Go to Soapbox (soapbox.msn.com) and search for Live Earth to bring up plenty of acts that were performed as part of the Live Earth concerts that began in Sydney on 07/07/07.

Here's Crowded House, for example:

 
Video: Live Earth 2007 - Crowded House (Sydney)

To watch the Live Earth concerts, click here.

At the time of posting, Paul Kelly is on the stage at Aussie Stadium, Sydney. Eskimo Joe follows.

You'll find a schedule of Live Earth concerts around the world on the NineMSN Live Earth Concerts page.

The Sydney concert is the first of those being held around the world on 07/07/07 and it begins at 11.10 am (AEST, Australian Eastern Standard Time). Then follows:

• Tokyo, 1 pm AEST
• Antarctica, 7 pm AEST
• Shanghai, 8.30 pm AEST
• Hamburg, 10 pm AEST
• London, 10.30 pm AEST
• Kyoto, Midnight AEST
• Johannesburg, 2 am AEST
• New York, 4.30 am AEST
• Rio de Janeiro, 5 am AEST

The NineMSN Live Earth page has the full listing of musicians.

Can't get to a concert? That's ok, you can watch online for free - use the links from the Live Earth page.

ABC TV has just shown the My Favourite Album show on which the No. 1 choice voted by Australians was announced... The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. Yes - that's the one webDotWiz voted for.

You can get the full top 10 list on the ABC's My Favourite Album site. The Top 100 list is on this page.

webDotWiz is currently listening to... On the Run, the second track of Dark Side of the Moon (with the volume turned up lots).

Microsoft has officially confirmed on Reuters that the company will be releasing a music and entertainment player to compete against the Apple iPod. See Zune Insider and Bink for the full details. A release date has not yet been announced.

For a quirky video, visit comingzune.com.

Tags (Technorati): Zune, music, music and entertainment player

webDotWiz first saw mention of Pandora (http://www.pandora.com/) somewhere and gave it a try.

It's a free service (apparently it used to cost) so you can choose a selection of your favourite music tracks (by artist or title) and Pandora will play them. On an ISDN connection there are a few jitters and pauses but it's designed for broadband and the tracks are of a high-quality recording.

See the link below for more info.

Quote

TechCrunch » Pandora is Now Free

Trey Anastasio, Shine (Columbia)
Celine Dion, On ne Change Pas (Epic)
Neil Diamond, 12 Songs (Columbia)
Our Lady Peace, Healthy in Paranoid Times (Columbia)
Chris Botti, To Love Again (Columbia)
Van Zant, Get Right with the Man (Columbia)
Switchfoot, Nothing is Sound (Columbia)
The Coral, The Invisible Invasion (Columbia)
Acceptance, Phantoms (Columbia)
Susie Suh, Susie Suh (Epic)
Amerie, Touch (Columbia)
Life of Agony, Broken Valley (Epic)
Horace Silver Quintet, Silver's Blue (Epic Legacy)
Gerry Mulligan, Jeru (Columbia Legacy)
Dexter Gordon, Manhattan Symphonie (Columbia Legacy)
The Bad Plus, Suspicious Activity (Columbia)
The Dead 60s, The Dead 60s (Epic)
Dion, The Essential Dion (Columbia Legacy)
Natasha Bedingfield, Unwritten (Epic)
Ricky Martin, Life (Columbia) (labeled as XCP, but, oddly, our disc had no protection)

Several other Sony-BMG CDs are protected with a different copy-protection technology, sourced from SunnComm, including:

My Morning Jacket, Z
Santana, All That I Am
Sarah McLachlan, Bloom Remix Album

Note that EFF points out that this list may not be complete.

Further down, the EFF page shows what we need to look for on the CD cover.

The link to the EFF page is http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004144.php.

While I’ve answered the question of how the uninstaller knows if the uninstall link is for your computer, I can’t definitively answer questions like:

1. Why isn’t Sony publicizing the uninstall link on their site in any way?
2. Why do you have to tell Sony twice that you want to uninstall?
3. Why is the email with the uninstall link labeled confidential?
4. Why does Sony generate a unique uninstall link for each computer?

Sony has left us to speculate, but under the circumstances the answer to all these questions seems obvious: Sony doesn’t want customers to know that there’s DRM software installed on their computers and doesn’t want them to uninstall it if they somehow discover it. Without exaggeration I can say that I’ve analyzed virulent forms of spyware/adware that provide more straightforward means of uninstall.

On Thu Nov 3, Molly Wood, section editor, CNET.com, wrote the story linked to below after Sony were caught out using what can only be termed "illegal techniques" to enforce digital rights management on some of its music CDs. There are a couple of quotes from Molly's article below.

The man who found Sony's attempt had hiding what was installed on a user's computer when a Sony music CD was inserted to be listened to was Mark Russinovich who has developed detection software (termed a root kit)  to detect code installed by spyware hackers.

You can catch up on Mark's main articles:

• Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far
• More on Sony: Dangerous Decloaking Patch, EULAs and Phoning Home

BBC News, among other news outlets, have reported the incident - see Sony slated over anti-piracy CD.

If you go through the steps that Sony details at its site, keep an eye on Mark's blog - at the time he wrote the second story referenced above, he still hadn't received the fix so wait until he's tested Sony's patch.

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DRM this, Sony! - CNET.com

I hope this is the week that everyone in the world finds out what a root kit is. And I hope it's a week we look back on in amazement, as we consider just how far Sony was willing to go to criminalize consumers in its efforts to preserve control over its product. Because I believe this is the week that Sony effectively declared war on the consumer, announcing what most of us had already suspected: fair use is a joke in the movie and record industry, and the companies who control mass-market content will truly stop at nothing to protect their profits.

...

But this--using the tactics of criminals to invade our PCs without our knowledge and to expose us to further attack, just so you can keep us from, say, burning a mix CD and giving it to our friends--this is beyond the pale. And as many news sources are beginning to point out, there's some reason to think it might also be illegal, under the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Oh, dear, another big company gets found out trying to infect our computer with one of their insidious copy-protection schemes. Except this time they went too far by using a technique that the real spyware hackers use to hide their dirty work.

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Sony Patch Reveals Its Anti-Piracy Files on PCs