Online, we can print the full text of your letters and blog pingbacks. So here's what we chose from to make the print selection....
APPLE AND DRM >> Personally, as long as the purchased content is DRM-free, I couldn't care less what other services they might offer with DRM'd content, and I would still caution anyone thinking of using them of the limitations of DRM. If the price for the DRM'd service reflects its much lower value due to the DRM, then maybe it's a nice alternative. I'll reserve judgment until something tangible is shown. p812.com/tire/
>> What is interesting to me is the article neglects to look at what Microsoft is doing with Zune in regards to DRM. Just like Apple and Amazon - the Zune Marketplace also offers DRM-free music. Unlike Apple however, DRM-free music purchased in the Zune Marketplace is in MP3 and usable on any MP3 music device and playable in any piece of software really that supports playback of MP3's. Amazon offers DRM-free MP3's off their site as well. I'm not sure whether Amazon does digital watermarking for their MP3's but Zune does not do any digital watermarking for any MP3 music purchased in the Zune Marketplace. When I purchase any songs online - it's via the Zune Marketplace and in DRM-free MP3 format. brandonleblanc.com/blog/
>> It's looking more and more like analysts may be worrying too much about DRM, and not enough about whether music services were actually useful to customers. Apple's iTunes store rose to prominence despite selling DRM'd music, and it's grown even more dominant as competitors have started selling non-DRM'd music. If the market demonstrates that there's an interest in subscription music services, Apple's likely to dominate the market with its own DRM'd offering. podcastingnews.com
>> Microsoft is one of the largest sellers of DRM technology and has continually screwed it up badly. Microsoft purposely killed off Windows Media Player for the Mac in an attempt to lock out Macs and iPods from Microsoft's DRM as if they were the market leader. Making their own DRM not compatible with the iPod has proved to be a bad move. reelsmart.com
GUARD YOUR LAPTOPS I was just wondering if you remove your hard drive from your laptop and store it in say … a camera case … do they have the right to sequester it? Peter Zarglis, Toronto
>> This is so sad. The continued erosion of liberty is amazing. I think we need to wonder now how much longer we can expect the right to openly criticize bad government policy. It used to be the USA government looked down on "soviet block" spying on those visiting the country. That the leaders of the USA have so abandoned liberty is very sad. investing.curiouscatblog.net
>> Does this worry anyone else as much as it does me? metafilter.com
>> You know that things are really bad when a very public mainstream figure like Schneier is advising people on how to avoid and deceive their "protectors". ricardo.strangevistas.net
>> Apparently that whole needing a search warrant thing doesn't apply to your laptop in an airport. bitteroldmann.blogspot.com
>> For an agent to confiscate my laptop and go digging through it...it's like digging through my mind, my heart, my soul, because everything on my laptop is me and my life. I should start my own country. deviousdomain.blogspot.com
>> The problem, here, lies in our own hands. It is us, as the general population, who allow these ridiculous and unacceptable laws to pass because of our cluelessness. We should take our governments for what they are - sly, conniving, manipulative groups of selfish individuals, and watch our backs. jamesburgess.co.uk/blog/
>> Personally, I find this to be an intolerable violation. If I'm travelling with my laptop (as I do regularly), having it confiscated for even a few hours can make a serious dent into the value of my trip. Losing t for a few days would likely render much of a trip useless. pocketmojo.net
>> The society that will allow something like this to happen won't do anything to circumvent it. If you would, you would have kept it from happening in the first place. It could be worse, I guess. They could be doing random cavity searches at the grocery store. infosprite.com
>> Imagine the data they can gather from just combining cellphone adres books. They know who you know. And who knows you! If they ever need to do a background check, they can just visualize your whole social network!! blog.cone.be
>> The only problem that I can see with purging everything is that since they don't need probable cause to begin with, the standards are so low that they could argue that you had something to hide because your laptop is pristine clean coming across the border and obviously not new. codemonkeyramblings.com
>> How far do they have to go before we are so protected and safe that life becomes not only dull but run by an elite few? If they have my data, they could notionally run my life. digistories.co.uk
>> Why should you trust them not to steal your credit card numbers, just because they're wearing a badge? hilbertastronaut.blogspot.com
ONLY CONNECT FRIENDS >> Controlling user data in the long run IS the KEY to getting to the top of the online world. Whoever puts out the best "must-have" application that integrates all of this open data from multiple sources, and present that information in a contextually meaningful interactive manner, will gain the most from the new openness. biz.penalicio.us
>> Most importantly a Web 3.0 will continue to share what your friends are up to, live, as it happens in real time. Ultimately then things become more compact. More real. More about You. web2mediatalk.blogspot.com
NO CARRIER In today's Technology Guardian Andrew Brown extols the virtues of the Huawei broadband modem dongle. My experience is slightly different. I obtained one free a few days ago on an 18 month contract. When I came to use it, the line speed here in Bromley (only a few million miles from the Liverpool Street station blackspot mentioned in the article) was so bad that I couldn't even access the vendor's website. In addition, each time I tried to use the dongle in my new laptop, Windows crashed. I could have persuaded myself to live with the slow speed as the intention was to use it away from home. But the effect it had on my Windows Vista was a side-effect too far. I have returned the dongle and cancelled the contract. John Street, Bromley
MUSCLE MUSEUM Back in January I bought my first PC. It has Vista HP and Office H&S and I am 71. Like Charles Authur's friend, I balked at the new layout and short cuts in Word 2007. But the layout aims to offer relevant functions and although I use the mouse more, I am growing to like it. However, I find basic faults and simple compatibility problems in Word and Excel. A fault that Microsoft has twice viewed on my desktop is compressed and justified text that should be left aligned. I found this first when the Iris OCR program in HP's software for the G3010 scanner wrote to Word. But opening with Word 2007 an RT file Iris created has the same effect. Word 2003 does the latter too. And both Words do this with a RT file created by the Textbridge OCR in PaperPort 7.0 running under 2000. And they treat a normal hyphen as non-breaking. Later I found a licence agreement in RT that Word 2007 compressed and justified. The workaround is to Select All and Paste into a new document. But Microsoft has closed the case without a fix! Nor did they explain why small RT and doc files from Word 2007 are so much bigger; some 4 and 2 times their normal size. Yet a suite of large spread sheets and charts from Excel 2000 were only 55% as big in Excel 2007. But I had to open the old files directly from Excel, until I found it buried in the list of programs for Windows Explorer. More seriously, when I printed a graph on a spreadsheet with Excel 2007, a line and texts on the right were shifted 2% to the left. And when I saved in the old format and opened with Excel 2003, the vertical distance on the screen between texts and the font size were 7 and 12 % big. And only the chart printed! What is going on? Never mind the basics, enjoy the fancy features! George Talbot , Watford
I think the article touches on a matter of very great importance. Let's face it, most people have only a superficial knowledge of computers and they are not interested in the technical side, they just want to use them as tools, mainly for word processing. A good example is a friend of mine, a translator who works all day on his computer, who wanted broadband and was told his faithful old computer was not good enough. So he ordered a new computer, and asked for Word to be loaded on it. What he got was Vista and Word 2007 - what you might call a double whammy. (Incidentally I had to warn him to change the default document format or no-one would be able to load his work). When Windows first appeared, Microsoft did a commendable job in establishing a standard which all makers of software could follow. Office followed and each new version stuck to the rules and was evolutionary, so you could pick up the modifications/improvements in half an hour. Office 2007 has broken all the rules and there are serious questions as to whether all the modifications are improvements. Consider a young person setting out to learn business skills - does he/she learn the old Office or the new? If he learns the old, he may be regarded as not up-to-date with the latest software; if he learns the new, the chances are that when he starts work the employer uses only an old version and he will be helpless. I have loaded and unloaded 2007 twice in exasperation, finally I decided I should stick at it for several months so that I could not claim lack of familiarity - to no avail. There are several good things about it which could be incorporated in 2003, but I cannot see the point of it, unless Microsoft has some hidden commercial agenda. I know quite a few friends who have unloaded 2007. There are now various alternative options to Word, probably based on the groundwork carried out by Microsoft. It must surely be time for some authority (the EU?) to establish a standard for the 95% of word processing that is carried out and which is what most people need. By all means have special ones for people handling huge files or other special needs without encroaching on general usage. Many of the other changes to Office 2007 seem to have been done in a hurry and without thought, and more with the intention of creating some flashy new software. The great trouble is that we seem obliged to buy the new versions (particularly of the operating system) as the old no longer are available. However I am not sure I agree with you on muscle memory. The only virtue of 2007 I can think of is that at least you can carry on using hot keys and thus get round the cumbersome "Ribbon". For example, there used to be two Close buttons on the top right-hand-corner of Word, one to close the document and one to close the program. If you press the latter to get rid of your document and you do not realise it is the last one being processed, you unload the program. The easiest way to prevent this is to press Ctrl W (muscle memory). If this is so wonderful, why did they not do it to Excel which retains the two buttons? How long will it take for Microsoft to realise what a bloomer they have made. Louis Calvete, Welwyn Garden City
>> I live and breathe keyboard shortcuts, so to have to learn new ones is a depressing thought. I've been on a Mac for nearly half a decade now, and I'm still learning new shortcuts, then having to unlearn them at work… The article is so true when it says you mould your software to your needs. brightmeadow.co.uk
KNOCK ON WOOD I stumbled across this article from March 2007 whilst searching on-line for information about wood pellet boilers. I am about to buy a wood pellet boiler so that I can reduce my reliance on fossil fuels, especially oil, and reduce our CO2 emissions. However, I can't help but think that pellets are not entirely 100% carbon neutral, if you consider the energy used to produce them. For instance, the pellet plant in Nottinghamshire referred to in the article, has to reduce virgin willow to sawdust, and then compress the sawdust to form pellets. Could you tell me how carbon neutral wood pellets really are, if you take these factors into account? 90%? 80%? Or less? Don't get me wrong, I am not knocking pellets, I only want to understand them better. Will Nichols (no post town given)
OLD TIME ROCK'N'ROLL OK article, vaguely interesting nostalgic story unfortunately described in unschooled metaphors and ultimately i disagree with the sentiment. where is the economics? that record exec in his day was the big global publishing success story, he shafted more than his latest secretary and his long suffering wife and family, he shafted America for $15 for a paper and plastic CD which cost him 5 cents. artists famously did not make from the record deals but relied upon touring and sponsorship deals. i name Prince and George Michael as two high profile contractual rebellions. the monopoly profits from the global plastic and paper industries were obscene, real economic value stripped from our economies to pave desert palaces with gold. same metaphor as with OPEC, find Mecca replace with California hold that all technology has a road map with a forward vision of 20-40 years which is the time from conception to final market death. within the narrow scope of the business model, that record exec knew his business path from vinyl. he happily jumped to new formats such as tape, cd and dvd, and embraced the digital revolution. Richard Branson the father of the record industry famously does it with cable, telecoms, et al. the digital games industry is competing with the movie industry for turnover and today we are spending 10x our father's budget on digital media and entertainment. the global media monopoly still resides today in the same hands as it did 40 years ago your record exec fully understands his business is selling plastic and paper at marginal cost for abnormal profit. the arrival of digital copying at zero cost and decentralised digital distribution provides no opportunity for selling plastic and paper. he is a paper and plastic dinosaur, an awkward metaphor for the passing of a paper and plastic industry, a whinge from those wringing the last cent of value out of ancient technology. all of a sudden he is not interesting and HMV is looking shabby there is much whining and gnashing of dentures about trivial filesharing destroying industries but even a Harvard study could not link the demise of the traditional record industry with p2p. thankfully all the noise is coming from America where it is understood to be what it is, legalese from the land where the politician is in business and the state attorney is archbishop. the European Parliament has recently voted not to criminalise petty filesharers and the European Union invested €14 million in a research project to discover the potential of p2p with partners including the BBC, Delft University of Technology, the European Broadcasting Union, Lancaster University, and Pioneer. both Universal and Sony have stated they will release their entire back catalogues DRM-free the big dummy question. if we don't pay for our music or movies or games or software then how is it going to be made? recall warez has been around since the 70's and nobody sees a slow down in the software markets. tv did not destroy cinema, cd's did not destroy music, i pay $100 per month for my SkyHD, i own a pc, xbox 360, psp, ds, ps3 and Wii, and i buy ringtones and themes. there is more money today sucked into media consumption than at any previous time in media history, it is suddenly addictive, it is suddenly better value for money. Henry Lacadaemon, London
