Alex Reid

EFF Confirms Secret Software on 19 CDs

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says that some Sony-BMG CDs include a secret rootkit software when played on your computer. The software, created by First 4 Internet and known as XCP2, ostensibly “protects” the music from illegal copying. But really it blocks a number of legal uses–like listening to songs on your iPod. The software also reportedly slows down your computer and makes it more susceptible to crashes and third-party attacks. And since the program is designed to hide itself, users may have trouble diagnosing the problem. And Sony-BMG have no instructions how to remove it.

If you listened to a CD with the XCP software on your Windows PC, your computer is likely already infected. To view the growing list of infected CDs, click here. You can spot CDs with XCP by inspecting a CD closely by looking at the back of the CD like in the image above.

A million year ago – or in real time, July 2004 – I was stopped by an angry cop (Winnipeg Police Service officer #1849; Smith) who blantly made up a $105 traffic ticket to “teach [me] a lesson” because.. well, I’m not actually sure why.

I can’t express how upsetting this experience was in words; imagine the worst meathead bully pushing you around with a gun and openly bragging about how he can make up charges against you. Since I can’t do my experience justice right now, read about the angry Winnipeg cop here. I honestly think this angry cop was on steroids.

Anyway, George Wright, the commissioner at LERA (the Law Enforcement Review Agency) called me yesterday to tell me that they believe there is more than enough evidence to support that this officer used “oppressive conduct” and for being “discourteous”. Of course, the latter is a joke.

LERA asked me if I wanted to meet with angry cop, but I declined. What’s the point? He’s a liar (see what the traffic court judge said here) and he’s clearly vindicative. Would you meet with someone like this?

So, LERA has given angry cop 30 days to respond. He can either a) admit he’s a jerk or b) continue to be a jerk. Assuming he chooses option B, I’ll be going to a hearing in the spring and the cop’s lawyer will try to break me down, blame the victim blah blah kind of thing. (See here). No matter what, at this point, angry cop has this blemish on his record. This is very rare. Only two percent of LERA complaints actually make it to court. I wrote an article about how in 2003, one in five Winnipeg Police officers had complaints against them.

Maybe next time, he’ll treat strangers with more respect and dignity.

ARRGGH! This is frustrating!

I’ve been trying to hook my computer to my TV.

No matter what screen resolution I use, no matter which TV I use, no matter how I connect to the TV, the computer loads fine in the television view. But after Windows is done loading, the position jumps around. And I mean it jumps around. One try will position the screen off the top right, the next try may load it almost in synch, but the colour will super-purple/orange/green.

Any ideas?

*sigh*

For the last couple weeks, my computer suddenly stopped recognizing my iPOD Shuffle. With everything else going on in my life, I really didn’t have time to deal with it. But now, there’s only so much Dandy Warhols and K-os I can listen to over and over when I’m walking the town.

What annoys me the most is that my computer DOES recognize something is going on, it just won’t recognize the iPOD. When I plug it into my computer’s FireWire card where my other USB hardware operate fine, any music playing skips to signal that something has been introduced to the computer. But iTunes and My Computer won’t recognize it!

The iPod Support website suggests “restoring” the iPOD to fix this.. assuming the computer recognizes the iPOD… arrrgh. If the computer recognized the iPOD, I wouldn’t need to restore it.

F*ck, I’m really starting to regret buying the iPOD. It’s cute and in theory, it should work.. but after five months, it just stops working. Gawd, this is depressing.

 In all my years of buying printers from name-brand stores, I was always told you couldn’t refill your ink cartridges. I knew there was probably a way to do it but didn’t know how.

I found a ink refill kit from Jettec.

I just tried it out today and I’m impressed. It’s super easy to use and sooo cost-effective. Instead of doling out $40 for each 10 ml ink cartridge and throwing away a chunk of plastic, I spend $40 for 90ml of ink and only throw away one chunk of plastic instead of 9 chunks.

Ink costs have been just too high for me to even consider printing anything which can really make office productivity difficult.

Exciting, eh?