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WHY 98 PERCENT OF
YOU ARE MEN
I don’t know why only 2 percent
of your readers are women, but
I do know why I fall into the
minority category. I’m not a
gamer, and I don’t strip down
my box every week or overclock
my processor. I do, however,
develop multimedia applications
for the web. I looked at all the
popular PC mags out there and
only Maximum PC gives me
the information on hardware,
memory, and processors that
I need. Adobe Premiere can suck
the life out of sub-par systems. I
didn’t need a benchmark to find
this out. Maximum PC has been
a tremendous help when I’ve
needed to configure my
rig to battle the trenches of
video encoding.
Thanks for all the help, and
for not including feminine
hygiene ads in your magazine. I
have all the information I need
on those.
—JENNIFER KANGIS IT LEGAL TO BUY MP3 FILES
FROM ANOTHER COUNTRY?
Kudos on the very informative
“Know Your Digital Rights”
(February 2004). This article
cleared up a lot of grey areas for
me and is surely a keeper. I was
surprised, however, that you
didn’t cover a new controversy
with digital rights: buying MP3s
from another country. Recently,
sites like the Russian allofmp3.com
are making big bucks by
“exporting” MP3 files to users for
as little as 1 cent/MB. They seem
to be “in the clear” in their own
countries, but I would love to
hear your legal experts’ opinions
on whether this is legal for U.S.
buyers to use.
—CHRISTOPHER MASELLIPC RIGHTS AUTHOR JASON
COMPTON RESPONDS:
Unfortunately, you can commit
copyright infringement under the law
even if you think your actions are
legit, such as paying an unlicensedsite for music downloads. “Copyright
law doesn’t care about intent for
the most part,” says Jason Schultz,
staff attorney for Electronic Frontier
Foundation. “The main exceptions
are criminal copyright liability and
how much you pay when you’re
found guilty.”
Sad but true, the only way to
really know you’re in the clear is to
contact the record label that owns
the track and ask if a particular site
is licensed to sell it. On the other
hand, we don’t know of any users of
these “grey” pay services who have
been subpoenaed. Yet.IS MY SON A CRIMINAL?
A buddy just pointed out to me
that the CFO of EA makes $23.
million a year. Who’s ripping off
whom here? I’m supposed to feel
like a crook if I burn a copy of
a game and give it to a friend? I
don’t think so.
That issue aside, I’d love to
know what the legal ramifications
of having my 10-year-old son
accept the EULA for every piece
of software I install.
—THE SKULKERPC RIGHTS AUTHOR JASON
COMPTON RESPONDS: According to
Ross Kodner, president of MicroLaw
Inc, “A 10-year-old is not considered
competent to enter into contracts
without parental consent (evidenced
in writing).” However, if you buy the
software and commission your son to
install it, then it could be argued he
is acting as your authorized agent, or
is acting under your supervision and
approval.
Says EFF’s Schultz, “Contract law
varies from state to state, though,
so the answer might also depend
on where you live. In addition, there
are lots of problems with EULAs, and
even some question as to whether
they are real contracts.”WHITHER DOLBY DIGITAL
DECODING?
I’d love to commend you for
a great magazine. It’s the only
thing I ever look forward to in
the mail these days. I have aquick question: Why is it that
soundcard manufacturers like
Creative Labs don’t include Dolby
Digital Decoding output and only
include PCM on their soundcards
for functions other than DVD
playback? I have a $1,
receiver with nine speakers and a
subwoofer, and I don’t need the
5.1 speaker rigs. It stinks to not
have decoding support for EAX
games over the optical/RAC out.
—JOSEPH LEVYSENIOR EDITOR GORDON MAH
UNG RESPONDS: This isn’t just a
Creative Labs issue. Most of the
soundcards and motherboards
on the market with SPDIF outputs
(optical or coax) do not support
encoding Dolby Digital streams. In
the old days, the issue was comput-
ing power—unless the DSP on the
soundcard could do the encoding,
it would have to occur in your CPU.
In the 500MHz Pentium III days, you
could probably watch a DVD and
nothing else. Today, even though
there’s a wealth of CPU cycles,
few do host-based Dolby Digital
encoding. I suspect it’s because the
companies don’t want to pay Dolby
any more money. nVidia is currently
the only company we know of to
offer a hardware-based encoder
in its nForce2 chipset. All is not
lost, though. C-Media is supposedto offer a host-based encoder on
its AC97 chips. We haven’t seen a
motherboard with this feature yet,
but C-Media continues to claim it
has the capability.WINDOWS XP TIPS CONTEST
RESPONSES
The best damn tip for Windows
XP: Subscribe to Maximum PC ,
where you will find everything
you need to know.
—DANNY CHAVIRAUnlike many of the other tips
that Maximum PC publishes , this
tip won’t optimize your PC’s
performance or tweak a particular
setting. Instead, it will create
a console of frequently used
applications, folders, and web
sites and put it constantly at your
fingertips, resulting in an ordered
and clutter-free desktop.
To begin, create a folder on
your desktop named something
fitting like “Shortcuts” and
fill it with the shortcuts you’ll
want to frequently access. I put
applications, documents, and
files in mine. Close the folder,
click on it and drag it to the
edge of the desktop screen. It
will transform into a taskbar that
can be manipulated similarly
to the taskbar at the bottom of
your screen. To hide the folderJust e-mailing
you guys and
girls to say
thanks for
putting out
such a great
magazine month after month. I’ve been here in Iraq for
about nine months, and I think I would go crazy without
your great reading material. Your magazine keeps me and
my fellow soldiers up to date on the latest and greatest PCs,
gadgets, and other cool stuff. I’m also sending you a
picture of one of the coolest aircraft in the U.S. military:
the Blackhawk. It’s like riding a roller coaster, only faster!!!
Anyway, thanks once again from all the soldiers, and your
magazine is truly KICK ASS.
FROM TIKRIT-IRAQ,
—PFC LUCIANO REBOUCAS06 MAXIMUMPC MARCH 2004
YOU’RE
WELCOME—
CAN WE
RIDE IN THE
BLACKHAWK?