Musings on ‘Networked Society’

Transcontinental iChat Travels

Thanks to Janet Hill, whom I met at the MacMania 4.5 geek cruise last year, and who works for Apple in education, I just had the most awesome iChat session ever: a trans-atlantic video chat.

A few weeks ago, Janet and I had already tried to initiate a video chat, but the Gods of the Firewall […]

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My New Phone Support Benchmark

In this networked day and age, we only realize how much we depend on our numerous technical gadgets when they fail. Thankfully, telephone hotline support is just a few digits away, and we have all come to love the competent, patient, and friendly support folks at the other end whose main goal in life is […]

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Improved Security for eBay and PayPal Accounts

eBay has rightfully garnered a lot of criticism over their lax security measures. E.g., during their first years of operation, the login screen would default to the unencrypted, non-SSL page, even though secure access over SSL was available during all that time. Now it’s eBay, of all .coms, and their sister company PayPal who are […]

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Who Are They Fooling?

When, in one of my first posts, I commented on DRM in general, and Sony’s XCP disaster in particular, I also wrote this about DVD region codes:

[W]hy can’t I play a DVD I honestly bought in the US on my DVD player here in Europe? Oh, wait, I can: I just need to […]

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seriously DisRespecting Music-buyers

Sony’s recent attempt of establishing a highly invasive DRM technology just provides another example of what is wrong with the whole concept of DRM.

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