copy-protected cds

I went to HMV in Takashimaya Shinjuku, where they had 3 of Jamelia's albums. It's kind of sad (but a brilliant way to sucker those collectors) when the same music store carries 3 different versions of the same album. I found Jamelia's Thank You album, including the 2003 release with 12 songs (U.K. release probably), and two 2004 releases, one the International version with 14 songs, and one the Japanese only release, with a grand total of 17 songs (4 versions of Superstar). Anyway, aside from the track differences, the 2003 release had no copy protection, the 2004 International release had copy protection (a warning that the CD does not play on all media devices), and the Japanese release had more complicated copy protection (that I'm not sure I fully understood as it was all in Japanese). I spent half an hour trying to debate which version to buy. Price differences were negligable, with the more recent versions more expensive. I wanted the Japanese version (being a sucker for those extra versions of Superstar), but if I can't listen to the songs on my mp3 player, it's just not as useful.

email suggestions

1) Double check your email before you send it. In particular, if sending an attachment, attach the file before doing anything else (such as typing in the sender's email address).

Eclipse JSP and XML editors

The Eclipse Web Tools Project (for the Eclipse Integrated Development Environment) has useful tools for Web application development. I specifically installed it for the JSP editor and XML editor. There are a bunch of other tools included in it, of course. The simplest way to install the Web Tools Project is to follow these instructions in your existing Eclipse installation. I have Eclipse 3.1 installed and updating took a while but worked smoothly.

guarding personal data

I've been pretty free with my personal information when registering for websites in the past. However, it hit me today just how little people care about protecting the personal information of the people who use their sites. I think a large part of it is ignorance about the importance of personal information.

From now on, I will be very firm about not giving out certain personal information. I'm also going to clean up the information that is currently being stored on various websites.

It's probably best not to do any online shopping. But I really like online shopping.

I really ought to delete my orkut account... but I can't bring myself to do so yet.