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Best of Giz Explains 2008: Stuff You Absolutely Need to Know
Posted by Matt Buchanan at 6:00 AM on December 25, 2008
I hope you guys learned as much reading Giz Explains this year as I did writing them. Here are the best, the ones explaining stuff you absolutely must know.

Condensed explanation: Digital rights management is a corporate pain in the arse that stops you from doing whatever you want with music and movies in the name of fighting piracy. But there's more to it.
Some say that the end of the trusty hard drive is near, killed by SSD. But let's not be so quick to give up on a technology that stores a whole terabyte for $US100.
Mac OS X, mythically immune to common computer plagues, has actually always
Last week, you probably noticed new computers from
Once upon time, video codecs and formats were really only the concern of AV nerds, anime freaks and hardcore not-so-legal movie downloaders. Now, even the most part-time of geeks has to deal with them, whether they're trying to stream a flick across their house with an Apple TV, dump some video onto their phone or just trying to grab last night's episode of Dexter because they, uh, forgot to renew their Showtime subscription that'll work in their media player. It's messy and annoying, but we're here to clean it up. Take a deep breath.
Last week,
The phrase "64-bit" has been tossed around lately, the most it's been since the Nintendo 64. If you haven't heard it, pay attention. One of the most important steps forward in computer power is happening right under your nose, but most people don't know thanks to the sneaky efforts of Microsoft and Apple. Though fully 64-bit operating systems are the OSes of tomorrow, you can taste some of that power today with 64-bit versions of Windows and OS X. Here's why 64-bit computing is so awesome:
