From the HIDC CYA Newswire: Sony Recalls CDs & Apologizes to Customers

As reported by many news sources. Sony has issued a stronger apology(that is still responsibly vague on what they will admit was wrong doing taking into consideration the lawsuits already mobilizing against the company) and they've initiated a recall of the more popular CD's that contain the rootkit "malware".
I swear Sony can't really do anything right. If those in charge didn't have their heads in the sand, they should strongly consider an overhaul of the marketing and public relations department. Though this recall and apology are positive actions. All of the reactions or non-reactions by Sony leading up to this moment have been really unacceptable and made a bad public relations situation all the worse.
BTW - Just in case you hadn't read about it yet. Don't use the uninstall program that Sony is distributing. Word is, it opens your computer to even more security risks. That's just par for the course.

Nine Inch Nails, Nov. 2, Wash. D.C.

Wow, ok, so yesterday was the Queens of the Stone Age and Nine Inch Nails concert at the MCI Center in beautiful downtown Washington D.C. I have never seen either band before and I was quite happy for the chance to finally see them live. While I am not a fan of shows at arenas or stadiums because the intimacy is lost and the bands pretty much have to stick to a standard set of songs due to time restrictions being in place, the two bands did quite well for what they had to work with.

The opening act was Death From Above 1979, which I had heard of before but never heard before, and I was quite impressed by them. The arena was barely 1/3 of the way full but the 2 man band did not care as they blistered through a crushingly loud set of fast paced punk/jam metal (the only way I can describe it). One bass, one drum set. That's all they needed and they pretty much rocked, I came away quite impressed.

Next came Queens of the Stone Age, who appeared a little miffed that even though the stadium was filling up, no one cared that they were on stage. Because of this, frontman Josh Homme even said towards the end of the set "I hope you guys have fun tonight and don't just sit there with your thumbs up your ass all night." I guess that was his form of saying the crowd sucked. In any case, I like QotSA a lot, but their music seems to make me sleepy. Its not for lack of loudness or heaviness or anything, its occasionally fast paced, always sludgy and thick, but Homme's voice for some reason puts me in a sleepy trance every time I hear it. Nevertheless, they put on a good show and played songs from mostly their last 2 albums, a little disappointing since I wanted to hear a couple tracks from "R".

Finally, Nine Inch Nails came on. They had a huge somewhat transparent cloth (used for projecting movies at one point) over the entire stage, behind it they filled the stage completely with smoke. Looked like a big bbq was going on there, but then they backlighted the cloth and the band kicked into a non stop set of songs that lasted a good hour and a half. (set list will be posted at the bottom). They crushed the heavy songs like Wish and March of the Pigs (Moshing didn't occur much in the crowd until the song Wish came on, a few pits opened and quickly closed thereafter) and settled down on the slow ones like Hurt (many many lighters and crowdmembers singing along). NIN basically did a very professional arena rock set of their greatest hits spanning Reznor's entire catalogue. The guitarist was crazy as heck, bouncing around on stage, destroying his and his bandmate's equipment, throwing bottles at the audience and attacking all of the other guys on stage. Hilarious.

Overall, a pretty standard arena rock show, no real surprises, but it was a solid concert to see. Nothing like finally getting to see one of your favorite bands of the last 15 years live in concert. So while it was nothing special, it was still pretty darn amazing. I know I was pretty amped up after.

Set List
1. Pinion
2. Love Is Not Enough
3. You Know What You Are
4. Terrible Lie
5. The Line Begins To Blur
6. March Of the Pigs
7. The Frail
8. The Wretched
9. Closer
10. Burn
11. Gave Up
12. Eraser
13. Right Where It Belongs
14. Beside You In Time
15. The Collector
16. Wish
17. Only
18. Reptile
19. Suck
20. Hurt
21. The Hand That Feeds
22. Head Like A Hole

Samsung to Enter Digital Music Retail Biz

According to reports yesterday, Samsung has plans to compete with iTunes and the many other digital music stores on the 'net with a store of their own. There's no word on what format the music files sold will be delivered as or if this store will have cross platform support. Samsung apparently believes the online store is the key to surpassing Apple in digital music player sales.

Okay, I have to stop. I'm laughing so hard while typing this that it's too difficult to concentrate. Are they serious?? I mean the digital music playing field is crowded as it is. You have Apple, Yahoo, Sony, Napster, plus stores hosted in other countries just to name a few. I can see the added value of having complementary software for purchasing music if you own a Samsung player, but to think it's going to totally trump Apple's iTunes/iPod phenomena is nutz

Additional article on the topic here.