Scary thought but TRUE

You may not be interested in the digital rights war, but that doesn't mean you'll have the luxury of sitting on the sidelines. Because the other side is very, very interested in you.

Zap You!

A new post for the first time in ages. This guy has way too much time on his hands but it's funny. Solar Death Ray

Sweet sorta success

I'd be shouting it from the rooftop, but I lost my ladder. Sony has recalled all the infected CDs, or at least says they have. I'll check out Wal-Mart this afternoon. This is a minor victory though - they make no promises they won't try this again. I only hope all the lawsuits spread out to include any dangerous copy protection. The surest way to make a criminal out of an honest person is to treat them like a criminal.

Notice the link to "The Egg" at right. Quirky, truly GEEK internet radio. Woo Hoo! Jump in the carton!

They done broke it, canna they fix it?

Apparently NOT. I haven't tried the fix that Sony is offering for the mess it caused, and I won't - Lord knows what further havoc that might bestow on an already sick system. Besides that, getting their fix means I would have to give them my EMAIL ADDRESS! WHF? Are they going to add insult to injury by SPAMMING US? I DO have a fix now that stops short of wiping the hard disk clean, but it involves editing the registry keys, temporarily disabling the CD-ROM drive, and multiple re-boots. Certainly not for the novice and I won't post it lest Mr Six-Pack screw up his system even worse and then blame me. Take it to a professional or wait for the cure from the major anti-virus people. Even Micro$oft has one in the works. As far as I know, these are the only CDs affected:

— Trey Anastasio, Shine (Columbia)
— Celine Dion, On ne Change Pas (Epic)
— Neil Diamond, 12 Songs (Columbia)
— Our Lady Peace, Healthy in Paranoid Times (Columbia)
— Chris Botti, To Love Again (Columbia)
— Van Zant, Get Right with the Man (Columbia)
— Switchfoot, Nothing is Sound (Columbia)
— The Coral, The Invisible Invasion (Columbia)
— Acceptance, Phantoms (Columbia)
— Susie Suh, Susie Suh (Epic)
— Amerie, Touch (Columbia)
— Life of Agony, Broken Valley (Epic)
— Horace Silver Quintet, Silver's Blue (Epic Legacy)
— Gerry Mulligan, Jeru (Columbia Legacy)
— Dexter Gordon, Manhattan Symphonie (Columbia Legacy)
— The Bad Plus, Suspicious Activity (Columbia)
— The Dead 60s, The Dead 60s (Epic)
— Dion, The Essential Dion (Columbia Legacy)
— Natasha Bedingfield, Unwritten (Epic)
— Ricky Martin, Life (Columbia)

source: Electronic Frontier Foundation thanks, guys

I truly believe that few if any of these artists had anything to do with this, but they will feel the backlash. I haven't had time to visit most of their websites, but the Van Zants have devoted a whole page to apologies and what help they can give their fans to resolve this. A hell of a lot more than Sony has done.

Shame Sony discs don't make good Frisbee(tm) substitutes

Then there'd be one use for them. I have spent the last few days helping friends remove root kits from their machines. If you don't havea clue as to what I'm talking about you are blind, deaf, and can't Google something as simple as "Sony rootkit." Contrary to what the Sony goons say about this malicious (and futile) attempt at copy protection, I have verified these little tidbits with my own systems:1. It steals clock cycles from your CPU, slowing your system down.2. It "phones home" if you have a connection to the internet, supplying Sony with info on what music you are playing.3. It's "stealth technology" can easily be used to hide anything else, a virtual gold mine for the script kiddie hacker. Not that they need much help.4. It is difficult to remove, and any mistake in the attempt to do so can result in your cd-rom becoming unusable and/or your system crashing. Some friends have already had to completely re-install Windows from trying to do this themselves. In the case of two machines, we pulled out their hard disks, plugged them into one of my machines, copied important data, and then completely reformatted their drives.In every case I have had personal experience with, the infection apparently came from the new Van Zant cd. I applaud the Van Zant brothers for immediately posting about this on their site,http://www.thevanzants.com/ along with links to help you remove the software.More on this as the dust clears. The truth is in there.

Long Time

It's seems like a year since I have posted. All work and no play... Well, not entirely. Here's a spot for all you gear heads just in time for Christmas. http://emachineshop.com/ And I mean a full online machine shop at your fingertips. They even provide free CAD software and the list of available materials and shop tools borders on the ridiculous. Just design your part and order it. Wow, now you can build that 240 mph hybrid you've always dreamed of.

On a more down home level, an open source scalable vector graphics editor for the masses, and it even exports to POV-Ray!!!. http://www.inkscape.org/ Use this to design decals for the hybrid! Seriously, this is a very useful piece if software. It even includes an XML editor. Tutorials included, and lotsza online support.

Here Momma cat and I enjoying the beautiful Autumn weather. The trees have been particularly colorful this year.

My heart goes out to you

Just a little test to see if I could actually convince the Blogger software to do an animation. It sort of worked. It is animated but somehow the gif palette got a bit trashed in the process. Still. I am impressed by the ease with which I did this.