Geek On The Mountain

How scary is this? Sony BMG has something to the tune of 20 CD’s they’ve shipped since march that have a copy protection scheme that functions much like a rootkit and spyware. The software itself is designed to stop you from making more than a certain number of copies of the CD. The kicker is that a second program is also run that serves to hide both programs from the user.

This sounds almost harmless until you take a couple of other things into account. First of all, the software installs itself when you put in the CD and it pretends to install an audio player (a good reason to disable autorun) and fails to make clear what it is actually doing. This is something spyware/malware does all the time. Also, by user, I mean administrator. Once installed, no user on the computer has the ability to see the programs. It actually alters what explorer will show to you. This is a technique used by rootkits, which are programs used to take control of a system. The service for the hiding program even calls itself “Plug and Play Device Manager”….nice.

To make matters worse, there’s no easy way to uninstall the program. Apparently, if you just delete the files, your whole system will crash. And for the real cherry on top, the hiding program doesn’t just allow the copy-limiting program to be hidden. Any file that starts with “$sys$” becomes hidden to the system. This is a security hole that can allow any other program to hide itself. The PR would just be great if a virus went around that exploited that hole…

Obviously, the easiest way to tell if you’ve got it is to just make a copy of a file and then rename it so it starts with “$sys$”. If it disappears, you’re infected.

The register has a couple of articles and Freedom To Tinker offers some good info as well. The anti-virus company F-Secure has a blog that has into on their work as well as a screenshot of the installer. You’ll find a link buried in there somewhere for a way to contact Sony BMG and ask them to provide an uninstaller if you’re infected. F-Secure also has a link to a beta version of their rootkit detector that will find the programs (although you don’t wan’t to use it to remove it, as it will mess things up)

So on the upside, the software itself isn’t harmful or self-replicating or anything like that. On the downside, it leaves a security hole open, installs itself covertly, and of course wastes a small amount of system resources (unless the consumer wants the software, but what consumer would want the software?). The most bothersome thing to me is the hidden nature of the thing. It goes to some lengths to try to take some portion of the control of your computer away from you. I’ve always held the belief that the user should ultimately have control his or her own box. Silly me.

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I haven’t felt much like writing the past few days. My blogging mind keeps on rolling though, so I keep on coming up with things and running through outlines in my head. At this point, it’s easiest to just write down one big jumble. So consider yourself warned..

Firefox (the cat, not the browser) had to have surgery last week. He had been having problems with an infected eye. We had been giving him some homeopathic crap which seemed to be helping (the swelling on his inner eyelid had noticeably decreased). Then suddenly, his whole eye swelled up quite badly a week ago from last Friday. This was labor day weekend, and apparently our vet didn’t want to bother answering pages for emergency service, so we couldn’t do anything for him until Monday (I’m not sure if it would have mattered or not though). He had to have the eye removed. He’s doing fine now, although he looks weird, not so much because he’s missing an eye, but because one side of his face (including whiskers) has been shaved and the other hasn’t. He’ll look pretty much normal once his hair grows back. The situation sucks really, but I’m just glad he didn’t die or anything.

In case you missed the news last week, they released a report on the data received from Deep Impact, the probe NASA sent to investigate a comet. What they found was quite interesting. Instead of what we expected to find, a ball of ice, there was more of a ball of snow. They found that there was no ice present in any size larger than small pieces. They’re saying that it is more like a snowball, or a ball of dust, and a ball of ice. The funny thing here is that the ESA launched a probe last year that’s due to land on a comet in 2014. If the findings from deep impact are consistent amongst all comets, the probe is going to be wasted as it is supposed to land on the surface of the comet. That is to say, if there is no solid surface to land on, the probe will just sink into the comet.

I picked up a copy of Staind’s Chapter V last week as well. Although it’s a bit on the light side (meaning I’d classify it as plain old rock, mind you), it’s pretty good. I had to listen to it a few times to really get into it (although that’s normal really..), but there are definitely some catchy songs on there. I would think anyone who liked 14 Shades of Grey would like this disc just as well.

The Simpsons started off their new season earlier than they have in some time this year. It’s been years since they’ve started before November (sometimes even showing the Halloween special AFTER Halloween… even if it falls on a Sunday during their time slot!). Fox is trying to get a jump on everyone else this year. The episode…..was OK. Homer looses a bunch of money betting on Football games (again). Of course, he was betting money he had borrowed from Fat Tony and when he couldn’t pay him back he had to agree to let Fat Tony use the house to make an “Adult Film”….Lemony Licket: A series of horny events. The rest of the show is all about Manatees….it was an OK episode. It had it’s moments. It’s nice to see a 17th season..

I finally got around to watching the last episode of The 4400 (I probably would have watched it sooner, but I basically knew what was going to happen). It was pretty good, and it set up what should probably be an interesting season 3 (if < 10 episodes really counts as a season I guess). And, as if the show weren't enough like a soap opera as is, we find at the end that one character, who was just a baby, is suddenly a teen-ager. I suspect they'll explain it though, rather than pretending that it's just normal.

Football is finally starting. There've been pre-season games for the last month or so, but it's just not the same. Maybe the Lions will do well this year. Probably not though. No team has ever played in a Super Bowl in their own stadium. I'm sure this year won't be an exception. Detroit is a truly crappy club. They haven't won a championship since the 50's, before they joined the leagues and starting playing Super Bowls. They currently hold a record for most games lost over the past 4 or 5 seasons. They've had some good teams over the years, but there always tends to be some critically weak link that holds them back. Most notably, they can never seem to get a good QB. Their current one, Harrington, is OK at best. When he's having a good game, he's truly an asset. The problem is that every other game, he's totally off and they're just screwed. Last year a significant portion of their offense was just returning kicks for TD's. It was pretty sad. On the up side though, they just killed Green Bay last night. It was actually a fairly even match-up for a while, but Favre was having a bad day for sure which of course helped immensely. They actually held GB to only 3 points, which is apparently the fist time they've had such a low score with Favre starting since 1992. Not bad…The Lions have a LOT of young talent right now. Hopefully they can turn it into at least a first round playoff game.

I also noticed yesterday that the Pentagon revised our nuclear strike plan to include use of nukes for going after terrorists (to stop an attack, that is) and to destroy WMD. Although I can say that it’s understandable, I can’t really say that using nukes, ever, is really a good idea. There tend to be these side effects, you see… I read an article in Popular Science a month or two back about nuclear bunker buster bombs. (this online article is nowhere near as detailed as the one I read in the mag). I see as well that they have links to a blast effects calculator and a fallout calculator. I in find it’s most interesting to put the blast on familiar geography….I placed it on the east coast, and with a 15 mph wind, a swath of land nearly the width of Virginia was in the “recommended evacuation” area. Nice.

Finally, iTunes 5.0 was released and they’ve somehow managed to make it even uglier than the last version. Things just don’t flow as well. It’s also rather odd, because they’ve actually put the menubar into the titlebar (which works because the title text is always centered in the bar and not left justified. On the upside, the “status box”, that’s my word for the thing in the middle of the upper part of the window that actually tells you what’s going on….what’s playing, what’s importing, what’s burning, etc., has gotten bigger and they seem to put more information in there. I can hardly believe Apple decided to ruing their “simple” design by putting more useful information in the interface, but they did. What will they think of next?

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About a month a go I picked up a copy of Endless Blue’s self titled album. I usually stick to metal almost exclusively (though I do like many things), so this is a bit out of character for me. They seem to put themselves into the genre of trip-hop, which I had never heard of (seems it’s been around since the mid 90’s though). It’s basically electronic with a heavy beat and generally a somewhat slower, mellower pace then what I’d normally think of when music is described with the above qualities. It doesn’t hurt that, imo, the singer’s voice has a somewhat mesmerizing quality in general.

I first heard this stuff while watching an episode of The Scene. Endless Blue’s music is played in the third episode. Two of the featured songs, 99 and Down, can be downloaded from their site. Those are two of the best songs on the album….I also find the first track, September, quite catchy.

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In case you missed the news, Sony BMG has admitted to giving payola to radio stations.
Eliot Spitzer says it best:

…instead of airing music based upon the quality, based upon artistic competition, based upon aesthetic judgments or other judgments that are being made by radio stations — radio stations are airing music because they have been paid to do so in a way that has not been disclosed to the public. This is wrong, and it is illegal.

Basically, Sony BMG was paying radio stations to play their artist’s music. They even went so far as to have interns and outside firms that they’d hired call in and make requests to boost their artists.

I know how you feel here. I too was shocked to hear that one of my favorite, consumer oriented, and just all around caring record companies would participate in such an activity. (In case you haven’t been following the record company’s anti-piracy efforts over the years, it’s quite evident that they really, really, don’t care what they do and who they do it to in order to get their way. )

At least they’re being fined $10 million for their troubles.

Oh, and don’t forget the radio stations as well. It’s hard to say what ones were involved (since I haven’t bothered to try and look.. ), but they’re pretty much just as bad. Any station that was involved in this proves that they don’t care what their listeners want to hear.

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You may have noticed the section in my sidebar marked “Last Played”. It shows an album cover, the artist, song title, and the number of times I’ve played the song. The image is also a link to amazon. I set this up using Brandon Fuller’s Now Playing plugin for iTunes. Basically, the plugin outputs information about what’s playing to an XML file and then uploads it to the site. On the site, there’s a PHP file that parses the XML data and outputs what you see. How to do it is all explained on the site. He provides the PHP file to parse the XML and then leaves it to you to create the output. It’s pretty easy to setup.

There were only two things I did to the file that is even slightly interesting. (Read the article)

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