The US isn't the only nation with terrible copyright laws

Move over, Joe Biden.  New Zealand just went you one better.  The NZ Parliament has rolled over for the RIANZ (the Kiwi equivalent of RIAA), and passed a harsh new copyright law.

Here in the US, the RIAA accuses people of content piracy and drags them into court all the time ... but they still have to prove their allegations in court.  (Though even the RIAA have recently acknowledged that perhaps sueing their own market perhaps might not have been the best business plan.)  But under New Zealand's Copyright Amendment Act 2008, Section 92A and 92C, you're guilty if accused — and if you're accused, your ISP (which, in New Zealand, now means ANYONE who provides you with Internet service) is required by the new law to cut off your Internet service.

Partition Magic++

So, who knows Powerquest — now Symantec — Partition Manager?

Nice tool, huh?  But not too cheap.  And it barfs on Vista-created partitions.  And certain types of partition table ... non-compliancies will cause it to barf in the same way.¹  (It can in theory fix these non-compliancies, but only if you boot from a rescue disk.)  And none of these problems are ever going to be fixed, because after Symantec bought Partition Magic from Powerquest in 2003, the first thing they did was freeze it.  They have never released a single upgrade since they bought it, and have declared that they never intend to do so.  In effect, they bought it to EOL it ... but they keep on selling the obsolete version anyway.

I discovered an alternative today:  EASEUS Partition Manager.  It's almost a functional clone of Partition Magic 8, as long as you don't need it to recognize non-Windows partitions ... except that it works on Vista partitions.  And doesn't crash on XP's non-conforming partition tables.  (In fact, it automatically fixes the problems the first time you do anything to the affected partition.)

And best of all, the Home Edition — for personal use — is free.

[1]  Hands up anyone who's surprised that Windows XP writes partition tables that do not fully comply with the standard partition table spec.