Copy

An antipiracy code used in set-top boxes, Blu-ray and DVD players has been cracked and published on the Internet, and as a result, we may soon see devices on the market that allow people to make unauthorized copies of movies.

Intel confirmed to CNET yesterday that code posted anonymously to the Internet earlier this week is the secret master key to the HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) protocol. Intel created HDCP to be used for ensuring that only authorized devices are playing copyright-protected video and audio, and it licenses the technology to hardware manufacturers.

The master key is supposed to … Read more

TeraCopy from Code Sector is a free file-copying utility that offers more speed and security than Windows. It's a compact tool that can quickly copy or move single files or batches of files to any directory you select, but it does much more, such as automatically calculating CRC checksum values to speed up the validation process. It also skips bad files during the copying process, displaying them at the end of transfers so you can see just which ones need replacing or other attention.

TeraCopy's user interface is a pair of efficient dialogs, one an icon-based control panel … Read more

Ever see an address online, in an e-mail, or in some other document that you'd like to quickly add to your address book? ContactCopy lets you do just that, without the tedious process of copying, opening another application, pasting, and formatting. This handy little utility makes the process of capturing contact information almost effortless.

The program's interface is small and unobtrusive; it can be minimized to the system tray as an icon, or users can keep a small toolbar floating on their screen. Using the program is incredibly easy; simply highlight the information you want to grab, click &… Read more

Periodically users may run into an issue wherein files on the system cannot be copied or moved in the Finder. Upon dragging and dropping them with the mouse the file may start copying partially (if at all), but then stops with a warning, stating "Error -36". … Read more

In late May, a John Gruber blog post on Daring Fireball titled, Tynt, the Copy/Paste Jerks, finally explained to me why pasting headlines into the spreadsheet of stories I want to talk about on Buzz Out Loud each morning had become a pain in the neck. Tynt makes a utility that lets publishers modify what's put onto a computer's clipboard when the user performs a copy action, breaking usual computer behavior and upending user expectations.

As an example of how Tynt "breaks" copy and paste, go to Wired.com and copy headline text from the site, for example, "Deep-Sea Vent Discovery Sets Hydrothermal Life's New Depth Record," what you'll get when you paste it is instead, this:

It's the extra two lines, a blank line and the "Read More" text, that annoys users like me who are trying to fill out spreadsheets or forms with headlines, and who want the source links elsewhere (off to the side, in my case). I know it sounds like a minor complaint, but as Gruber points out, "It's a bunch of user-hostile SEO BS...Everyone knows how copy and paste works. You select text. You copy. When you paste, what you get is exactly what you selected. The core product of the "copy/paste company" is a service that breaks copy and paste."

I agreed, and I put up a Twitter rant myself: "How to screw up cut-and-paste: http://bit.ly/cC34ok Daring Fireball on Tynt. Bonus: How to disable it."

My retweet of Gruber's post lead to a call from the Tynt marketing team, a meeting, and the eventual realization that the people at Tynt are not jerks, that they haven't broken the Internet, and that, in fact, they're sitting on a killer business model.

… Read more

When OS X performs some system tasks that take a little while to complete, the system will present a progress window or similar notification to keep the user informed of what is going on. This includes tasks like mounting disk images, copying files, burning discs, or emptying the trash. Despite the convenience of these notifications, there may be times when they hang up and prevent the user from interacting with the system and doing things like restarting.… Read more

Excel can be a very useful tool for managing large quantities of information, but it's not always easy to combine data from different tables in a meaningful way. Merge Tables Wizard for Microsoft Excel is a handy add-on that automates the merging process, making it easy for even novice Excel users to merge tables like pros.

The program installs easily and appears as its own easy-to-find tab in the Excel menu. The program is designed to work as a wizard, guiding users through each step of the set-up process. Users simply select the relevant cells in the master table … Read more

Brian Tong joins us to talk about the high points of yesterday's WWDC announcement and how the new iPhone 4 compares to current Android hardware. Also, the HTC Evo 4G breaks a Sprint record, Android tablets for $100 and Google Music... coming soon? Plus copy/cut/paste shortcuts and a review of DoubleTwist.

HTC’s Evo 4G smartphone debuts http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_15228405

HTC EVO 4G sets new sales records for Sprint http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/06/07/htc-evo-4g-blows-away-sprints-first-day-sales-records/… Read more

For power users and other keyboard-shortcut fanatics, Keyboard Maestro is one of those apps that--once you've used it for a couple weeks--you wonder how you ever lived without it. (And, in fact, Keyboard Maestro mimics the functionality of many other much-beloved productivity-enhancing apps, even including the Classic Finder.) Keyboard Maestro's Program Switcher and Window Switcher make cycling through and managing open applications and windows a breeze, and its Clipboard Switcher lets you work with and store an endless number of clipboards. Keyboard Maestro also supports Growl and AppleScript, with the option of automatically pasting in script results at … Read more