entertainment

Call me a late adopter, but I have finally gotten rid of all CRTs in my house (partially as a space saving measure in preparation for our upcoming move to a smaller house, although this may just be a subconscious way of justifying the expense ;) ). I replaced my 32" CRT TV with a 37" LCD TV and my 19" CRT computer monitor with a 22" widescreen LCD monitor. The difference is amazing, although my remaining video equipment isn’t quite up to par (particularly my DVD player, which is not upconverting and seems to have a broken component output)....

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has posted a list of [Frequently Awkward Questions for the Entertainment Industry](http://www.eff.org/IP/faq/), just in case you ever need to challenge one of the deceptive RIAA or MPAA representatives. Some of my favorites: The RIAA has sued over 20,000 music fans for file sharing, who have on average paid a $3,750 settlement. That’s over $75,000,000. Has any money collected from your lawsuits gone to pay actual artists?...

This morning I turned on my iPod after not having used it over the weekend, and I was surprised to find that it had been completely erased, as if I had restored it to factory settings using the iPod updater. It prompted me to select my language, I had to re-enter all my settings, and all my songs and podcasts were gone. I had used my iPod on Friday without any problems, and I hadn’t used it since then and not even plugged into my PC or anything....

I just had a chance to catch up with the tech news from the past week or so, and I almost couldn’t believe what I read about Sony’s trojan-horse rootkit that was shipped on over 50 CD albums. Apparently this malware searches your computer for illegally downloaded music and reports this to Sony. And not only does the actual rootkit compromise your PC, but the removal application that Sony later issued under pressure from the public leaves your PC in a highly insecure state....

For a little over half a year now, I’ve enjoyed owning the top of the line iPod model, the 60GB iPod Photo. Sure, there had been a few interesting new models (such as the iPod Nano), but if you were looking for a large storage model, the 4th generation 60GB iPod Photo was the best you could buy. Apple has now released new iPod models to replace the previous 30GB and 60GB models....