Silvermac

U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald gave her approval after a hearing in which lawyers explained the deal that requires the world’s second-largest music label to stop manufacturing compact discs software that can leave computers vulnerable to hackers.

According to terms of the settlement, Sony BMG will let consumers who bought the CDs receive replacement discs without the anti-piracy technology and will let them choose one of two incentive packages.

The first package lets consumers who bought XCP CDs to obtain a cash payment of $7.50 and a promotion code allowing them to download one additional album from a list of more than 200 titles.The second package permits them to download three additional albums from the list. The court papers said Sony BMG would try to offer Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes as one of the download services available to the consumers.

Judge tentatively OKs Sony BMG settlement

In my opinion Sony is getting off the hook without even a slap on the wrist. Firstly they install the software on users’ computers without their knowledge or permission and therefore breaking the law. Then they are exposing those users to all possible security vulnerabilities but law says they ought to pay few bucks for it.

I’m sorry but in my opinion this judge is out of touch with reality.

What about the damage the users have? Who pays for that ? The only secure way to remove root kit from Windows machine is to format the drive and reinstall operating system. And of course before that users should back up their data, then upon Windows reinstallation they need to install all applications and reinstall their files and settings. How many Windows users can do this on their own ? 5% ? Maybe 10% but that’s it. And even those who can do it have to spend most of the day working on it.

I guess Sony should pay for this, every single affected user should be compensated with several hundred dollars for lost time, productivity and risk exposure. And of course they should all have professionally reinstalled Windows and their applications and data.

My daughter (8) is asking me to buy her the latest Kelly Clarkson CD but I guess she’ll be listening some other music. This is because there is something I don’t like about Kelly, her record company choice. Yes, good guess – It’s a Sony.

technorati tags: sony, settlement

Since there is every chance your previous computer was running on Microsoft Windows, one of the first things after switching to Mac would logically be – What antivirus software should I use ? The answer is – none.

How come – you might ask. Well, since the first release of the Mac OS X in 2001 the number of Mac viruses is precisely – zero. Plain and simple – there are no viruses that affect Mac OS X.

But what happens to all those viruses circulating around and driving computer users mad? These are all Windows viruses and by its design they don’t run on Mac OS X. Even if you receive it, say in an email, you will see an attachment and you won’t be able to run it. Your operating system will recognise it as “DOS executable file” and it won’t run even if you tried.

But, if OS X is so secure, why should the antivirus companies write those programs after all?

The answer to this question is not really black and white since there is a reason behind it. The risk of a virus on Mac OS X computer is not zero, but it is incredibly close to zero. However, we need to think of our friends and business partners running Windows computers as we may unintentionally infect them. We might receive an infected email from someone and forward it onto someone else. Even though it didn’t affect our Mac it might have a devastating effect on the recipient who is using Microsoft Windows.

Then there are Microsoft Word and macro viruses. Same story, your Mac won’t feel any pain but if you send the file to a Windows user you might get a nasty phone call or an email soon after.

And one more thing, if you are running Windows on Virtual PC (VPC) on your Mac, you need to have antivirus software. But this would be installed on Windows as this is where the vulnerability is. Again, even if your Windows on VPC on your Mac is infected, it won’t affect your Mac.

So, should you really get antivirus software for your Mac? I personally don’t but I’ll leave it to you to decide.

If you do here are some choices: ClamXav (free), McAfee Virex, VirusBarrier, Norton Antivirus and Sophos Antivirus

After a few days looking for a theme for my blog and visiting numerous websites with theme switchers I decided to go with Cloudy, written by Mario Vercellotti. There have been a few other options but since they’ve all lacked support for a few pluging I’m intending to use it was an easy choice in the end.

One thing I didn’t like about Cloudy were … erm, clouds. So I removed them and replaced with a small one-colour jpg image that is actually page background. Not that clouds look bad, but they just don’t fit into overall picture of my blog.

I’m yet to add an image into the page banner but that’s, I guess, less important at the moment.

Anyway, thanks Mario for the nice theme, excellent work mate.

technorati tags: wordpress, cloudy, themes