is made explicit). Instead supplying physical media the data is supplied and the user has to store it on media he provides himself. Data differs from physical products in that it can be infinitely duplicated without additional cost. A strong moral argument can be made that James Mackenzie is still the owner of the original licences to his records even though though his original media has been stolen or damaged. After all, if your TV is stolen or damaged you still have your TV licence. It doesn't follow the burglar home or vaporise in the smoke of a blown up TV. Would this justify him in going to a shop and stealing another physical copy of his records? Of course not. That really would be like stealing a new TV. The physical record has a manufacturing cost and it would be unjust to the manufacturer and retailer to take it without paying. On the other hand, obtaining a copy of the non-physical music data, which he already has a licence to, is unjust to nobody. The data is duplicated at no cost. Any media he stores the data on is provided at his own expense. Nobody has been deprived of anything and he has only recovered what was his in the first place. Of course, I am not suggesting that this sort of argument would stand up in court. Quite apart from anything else, it would be hard to prove which LPs and tapes one used to own and the terms their content was licensed under. It is probably safer to seek to replace old records through second hand record shops. None the less, it is offensive and wrong to suggest that downloading, under these circumstances, is morally equivalent to theft. It is worrying that many of us lack the concepts required to think clearly about licensing and piracy issues. The entertainment industry is exploiting our confusion to make the rules up as they go along, mostly to our disadvantage. Their plan is that we will continue to pay high prices that reflect perpetual licences but that the media and data formats will become restrictive and obsolete so regularly that we feel compelled to periodically repurchase licences that we already own at full price. That is a nice gravy train for the entertainment industry but hardly a fair way to treat paying customers. Meanwhile the real pirates will carry on mass producing pirate products regardless. Daniel Rigal, Guildford.
MONSTER BACKUPS Backing up is so easy but, no matter how much preaching, no one does it until it's too late. Ask any of my then unimpressed ex-students. After a crash and rebuild I had a spare 120 Gig IDE hard drive. . I bought a £17+ USB ICY box and inserted the HDD for external use; saving a lot of money over a dedicated external drive. I'll get a much bigger HDD and cooled Sata ICY box when needed I now backup end user files to this HDD and later, to CD or DVD twice (one copy near at hand, the other in a safe place), to release space for more back ups. But, do check that you're not overwriting a good file with garbage. Powering down the external drive isolates it from criminal encryption. I don't back up OS or Apps. They can be re-installed. Further, I have the C:\ drive OExpress email folders on another partition which I can also easily copy for back up. If on-line the OE folders could be "alive" to create problems when backing up directly to CD/DVD. Graham Davies, Bolton
Clearly someone's playing a very dangerous game, but there is hardly anything new about this: 1. Straight forward blackmail (as there is no option but to pay up, hoping their decryption still works on your trashed system) 2. The means (i.e. High-tech methods including advanced cryptography) 3. The target (i.e. innocent unsuspecting people with a few hundred dollars at their disposal) What is surprising is the apparent lack of meaningful targeting coupled with the desire NOT to gather conspicuous wealth. For example, such infiltration methods may well hold to ransom an entire corporation (criminal or legitimate) or indeed, a government department if the right data were stumbled upon (and the security methods were deployed sufficiently poorly). How much would the ransom be in these instances? This aspect of the scam (having a tiger by the tail) is especially flaky and may be even more dangerous than being caught receiving the money. Thankfully, the antidote to this scam is the same as any other threat to data; have a good backup strategy and a recovery methodology, noting that you can't ever do anything about the publishing of private data or related threats therein. If this occurs, then like any blackmail/extortion case, the weakness is always the location of the drop! The banks combined transaction audit will just facilitate following the money, unless we're talking cash (which has its own problems!) Finally however, will their trojan work in a UNIX environment? I suspect not, as the simplistic communications style and basic English usage in their ransom note is too poor and wouldn't indicate a sufficiently developed intellect to have have mastered any operating system, let alone a complex one. Dave Strudwick, Felixstowe
RENTIER ECONOMY (VIC KEEGAN) >> How can you call one the most exciting technological innovations of recent times as mere indexing. Google's founders spent years to develop its algorithm. Search engines in pre-Google era were pathetic. I have read about an incident when someone performed a search on a widely-used search engine of that era, Altavista, by the keywords Altavista itself, and it wasn't able to come up with its own url. It was unable to search for itself. Such was the pathetic condition of search engines at that time. Google's revenue model is also unique. So if they are coming up with the ideas then they deserve the dividend. rpriyedarshi.blogspot.com/
>> by and large the web's development as a resource for the average user can be largely ascribed to altruistic behaviour by participants - Victor Keegan at The Guardian thinks the gift economy of the web actually promotes overall economic welfare. I'm inclined to agree, but I can think of a few counter-examples - how about you? futurismic.com/
POST OFFICE BROWSING Paul Godier is concerned, understandably, that the Post Office only supports internet explorer for its online banking. I assume their reason for doing this is that it is easier to maintain the level of security necessary for internet banking by restricting the code to one browser specification. If Paul is using Firefox then there is an easy answer, download IETab from Firefox add-ins (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1419) and then he will be able to open IE specific pages - I haven't yet found one this doesn't work with. Mike Cushman, London
WINDOWS UPDATES The article "Skype's nightmare weekend" said: "Automatic restart is now the default for Windows Update, although it is only used when necessary and can be switched off in the Control Panel. " I am afraid it is not as easy as this - if you ever subsequently install an update, (even without knowing it) then the default becomes auto-reboot again and you have to go back into the control panel and switch it off - it's a real PITA... switching it off once does not work! Professor Peter Ivey, Calver
MBS REDUX Just wanted to voice my opinion to a well known source and see if everyone agrees here with me. I have just spent the last two months on my computer with the well-known MBS billing systems holding my computer to ransom. Now, I don't normally use my computer knowledge to "unlawfully" remove "legitimate" software from my computer. Luckily I have got rid of it with a certain technique. I am only 20 years old and since I have got rid of this, I have been researching into how many of these cases have been going on. My god, was I overwhelmed, its even attracted media attention.. So how the hell is this company still running. Now I'm sorry, but that is the most uncouth way of making money I have ever seen. Absolutely disgusting ! From what I have seen their are many people suffering from the same problem me and my family have suffered as this is a family computer. Now, our government and the public wonder why the Office of Fair Trading, Trading Standards etc don't work as well as they should. How does anyone let these things stand.. After research, I realise they do have a terms and conditions and clearly state their pledge... But after actually visiting the website it's about as clear as a blizzard in Greenland. It's like putting terms and conditions up in Japanese language and saying there's the T&C to cover our arses and make us legit. If I was an authority figure or head of Trading Standards, I would not only shut the company down, I would throw them in jail for 50 life sentences too. My honest opinion of what I'd like to do would be unlawful and too strong to say. They have caused not only unusable computer situations to families all over but some people who work from laptops and computers at home to lose their work due to being unable to use them which has cost loss of earnings and in one case I saw, someone's job. Please could you publish this somewhere whether its on the net or actually in the paper because I would just absolutely love to see the replies and responses to see how many people feel the same.. Michael Prince (no post town given)
