Open Pandora

[Lafinass]

If you use [link=www.pandora.com]Pandora[/link] as I do, you might be interested in [link=http://openpandora.googlepages.com/]Open Pandora[/link]. It's an open source front-end for the service that lets you listen to Pandora independent of your browser.

And if you've never heard of Pandora, then shame on you. You should go check it out - give it a song title or an artist name and it will seed a radio station with music of similar technical musical components. A few days of listening to your station, adding seeds and rejecting songs, will give you a fine tuned radio station that plays just the style of music you want to hear. Not to mention introducing you to new artists you'd never heard.

Oh. And it's commercial and cost free.

 

[Mostly Harmless]

AHEMMMMMM I loved this thing UNTIL........ It crashed my laptop. Everytimr it switches to another song it locates it from another place on the web. Similar to the now famous google "hack" index of; searches. The problem with this is it hosts many different viruses and mal ware programs embeded as part of the music file. ex. when it switches songs it will bring a popup with it. now this is ok for those who have a GOOD pop up blocker but the mal-ware program and cookies are still there. Some how some way I got something that kept turning my anti virus off and finally crashed windows. Now before everyone jumps on me and says its not the web site let me say this. I NEVER use my laptop. and when i do its usually on vacation. I have never had any problems with it until I brought it to work and started using Pandora. I also listened to it at home but my machine at home is much more protected. When i did a scan at home I found the same files and programs downloaded into my machine as my lappy. Pandora is a great idea and i love the music but Aftre this I will never use it again.

 

[Lafinass]

I run ESET's NOD32 (as part of the Smart Security package) both at work and at home. I have been using Pandora quite literally 7 days a week since August of '06. My scheduled daily scans have picked up not a single infected file and Spybot S&D only picks up the occasional tracking cookie. Several of the admissions girls also listen to Pandora on a regular basis without having a single infection.

Not jumping on you here, but it's not the site.

That said, if it's not the site you should probably look into what IS causing it. Do you have the specific virus names? Or perhaps a HijackThis log I could take a poke at?

 

[Mostly Harmless]

as a matter of fact I do. When I get home from work ill send it to ya


the names of the files not the viruses dont think you want those

 

[Lafinass]

*snort* No thanks, I've got a cold my computer doesn't need one.

The names of the viruses and if they (I hope not) are still resident on your machine, a HijackThis log of your system.

 

[Lafinass]

Actually. I have another question.

What do you mean by "Everytimr it switches to another song it locates it from another place on the web."? I've got port traffic mirrored and I have an almost constant stream of traffic to and from 66.151.149.78 from the three computers in the office that are using Pandora. I just closed down all traffic in and out of my computer except that with a source or destination of 66.151.149.78 and the music continued to play and I was able to navigate to new stations. So it would appear that all traffic for pandora is routed through a single IP. If you're seeing connections all over the web... dunno, it's not Pandora though. Maybe something hooked into your browser? Hrm...

 

[Mostly Harmless]

No What im saying is The music you hear comes from Pandora. (1 ip) The music you get comes from all over the web unfiltered and unchecked. pandora just supplys it. its like limewire or kaaza kinda but a live connection.

 

[Lafinass]

Err... are we thinking of the same service? From interviews I've read with Tim Westergren (Founder and CEO of Music Genome Project which rolled over into Pandora) they receive all of their music directly from the labels. This isn't like limewire or kaaza, they are playing legally license music. It's why you're only allowed to skip 6 songs in any hour and why you can't directly pick which song you want to hear, just the type of music. It's all legit.

Edit: Oh, and you can't listen to it if you aren't in the US. License conflict forced them to block all non-domestic IP connections.

 

[Mostly Harmless]

Thats correct. The songs are licenced and they do come from labels, however each label has a web page right? and cookies are embedded when you visit that page. same thing applys here. the music is provided legitly(if thats a word) but some thing has to pay the bills...ie adds. adds=cookies. well you can guess the rest. Im not stating all this as fact. iv done a little research of my own and the polls are about even some hate it some love it. I personally love it. I just cant use it !dodge . the music genome project was and is a great idea..if only they stored all that music on 1 server.

 

[Lafinass]

Oh. Didn't realize there were even ads. I see no ads and accept no cookies I don't desire. Had to disable a few things to even click on the ads here that benefit eGO - which I didn't know existed for the first several months I trolled the forums.

Edit: I find it hard to believe that if it was laden with viruses or malware I wouldn't have at least seen some attempt to breach my system. I check my log files every morning out of habit, and the only thing notable over the past few months were some attempted port scans and a site trying to run an ugly bit of Active X code.