The Mandelbear's Musings

From the BBC, no less, we get the headline FBI tries to fight zombie hordes!

Of course, it's about networks of hijacked computers, not yesterday's silliness. But the timing! (From wcg.)

I'm quoting this entire article because it's both short and appalling.

LACTON, England, June 23 (UPI) -- The Walt Disney Co., which had denied permission to grieving British parents to put Winnie the Pooh on their child's gravestone, has had a change of heart.

Disney had warned that a stonemason would be in breach of copyright if he included the bear's image along with "bear of very little brain," on the gravestone, The Telegraph reported. The parents had sought approval from Disney, but were rejected.

Stonemason Aaron Clarke said he was outraged.

"Disney make billions of pounds every year from children but they won't let a family put a picture on a stillborn baby's headstone," he said. "It is ridiculous. The family are upset enough as it is."

The company reversed course Thursday and allowed the parents to use the image. A Disney spokesman told the Telegraph the company is in continual communication with the family.

Yeah, they finally got pressured into doing the right thing. It's the fact that they had to be pressured in the first place that makes me ill. If you ever catch me buying any of Disney's Pooh crap merchandise, kindly hit me with a copy of this post wrapped around a clue-by-four. From Boing Boing.

Slashdot and BoingBoing both point to this article dissecting the rootkit that Sony installs in the name of DRM on their recent audio CDs. It hides registry entries and processes, and hooks into drivers and system calls, and creates a hidden directory. It's a rootkit -- one of the nastiest forms of malware out there.

It'll be a cold day in Hell the next time I buy a Sony product. Too bad for them; I was thinking of getting another pair of headphones. Anybody know of something roughly equivalent to the Sony MDR 7509's?