I’ve been writing this Cybernaut for almost six and a half years now, and only once has a tech company sent me a gadget to try it out for myself and write a review.
That ‘once’ happened two weeks ago when a representative from Sirius Satellite Radio www.sirius.com loaned me a Starmate plug and play model ($79.95) to test drive for about 10 days.
Of those 10 days, I was too busy the first eight of them to get into the package and figure out what wires and plugs I needed to hook up the player at my desk – there was a full car hook-up included, but I ride the bus most days so I left it alone.
At last I had a few free minutes on a Thursday afternoon to play. After spending about five minutes with the instruction booklet, I was listening to 100 crystal-clear satellite radio stations at my desk.
It’s not like I discovered fire or something, but it was nice to see that the technology was somewhat intuitive – something my parents could figure out, maybe.
The selection of music is huge. Of the 100 channels Sirius offers, 60 of them are commercial-free radio sections.
Liking my tunes off the mainstream the first place I toggled to was Alt Nation, Channel 24, and was a little disappointed – no Death Cab For Cutie or Arcade Fire, but I did get to hear the latest release from The Killers… again.
So I toggled again to CBC Radio 3, which I listen to online sometimes when I’m at work. Awesome. I also spent some time at Steven Van Zandt’s Underground Garage listening to the Kid Leo Program, which was not quite what I was looking for.
After checking out a few more stations, I took a spin around the dial to see if anything caught my fancy – the way I used to channel surf on television before I went to satellite, and it took suddenly four seconds to change between stations.
That’s the only real problem with satellite radio – it’s not instant like analog. There’s a short delay while the receiver tunes into each station, which discourages back and forth channel surfing.
But it’s not much of a drawback when you consider the benefits. Just off the top of my head I can think of half a dozen reasons why you might want to get into satellite radio:
• You live in a rural area and don’t have much selection on conventional radio
• You spend a lot of time driving and are getting sick of your CDs and the poor reception on the highway
• You live in a city, but are sick of the radio stations and morning personalities
• You like one or more of the unique stations offered by Sirius, and can’t get it anywhere else
• You entertain a lot, or run a restaurant, and like to have certain kinds of music playing in the background without a lot of fuss on your part
• You want to listen to Howard Stern talk to lesbians in the mornings, and are only waiting until his show is cleared by the CRTC
• You hate commercials with the burning intensity of a thousand suns
Depending on your situation, it’s also reasonably priced. Sirius is available, once you’ve paid for the receiver, for $14.99 a month or roughly $180 a year.
XM Satellite Radio (www.xmradio.com), the other service available in Canada, is $12.99 a month, but at this point offers about 20 fewer channels.
After my short test drive was over, I have to say that it was hard to put my – I mean Sirius’s – Starmate back in the box and send it home. The big drawback of being an official tester.
Apple gets a worm
There are over 80,000 viruses out there for PC users, and, until last week, zero viruses that target Apple’s OSX operating system. It was only a matter of time, though – nothing brings out the hackers like a challenge.
According to Macworld www.macworld.com the virus in question is called "lastestpics.tgz", and it’s hidden in a package that is supposed to contain screen shots of the next version of OSX. When you open the package, there’s an application that looks like a JPEG image file that opens when you click on it. It then attempts to spread itself using Apple’s iChat instant messenger service.
It doesn’t appear to cause any real damage, and doesn’t tie up network resources on the scale of other Trojan horse programs, but it’s causing a stir all the same. Some experts want to call it a virus, while others want to call it a Trojan Horse – still insidious, but generally harmless because it doesn’t affect your system itself.
If it is in fact a virus, it’s the first reported for the OSX and that in turn calls Apple’s reputation for ironclad security into question. If it’s a Trojan horse, the industry will likely shrug it off and continue to extol Apple’s security as a major advantage over Microsoft.
A lot’s at stake, and it all depends on whether latestpics.tgz is a virus or not.
