April 28th, 2007 -
Show number 3 was lots of fun. We talked about Copy Protection and why it helps no one. We also shared a bit about ourselves.
- Show Notes -
Main Topic:
Copy Protection – Otherwise known as Digital Rights Management (DRM), Copy Protection prevents consumers from using media they purchased in ways many people feel they should. It also fails to stop pirates from stealing the content, so really the media corporations are only hurting their customers.
Chris from Phoenix, AZ called us to add his thoughts on DRM and how he had to "work around" a problem when a CD he had purchased wouldn't import properly into iTunes.
Suzanna in Mesa is a musician who called in to give the perspective of copy protection from a content creator. Her music was pirated in Europe, and while she was upset that people were stealing her music she realized that there was no way to prevent it and used it to her advantage by referring to her music as being so good that people were willing to steal it.
Support Calls:
Mike in Gilbert, AZ called again. He had trouble visiting the website for AVG Antivirus that we mentioned last week. We provided the link again. As always, check these show notes for links, especially the long ones...
Mike also asked about a program called System Mechanic 7 that we do not have experience with, but another listener, Gary, called in to inform us that based on his experiences System Mechanic 6 is good, but 7 slows down your computer more than it's worth. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us, Gary! Pete chimed in to say that if you absolutely feel the need to use a registry cleaner he recommends Microsoft's free registry cleaner RegClean.
Gary had a question about his high speed internet connection via cable that appeared to be faster on his old computer compared to his new one. As far as he could tell, the only difference was that the new computer was running Windows XP Service Pack 2. We were stumped as to why this would cause any problems other than maybe firewall issues, but recommended trying to see if the firewall was the issue. Most likely the problem is with the cable company not properly handling the bandwidth of customers in Gary's neighborhood. Pete recommended dslreports.com as a tool for checking his actual speed and comparing it to other people in his area.
Chris from Phoenix, AZ had a question about data backups and whether optical media like CDs and DVDs have a high shelf life. We definitely recommend backing up your data, and CDs and DVDs are great for backing up data. Based on our personal experiences we have burned CDs that are over 10 years old and still working just fine. If the data is really important, though, there's nothing wrong with keeping multiple copies and making new backups periodically to ensure that a single hard drive crashing, a disc being unreadable, or a fire in your house will leave you without your important information.
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