Jim Flowers' Radio Weblog

	Tuesday, May 03, 2005

I was attempting to catch 20 winks while listening to a music channel via my cable provider. Hmmm... I thought, if the Cable company, who also provides my broadband service, allowed me to receive the music broadcast via broadband as well as the set top box then I would no longer need to pay the monthly subscription fee to Rhapsody.

Lo and behold, as if in a vision, an ad appeared on the TV telling me to go to www.musicchoice.com and I could receive the same music broadcast on my PC.

Excited like a kid at Christmas, I abandoned plans for my nap and settled in front of my trusty PC (more trusty since I abandoned IE in favor of Mozilla, I might add).

So, I go to the site. It wants me to identify myself. Ok, that is understandable.

But wait, it asks for the login id to my Comcast account -- one that was set up when the technician came -- but not used as my other DSL provider, BellSouth, is the one with whom I trust my email (yeah, yeah -- why do I need two DSL connections?).

Fumbling around, I find I can access my Comcast Services Account -- but the Internet Account is a different beast. Arrggg!

Finally, I remember the login. Then, the BEAST appears in a popup -- You must use IE 5.0 or greater and You must allow Comcast to downloard a DRM agent that works with Media Player. " You do not control your video and you will not control your music," says the Comcast bot.

Suddenly, a voice booms, "Honey, it is time to go!"

(to be continued...)

comment [] 7:03:04 AM

Yesterday I started receiving a lot of virus laden mail -- the type that steals addresses and carries a zip file. The creative "hook" on this virus is that is pretends to be a message from a major ISP claiming your email was rejected. You get "snagged" by opening the zip file to see that the errant message was.

comment [] 6:55:24 AM