Into Tech

You can never have enough storage and Seagate knows this better than most as it rolls out its latest generation of FreeAgent external and portable hard disk drives.

Sitting at the top of the heap is the drive above, the 1.5TB FreeAgent XTreme drive with eSATA, FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 connection options.

Those working with whopping HD files and graphics will be impressed with the 3GB/sec transfer rate via the eSATA hook-up. The range also includes a 500GB, 640GB, and 1TB drives. Prices [US] start at around £90 and will run to around £165 for the 1.5TB monster.

LG has launched what it claims is the first mainstream production 32in plasma TV with the 32PG6000. Well, it’s certainly the only one you’ll get in the UK.

LG launched a non-HD 32in plasma last year but, frankly, it wasn’t all that interesting for the price.

Plasma technology tends to occupy the 40in+ marketplace due to the cost of producing the panels but, LG’s new 32in model brings some of plasma’s advantages over LCD [deeper blacks, smoother playback of fast-motion video like sports] to the mainstream TV sector.

As you probably heard, Friday afternoon there was a tragic train crash in California, killing a bunch of people. There were some rumors going around over the weekend, and now the press is picking up on a report that the engineer of the Metrolink train that missed a signal leading to the crash may have been text-messaging with someone moments before the accident. It’s the type of story that the press loves, though there’s not that much evidence other than the claims of the kid on the other end of the text messages. Just as politicians are now pushing through “driving-while-texting” bans, you have to imagine that this will also help push along those initiatives. But, once again, the same issue comes through. The problem isn’t text messaging: it’s people in control over big, powerful machines (cars or trains) not paying attention the way they’re supposed to be paying attention.

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MySpace has been prepping its own music offering for quite some time, and Fortune reveals the basic details. They’re somewhat… underwhelming. It’s basically a scaled up version of that UK startup we wrote about last week, where we noted that you don’t beat piracy by being more annoying. Basically, MySpace will let people post streamable music on their sites, and will then sell ads against the music, as well as link to sites like iTunes and Amazon for people who want to actually buy the tracks.

There’s nothing wrong with the idea. But, it’s unlikely to make much of a difference in the market. To say, as Fortune does, that this “promises to be the most significant rollout of a digital-music service since Apple’s iTunes” is either hyperbole or (more likely) a statement on how awful other music services have been in the interim. Yet, it also ignores the elephant in the room (as does the MySpace store) which is that it only focuses on one reason why people download unauthorized music: the free part. Yes, MySpace music will be free. But will it also match the other reasons why people like file sharing systems? The convenience? The fact that it’s unencumbered with annoying ads or DRM? The aspect of sharing and helping to promote other artists?

MySpace’s offering will have some of that, but there’s no downloading. People will be able to create playlists and share them, but that doesn’t seem all that different than, say, iMeem. As if to prove that no one involved in this project wants to mention the elephant of file sharing, check out this quote from Luke Wood, executive VP of Universal’s Interscope Geffen A&M record label:

“This is how people discover music now. It’s not happening through people reading Rolling Stone. It’s not happening through the radio. It’s happening through social networks online.”

Is it really that difficult for folks in the industry to at least admit that many, many people discover new music through file sharing? They don’t have to say that it’s okay or that it’s legal. But if they’re going to come up with something that really competes, they should at least be willing to admit what’s really happening in the marketplace. This is not to knock MySpace and the labels for trying something different. It’s great that they’re trying — but pretending that file sharing doesn’t exist isn’t how you respond to the market threat. Without being willing to even mention the elephant, it’s hard to believe that the response is going to be able to compete with the elephant.

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Well, here’s a surprise. Just a few months ago, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the state’s anti-spamming law was constitutional. The case involved Jeremy Jaynes, who was convicted under the law and sentenced to nine years in prison. He appealed, claiming that the law was unconstitutional. As we noted when the Va. Supreme Court ruling came down, there were some big questions raised by the split court in determining whether this really was a violation of free speech rights — and Jaynes’ lawyers convinced the court to rehear the case — and, in a rather surprising move, the court has changed its mind.

The court has ruled that the anti-spamming law is, in fact, unconstitutional, as it’s a restriction on free speech. As we noted after the original ruling, it still seems like Jaynes could be brought up on charges of fraud, trespass, identity fraud, false advertising and many other charges, but for now, it appears that Virginia’s anti-spam law has been judged to go too far.

Declan McCullagh has a good analysis of why this is probably the right decision, even if it’s personally distasteful to let a spammer off.

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Back in May we wrote about Senator Joseph Lieberman demanding that YouTube remove a bunch of videos of terrorists. At the time, YouTube reviewed the videos in question, and took down the ones that violated the site’s terms of service, but left most of them up, noting that the ones they left up did not promote hate speech nor show violence. As we pointed out at the time, trying to ban terrorists from posting videos to YouTube seems incredibly short-sighted. First, it won’t work. Those videos will quickly pop back up on other sites that won’t take them down. Second, most of those videos are preaching to the choir. It’s unlikely that very many people are being recruited to the terrorists’ causes by a grainy video on YouTube. Third, letting terrorists post their videos to a mainstream site like YouTube should help authorities figure out who’s posting the videos and where they’re coming from. Fourth, and most important, one of the key founding principles of this country is the right to free speech, no matter how much one might disagree with that speech. But, part of that principle is that it allows people to respond. So, yes, the videos may be pure propaganda, but there’s no reason that people can’t respond to the videos and show why they’re propaganda and wrong. Confronting your critics is a reasonable stance. Demanding that they cannot speak is not.

Yet, a bunch of folks have been sending in links to a story claiming that Google has now caved to Sen. Lieberman, and will now band terrorist videos on YouTube. The article says that YouTube’s new terms of service will ban footage that “advertises” terrorism or “extremist causes,” which seems pretty broad, and certainly open to abuse. The article describes some videos that show how to commit violent acts — but those were already banned by YouTube, so that’s rather misleading. These new terms are more disturbing. It’s not going to stop the videos, it’s just going to make it harder to keep track of them, harder to counter them — all while making the terrorists feel more legitimate.

Terrorists should be tracked down and stopped — absolutely. But we should be dealing with the actual problem of terrorists, not some videos they made.

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Just this week, we pointed to a rather graphic demonstration of how easy it is to hack an election using Sequoia’s e-voting machines. Sequoia’s machines have been implicated in numerous problematic elections, such as vote totals in New Jersey that don’t add up properly, or the discovery that with a little effort you can vote multiple times on some Sequoia machines. And, of course, Sequoia’s usual response to these sorts of things is to deny any and all responsibility and maybe even threaten to sue those who discover the problems.

Well, here they go again. In a Washington DC primary election that used Sequoia’s machines, election officials are trying to deal with the fact that the machines seem to have added thousands of votes for a non-existent write-in candidate. The election board is blaming a “faulty cartridge” (though no one seems to know what that means, exactly). Sequoia, however, denies a faulty cartridge or a faulty database and says that it must be human error or maybe “static discharge.” You would think that a company like Sequoia would be quite concerned that its machines could change the course of democracy based on static discharge or basic human error, but it seems more concerned with avoiding any blame:

“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the database,” said Michelle Shafer, spokeswoman for California-based Sequoia Voting Systems. “There’s absolutely no problem with the machines in the polling places. No. No.”

There. Now, doesn’t that make you feel oh-so-confident in the ability of these machines to conduct a free and fair democratic election for President this November?

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There has been plenty of concern over the past year, that the FCC isn’t really prepared for the shift from analog tv signals to digital tv signals that will happen early next year. While the recent switchover test in Wilmington, N.C. didn’t go that badly, the LA Times notes that the FCC still received calls from 797 residents in the city on the first day and 424 more on the second day. While the FCC points out that this is less than one-half of one percent of the 180,000 TV-viewing households the changeover impacted, this still should throw up some warning signs for the big switchover.

First of all, in the test region, the FCC did a much bigger education campaign than has been done nationwide. On top of that, the percentage of households in Wilmington impacted by the change (those who don’t use cable or satellite TV) was only 8%, compared to 12% in the rest of the country. Some quick and dirty math suggests this could mean somewhere just under a million calls to the FCC for the big changeover. While the FCC staffed up to take the calls, you’d have to imagine they’ll have to staff up a lot more to take a million calls over the course of a couple days. Perhaps they can hire all those telemarketers who the telemarketing industry insisted would be put out of work by the “Do Not Call” list…

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Want to know how not to respond to criticism? By deleting it. Yet, it appears that’s what Amazon has done. Earlier this week we wrote about the controversy of EA’s decision to put cumbersome DRM on the highly anticipated video game, Spore. The response was that thousands of people started posting one star reviews of Spore, noting the problems with the DRM. Things then got worse when people realized that EA had misled customers about the fact that they could only have one user account on Spore.

Now, a bunch of people have noticed that Amazon appears to have deleted all of the reviews on the Spore page. This is only going to end badly. When you try to shut down a large group of people who feel wronged, you’re not just whacking the bees’ nest with a stick, you’re setting it on fire with a flame thrower. The folks who were complaining are only going to complain louder, and louder. Remember what happened when Digg tried to takedown the AACS crack? Whoever was responsible for removing the comments — whether it was Amazon or EA — they may find that the reaction to trying to shut down the angry mob is only going to make folks that much angrier, and alert that many more people to the problems they have with EA’s use of DRM.

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Earlier this week, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, Senator Herb Kohl, made a bunch of news for questioning why text message rates have become so high. He implies that because the number of national wireless carriers has shrunk from six to four thanks to mergers, that the four major carriers have too much market power. That sounds great, but is highly misleading — as evidenced by a new report that notes that the number of text messages being sent is growing rapidly. If the price were such a huge problem, wouldn’t that not be the case?

Part of the problem is that the Senator seems to only be looking at the a la carte pricing for text messaging. However, these days, most folks who use text messaging on a regular basis have signed up for some sort of bulk texting plan, that allows them to send hundreds of messages for a set price. The a la carte text message pricing is really only for those who rarely, if ever, use text messaging. Furthermore, if the mobile operators really are constraining the market and push things too far by driving the price even higher, then there are many alternatives that will quickly show up. As we’ve discussed in the past, it’s only a matter of time until other options for messaging become popular on phones, such as instant messaging clients — which can provide service for free. Once again, it seems like the gov’t is stepping in and complaining where there’s no real problem.

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