Pregnancy Update - Week 17
Not much in the way of news, but we had another doctor’s visit yesterday. Short version is that everything looks good and our ultrasound appointment is December 20th.
Ugly news day for Sony, again
BusinessWeek has a pair of articles today that do nothing to help Sony out. One of them is regarding New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s recent take on events (Spitzer Gets on Sony BMG’s Case):
“It is unacceptable that more than three weeks after this serious vulnerability was revealed, these same CDs are still on shelves, during the busiest shopping days of the year,” Spitzer said in a written statement. “I strongly urge all retailers to heed the warnings issued about these products, pull them from distribution immediately, and ship them back to Sony.”
He sent investigators in to various retail stores to attempt to purchase previously-recalled CDs that contained the rootkit DRM code. Turns out they were able to do so without problems. When asked about a potential case against Sony or fines:
A spokesman for Spitzer’s office in New York City declined to comment on the attorney general’s plans beyond the consumer warning, other than to say the office is “looking into” the matter.
With Texas already suing Sony over the issue, and angry noises coming out of the Department of Homeland Security I have a hard time imagining someone not going to jail over this issue.
As for the other article, it turns out that Sony was sitting on the issue for longer than they had let on (Sony BMG’s Costly Silence).
Sony BMG is in a catfight with a well-known computer-security outfit that became aware of the software problem on Sept. 30 and notified the music company on Oct. 4 — nearly a month before the issue blew up.
It turns out that F-Secure alerted Sony BMG about the issue significantly before the general public became aware of it. I think the public disclosure/private disclosure debate has good points on both sides, but this is a case where real action only seems to have taken place once everyone knew about it.
Clearly this explains why F-Secure was one of the only anti-virus vendors to take a clear stance anti-rootkit stance early on. They’re the guys that told Sony about it…
Other links:
American Manufacturing and Skilled Labor
U.S. market news is awash with reporting on GM, Delphi, UAW, and the collective mess that they’ve gradually gotten themselves into. Much can be said about how pensions setup in good faith and the best of intentions utilizing then-current economic data and forecasts ultimately led to this situation. Just as much media focuses on above-market wages for union workers as well as pay guarantees that ensure employees earn money even if they aren’t actively working.
At this point in time it seems that the question isn’t what happens if GM declares bankruptcy but when will they declare it and what happens next.
Another angle on much the same issue is worker shortage; nearly the same time that GM announced 30,000 employees would be laid off (pending contract renegotiation in 2007) there have been reports of shortages of manufacturing workers. The catch is that the shortages are for skilled workers (2005 Skills Gap Report PDF and the associated summary article).
“Clearly, the broadening skills gap in America calls for urgent action by both public and private stakeholders,” Engler said. “A highly skilled, innovative ‘high performance’ workforce is essential for our manufacturing sector to remain vibrant and to compete successfully in a global economy. If manufacturers are to remain competitive, the issues of education and training reform must be given at least as much attention as other top business concerns like trade, taxes, energy and regulatory reform.”
With additional consideration of things such at the widening trade deficit the question becomes how does the U.S. remain a relevant player on the world market for manufactured goods. The primary question this in turn raises is how does the market overcome the job-stability related stigma to acquire and retain skilled workers.
Sony DRM and the real story
The Sony DRM story continues to unfold in what could be an entertaining comedy of a company’s hubris and how it mistreats its own customers if it wasn’t actually happening. Bruce Schneier’s recent Wired news article on the ‘Real Story of the Rogue Rootkit‘ points out many of the more poignant issues surrounding the DRM and rootkit; those of the companies involved.
Sony hasn’t approached the backlash with much honesty or sincerity from the start. They weren’t up front with how many CDs were infected, how long they had been distributed, the scope of their distribution, nor the fact that it ‘phones home‘. Current estimates put the initial release of the rootkit at somewhere in mid 2004 with approximately 50 different albums infected. Before that was revealed I had a hard time believing the 500,000 networks infected estimates, even though the sampling method was sound.
While it is easy to be outraged at Sony’s approach to applying copy protection to their CDs, I have to agree with Bruce Schneier that the real story is how other companies have approached the problem. Of the major anti-virus vendors, only F-Secure has been a vocal critic of Sony’s malware. Neither McAfee nor Symantec actually remove the rootkit, only the cloaking portion of it. Unfortunately none of these solutions actually remove the rootkit itself, doing so would actually violate the DMCA as a copy protection circumvention device.
You have to wonder who the anti-virus companies are actually working for. Thus far it doesn’t look like its their customers.
Anti-DRM Discussions
I have fairly strong feelings about purchasing DRM’d material and how companies approach fair use. The current turmoil surrounding Sony’s rootkitesque DRM got me thinking about the issue in a different way. Namely, how best to explain the problems of DRM and what fair use rights it takes away.
Sony DRM and the Dead 60s
Netflix Settlement
Like quite a few of my friends I received an email from Netflix regarding a settlement in the Chavez v. Netflix, Inc. class action lawsuit. In short, the suit revolved around the ‘unlimited’ DVD rentals claim that Netflix used to advertise its service. I can’t say that unlimited rentals really seemed likely to me, but it is what they claimed. As many people discovered, the rentals were actually limited to 12 a month. Hence the lawsuit.
The settlement in the lawsuit provides for a 1 month free upgrade to Netflix customers who were paid subscribers before January 15, 2005 and were a member on October 19, 2005. This upgrade allows you to jump up one rung in their subscription ladder for free for one month, however, from my understanding you aren’t automatically downgraded at the end of the month. That sounds much more like a profit angle than a customer settlement to me.
In my opinion the one month upgrade is a pretty shoddy settlement as compared to the $2,528,000 the lawyers made. Due to the seemingly transparent marketing angle of the settlement I intend to opt out. Odds are reasonably good that nothing will come of it for me, but its hard to say. If 5% of the members of the class opt-out the settlement will be voided.
Just remember, by doing nothing, you aren’t opting out. You actually have to mail something to them. For more information on the case take a look at the official settlement site at The Netflix Settlement and the seemingly-grassroots anti-settlement site at The Netflix Settlement Sucks.
Social Distortion show
Last night a few friends and I went to the Social Distortion show at the Gothic in Denver. It was the first time I’d been to that venue, and while I really like smaller shows, the Gothic is almost too small. All in all it was a great show. Devil Doll and the Dead 60’s (warning: annoying background music ahead on the Dead 60’s site, I’m amazed people still think thats a good idea…) opened the show.
Devil Doll wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but they’re really pretty good. The Dead 60’s on the other hand.. well, yeah. I can’t recommend them. But then the last “opening band” I said that about appeared on the Matrix soundtrack (Lunatic Calm opened for Crystal Method a number of years back).
Social Distortion put on a fantastic show as always. The crowd was a little more intense, I imagine the small venue fueled this quite a bit, and the pit was fairly rough at times. They played for about an hour, then did the usual (stupid) encore routine that seems to be required these days. After another 2 songs in the encore they left and one of the roadies started turning off amps and unplugging equipment. Around five minutes in he looked up and got a panicked look. He spent another minute scrambling around plugging stomp boxes back in and turning amps on. Social D came back out to play another two tracks before they finally called it quits.
All in all it was a great show. Now if only Flogging Molly would come back to town.
Greasemonkey jump link script
Greasemonkey allows for quick and seamless web page cleanup scripts. The scripts are Javascript based and allow for all sorts of layout tweaks, page cleanup, link alteration, etc. It’s the perfect candidate for quick website “fixes”.
Previously I used a Jumplink extension for Firefox that cleaned up link redirection URLs. Sites like hotmail and others tend to use this technique. That plugin stopped working for me when I started running the Firefox 1.5 beta/release candidates and I hadn’t really missed it until recently.
I leveraged a bit of the code from that plugin for a quick greasemonkey script that accomplishes the same cleanup. Except now it happens at page load time. Hopefully someone out there finds it to be useful.
Update: Fixed a minor bug in the script and put the LGPL license info boilerplate in.
Sony’s DRM
As so much has been written all over the place, I have little to add regarding Sony’s new “rootkit drm” they’re including on some CDs. The best writeup I’ve seen, from a technical standpoint at least, is Mark’s from sysinternals.com.
There is also some interesting coverage at: