sparx

These CDs (content-protected) are NOT Audio CDs in the true sense of the term - they're a hybrid consisting of an Audio section where the tracks are stored and a data section where the proprietary player software installation files are stored. Case 1 - When inserted into a normal Audio CD player, the hardware recognizes it for it's supposed to be .. an audio CD and plays it normally. Case 2 - When the CD is inserted into a PC, the PC sees the data track and is led to believe that a data CD is inserted (which it is, in fact). The autorun then asks if you want to install a player with which you're able to play this CD ( It makes you believe that this proprietary player MUST be installed and is the only way you can listen to the CD tracks on your PC). The setup then proceeds to install this player and in some cases additional software which allows the owner to make 2 or 3 more copy-protected copies of the CD. That's when the EULA is displayed. Nowhere however, is the fact mentioned that software installed will NOT be visible to the user or is using dubious methods of staying in memory. That's the major bone of contention.

If you haven't already heard the buzz created by the discovery of a potential malware-type software (called a root-kit) installed when a SONY-BMG Copyright Content protected Audio CD is played, head here. To make a long story short, when you try to play a content protected Audio CD on your PC, proprietary software is installed allowing you to play that CD and to create up to 3 additional protected copies of that CD. What was wrong was the implementation - SonyBMG tried to hide the proprietary software using rootkit technology a method that is usually associated with the installation of something that tries to stay hidden on your system. Root-kits are usually intended to conceal running processes and files or system data, which helps an intruder maintain access to a system for malicious purposes. But for a content-protected Audio CD that you've paid for and agreed to an EULA (in which nothing like this is expressly mentioned) this sort of stay-hidden programming is a big no-no in my and many others' books. SonyBMG has now (wisely) bowed to public pressure and released a patch which will de-cloak the files and registry entries in use. Just one more attempt by big companies trying to think for us and install stuff that a user might perhaps not want or agree to.

As I've mentioned earlier, adopt a wait-and-watch policy -- do not be quick to jump to conclusions. If the company does make it and is succesful, no harm done - you've got your 1 TB mailbox, if not... I'm sure you had enough foresight especially after reading all the posts in this thread and others NOT to make any one service your primary repository of emails.So far, I'm pleased to report that they're doing well technically - emails are being sent and delivered on time. Scheduled maintenance outages are intimated to users before hand and they seem to stick to their plans with only one outage taking longer than planned but without any loss to emails.I also like the ability to change skins/themes.With regards to the question - "How can they afford it?" - They've recently offered a paid version of their service wherein, for approximately US$20 one can get full SMTP access and better antivirus and spam protection.

Hello all ! I need to increase my hard disktorage capacity and therefore have decided to go in for new HDD. I have an Intel D865 GBF mother-board and a P4-C running @ 2.4 GHz with Win XP as the primary OS. Currently I have one 40 GB HDD set as Primary Master, one 20 GB as Primary Slave, two optical drives ( DVD / CD writer ) as Secondary Master / Slave. I intend to remove one of the optical drives or if I find someone willing to take the 20 GB HDD, out it goes. Question1: Will a new SATA HDD function and co-exist with an existing PATA HDD ? Question2: Will I need to make any changes in the power supply? Question3: Will there be any difference in performance between a SATA and PATA HDD of the same capacity? TIA !

First, be logged in to your everyday-use account(profile) To Change the Location of your favorites: Click Start/Run Type in regedit In the registry editor navigate to HKEY CURRENT USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders. In the right pane, right click Favorites/Modify/ Change path to the Favorites folder of your Administrator (Possibly C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Favorites). To verify: On the Favorites menu, click Organize Favorites. An easier method would be to use TweakUI (in your case v1.33 for 98 / ME and 2000 ) available here Anyway, that should allow you to get your favourites in order.

VNC is short for Virtual Network Computing - a protocol used for remote control of computers on a network. It's best used on LANs and other networks where a decent amount of bandwidth is available. A lot of network administrators use it. It saves a lot of effort as the user sees the same desktop as would be seen if he/she were physically at that console. It's based on a client-server model -> the server is the machine that is to be controlled. The client logs in to the server and controls everything from keyboard key presses to mouse movements. The screen changes to reflect the changes made. VNC as a protocol is under GPL and so the source can and has been modified by many projects to deliver improved implementations. Some notable projects that use VNC are TightVNC / RealVNC and UltraVNC For more info - the Wikipedia page is a good place to start.

My favourite way is also one of the better looking ways to display one's email address without worrying about bots, scripts and crawlers trying to harvest the email address. Embed a small picture of your email address. The following link is especially useful if your email address is from one of the more poular email providers like GMail / Yahoo / Hotmail / Earthlink / AOL / Bigfoot / Verizon / Netscape etc. The image generated is stored online and you can link to the image or you can save it your disk too. Some samples are included below: The following are available here. This one is designed solely for GMail users. Samples below: Note that if you decide to use the link and scripts so that an email can be sent to you when the image is clicked, you're negating the whole point, since your email still be obtained by the bots. Refer to posts above for clues on how to "munge" your email by using the encoding method UPDATE - As I was browsing the above sites, I came across the main site. Have a look. They also support more of the same providers but it has a different look.

GMail started the trend of offering huge email space. Yahoo and Hotmail followed. Now a similar path is being pursued with something connected albeit a tad late - the user interface. No matter how much space is offered, a bad ( or rather not too feature-rich) user interface might just send a prospective user to the competition. Hotmail is currently BETA testing its new webmail interface and is calling it "Kahuna". It's currently an invite-only test, so you need to be brought in ( shades of GMail exclusivity at work here ). At first glance, it looks like someone ripped the Outlook 2003 interface and placed it within the website framework. A similar 3-pane concept is used as can be seen below: As expected, it's based on AJAX and has many of the features we've come to know and love from GMail inluding but not limited to keyboard shortcuts and thumbnail previews of images. A small reminder: After buying out OddPost.com, Yahoo have already embarked on their version of a site interface re-design. Here's one more way that GMail has made life for the everyday mail user more comfortable - increasing competition leading to several degrees of enhancement in service levels and "What do the users want?" being asked repeatedly.

Agreed that they'll require loads of space. They're counting on the fact that a very very minute percentage of users will use a lot of space allotted to them initially. Available space will keep getting upgraded as more and more customers flow through. Think of it like what a bank does = they don't have enough money in the safe to cover a mass withdrawal by a large section of their customers. That in part is due to the confidence level shown by the customers toward the bank. Similarly, most users won't likely fill up the mailbox space allotted to them more than even 5% of the capacity offered by this service and I stretch that to its limit (50 GB)! You're assuming two things at the very least: 1. The site can't be trusted because it's making an outrageous claim 2. The site cannot technically deliver on its promise. My line of thinking is - grab your username while it's available and see how things proceed. Obviously don't use it as your primary mailbox until things settle down and a modicum of trust in the service is established.

To all those who think it's too good to be true - do the thoughts / feelings that you're feeling right now seem familiar? Did you have these same sort of feelings when GMail announced 1 GB of storage for free when the competition was still offering 2 MB or 6 MB ? I did. All I'm saying is don't make assumptions. Agreed, we've never heard of this company as opposed to Google who many millions across the globe have come to love and trust (not necessarily in that order). Let's just see how it works out....Another thing-- a lot of companies use compression to allow a much smaller size of hard disk space offer a lot more capacity especially those offering large capacity mailboxes. The performance difference is just not noticeable to the end user.

Google has debuted an online RSS feed Reader called appropriately enough Google Reader It's interface is based on AJAX so it feels like GMail with sliding sections and improved speed. One is able to import and export their RSS feeds with ease through an OPML file. What sets this apart from other services like Bloglines is its interface and the ability to edit feed URLs. A built-in filter also makes seraching for a particular blog much easier. Also like GMail is the capability to STAR * an item ( what us older geeks think equal to flagging an item ). Still needs work because IMHO, it isn't as fast as Bloglines and the scrolling interface although looks good doesn't peform as well as a tree structure. It's still early days though and I'll keep switching betwen the two to see how they shape up. As of now, no AdSense adverts which is another thumbs-up in my opinion. Now if only, there are Firefox extensions which will support GReader !

Well after seeing jedipi's post re: 30gigs.com I felt awed about how the name of the game seems to be increasing mailbox storage. I just wish emai providers would improve their interface, and offer better features like improved spam protection or something like customizable filters. I just came across this service - MailNation.net What strikes you straight away is the immense space that they're offering - 1 Terabyte. I'm reasonably certain that 98% of users don't have this kind of space on their hard disk drives ! That's huge. There are additional features that I like about this: 1. It's free and as of now - NO adverts ! 2. They're offering IMAP4 or POP3 access and a WAP interface 3. Spam protection and a challenge response system 4. Antivirus protection from Trend Micro 5. A decent user interface for the webmail with the user being able to choose from a number of themes/styles ( I especially like the preview pane, makes it look like an email client a la Outlook Express / Thunderbird ) 6. HTML composition of messages allowed. 7. An existing address book can be imported in CSV format (very useful) 8. Has support for S/MIME to allow encrypting and digitally signing email messages ( I just hope they also support PGP/GnuPG in the future) 9. Email search to dig thru the junk you'll no doubt be accumulating.... 10. It's allowing users to sign up right now -- No invites needed. 11. A variety of domain names available: mailnation.net spymac.net xtremewebs.net bgxmail.net mailhaven.ca docomo.ca 1tbmail.net among others. A support helpline phone number is also provided although the actual test will be how well it performs with the added influx that seems just poised to take advantage of this... Now, a negative point - SMTP access isn't available. Which means that one needs to use either their ISP's server or some other authenticated server to send their emails from a mail client. Note that, sending emails from the site is absolutely allowed and encouraged

jcguy: perhaps you ought to take a look at the original post - it's quite clear that you're able to use Meebo to connect to MSN / ICQ / Yahoo / GoogleTalk and that too all at once! Meebo is web-based user interface, not a proprietary protocol.

Not that it would matter to the people who frequent these forums (or is it fora?), but MS will likely deploy some sort of authentication check before the installation of the Service Pack is allowed to proceed. Any takers for how long it'll take crackers to post a work-around?Remember the Windows Genuine Advantage premise which doesn't allow a user to use the updates until they prove that their copy of Windows is genuine? I do believe a simple javascript work-around let users update their machine without too much of a fuss.

It's still too early for me to chuck away my favourite IM, Miranda but Meebo definitely makes one sit up and marvel and what can be achieved strictly thru server-side processing. Of course, the Meebo interface leaves a lot to be desired. A lot of bugs that need to be worked out, but thankfully the development team are always ready to listen. This is something that is noticeably missing from the big guns like Yahoo and MSN ( I've had mixed results with the dev teams @ Google ). I've noticed that it seems to work better when you have a dedicated IP address rather than when accessing the Internet via a Network LAN. It tends to drop packets and at one point of time was showing the status of my contacts incorrectly. The plus points - you can log in to your IM service form anywhere and you don't need to download anything! Also, because the services are now storing your contact list online, one really doesn't need to re-enter the contacts each time. Talking from the programming point-of-view, it definitely is an advancement in methodology and techniques. darkranger: Do you know if the new YahooMail interface will be based on similar concept of dynamic elements?

Well, here's the good news - MIT Media Labs are currently developing a $100 laptop. The bad news is that they're only available to deserving children under the auspices of certain NGOs and charitable organisations. The current plan is to offer a 500 Mhz processor with a 1 GB Flash drive for storage. It will run a Linux-based OS designed to function minimally. The three amazing things that I found about this were: 1. Integrated Wi-Fi access 2. A colour LCD display which switches to Black & White mode when used outdoors to conserve energy ( That's something larger vendors ought to think about, IMHO ) 3. This is what I want on my notebook too - a hand crank to power the machine! They claim 1 minute of cranking will generate enough energy to keep the machine working for 10 mins. Not too shabby - build up your biceps and surf the net at the same time... A new peer to peer mesh networking system will also allow these machines to interface with each other without the help of any other routers or hubs. Very cool. I just wish I could get my hands on one even if it were just for testing

One of the main contenders to the title of "Fastest Browser in the world" Opera v 8.5 has been released. What makes this release so very joyous and eventful is that the Opera browser is now freeware ! That's right ! For all those of you who missed out on the registration code give-away a few weeks ago, rejoice... the full version is freeware and AD-free ! Before Firefox came along, Opera was my browser of choice but I had to contend with the AD banner which made me eager to switch to Firefox but I might have to rethink that following this news. * Tabbed browsing * Integrated search * Pop-up blocking * Fast Forward - allows you easily go to the next page in a sequence of pages! * Password manager - (Bye Bye, AI Roboform!) * Sessions - allows a user to save a group of pages to browse later * Mouse gestures * Notes - kept in conjunction with a Web site you want to refer to later * Voice commands - You speak, Opera obeys! * Security bar Opera displays security information inside the address bar, located next to the padlock icon that indicates the level of security present on a site. * Encryption - Industry standard encryption technology embedded to ensure your credit card details don't go into the hands of the wrong people! * Delete private data - Clear your history/cookies and other stuff in one click ! * M2 Opera mail - Opera's built-in POP/IMAP E-mail client is a combined e-mail program, news reader, mailing list organizer and RSS/Atom newsfeed reader. * IRC chat * Full Drag and drop Customization of buttons and search fields etc. * Skins * Small-screen mode - Marvellous if you don't have WAP access on your cell-phone but you need to download some wallpaper or cell-stuff via a WAP site When displaying a page in small-screen mode (Shift+F11) you can see how it will look on a mobile phone or other small-screen device running Opera. So the question that most people will ask once the euphoria dies down... How will the company survive if they're giving away their primary cash cow for free? Answer: Premium Support and Opera browser for mobile phones and PDAs will still cost. === Opera Download Page ===

Several sites have reported that Yahoo is beta testing a new interface for its email service. Sources claim that recently acquired company OddPost is behind most of the interface changes that will be seen. The above image is what the OddPost interface looked like earlier. The Yahoo Mail interface as we know it might well be replaced by something that resembles Microsoft Outlook or other full-fledged PIMs. It's a good idea being able to integrate existing services like AddressBook, Bookmarks and the recently re-launched My Yahoo so as to present a more unified presentation. You login and in front of you is your email / schedule / news stories and RSS feeds and reminders for the day. Best of all, it's accessible from any PC connected to the Net and you can also synchronize your existing PIM with the service using the IntelliSync software for free. Review & First Screenshots

Google has now released as BETA their Blog Search Engine. Available as a Google search or Blogger Search interface, it's know really easy to search for content posted on blogs. Google says that they can index feeds in both RSS & Atom, so a wide variety of blogs should turn up. The search is not restricted to blogs on Blogger.com (which is owned by Google) but can be extended to blogs hosted on other sites too. Of course, the standard Google search operators can be used to great effect and new operators have also been introduced: * inblogtitle: * inposttitle: * inpostauthor: * blogurl: Quite self explanatory. The usual clean interface helps a lot. It's nice to have one more type of Google search. BTW, Google claims that using the blog search will give better results than using the normal search when looking for blog content.

In that case I'd recommend that you have a look at the Creative line of players. Some of them even have FM radios built in and can even play WMAs Also, they're much cheaper, have a decent build quality and pretty intuitive and easy to use.

Moody - I suggest that if you want better quality audio while at the same time keeping the file sizes small, you look at alternative codecs. AAC which the iPod supports is an up and coming format. The Open Source Ogg Vorbis codec also provides much better compression ratios for equivalent audio quality when encoded in MP3. Of course, this is all moot when you have tracks already encoded in MP3 format. In an ideal situation you ought to convert to these alternative codecs directly off your CD. Converting from an existing MP3 to another codec might shrink the size but it will most definitely compromise the audio quality !

Last week, Apple introduced two new products - the new and very sleek & slim iPod Nano and the so-called "iPod Phone" (officially the Motorola ROKR) that will debut in the US and other areas in association with telecom giant Cingular Wireless. First, here's the dope on the device that is in all likelihood be more useful to me than the other - the iPod Nano. An ultra-thin style and a height not more than that of a regular pencil make the Nano stand out from the rest of the pack. Apple devices usually look better than most, but his one also pushes performance. It's designed to be the replacement for the iPod Minis and will be available (at first) in two colours - white & black and in two capacities - 2 GB (500 songs avg.) & 4 GB (1,000 songs avg.). Now that's a lot of music to be carrying around! The battery life is rated @ 14 hours of continuous playback, although initial reports from the gadget gurus peg it at just under 13 hours, this being a more realistic figure. The Nano sports a colour screen which sets it apart from the older Minis and the screen-less iPod Shuffle. The iPod Nano also includes the default docking port allowing you to add on any of the almost hundreds of accessories available for iPods today. Other plus points include but aren't limited to: =photo viewing capability =can a wider variety of music although there still isn't any WMA support (never expected any, anyway!) AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Music Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3 and 4), Apple Lossless, WAV, AIFF =faster charging time - only 3 hours to charge it fully// 90 mins. to charge it to 80% [haven't been able to confirm this, although it does sound plausible enough!] ====================================== iPod Nano Official Page Google Search for iPod Nano ======================================

Nedwolf's Portable Freeware has a very good collection of software that one can carry around on one's USB Key or flash card etc. The main benefit of software such as this you don't have to go around installing it . Just plug in your external storage medium and run it off the disk. Browsing the site, I came across yet another site whith the same concept in mind - PortableFreeware.com But what if the remote host doesn't have a USB port or rather an available USB port? Well, you can upload it to a storage site online like your GMail account or even Xisto [ although that clashes with their policy, perhaps ? ] Anyway, just thought I'd send in the links ...

Ummm.... not too sure about that although I think the code give-away is for 24 hours. We all know that pirated codes were always available, but tghis way one gets the non-guilt way of ensuring that you've got the full uncluttered version !

Wow ! This is what software developers ought to do to get on the good side of their users. To celebrate the 10 year anniversary of Opera, which some describe as being "the BEST browser in the world period." it's developers are holding a 24 hour party . For the duration of this party, they're giving away registration codes for various flavours of Opera for free ! Link here Codes are available for the following platforms: Windows Linux Intel Linux PowerPC Linux Sparc FreeBSD Solaris Mac Unfortunately, the two real platforms that I was hoping for - Palm OS and Series60 aren't included. Still, many congrats for stying on in the business and continuing to innovate -- Good Luck & Happy Birthday Team Opera !