Rumor is that Itunes will Remove DRM!

[ad#ad2-right]A report from last week brought to AppleInsider‘s attention by French technology site ElectronLibre asserts that it’s now “clear” Apple will spark new interest in its music store by removing DRM from tracks published by Sony, Universal and Warner on December 9th.

[Via Apple Insider]

Although, this is somewhat unlikely I’ve got my own theories on this.  You see If Apple did this tomorrow that would be a BIG deal, due to the fact that Microsoft will be releasing there patches on the same day.  I find it would be a momentous occasion.

[ad#ad2-left]I can only guess why and the guess is just a guess.  If Itune’s did remove there DRM the same time as Microsoft Patch Tuesday, I’d have to guess they will co-inside because of the difficulty of using the DRM, Digital Rights Management, on other products.  For example, Windows Media Player .  If Apple decided to approach Microsoft and come up with a way to make sure all DRM is stripped this would be the ideal situation.   Although this is highly unlikely, I’d have to think Apple wouldn’t wait till tomorrow to strip the DRM.  They know Microsoft schedule.  We will have to find out in the coming days.

Some good CyberMonday Sites to look at for 2008!

I was just getting done with that story about the Walmart Stampede, and thought I would encourage people to check these good sites for people to check out for great deals.   I have been looking through sites combing for some great sites to find the best deals and here they are:

[ad#ad2-right-1]

  • Dealio — Dealio will not only show you sneak peaks at Cyber Monday ads, but we will also send you directly to the store so that you can purchase the often limited inventory Cyber Monday deals before they disappear. Best of all, there is no need to hop from site to site – Dealio has all your Cyber Monday shopping covered.
  • CyberMonday — Shop hot holiday deals from more than 500 merchants. All of Shop.org’s proceeds from CyberMonday.com support the Ray Greenly Scholarship Fund.
  • Cybermonday Mahalo Deals — This Mahalo page collects links to websites offering information and discounted merchandise for Cyber Monday.
  • Best Cyber Monday Sales –Well, I finally put together a list of the top retailers throughout the country with links directly to their Cyber Monday deals.
  • Shopzilla —  The company’s mission is to enable shoppers to quickly and easily find compare and buy anything, sold by virtually anyone, anywhere. Each month, Shopzilla connects millions of consumers with thousands of stores.

These are just a few that I could find and wanted to let people decide where they would like to go!!

Cricket USB UM100 Broadband Wireless Modem Review.

The UM100c is No Longer Available, Please check out the Cricket [intlink id=”3059″ type=”post”]A600 Modem Review[/intlink] Or the [intlink id=”4523″ type=”post”]UM185 Broadband modem[/intlink]. The UM185 modem might be a replacement to the UM100.

After a full week of playing around with this USB wireless, I wanted to talk about it. So let’s break it down into pieces.

  1. [ad#text-broadband1]
  2. Installation —  The installation of the USB was not to difficult.  I did have to do some more steps than this:  Install the Software, then hooked up the USB device to the USB port.
  3. Manual Activated the Broadband —  For some reason in my area they had several people have problems with the broadband activation.  So I had to activate it manually!!

After that all went well, I was on the internet just a cruising along.  I did however wonder why I was getting such a slow response speed.  When I went traveling I thought I would share some of my local results with you to better show you my speed.  All these test were done at

my speed test around town

Please see an updated post on how to get even more speed from the broad band modem.
This speed is not the true speed for the broad band modem
.

The Percentages over the results are showing you just what my signal strength was when I was doing the test.  Two of the 4 were traveling on the highway and the other two were stationary.  I also know that my speed will vary along with signal strength, I know I have to be a mile or less from a tower to get 100%.

*Update* 12/21/08

[ad#cricket-1]In my other post I talk about why I didn’t get the speed I expected, but after I did the activation I went to normal Mobile Broadband speeds.   I also now have been using the USB Modem for my main internet without any or much problems.   I know I can’t play any major online games but I can at least have the internet with me were ever  I go.   As long as you stay in the coverage area, you should be in good shape.  .  Like I Said I’ve used it in my area for over a 1 month and with the small little problem, the speed has been really dependable and I haven’t had any major issue with connectivity. I’ve been using this modem as my main internet and have not seen any major internet and have not seen any of the cap come my way.   I think they won’t mind to much as long as you don’t ABUSE the internet, for example don’t use it for bittorrent downloads and you should be fine!!

Update 12/24/2008
I also did travel with my laptop to another city, and I got to say it was really good and how it did when I went from one city to another. Check out the report here.
According to some post and forum talks around the the internet they are talking about the soft cap of 5 Gigabytes but that seems to not be so important right now.   After all, they have to make money some how.   I will update as necessary when I find anything else out.

update 1/01/09

I also did a video and uploaded it to youtube using the broadband connection. I had no problem uploading this video to Youtube. I’ve embedded it in this web page. See it on the bottom:

I also bought the [intlink id=”3059″ type=”post”]A600 Cricket modem[/intlink] and I absolutely love this modem because of the things you can do with it.

Citigroup bank might be saved through the recession.

According to reports from ABC News, Citibank is having a hard time and might need to be assisted by the government.

[ad#ad2-right]The company has seen its shares lose 60 percent of their value in the past week, reflecting a crisis of confidence among skittish investors. They are worried all the risky debt on Citigroup’s balance sheet will turn into losses as the economy worsens and the markets stay turbulent — losses that could be nearly impossible to reverse.


[via ABC News]

Although this is somewhat expected, I don’t think we can afford to pay the debt of a bank.  We are all having to deal with this recession.   I don’t know how they can afford to pay for Citigroup and expect this to help bolster the economy.   I guess only time will tell!!!

Vista has a new Vulnebility!

According to Techworld.com,  Vista has a new Vulnerability that could let a hacker infect a Vista machine with a rootkit.  The talk from them is quite intriguing.   I will quote it to better let you know what the Vulnerability is:

The vulnerability could allow a hacker to install a rootkit, a small piece of malicious software that is very difficult to detect and remove from a computer, Unterleitner said.

[ad#ad2-left]Phion notified Microsoft about the problem on 22 October. Microsoft indicated to Phion that it would issue a patch with Vista’s next service pack. Microsoft released a beta version of Vista’s second service pack to testers last month. Vista’s Service Pack 2 is due for release by June 2009.
[via Techworld.com]

The way they could do this is through the Device IO Control which in turn could corrupt the Kernel of Windows Vista.  Now we all know that Microsoft will release a patch quicker than 6 months away.  According to this article, people are already looking for the exploit and want to know more about it.  I would be willing to bet they will have a patch out sooner than later.  Probably January or Febuary, which will be a big deal because no one will expect it.  I would also imagine hackers will start trying to figure out how they could install software as quick as possible before Microsoft pushes out the patch.   So what can you do to protect yourself, Get a firewall, a Antivirus and learn how to protect yourself to prevent yourself from getting a computer virus.