We recently started testing a freeware application and web service called Dropbox. Dropbox instantly backs up files you place in a designated folder to the Dropbox server. Whenever you modify a file, it will update the copy on the server. Dropbox also does revision history, so you can recover older versions should you lose something.

You can check out Dropbox at their site, and download a Windows, Mac, or Linux client.

Last month, the Consumerist asked if the DRM phenomenon drove well-meaning people to piracy. We invite you to review the story of one man who did so despite his best efforts.

We may not be the right people to discuss DRM. We have never purchased music from an online store and we refuse to buy an iPod. But when hearing something like this…

There I sat, a loyal music fan who has shelled out actual money to a business that is supposed to be having financial problems, and the best they can do is tell me to wander the streets of Seattle looking for different internet providers who might allow me to download the music that I have already paid for, music that I have spent the better part of three house trying to listen to, and which is still unusable?

We tend to think we made the right decision. We rip our music from CDs, make plans to, but fail to convert our old cassettes and vinyl to MP3. But we have withdrawn from online music downloads because of the above…it just seems too complicated to us. And iPods…well…we bought a 1GB Sandisk MP3/WMA flash memory player for $19.99 after rebate. We haven’t had any problems with it.

There are people who are willing to deal with the restrictions of music in order to buy through these companies. We salute them. There are also people who find ways around it, and those who pirate. We wish them luck in their endeavors as well.

In good news, the EMI Group will be selling premium DRM free music via Itunes in May, excepting Beatles tunes. Higher-quality music files, which will play on any computer and any digital-audio player, will not replace the copy-protected EMI music currently sold through iTunes. They will still offer the standard 99-cent iTunes downloads. DRM-free will be 30 cents more. Existing customers will be able to upgrade. Full albums will costs the same, DRM or non-DRM.

Tests by EMI indicated the higher-quality, DRM-free songs outsold the DRM ones ten to one. Steve Jobs of Apple has advocated the elimination of DRM in the past, and this seems to indicate that the recording companies are reconsidering the current situation.

How often do you hear that line?

Australian news reported that Federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced on February 20th that standard incandescent bulbs would be phased out within three years. Details of the plan, including costs, will be made available later. It is felt the change could cut greenhouse gases by 800,000 tons a year by 2012.

In Canada, Ontario, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick considered banning the incandescent light bulb, following Australia’s lead. After all, one part of the former British Empire can’t be more progressive than another.

And the United States doesn’t want to think Canada could be more progressive than it…so CBS news reports, California may also ban the light bulbs. Most light bulb manufacturers support the phasing out of the bulbs, but at their pace, feeling that it is unnecessary to ban older bulbs to force the issue.

We ourselves are fond of the bulbs, although we do have a few halogens in certain places for which there are not yet better replacements. We’ve been experimenting with dimmable fluorescents of various brands and the technology there continues to improve.

For those of you following, our new favorite place to buy bulbs is now 1000bulbs.com, which may have had our dimmable bulbs backordered, but provided excellent customer service and reasonable pricing on all our needs.

• Bruce Schneier has an article on DRM in Windows Vista. Not only does Vista implement extensive DRM, but it also continuously spends CPU time monitoring itself, trying to figure out if you’re doing something that it thinks you shouldn’t. If it does, it limits functionality and in extreme cases restarts just the video subsystem. Not exactly a friendly feature.
• The RIAA sued a woman for allegedly sharing copyrighted material. She had her case dismissed and was awarded attorney’s fees in excess of $50,000. The RIAA, however, filed an appeal, to reconsider the decision to make them pay. They want the judge to rule that an owner of an ISP account is responsible for all activity on that account. Such a ruling could make individuals running open hotspots and/or offering public wireless access liable. The RIAA has tried before to establish such a precedent.
• The Consumerist reports that the RIAA has sent letters to 400 students at 13 universities encouraging them to confess to illegal file sharing and pay a “settlement” at P2PLawsuits.com. The RIAA has limited evidence these students are doing something illegal. They have a link to a PDF of the offending document here. If they don’t pay, the RIAA will subpoena the names of the students they say they’ve caught from the schools’ IT departments.

The Asbury Park Press reports that Verizon is suing Vonage for patent-infringement, alleging that Vonage has “appropriated the results of years of research conducted by Verizon and its predecessors.” The patents Verizon claims have been violated cover the interfaces between the old phone system and the more modern computer system mimicking it and are essential for providing VoIP phone services that mimic traditional phone service.

Because the patent claims are so broad… Vonage would never be able to operate, nor would any other VoIP service, most likely. Vonage considers it likely that the courts will invalidate the patents.

Lifehacker has a great feature on how to encrypt your web browsing with an SSH Socks Proxy.

1. You’ll need an SSH server. If you don’t have access or can’t get access through a web host, many of which allow this access, you can always run your own.
2. You’ll also need a client. The most popular one for Windows computer is Putty. It is simple to use.
3. Set up your SSH client to establish a tunnel between a local port and a port on the server.
4. Set up your Internet browser to use a Socks proxy.

Now, that seems a bit hard for some people. There are alternatives.

• Tor – Tor is a toolset for those who want to anonymize their internet usage.
• Routers – Various routers can run SSH and even a SOCKS proxy. Most of these are Linux-based routers running custom firmware. More information…