Every week we receive far more letters and blog mentions that we have room for in print. So here's the full text of those we chose from. (We do tidy up the spelling.) Click through, read on...
DVD.. FLOP? I see in your front page article in today's Technology Guardian that you are repeating the industry's misleading claim that AACS (and before it DeCSS) are technologies intended to prevent illicit copying of DVDs. In fact they are no such thing: in order to copy a DVD there is no necessity to decrypt the contents as a bit for bit copy will be identical to the original and therefore playable on the same equipment and producing the same output. While some manufacturers and software writers will have made bitwise copying difficult this will only affect ordinary users - professional pirates will have no difficulty. The real intention of these technologies is to restrict the equipment on which DVDs can be played so as to allow the publishers to maximise revenues by preventing free trading of DVD between countries and to enhance the position of those equipment manufacturers and software producers who are willing to co-operate. Jeff Taylor, Hassocks
>> I personally feel something needs to fundamentally change with piracy and copyright laws to deter those involved in the black market industry... http://www.10yetis.co.uk/yetiblog/index.php?/archives/284-Blu-Ray-Cracked-Hollywood-Frustration.html
>> Hollywood should use this episode to understand that it's pointless to keep throwing resources at DRM and copy-protection technology, because it simply doesn't work. It will be interesting to see how AACS and the movie studios respond: breaking current players' compatibility with new movies would certainly undermine the claim that DRM makes things better for consumers. http://www.kizo.com/?p=20684
>> It might even be that we get something analogous to Moore's law for breaking encryption: the ongoing expansion of computing into our daily lives can only mean that the cracking of new encryption formats gets quicker and quicker. http://www.inmyhumbleetc.co.uk/?p=33
SNIP SNAP Haha, awesome! Thanks for telling me how to get rid of those hateful popups! Anatoly Vorobey, Jerusalem, Israel
Firefox also has the Cooliris plugin, which is much better. When you hover over a link, it will show a tiny blue box next to the link. If you click on the blue box, it pops a window of size you choose. This is the web site and allows you to scroll, enter forms, link forward/backward, and open into a new tab; if you move the mouse out of the window, it goes away. It works with everything except Flash. The point is that you control when you want it. I much prefer this to opening into a new tab, since many changes you just read something or look at something, and move on. I hate Snap since it makes you have to move the mouse around links and boxes. Paul Kimelman, Walnut Creek, California
I just read your recent article "Is Snap Preview the most hated Web 2.0 function ever?" and I wanted to take the opportunity to respond to some of the points in your article and clear up some of the inaccuracies and misconceptions about the Snap Preview Anywhere service. Currently, hundreds of thousands of sites use the Snap Preview Anywhere service totally voluntarily. Anyone – site or user – can easily turn this service off, however hundreds of thousands have chosen to install and keep SPA on and have found the feature to be quite useful. There has indeed been a few dozen blog posts criticising the service – some vehemently. However you neglected to mention the hundreds of posts that praise the service for its usefulness and the benefits it provides. Here are just a few comments you might want to review http://wordpress.com/blog/2007/01/13/snap-live, http://wordpress.com/blog/2006/12/29/snap-to-it/, http://www.xanga.com/john/572020583/graphical-preview-panes---premium-beta.html, http://blog.compete.com/2007/02/15/snap-search For a more in-depth discussion of SPA – both its strengths and weaknesses – you might also visit our blog post http://blog.snap.com/2007/02/09/spa-use-case. I believe you made reference to a portion of this post in your article, but if you dig deeper, the point is made that the perceived usefulness of previews is highly dependent on the user and we empower then to adjust or remove the previews. Snap Preview Anywhere has never claimed to provide *all* the information needed, but rather to provide richer-than-what-is-currently-available cues to what lies ahead. The blogosphere tech pundits who critique SPA on the basis of usefulness, either fail to think outside of their personal frame of reference or they are essentially expressing a lack of interest in the less tech savvy. Erik Wingren, who you quote in your article, recently had a conversation on this specific topic with your fellow countryman Adriana Cronin-Lukas on the Media Influencer blog: http://www.mediainfluencer.net/media_influencer/2007/02/snapping_at_pop.html As an example, your post today "How can you watch TV underground" included the provocative link text "refused to do a deal" which led to a slow to load dead page at moneyweb.co.za. With Snap Preview Anywhere, your readers would have instantly been able to see that the corresponding link is to an unavailable article, thereby avoiding a wasted trip and a half a minute waiting for the page to load even at broadband speeds. Moreover, your article doesn't mention the constant stream of revisions/improvements/additions we've made to SPA since its initial launch less than three months ago. Many of these revisions are aimed at making it easier to customise how SPA operates, when SPA is enabled, and how to disable the feature. Snap, as a company, prides itself on engaging in two-way conversations with our users and we've been listening to them to make the product even more beneficial. In the coming days we'll also be launching a contest to encourage people to submit their feedback and ideas on how to best evolve the service and make it even more valuable. Finally, to your last point about Snap's principal ambition as a new search engine being fatally wounded, I'd beg to differ. To the contrary, Snap.com is the fastest growing and largest Web 2.0 search engine, as measured by the major trackers, and serves millions each month. Our technology and approach has been lauded throughout the industry, including being named among TIME magazine's 50 coolest web sites. Thank you for taking the time to read this and we welcome any additional feedback you may have. We'd love the opportunity to discuss Snap with you in greater detail and to bring you up to speed on some of the new enhancements we have planned. If that's of interest to you, let me know. Tom McGovern, chief executive, Snap
>> Snap Preview ... obscures what I am reading, is too small to be of any real use and is highly irritating. http://www.longrider.co.uk/blog/2007/02/24/snap-preview/
>> My number one reason for "turning this thing off" is because of Snap Preview's liberal use on many websites. These webmasters (for a reason unknown to me) allow way too many links on the page to use the Preview. It becomes redundant and has a negative effect when a visitor is just scroll-wheeling down the page and inadvertently, as the mouse hits a link, has a Snap Preview open, even if only for a split second. If there is an abundance of link "previews" (read: pop-ups) on the page, you are literally barraged and distracted by them. We don't like pop-ups! http://adrianherritt.com/internet/snap-preview-why-how-to-disable/
>> Is Snap Preview the most hated Web 2.0 function ever? Short answer: absofuckinglutely. http://moi.st/ure/297/
> Is Snap Preview the most hated Web 2.0 function ever? Totally, dude. http://vare2yang.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!F04D26B4FF120373!177.entry
>> I'm having second thoughts about Snap now… http://sensitivitytothings.com/2007/02/23/snapped/
DIG THE SITES, NOT THE USABILITY >> I just wish this wisdom of the crowds/user democracy notion would dry up and blow away, you digg? I can't help but think it will only lead to bland, whitewashed sameness-of-thought. All you can really get from a crowd, especially an unpaid crowd, is group-think and mob rule, not innovation, banality not originality. http://www.lagtime.com/cib/?linkid=3200&CFID=798299&CFTOKEN=62405244&jsessionid=9c30800237ce$3F$3F$3
SWITCH ON, SWITCH OFF I was surprised to read in Guy Clapperton's article that "Toshiba doesn't allow users to switch off its televisions". I may be out-of-date, but in my house all appliances are connected to the mains via plugs and sockets, and all the sockets are switched. How are they going to prevent me carrying out an action which has positive effects on both safety and the environment? Andy Taylor, Stokesley
Maybe I'm missing something, but is Sky seriously saying that the technology of hard disk PVRs is such that it isn't possible to set the thing to record in the future, activate the timer and then leave the unit dormant, drawing the same amount of power that it does when off and only displaying the time, until the timer setting kicks in and it comes fully to life? This has of course been the practice with VCRs for 30 years, and I can't believe that PVRs are so different. Chris Rogers, Edgware
UFOs In every article about UFOs there are never any theories as to how these machines are/were powered. Pictures show them hovering stationary over different sites, but no explanation how they are powered. We've all seen film of NASA rockets blasting off for a journey of a few hundred miles and most of these rockets are made up of fuel supplies, so how can a UFO, the size of a No. 24 bus (or dinner plate) travel all over the skies without refuelling? Mike Mitchell, Hove
>> for me, as an anthropologist, one of the most fascinating topics for me that is an excellent example of the Spooky Paradigm is the relationship between these topics and government officials. http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2007/02/secret-discussion-of-ufos-in-uk.html
>> That is so cool! And such a waste of the taxpayers money! And so cool! The group was called DI55 and it states its paranoid, fantastic, ridiculous, intensely cool and outrageous credo in a note in the report: "The national security implications are considerable. We have many reports of strange objects in the skies and we have never investigated them." http://lastvisibledog.org/blog/2007/02/22/torchwood-is-go/
INTERNET PHONES Victor Keegan, in his article (Telecoms nirvana put on hold - 15 February) says that the arrival of a time of universally free calls over the Internet "won't take off ... until everyone is on the same system" and goes on to point out the limitations of Skype, which can only be used to contact other Skype users. While it may not be nirvana, I have, as a private user, been using VoipBuster, a software based system, for a couple of years now and can communicate at little or no cost with others who don't even have a computer, still less have access to broadband. I need a PC at my end and can either use a headset plus microphone, in which case there's no charge for many destinations, or, since it's more convenient, can set the call up so that my end is routed to my conventional landline. It then costs me 0.05 Euro connection fee, plus 0.01 Euro per minute for the duration of the call. The call can then be routed to the recipient's landline and we can then conduct a normal handset to handset conversation. I use it regularly to talk to my brother in Spain. He lives in an outlying place where the telephone is connected by radio and broadband unavailable. A typical call to him lasting about 8½ minutes cost me 0.14 Euro. The quality of the communication is as good as a local call and there have been very few glitches indeed. The only "snag": I have to deposit about €10 with the company, which deducts the costs of my calls from this, and I then need to top it up periodically. For some reason this system is never mentioned in reviews of Internet phoning. I can't think why except that it may not suit big business users - though there is a new version intended for them. Harold Stern, London
TV ON YOUR MOBILE Well watching TV on your phone would be ok if the sound quality ie the volume was reasonable on your headphones as I have tried to watch TV on the go on a bus for example and you can't hear anything so I'm cancelling my one month trial of mobile TV on 3 after the month is out of the way. Think they should put the phones in a proper test enviroment for different senarios before they launch ideas such as this. Otherwise I would be happy to watch it on the go to work but resort back to my MP3 player. Not directly a comment on the article but just my view! Good article otherwise! Fraser Robertson, London
I just read this rather appalling and ill-informed article. I could not believe that the Guardian is publishing such shoddy journalism. Does Charles Arthur honestly believe that 'Huh? What's the difference?' is appropriate phrasing for a publication which supposedly prides itself on supplying high quality content. This is to say nothing of the clear paucity of grasp that the writer exercises over his subject matter, which is surely obvious to even the most casually informed teenager. Dan Smith (no post town given)
