Poor Rudolph Is Now Stuck In Folsom Prison

I wonder if the inmates are allowing him to join in any inmate games?

Play song [quicktime required]

Who Knew?

I always thought Michael Stipe just mumbled because, well, because he mumbled. Who knew that we were supposed to be paying to know the words?

I really do think this may be going a bit too far.

The internet download wars hotted up this week with one of the world's biggest music companies, Warner Chappell, leading a crackdown on websites that offer free song lyrics, scores and guitar licks.

OK, all of you who remember the words to that birthday one. . . into the Memory Eraser right now!

Executives at Warner Chappell are fed up with internet entrepreneurs "ripping off" songs - from perennial favourites such as Happy Birthday and Rhapsody in Blue to the music of Madonna and Sir Elton John.

This goes beyond reasonable protection of content and walks all over the entire world's right to use the internet as a repository for and a disseminator of information. Eventually, the internet as these people envision it, will be nothing more than one big place for them to sell people something, be it product, content, ideas or thought and woe unto anyone who crosses them.

The Music Publisher's Association (MPA), headed by a nice fellow named Lauren Keiser, is serious about their campaign which they intend to launch in 2006.

Mr Keiser said he did not just want to shut websites and impose fines, saying if authorities can "throw in some jail time I think we'll be a little more effective".

Right. That'll fix 'em. Lock them up for remembering the words to the songs and sharing them with others. Not like we have anything better to be doing with our jails and other law enforcement resources.

As Gilbert Gottfried says oh so well. . .
"Hey, Lauren Keiser, what the f*ck?"

Aw Geeze...

I mean, this really makes us look good in the eyes of the world. NOT.

BEIJING, Dec. 10 -- China will return three containers of substandard medical supplies donated by US charity organizations, which included stained bedding, used surgical clothes and expired equipment . . . Some of the medical equipment had a use-by date of 1998 . . . Dirty quilts and clothes were also found, the paper said.

I'm aware we need to find some place for this stuff to end up aside from the beaches of the East Coast but really. . .

A press official surnamed Shao from the national charity federation said it frequently received donations from around the world, but it was the first time it had received medical waste.

I just don't think this is good at all.

OK, So It Really Is Much Worse...

Back on November 15 I mentioned Sony's other DRM method, MediaMax from SunnComm in a post titled "It May Be Worse, Much Worse", and I quoted the excellent "Freedom To Tinker" blog like so:

What few people realize is that Sony uses another copy protection program, SunnComm’s MediaMax, on other discs in their catalog, and that this system presumably is not included in the moratorium. Though MediaMax doesn’t resort to concealing itself with a rootkit, it does behave in several ways that are characteristic of spyware.

So, not being one to indulge in any sort of "I told you so" type of gloating, it pains me to report that. . . err. . . I told you so. It is, apparently, much worse than anyone thought or could have even begun to believe. Not only has the SunnComm malware recently been shown to indeed open a security hole in the user's computer (and remember, this is also the users who actually clicked on "NO, DON'T INSTALL ANY OF THAT CRAP ON MY COMPUTER") but the patch recently released to close that hole does so while opening a second security hole of its own.

However, the day after the patch was released, Professor Ed Felten and Alex Halderman identified a new problem. We take any security problems identified by these security researched very seriously. They "recommend for now that if you have a Windows PC, you:

• do not use the MediaMax patch
  
• do not use the previously released MediaMax uninstaller, and
  
• do not insert a MediaMax-bearing CD into your PC."

Presumably if you are lucky enough to have previously bought and played one of these infected CDs on your computer you should now just not turn your computer on until such a time as Sony and their software suppliers get around to being responsible business persons and standing behind their products and their actions.

We should not be holding our breaths, folks.

How much longer do SONY expect anyone to continue to buy their products while they continue to demonstrate both a complete disinterest in the rights, desires and welfare of their customers and a complete ignorance of what exactly they are doing? Neither trait is representative of a company, particularly a technology based company, that I will personally choose to do any further business with. How much longer will the retailers responsible for foisting these products off on the consumer continue to stock this malware on their shelves? It was one thing for them to carry these Copy Protected CDs before all this came to light but for them to continue to carry this company's products in light of all this continuing mess certainly doesn't make me want to do any more business with them, either. SONY keeps saying "Oh, okay, this is the complete list of all the problem items" but has yet to release any sort of honest and comprehensive list or admission of any sort of guilt or culpability until after the fact. It is always "complete disclosure until we get caught some more."

I'm also wondering what undiscovered surprises all the other forms of DRM that are floating around and being delivered on other companies' products have in store for us.

More Unacceptable News On The SONY Front

Seems the New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office sent secret shoppers out to a number of stores to see if SONY are living up to their recent promise to pull malware infected CDs from retailers shelves. The results are not very good.

Spitzer's office sent investigators disguised as shoppers to several large music chains, including Virgin Megastore, FYE, Best Buy, Circuit City, Sam Goody, and Wal-Mart; the investigators were able to purchased copy-protected CDs at all the stores they visited.

They were also promised quick delivery of the CDs in question from 5 of 7 online retailers.

"It is unacceptable that more than three weeks after this serious vulnerability was revealed, these same CDs are still on shelves, during the busiest shopping days of the year," said Spitzer in a statement.

Yes, couldn't agree more. Apparently SONY forgets the big guy is making a list and checking it twice. . .

How Time Flies

I often wonder why so many blogs I look at seem to lie fallow for so long after a good beginning. I see now that it takes more effort to actually post daily than I thought it was going to. It seems like just a few days that I've not been here and have felt like I was just "too busy" or "just not inspired enough" to post anything but I see that it has actually been well over a week.

I have been a little busy, creating and putting a new website on line for a customer of my business, Captain's Designs, and I've still got some work to do on that site, mostly to try and get it to render correctly with Firefox as well as with IE, but I haven't been so busy I shouldn't had enough free time to put up a post or two.

I'm not sure if I can do any better, but I'll try.