If you’ve seen or read the news in the past week at all, you know that there’s a controversy over Sony/BMG’s decision to put what amounts to a virus on some of their music CD’s.

The kids at Electronic Frontier Foundation did some research on the issue and offered the following list of known CD’s to be infected (this is not a complete list):

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) (labeled as XCP, but, oddly, our disc had no protection)

If you choose to purchase one of the listed CD’s… a word of caution: DO NOT put it in a Windows PC unless you’ve disabled the auto-run feature (or hold down the shift key when you put the CD in, which does the same thing for that time only). If you use the shift key method, don’t attempt to browse the CD by double clicking on your CD-ROM, rather, right click on it and select “explore” to view its contents.

How to tell if a CD you’re attempting to purchase has this garbage on it: Look at the spine and the back. If you see the following… buyer beware!:

The spine of the CD will be labeled as such

Look on the back for this message (at the bottom)

To be totally safe, just do what I and a lot of other people are doing…. don’t purchase any CD’s from Sony/BMG. Send them a message: We’re not going to take this crap. They shouldn’t be beating those of us who actually purchase music with a stick.

This got posted on the forum and I just had to share!
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Wackiest web names ever

By JONATHAN WEINBERG

EVER done something then instantly regretted you didn’t check things out a little bit more closely!

Well, the people behind these websites must have been kicking themselves after buying this set of wacky domain names.

At first glance they might seem innocent enough, but have another read.

Who Represents?, a database for agencies to the rich and famous:
www.whorepresents.com

Experts Exchange, a knowledge base where programmers can exchange advice and views:
www.expertsexchange.com

Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island:
www.penisland.net

Need a therapist?
www.therapistfinder.com

Mole Station Native Nursery, based in New South Wales:
www.molestationnursery.com

New to Milan and you need electric light? Why not sign up on-line with Power-Gen?
www.powergenitalia.com
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What the hell were you thinking… installing what basically amounts to a rootkit on a music CD?

I understand that you want to target people who download music for free… but you’ve missed them and instead hit the people who actually BUY music. You’ve also angered them (judging by the comments left on Amazon’s website).

You’ve basically unleashed a trojan on the consumer. A virus that, in some cases, breaks the operating system of the user who purchased music from you.

This action will also have a negative impact on the artists that you’ve chosen to use to pedal this poison onto the consumer. People won’t buy it. Because of the changes you’ve made, the CD (and it cant’ really be called that because it goes against the CD standard, and I understand that Pillips has banned you from displaying the “CD” logo on it), it may not even play in a home or car CD player.

I, for one, will not be purchasing any music from Sony/BMG until they cease and desist from such actions against those of us who actually support the artists by paying for music, and I encourage everyone else out there to do the same.

To Amazon.com’s credit… at least they warn you that the music CD you’re about to buy has this kind of thing on it. How many titles are affected is uncertain, but a quick google says it’s a lot.

They’re doing a demo of one of our systems this week. That means that someone has to be here to support them with the server in case bad things happen.

That someone is me.

I don’t mind these kinds of things… this is what they pay me for. What I don’t like, though, is where the demo is taking place: the east coast.

This means that I need to be awake, at work, and ready to go at 8:00am Eastern.

Unfortunately… I live on the west coast.

So… the plan for the weekis: Sleep in the guest room so that when my alarm goes off at 3:00 am I don’t wake my wife. Brew half a pot of coffee. Get showered, shaved, and generally acceptable looking by 4:00am. Then scrap the ice off the windows of my car and get to work before 5.

wheeeee!

I’ve just spent the last 4 hours trying to install Windows 2000 Server on a Sony Vaio PCG-R505DCP laptop.

People… do yourself a favor… if you’re shopping for a laptop of any kind… skip on the Sony Vaio line.

Sure… they’re pretty, but if you’re looking to do anything other than keep it like it came out of the box, then this is probably not the machine for you. The Sony website is poor at best: No search function to find drivers or anything else for that matter, an unbelievably limited “common problems” section, and zero support for anything outside the worlds of Windows XP or 2000.

Their documentation and driver selection for the two OS’s they do support is horrible at best.

Ugh.

After several hours of pain, I’m down to three issues: one unknown device in the device mangler, no drivers for the memory stick slot (at least none that Windows 2000 Server can use), and an annoying error with the DMICALL not loading on boot (the .sys file that goes with the .inf and .vxd is missing and generating an error). Of course, it’s a Sony file… but where the hell do I find it on their website (and more specifically… get it installed)?

Unfortunately, this laptop is being shipped to a customer to use, and problems like that just can’t be.

I think I might “accidentally” drop it and convince my boss to ship them a ThinkPad instead.