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T A B L E__T A L K Is the Mac OS8 all that and a bag of chips? Or is it a gigantic waste of time? Weigh in on Apple's latest OS in the Digital Culture area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Betrayed! By Evan Marx A writer's engagement unravels -- thanks to a telltale e-mail message (04/28/98) Epistolary romance, digital style By Jenn Shreve E-mail has changed how we start relationships, how we keep them going -- and how we wreck them (04/27/98) Love is blind By Lisa Palac She met her sexual soul mate online -- but he wouldn't let her see what he looks like. Excerpt from "The Edge of the Bed" (04/27/98) Do computers boost productivity? By Andrew Leonard According to one student of the numbers, the answer is: No way (04/24/98) You are what you type By Pamela LiCalzi O'Connell Why do people love taking personality tests online? (04/23/98) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE 21ST FEATURE ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - _______

Revenge of the "early adopters" ANGRY DVD OWNERS DIDN'T LIKE CIRCUIT CITY'S NEW VIDEO-RENTAL TECHNOLOGY -- SO THEY FOUGHT BACK ON THE NET. BY ANDREW LEONARD Talk about your no-lose protest propositions: Wednesday, April 29, is, according to a bevy of Web sites, "International No-Divx Day." But Divx -- a home entertainment technology system designed to replace video store rentals with pay-per-view -- doesn't even exist yet. That makes it fairly easy to shun, even if you are a typical "early adopter" -- the kind of person who absolutely, positively must have the newest whiz-bang gadget before anyone else. But even if Divx were already available -- even if you could buy a special Divx player, hook it up to a phone line, purchase an encrypted digital video movie disc and pay the fee for watching your chosen movie, right now -- the early adopters would still spit in disgust and festoon their Web pages with "No Divx" buttons. Early adopters hate Divx more than anyone else: They see it as a rival to their own digital video technology of choice, DVD (basically, a compact disc that plays video). And they have trumpeted their opposition across the Net ever since consumer electronics retailer Circuit City first announced Divx last September. Circuit City says that it isn't particularly interested in the early adopter market. The company is aiming for the mainstream, at the millions of video renters sick and tired of paying late fees because they've forgotten to return their VHS tapes on time. But in today's information climate, consumer entertainment technology companies ignore avant-geek concerns at their peril. Early adopters have always excelled at spreading word of mouth and generating grass-roots excitement. And online communication amplifies word-of-mouth exponentially. If Divx crashes and burns, as many analysts predict, the Net will have helped shoot it down. "Let's stand together and fight Divx," wrote one poster to the newsgroup alt.video.dvd. "Our efforts on our own have not led to success so far so it's time to unite our efforts. If a considerable number of people join the Divx boycott it could work. But we have to act now -- before it's too late. I don't want to wake up one day and find out that my favorite music CD is Divx encoded and that my favorite computer software contains the Divx virus." "DVD SHALL PREVAIL!!! DIVX MUST DIE!!!" "I'm trying to get enough controversy stirred up where somebody at the studios somewhere will go, 'This is like the abortion issue; let's just not to do this,'" says Tim Kraemer, webmaster of the Tech Zone and the original organizer of International No-Divx Day. "I'm just encouraging everyone to do everything they can to actually stop this before it happens. Historically, consumers have always had a 'we're going to take it' attitude. But we've got the Internet now. It's easy to protest. We don't have to type out letters and send out mail. The Internet gives you a place to scream and yell where people can hear you really quickly." N E X T_P A G E .|. Why the early adopters went bonkers