It is now official, if it wasn’t official before, HD DVD is DEAD. If it weren’t bad enough that Warner Brothers decision to go exclusively Blu-ray weren’t enough of a death blow, Netflix is now going exclusively Blu-ray. Game Over.

I would have rather HD DVD won if for no other reason than I have a sick fascination in watching Sony formats die one after the other. I have heard of being a maverick, but Sony takes it to an extreme. They have storied career of creating competing formats only to see them receive a tepid response from the public, slide into obscurity, and die.

Remember ATRAC? No? That one was Sony’s answer to MP3…a real barnburner! What about Memory Stick? Maybe… That one was Sony’s flash memory product. It was in every Sony camera both still and video, and basically only in those cameras. No one wanted to give Sony a portion of their profits. Sony was also the progenitor of Betamax, a technically better contemporary of the VHS tape that died a legendary death. (Product failures are still measured by this watermark…)

Yes Sony, what a fine history you have of formats that fail. But, in this case, I think you have finally created a winner, and its true herald is Netflix. With Netflix washing its hands of HD DVD, the war is indeed over.

CrunchGear » Archive » HD DVD group calls Netflix Blu-ray decision ‘unfortunate’

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/12/hd-dvd-camp-issues-sad-little-response-to-netflix-best-buy-snub/

Nokia has recently announced that it is opening a new online music store called Ovi. Apparently that means something like “Open Door” in Finnish…who knows.

All this is happening at the same time that Sony has announced that it is shuttering its online music play Connect.

So let me get this straight, Sony, who has its own record label and has a lot of experience in the music business is throwing in the towel while a cell phone maker is getting started… hmmm. It sounds to me that Nokia’s music store is on death watch before it even gets started. I don’t think it will work.

If you have been monitoring my link stream, you will have no doubt seen a link to a story that Sony has once again put a root-kit on one of its products.

If you remember a couple of years ago, Sony started putting root-kit tecnology on a number of its CDs as a way to inflict DRM on its customers. If you want to learn more about Sony and root-kits, do a search on root-kits in the search window right here on the site.

After people realized what Sony was doing, there was a huge uproar in the tech community including some trips to court and some indemnification of users who had their computers damaged by Sony’s root-kit technology.

One would think that Sony would have learned its lesson, but apparently not because it has recently come out that Sony has started releasing games with root-kits! Are you kidding me?

This just further illustrates that Sony could be in the beginnings of corporate death throes. Sony has always been an innovator in the electronics industry. An innovator comes up with creative ideas to address problems in the marketplace. They come up with new products that reinvent the space.

A time comes however when a company becomes more interested in protecting its bottom line rather than investing in new innovative products. This is the beginning of the end.

Don’t get me wrong, Sony will still be around for a long time, but they will continue to become more and more irrelevant.

The artists and dreamers have left Sony. Those with vision have given way to those who are only interested in bottom-line antics that give an illusion of protecting profits.

There is an irony here. Moves meant to protect the bottom-line that are anti-customer will slowly bleed away profits until a company either radically changes or simply fades away.

Sony, change your ways, because right now, you are a nigtmare of a company!

Happy Birthday to me! And, guess who shares my birthday…why it’s none other than my arch-nemisis Sony. What a great birthday surprise! Who knows, maybe someday I will destroy other people’s computers just to ensure my own wealth.

News.com is reporting that the Allman Brothers and Cheap Trick are suing Sony for underpaying them for online sales. I don’t know whether it is true, but it makes my heart light and giddy when I hear about artists standing up to large corporations that treat their customers like criminals and destroy computers with illegal (I don’t know if it is really illegal or not, but it should be.) rootkit technologies posing as “digital rights” management.

Digital Rights is such a joke. I know they aren’t protecting my rights. Rather this DRM only serves to circumvent my rights to use my lawfully acquired music the way I want.

I also have a major bone to pick with Sony because their rootkit rendered my work computer useless. I lost a lot of unrecoverable data because their software “bricked” my dual processor behemoth. I listened to Switchfoot’s latest album on my computer and then a few months later I couldn’t boot my machine because those morons made their drivers load even in safe mode. I was left with only one option. I had to rebuild my computer which robbed me of days of productivity.

So, I say go Allman Brothers, and go Cheap Trick. Get out of your contract if you are in one, and leave Sony behind. They are evil, evil, evil.

This is old news for people who stay on top of tech stuff, but for those of you who don’t, Sony has started putting Digital Rights Management (DRM) software on their new CDs (Including Switchfoot’s newest CD). This wouldn’t be so bad except that their DRM includes rootkit technology. (See my entry from 2 posts ago.)

For those of you who don’t know what rootkits are, and I know there are a lot of you, rootkits are hacker tools that allow a writer of a program to hide things on your computer so far down in the bowels of your computer that your Operating System cannot see it. What the Heck?!? To add insult to injury, it is a poorly written rootkit that will allow any script kiddie (a very unsophisticated programmer) to hide viruses and other malware on your computer. AND, the rootkit also “phones home” to Sony some absurd amount of times per hour to track your usage of Sony’s Music.

I hate DRM. I believe it robs us of fair use. I believe it punishes those of us who are law-abiding music lovers. The people who are really the problem in the stolen music market won’t be stopped by DRM. But, those of us who just want to listen to music that we have purchased on our iPods are left out in the cold.

Boo Sony! I will not by anything from Sony if at all possible. I just hate it that Switchfoot, a band that I like, is caught up in the whole debacle. If you agree with me, I invite you to join me in avoiding Sony products.

Rootkits… I mean really!!!!

MurDog OUT!!!

Rootkits are little applications that sit VERY deep on your machine… so deep that virus scanners and other protective applications simply cannot see them. These programs are used to hide spam programs that turn you computer into a spamming zombie or continually serve up unwanted advertisements. These rootkits are the domain of spammers and virus writers.

Well, on new CDs from Sony, including the new Switchfoot CD, if you want to play them on you PC, you have to install a program. I am sure it is in the fine print, but for the standard computer user, Sony installs a rootkit on your computer. This little program runs way deep in the bowels of your computer, and who knows what it actually does. I am sure it sends information back to Sony, and definitely notifies them of “suspicious” activities (even if these activities constitute fair use…).

Shame on Sony for taking these tactics. I don’t mind them wanting to protect their product, but rootkits are too far. Not to mention that it is nearly impossible to get the songs that you purchased onto you iPod branded MP3 player. If you want the new Switchfoot CD on your iPod, you had better purchase it from the Apple Music Store. Otherwise, you will be sunk.

Boo to Sony. Boo to harsh, over-protective/restrictive DRM. EFF, we need your help. This is rediculous….

MurDog OUT (See the Digg story below.)

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“So: if you’ve recently used CD releases from Sony BMG on your Windows computer, the “Scan for Rootkits” function in our product will detect this program on your system. Same happens with our free BlackLight beta that you can download from our web site.”

read more | digg story