The RIAA owns the distribution channels to the stores and the radio. They control who gets shelf space and who gets a shot at the radio.
They don't own any distribution on the net. They are in danger of losing revenue to non-RIAA artists and labels.
The pricing increase is a move to push consumers back to the stores and to their monopoly on distribution, and hence regain their control on artists and music.
When Joe Sixpack does the math, he'll find it is cheaper to buy CDs from the store. This is what the RIAA wants to happen. They want to erect a barrier to online music.
Hmmm... lots of parallels with M$ making IE cheaper than NS (bundled with OS so consumers don't have to waste bandwidth $$$ finding and downloading a browser) and controlling the distribution channels through OEM channels by strong arming non-IE exclusion clauses in their license agreements... Anybody smell antitrust? Oh right I forgot, Bush is in office.
Why is an industry whose products promote murder, infidelity, perversion, corruption, stealing, deception, materialism, and rebellion being allowed to march in our classrooms to promote respect for copyrights?
Once a year I drive four hours to Pennsylvania to buy clothes where there is no sales tax on clothing. I pay a couple hundred in cash so there is no auditing trace.
Not only that, NYS has agents that check the plates in these out-of-state clothing outlets and they leave leaflets on the windshields pressuring citizens that they are evading sales tax. How's that for heavy handed tactics?
NYS has done a great job of taxing citizens and jobs out of the state and I am moving away once I am in a position too, because I have just become unemployed and there are no jobs here. Good riddance NYS, and to hell with your Gestapo tactics and your broken tax system!
Military and classified networks are walled fortresses with complete isolation from the internet world. They do not tolerate breaches of this nature that puts classified data at risk. If even a laptop enters from the outside world, it will not leave without a complete wipe of the hard drive, memory, and any other removable media. No exceptions.
M$ Office Product Activation phones home over the Internet. That's a no-no in a classified secured area.
why it takes less than six days for M$ to be hot-n-heavy on the trail of the source of the leak while it takes M$ six months to patch a serious security vulnerability in their source code?
Jack Burgess does have an eye for anthenticity, but his 20' by 20' layout is dwarfed by this old time tourist attraction called Roadside America, which is a miniature village that fills an entire warehouse with O scale model trains complete with running cars, trolleys, waterways, working crossing gates and signals, working coal trestles, wood mills, you name it. It still fascinates me since I saw it when I was a kid. And they turn the lights down periodically for a dramatic nighttime scene.
Wholesome tourist attraction for kids and adults - you'll love it. Usual disclaimer applies.
I have a Pentium II WIN2K machine for the net and current apps, and I have a homebuilt 486 running WFW311.
Why WFW311? It's my music production machine. I work with MIDI and no digital audio. I have a Music Quest MQX32M MIDI interface with SMPTE I/O. That card is one of the best MIDI cards ever made, but Music Quest/Opcode was absorbed by Gibson and no drivers were ever released for WIN9x and newer OS.
I don't need digital audio. I have analog tape for the non-MIDI stuff and I use SMPTE to sync the PC to tape. I never have a problem with it.
I also recognize the fact that WIN9x/NT OS are optimized for the OFFICE and not for multimedia. They simply do not put emphasis on efficient MIDI processing. That is why WFW311 is superior for MIDI.
WFW311 also is a lean OS that has minimal latency on my MIDI tracks, the API simply does not get in the way unlike today's bloated APIs. I hear musicians complaining of MIDI latency all the time on newer OS, yet I get really tight tracks running on WFW311.
It also boots up a lot faster than any newer OS despite the 100Mhz 486 against the 233Mhz Pentium II. When I have one of those precious moments of inspirations, that means something not having to wait for the OS to boot.
There's a lot of wisdom to the phrase "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
Yahoo insists on an alternative email when signing up to view groups. My ISP allows me up to six email accounts. Fully aware of their history of resetting preferences, I gave them a disposable email account which is used for nothing but Yahoo. Yahoo spams it, I delete the email account. Problem solved.
My real email accounts have been spam free since 2000.
The RIAA wants to frighten us into coughing up dough as a "settlement" when it forgets:
1) precisely zero percent of the settlement money will go to the artist who created the music,
2) that said settlement money falls under the IRS definition of "earned income",
3) since none of the money goes to the artist who is contractually entitled to percentages on earned income, that constitutes violation of contract against the record label,
4) precisely zero of the copyrights in question are owned by the RIAA,
5) as a third party representing the labels who are the actual copyright owners, the RIAA cannot claim copyright infringement, cannot sue for damages, and thus cannot collect monetary settlements,
6) the DMCA's purpose of bypassing judicial intervention, namely delegating power to sign subpoenas from a judge to a lowly court clerk, was a move to reduce massive legal expenses in the RIAA's favor,
7) by sending the letters of intent to sue, the RIAA saves itself more money by deferring the cost of filing suit papers in an attempt to frighten the offender into submission. That means they get better returns on your settlement!
Wake up people. This is extortion. Despite the scare tactics, the RIAA has no teeth. They do not own the copyrights, the labels do. Let the labels do their own dirty work. The RIAA is just a front company to shield the labels from damage to their public image.
And to the RIAA: don't waste your time coming after me, for I am a working musician and I do not participate in P2P. Do us all a favor, and hurry up and die.
You should have immediately called the card company, reported the account as fraudulent, and cancelled the account.
When I filed papers for divorce, I intercepted a letter from a credit card company I have never heard of requesting more information so they could approve a credit card application.
I immediately called the company and reported the application as fraudulant and demanded a copy of the application. When I received it I found it had been written out in my soon-to-be-ex-wife's handwriting, using my personal information with her signature, and she named herself authorized user.
At the time she had diverted my mail without my consent to a PO box. If I had not put a forwarding on mail in my name, that account would have been approved, the cards delivered to the PO box in her hands without my knowledge, and she would have maxxed out the $12,500 limit and left me stuck with the bill.
I immediately closed all joint accounts, cutting her off completely. The bottom line is, every credit card has a phone option for reporting fraud which get you a human on the phone, and when the magic word "fraud" is mentioned they are extremely cooperative.
I also reported mail fraud to the authorities and put a fraud alert on all my credit reports.
That credit organization refused to fax the application - if you think about it, it's for a good reason. I demanded that they mail the paperwork to me, and if they had refused I would have used the state BBB, the state AG, and the FTC against them.
What happened to you constitutes identity fraud which is a federal felony - banks do not take this lightly. Someone forged your signature on an application, that is assuming your identity. However foolish you were to casually discard paperwork containing your SSN, that is still identity fraud.
Because your signature was forged on that application, that constitutes credit card fraud. Because that application has a forged signature, you can argue that you are under no obligation to the credit card company.
Having been a victim of underhanded tactics, you have to learn to be aggressive. Shredders. Keeping SSNs secure. Refusing to disclose SSNs except to banks, hospitals, insurance companies, and law enforcement. Stop the tirade of credit card junk mail offers to your mailbox. I suggest that you do the same. Especially when it jeopardizes your credit history and your potential to secure a mortgage - or if you have a catastrophe like a serious hospital bill while you're raising a family and you need a loan to pay it off. The last thing you need is to be turned down and find out you were a victim of fraud.
So the movie/record industry wants to march in the classroom and preach about ethics?
The movie/record industry have always been an indirect influence on the classroom, whether they want to admit it or not:
We have a new generation of parents with no idea of how to raise kids, they forget that growing children are impressionable. Out of habit, they plop their kids in front of the TV or the radio as a babysitter, a distraction.
TV and radio has more foul language, violence, sex, and immoral behavior than ever before. The mass media encourages children to be rebellious to authority. These kids with impressionable minds mimic their TV characters and rebel against their parents. When they see how well that works, they progress to rebel against their friends, against their society, against their teachers, their principals, their law officers, their judges, their politicians, on and on. Unchecked, this behavior is cast in stone into their adult lives.
Think this is ridiculous? The effect of TV is manifested in the Jerry Springer shows. There was a grade school class where the teacher began changing the channel when the Springer show came on. In protest the kids in the class threw chairs at the teacher, mimicing the Springer show.
Another one: Beavis and Butthead episode where one of the characters plays with fire and chants "fire is good, fire is good." Shortly after it aired, a five year old boy set fire to his trailer home killing his little sister. He admitted that he was influenced into the act after viewing the Beavis and Butthead episode. It was never aired again. That is a blatant admission that the media knows the devastating influence they have on culture.
Right here on/. there was a story of a high school counselor who reprimanded a student. In retaliation, the student made false accusations of sexual assault. Despite the repentance of the student when she admitted to authorities that she made the whole thing up, the counselor lost his job and his career. One guess where you think the student saw that immoral behavior...
Movies and TV shows glorify indiscriminate sex and trashy fashion. More and more teenagers are having sex before they graduate high school. The likes of Madonna and Britney Spears have influenced teenage girls to dress provocatively. They're not shy about wearing low rise jeans with the tops of their thongs showing. The jerks that the media is pushing as "male role models" are influencing an entire generation of men, who inherited all the wrong ideas of a healthy relationship and family values.
The result? Unwanted pregancies, widespread transmission of uncurable STDs, broken families, and a whole generation growing up with corrupted ideas of indiscriminate sex with zero accountability for their actions. These are the consequences that movies, TV shows, and records NEVER EVEN BROADCAST.
And now these hypocrites want to broadcast their view of ethics in the classroom. Riiiiiiight...
Take a good look at the late Katherine Hepburn, who has been called a "role model". She married once, and divorced in 1934 as her movie career was taking off. She was quoted "I don't believe in marriage. It is bloody impractical to love, honor, and obey." In short, she rebelled. She then had affairs with many Hollywood men, including Howard Hughes. She then had a long extramarital affair with Tracy Spencer, a married man who refused to divorce his wife. Hepburn rejected everything about marriage and embraced fornication, adultery, and indiscriminate sex. All starting in the 1930s. And todays' women look up to this person with reverance and admiration?!? If you want to find out why today's family culture is so fucked up, look no further than this "role model".
And Hollywood perpetuated this woman, because this crap made them money.
Mae West wasn't shy about her rebellion either. She admitted losing her virginity at the age of seven and her brashness permeated through al
...does the industry flout their first amendment rights when movie directors complain about third party DVD rental houses censoring subversive scenes from movies, when the pr0n industry justifies their existence on the first amendment, yet the courts decide that the injunction against DeCSS does not violate the first amendment?
If I am selling winter coats, for instance, I don't show you how warm you will be, I show you how good you might look, how others are impressed with your good taste in clothes, and maybe, just maybe, girls will flock to you because you are now so cool. I didn't say anything about how warm it makes you, so if the wind cuts through it like a hot knife through butter, then I have not lied.
BULLSHIT
Like it or not, your official job description as a marketer is to deceive people. In your example, selling a winter coat that does not perform its principal purpose, which is to keep you warm in winter weather, is fraud and the practices you use qualify as deception, which will get you in a lot of hot water with the FTC. DECEPTION AND LYING ARE THE SAME THING! As long as you are deceptive, there is no justification whatsoever for your tactics.
You sir, are the reason why:
I have thrown the television out of my house
I have stopped listening to popular radio
I have signed up for many do-not-call lists
I have despised telemarketers
I have been diligent about staying off spammers' list
I have learned to ignore billboards in the sky, in the street, on the tractor trailers, on people's clothes, and above the urinal where I piss
I have learned to ignore advertisements in magazines and newspapers, especially those that blur with the media content.
I have stopped going to movie theaters
it is the CONSUMER'S job to make sure its the right product for them.
Oh there you go. Pointing the blame at the consumer when the manufacturer makes a FAULTY PRODUCT. You disgust me.
My job is to push the buttons necessary to get customers to buy.
The likes of you have pushed one too many buttons. Goodbye, good riddance, and check the reference in my sig below for it has to say about deceivers.
I have not purchased one single CD in over two years. Why? Because I am tired of spending $18 on a CD with only one good song and the rest disposable rubbish. I am tired of reading that the cost of CDs has fallen below $0.50 in the last twenty years while the retail price has not. I am not happy that the industry has been convicted of price-fixing by the federal government. I see no reason to support RIAA labels until the retail price of a CD is more realistic.
I also do not participate in filesharing. Why? Because I am a working musician who believes that artists should be reimbursed for their hard work. My ethics don't agree with filesharing and they don't agree with the heavy handed tactics that the RIAA is raining down on filesharers.
Do I have your attention? That means I do not fit the argument that the RIAA has attributed fallen CD sales to piracy. I am the exception and I am not alone.
As a working musician, here is the root of the problem as I see it: musicians are being exploited and are being cheated out of their earnings through endentured slavery and corrupt accounting methods.
As a business man, the other root of the problem is that the RIAA wants to perpetuate a business model that doomed to oblivion and refuses to embrace the internet as a distribution channel.
Why? Bill, the major labels OWN the brick-and-mortar distribution channels, but they CAN'T own the internet distribution channel. It's not possible. They want a mafia-style death grip on their distribution and they would rather litigate and legislate away the "illegal" distribution channels on the internet.
My question is: when are the members of the RIAA going to drop their self-defeating barratry and focus on offering quality product?
Slashdot Mirror
They don't own any distribution on the net. They are in danger of losing revenue to non-RIAA artists and labels.
The pricing increase is a move to push consumers back to the stores and to their monopoly on distribution, and hence regain their control on artists and music.
When Joe Sixpack does the math, he'll find it is cheaper to buy CDs from the store. This is what the RIAA wants to happen. They want to erect a barrier to online music.
Hmmm... lots of parallels with M$ making IE cheaper than NS (bundled with OS so consumers don't have to waste bandwidth $$$ finding and downloading a browser) and controlling the distribution channels through OEM channels by strong arming non-IE exclusion clauses in their license agreements... Anybody smell antitrust? Oh right I forgot, Bush is in office.
That's inviting the wolves to guards the flock.
Not only that, NYS has agents that check the plates in these out-of-state clothing outlets and they leave leaflets on the windshields pressuring citizens that they are evading sales tax. How's that for heavy handed tactics?
NYS has done a great job of taxing citizens and jobs out of the state and I am moving away once I am in a position too, because I have just become unemployed and there are no jobs here. Good riddance NYS, and to hell with your Gestapo tactics and your broken tax system!
They tried it on Harley Davidsons and it was a poor seller. Can't imagine why...
We wouldn't want the AG catching you trading Paris Hilton pics around those government networks, would we...
I'm hearing impaired and I wear a hearing aid.
"Sorry honey, my battery must have gone dead while you were talking."
My solution is easy :)
Military and classified networks are walled fortresses with complete isolation from the internet world. They do not tolerate breaches of this nature that puts classified data at risk. If even a laptop enters from the outside world, it will not leave without a complete wipe of the hard drive, memory, and any other removable media. No exceptions.
M$ Office Product Activation phones home over the Internet. That's a no-no in a classified secured area.
Someone at M$ is going to get das boot.
I make them read /.
HI DAD!
why it takes less than six days for M$ to be hot-n-heavy on the trail of the source of the leak while it takes M$ six months to patch a serious security vulnerability in their source code?
Think carefully about that.
Wholesome tourist attraction for kids and adults - you'll love it. Usual disclaimer applies.
Why WFW311? It's my music production machine. I work with MIDI and no digital audio. I have a Music Quest MQX32M MIDI interface with SMPTE I/O. That card is one of the best MIDI cards ever made, but Music Quest/Opcode was absorbed by Gibson and no drivers were ever released for WIN9x and newer OS.
I don't need digital audio. I have analog tape for the non-MIDI stuff and I use SMPTE to sync the PC to tape. I never have a problem with it.
I also recognize the fact that WIN9x/NT OS are optimized for the OFFICE and not for multimedia. They simply do not put emphasis on efficient MIDI processing. That is why WFW311 is superior for MIDI.
WFW311 also is a lean OS that has minimal latency on my MIDI tracks, the API simply does not get in the way unlike today's bloated APIs. I hear musicians complaining of MIDI latency all the time on newer OS, yet I get really tight tracks running on WFW311.
It also boots up a lot faster than any newer OS despite the 100Mhz 486 against the 233Mhz Pentium II. When I have one of those precious moments of inspirations, that means something not having to wait for the OS to boot.
There's a lot of wisdom to the phrase "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
My real email accounts have been spam free since 2000.
Bradley Tipp of all people should be well aware of M$'s BSA attack and smear campaign that coaxed Ernie Ball to convert to a happy Linux customer.
1) precisely zero percent of the settlement money will go to the artist who created the music,
2) that said settlement money falls under the IRS definition of "earned income",
3) since none of the money goes to the artist who is contractually entitled to percentages on earned income, that constitutes violation of contract against the record label,
4) precisely zero of the copyrights in question are owned by the RIAA,
5) as a third party representing the labels who are the actual copyright owners, the RIAA cannot claim copyright infringement, cannot sue for damages, and thus cannot collect monetary settlements,
6) the DMCA's purpose of bypassing judicial intervention, namely delegating power to sign subpoenas from a judge to a lowly court clerk, was a move to reduce massive legal expenses in the RIAA's favor,
7) by sending the letters of intent to sue, the RIAA saves itself more money by deferring the cost of filing suit papers in an attempt to frighten the offender into submission. That means they get better returns on your settlement!
Wake up people. This is extortion. Despite the scare tactics, the RIAA has no teeth. They do not own the copyrights, the labels do. Let the labels do their own dirty work. The RIAA is just a front company to shield the labels from damage to their public image.
And to the RIAA: don't waste your time coming after me, for I am a working musician and I do not participate in P2P. Do us all a favor, and hurry up and die.
This is coming from the same crack monkey that hollered DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!...?
When I filed papers for divorce, I intercepted a letter from a credit card company I have never heard of requesting more information so they could approve a credit card application.
I immediately called the company and reported the application as fraudulant and demanded a copy of the application. When I received it I found it had been written out in my soon-to-be-ex-wife's handwriting, using my personal information with her signature, and she named herself authorized user.
At the time she had diverted my mail without my consent to a PO box. If I had not put a forwarding on mail in my name, that account would have been approved, the cards delivered to the PO box in her hands without my knowledge, and she would have maxxed out the $12,500 limit and left me stuck with the bill.
I immediately closed all joint accounts, cutting her off completely. The bottom line is, every credit card has a phone option for reporting fraud which get you a human on the phone, and when the magic word "fraud" is mentioned they are extremely cooperative.
I also reported mail fraud to the authorities and put a fraud alert on all my credit reports.
That credit organization refused to fax the application - if you think about it, it's for a good reason. I demanded that they mail the paperwork to me, and if they had refused I would have used the state BBB, the state AG, and the FTC against them.
What happened to you constitutes identity fraud which is a federal felony - banks do not take this lightly. Someone forged your signature on an application, that is assuming your identity. However foolish you were to casually discard paperwork containing your SSN, that is still identity fraud.
Because your signature was forged on that application, that constitutes credit card fraud. Because that application has a forged signature, you can argue that you are under no obligation to the credit card company.
Having been a victim of underhanded tactics, you have to learn to be aggressive. Shredders. Keeping SSNs secure. Refusing to disclose SSNs except to banks, hospitals, insurance companies, and law enforcement. Stop the tirade of credit card junk mail offers to your mailbox. I suggest that you do the same. Especially when it jeopardizes your credit history and your potential to secure a mortgage - or if you have a catastrophe like a serious hospital bill while you're raising a family and you need a loan to pay it off. The last thing you need is to be turned down and find out you were a victim of fraud.
The movie/record industry have always been an indirect influence on the classroom, whether they want to admit it or not:
We have a new generation of parents with no idea of how to raise kids, they forget that growing children are impressionable. Out of habit, they plop their kids in front of the TV or the radio as a babysitter, a distraction.
TV and radio has more foul language, violence, sex, and immoral behavior than ever before. The mass media encourages children to be rebellious to authority. These kids with impressionable minds mimic their TV characters and rebel against their parents. When they see how well that works, they progress to rebel against their friends, against their society, against their teachers, their principals, their law officers, their judges, their politicians, on and on. Unchecked, this behavior is cast in stone into their adult lives.
Think this is ridiculous? The effect of TV is manifested in the Jerry Springer shows. There was a grade school class where the teacher began changing the channel when the Springer show came on. In protest the kids in the class threw chairs at the teacher, mimicing the Springer show.
Another one: Beavis and Butthead episode where one of the characters plays with fire and chants "fire is good, fire is good." Shortly after it aired, a five year old boy set fire to his trailer home killing his little sister. He admitted that he was influenced into the act after viewing the Beavis and Butthead episode. It was never aired again. That is a blatant admission that the media knows the devastating influence they have on culture.
Right here on /. there was a story of a high school counselor who reprimanded a student. In retaliation, the student made false accusations of sexual assault. Despite the repentance of the student when she admitted to authorities that she made the whole thing up, the counselor lost his job and his career. One guess where you think the student saw that immoral behavior...
Movies and TV shows glorify indiscriminate sex and trashy fashion. More and more teenagers are having sex before they graduate high school. The likes of Madonna and Britney Spears have influenced teenage girls to dress provocatively. They're not shy about wearing low rise jeans with the tops of their thongs showing. The jerks that the media is pushing as "male role models" are influencing an entire generation of men, who inherited all the wrong ideas of a healthy relationship and family values.
The result? Unwanted pregancies, widespread transmission of uncurable STDs, broken families, and a whole generation growing up with corrupted ideas of indiscriminate sex with zero accountability for their actions. These are the consequences that movies, TV shows, and records NEVER EVEN BROADCAST.
And now these hypocrites want to broadcast their view of ethics in the classroom. Riiiiiiight...
Take a good look at the late Katherine Hepburn, who has been called a "role model". She married once, and divorced in 1934 as her movie career was taking off. She was quoted "I don't believe in marriage. It is bloody impractical to love, honor, and obey." In short, she rebelled. She then had affairs with many Hollywood men, including Howard Hughes. She then had a long extramarital affair with Tracy Spencer, a married man who refused to divorce his wife. Hepburn rejected everything about marriage and embraced fornication, adultery, and indiscriminate sex. All starting in the 1930s. And todays' women look up to this person with reverance and admiration?!? If you want to find out why today's family culture is so fucked up, look no further than this "role model".
And Hollywood perpetuated this woman, because this crap made them money.
Mae West wasn't shy about her rebellion either. She admitted losing her virginity at the age of seven and her brashness permeated through al
M$ gave away Internet Explorer.
Netscape had to compete with free, and lost. Now the battle field is level, and M$ doesn't like it because it is competing with free.
Hurts to wear the shoe on the other foot, doesn't it?
Clippy: It looks like you are trying to sign up for pr0n. Would you like me to retrieve your signature facsimile for the credit card authorization?
I'm replacing my new car with a horse.
Hypocrites, these movie monguls are.
BULLSHIT
Like it or not, your official job description as a marketer is to deceive people. In your example, selling a winter coat that does not perform its principal purpose, which is to keep you warm in winter weather, is fraud and the practices you use qualify as deception, which will get you in a lot of hot water with the FTC. DECEPTION AND LYING ARE THE SAME THING! As long as you are deceptive, there is no justification whatsoever for your tactics.
You sir, are the reason why:
it is the CONSUMER'S job to make sure its the right product for them.
Oh there you go. Pointing the blame at the consumer when the manufacturer makes a FAULTY PRODUCT. You disgust me.
My job is to push the buttons necessary to get customers to buy.
The likes of you have pushed one too many buttons. Goodbye, good riddance, and check the reference in my sig below for it has to say about deceivers.
"Carefully crafted marketing campaign", my ass.
I have not purchased one single CD in over two years. Why? Because I am tired of spending $18 on a CD with only one good song and the rest disposable rubbish. I am tired of reading that the cost of CDs has fallen below $0.50 in the last twenty years while the retail price has not. I am not happy that the industry has been convicted of price-fixing by the federal government. I see no reason to support RIAA labels until the retail price of a CD is more realistic.
I also do not participate in filesharing. Why? Because I am a working musician who believes that artists should be reimbursed for their hard work. My ethics don't agree with filesharing and they don't agree with the heavy handed tactics that the RIAA is raining down on filesharers.
Do I have your attention? That means I do not fit the argument that the RIAA has attributed fallen CD sales to piracy. I am the exception and I am not alone.
As a working musician, here is the root of the problem as I see it: musicians are being exploited and are being cheated out of their earnings through endentured slavery and corrupt accounting methods.
As a business man, the other root of the problem is that the RIAA wants to perpetuate a business model that doomed to oblivion and refuses to embrace the internet as a distribution channel.
Why? Bill, the major labels OWN the brick-and-mortar distribution channels, but they CAN'T own the internet distribution channel. It's not possible. They want a mafia-style death grip on their distribution and they would rather litigate and legislate away the "illegal" distribution channels on the internet.
My question is: when are the members of the RIAA going to drop their self-defeating barratry and focus on offering quality product?
And I'm on a 56K phone modem. Took less than thirty seconds of connection before BlackICE prompted me.
So I unplugged the phone cable and then configured BlackICE to block MSBlast forever.
Then I checked my registry, drivers, and running applications for this maggot. No sign of it.
After reconnecting, BlackICE detected and blocked attempts at MSRPC.
Firewalls WORK.