The Grass is NOT Greener!

I made a HUGE mistake tonight folks. I decided to "take a walk on the other side of the tracks" and see what was up over there. I wanted to stream a couple of videos and find out what the experience was like for the average computer user who wanted some tunes from the "known" non-independent sources.

I fell victem to sites like launch.com and eMTv.com (sorry, I will NEVER be able to bring myself around to spelling "eMTv" the way they want me to... ESPECIALLY after an experience like I had tonight!)
I even tried a few other RIAA "sanctioned" sources for vids and/or music. And I visited a few "name" artists websites...

Needless (?) to say, in order to view content from such places, I ended up having to upgrade my music player (I have "bought and paid for" music-match software which I had previously needed to "update" since 2001 or so...) in order to stream/download some of the content. Some sites required me to use realplayer... similar story... "upgrade" required (and foolishly, I complied.)

I am very ashamed of the BIGGEST sin I commited upon myself tonight. I "upgraded" my Windows Media Player to "9"...

After all the reboots, hours of configurations/re-installing etc... what did I get??? Well, I must be honest... I did get to hear a few tracks (drm infected audio streams) and I got to see a few music videos (double ditto the drm) ...all of which I probably could have "enjoyed" by watching eMTv during the late night hour or 2 each night when they actually play a video...

But what did I REALLY get from this experiment?

(1) A severely crippled computer that used to run fairly smoothly.

(2) A conviction that I have been right all along that Independent Music is much more listenable and enjoyable than the "major label" schlock.

(3) A strong desire to shoot myself in the head for being so stupid.

(4) A need for a very computer savvy friend who can tell me how to get RID of that f**king WMP-9 that keeps trying to "call home" and keeps trying to get me to "install" DRM "identifiers" for the sake of "protection" (who's protection??? ...unspecified by "9" ...but I ain't no idiot, and I know WHO...

(well, I guess I really AM the idiot for agreeing to the "upgrade" in the first place...)

help? Anyone?

"5 will get you 20" that I am gonna have to completely wipe my hard-drive and re-install EVERYTHING and start over from scratch...

just because I was "curious"

...well, this cat got killed.

PLEASE, EVERYONE, DO YOURSELF'S A FAVOR AND STICK TO INDIE MUSIC SOURCES WHILE ONLINE!!!

(PS, and BTW, I stuck an indie CD in my CD drive to listen while typing this up and heard in less than 45 minutes a huge wealth of awsome music... MUCH MORE than I did in the past 10 or more HOURS of mucking about in the RIAA "approved" way of getting music entertainment online.)

Shmoo, of Electric Gypsy
Support Local and Independent Music!

Sorry, Shmoo. You know what they say: Curiosity killed "la chatte" or "le chat". I took your advice months ago and never agree to update winamp, Windows Media Player or Real Player. This means I can't always hear or view what I want to. But I had so much trouble when my daughter updated AOL IM which automatically installed Viewpoint Media Player. Send an e-mail to goldenpi. Here's goldenpi's page: http://goldenpi.no-ip.org/drm/

You might be able to find some information here: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/08/138200&tid=152

I got a lot of help here, too: http://www.spywareinfo.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=4298&st=60

...the sad thing? I only updated the players that I already actually PAID for... not the "freebie/gotcha" shareware ones...

Thanks Lachatte! When I get off my drinking binge/get sane again, I got a LOT of work to do on my box! lol!

(Honest folks, I didn't think it would screw my 'puter up THIS bad... hell, nearly every .mp3 I play from my hard-drive, or from a CD I made causes a "pop-up" box to appear indicating that it is trying to "call home"... AND THESE ARE INDIE TUNES... MORE THAN HALF OF THEM MY OWN!!!)

Sheesh!

(Maybe time to WIPE and get over the learning curve and go linux?)

Another ringing endorsement for the RIAA

restore your computer to the last restore point before you started such silliness.

...hell, I need a new box anyway.

wow

Raoulduke1 is right. Many computers used to come with a recovery CD. They don't give you that anymore. But you can do a System Restore. You pick a date (sometime before you added stuff that screwed up your computer). I would get somebody's help before attempting it though.

Of course they don't give you a recovery CD anymore. First, you might... get ready... heaven forbid... COPY A PROGRAM **GASP**!!!

In addition, because so many programs come from different sources (aka greedy corporations), they probably couldn't agree on licensing for the recovery CD.

Like gdZiemann said in another thread "Money -- the one true religion".

I always make backup copies of the .wav files of my band to CD and everything else that I care about (...all YOU guy's and OTHER indie's music) I can mostly re-find online anyway. %90 of the other stuff on this box is just junk anyhow. A clean wipe might be a good idea. (Gotta find that damn win 98 disc tho...)

"I even tried a few other RIAA "sanctioned" sources for vids and/or music."

I didn't think the RIAA sanctioned videos? sorry Mike I'm getting picky. setting the restore point is probably the easiest way and it's very easy. hope you have winME or XP otherwise you won't be able to do that.

Too big a job 4 me today...

Guess I could make the best of a bad thing and go dl and watch all the pRon clips that required "9" before I wipe this box clean (lol)

c ya all in a day or 2

98 Rick, 98 SE and NEVER beyond

I tell ya there is awesome band called
Point Defiance for all you hard rock fans out there.

There are independant and have great music. Its bands like that which make it so easy to make the transition to independant music.

If any of you have been keeping up with what I have been doing musically...just a note to sat that I am going to be updatingt my site soon and including a couple new tracks and every once in a while adding new sound clips of the stuff I am working on.

www.jodemusic.com

Oh, so that's what lachatte means.
French was not my language.

[audio hifi 172425] "Grass is Greener" [\audio]

oh well bedouin.dmusic.com

I am sorry to say, I don't think you will get all the media 9 out of your system. You have probably found out already with an attempt to uninstall. It does leave the phonehome in place and conviently forgets to uninstall that part.

If I would make a suggestion to you, it would be to use VLC for a video player and to use QCD for a music player on your computer. Both are free, both support a wide range of formats, both can be found with a search of Google, and best neither have phone home.

When I do a fresh install one of the first things I do at the first oppurtunity is to dump both IE and Media player (or as much as possible). Another is to dump MSN explorer (ever notice it is the only one that sends a warning message its not going to work anymore? Duh!).

The majors have dumbed down music and vids to the lowest common denominator, hyping looks and sex as more important selling points than actual talent. Witness the debacle of whatshername (Ashley) and the attention it has recieved. Then comes in the sound engineers and mixers and ask what is the problem, they been doing it for years.

Yep they been doing it for a long time, only thing is they didn't let the buying public in on it. The public now feels ripped off by a common practice of the entertainment industry (notice it was not called music industry) when paying these outrageous ticket prices. They paid to see a dance routine under the mistaken idea that they were going to see a band preform live.

The nightmare of preventing you from doing what you want with stuff you purchased, such as your player is another side victim of this sort of mentality. Not going to be able to play the latest greatest unless you are upgraded. If you are, you got a big brother watching your every move. Once in your machine, it isn't coming out without dumping everything and getting a clean machine.

So just how many unknowledgeable computer users you think have been driven away from perfectly legal listening experiences, such as indies by those warnings? Once again you see the influance of the music and major corporations trying to steer you away from what they don't want you to know exists or that is legal. Of course if you complain you will get something to the effect of, "Its just a computer, it can't tell the difference." Yeah right. It COULD tell that you didn't buy it from them though, couldn't it?

Inm order to get rid of WMP 9 completely, well, you'll have to hack the registry to be sure to get it all. Much like Norton AV, WMP leaves Registry calls upon uninstalling. You also need to get rid of any run in the back ground programs, such as the "phone home" module.

Frankly, a format and re-load works much better, and using Win 98, if you hvaen't done a restore in a couple of years, you should consider it. If you have an unstall 3rd party running, then you could probably uninstall it, and get ti all.

Also, while on the topic, it has been mentioned to use Windows System Restore. In the case of WMP, that won't work. Windows System Restore ignores any programs that it looks at as system critical. It also only works under Win ME/XP.

a simple way to protect your computer from the days when you do dumb things is ghost your computer after you get it set up the way you want it, after that do all the dumb things you want and return your computer to pre dumb buy reloading throught your ghost program. Nortons has worked well for me.

Media 9, like Hack Valenti, is a leech, a parasite....once it's tentacles are infiltrated into your system...you are in DRM Hell...just say NO to media 9

Remember to back up everything to CD-R/RW before the reinstall (Documents, downloaded program install files, zip files and images). I've forgotten to do some of that before (forgot my docs) and regretted it.

Oh, and BTW, you can download the Media Player 9 codecs to update Media Player 7 without installing Media Player 9, you only install the codecs that allow you to see newer video. I did that and haven't had any problems. Windows 98SE, baby!
I'm still trying to figure out Linux, I have a dual-boot system, which has save my butt a couple of times; Linux can see Windows files and if Windows totally screws up, you can drag your windows files into Linux to back them up then put them back into windows after re-installing.

save=saved
Doh!

OK, MP9 is not all that bad. You CAN control it. Mine does NOT phone home or d/l any DRM-infested stuff. You just have to turn off the default privacy settings & if you are really concerned about it just don't give it access to the internet from your firewall. Also, it can be uninstalled, but it's not for the faint of heart.

Correction: My site is now at http://sharedserv.no-ip.org/drm/

I keep the old link going for compatability, but some time ago it was stolen by a scam company. I changed to sharedserv.no-ip.org then - some other users also have sites hosted on my server. I managed to reclaim goldenpi.no-ip.org, but I am trying to get rid of it. There are far too many search engines using it through.