I guess I got what I was hoping for, only took them about 10 days this time to fix it. Same procedure as last time the camera application failed to launch, they replaced the camera. I wonder what it is with my usage that would cause the camera to fail so completely that it needs to be replaced. Will be interesting to see for how long it will hold together this time. 😉

After reading in the swedish newspaper DN that CBS is showing their new TV-series Threshold over the internet I went and checked their homepage. What I got after some confused navigation was a streaming video containing the text:

This content is not available for viewing outside of the United States

A little bit dissapointing but not very surprising, and since the quality of that stream is probably substandard anyway it doesn’t really matter.

When will these media companies realize that a lot of people loves to see the latest series as soon as possible? I know that one can buy Lost via iTunes but what is that compared to getting the episodes as soon as they are aired in full hd quality? If I have understood things correctly I’d only get a really low resolution version of the episodes via iTunes as well.

What I’d like to see is a way to buy each episode before they get pirated so I can watch it via my computer that is hooked up to my hdtv. It doesn’t really matter if it is streamed or downloaded as long as the price is right and the quality is high. Buying the DVDs later is boring since they take foreever before they are released and I’d miss all the fun discussions that take place when the episodes are first aired. Then there’s the whole subject about DVD regions one have to circumvent to be able to buy some DVDs if one wishes to wait.

While trying to change the key layout on my computer to make it easier for me while developing I noticed that I couldn’t remap AltGr+G. Google Desktop uses it, as well as Windows+G, as a shortcut to the search textbox. Luckily I found a way to change this behaviour by editing the registry as outlined in this newsgroup thread.

In “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Google Desktop\Preferences”
create a DWORD value named “hot_key_flags”.
Setting this value to:
– “0” disables both Ctrl-Alt-G and Windows-G
– “1” disables Windows-G, but leaves Ctrl-Alt-G enabled
– “2” disables Ctrl-Alt-G, but leaves Windows-G enabled
– Removing the key or setting the value to “3” or higher will enable
both keys.

So now I can get back to remapping some previously hard to reach keys to more convenient places.

Apparently Mark at SysInternals recieved some “answers” to his earlier blog entries from the company, First 4 Internet, that developed the rootkit with a drm addon for Sony. Read Mark’s response here, looks like he was not impressed.

Instead of admitting fault for installing a rootkit and installing it without proper disclosure, both Sony and First 4 Internet claim innocence. By not coming clean they are making clear to any potential customers that they are a not only technically incompetent, but also dishonest.

The one thing I find most annoying about this is how to explain this to my non-tech savy friends. They just use Windows XP as it is configured by default, all users have administrator rights and so on, and have no idea that there can be anything more than music on a music CD they’ve bought nor that applications and drivers can be installed simply by them putting a music CD into their computer. Most just take for granted that when an dialog opened from a, for example, Sony CD, tells them that they must click accept to be able to listen to an album that no harm will be done to their computer.

I wish that music CDs could’ve stayed being just music CDs.

Today I got for the first time in my life a spam message via the PM system at a forum. That is, me and everyone else who is a member at the bradsoft.com forums. Talk about surprising, and I probably shouldn’t have, but I thought it was at least a little bit amusing. Not the actual spam contents though, that was the usual “give us money now and you’ll get 70% of $35,500,000 later” scam. 🙂

Running SysInternals RootkitRevealer on my computer didn’t reveal anything as hiddeous as Mark at SysInternals found. I did however find some, at least to me, curious things.

One thing was a hidden key at HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\d346prt\Cfg\0Jf40. But I don’t think it is anything to worry about, looks like it is part of Daemon tools, a CD emulator tool I use to mount CD images. At least if one is to believe the answer I got in the Daemon tools forum.

The second thing I found was a couple of broken keys at HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Reinstall. At least that is how I enterpret RootkitRevealers “Key name contains embedded nulls (*)” message. Looking at the values in that key it looks like they are part of older ATI driver installs. Has anyone else seen this? Or is something more sinister going on in my computer than broken ATI installers? I removed them, and everything seems to still function ok.

Lastly the reported inconsistency with the System.EnterpriceServices assembly is probably nothing to worry about. But I could be wrong 🙂 Can anyone explain this?

That I didn’t find anything more suspicous don’t really surprise me. I have autorun turned off and try to read up on what it is I install before I do. But still, I did manage to unknowingly install Starforce , a drm system for games that also installs a couple of drivers, that I think caused some funky behaviour of my dvd. It spun up and stayed rotating at high speeds whenever I had a CD in the drive. But the creators of Starforce at least have a uninstall utillity, would be even better if a uninstall entry in add/remove applications was created for it but I guess that is asking for too much. Still don’t know what game I got Starforce from, the ones I currently play still work.

Once more I have turned my phone in for service, I’m really starting to regret buying it. I really like it as a phone, but having my phone break down every few weeks sucks. And to add insult to injury, as I ranted here, OnOff’s service only make things worse. My conclusion still stands, now stronger than ever. Don’t make the same mistake as I have and buy something from OnOff.

Anyways, I was led to believe they would at least give me new phone now that has broken more than three times, but as I found out today that is not the case. That only happens if the phone has the same fault three times. This was only the second time the camera on the phone stopped working.

Hopefully it wont take them two months to fix it this time..