Is the high-definition DVD format war over? Reports say the Blu-ray format has won against the HD DVD format. Can I now buy a Blu-ray player, confident that all will be fine? Name and address supplied DQ: At the Consumer Electronics Show held in the United States in January, there was a tremendous buzz about this. The companies behind Blu-ray were thrilled with the decision by Hollywood studio Warner Bros to bring out films only in the Blu-ray format from this year. I believe the high-definition video format war is probably over but you should watch for flare-ups. Monitor the number of high-definition video discs you see in the shops and on the Web. If Blu-ray titles start to dominate, you can say the battle has been won. Check out the article 'Five reasons you shouldn't buy a Blu-ray player yet' at crave.cnet.com (click on Home Video). You can judge for yourself if the reasons laid out there are important. On the internet, I read a story about a billion-dollar deal that was leaked to the press because a lawyer allowed some e-mail software to fill in names automatically. The lawyer found out later that the name filled in by the program was not his client's name but that of a reporter. What should I do to prevent a similar mishap from happening to me? Gary, Pok Fu Lam DQ: Back in the days of sending faxes via computer, the same thing sometimes happened. You would write a fax, click on 'send to' and a list of names would pop up. Sometimes if you didn't check carefully, you would click on the name above or below the one you wanted. Most e-mail systems allow you to turn off the automatic filling in of names. If you are handling particularly sensitive material - such as the details of a billion-dollar transaction - you may wish to do this. However, typing in a name by hand can be equally dangerous. A friend of mine made a small mistake when sending a sensitive document and only afterwards discovered 'john.smith' and 'jsmith' were different people. My advice: when sending sensitive messages, look very carefully before hitting that send button.
