TidBITS#770/14-Mar-05
=====================
Databases are all alike, aren't they? Well, no, and this week
Adam shares his real-world experiences with Panorama V, an
unusual database that makes it easy to add new capabilities
as you discover you need them. In other items, Jeff Carlson
covers three new ebook initiatives, Glenn Fleishman opens his
Mac mini to add RAM on the cheap, we link to several Take Control
excerpts, and we note a court decision permitting Apple to
subpoena confidential information about trade secret leaks.
Topics:
MailBITS/14-Mar-05
When It Bends, It's Funny. When It Breaks...
A Rising Tide of Ebooks
When You Need a Panoramic View
Take Control News/14-Mar-05
Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/14-Mar-05
<http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-770.html>
<ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/issues/2005/TidBITS#770_14-Mar-05.etx>
Copyright 2005 TidBITS: Reuse governed by Creative Commons license
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MailBITS/14-Mar-05
------------------
**Apple Wins Subpoena Request** -- In the latest update in Apple's
quest to squelch information leaks, Judge James Kleinberg of
Santa Clara County Superior Court ruled last Friday that the news
site O'Grady's PowerPage must divulge its confidential sources,
describing the information as "stolen property." The judge was
careful to note that his ruling should not be construed more
broadly than Apple's right to subpoena information from
PowerPage's ISP Nfox. The judge also made a distinction between
"the public interest" (served by whistleblowers disclosing health,
safety, or welfare hazards) and "the interested public" (served
by news and enthusiast Web sites). The full text of the decision
can be downloaded from The Mac Observer site. Jason O'Grady has
said he will appeal the decision. [ACE]
<http://www.macobserver.com/article/2005/03/11.8.shtml>
When It Bends, It's Funny. When It Breaks...
--------------------------------------------
by Glenn Fleishman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I had beads - nay, rivulets - of sweat on my brow. Why wouldn't
it open?
You guessed it: I was installing RAM in my new Mac mini. I avoided
Apple's $425 price tag for a 1 GB upgrade (from the meager built-
in 256 MB of RAM), and bought generic RAM for $200. I also watched
Other World Computing's very clear video of how to use a putty
knife to crack open the mini case.
<http://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/index.cfm?page=Video/directory.html>
Perhaps I was too sanguine. I'd slipped the knife in, and starting
cracking. But the noise was terrifying. I watched the plastic
bow and thought, "This just can't be right, regardless of what
I'd heard."
I persisted. I nicked the bottom of the case a bit, but after
wiggling it this way and that and hearing awful ship's-rigging-
collapsing, nightmare-tree-falling sounds, the case released
its burden and allowed me access to the beautiful innards.
I'd wrestled with the giant clam and snatched its pearl.
Well, I snatched a 256 MB memory module. I put the new 1 GB
module in, sealed her back up - just a little worse than
re-sealing a Tupperware-brand container - and fired the
puppy up.
Happy as a clam, it booted.
A Rising Tide of Ebooks
-----------------------
by Jeff Carlson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Adam is fond of talking about the "Macintosh ecosystem" and how
the companies and products that make up that system generally
work together for a common good. When a shortcoming is found in
Mac OS X, for example, software developers create utilities to
address it. In many cases, you get several programs that do the
same thing, but with their own unique approaches. Look at the
plethora of snippet-keepers (many of which Matt Neuburg has
reviewed). A couple years ago, I didn't put much thought into
whether such note-taking and -organizing software existed, and
now I look for which one offers the features that suit my style
of working.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05237>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbser=1196>
The same effect is starting to apply to electronic books, as well.
Since TidBITS Electronic Publishing started the Take Control
series of ebooks (of which I've edited three titles), I now pay
more attention to other publishers who are releasing Mac how-to
books using the electronic publishing route. As more titles
appear, the credibility and usefulness of the entire category
improves - "a rising tide floats all bits," if you will.
<http://www.tidbits.com/takecontrol/>
If you're looking for more resources to expand your Mac how-to
book library (and since I make part of my living publishing
printed books, I include traditional publishers in that
classification), here are a few other ebook publishers that
have recently released titles.
**MyMac.com's Scroll Down Books** -- I often wonder how the folks
at MyMac.com have time to review all the books and products that
they do. Now they're adding to their plate by launching Scroll
Down Books. So far they've released two $5 titles in PDF format:
"Buying Used Macs," by Neale Monks (176 pages), and "iMovie - On
the Cheap," by Chris Seibold (95 pages). (Seibold's title covers
iMovie 4, not iMovie HD, but because the two versions don't differ
significantly - aside from the capability to edit HD footage - all
of the information still applies. It wouldn't surprise me if
Seibold is working on an update, as are the rest of us who have
published iMovie books.) Although both titles are inexpensive,
I was hoping to find a free downloadable sample of each book to
let potential buyers preview the content and style of writing.
<http://www.mymac.com/ebooks.php>
**Fix a Troubled Mac** -- One of the advantages of electronic
publishing is the speed and ease of being able to update an ebook
as software and hardware advances. Fix a Troubled Mac, a $15,
222-page PDF written by "dirtymouse" (would a real name be
so hard to include?), certainly benefits from that type of
flexibility. The title includes troubleshooting information for
Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X, with lots of photos and diagrams to help
navigate the often headache-inducing process of nailing down and
fixing problems. A 4.1 MB sample can be downloaded from Apple's
Web site.
<http://fixa.troubledmac.com/>
<http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/
fixatroubledmac.html>
**SpiderWorks** -- Another advantage of electronic publishing is
its economies of scale. When a print publisher creates a title,
the company pays for the printing of a minimum of a few thousand
copies up front, with the expectation that it will recoup its
investment from sales of those copies. But what if a publisher
doesn't think a title will sell its minimum print requirement,
or what if the publisher doesn't have the money on hand for the
initial print run? The history of publishing is strewn with good
titles that haven't been released or updated because publishers,
for whatever reason, chose not to invest in them.
SpiderWorks, a new ebook publisher, is filling that gap by
publishing updated electronic editions of books that are no longer
in print (as well as brand new titles). The last edition of Danny
Goodman's AppleScript Handbook was published in 1995, but now
SpiderWorks is offering the third edition of the title as a $15
PDF (388 pages), now updated for Mac OS X. Also coming back for
more is Dave Mark's Learn C on the Macintosh ($15, PDF, 292
pages), updated for Mac OS X. New titles include David Hill's
Cocoa Game Programming ($10, PDF, 152 pages) and Ben Waldie's
AppleScripting the Finder ($10, PDF, 107 pages). You can download
samples of each ebook, which include the full table of contents
and some content.
<http://www.spiderworks.com/>
It's great to see other publishers releasing ebooks that go well
beyond simply printing a traditional book to a PDF file by adding
features like links, bookmarks, and layouts designed for onscreen
reading. For instance, the SpiderWorks ebooks all feature a two-
column layout that seems to be a good fit with the horizontal
screens of most Macs and that prints horizontally on an 8.5 by
11-inch sheet of paper.
When You Need a Panoramic View
------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
When you're setting up a database for the first time, do you
know exactly what you'll want out of it, for the rest of the
life of the database? Heck, do you know what you're going want
from it next month? You probably have a general idea, and
if you've created databases in the past or are working with
a consultant, you'll probably spend some time mapping out
your data structures, reports, and more. That work is usually
highly worthwhile, since it can be difficult to rework overall
architecture in many database programs.
Until 2003, I hadn't created a custom database by myself in years.
Geoff Duncan set up all the databases related to TidBITS, and all
the rest of my database tasks were ably performed by dedicated
programs such as Now Contact (for our shared address book) and
Eudora (for archived email) that did an excellent job at what they
were designed for, but didn't venture past those confines. But at
the end of 2003, we started Take Control, and I knew we were going
to need a database to track orders and generate royalty statements
for our authors. It's conceivable that there is a dedicated
royalty database program available, but I couldn't imagine it
would be able to handle the raw data we received from eSellerate,
and I didn't want to pay a consultant to create something until
I knew exactly what I wanted the database to do.
**Deciding on the View** -- After some thought, I decided to
create my royalty database in ProVUE Development's Panorama,
a powerful and quirky database program that was one of the first
Macintosh databases ever. I had used Panorama last back in 1992,
so I'd forgotten anything I once knew about programming it. What
I did remember was that Panorama's RAM-based architecture made it
lightning fast when you were performing queries, something that's
often not true of other databases unless you've indexed the fields
upon which you're querying and you're performing a relatively
basic query (Panorama queries can search for text in the middle
of words, search for text phonetically, search for fields compared
to other fields, and search using an arbitrary formula). Also key
in my decision was Panorama's Data Sheet, a spreadsheet-like view
of your data that matches the way many (if not most) people who
are not database professionals like to visualize their data. That
tabular visualization is the reason so many simple databases are
created in Microsoft Excel, even though Excel isn't particularly
accomplished at database work.
<http://www.provue.com/>
The reasons these two facts - fast queries on any field and the
Data Sheet's tabular view - were important to me is that I knew
going into my project that I didn't have a clue what the database
would look like in a year. And not only could I not predict what
I was going to want, I didn't have time either to guess at what
might be important or to spend a lot of time creating a database
that performed tasks I didn't need. I knew I needed to calculate
monthly royalty statements for a couple of books based on the data
in tab-delimited text files that I received daily from eSellerate.
At that point, though, I could barely imagine that some authors
would be writing multiple books, that we'd also be paying editors
and translators (some of whom could also be authors), that we
might end up with multiple authors sharing royalties on a book,
and so on. Plus, when I started writing the database, I knew
relatively little about my incoming data. I couldn't predict
that we'd want coupons for individual books, for bundles of books,
and for entire orders, and until some appropriate orders came
through, I had no idea how affiliate adjustments had to be
made. In short, I was flying low, fast, and blind, and I needed
a highly maneuverable airplane to skim through my data. In a word:
Panorama.
**Zooming In** -- I'm not going to attempt to tell you everything
about how Panorama works; it's both powerful and deep, and I'm
sure I've merely scratched the surface of its capabilities. What
I will tell you, however, is a bit about some of the features that
enabled me to understand my incoming data and extract the results
I needed. Each month I have enhanced the database a bit more as
I learned more about what I wanted.
As I noted earlier, Panorama's spreadsheet-like Data Sheet is
a wondrous thing. You don't have to create any layouts to enter
or view data in Panorama, for the simple reason that in the
Data Sheet, you can see and change every field of every record.
Of course, you can create layouts that help you focus on specific
fields or that are used in generating printed reports, and I did
create them eventually. But even still, I spend most of my time
in the Data Sheet, since it's such an excellent tabular overview
of my data. So, every month I would use the Unix cat program to
lump together all the daily reports I received from eSellerate
in email, then I'd strip out the column header records on each
using BBEdit, and then I'd import the resulting text file into
Panorama. Seems clumsy, doesn't it? I mentioned this while
chatting with Jim Rea, Panorama's creator, and he sent me the
bones of a procedure - which is what Panorama calls the little
programs you write to automate tasks beyond what's possible from
the interface - that looked in the appropriate folder and imported
all the files in it, automatically stripping the column header
records. Life was already a little easier (and there's also
a mailing list for Panorama users to share similar pointers).
<http://www.provue.com/support.html>
The Data Sheet not only looks like a spreadsheet, it works like
one as well. For those first few months, before we had coupons
or affiliates to complicate matters, I relied on the commands
in Panorama's interface to generate raw numbers that Tonya then
further massaged in Excel to generate an actual royalty statement.
Within the Data Sheet, you can sort on any column (columns are
fields, rows are records), show just the records that match single
or multi-field queries, and, most interestingly, group records
by field. Grouping is tremendously helpful because it lets you
collect records into what Panorama calls "summary records."
Summary records are real records that can contain the same types
of data as normal records, but they're temporary; you can use
them to hold the results of mathematical equations as subtotals,
and when you're done with a particular grouping, remove them.
Summaries are essentially a hierarchical outline, with an outline
level for each grouped field, and you can view any level of the
outline independently. This feature proves to be useful because
it enables you to - for any ad hoc query - group and subtotal
the records found by the query, view the subtotals, and then
expand either the entire set of found records or any individual
group to see how you arrived at particular subtotals.
An example will make this more clear. We now have a lot of books
to track, and every now and then when I'm running royalties,
I notice that my database and eSellerate's payment report disagree
about how many copies of each were sold in a month. So I do
a search to limit the displayed records to just books sold in
the appropriate month. Then I group the database on the Title
field to make a summary record for each book. Then, while in
the Quantity field, I use the Total command in the Math menu
to count the number of each book sold in that month. Lastly,
I change the outline level so only my subtotals and the grand
total (created automatically when I used Total) are showing.
With these steps, I've gone from a list of several thousand
records to about 20, and I can easily compare my numbers with
eSellerate's. When I find a subtotal discrepancy, I expand the
summary record for that book, and glance at the raw data, which
usually reveals the reason right away. This is a simple, though
real example, and I use this basic technique often to understand
my data and the result of any calculations I'm performing on it.
**Automation** -- Of course, just because you can perform all
these commands directly from Panorama's interface doesn't
mean you should. Panorama has a full-fledged programming
language, complete with local and global variables, looping
commands, and so on. Any time you find yourself repeating the
same actions over and over again, it's time for a procedure.
My first procedures were quite simple; they just selected data,
grouped it, and performed calculations on the records in the
group.
The most important procedure I wrote calculates the amount
of money different people earn for each sale of each individual
book, storing those numbers in new fields I've created. In concept
it's simple: multiply the unit price by the quantity, subtract
the transaction fee, calculate any coupon discount and subtract
that and any affiliate charge, and then divide the resulting
subtotal between the author, editor, publisher, and any
translators. In reality it's simple too, or it was until we
ended up with oodles of specific coupon codes, some of which apply
only to specific books (but which still appear in the records
for other books purchased in the same order), others of which
apply to the entire order, and all of which can have different
percentage adjustments or fixed discounts.
All of the complicated "if a record has this coupon, perform this
calculation" code for coupons has caused my earnings calculation
procedure to get ugly, and adding new coupons to it each month has
become a painstaking and error-prone process; that in turn was the
hint I needed to move to the next level in Panorama, using its
relational capabilities.
**Linking Databases** -- In the beginning, Panorama was a flat-
file database, but at some point in its long evolution, ProVUE
added the capability to link databases by lookups, statements
in a procedure that go into another database, find appropriate
records, and extract the relevant data from those records. Once
you have the data, you can do with it whatever you want, such
as using it in calculations, inserting it into the database
and so on.
My first effort at linking databases came when I wanted a way of
connecting book titles to authors, since eSellerate didn't know
the author name to include it anywhere in our raw data. I could
have written a procedure that found all instances of "Take Control
of Upgrading to Panther" and filled in an Author field with "Joe
Kissell", but that would have required constant modification of
the procedure to account for new titles. The right way to do this
is to create a Books database that contains fields for Title,
Author, Editor, and Translator, and then, whenever I needed to
know the author (or editor, or translator) of a book, to look that
up in the Books database. Adding data for new books to the Books
database is much easier and less error-prone than modifying a
procedure each month.
That's especially true of the enhancement I'm working on this
month, which is a new Coupons database that tracks all the
different coupon codes, the percentage or amount of discounts they
embody, and information about when and why they were generated.
I haven't quite finished the code yet, but the idea is that for
any record in my Orders database that has a coupon, I can look up
the coupon in the Coupons database, determine if a discount should
be applied, and do the math based on the information reported back
for that coupon. Since we've used about 50 coupons so far, this
is proving already to be a more coherent and accurate approach.
One use for the Coupons database has already arisen - a minute's
work with Panorama's Text Export Wizard and I was able to export
an HTML table of the coupon codes and descriptions to share with
our authors on our internal wiki. The Text Export Wizard is only
one of many useful canned utilities that ProVUE has written and
bundled with Panorama.
Yet another advantage of breaking the system down into multiple
databases is that it leaves room for growth. At the moment, the
percentages we use to calculate author, editor, and translator
royalties are the same for everyone. But I could imagine a
situation where they weren't the same, and if that comes up,
it should be relatively easy to add fields to the Books database
that specify what percentage each contributor to the book should
earn. Luckily, with Panorama, there's no reason to cross that
bridge until I come to it.
**Layouts and Reports** -- Unlike many databases, there is almost
no manual data entry in our system, and what there is (mostly
direct sales from organizational purchase orders and the like)
could be done directly in the Data Sheet in our separate Special
Sales database. However, when we published the "Take Control of
Panther" print book with Peachpit Press, we created a situation
where we would not only have to enter the data from the statements
they sent us, but we'd have to break apart the entered record
to be able to share the proceeds appropriately with each of
the authors whose book was included in the print collection.
For that, I created a layout - basically a form containing fields
and labels - into which the data could be entered. Then I wrote
the procedure that split up the entered data so it matched the
format of other special sales and attached that procedure to a
clickable button. Now, when it comes time to enter any bundles,
such as our print books, I can type in the numbers, select the
appropriate bundle from a menu, and click the Split Bundle button
to break it apart. In essence, I'm using the layout both as an
interface with which to enter data and as way of transforming
the entered data into the form I need. Layouts can thus protect
the data from me (preventing me from modifying bits I shouldn't
accidentally) while at the same time protecting me from the data
(by hiding irrelevant fields). And if I'm ever concerned about
something I've done, I can easily check in the Data Sheet to make
sure all the underlying data is correct.
The most obvious use for layouts, of course, is in generating
printed reports, which are one of the more powerful and tricky
parts of Panorama, because they rely heavily on the summary
records created by grouping (since that's how you get subtotals,
and you usually want to include subtotals in your reports).
Panorama handles all this with the concept of report "tiles,"
onto which you put boxes that display information from specific
fields. Tiles are associated with different summary levels
(since you probably want a variety of subtotals and totals on
many reports), and there are a variety of options for how they
float on the page. Panorama also offers a full graphic editing
environment for adding boxes and lines and text and images to
your report. It feels like MacDraw of yesteryear, and my main
irritation is that getting a report to look just right is often
quite time-consuming, especially since you can't necessarily
predict the length of any given field. Nevertheless, using it
I was able to create reports showing both historical sales over
time for each book and monthly royalties for each author, editor,
and translator.
**Interface and Usage Nits** -- I won't pretend that Panorama is
perfect by any means. Its interface, having evolved across many
years and many incarnations of the Mac OS, is quirky, bordering
on weird in places. For instance, you can't close Panorama's
Preview window (for previewing reports) with Command-W, and
moving to the next page (you can't move the previous page)
requires clicking a tiny page button in the upper left corner;
a set of modified scroll arrows would be more obvious. Opening
a procedure or layout in a new window (rather than taking over
the frontmost window) requires holding down a modifier key.
Little things trip me up too, like trying to close dialogs by
pressing the Escape key; it works in system-level dialogs like
Print and Save As, but not in any of Panorama's native dialogs,
and worse, if a Panorama dialog contains a text field, pressing
Escape types a character in that field. And as cool as the
Data Sheet is, you have to be a little careful in it, since
it's easy to add a new record accidentally by pressing Return
or by scrolling past the last visible record. Luckily, Panorama
prompts for confirmation if you accidentally try to delete a
record by pressing the Delete key when you mistakenly thought
you were editing the contents of a field.
**The Grand Total** -- Usage nits aside, the way Panorama allows
you to take advantage of its features over time, as you discover
what you need and learn more about how to use Panorama itself,
proves to be the most unusual and attractive aspect of the
program. I'm no database expert, but other databases I've used
over the years haven't been nearly as flexible or forgiving if
you decide that you want to change the way the database works in
some fairly radical fashion. If you are looking for a database
that can grow with you, Panorama is worth taking for a test drive.
The free evaluation version is fully functional, but once your
database has more than 250 records in it, you'll be prompted
to play a little game every time you print or save.
<http://www.provue.com/panoramatestdrive.html>
Panorama V runs natively in both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X, includes
over 3,000 PDF pages of documentation, and costs $300 for a
full development version (you can also get runtime-only versions
for $130).
Take Control News/14-Mar-05
---------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
As a way of spreading the word about Take Control ebooks, we've
started working with some of our friends at other publications
to publish excerpts from a few of our books. You can already
download free samples of all our ebooks to see what's covered
and what the reading experience would be like, but the excerpts
contain the full text and screenshots of particular sections.
<http://www.tidbits.com/takecontrol/>
<http://www.tidbits.com/takecontrol/news/>
**Take Control of Sharing Files in Panther excerpt** -- If you're
interested in a more secure, more configurable FTP server in
Mac OS X and you haven't already purchased Glenn Fleishman's
"Take Control of Sharing Files in Panther" ebook, head over
to O'Reilly's MacDevCenter, where we've published an excerpt
from the latest version of Glenn's popular ebook. In the excerpt,
Glenn explains how you can install and configure PureFTPd to
replace Mac OS X's built-in FTP server, turn on anonymous FTP
access, create FTP users that don't have associated Mac OS X
login accounts on the machine, and more.
<http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2005/03/04/ftp.html>
<http://www.tidbits.com/takecontrol/panther/sharing.html>
**Take Control of Mac OS X Backups excerpt** -- Joe Kissell's
"Take Control of Mac OS X Backups" has been our best-selling ebook
of recent months, and it's great to see so many people protecting
their data with good backups. If you haven't yet bought Joe's
ebook, you can read a two-part excerpt on Macworld's Web site.
In part one, Joe helps you start developing a backup strategy:
he explains the difference between duplicates and archives
(and why you want both), and discusses why synchronization
utilities aren't sufficient for backups. Then, in part two,
he talks about how often you should back up, looks at what's
different about backing up a small network, and provides his
overall recommendations.
<http://www.macworld.com/2005/02/features/takecontrolexcerpt1/>
<http://www.macworld.com/2005/02/features/takecontrolexcerpt2/>
<http://www.tidbits.com/takecontrol/backup-macosx.html>
Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/14-Mar-05
------------------------------------
by TidBITS Staff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The second URL below each thread description points to the
discussion on our Web Crossing server, which will be faster.
**Good streetmap software for Macs?** Do any companies make
mapping software comparable to Microsoft Streets & Trips
for Windows? Route 66 could be the answer, or online mapping
sources. (2 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2504>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/362>
**Apple, FireWire, and USB** -- Apple stopped bundling a FireWire
cable with its new revision of iPods in favor of a USB 2.0 cable,
leading to a spirited discussion of which format reigns supreme,
including a long post from Michael Teener, who was the tech lead
for FireWire at Apple in the 1990s. (22 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2505>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/363>
**Two-Fingered Blackout PowerBook Dropping** -- Glenn Fleishman's
article last week about the new features of the latest PowerBook
models helps reveal not only the motion sensor hack mentioned in
the article, but also a game based on the technology. (2 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2506>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/364>
**Auto scroll utility** -- Is there a way for fast readers to
scroll automatically through long Web pages (or other documents)?
A few suggestions are tossed into the ring. (3 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2507>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/365>
**Mac OS X Window Behavior** -- Jeff Carlson's article on the
default behavior of Mac OS X windows spurs debate on which methods
are "right" or "wrong," while alternative methods for bringing
windows to the front are offered. (29 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2508>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/367>
**Domain Name Hoarding** -- What's to be done about companies that
buy blocks of domain names and sit on them without developing
them? And is this really a problem? (24 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2509>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/368>
**QuickerTek antenna worked well** -- A reader's attempts to
improve the range of a PowerBook G4 Titanium prove successful.
(1 message)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2510>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/369>
**About DRM and copying** -- Prices of many products in France and
elsewhere, such as iPods, include markups that in effect assume
you're going to use the product to steal copyrighted material.
Is this type of front-loading tax at all effective? (9 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2511>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/370>
**Terminology surrounding shareware** -- With large commercial
developers offering trial versions of their products and then
providing online payment and download (such as Adobe Photoshop),
does the term "shareware" still retain its original meaning?
(2 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2512>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/371>
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