CNET’s report on Napster To Go (NTG) hacking shows us that stream ripping has come of age. The latest NTG news and opinions (read The Register and Russ Beattie’s blog for two conflicting views) plus the recent round of MPAA lawsuits against LokiTorrent and other torrent swapping sites has motivated me to examine the most economical legal way for me to get the music, TV, and movies I want.
I’ve found one crucial truth is missing from most of the pundits’ analyses: Most media sucks.
I don’t give a flying fig about monthly subscription services because most of the thousands of movies, TV shows, and songs out there are crap anyway. Who cares if I can fill my MP3 player with thousands of songs a month for $18 if most of those songs stink? I want what I want, and by the time I boil things down to that, there really aren’t that many songs, shows, or movies left.
Take music, for instance. I’m very happy to listen to good old fashioned broadcast radio, friends, and LaunchCast to find new tunes. When I find a song that isn’t crap, I preview the rest of the CD from Amazon or Wal-Mart. If enough of it’s good I buy the CD from whomever has it cheapest (online, brick and mortar, etc.). If there are just a few good songs, I can pick up each one individually for 88 cents apiece from Wal-Mart.
If Wal-Mart’s smart, they’re already working on similar services for HDTV and movie distribution. Marry that with Amazon’s “search inside” technology a la “search inside the TV program” and “search inside the movie” and you get an idea where I’m heading with this…
In the end, stream ripping won’t kill high margin media distribution. Wal-Mart will.
No sooner had I blogged about Xbox mods than Microsoft announced one of their own:
Microsoft is recalling 14.1 million Xbox power cords due to electrical problems.
To find out if your Xbox is effected (the majority of the world’s ‘boxes are), click here. Additional information is available from the XBox Replacement Cord FAQ.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change‘s Kyoto Protocol enters into force today.
I’m happy to see so many countries around the world pledge to do their part and ashamed to see the biggest polluter by far, the United States, not participate.
Everybody seems to understand the importance of this except the President of the United States. Mr. Bush, please read this special report by National Geographic. Let me, Nat Geo, or anybody else on Planet Earth outside of your inner sanctum and the oil industry know if you have any questions.
We’d like to help. Really.
PC Magazine’s recent article “A False Sense of Security” gives some sobering stats on just how badly infected and malware abused the average American PC is. I’m pretty sure that this applies to many other netizens’ systems, too.
Read it for a sobering wake up call. Then make certain you have installed, up to date, resident-in-memory antivirus, firewall, and antispyware software.
My favorite suite is Norton Internet Security. It’s one of PC Mag’s too, along with Editors’ Choice Zone Alarm Security Suite. Either is highly recommended.
If you can’t dig up a few dollars for one of those two, you can still install sufficient, albeit somewhat feature-limited, free AV and firewall software. Click here to read my previous post on hardening your wireless network which includes links to personal editions of AntiVir and Zone Alarm.
One thing neither of the suites nor the AntiVir+Zone Alarm freebie route provides is reasonable spyware/adware detection and removal. A year or two ago many people thought such a thing unnecessary. PC Mag’s “Antispyware” sidebar and reviews prove otherwise. Their recommendations boil down to two picks:
- Webroot Spy Sweeper is their Editors Choice
- Freely available Spybot is still pretty good, especially as a secondary tool backing up Spy Sweeper
Wanna save some scratch if you can get away with it? Combine Spybot with Webroot’s free Spy Audit tool and you’ll only have to buy Spy Sweeper when the audit turns up something Spybot missed.
Here’s how. First, download and install Spybot (click here to access the download page). Once you have it installed, be sure you check for any updates and turn on its “Immunize” function. Then run a scan by clicking on “Check for Problems”. If you have spyware on your sysem, you’ll see a list of the problems and be able to remove them by selecting the “Fix selected…” button. If all goes well, after you’ve fixed all of the issues and re-run the scan you may still see incorrect Spybot flagging of “DSO Exploit” issues such as:
I say “may still see incorrect Spybot flagging” because if you have the latest OS updates for your PC (you do run Windows Update on every box with Windoze, don’t you?), you should have already installed patches from MS for the potential DSO exploits. Spybot still (incorrectly) reports the problem, however, maybe in a case of being overcautious. (You can configure these warnings “off” if you like; see Spybot docs for more on how to do that.)
After you’re run Spybot and removed all of the issues it can find and treat, download and run Spy Audit. While Spy Audit executes it looks something like:
then it will load the results of its scan in a Web page (you’ll need to allow Internet access via your firewall for this to work). If Spybot has done its job very well, you’ll see:
Celebrate if you see ‘0’ in all of the columns!
More likely, you’ll see at least some adware cookies. You can temporarily flush those via your browser’s cookie deletion or clear option, then re-run Spy Audit to see if it returns a clean bill of health. Pleae note however that many of these cookies may be loaded onto your system again at some future time. To curtail them, you need to either limit cookie abilities in your browser or install stronger antispyware.
If you need to go the latter route to get rid of remaining cookies or spyware, pick up a copy of Spy Sweeper. It’s not perfect, but PC Mag believes it to be the best option we have right now short of running Linux (ok, I added that Linux part, couldn’t help myself).
Good luck and death to all spyware!
Reuters reports on the photo industry’s predictions that US digital camera sales growth will slow in 2005.
While sales increased more than 30% per year in each of the last three years, the industry expects 2005 sales growth to be around 13%. It’s still growth, mind you, but the hockey stick is apparently starting to flatten out. Other stats to note:
- US digicam sales growth is expected to plateau in 2006 or 2007
- Overall camera market including film cams is expected to be relatively flat in 2005 versus 2004
- Film sales are expected to decline 18% in 2005 after dropping 19% in 2004
- Home self-printing of digipics will shrink to 52% in 2005 from 61% in 2004
- The decrease in print-at-home seems to be due to an increase in the number of people printing their digipics at local retail stores a la Walgreen and Wal-Mart, projected to be 40% in 2005 versus 31% in 2004)
No specific mention of the cellcam effect on any of this.
Still more time to kill before PSP?
The Washington Post recently published an article on mods that’s worth a read if you own a Xbox.
Of particular note is the open source Xbox Media Center (XBMC) software which, combined with the appropriate hardware mod, turns your box into a versatile audio and video playing, Internet streaming, multimedia jukebox similar to what the full blown Windows XP Media Center Edition can provide on a standalone PC. All of this and XBMC still supports networked play through XLink Kai tunneling and more. For a $150 console plus $60 or less in hardware mods, that’s a pretty impressive upgrade!
Screenshots available from the XBMC site. Click here for information on how to install and use XBMC. And remember, opening the Xbox case voids the warranty, so you mod your ‘box at your own peril.
Looking for something to do while waiting for PSP?
Why not read BBC’s excellent overview of the first ten years of the PS Generation in “Decade of dominance for PlayStation” and reminisce?
Brings back memories, doesn’t it?
Interested in monitoring discussion on the J2ME Archive mailing list but prefer to do it via your RSS aggregator rather than email or visiting the Yahoo! Groups site regularly?
Ask and ye shall receive: I’ve enabled a feed for the list via Yahoo’s new RSS support.
Click here to learn more or grab the feed directly here: 
PS The list remains open to membership, limits posts to members-only, and is moderated per list membership’s wishes to eliminate spam and off topic posts.
I continue to see far too much incredibly annoying comment and trackback spam. I’m taking some steps to further limit the problem. In so doing, I’ve also decided that since I’ve not enabled others to blog on my site anyway, it makes sense to remove other user accounts. Done.
If you’re like me, you often get roped into helping friends and family set up a new PC or troubleshoot their applications and home network. I’ve joked more than once that I’d be glad to help if they’d pay my standard hourly fee…this usually draws a blank stare or a little bit of angst, and unfortunately has never resulted in any consulting fees.
I guess that’s just a personal hazard for techies. Even if it is inevitable, however, I’m still resigned to helping people help themselves as much as possible.
Three great resources I’ve come across recently for helping to teach a man to fish:
- “Make the Most of Your New PC” from PC Magazine walks one through setting up a new system (works best for XP but should be ok with minor mods for earlier versions of Windows, too); sections highlight setup, data and settings migration, security issues, networking, backing up, and maintaining
- Speaking of XP, “Windows XP Home Edition: The Missing Manual” by David Pogue from Pogue’s and O’Reilly’s Missing Manual series (click here for the book’s homepage) should be in the box with each new Win XP sysetm but isn’t; good overviews on how XP Home Service Pack 2 works, what applications are bundled in, and how an end user can get the best bang for their Windoze bucks
- O’Reilly’s recently published “Home Networking Annoyances” by Kathy Ivens details many of the wired and wireless network issues home users face; O’Reilly’s homepage for the book includes a free chapter on File-Sharing Annoyances
Do yourself a favor and have copies of these handy to share the next time someone asks you for free support.
BillDay.com 