Category: Uncategorized

Ever year, Ernst and Young holds “Entrepreneur of the Year” awards, regionally and nationally.  (I was nominated for the award last year in my region but lost out to a smart guy who provides internet access to hotels, while Dave Moll. over at WebRoot deservedly won last year in his region.) The process of winning an award is a bit of a mystery, but one assumes there’s a certain amount of due diligence in the whole process. 

Well, the E&Y team for the Minessota/Dakotas region decided that the folks who power Freeze.com deserved to become Entrepreneurs of the Year for their region.  They are Aaron Weber, Vice President, Robert Weber, President and Founder, and Ryan Weber, Executive Vice President and Founder.

Ok.  What is Freeze.com?  It’s a site which tries to load you up with adware and spams you, in return for free screensavers. 

A recent test install of a screen saver netted attempts to install products from New.Net, WhenU and the Yahoo toolbar.  It was a cornucopia of fruity, juicy ads blizzard happiness.  Use a product from Freeze.com and you will be awash in sea of happy advertising!  But you’ll have a cool screensaver, so that’s a relief.

Here’s a recent download of one nifty shark screensaver:

Start page

Yahoo toolbar

WhenU SaveNow adware

New.net adware

Weather Channel

(To their credit, I opted out of all of these offers, and they didn’t install on my machine.  But how many people just click “Next, Next, Next”?)

On my desktop, there was a cluster of beautiful new icons.

These point to Certified-Safe-Downloads, aka Registry Cleaner (rating) and 24/7 downloads (rating) — and a couple of other sites.  (Fwiw, Freeze.com EULA here.)

Anyway, Freeze’s formula has worked.  According to the company,. the company has grown over 400% in the last three years, has been profitable since inception and has 85 million registered users.

Well, what can I say.  This company isn’t a criminal enterprise by any stretch of the imagination.  They’re just a bunch of guys aggressively monetizing free screensavers through advertising.  I just wonder if that E&Yoffice should have given the award to their local guy who does internet access to hotels.

 

Alex Eckelberry
(Hat tip to SiteAdvisor)

How to reinstall Windows without reactivating
Need to format your hard drive and reinstall XP, and don’t want to have to go through the product activation process again? You can save the activation status info and then restore it after you reinstall the operating system, as long as you haven’t made any changes to the hardware. Here’s how:

1. Before reformatting, in My Computer, double click the drive letter on which you installed XP, and navigate to WINDOWSSystem32.
2. Click “Show the contents of this folder” if necessary.
3. Copy the following files to a floppy, USB drive, CD/DVD or network location: wpa.dbl and wpa.bak.
4. After reformatting and reinstalling XP, select NO when asked if you want to activate Windows now.
5. Restart in Safe Mode.
6. In My Computer, open the WINDOWSSystem32 folder and rename the existing wpa.dbl and wpa.bak files (if you have them).
7. Now copy your old wpa.dbl and wpa.bak files to the System32 folder.
8. Restart and you should not be requested to activate again. This only works when you reinstall Windows on the same computer and the hardware remains the same.

Can’t play your WMA file?
If you get a message that says “A security upgrade is required to play this file” when you try to play a WMA file in Windows Media Player: This happens when you try to play copy protected content in Windows Media Player 10. If you click the “yes” button, you will probably get a message that says “This computer is not authorized to play this song. In order to play this song you must first purchase it. If you already own the song, sign in to listen to it.” At that point, you’re given two choices: buy the song for $.99 or click the “I already own this song button.” If you click the latter, you may be asked to install the MSN Music Assistant and the digital rights management components on your XP computer may be upgraded by creating a unique identifier and sending it to the MSN server. To download the Assistant, you’ll have to sign into MSN with a Passport or Windows Live ID.

If you get a message that you’re unable to upgrade the DRM components, it may be because your LAN settings in Internet Explorer are configured to automatically detect a proxy server. To fix that, click Tools | Internet Options, click the Connections tab and then click the LAN Settings button. In the dialog box, uncheck the box labeled Automatically Detect Settings.

Slow Performance of Favorites menu with SP2
If you find that your computer is slowing down to a crawl whenever you try to access the Favorites menu in IE or Windows Explorer after you installed Service Pack 2, it may be because you’re redirecting the My Documents folder to a non-local (network) location and have enabled the desktop.ini cache. There is a hotfix available for this problem, but Microsoft recommends you apply it only if severely affected. Read more in KB article 898612.

Memory leak in Tablet PC
If your portable computer is running the Tablet PC edition of Windows XP and you’re noticing a gradual decrease in available system memory that causes a performance hit, you may be suffering from a known memory leak caused by the tcserver.exe service. Restarting the computer fixes the problem temporarily, but now there is a hotfix you can get from Microsoft Product Support Services. To find out how, see KB article 895953.

You get an error message when you try to open User Accounts in Control Panel
If you try to open the User Accounts applet in the Windows XP Control Panel and instead of opening, it gives you a message that says “Microsoft HMTL Application host has encountered a problem and needs to close,” you can usually remedy the problem quickly by registering a DLL. For instructions on how to do so, see KB article 919751.

Deb Shinder

Techies have been testing it for months, but as you know, until now, most had to wait.

There’s been plenty of hype about Microsoft’s new operating system, from both sides of the fence. On private newsgroups, beta testers have posted horror stories, glowing reports, and everything in between. Some industry pundits have ragged on Microsoft for omitting some features as Vista has rolled closer to completion and for pushing the final release date back. Meanwhile, members of the computer-using public have reacted in ways ranging from ho-hum apathy to eager anticipation. Now those who want to (and are brave enough) can try it out for themselves. Last week, Microsoft released the first public beta of Vista. You can download the “Customer Preview Edition” here.  

It comes in English, German and Japanese language versions and if you’re running cutting edge hardware, yes, you can get a 64 bit edition. Registering for the Customer Preview will also get you the release candidate (RC1) when it becomes available later this year.

As an MVP and MSDN member, I’ve had access to several previous builds of Vista betas and some of them have impressed me more than others. Since I’ve been under a Non-Disclosure Agreement, though, I couldn’t write much about it. Now the cat’s out of the bag! I decided to try to approach this public beta fresh, as if I were a consumer seeing it for the first time, and report on the download and installation experience here.

For a small fee, you can have Microsoft send you a DVD. I opted to instead download the ISO file. It’s about 3.5 GB for the 32 bit edition or 4.4 GB for the 64 bit, so a high speed connection is almost essential. You also need a DVD burner in order to convert the download into a bootable DVD. Of course, if you’re using virtualization software you can run the ISO as if it were a physical disc. Be sure to check the system requirements and run the system checker on the installation DVD before attempting to install.

I’ve installed the private betas of Vista in virtual machines (both Microsoft’s Virtual PC and VMWare). For this public beta, I decide to take the plunge and install it “for real” in a dual boot configuration with XP on one of my two primary computers. That took a leap of faith (if things go wrong in a VM, it doesn’t affect your host operating system; if things go wrong in a dual boot install, you might end up hosing XP). But I crossed my fingers, said a prayer and clicked “Install.”

First you’re asked whether you want to connect to the Internet during installation and automatically install updates. Since this was the default choice most consumers would make, I okayed it. Next you have to agree to the EULA, then choose whether to upgrade your current OS or do a custom installation. I was very pleased to see that the upgrade option is disabled (that’ll keep a lot of people from overwriting their XP and regretting it later). You must remove c:ProgramData in order to upgrade.

I chose Custom Install and picked an empty partition I’d created just for Vista. File copy took about five minutes, but expanding those files took almost three times that long. Then it flew through feature and update installation and we came to “Completing Installation” less than 20 minutes after beginning (of course, your mileage may vary depending on your computer’s resources and configuration. This is a fairly high end system). The computer rebooted a total of three times during the process.

The only scary part came at the end, when after about one minute of the Completing Installation screen, the monitor went black and a “no signal input” message appeared. This lasted for maybe two minutes (two long minutes), but it was obvious there was still activity going on from the DVD and hard disk noises. Finally the disc spun down and then the system restarted for the third and last time. The boot menu appeared, with two choices: “Microsoft Windows” (that’s Vista) and “Earlier version of Windows” (which I hoped would take me to my original XP installation). I booted into Vista first.

The cursor appeared and “Beta 2, Build 5384” in the lower right corner of the screen. After 30 seconds or so, the graphic setup program started. The dialog boxes went through the usual questions: country, region, keyboard layout, entering username and password, choosing a computer name and wallpaper, time/date settings. You’re also asked whether you want to automatically install updates, use recommended security settings, or decide later. When setup is complete, you click Start and a logon screen appears. Enter the password you set up for the account a moment before, and your desktop will appear in another half minute or so.

I was automatically connected to my home network and could access my domain resources. IE 7 worked on the first click (I still remember how many readers wrote in exasperation when XP’s IE 6 wouldn’t connect “out of the box”). Most exciting of all, I opened Outlook Express, entered the configuration settings for my Exchange server, and OE immediately connected and started downloading my folders. The OE interface has two folder hierarchies, one for the local inbox and one for the Exchange inbox. How cool. The only real glitch I encountered was that multiple monitors didn’t work. I have three monitors connected to two video cards on this computer, and all three work fine in XP. Vista only seemed to recognize the primary monitor (DVI connection). I’ll be spending some time figuring that one out.

Shutdown was fast, and then came the moment of truth: was XP still there? At the boot menu, I selected “Earlier version” and after only a brief moment of suspense, was back in my old operating system, which performed normally. I’d rate the installation of the Customer Preview edition a definite success – although I’ll be happier still when I can get all three monitors going.

Despite my own experience, remember that different systems may react differently and some will have compatibility issues. Installing in a VM is still the safest way to experiment with beta software. If you give Vista a try, please back everything up first. And let us know how it goes. Now that the NDA restrictions don’t apply, I’ll be writing more about Vista’s new features in the future.

Deb Shinder

Titan Shield (aka TitanShield) offers loads of fun.  Available at antispywarebox(dot)com (a new rogue site) and titanshield(dot)com

One curious thing this naughty program does is install fake adware files on your PC.

The latest version of CounterSpy will detect this new rogue application (download here).

Alex Eckelberry
(And gracious thanks to our friends at MAD for the tip)  

 

Got this from Mat at Sana Security.  An innocent looking ad on Craigslist leads to a site with malware.

Hello,
Thank you for your interest in my car. I gladly inform you that it is still on sale so you are right on time.
Sorry for the delay, as I am staying in the hospital right now. As I have to cover all the costs myself, I am selling it and the deal is very good for you. The car is in an excellent good condition. Please, follow the link and download all the specific information about the car:
http://url_removed/myalbum.exe
As soon as you download it, you will have all the necessary data:
description, photos, and other
details. Please, make sure you are well acquainted with the info so that your decision would be reasonable. The car is in excellent condition, no accident. Thank you.
Please, reply ASAP and feel free
to ask any questions.
P.S. To watch the pictures you are to save the portfolio on your computer and launch it.

Mat’s link here.

Alex Eckelberry

While official support ends in mid-July, Microsoft looked at fixing MS06-015 and said screw it:

Specifically, after extensive investigation, we’ve found that it’s not feasible to make the extensive changes necessary to Windows Explorer on these older versions of Windows to eliminate the vulnerability.

This is because during the development of Windows 2000, we made significant enhancements to the underlying architecture of Windows Explorer. The Windows Explorer architecture on these older versions of Windows is much less robust than the more recent Windows architectures.

Due to these fundamental differences, these changes would require reengineering a significant amount of a critical core component of the operating system. After such a reengineering effort, there would be no assurance that applications designed to run on these platforms would continue to operate on the updated system.

We do strongly recommend that customers still using Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition (SE), and Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (ME) protect those systems by placing them behind a perimeter firewall which filters traffic on TCP Port 139 which will block attacks attempting to exploit this vulnerability. This is discussed in the “Workarounds” section of the vulnerability.

Link here via /.

Well, this may elicit howls of protest from some, but I personally don’t blame them much.  Low-level Win 98 development is a horrible, ghastly endeavor, and given the challenges they were faced with (like making apps continue to be compatible), I think they made the most logical decision.

 

Alex Eckelberry

You’ve probably heard of this one already, but there’s a well-named tool available that removes the pre-loaded software you get on a new Dell system.

I was recently reminded of this app by one of my favorite bloggers, Donna. Her link here.

Alex Eckelberry 

Now there’s jurisprudence in our local court.  Come to think of it, I rather like it.

This matter comes before the Court on Plaintiff’s Motion to designate location of a Rule 30(b)(6) deposition (Doc. 105). Upon consideration of the Motion – the latest in a series of Gordian knots that the parties have been unable to untangle without enlisting the assistance of the federal courts – it is

ORDERED that said Motion is DENIED. Instead, the Court will fashion a new form of alternative dispute resolution, to wit: at 4:00 P.M. on Friday, June 30, 2006, counsel shall convene at a neutral site agreeable to both parties. If counsel cannot agree on a neutral site, they shall meet on the front steps of the Sam M. Gibbons U.S. Courthouse, 801 North Florida Ave., Tampa, Florida 33602. Each lawyer shall be entitled to be accompanied by one paralegal who shall act as an attendant and witness. At that time and location, counsel shall engage in one (1) game of “rock, paper, scissors.” The winner of this engagement shall be entitled to select the location for the 30(b)(6) deposition to be held somewhere in Hillsborough County during the period July 11-12, 2006. If either party disputes the outcome of this engagement, an appeal may be filed and a hearing will be held at 8:30 A.M. on Friday, July 7, 2006 before the undersigned in Courtroom 3, George C. Young United States Courthouse and Federal Building, 80 North Hughey Avenue, Orlando, Florida 32801.

DONE and ORDERED in Chambers, Orlando, Florida on June 6, 2006.

Link here.

Alex Eckelberry

A bunch of us are going to Tech.Ed next week.  If you happen to be there, drop by our booth and say hello.

Alex Eckelberry

Tedd Richardson has a good post about fraud:

Just because someone at the bank tells you a check is good, it might not be the case. Here is a story written by Caroline Mayer of the Washington Post, where someone selling a car on a auction site received a check for more than the amount of the purchase and was asked to wire the excess funds back. The seller was suspicious and asked a teller at his bank (twice) to verify the check and was told it was good. Here is what happened next as Caroline Mayer reports: “Four days later, as he reviewed his account online, he discovered the check was not good. Even worse, the bank was demanding that he repay the $5,000.”

Link here.

Alex Eckelberry

Some Cox subscribers might be having a tough time getting to Craigslist. 

Instantly, rumors started that Cox was doing a net-neutrality thing — throttling bandwidth to the site to stifle competition against their own print classified business.

Well, it turns out the problem is a lot simpler (and considerably less nefarious): It’s related to the AV/firewall suite that Cox license from Authentium.  Since we do business with Authentium, I thought I would contact them to get an explanation.

Here’s what happened: Craigslist does the unusual step of sending a TCP packet with a zero-length window (typically used to indicate that that the server is experiencing congestion and can’t handle more data). 

Those subscribers running the suite will experience delays in getting to the site, since Authentium’s firewall responds to the zero-length window by sending data only one byte at a time, even after the server increases the TCP window size.

Authentium is on it and is fixing the problem.

The whole thing is explained here by Ray Dickenson of Authentium. 

Alex Eckelberry

Robert, our creative director, took some incredible pictures yesterday of the Tampa skyline off of Davis Island.

In this area, you don’t have to photoshop pictures to look this good—it really does look like this down here, especially this time of year. 

And, we are always hiring (HR email here)…

Alex Eckelberry

 

Everybody wants to sell suites.

• OneCare.
• McAfee’s “Falcon” project
• Symantec’s Norton 360 project.
• And now AOL with a product that will be marketed to the masses.

Alex Eckelberry

 

You heard the rumor here. Now it’s official.

Official Zango propaganda here.

Alex Eckelberry
(Thanks Phil)

A while back, Paul and Robin Laudanski and I started PIRT, and the results have been strong.  The PIRT volunteer staff is taking down lots of phishing sites.

I guess it’s been working and pissing off some phishers, because CastleCops has been under heavy DDoS attack.

Things are back to normal, and Paul will be writing something up a bit later as a forensic investigation is still in progress.  

Alex Eckelberry

Paying AOL customers now get ads in their email.

Alex Eckelberry

 

Fwiw, company propoganda here.

Alex Eckelberry

There’s a new trojan on the loose, undetected by almost all AV engines:  Pornmagpass, from pornmagpass(dot)com.

Install it as a “free” ticket to porn. After all, the FAQ says “It is 100% free. No catch.”

But… the EULA says:

SOFTWARE INSTALLATION: Components bundled with our software may report to Licensor and/or its affiliates the installation status of certain marketing offers, such as toolbars, and also generalized installation information, such as language preference and operating system version, to assist Licensor in its product development. No personal information will be communicated to PORNMAGPASS or its affiliates during this process. Licensor may change homepage on user’s computer and may offer additional components through our version of checking/update system. These components include: toolbar, popup ads manager, advertisements messenger, pc protection software, shortcuts manager.

Well, well.

Install it, and this trojan will install rogue security app SpywareQuake and adds a new IE Toolbar called “Safety Bar”

To mangle a common phrase, the pass to hell is littered with porn. In this case, PornMagPass.

And as a final note, yet another malware site hosted by Intercage, the Best Friend Ever of all malware authors. 

 

Alex Eckelberry
(And thanks to Sunbelt’s Adam Thomas for his work on this)

How to enable and use the secondary logon service

Many PC users log onto their systems with administrative accounts all the time, because they need to be able to run certain programs or perform tasks that require administrative privileges and don’t want to have to log off and log back on with an admin account to do so. But running as an administrator puts your system at risk. You might not realize that Windows XP has a feature called secondary logon that allows you to run a program using an admin account when you’re logged on with an account with lesser privileges. Here’s how to enable the service and use it with a shortcut.

1. To enable secondary logon, you must first log on as an administrator. Then right click My Computer and select Manage.
2. In the Computer Management console, expand Services and Applications and select Services.
3. In the right pane, right click Secondary Logon and select Properties.
4. In the Properties dialog box, select Automatic for Startup Type and then click Start.
5. Click OK and close the Computer Management console.
6. To use secondary logon with a program shortcut, first locate the shortcut in the Programs menu, then press the SHIFT key while right clicking the shortcut and select Run as.
7. In the Run as dialog box, click the following user option, then enter the user name and password for the admin account you want to use to run the program and click OK.

Can’t view source code on web pages
If you find yourself unable to “View source” to see the source code of a web page in Internet Explorer, one fix is to delete the temporary Internet files, but that may not work for everyone.

A full cache is the most common reason for a sudden inability to view the source, but there are other things that can cause this. If you have somehow deleted Notepad.exe, you will no longer be able to view the source since IE uses Notepad to view the text files that make up the source code. In Windows Explorer, check the WINDOWS folder to see if the Notepad.exe application file is there (you may have to change your folder view settings to allow you to view the files in this folder). Normally XP won’t let you delete system files like Notepad.exe but it’s possible that it has been corrupted. Try copying Notepad.exe from another XP computer into your WINDOWS directory. It can also happen if your cookies folder is on an NTFS partition and you don’t have the proper permissions (Change) to the folder. It could also be that you just got impatient; you may not be able to view the source if the page hasn’t downloaded completely. It’s also possible for an administrator to restrict you from viewing source code by editing the registry.

New Window displays blank white page
When you open a new window in Internet Explorer 6, do you get a blank white page instead of the web site you were expecting? You might also get an error message (Error 49) if you try to do a search on the page with the Find command. This is caused by IE DLL files that aren’t registered correctly. Luckily, it’s fairly easy to register these files using the command line utility regsvr32. For instructions on how to do so, see KB article 902932.

The connection between your XP computer and Windows Mobile 5 device is lost
You connect your Windows Mobile 5 smart phone or handheld computer to your Windows XP desktop computer via USB to synchronize files or install software on the mobile device, but you may find that your connection is being intermittently lost, which can cause all manner of problems if it happens during a download or synchronization process. This happens when the XP computer has service pack 1 installed and has an EHCI USB 2.0 host controller attached. The good news is that there’s a hotfix (USB 1.1 and 2.0 update) that should resolve the problem. For more info and a link to get the fix, see KB article 902270.

Windows validation check won’t complete
The Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program requires that your system be checked to ensure it’s running a legal copy of Windows XP or 2000 before you can download some software from the Microsoft web site. However, you may try to validate your copy of Windows only to have the system hang and never complete the validation process. This may happen because you’ve blocked ActiveX controls from running on the computer for security reasons. WGA needs to be able to run ActiveX. For instructions on how to reenable ActiveX in Internet Explorer, see KB article 905226.

Deb Shinder

Tech types have been predicting for decades that the end of the paper era is at hand. Remember how computers were going to lead to the “paperless office?” Yet it seems that today, with computers everywhere, we generate more paper than ever before. Many states in the U.S. have passed laws recognizing the legality of digital signatures, but for a lot of folks, “having it in writing” still means a “hard copy” – and if we get an important document in electronic format, the first thing we do is print it out so we’ll have a “real” copy to stash in the fire-proof file cabinet.

Many of the companies with which I work – most of which are in the tech industry – still send contracts via snail mail and require paper copies with original signatures even though all the rest of our correspondence and submission of work is done via email.

This distrust of electronic information is probably based on past experience with its sometimes ephemeral nature. Who among us hasn’t ever experienced the frustration of losing important computer files forever due to a software glitch or hardware failure? This “now you see it, now you don’t” aspect of electronic documents makes people nervous when those documents are important legal agreements. Sure, paper documents suffer from their own form of fragility – as anyone who’s lost the cash they stashed under the mattress to a fire can attest – but there’s something comforting about being able to hold that piece of paper in your hand.

I suspect it will be a long time (not in my lifetime) before the populace will accept purely electronic forms of things like employment contracts, marriage licenses, birth certificates, real estate deeds and other important “papers.” But what about the tons of more mundane pieces of paper that clutter up our daily lives? Is it really necessary to have a hundred (or in a large office, a thousand) copies of every corporate memo floating around? Could we take a load off our file cabinets – not to mention our wastebaskets – if we posted routine info such as price lists and standard operating procedures on intranet web sites instead of distributing paper manuals? Would security be improved (along with the need for heavy duty shredders) if we disallowed printing of sensitive information and instead kept it in encrypted computer files?

But it’s not just at the office that paper is being (albeit very slowly) replaced. I wonder how many people there are out there who, like me, no longer subscribe to their local newspapers because they can read it on the web instead? I love not having to fill up the recycle bin with all those old newspapers every week. If you have a kitchen computer (or just a laptop), you can easily bring up recipes on screen when you need them and not have to store bunches of recipe cards or cookbooks. Even this newsletter you’re reading is a case in point; ten years ago I was still getting computer tips newsletters in the mail; now they’re all distributed via email or the web.

Some other replacements for paper have had a harder time catching on. Take ebooks, for example. It’s a wonderful idea: I can carry the equivalent of a hundred or more novels or reference books on vacation with me, stored on a tiny flash memory card. If I want to find a particular scene or description that I read many pages ago, I can use search software to go to it quickly and easily. I can mark where I left off reading without turning down the edges of pages or dealing with bookmarks that fall out.

So why aren’t electronic books wildly popular? It’s not for lack of trying. Publishers have marketed ebooks as PDFs, Microsoft has its own (very functional) Reader software for both PCs and handheld (Pocket PC) computers, and at least a dozen companies have tried, over the years, to sell dedicated ebook reading devices that are more compact and less costly than a full fledged computer.

The most recent attempt to cash in on this market comes from Sony, which this summer is releasing a device in the U.S. called Sony Reader to be sold through the SonyStyle.com web site and at Borders bookstores (it’s been on the market in Japan for a little over a year and is moderately successful there). It’s about the size of a paperback book (6.9″ x 4.9″ x .5″) and weight about half a pound. The question is whether it will overcome the obstacles that have prevented previous ebook readers from gaining popularity.

Common complaints about readers included short battery life (imagine avidly reading the latest thriller and having the pages all suddenly go blank during an exciting scene), high cost, and proprietary formats. Sony seems to have addressed the first, with a battery that reportedly will last through up to 7500 page turns per charge. With a price between $300 and $400, though, consumers may still balk. In my opinion, in order to gain a real following, an ebook reader is going to need to retail for around $150 or less. Some argue that consumers are paying nearly $400 for the highest end ipods – but I’m not sure the book reading public is ready to shell out to the same degree as the music listening/video watching public. Of course, I could be wrong.

Probably the biggest cause for failure of earlier reading devices was the lack of a standardized file format. The ebook you bought for one device couldn’t be viewed on another company’s reader. And only a limited number of books were available in each format. If you bought a book in .lit (Microsoft Reader) format, you couldn’t read it on your Franklin eBookMan. Another big concern for those of us who like to keep and re-read our books is digital rights management (DRM). As with digital music, ebooks are often coded with limitations intended to prevent copyright violations but which also interfere with a legitimate purchaser’s ability to use the files.

In fact, DRM was the downfall of Sony’s earlier ebook reader. They released the Libre in 2004 and it was hailed for its excellent screen display, but a business model that only allowed you to keep the ebooks you purchased for 60 days (after which they locked up and couldn’t be read) ensured a less than enthusiastic reception in the marketplace. The new Sony Reader supports PDF, TXT, and RTF file formats (and can convert Microsoft DOC files to RTF) along with its own Broadband eBook (BBeB) format. Its new and improved DRM lets you keep the ebooks indefinitely and share them between 6 devices.

What do you think? Are we getting closer to a paperless world? Will it ever happen? Are you using less paper these days – or more? Would you substitute an ebook reader for “real books” if the price was right? Why or why not?

Deb Shinder