Some History
The domain was registered while taking one of my patented Long Thanksgiving Breaks. That was ThanksGaming 2005, and I grabbed the domain one night while talking to that coder I always mention, Malaprop of Cambrian House. Malaprop kindly put the domain on his site, installed WordPress, and away I went. My first actual post (I believe) was on the 20th of 2005, but it was accidentally deleted, so the first surviving post is from the 21st.

Some Stats
Over the past year, I've had (what I consider seeing as its just another random blog in the Internet where a new one opens every second) to be some pretty nice stats.

• Over 20,000 page hits
• Over 10,000 "users" you can figure out how Stattraq defines a user
• Two search engines that have over 100% of my website indexed! (Again, you can go figure out how they have more pages indexed than I have pages).
• Two pages selected by spambots for spam! They think I'm populart (I guess) and spam half-year old posts to sell viagra! An annoyance I took care of by using Akismet

Of course, the above ignores such fun ones as 100 posts means roughly one post every 3-4 days.

Big posts
I believe I created the blog to talk about the Sony BMG Fiasco. This was my first serious post, and it got some decent reads by a variety of people. Unfortunately for the world, this has pretty much blown over in a year. Heck, it had blown over within 6 months. What a shame a company got away with this when non-malicious citizens are thrown into court for downloading one song to the tune of $2,000. Had Sony gotten such treatment, it would be out of business (I refer to the fact that Sony included source code that was licensed. In addition they took it from a man whom the music industry tried to have thrown in jail.)

The next significant thing I talk about was my beliefs with regards to software, and the fact that I buy into a communist view of software. I tied this in with one of my favorite pieces of code, Linux.

I had a run in with the law last Spring that was kind of interesting. I'll leave it up to you to decide what to make of the encounter. The three ways I tried to write it here just... made Law Enforcement seem incompetent, and I don't want to say that.

While I may the only one laughing about it, I think I came up with a good argument in favor of single geeks on Inyragvarf Day.

Then we saw a public official fly off the handle when presented with a problem he didn't know. Great lesson to be learned about politicians and technical stuff. I rather dislike politicians so won't be going downt hat road, however.

One of my favorite posts was how to legally and ethically hack your GPA. This might also be the one I'm most torn about, as I get tons of hits from search engines with kids looking to actually hack their GPA. Meaning, maliciously break into a grade server, and screw with stuff they don't own. My idea is a lot more elegant, and completely legal. Which is why I enjoy it.

Wrap Up
It occurs to me this post is rambling and self serving... Plus I'm running out of time for posting right at midnight. So, I will end it now. You can browse back through my posts and see if there's anything decent. I'd like to wrap up b y reiterating my purpose of this blog. That is, simply put, to generate thoughtful discussion (or just thought on your own) and get people to thank more about the world around them. View everything from a different perspective, because that's how you find holes in a system. It may be that some of what I post is controversial. I may accidentally post something that's considered "illegal" by some form of law. Anything up here is not meant maliciously, and is purely for the sake of expanding the minds of my generation.

It's been a fun year for me, hopefully I've kept you (whomever my readers are... [Ok, i can see IPs... so I know who you are]) interested, and made you think a little more about some subject, I don't care what. See you next year.

A lot of people have suggested I start charging for my work, so fine. From now on, if I have to fix a problem with Sony/BMG related material, I'm charging. I will charge whatever the cost of a local PC shop would be, including data recovery/backup, and will document everything.

Anyways, here's a link. I'll clean this up on Monday when I'm home.

It turns out that there were worms in the catfood and now your cat is incredibly sick. Amazingly, the attorneys did this on purpose. If you take her to the vet, it will cost you hundreds of dollars to cure her. You don't remember blinking, but they swear you did.

The government has sent an angry letter to the catfood guys, but no one looks like they have any intention of paying your vet bill - or even sending your cat a get well card.

In response to the government, the catfood people announce they've "solved" the problem, because they've agreed to temporarily stop shipping worms in catfood. However, they're still shipping spiders, ants, and leeches - and they have "big plans" to expand the practice.

You don't know exactly how long your cat has left to live, but after watching all this, you get the feeling its days are numbered one way or another.

I'll take this moment to translate DRM. This is to software what a pair of handcuffs and pole is to a criminal. It means he can't go somewhere he shouldn't, and others can't make him... without extra work. I add the last bit because, like even good handcuffs, DRM can be broken, and in no wya prevents piracy.

To get back to the story, this software is a rootkit. A rootkit is a piece of software (I would say virus) that attains permission to do whatever it wants to your computer, and because it is "root" (the highest permissions level) it can hide, even from anti-virus software! This rootkit does something we know, and things we don't know.
We know:

1. It hides all files beginning with $sys$, which allows virus writers more room to work.
   • That is to say, if the file name was $sys$text.txt you would not be able to see if on the desktop, or anywhere else. A virus named $sys$virus.exe would be able to run just fine, undetected!
2. It “phones home” unidentified information, probably regarding your system.
   • That means it sends information to a server elsewhere, where someone could collect it and study it. Such as what windows you have open, (looking for copy software), and your IP address (to tell your ISP you violated their copyright).
3. It contains GPL’ed source code, violating the terms of the GPL (another form of copyright).
   • This means they took other copyrighted work, violated its copyright, and distributed it. AKA, they broke other people's rights, in order to protect theirs.

As if the above wasn't bad enough, their president, Thomas Hesse, went on NPR to say “Most people, I think, don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?" In other words, if you don't know we're hurting your security, we must not be hurting it. Though it should be noted here that at first he denied such DRM software, and it wasn't found until a concerned user found it on his system.

Note, he was told of the security flaws on October 4, 2005. Almost 30 days before the software was found out by the public. He had the time to change it, and issue a recall, he didn't.
So, what was the solution? Sony hired another company to make a removal tool. That seems to be the right thing to do, right? Well, that tool was even buggier, and opened up your web browser to any other software that wanted to install itself.

Hmm... think of this like your computer being your car, I love using that analogy. Sony hid a bad part somewhere in it, and finally agrees to fix it. When the mechanics fix it, however, they have to get in, so remove the locks from all the doors. They then forget to reinstall the locks, and give it back to you minus the bad part, but also minus the locks.

Now then, what can you do? First, you can tell me if this made sense or not, and how I could clarify even more. I've changed it to not need to be logged in for comments, hopefully I don't get trolls. If I do, I'll turn that back on. Until then, comment away!

Second, you can immediatly place your Sony cd's as far from your computer as possible. Next check this list to see if any of your cds are infected. Even if they're not on this list, I wouldn't trust them not to have other DRM (and they probably do).

Third, boycott Sony. By the way, it's a crime to advocate boycotting a company in Virginia, so, right now I'm putting my own liberty at risk to urge you to do the right thing. Do not buy Sony products until they have shown

1. Remorse for their actions before. Lieing to the public, bad software, stealing, everything.
2. A proficiency at putting out good software and products, that are free from DRM. This will never happen, as even amidst the scandal, they announced their new DRM scheme in Australia.

I, for one, will never buy Sony products again, I don't care if they're the last label on the planet. The artists I like are all on smaller labels, and those labels normally do not believe in DRM software.

Apparently, Sony knew about the security flaws (they call 'em features *wink*) since the beginning of October. The flaws weren't told to the public (by an outsider) until the END of October. Now, what would happen to, say, a car company that hid a flaw for a month in the hopes it'd go unnoticed? It's called willful neglect. I hope they get strung up for this all the more.

First I thought they were stupid, just couldn't write good software.
Then I thought they were incompetant, for not checking what they put in (GPL code).
Now I think they're evil and should all burn for knowingly and willingly letting this stay out for a month as vulnerable as it is!

But luckily for us, the consumer, Sony-BMG had this to say:
"We're very, very sorry for the disruption and inconvenience that this has caused to music consumers," (Thomas Hesse, president of Sony BMG's Global Digital Business).

That guy is a grade A joker, with everything he's said. Seriously guys, making fun of Bush's speeches is so 2003, lets jump on Hesse instead. This is the same guy who said that rootkits are OK, because the average user doesn't know what it is.... *blank stare*

Very sorry? Very SORRY?! If I infected millions of computers with a virus, I wouldn't be very sorry, I'd be in jail!! For anyone who thinks that is an unfair assumption, notice that the Sony rootkit has been found on computers in most major corporations (Fortune 500, the works) as well as DoD and foreign government systems.

Sorry doesn't cut it anymore, and these guy MUST pay. I don't care if First4Internet wrote it, Sony must take responsibility for this, just as a car company would have to if they didn't issue a recall for bad brakes they didn't make.

And this whole rant isn't even on DRM itself, merely Sony's raping of people's rights (colorful? yes. appropriate? definatly).

• It hides all files beginning with $sys$, which allows virus writers more room to work.
• It "phones home" unidentified information, probably regarding your system.
• It contains GPL'ed source code, violating the terms of the GPL (another form of copyright).
• The "software" to remove it opens your system up to even more bugs.
• Finally, when this story first aired they LIED about the rootkit, and claimed that all this didn't matter since "Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it? (Sony BMG's Global Digital Business President Thomas Hesse)"

Simply amazing. My jaw hasn't gotten off the ground yet, and it's almost been a month. I gurantee that more develops in this case, as four seperate lawsuits have already been filed, and hopefully the source code will be picked over with a fine tooth comb.

Now, for those of you wondering, what can I do, you've got a few options:

1. Boycott Sony, not just their CDs, everything. Who knows what software (digital cameras anyone?) might be infected?
2. Tell everyone you can about this. I admit it, the Hesse was right, no one knows what a rootkit is. So spread the word, point them to this site, or any of a dozen out there (check my "Sony Fiasco" link to the right).
3. Finally, please guys, let this be a wake up call and start supporting open source and free software/media. There's artists out there who give away their work, support them. Support free operating systems and programs. I'll tell you right now, FOSS programmers dislike DRM for the most part, and will code around it.

For a full timeline of events, here's one that boingboing put together.