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Free Legal Music Downloads: In China

Martin — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 13:18:07 +0000

Downloading music is illegal, right? That’s what the Music Industry is telling us all the time. They sue people who download music and do everything in their might to keep up the image that music downloading is a major crime.This is however apparently not true in China where Google struck a deal with major players in the Music Industry – to be precise Universal, EMI, Warner and Sony – to provide free full songs in their search engine. About 350K songs are offered in the beginning. That number is said to rise to 1.1 million songs in the next months alone. The songs will feature both local Chinese artists but also international acts.

The reason for Google is that they are only number two in the search engine market in China. Baidu is first there and offering music downloads as well albeit without a similar deal. The reason why the Music Industry agreed to the deal is simple: Money. The majority of Chinese do not pay for music but download it from the Internet. And so it was decided that sharing some advertising revenue with Google is better than fighting illegal music downloads.

Google is restricting file downloads to Chinese users according to Mashable who were the first to publish the story. The search interface on the other hand is available for everyone.

Definitely an interesting progression especially for Chinese users who can now download music legally while everyone else in the world cannot.

Tags: china, emi, google china, legal music, Music Industry, music-downloads, sony, universal, warner

Blu-Ray Region Code Remover

Martin — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 19:34:27 +0000

Although Blu-Ray has won the battle of this generations HD formats against HD-DVD it is still far away from winning the battle against the DVD format. The majority of Blu-Ray players had made their way into the homes in the form of the Sony Playstation 3. PC users can purchase Blu-Ray players and the more expensive Blu-Ray writers for their computers for some time now as well.

There have not been many releases on Blu-Ray disks though except for movies. Blu-Ray disks can have a region protection which means that it can be that a movie won’t play on a Blu-Ray player if the disk and the player have been purchased in different regions.

The world is divided into three regions: Region A spans across most of Asia, region B includes Europe, Africa and Australia while region C includes North- and South-America and Japan.

Not all Blu-Ray movies are region encoded though. The decision is made by the motion picture studio releasing the movie.

The Blu-Ray Region Code Remover removes the region code of Blu-Ray disk rips on a computer’s hard drive so that these rips can be played regardless of the user’s region. It furthermore supports removing of region code from Blu-ray titles and Java-enabled titles. It can also remove Prohibited User Operations for a better user experience.

The software program requires Windows XP or Windows Vista and the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0.

Tags: blu-ray, blu-ray region code, blu-ray software, movies, portable software, region code, region code remover, sony, windows software

Blu-Ray hardware sales figures drop in 2008

Martin — Fri, 02 May 2008 23:28:17 +0000

The format war between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray is finally over and one would have thought that this would have a positive effect on Blu-Ray sales especially from the customer group that decided to wait and see which side would win the war. Now that HD-DVD lost the format war it should have been clear that consumers would buy Blu-Ray players. Apparently though they are not.

Figures for the first quarter of 2008 have just been released and Blu-Ray standalone player sales dropped by 40% between January and February and rose by only 2% in March. Analysts had predicted that the winning format would see a strong surge in hardware sales but this is not happening.

The price of the Blu-Ray player cannot possibly be the reason for the sharp drop. The players were as expensive when Blu-Ray was still competing with HD-DVD and the prices have not changed a lot since then. One possible reason could be that the customers who wanted to purchase a Blu-Ray player have already done so and that the others simply do not want to pay that much money for a movie player.

Add to that the Internet update problematic and horror stories that some early Blu-Ray players will not be able to play new movies because of technology updates and you pretty much got it summed up.

Would not it be funny if no format would win the war ? That Blu-Ray would not win either because most consumers don’t need it ? That another company would come up with a better format, without DRM, for a lesser price ? I would love to see that. How about you ?

Tags: blue ray, hd dvd, sony, sony-playstation, toshiba

Sony: Want us to remove our crapware for you ? Pay us !

Martin — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 08:24:34 +0000

Sony is a company that is never shy when it comes to finding questionable ways to making just another buck or to annoy a large part of the Internet community by doing something stupid like the Sony Rootkit disaster last year. Their ingenious minds have come up with yet another way to make the extra buck, it’s really amazing in my opinion.

If you purchase a new notebook – and it does not really matter from which manufacturer you make the purchase – you notice lots of software, many call it crapware, that is preinstalled on that notebook. You get demo or trial versions of software, lots of unnecessary applications from the manufacturer and much more that slow down the computer. Many companies love to add a Norton or Symantec trial to the computer for instance.

Sony obviously thought that some customers would like the crapware removed but instead of offering this as a configuration option that is free of charge they charge $50 for it. Yes that is right. Those who add the crapware ask the customer to pay $50 for its removal. That’s a nice business model don’t you think ?

If you feel desperate you could try to use the software PC Decrapifier instead which removes quite a few applications that are usually installed on new notebooks and computers.

Tags: crapware, decrapifier, notebook, sony

HD DVD is throwing the towel

Martin — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 22:34:40 +0000

With more and more companies announcing to go Blu-Ray exclusive it is only a matter of time until Blu-Ray will be announced the winner of the battle of the high definition war. I really could care less which format wins the race because I have no intention to purchase either of them in the near future but if you plan to purchase a HD player you probably should buy a Blu-Ray player.

I’m not a huge fan of Sony and have still hopes but it looks pretty sad for the HD DVD supporters. Those consumers who have bought a HD DVD player will face a huge problem much like the Betamax users faced back in the days when VHS did win that race. It occured to me that the consumer is always loosing in this kind of wars.

If you pick the wrong player you will have to purchase another one to be able to view high definition videos, if you pick the right player you contributed to a monopoly, and it’s Sony this time – it will be awful, it’s a Sony after all.

Tags: blu-ray, hd dvd, high definition, sony, toshiba

Sorry you cannot use that battery because it is not made by us !

Martin — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 21:51:46 +0000

I really do love Sony. They do have so many innovative ways of ******* off their customers it’s unbelievable they are still in business. We have already seen proprietary formats, rootkits on CDs, the soon to be closed online music store that will leave customers who have purchased music there with not playing music if they change hardware or computer. Now there is another story emerging, this one is about Sony notebooks and how they lock out low cost batteries.

Reports are all over the Internet (here, here or here for instance) and from the date of the news we can see that it is not really a “new” problem but one that exists for several years. If you own a Sony laptop and want to buy a separate battery you have to pay roughly three to four times the price if you buy a original Sony battery instead of a generic one.

If you make the decision to buy the generic battery you might be in for a nasty surprise. Sony is not allowing generic batteries in many of their notebooks by using software and hardware protections. The software protection is simply a file called ISBMgr.exe which prevents the usage of another battery not manufactured by Sony. Some users were able to use the battery by removing that program from their computer. (ISBMgr.exe is apparently run at system startup, use msconfig or autoruns to disable it.)

One user described the error message that he received when he booted his Sony notebook with the generic battery:

I got an error message saying the battery either wasn’t properly inserted or wasn’t a genuine Sony, and that the notebook would go into hibernation and the battery must be removed

The hardware protection on the other hand cannot be disabled which means that if you have a notebook with that hardware protection you will not be able to use a generic battery. The It’s a Sony slogan becomes a whole new meaning, don’t you think ?

Tags: ISBMgr.exe, notebook, sony

Need Another Reason why DRM is bad ? Here it is !

Martin — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 10:22:15 +0000

I always asked myself what the main reason for DRM – digital rights media – really is. It – maybe – can be used to stop legit buyers from giving a song to their friends or relatives but it surely does not step the spreading of music at all. Music pirates do get the music before any shop has them in their inventory which in turn means that everyone with a little bit of knowledge about P2P services can get their hands on the music.

If it’s not about preventing the music from being spread, what is it about then ? That’s the question. My thoughts are that someone sold DRM to the CEOs and Executives and that they, with their limited technical understanding thought that it would prevent music piracy. In the end, only the consumers who purchase music are screwed, as you can see in this fine example.

Sony decided to close down their Connect music store that tried to push once again a proprietary format. They miserably failed and that is probably the main reason for the closure. The problem for consumers however is that the music that they purchased from that store had DRM in it.

Don’t worry, the music will play just fine after the store closes down, that is, unless you happen to change your computer hardware. Because at this point, it will stop playing. Ain’t that great ? You bought music thinking that you could enjoy it for the rest of your life only to find out that it won’t play if you change computer hardware or use a new computer.

I’m not sure how you see this but I think that this is absolutely unacceptable. If they want to use DRM they have to make sure that music will play even if they decided to close down their store or change their policy or whatever. My advice: Don’t buy music with DRM ever.

Closing lines are from the Download Squad article, very fitting I think:

DRM does not prevent piracy. DRM merely shafts loyal, paying customers who choose to legitimately obtain their media online

Tags: drm, music, Music Industry, sony

The HD war is not over yet

Martin — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 14:18:14 +0000

If you thought that the HD war was over with the switch of Warner Studios from supporting both HD formats to just Blu-Ray then you might want to observe the market a little bit longer. The effect that Warner has left the HD DVD supporters will not be visible to consumers later this year when the contract expires (May 2008). From then on Warner will only release movies on DVD and Blu-Ray.

Two studios, Paramount and Universal are still backing up HD DVD and press releases suggest that they have no intention to change their stance in the near future. Movie fans are still facing the problem that a choice can’t be made if they wanted to watch movies from all studios unless they would purchase a more expensive dual player that would play Blu-Ray and HD DVD movies.

Many Blu-Ray and HD DVD movies are currently offered at Amazon for 50% off and player prices have been reduced as well. You can purchase a HD DVD player for $149.99 and get five HD DVDs free as a bonus which is an attractive offer.

My stance on this matter remains unchanged. I will boycott both formats and won’t purchase a remaining format as well if there should be a winning format in the near future. I do so mainly because of DRM and all the crap that is loaded into those players. I also have no intention to update my player’s firmware regularly because the manufacturer published a new firmware to fix some security holes.

That’s not what I want and I’m pretty confident that this is something that most consumers do not want as well – if they would know that is.

Tags: blu-ray, hd dvd, high definition, paramount, sony, toshibar, universal, warner

HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray Next Round

Martin — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 22:48:12 +0000

I don’t know how you feel about the ongoing format war between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray but I’m sick and tired to hear which company is backing up which format and which format is doomed because of this move. Today the news hit the Internet by storm that Warner is going Blu-Ray exclusive and everyone was asking the question if this was the end of HD-DVD losing another major movie studio.

To be honest; I do not care if that is the end, if the war will go on another decade or if everyone will come to their senses and produce one format for all movies. I can understand that companies want to push a format that they have created. What I can’t understand is that movie companies like Warner did not pressure the format creators to create one format which would be the best for the customers.

Now we have two formats and everything seems to be utterly complicated. Playstation 3 owners want Blu-Ray to win, the guys who bought a HD-DVD drive for their Xbox 360 want that format to win and everyone can’t play movies that are released exclusively for the other format.

It’s all about money of course and the company whose format is going to win will make most of it for a long time to come. Do they care about the viewers, the customers ? I don’t think so. Besides the obvious fact that many customers who already bought a new player will not be able to view all movies they are also confusing everyone who has not made a decision yet.

My opinion is that we will see players who are supporting both formats. They will cost more but are in my opinion the only reasonable way to please those who buy the players. I for one will use DVD as long as possible and boycott this insane war. I would change my mind if they would release a player that is fast, without all the copy protection and DRM and play both formats without problems. This will never happen I know but hope is still there.

Tags: blue ray, hd dvd, microsoft, sony, toshiba, warner

Sony PS3 + 15 Movies for $499 at Walmart

Martin — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 22:22:37 +0000

I’m not really sure how Sony is planning on making money from that sale but I suppose they have a good reason for that. Walmart is apparently offering a Sony PS3 80 Gigabyte console system plus 10 Blue-Ray movies plus 5 mail in Blue-Ray movies for $499 as part of their Secret Sales holiday campaign.

Only Blue-Ray movies that sell for under $30 can be chosen right in the store where customers make the purchases. All stores hold a minimum of two systems for the price and it remains to be seen if many will have much larger quantities and if Sony decides to count those free movies to Novembers Blue-Ray sales.

I still would not buy a PS3 even with that crazy amount of Blue-Rays that they throw at you but I suppose this will be a mighty successful campaign for both Sony and Walmart.

Many customers will probably buy the package and sell or return the Blue-Ray movies to drop the price of the PS3 system. I guess it is a good bargain but you should not just calculate the price of the Blue-Ray movies and subtract it from the price of the PS3 unless you did plan to buy all those movies anyway.

Tags: ps3, sony, walmart

Send Text Messages to the Future

Martin — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 13:15:19 +0000

Textmemos is a service that lets the user type in text messages that he wants to have delivered at a certain date and time. All that needs to be done is to enter the cell phone number, the cell phone provider, the date, time and of course the message. As of now 38 different cell phone providers are supported by Textmemos most operating in the United States and Canada with only a handful European ones.

The service itself is completely free and no advertisement will be send in any way to the cell phone number of the recipient. The system behind the service utilized the fact that many cell phone provider accept sms that are send by email which is exactly what Textmemos is doing.

New sms are processed every fifteen minutes and send out to the cell phone providers. All messages are send one hour in advance of the time detailed to avoid late delivery.

My cell phone provider is unfortunately not in the list but I have a friend who is using this service quite often. It works very well. This is nice if you forget birthdays often for instance or other important events.

Read More:

Textmemos
via MakeUseOf

Tags: cell-phone, mobile, Nokia, samsung, sms, sony, text memos

Sony caught editing Halo 3 Wikipedia entry

Martin — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 06:44:39 +0000

Oh Sony, when will you learn that manipulating the public will not be taken lightly when it becomes public. This time, someone from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe’s studios in Liverpool was caught adding a sentence to the Halo 3 entry on Wikipedia. The person in question added the sentence ‘Although it won’t look any better than Halo 2′ to the game description which has been removed after discovery.

The manipulation was discovered using the highly acclaimed Wikiscanner which is a searchable database for all Wikipedia edits that have been made.

One has to ask if this was the doings of an individual or sanctioned by Sony and I would guess that it was done by an individual. By using a IP assigned to Sony however Sony is to blaim, again. Real Manipulation looks different and is not done from company computers at all.

You hire someone far away or use your home computer with dynamic IPs or proxies to manipulate which is much harder to spot. This time it was just the blunder of one single employee which happened to fall back on Sony because he was using their network to manipulate the entry.

Read More:

Wikiscanner proof

Tags: halo 3, manipulation, rootkit, sony, wikipedia

Rootkits: Sony does it again

Martin — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 16:27:39 +0000

I would have never thought that a company like Sony would not learn from its mistakes especially after the first rootkit debacle which was a major public relations fiasco for Sony. The first rootkit was placed on several audio CDs that were distributed in 2005 and led to a $6 million settle case in the United States. While the rootkit was intended to make it impossible (albeit ineffectively) to copy music from the CDs it was effectively used by producers of malware, trojans and spyware to hide their code from antivirus software.

The sentenced that always reminds me of how amateurish Sony handled the whole affair went something in the line of “People who don’t know what rootkits do should not care about them”.

It seems Sony did it again. F-Secure is reporting that Sony is now selling a USB stick – the Sony MicroVault – which installs a hidden folder in c:\windows when installing the USB fingerprint software.

So, when enumerating files and subdirectories in the Windows directory, the directory and files inside it are not visible through Windows API. If you know the name of the directory, it is e.g. possible to enter the hidden directory using Command Prompt and it is possible to create new hidden files. There are also ways to run files from this directory. Files in this directory are also hidden from some antivirus scanners (as with the Sony BMG DRM case) — depending on the techniques employed by the antivirus software. It is therefore technically possible for malware to use the hidden directory as a hiding place.

F-Secure suspects that the hidden folder is used to protect the fingerprint authentication and strongly disagrees that this is the correct way to achieve a protection.

I think that Sony made a big mistake in using such a technology again even if it was intended to be of good use for the owner.

Read More:

F-Secure Blog

Tags: fingerprint, malware, rootkit, sony, Spyware, virus

The HD-DVD vs. Blue-Ray war confuses consumers

Martin — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 07:10:18 +0000

The war between HD-DVD and Blue-Ray entered a next stage with the announcements of Paramount and Dreamworks to publish their lineup exclusively on HD-DVD. Rumors soon spread around the Internet that both companies were receiving payments (Paramount $50 million dollars, Dreamworks $100 million dollars) from HD supporters to make this decision.

The situation is currently the following: Paramount and Universal will publish their movies exclusively on HD-DVD while Disney, Fox, Sony, Lionsgate and MGM publish theirs exclusively on Blue-Ray. Time Warner seems to be the only movie company that is producing movies for both HD formats.

While the companies are battling for the one true format consumers are confused and left with choices that they can’t make at the moment. No one wants to pay hundreds of dollars for a HD player if that player will be obsolete in a few years. Remember the Beta / VHS fiasco back then ?

The best choice at the moment is to wait in my opinion and buy the movies on DVD which is the only format that will see all movie releases from all companies. If you already made a purchase you can enjoy some of the movies in HD but will have to rely on DVDs to be able to watch the other movies.

I’m really happy that I do not have an HD television yet and no desire to buy an Xbox 360 with HD drive or a PS3 with Blue-Ray in the near future. I have all the time in the world to wait and see how this war continues. Will it be decided by money or by the choice of the consumers ?

Tags: blue ray, dreamworks, hd dvd, microsoft, paramount, sony

Blue-Ray Disks that rot

Martin — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:48:44 +0000

Have you ever seen something so irritating than rotting Blue-Ray disks ? Paying $35 for a movie (now available for $22) that is not playable after a few months because of rot ? A user in the AVS forum started a thread showing pictures of the Blue-Ray movie The Prestige that showed dozens of blotches that are apparently underneath the disk surface.

Several other users reported that their disks were showing similar blotches while others said their disks did not have them. Suggestions were that it could be climate related or a coating problem during production on some batches that have been sold.

The thread starter was using a PS3 to play the movie which could be related. There are unfortunately not that many information available at this point but this could be a serious blow for the Blue-Ray supporters if it turned out to be something serious that could happen to all disks.

Do you own a Blue-Ray player and have the movie The Prestige ? How does yours look and which Blue-Ray player do you use ? Click on the images for a larger picture.

found: Crunchgear

Tags: blue ray, blue-ray rot, faulty blue-ray disks, sony

Sony DVD does not play on Sony DVD Player because of DRM

Martin — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 20:20:55 +0000

I knew that something like that was going to happen eventually and it did happen with the releases of “Stranger Than Fiction” and “The Holiday”. Mick B posted the story on a new blog that he apparently created just for the purpose of bringing the news to the world. He rented the two DVD movies (from Sony Pictures) and tried to play them on his Sony DVP-CX995V DVD player. Both DVD movies did load until the splash screen was shown and stopped loading from that moment on. After 60 seconds the DVD player did turn itself off with no apparent reason.

Mike did call Sony electronics who told him to call Sony Pictures which he did. The tech on the line told Mike that this was happening because of a new copy protection that Sony was using on those movies and that they would not change the way the copy protection worked. A firmware update would correct this situation and make the DVDs playable in his player. When he asked about the update he was told that it was not available yet and that it could take two to four weeks before it would be available.

Great story, is not it ? I really love the way the Sony tech reacted to Mikes question. Very professional to tell him that an firmware update would help but that it is not available now. Great help for someone who wanted to play legit DVDs on a DVD player. Why is it the case that only customers who buy DVDs and CDs are often having troubles playing them ?

I suppose there is only one solution to the problem. Avoid Sony at all cost, they had so many ****ups in the past years that I’m really wondering why they are still in the business at all.

Tags: dvd movie drm, dvd movie wont play, dvd player, playback problems, sony, sony drm

Add a bigger hard drive to your PS3

Martin — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 07:32:42 +0000

I always wondered why Microsoft and Sony added hard drives with such low capacities to their gaming systems. HD Movies, game trailers for instance, use so much space that the hard drive will sooner or later be filled to the rim with the only solution to delete files to free up space. Someone on myspace posted a solution on how to add at least one 3,5″ SATA drive to your Playstation 3. The 3,5″ will not fit into the PS3 obviously because it is using a 2,5″ internally.

You will need the following hardware:

1 medium Phillips screw driver.
1 3.5″ SATA HDD
1 3.5″ SATA HDD enclosure.
1 Male SATA 7-Pin DATA to Female SATA 7-Pin Cable. (I’m using a 20″)
You may need a set of needle nose pliers or a pair of snips.

The author has linked to websites that aid you in the process. He recommend an external SATA case to add the 3,5″ SATA drive to it. The case needs an external SATA connection as well as its own power supply to work flawlessly.

I do not own a PS3 yet which means I could not try this little hack on my own machine. It seems to me that you have to use the internal SATA connector to connect the external SATA drive. Here is what he is saying about this, rather vague unfortunately:

If you want cut, a hole in your PS3’s HDD cover and run the cable through go ahead. However, I may at a later time make a male to male SATA cable. I will lilkely use the extension cable I already have and a cable from a SATA cable bracket like in the following pics. I will cut a hole of the appropriate size in the HDD cover and attach the bracket end to the cover. Figure this part out yourself. For now I’ll keep the PS3 in a vertical position with the cable hidden running through a hole below to the drive enclosure.

Tags: festplatte ps3, ps3, sony, sony-playstation

Zune does not allow to share all songs

Martin — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 07:58:40 +0000

Microsoft’s answer to Apple’s iPod is getting some bad feedback lately. It turned out some months ago that shared songs, e.g. songs that you send another Zune user to his Zune, would only be playable for 3 days / times before they became useless. It did not even matter if the song contained DRM or not, all songs, even your own produced ones, would be limited to this.

This was apparently not enough for the usual suspects. Sony, we do love Sony – don’t we, and Universal decided to prohibit even this type of sharing for more than 40% of the songs that one could buy on the Zune marketplace. The first question that comes to my mind is why Microsoft is paying Universal roughly $1 for every Zune sold if Universal does not even allow that some of their songs are shared with all the limitations of the Zune player ?

This is probably blown out of proportion by the blogging scene at the moment but I think Microsoft should at least have the courtesy to label songs that can’t be shared. Every user should now if it is possible to share a song that he has bought from the Zune marketplace.

Record Companies again show that they do not understand the market at all. What would another Zune owner do if I would send him a song which he likes ? The song becomes unplayable after a time. Would be buy it ? Probably ? Would that mean profit for the companies ? Yes it would.

You know why I bought some CD`s for the first time in years ? Because I was able to listen to the whole tune online (ripped it) and offline before I decided to make the purchase. I personally think that they lose money because of the restrictions that they impose on their customers.

Tags: drm, microsoft, share-songs, songs, sony, universal, Zune, zune-marketplace

Get rid of preinstalled Software

Martin — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 17:24:50 +0000

Did you ever buy a new computer from manufacturers like Dell, HP or Sony ? If you did you know that those computers come loaded with a bunch of preinstalled software products that are normally not very useful and use valuable disk space. One option would be to uninstall one product after the other until you have every last one of them removed from your new computer.

A much faster method would be to use the so-called PC DE-Crapifier to uninstall most of not all of them in one go. Starting the software simply displays a list of products that is currently installed on your computer. This is not the uninstallation dialog that you see when you select it from your control panel. PC DE-Crapifier only scans the system for known products that are preinstalled when buying a new computer.

You may select to remove none, some or all of the programs that are found during the scan. This ensures that you can keep all the programs that sound interesting or have been installed on purpose. The list of programs that PC DE-Crapifier supports is a long one, here we go:

QuickBooks Trial
NetZero Installers
Earthlink Setup Files
Corel Photo Album 6
Tiscali Internet
Wanadoo Europe Installer
Get High Speed Internet!
Internet Service Offers Launcher
Dell Search Assistant
Norton Ghost 10.0
Symantec Live Update
MS Plus Photo Story 2LE
MS Plus Digital Media Installer
McAffee
Norton Internet Security
Google Desktop
AOL US
AOL UK
MusicMatch Jukebox
MusicMatch Music Services
Wild Tangent Games
Norton AntiVirus 2005
Norton Security Center
Norton AntiSpam
PC-cillin Internet Security 12
Run Registry Entries
Desktop Icons
Corel WordPerfect
Roxio RecordNow
Sonic DLA
Sonic Update Manager
Sonic RecordNow Audio
Sonic RecordNow Copy
Roxio MyDVD LE
Microsoft Office Standard Edition 2003
Quicken 2006

As you can see a lot of programs. Please note that some of the listed programs are so called light versions that do not offer the functionality of the full priced product. Others can be trial versions that you can only use for a certain time with the option to buy them if you want to continue using them.

I’d say this is pretty useful if you want a fast efficient solution.

Tags: crap, de crapifier, dell, install, pc de crapifier, software, sony, uninstall

How to easily dump PS3 movies and games

Martin — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 06:53:43 +0000

I don’t know why Sony is so obsessed with Linux, it just does not feel right but I really can’t find a good motive for the support – yet. Some guy apparently installed Linux Fedora Core on his Playstation 3 and dumped everything that he could get his hands on. He was able to dump a complete game disc to his external usb hard drive that he connected to the PS3.

Some days later he managed to do the same with a Blue-Ray movie which means that everything is set to get the warez scene going. I think it is kinda strange that it was always easy to copy games for the Playstation systems and many people think that the success of the Playstation systems could be connected to this.

This got me thinking. Why did not Sony try and dump their discs if they knew everyone would be able to install and use Linux on the Playstation 3 ? Did they all miss it or was it probably something they did not care about or even wanted ? What do you think about this ?

Tags: blue ray, copy, dump, dvd, image, iso, Linux, movie, playstation-3, ps3, sony

gHacks technology news » sony

Free Legal Music Downloads: In China

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