Until this goes from parody to reality.

At my parents' house the holiday and I noticed it lying there on a end table, a major label CD. I didn't know the name, but asked my father if it was a SonyBMG disk. He grunted it wasn't, not really paying attention to the question. I had a feeling about the disk and scanned it's label there wasn't either company named directly, but I noticed the Sonybmg.com website mentioned. 30 seconds later I had my laptop out and confirmed it.

The disk had spyware.

I mentioned to my father he had to deal with it and asked if he had put it into his computer to load into his Ipod yet. He said he hadn't but he had been planning to soon. I warned him not to load it, why, and mentioned I'd email background on the CD and it's potential effects.

The message is simply this, part of the responsibility of the blogosphere is to communicate and share knowledge with others. So watch out for your friends and family this holiday season for SonyBMG rootkit products after all, you would want them to do the same for you and the signs are not always obvious. Alot of people may have only vaguely heard the story and don't realize the potential impact. So keep careful watch this holiday season.

Friends don't let friends buy spywear.

Boing Boing's post with details on Sony Rootkit

I for one am Shocked, Shocked to see that Gambling is going on here.

As I may have mentioned I am homebrewing rather actively again. I brewed a Xmas Ale for holidays planning to send it to friends I don't get to see often (shush they don't read the blog and it's kind of a surprise). So I asked one friend for her to email me her address so I can send her a gift. I checked my email and she sent me an email, containing her email address, no physical address. (And yes for the record she is a blonde)

Don't press the big red button. I warned you, don't do it. (Via Scoble)

Interesting interview with John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods. I suspect my personal version of Libertarianism is a closer match to his than the typical Libertarian Presidential candidate. I'll have to put his book on my wish list once it's released. I hope he starts to blog more often. He just needs to open a store in Flagstaff.

Journalism is hard.

So I try to use my Yahoo mail account the other day and it asks for me to fill out one of those word verifications to verify I am not a Bot. Had this been a new account or perhaps created in the last year I could understand it asking for such verification. But I have been using this account on near daily basis for 5 years. You would think the designers would create a password system that would bypass such authorizations for long term user. I understand that such password systems can be gamed and that they are trying to prevent spam, which I can support. But when they interfere with user experience of someone using an account for years it gets a little silly. Worse yet when I emailed my complaint that they ought to make the system more intelligent the customer support person at Yahoo, or perhaps Bot I'll never know they didn't provide a name, they explained how to use the system and ignored my point that the system should be better designed.

Bad user experience, reenforced by bad customer service. Not the way to keep customers.

First ABC, now CBS and NBC are getting into distributing content on the internet, can the movie industry seriously be that far behind? The broadcast model is changing before our very eyes.

AGAIN, busy, busy month. See you in December.