I’ve got some “Sirius” concerns with satellite radio.

First, let’s start at the beginning. In the beginning, there was XM and Sirius (and WorldSpace, that’s only for Europe/Asia). XM has a diverse and solid playlist with great channels. Sirius had a less diverse playlist and has Howard Stern. XM always was a step ahead of Sirius, whether it be the technology, number of subscribers, or quality of music. One day Sirius managed to merge with XM, breaking the FCC ruling that the two couldn’t merge in the first place.

At first, all was well. Mel Karmazin, SiriusXM’s newly-appointed CEO, announced that the two entities would remain separate, and everyone would get to keep their own music. Then things got bloody.

October 13: At the XM Headquarters in D.C., someone logged into the timesheet application and realized that he had a termination date of October 15. Word of this spread like wildfire through the office, and by the end of the day, as many as 75 people from music programming got the boot.

From dcrtv.com, a small list of those who got canned:

Soul Street’s Bobby Bennett and Leigh Hamilton, Raw’s Mz Kitti, The City’s DJ Xclusive and Lisa Ivery, Viva’s Karla Rodriguez, and Aguila’s Mad Mexican. Plus Ken Smith of ’50s-On-5, Pat Clarke of ’60s-On-6, XM America’s Ray Knight, John Welch, and “Country Dan” Dixon, BK Kirkland of the Groove, plus Bill Evans, Brian Chamberlain, and Cathy Carter from XM Cafe. XM Gospel’s Jay Bryant and Suite 62′s Vic Clemens.

Since then, several channels have switched into “auto-pilot” with no DJ, but a mysterious robot playing just music all the time.

While the Sirius side of things has seen a couple losses, it’s been nothing like the XM side. This “merger of equals” is looking moreso like “hostile takeover.”

Just today we’ve learned that XM 82 (The System) is getting canned on November 4. It’s quite possible that it’s demise is directly related to WorldSpace’s Chapter 11 Bankruptcy filing, but the timing seems a tad bit suspicious.

While all of this is bad, the biggest issue at hand here is the threat of losing the entire lineup. Despite Mel saying the two services would remain separate (this might have even been a requirement of the merger), there’s whisperings of Sirius and XM to combine channels and broadcast the same lineup on both services come November 5.

Judging by how things have been going, I can only imagine that we’ll lose more XM stations and on-air talent. So far, they’re already killing one station I listened to a lot, and they’ve killed a couple other stations that I recently just “discovered” and was starting to enjoy. If they keep going down this track, they’ll be loosing a 4 year subscriber/fan…

(More as this develops)

~Jaker

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~Jaker

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred billion. It’s less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.

I don’t care how much crap Intel is going to give nVidia about it’s CUDA architecture. This is an example that using a graphics card to do number crunching is sometimes better than using a regular CPU.

Global Secure Systems has said that a Russian’s firm’s use of the latest NVidia graphics cards to accelerate WiFi ‘password recovery’ times by up to an astonishing 10,000 per cent proves that WiFi’s WPA and WPA2 encryption systems are no longer enough to protect wireless data.

 

David Hobson, managing director of GSS, claimed that companies can no longer view standards-based WiFi transmission as sufficiently secure against eavesdropping to be used with impunity. He also said that the use of VPNs is arguably now mandatory for companies wanting to comply with the Data Protection Act.

 

He said: “This breakthrough in brute force decryption of WiFi signals by Elcomsoft confirms our observations that firms can no longer rely on standards-based security to protect their data. As a result, we now advise clients using WiFi in their offices to move on up to a VPN encryption system as well.

 

“Brute force decryption of the WPA and WPA2 systems using parallel processing has been on the theoretical possibilities horizon for some time – and presumably employed by relevant government agencies in extreme situations – but the use of the latest NVidia cards to speedup decryption on a standard PC is extremely worrying.

 

“The $64,000 question, of course, is what happens when hackers secure a pecuniary advantage by gaining access to company data flowing across a WPA or WPA2-encrypted wireless connection. Will the Information Commissioner take action against the company concerned for an effective breach of the Data Protection Act.”

(Per SC Magazine)

Am I surprised? Not really. From a convenience standpoint, WiFi is great. From a security standpoint, how secure can one be when you’re freely broadcasting your network over wireless?

~Jaker

I think I’m suffering an appliance/electronic epidemic. About a week ago, my Pizzaz died (rest it’s soul). This hasn’t been too bad, since I really haven’t made pizza in awhile, and I have the oven as a backup.

Earlier this week, my xm2go tuner died. This was bad, because that was my only ticket to getting XM during my daily commute to work. I’m saddened by this, because that old tuner was pretty cool. It was the first portable tuner that XM released, and had the ability to record shows, pause live XM, and keep me entertained for hours on end. I knew that I had to get a new tuner, because my alternative (Milwaukee radio) still sucks.

I got that new tuner, and now I sport the Inno. This new tuner hasn’t had much listening time on it yet, but I have figured out several pretty sweet features:

• The built-in antenna is amazing compared to the xm2go. I can pick up a signal when standing in certain areas in my apartment with just the built-in antenna.
• The TuneSelect feature lets me do really sweet stuff with recording music (which, by the way, we’ll never see again on another tuner because it was this feature that XM was sued by the RIAA for). TuneSelect lets me record automatically whenever a specific song or artist plays. It still stays locked on the device, so I can’t copy it elsewhere. But I can listen to it whenever I want.
• So I’m listening to a station. A song comes on that I don’t recognize, but after the first minute or so, I realize that I love this song and I want to record it. Once I hit record, the Inno will record from the beginning of the song (up to 10 minutes previous, and assuming you were on that channel the entire time) all the way to the end. That is just kickass.
• XM+Napster. I’m upset that the Inno is not Napster ToGo capable (and their marketing should make this clear, as I was fooled by this). It does still integrate with Napster in a different way though. On the xm2go, I’d press the “mem” button when I heard a song, which would keep a copy of the title and artist in memory (up to 20). Then, from time to time, I’d manually copy this list to a text file on my computer (the infamous “xm.txt” file). With the Inno, I press “Bookmark” and the Inno keeps the title and artist. The difference is when I plug the Inno in my computer, my bookmark list shows up in Napster, allowing me to copy the list, listen to songs right away, or download them. Napster also lets me manage records (and listen to them).
• Two words: color screen.

I love my Inno, and it’s amazing holding the two tuners side by side and seeing how they’ve progressed. My only complaint with the Inno is actually a complaint with the FCC. The FCC ordered XM and Sirius that their new tuners must find a new way to broadcast over FM, as their old tuners were too powerful. Sirius just lowered the power of the FM modulator, and XM released this thing called SureConnect. Basically you’re supposed to clip this little thing around your antenna so the FM signal broadcasts directly on your antenna. The problem is they only designed this little device with cars with front- or back- antennas. My antenna, the RC-car on-the-top style, was not officially supported by XM. At first, I didn’t find a good way to mount the SureConnect device, so I tried a couple alternatives:

1. Use the built-in FM modulator in the Inno. This worked barely. With the FM power turned up “all the way,” I still barely heard the signal over my radio.

2. Use my FM modulator. This sort of worked, except I heard a horrible humming noise in the background whenever the Inno was plugged in.

The fix? I little bit of “hacking” my car. While I couldn’t attach the SureConnect device to the antenna, I could attach it to the cable that leads to the antenna. After removing the dome light in my car and disconnecting the antenna, I was able to attach the SureConnect directly on the antenna cable. Then I put everything back together, did some wire running and hiding, and I was finished. I have SureConnect in my car, but you’d never know it

I’m still not completely convinced that using an FM modulator is the best solution, so I’ve still got my eyes on the AUX input adapter for my Focus. I just need to pay up the ~$70 for it, and dedicate an afternoon to doing some stereo work in my car.

While I’m sad to see the xm2go, well, go, I am happy to have my XM back. Rock on!

~Jaker