The Apple\EMI press conference announcing DRM-less music is a big one, and we should all take note of whether the rest of the industry is going to follow suit. Now they are suggesting that this DRM-less music is premium content and have increased the fidelity of the files sold and will be selling them at $1.29. You can upgrade DRMed music for $0.30 a pop.

As I suggested in a previous post music with DRM needs to cost less, I was personally hoping for a greater revolt i.e. songs sold for much less than 99 cents each. With US CD sales down 20% this year the record labels will be scrambling to get a better foothold in the downloads market. I still think Pandora's box is already open and I doubt whether it will possible to control the music industry in the same way again, file sharing is just too easy!

"We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves." - Eric Hoffer

This is hilarious, a little biased toward the Zune but it is funny!

As is the case with most developers we serve the dual purpose of tech support and help desk for our extended family, for me that has extended to most of the people in my Church. I burned the lion share of today disinfecting a laptop that would barely boot and that I simply refused to give access to the Internet.

The owner of the laptop is notorious for infecting machines but I think on this occasion all records were broken. I was able, this time round, to identify the source ... Morpheus!! (notice I have not even put a link to this site as it should be considered the gateway to the lower levels spyware). Morpheus is a file MP3 sharing software popular with people who know no better. It is easy to install but is almost impossible to get rid of and it attracts and\or purposefully spreads several variations of viruses and Trojan horses. During the trouble shooting stage I noticed that I was unable to run CMD.exe or TaskManager, it was pretty bad in there!

After a lot of research and about 6 hours, I was able to not only rid the machine of the Trojans (all 1500+ of them), but I was also able to get the machine up to a decent level of security.

To all friends and family out there who happen to read this blog I am going to provide the following links that will allow all of you to empower yourself with a reasonable level of security to any PC for FREE ... so here goes.

AVG Free Edition - AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition is a free anti-virus protection tool developed by GRISOFT for home use.
Spybot - Detects and removes spyware, a relatively new kind of threat not yet covered by common anti-virus applications.
Adaware - Popular anti-spyware product for computer users around the world, with nearly one million downloads every week.
ZoneAlarm - Automatically makes your computer invisible to anyone on the Internet, Systematically identifies hackers and blocks access attempts.

I have been using some combination of the above software for the past 4 years and I have had zero infections during that time. Coupled with just avoiding crapware like Morpheus and not going to suspect website's ... and Gmail's spam filter is the best I have ever seen. It catches more than 99.9% of all spam without blocking friendly email, not sure how! My Hotmail account treats everything as suspect until I send or respond to the email address.

Safe Surfing!!

"Silence is a source of great strength."- Lao Tzu

In my last post I mentioned the Windows Experience Index (WEI) on my HP Pavillion DV6000 notebook was 2.2. As I wrote it struck me that it seemed to be awfully low. In fact it dawned on me that I had checked this WEI on the same machine in Circuit City and it was 3.1! I went back to the store and confirmed that I actually purchased the right model, and that I had not somehow been tricked into purchasing a lower model. After being convinced that the model numbers matched I decided to give HP support a call which is where this story gets interesting.

Now I know I should have low expectation of level 1 tech support but considering I have been developing and supporting software solutions for almost 10 years I need to feel someone is as talented and committed (tooting my own horn) as me! So I get through all the initial tell all of the meeting and this guy actually has no idea what Windows Experience Index is! I try to explain that this is a part of the Vista OS and that it is not actually a separate program for which I can supply a version number. After being left on hold for about 10 minutes he comes back finally convinced that I am actually telling the truth.

After about another 10 minutes of waiting he gets back on the phone and lets me know that there is an known issue with HP machines and the Vista OS' ability to detect the correct Index for various components. I was this close to sending my machine back after what amounted to a great first day. If I do not see an update for this issue soon, I still might!

"You can learn from anyone even your enemy." - Ovid

I love PBS, and they have a great 3 hour Physics mini series (nothing mini about) available online called The Elegant Universe. It really puts into perspective the roles of some of the great physicists such as Newton, Maxwell, Einstein and Bohr and show how they helped unveil the secrets of the physical universe.

If you have little or no idea about String theory, Quantum Mechanics, General theory of relativity this is an excellent starting point. This is a well paced and interesting series of videos with wonderful eye candy!

"We live in a Newtonian world of Einsteinian physics ruled by Frankenstein logic." - David Russell

I purchased my wife a HP Pavillion DV6000 notebook this weekend, I think I would have preferred to get the Sony Vaio but that ended up being a bit pricey. After removing all those HP craplets that are littered throughout the system I started to look a little more closely at the the Performance Information, specifically the Windows Experience Index.

I found the Windows Vista blog that helped to explain in more details what these arbitrary numbers would mean in relation to the actual user experiences. My lowest number was in relation to the 'Graphics: Desktop performance for Windows Aero' at 2.2, this seemed kinda low and coupled with the fact that I only have 1 Gb RAM (2 x 512MB sticks ... how frustrating) the overall experience was surprisingly snappy. I am very happy with the Vista feel, I am just loving the eye candy.

I love the concept of Gadgets and am looking forward to creating a good Google Notifier. I am not sure I like any of the Gadgets that represent Gmail so far. I would have thought that most companies would be making Gadgets with a friendly digital signature to give us that warm fuzzy feeling as we install ... but alas the only Gadgets of note were signed by Microsoft.

I became painfully aware of the confirmations required for every single installation\uninstallation that I performed. It got to the point that I was not even reading the messages which surely is the whole point of the added security.

I checked out the file system briefly which now consists of the much more succinct "C:\Users\[YOURID]", I never like the "C:\Documents and Settings\YOURID".

What else ... oh ... with they have given a well deserved face lift to all the games and added a couple of new ones. I absolutely love the addition of the 3D chess game, it allows you chose the type of Board and pieces, but I really wish we could use cooler characters ala Star Wars.

Now I was little disappointed that Zone Alarm has not updated its product to work on Vista. Aside from that I give the first day of Vista two thumbs way up!!!

"We rarely think people have good sense unless they agree with us." - Francois de La Rochefoucauld