This week's letters and blog pingbacks in full

We don't have room in print for all your letters and blog pingbacks, but do here. Xboxes and Phorm got people worked up...

We don't have room in print for all your letters and blog pingbacks, but we do here. This week people were worked up about XBoxes and (inevitably?) Phorm. More on the clickthrough..

TIM WHISKERS Thank you for publishing the article on Tin Whiskers. This is something the public needs to understand. Too much attention has been given to well meaning people who are pushing the environmental agenda politically but with very little science behind what they are trying achieve. Almost all the lead used in industry is used in car batteries and there are good recycling programs for that lead. We now have programs to recycle electronics such as cell phones and that is a very good step forward,and should be the way we handle the lead problem. However some of the green community captured the public attention and pushed through the no lead on electronics, when there was not sufficient test data available (actually there was a lot of data on US Military aircraft) . Now we are finding the problems of having a political agenda and not one based on science and facts. One small problem the no lead people have not address is the increased amount of energy used to process the electronic parts that use no lead. All the processing ovens in the world have had to be changed out or modified so they can run 60 deg C higher. While this might not sound a lot, just think of thousands of ovens running 24 hours a day consuming electricity, which is probably generated by coal. So to get the lead out of electronics we burn millions of Kilograms of coal, that pollutes our skies. Steven J. Adamson, President IMAPS, Market Manager, Asymtek

>> Amazing how doing the right thing can turn out to have a downside.

NEUROMARKETING >> Budweiser doesn't make me more popular with the ladies, nor the life of the party (unless the lady is a urinal, and the party is the hopping mens room culture). Car X doesn't make me a sexy, rich, race car driver. Nikes and Gatorade don't make me any less of a nonathletic geek. And the last time I drank a liquor that was advertised I didn't get suave, unless suave really means rowdy, sweaty, and hitting on fat chicks. Advertising usually goes for cheap psychological gimmicks, rather than actually explaining why Pepsi is better than Coke, or telling me why a crappy plastic mop is better than the one I own. In short, they lie. Advertising is just manipulation, and I, for one, do not like to be manipulated.

>> It's an interesting study, but it doesn't really help marketers. Not least because it's a lab task, and no money was involved, but also because the benchmark to which brain activity was compared was what people said they'd buy. In other words, the 'gold standard' to which the other evidence was compared in this study, was simply asking people what they'd buy - no different to what traditional market research already does.

XBOX >> There's no doubt that Microsoft intends on backing digital distribution, and has done so for quite some time. But with the way he suggests that disc formats will be looked at as being so irrelevant within the next 18 months, why did Microsoft ever bother with HD DVD? So we could all have a worthless add on once digital distribution becomes the blatantly obvious platform of choice.

>> That little HD DVD experiment was pricey! But when you are Microsoft, what are trivial things like money? Nothing! Just look how smug Xbox 360 UK boss Neil Thompson is. Think the death of HD-DVD keeps him up at night? No way. This guy sleeps like a baby. No, he sleeps like two babies.

>> Fine, sir. Thanks. Game Guy's glad your heart is in the right place. Now, how about Microsoft's quality control? Game Guy's on his fourth XBox 360. The previous three died leaving a red ring of death to mark their passing. But he's among the lucky ones; some heavy-duty Xbox users have casualty lists reaching into double digits. In the time Game Guy has gone through four Xboxes, he has had one Sony PlayStation 3, one Nintendo Wii. And now, with Mr. Thompson offering only apologies, Game Guy has one more good reason to avoid Xbox.

>> I will agree that online distribution is the future, but it's a future that's ten years distant.

CRITICISING PHORM AND APPLE A good piece, but perhaps you've still missed the point that Phorm can't do very much about their bad PR because Phorm is an inherently bad idea. If I meet someone who wants to mug me on a darkened street one night, then having him explain beforehand exactly how he proposes to mug me isn't going to make me one whit happier about the idea. And so it is with Phorm. While we might not know the exact technical details, I think it's undeniably clear that they propose to look over my shoulder at every web page I read. Even if (thankfully) they can't read the https ones. But what if I didn't mind this, and gave my consent as a customer for them to do this? That still leaves the other end of the connection - those website providers whose carefully crafted pages I have chosen to visit. And because I have chosen to visit them, those pages will be data-raped by Phorm for keywords. Just so that Phorm's advertisers, whose sites probably compete with the one I visited, but aren't attractive enough, or high profile enough, can have another way to try to reach me. If you had invested time, effort and care in building a good website, only to have that happen without your permission, and possibly even without your knowledge, how would that make you feel? Not good, I know. Now, the Guardian, in a most praiseworthy way, have decided you want none of this. Kudos to you. Bur apart from The Guardian, what happened to our major institutions eschewing things that were merely immoral? Let alone caring that Phorm is probably illegal; do I detect the shade of Richard Nixon here? Roy Brown, London

I applaud the Guardian Group's decision to have nothing to do with traffic intercept technology. This system is a direct intrusion into customer's privacy and, if allowed, will totally alter the direction in which the internet develops. It raises so many questions on a most basic level about who decides what users see or where they might go on the net. As a Virgin Media and a TalkTalk customer I am concerned. Simon Atyeo, London

>> In a move reminiscent of Pontius Pilot, TalkTalk are playing the "we're just the conduit card and the security of your digital property is nothing to do with us" card. Okay, well I can sort of accept that especially since the music industry doesn't seem to be coughing up the requisite greenbacks to fund an army of net-watches. And yet here we have BT spying on all of our browsing habits in order to target us with specific advertising. That's the same bloody thing isn't it? Oh now I see what I missed - one of them costs money and the other one makes it.

>> Bummer. I kinda like BT.

SONOS POINTS Comparing US and UK/EU prices is always a complicated matter and never straightforward. The real alternative to the Sonos that will leave pennies in your pocket is the Squeezebox Duet. And the amount of power that the Sonos consumes in standby is about 5 watts. Otherwise a fair article. Alasdair Wilkie, Wokingham

I would be very interested to see a review of the competing Logitech Duet - cheaper and does much of the same stuff - but is it any good? John Davies, London [We'll try to get one - Tech. Ed]

VIRTUAL SPORTS >> Of course, the other view is that these gamers should be out playing real sport and developing real team spirit. But given 2012 is just around the corner, and the host nation is permitted to introduce a new sport, perhaps this is a chance for Britain to dominate in something other than rowing.

CELLUON LASER Your review of the Celluon laser keyboard (March 20th) was good but could have mentioned two useful extra points. 1. It doesn't currently work with the PlayStation3, which is a real shame. The PS3 occasionally cries out for a keyboard - eg when surfing on the browser - but you don't really want a big keyboard sitting in your living room on the coffee table, so a laser keyboard would have been ideal for occasional use. 2. BlackBerry users need to check before purchase their settings to see if Bluetooth devices are allowed [to do] keystroke injection. (Settings/advanced options/applications then edit default permissions option on any programme listed. Expand the interactions list, then check that keystroke injection is enabled.) Mine wasn't, my work IT couldn't be bothered to enable it (too much hassle, they said). I know have a lovely looking laser keyboard which works neither with my PS3 nor my BlackBerry. Such is the curse of the early adopter occasionally. Jim Frayling, London