The Desktop Fishbowl
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Tuesday, 26 March 2002

Mark Pilgrim on Copy Protection: Sonys and Broderbunds of the world, pay attention: the only long-term effect of copy protection is to ensure that those who defeat it are immortalized. Long after my Playstation console falls apart, long after all the original, legitimate, uncopyable Playstation discs have crumbled into dust, long after the no-doubt-teenager who cracked Spyro 3 has grown up and joined polite society and found better things to do with his time, Spyro the Dragon will be remembered. Unfortunately, it will also be associated with that damn ugly crack screen, because no other versions will exist. This is what the past will look like someday. And we'll just shrug, skip intro, and get on with it. 7:48:39 AM

Volume Control Knob Turns Heads. It's a volume control for computers, but why is it so hot (and so expensive)? Well, it can do ... so much. Leander Kahney reports from Macworld Tokyo. [Wired News] "People see it on someone's desk, glowing and pulsing, and they've got to know what it is," he said. "We get people saying, 'It's incredibly useless, I use it every day.'" It's the power of having a very simple idea, and executing it well. 7:04:56 AM