The King of Pointland

P0wned by Sony

I'm a pretty loyal Sony customer and have been for some time. I own several Sony radios and a fairly expensive Sony digital camera. When I recently helped my girlfriend select a TV, I recommended a Sony. If somebody wants to know what DVD player to buy, I'll tell them to get a Sony. Were you to ask me for a good name for your newborn male child, I would suggest that you name him Sony McSonycutty, even if your surname were not McSonycutty.

Until now.

Here's the deal. When the writers of malicious software (viruses, trojans, bots, etc.) want to hide their program on your computer — so that you can't see it in the file explorer, in the list of running programs, etc. — they use something called a rootkit. Rootkits modify your operating system so that it lies to you about what's on your PC. They are difficult to detect, and difficult to remove.

It now appears that certain CDs sold by Sony Music use a rootkit to hide the Digital Rights Management (DRM) software they install to prevent you from doing perfectly legitimate things like transferring your music to your iPod.

Look at the mess this guy had to go through to a) realize he had been tricked into putting a rootkit on his PC and b) remove it.

I'm the kind of person who feels bad about copying CDs. If somebody asks me to burn them an album, I'll sometimes buy the CD as a gift so the artist can make some money (i.e., a small fraction of the retail price). And now we see how Sony rewards their customers, people who chose to purchase music rather than copy it from the net. Next time, perhaps, I'll find another way to obtain the album, and mail the artist a check, or a Denny's gift certificate, or something, instead.

Black Bored

In the hallway of the Engineering building, for many months, a blackboard has been sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall. At some point, somebody wrote "How long do I have to keep looking at this?"

Recently, a response appeared:

"Until you CONFESS!!!"

I can't stop laughing. I don't know why.

Seven Hundred Sixty Eight

Open up your cellyphone and send a text message to Google (GOOGL = 46645) or Yahoo (YAHOO = 92466) to search for stuff . . . on the go! How many teaspoons are in a galloon? Answer this burning question in mere seconds ("gallon in teaspoons")! Learn what words mean ("define prolix")! Get the weather in Akiachak, Alaska ("w 99551"). And, as required by law, locate the nearest pizza place ("pizza 08625").

The results aren't always what you might hope for. A Google search on "porn 20500" gives only one entry, for the "Maryland Coalition Agnst [sic] Porno."

At one point I was vaguely aware that you could do this, but an article in the Sunday Post reminded me.