Eating the Apple

Eve did it. Adam did it. Now it's my turn to take a bite. Why not? Hey! It's delicious.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Turkey of the Year

Turkey Day is upon us. What better way to celebrate Turkey Day than by giving the Turkey of the Year to some deserving clown who really messed up. I'm getting out of politics for this one. I'm not going to cite Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Rove, or Pat Robertson. That's too easy -- belabouring the obvious. There are just too many turkeys in politics.

Instead, I'm giving my Turkey of the Year Award in the field of Arts and Culture:

Turkey #1 Sony BMG Corporation for including 'rootkit' software on some 50 music CD's. This software installs itself on your computer without your knowledge or consent. It hides all files and registry entries whose name begins with $sys$ thus opening the door to viruses that cannot be removed by normal means.

Turkey #2 Sony BMG Corporation for not including an uninstaller with the 'rootkit' software. An attempt to uninstall the rootkit by deleting the files may disable the CD drive.

Turkey #3 Sony BMG Corporation whose president, Thomas Hesse, said, "Most people, I think, don't even know what a Rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"

Turkey #4 Sony BMG Corporation for putting out patches that are riskier than the original software.

Turkey #5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 Sony BMG Corporation. In their zeal to protect their copyrights, Sony used software plagerized from the open software LAME (mp3 reader) project.

For more information, go to www.sysinternals.com or google sony rootkit.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home