March 2008

After long wait, Vista SP1 is officially out.

Vista x86 / 32-bit Update (~435 Megs)

Vista x64 / 64-bit (~727 Megs)

Overview of Vista SP1 (overview, release notes, etc)

I've been using the pre-paid phone service "Virgin Mobile" for around 5 years now. I've had a lot of issues with them in the past, partially because of service issues but mostly the huge cluster of customer service.

No one keeps track of issues. No one communicates. No one can be held accountable when something goes wrong. They pass issues around and promise to call you back when its fixed - which is never. Seriously, I had an issue opened in November 2006, and as of February 2008, it still was not resolved.
The only fix for any service issue is to close your account and get a new phone. That has been the only un-official solution I've received from people working for the company. They admit they can't fix things and recommend just starting over.

One of the services they offer is called Studio V.

It is a site where users can submit their own wallpapers and ringtones. Companies don't make a lot of money off people making phone calls, but they make a TON of money off wallpapers and ringtones.
Studio V lets you submit your own work, and you actually get a bit of money each time someone downloads your work.

I created a few images with Paint.NET for the site. I drew some colored lines, applied some images filters, swirled things around a bit, and posted an image called "Purple Vortex."
It was immediately downloaded by a lot of people. It even showed up on their "most popular" page for a while.

I then submitted another version of the image that was a slightly different color. People started downloading that even faster than the original version.
I watched my cash balance slowly increase over the next few days instead of decreasing.

Today I log in and see my balance has hardly moved over the past several days. I then see that my wallpapers have been BLOCKED from being shared any more.
I clicked them to find out why.

There is a note on them:
"Your content was denied for sharing with others because:
Copyright issue
Your wallpaper was not approved because we believe the image, or photo used in your wallpaper is owned by someone else. Please make sure to upload only photos, or images that you created and own."

What? Seriously?

*I* make an image from scratch, post it, it's reviewed and approved by someone, gets shared, downloaded a lot, and then pulled because they believe it is owned by someone else? What??

What can I do? Seriously? There is no help. No technical support. No one to talk to.

My most popular images have been removed, so you can't help out by getting them.

"Shareaza" is a popular p2p program that supports multiple networks such as the gnutella network.

A few weeks ago, an "imposter" company ("Discordia") took over the Shareaza website and put up their own site, complete with fake software. They call the software "Shareaza v4" and even use the Shareaza logo.

Some fans of the real Shareaza wanted to try to take down the hijacked site - but then someone from the imposter Shareaza site actually threatened legal action against the real Shareaza team because of that.

I just read now that the people behind the fake Shareaza site are now trying to register the "Shareaza" trademark for themselves to prevent others from using it.

This page has links to multiple news sites reporting on the Shareaza hijacking:
http://www.shareazasecurity.be/forum/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=411

Here is the forum with many more posts regarding the Shareaza takeover:
http://www.shareazasecurity.be/forum/viewforum.php?f=46

Here is the official Shareaza site. The real Shareaza:
http://shareaza.sourceforge.net/