...for those "heavier days."

It's been extremely busy of late, mostly due to to my ever increasing workload. I'm working 7-3 as a nurse's assistant at a local hospital, and when it is called for, I'm pulling 4-9 or 4-close at Circuit City, working at the front desk. On top of that, I'm working weekends (or whatever days I happen to have off) on a top secret web design project.

In site related news, I may have found a way to make Firefox realize my site can be livebookmarked. So if you happen to be into that sort of thing, and there's a good chance you are, try it out. I'm going to hopefully make it happen in just a few minutes.

Well, it looks like the Italians aren't the only ones suing Sony for their dirty DRM tricks. Now we've got states in on it. California should have a pretty solid case.

The suit alleges that Sony's software violates at least three California statutes, including the "Consumer Legal Remedies Act," which governs unfair and/or deceptive trade acts; and the "Consumer Protection against Computer Spyware Act," which prohibits -- among other things -- software that takes control over the user's computer or misrepresents the user's ability or right to uninstall the program. The suit also alleges that Sony's actions violate the California Unfair Competition law, which allows public prosecutors and private citizens to file lawsuits to protect businesses and consumers from unfair business practices.

And don't worry, it looks like New York might get in on it. You know how New York hates to be behind on trends (Same article):

Scott Kamber, an attorney in New York, said he plans on Wednesday to file class-action suits targeting Sony under both New York consumer protection statutes and a federal criminal statute that allows civil actions.
"This situation is particularly egregious and surprising from a company that should be familiar with concerns people have with programs crashing their Windows computers," Kamber said. "What Sony is saying with this software is that 'Our intellectual property is more deserving of protection than your intellectual property,' and Sony can't be allowed to get away with that."

All of this comes on the heels of news that the Sony DRM rootkit has been exploited to mask a trojan.

Sony-BMG's rootkit DRM technology masks files whose filenames start with "$sys$". A newly-discovered variant of of the Breplibot Trojan takes advantage of this to drop the file "$sys$drv.exe" in the Windows system directory.

Now who didn't see that coming?

Oh, what's that you say? The First 4 Internet CEO, who is responsible for the DRM software in question? Who, regarding the security of the software said this:

"What we decided to do is take extra precautionary steps to allay any fears," said Mathew Gilliat-Smith, First 4 Internet's CEO. "There should be no concern here."

No concern. Hm. That thought is more irresponsible than Kansas' thoughts about intelligent design.

Italians to Sony: "The only corruption we like is our own."

Get it? A shameless smack at both Sony and the Mob. Two for the price of one.

Under the guise of protecting businesses and personal information, the politicians in Westchester County, New York, have decided to try passing a law trying to force businesses and home offices to secure their wireless networks.

Politicians in Westchester County are urging adoption of the law--which appears to be the first such legislation in the U.S.--because without it, "somebody parked in the street or sitting in a neighboring building could hack into the network and steal your most confidential data," County Executive Andy Spano said in a statement.

The draft proposal offered this week would compel all "commercial businesses" with an open wireless access point to have a "network gateway server" outfitted with a software or hardware firewall. Such a firewall, used to block intrusions from outside the local network, would be required even for a coffee shop that used an old-fashioned cash register instead of an Internet-linked credit card system that could be vulnerable to intrusions.

I'd like to say this sounds good in theory, but after the slightest bit of consideration it's easy to see that this is not a good law. Not only is it restrictive of a service for which people pay, but how do they plan to enforce it? They're going to send police patrols wardriving into upscale neighborhoods with home offices, when real actual crime goes on elsewhere?

Don't even get me started on regulating how a business or person decides to use his or her Internet. If I want to run an AP wide open so that anyone parked outside can use it, I should be allowed to, even if I do run a business from home. The government shouldn't legislate me into buying more equipment to do so. It's my money, my service and my network.

If they're trying this for some sort of warning to the public at large, regarding the insecurity of their wireless APs, then there's a better and more legitimate way to do it. That's called the Public Service Announcement. "Lock down your wireless." There. That's catchy enough. Run radio ads, run TV ads, run paper ads, but for God's sake, don't bring the law into it.

Absolutely ridiculous.

Sony got caught with their hands in the cookie jar, and are making strides to rectify their errors, says Wired.com (Second story).

Sony backpeddles -- fast: After a chorus of criticism, Sony's music division is distributing a free software patch to reveal hidden files that automatically installed to hard drives when some of its music CDs were played on personal computers.

The offending technology was designed to thwart music piracy.

Sony BMG Music Entertainment and its partner, Britain's First 4 Internet, said they decided to offer the patch as a precaution, not because of any security vulnerability, which some critics had alleged.

"What we decided to do is take extra precautionary steps to allay any fears," said Mathew Gilliat-Smith, First 4 Internet's CEO. "There should be no concern here."

In my mind, the damage is already done. I'll find other ways to get Sony's music that doesn't involve running their CDs on my PC. Namely, iTunes. I like how nonchalant the CEO was. "There should be no concern here." He's right. There shouldn't be any concern. There never should've been, as his software shouldn't have even been on there in the first place.

Well, the best solution now is just not to buy Sony CDs anymore. Or any CDs for that matter.

I don't think they will. And if they don't, I simply won't buy CDs anymore. Period. From any publisher. And I recommend that you don't, either. As a fan of music who respects the need for artists to make a living, and a security-savvy PC user, I'm incensed that Sony -- any company -- would think it's OK to do this. It's not. But the only way (I can see) to send that message effectively to Sony BMG executives is to vote against CDs with my wallet.

- Andrew Brandt

The hubub is of course, that Sony's CDs DRM installs rootkits onto your PC, burying themselves deep into your OS, undetectable by antivirus and unremoveable without consequence (as learned by Mark Russinovich:)

I deleted the driver files and their Registry keys, stopped the $sys$DRMServer service and deleted its image, and rebooted. As I was deleting the driver Registry keys under HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services I noted that they were either configured as boot-start drivers or members of groups listed by name in the HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot subkeys, which means that they load even in Safe Mode, making system recovery extremely difficult if any of them have a bug that prevents the system from booting.

When I logged in again I discovered that the CD drive was missing from Explorer. Deleting the drivers had disabled the CD.

I've always been fussy about the security of my PC. Few things bother me more than software installing either automatically, or installing other software. Such is the case with many instances of spyware. Spyware is bad enough, but generally you can get it off if you spend enough time on it. The rootkit you can't even remove, without damaging your Windows install. And on top of it, the rootkit is poorly written enough that it presents a significant security risk for viruses.

Dell is having trouble lately. They just recently posted that they didn't meet expectations for the second quarter in a row. Dell looks to me to be scrambling to figure out how to keep sales up and margins up, all without actually understanding why people don't like them anymore.

Dell's descent from computer sales giant has been a gradual process. My first experiences with Dell were 4 years ago, working as a support technician at Utica College. I routinely had to make calls to their support division in instances of hardware failure (catastrophic or otherwise). I remember distictly one call where an onboard Ethernet port had gone and I relayed to the tech exactly what I did to diagnose the problem. He sided with me in short order and sent a tech out the next day to swap motherboards the next day.

Fast forward three or four years. My support call ends up somewhere in India. I don't have a problem with Indians taking tech support calls, but I do have a problem when it's obvious I know more than the techie I'm talking to on the phone. Being asked to repeat everything I've already done while on the phone is just absurd. Hearing pages turn so that the techie can get to "your problem" is bogus, no way around it.

It wasn't long before Dell's support services for business and education came back to the United States. It seems I wasn't the only person fed up with that kind of tech support.

Today, Dell's home division still provides customer support out of India. And consequently, it seems anyone I hear talk about Dell hates their customer service/support. I know I don't tell anyone to buy Dell anymore. I used to recommend them emphatically.

Dell has been doing things like removing the Intel and Windows XP stickers from their computers during assembly, hoping to save margins. They offer "Free Delivery" but not "Free Home Delivery." (The package is delivered to the Post Office, where you go to pick it up). What they don't realize is that treating the symptoms isn't going to help their company. The problem is more fundamental than they realize. You cannot have a company with a weak support division.

Finally, an LCD that would make Bender happy. And sometimes it doesn't even use power.

Blame Fujistu for this miracle of modern technology.

For now you're going to have to wait, they're expecting 2 to 3 years of further development before it hits the market. Practical apps would probably include things like e-paper, where you don't need changing info. Other places it might be useful is in devices like iPods, where you could have static parts of the display. Seems like it could be useful.