We have been using our new service provider and completely off of SBC for just over a month now and we are getting some very positive feedback from many of our customers. People are telling us that they notice the effects of the v.44 compression and that they are experiencing fewer connection problems . We are also seeing fewer technical support calls.

The FREE accelerator is also making a big hit. And not just because it is free. Most of the folks who were paying for our earlier Propel offering are telling us that the new Riverside Accelerator is greatly superior. We know that we very rarely have technical support calls concerning the Accelerator. Ninety-five percent of the calls that we get concerning the Accelerator are from people who just downloaded and installed it and don't know what username to enter.

The new service provider coupled with the Riverside Accelerator makes for an unbeatable combination in the dial-up marketplace.

Digital Rights Management is a broad term for the many different technologies used to enforce copywrite laws on all sorts of digital media, be it software, music, movies, etc. If you do a Wiki search on DRM you will find that they define it in a much larger sense, but we will just call it copywrite enforcement.

DRM, as in all topics, can be viewed from many different perspectives. If you are the manufacturer or author of software, music, or movies you will think that you have the right to protect your intellectual property by any means possible. DRM to you, is justified, no matter what the consequences to the person who bought the material or the equipment that they use enjoy it or work with it.

If you are the person who bought the material, you feel that you can do whatever you want with it. That, of course, is not completely true. You can use it personally to your hearts content, but, you can't reproduce it for the purposes redistributing it. That is against the law. Where most people run into problems with DRM is when they have a favorite music CD and they rip it on to the computer into either an mp3 or wma file. What they don't realize is that Windows Media Player has its own DRM. What means is that Media Player will digitally license every every music file on your computer and every music file the your computer ever plays. So, the mp3 that you created will only play on your computer, not some one else's computer, and It will only play on your computer using Windows Media Player. Suppose you computer crashes, you have all your mp3/wma's backed up. So you reload windows only to find that your computer now refused to play your music. What has happened? When Media player rips your music it creates these license files, and if these license files ever get lost, so does your ability to play the music. These licenses are also created and stored on your computer with music downloaded from places such as walmart.com

These types of things, though, are a relatively minor part of the problem. DRM introduces a wide array of issues that have to do with privacy, personal and public security, bank and medical records and the list gets very large.

But many companies are taking things too far, For instance, Sony was recently caught installing rootkits on peoples computers who play several of their music CD titles. The rootkit would install on your computer regardless of wether or not you agreed to the license agreement. A rootkit is a piece of software designed to modify your operating system (like Windows XP) so that things can be hidden on your computer making it impossible for Windows or any software on the computer being able to detect it. Rootkits are typically used by virus writers to hide the virus files from Windows and/or your Anti-Virus software. The purpose of Sony's rootkit was to hide the files that prevented you from being able to copy the cd on your computer. Unfortunately though Sony's rootkit can and has already been used by virus writers to disguise themselves. A complete list of CD's that install this rootkit is available here. If you have one of these CD's you can also check this FAQ to find out about getting these CD's replaced and other terms of the settlement. There was a lot of noise made about this when it was first discovered last November, but from what we can tell there is an awful lot of sweeping under the rug going on.

http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT4358489607.html, http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/11/sonys_drm_rootk.html

SBC, Verizon, & Bell South we believe are working in collusion in trying to extort Internet content companies for moving data over what they (the evil phone companies) call THEIR network. That's ironic, given that way back in the early 70's when the ARPANet, the Internet's successor was first being tested, AT&T (then THE phone company) was happy to sell wires to what they considered a bunch of silly geeks. Very few at AT&T ever thought that this new network would ever be useful.

Now that it is useful, they call it THEIR network. It might be their wires, but, WE have been paying for it. We ALL pay for it each month. We, when we pay for our T-1 lines, and you, when you pay for your Internet access. When we buy T-1 lines we are paying for DATA lines. There is no law that says what that data can or cannot be. It is the same when Google or Vonage buy their data lines. The traffic that they put on it is their business. They are paying for it.

Now the big phone companies want to charge companies like Google and Vonage an "EXTRA" charge because all of that traffic is moving over THEIR network. We have always considered SBC evil, now we are sure of it.

Here are a couple of articles that will tell you more on this subject.
http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2006/011606bradner.html
http://www.networkingpipeline.com/blog/archives/2006/01/google_we_wont.html>
http://www.isp-planet.com/politics/2006/freedom.html

We did not have anyone send in a question this month so will answer a common one.

Question: When checking email with Outlook Express I keep getting disconnected from the Internet

Riverside Tech: There is an option in Outlook Express which will disconnect you after sending and/or receiving mail. If you are getting disconnected after checking or sending your email, It may be that this option has been turned on. It will disconnect even when it is automatically checking email in the background or when Outlook Express is minimized. Whenever you check email manually by pressing "Send & Receive", the checkbox appears on the popup screen showing the progress. Many people accidentally check the box, and once you do it stays checked permanently.

Here's how to turn it off:

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