Sony has graciously agreed to stop production of copy-protected CDs containing DRM technology that installs itself as a root kit on your PC. It took two lawsuits, countless angry consumers, and at least one Trojan horse designed to exploit the backdoor they opened to get us there, but hey, it's a start.

Permalink | 70 comments

• Read also: Buzz
• Email to a friend | Print this post

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, has proposed new copyright enforcement laws that would make it a crime to even try to make unauthorized copies of media. Hey, Alberto? Between the root kit and the ever-changing definition of unauthorized, I am really not in the mood. OK? OK.

Permalink | 17 comments

• Read also: Buzz
• Email to a friend | Print this post

• What's better than a Pez dispenser? An empty Pez dispenser, because Pez tastes like the bastard child of chalk and cotton candy. What's better than an empty Pez dispenser? A Pez dispenser that plays MP3s instead of dispensing crappy-tasting Pez. As such, hip-hop-hooray for the $99, 512MB Pez MP3 Player. It plays MP3s, doesn't mess with no Pez, and looks disturbingly like a cartoon version of Crispin Glover. If that's not weird enough for you, please consult James Kim's roundup of screwed-up-looking MP3 players.

• I feel bad for people who have billions of dollars. It must be hard for them to make a holiday wish list, because they probably already have a nice digital camera and an Ivan Lendl mouse pad. So with them in mind, we put together a list of the most ridiculous and gratuitously expensive junk we could find. Have fun with your new AquaCar, Sterling Matthews III, Esq. It will come in handy when you're shuttling back and forth between your own personal islands. As for the rest of us poor jerks, the plain-old CNET Holiday Gift Guide will have to suffice.

• Spaghetti, baseball, sweater vests...you name it; if it's cool, it came from Asia! If you want to know what's supercool, it's a good idea to check out what's considered cool in Asia. That's because the entire continent is cool by default, so stuff that's considered cool there is supercool in other, less-cool areas. Well, CNET apparently wants you to get a supercool cell phone, because we've rounded up the hottest handsets on the streets of Asia. And by streets, we mean time-machine jetways, because Asia is too cool for normal roads.

• Here is a good CD to buy: Goin' Off by Biz Markie. Here is a good CD not to buy: anything made by Sony. That's because while you are bumping jams on your computer, that Sony CD you're listening to is installing a root kit on it. In turn, that root kit can mess up your PC something proper. Sony says it's all in the name of digital rights management (DRM), but Molly Wood ain't even trying to hear that noise. And you shouldn't either.

• If you don't want anyone stealing your celly, you might want to pick up one of these really ugly phones. They have faceplates only a mother could love. Plus, holding one up to your face will make you look more attractive by comparison. E.T., phone homely. Reach out and touch someone with the ugly stick. Dial U fo...(Note: I was yanked offstage by the neck with a cane before completing this last terrible cell-phone joke.)

Permalink | 1 comment

• Read also: Digital Living
• Email to a friend | Print this post

A woman recently robbed four Wachovia banks in Northern Virginia while talking on her cell phone...and you think cell phones in restaurants are annoying. Investigators say they don't know whether someone was actually on the other end of the line (Wachovia customer service, possibly?), but the robber kept her phone to her ear for the length of each holdup. Ironically, though, she showed a gun in only one of the robberies. So far, the suspect made off with cash, but she sounds like a future Darwin Award recipient to me.

Permalink | Post a comment

• Read also: Cell phones
• Email to a friend | Print this post

A hand, elbow, and shoulder surgeon this morning offered some great ideas of how to go about considering a technology purchase for a small business. The doctor and two partners run their clinic inside a very large hospital in midtown Manhattan. They take notes on patients by hand (no pun intended), so, in between pulling and poking and twisting arms, they scribble their assessments on printed slips of paper, which go into manila folders. A gaggle of office workers then use those hand-written forms to file all the appropriate insurance and other claims, then tuck them away in file cabinets.

It's the way they've been doing it for years, and it works well enough. But they're going to spend thousands of dollars on an electronic medical records system from a company such as ClinicSuite or ChartLogic so that they can enter the information electronically rather than on paper while they're with the patients. They don't know how much money, if any, they'll save, but they're convinced it will save them hassles. For example, there are strict federal guidelines about the types of information they have to collect, and if they ever get audited, you can imagine the man-hours of trying to track down every sheet they ever filled out on thousands of patients. Compare that to just handing over a couple of computer disks.

The doctor pointed out that they could also make money by sometimes being able to bill at a higher level, because the software will ask questions and help them fill out fields they might not consider otherwise. It could mean another $20 or so for any given patient, which over a year could be worth tens of thousands of dollars. Not to mention the savings of chasing down lost slips of paper or fixing incorrectly transcribed info.

Here's the trick they're going to use in deciding on a system: Each of the three doctors is going to take a half-day off and individually try out systems the vendors will bring in. Then they'll confer and compare notes. The beauty of this approach is that, rather than relying on a salesperson or looking at the equipment together--and being unduly influenced by each other--they'll each push, poke, and prod and come up with their own questions and thoughts on what works (or doesn't) for their business.

And they're going through another key part of the process any small business does with a major technology purchase: considering the particulars of how the technology will apply in a very real-world way. For example, the doctor pointed out, if they get a desktop computer, they will seem less personal because, rather than looking at a patient and jotting notes, they'll be leaning over to the side to type into a keyboard. But he's worried that tablet PCs, which could solve that problem, are easy to steal. The office is inside the gargantuan Roosevelt Hospital, which gets tons of foot traffic. ChartLogic uses voice recognition, but how would it affect your feelings if your doctor were talking into a headset while you talked to him or her? I hope he lets me know which system they decided on, and why.

In the meantime, the moral of the story, I think, is that it's worth it to get the technology you need, but you also have to systematically consider your needs and how you'll evaluate the technology, before you buy.

Permalink | Post a comment

• Read also: Work
• Email to a friend | Print this post