Steinbring Inc.

Well, it had to happen some day.  The Zune DRM Stripper removes the DRM from music squirted to you and music you bought at the Zune Marketplace.

Link, Download Link [ Via /. ]

I do agree that Vista is more stable than XP and that as long as you don’t mind the heavy hardware requirements and the pre-infection of the system with DRM, it’s a good option but no operating system can be completely bulletproof.  Kez News [ads on site are NSFW] is reporting that in order to completely lock the system up to the point of requiring a reboot all that is required is to hold down the windows key and the ‘e’ key at the same time for about 20-30 seconds.  This doesn’t sound like a security vulnerability.  It’s just a bug but it shows that any OS needs to be beat around a bit before it can be declared even moderately stable.

It’s hilarious that Dell is this honest about how resource hungry Vista is.  I really need a 256mb graphics card for a large spreadsheet?  512mb of RAM is only good for booting the system but is not sufficient for running any programs or games?

Link [ Via Reddit ]

With the ubiquity of Windows in today’s world, this could be a very good thing.  I just hope they properly implement it.

Microsoft is working on a remote access tunneling protocol for Vista and Longhorn Server that lets client devices securely access networks via a VPN from anywhere on the Internet without concern for typical port blocking issues.
The Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol (SSTP) creates a VPN tunnel that travels over Secure-HTTP, eliminating issues associated VPN connections based on the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) or Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) that can be blocked by some Web proxies, firewalls and Network Address Translation (NAT) routers that sit between clients and servers.
The protocol, however, is only for remote access and will not support site-to-site VPN tunnels. 

Link

What the heck! When they released this stupid thing, they said:

(a) The music industry will be getting a kickback for each Zune sold for no real apparent reason

(b) You can only use music bought from the Zune marketplace and can’t even use the music you already bought from Microsoft via MSN Music

(c) Everything is infected with their DRM crap

The only cool thing was that you could do was to share (or squirt) music (for only 3 plays or 3 days) to other Zune owners (if you can find another one) via built in wifi. Now, they’re saying that for music from certain artists (40-50% of Universal and Sony artists) you can’t even do that?!?!? That’s insane! This is why the Zune is failing so miserably.

From cliczune:

Here’s what we found from the 50 songs tested by Zunerama:

Universal Music Group

* Prohibited Zune Sharing: Gwen Stefani, Snow Patrol, Eminem, Blue October, JoJo, Jay-Z;
* Accepted Zune Sharing: Nickelback, Nelly Furtado and Maria Careh;

Sony Music

* Prohibited Zune Sharing: Beyonce, Weird Al Yankovic (not sure if song is from Sony) and Ciara;
* Accepted Zune Sharing: Shakira, Wyclef Jean, The Fray, Christina Aguilera, John Mayer and Brad Paisley;

Link