News flash: Sony still evil

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/29/sony_rootkit_controversy/

Even though they "learned their lesson" with the rootkit on their CDs last year, this year they're shipping USB thumb drives with rootkit-like behavior.

I'm sorry they insist on acting like that; they do have a few nice pieces of equipment, but they're not getting my $$. I got a Panasonic camcorder this year instead of a Sony (not that the Panasonic isn't good too, but Sony didn't even get considered for purchase due to evilness, so I don't know if Sony has a model that would have been better for me).

Belkin's on the "evil" list too, and they just lost $35 of my money last weekend when I bought a D-Link router instead of one of theirs that was actually cheaper.

One machine ordered

I ordered the cheapest machine I could get from Dell to replace the fried MythTV box. Here's what "cheapest" means:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual core 3800+
160 GB hard drive
1GB RAM
Vista Basic Home (will get deleted immediately and overwritten with Linux)
48x CDRW/DVD reader combo drive
integrated sound/graphics, USB kb/mouse, 56K modem, ethernet, etc.

That was $329. I then threw in an enhanced VGA card, not because I need the enhanced but because I need SVideo output to go to the TV, and the card I have is AGP and everything is PCI Express now. That put it at $379 plus tax, free shipping.

I'll probably get pretty much an identical machine to replace the other fried machine. I wanted to get going on at least one machine because I'm trying to balance between getting things restored to normal quickly and waiting to see how the insurance is going to work out. I do know I need at least one machine so I did that. I'm hoping the insurance company will be willing to let me hang on to the old machines until I have the replacement machines, so that I can copy the data over without having to go out and buy a few 500 GB hard drives.

I'm still going to have to get the MythTV box going because the scheduling data feed changeover happens this weekend, and I only have data through next Wednesday, not long enough to get the new machine in.