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Over a year ago, Sony BMG loaded DRM on their CDs so when you put it in your computer’s CD ROM drive, you get a rootkit.  When you tried to remove it, the rootkit screwed up your computer.  Then finally a month later, Microsoft released a patch that safely removed it (ironic, right?). 

Sony has just agreed to pay out $150 to customers infected by the rootkit in order to “repair damage done.” The company will also be providing an uninstall tool and patches to repair any damage that was done.  If my computer was infected, I likely would’ve re-formatted by now, but would gladly pocket the cash.  In fact, I think I’ll hit up eBay and look for an infected CD to install on my computer.  Sounds like an easy payout to me!  (Disclaimer: we do not indorse this activity)

Read [Yahoo! News] Via [Gizmodo]

We’ve gotten in touch with Rob Lord the CEO of Pioneers of the Inevitable, the company behind Songbird, and we’re going to be interviewing him. As always, we would like to open up the floor to you, the readers, to come up with some good questions. So after playing with Songbird and have a question that you’ve been dying to ask Rob, post it down in the comments. Ask as many as you want, and we’ll get the answers. Some background on Rob:

Rob Lord is an Internet digital media geek, SET player and occasional gardener. Rob was previously founder and CEO of IUMA (acquired by Universal Vivendi), VP of Web Technologies at N2K (acquired by BMG), General Manager of Nullsoft (acquired by AOL) and co-founder/CEO of Mediacode (acquired by Yahoo!). Rob was most recently Director, Product Manager for the Y! Music Engine at Yahoo!