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.

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.

Tonight, my bestest friend EVER, Jess, upgraded Woody (the little machine that you all have come to know and love as this server) with a new kernel.

Now… for the first time ever (and only a friggin’ year after she was put into production), both processors are running.

Yup… dual AMD MP 2800+ bizzaches…. hummin’ away in unison. All hot and sweaty and glistening and…. um… if you need me, I’ll be in the bathroom.

Damn… now I gotta… um… process somethin’ and stuffs.

Oh… and I fixed my Tivo (only took 6 hours yesterday and another 5 today).

Yup…. accomplishment feels spiffy.

Oh… and on one final note: I ordered Firefly – The complete Series from Amazon a couple weeks ago. When it came, I discovered, much to my dismay, that it was bundled as an “OMG SUPER DUPER LIMITED EDITION”, with two coppies of DVD #2 and no coppies of DVD #4. Amazon (God bless ’em), is sending a new box set out and it should be here on Wednesday.

As anyone who has ever known anything about me will attest… I collect domain names.

I like to buy them, start grand projects of monumentally humorous design… then walk way when something shiny or with breasts presents itself to me.

But this time is different.

I purchased a new domain earlier in the week and set about getting the DNS and MX records done. It’s gone live… and I’m actually using it!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you:

Sure… it’s my forum, but damn… that’s a snappy name! (and perfectly apt for a forum).

I’ve been going through my stats looking for other pages where the authors feel justified in hotlinking.

WARNING!! Sharp learning curve ahead!!

Exibit A

Exibit B (page fixed… this is a screenshot)

I could have been far nastier with what I put up there, but I’m feeling all generous and stuff today. Tomorrow might well be a different story.

Seriously kids… choose life.