"...but any track you purchase in the new format is instantly watermarked with your username and e-mail address."

Your name and account information is not "watermarked." An audio watermark is a specific technology that inserts hopefully inaudible data directly into audio bitstream for recovery by that specific watermark detector. Real audio watermarks are designed to survive various audio conversions and processing that may later be done to the file.

What Apple is doing is not watermarking; they are simply embedding account information into the header of the file as metadata tags, which by the way, they have always done for purchased tracks. It wasn't a problem for years, so why is it a problem now?

I would suggest that if you are going to report and comment on technology, you might want to actually learn about the various relevant technologies first instead of echoing what you hear on other website that may or may not know what they are talking about. After all, we come to Salon for original analysis, not to hear a game of telephone.

"...In short, you don't expect the product you buy to customize itself invisibly when you buy it."

It's not customized "invisibly." As stated many times before, Apple has embedded this information in all purchased tracks for years. If you want to see the info, just right click on the track and choose "Get info". This is how it works on a Mac and it probably works similarly on a PC.

So what is invisible?

Sure nabalzbbfr.... that's why Hunthorse referred to him as Hussein Obama. That has nothing to do with racism, right?

I see that reading comprehension is not one of your skills.

Glenn said:

Just imagine if Obama had issued a statement similar to McCain's with regard to Farrakhan: "I am very proud of Minister Louis Farrakhan's spiritual leadership to thousands of people" and "don't have to agree with everyone who endorses my candidacy. I'm still 'honored" to have his support."

Do you see the part of the sentence that says "JUST IMAGINE"?

Hedges makes the classic mistake of assuming atheists have some sort of organized faith-based belief structure that is similar to Fundamentalism. Nothing can be further from the truth. The defining characteristic of atheism is the lack of belief in a deity, with the substitution of a naturalistic, evidence-based philosophy in its place.

Anything that is outside of that particular definition is not atheism. It might be politics or polemics, but it's not atheism.

Then to prove his "point" he picks three prominent atheists, one of whom he ignores because "he's British," the second he calls "shallow" and the third, "amoral," offering no evidence to back any of this up.

The main reason why atheists are speaking up is that they are tired of:

- having religion forced down their throat

- having societies' decisions being made, or budgets spent, on faith-based (as opposed to evidence-based) fiascos.

- having religion as a litmus test for almost any public endeavor

Most atheists don't give a crap what other people believe; if you want to believe in fairies or unicorns or deities, that's fine. Just don't try to legislate your beliefs or ram them into public schools, or fly planes into our buildings.

Shooter said:

For instance, nearly everyone here thought invading Iran was a done deal. They were wrong

There is a big difference between thinking that an event might happen, and actively advocating the event. Some people thought that this crazy administration might try to launch airstrikes against Iran. That didn't happen, for a variety of reasons (the Iran NIE threw a blanket on those plans) Nobody here was advocating a strike on Iran. See the difference?

Most people were on board for invading Afghanistan and it's not looking so good these days. Does that counter the support of invading Iraq? How does one condone invading one country, while considering the invasion of another anathema?

It is widely accepted that Afghanistan and its Taliban government were giving safe harbor to Al Qaeda and bin Laden, and thus were responsible for 9/11. Iraq, however, had nothing to do with 9/11. See the difference? Also, do you think there is any connection with the lack of military resources available for Afghanistan, and the bulk of our ground forces being stuck in Iraq for 5 years?

Do we examine the bona fides of those that said the Iraq elections would be a sham or even non-existent?

The Iraqi election were a sham. They were intended to unite the Iraqis. The Sunnis boycotted them, remember? The nation descended into civil war. Ring a bell?

How about those that got the surge effort wrong?

Most criticized the surge because it had no corresponding political effort to stabilize the country. And that is exactly what has happened. The surge was a tactic to reduce violence. The strategy was supposed to be political reconciliation. The strategy failed.

More importantly, where are the predictions for what happens if/when we pull out? Personally I think civil war will resume and Iran will take over a large portion of Iraq.

Everybody thinks that civil war will resume. We can only stop people from fighting temporarily. The argument is that Americans should not be giving their lives in a futile attempt to prevent two factions from killing each other. It's gonna happen whether we stay or we leave. It will take at least a generation for things to change. Iran became a player in the region because the US failed to stabilize Iraq in the first six months. Some bells cannot be unrung. So the borders might change. They have in the past, and they will again.