Ozzy makes Macs paranoid

Forthcoming albums from Ozzy 'the Prince of Darkness' Osbourne will not be Mac friendly, music giant Sony has confirmed.

In a similar situation to the Celine Dion CD fiasco of a few weeks ago, playing the Live at the Budokan and The Osbourne's Family Album discs on a Mac will require the machine to go in for major surgery afterwards.

Much like being at a Sabbath gig in the old days, apparently.

Once again the problem is not that the CDs are too rock n' roll, but rather that the Key2Audio copy protection technology, designed to limit piracy on the open seas of the internet, not only prevents discs from being copied, but from being played in a PC.

For some reason the Mac's CD drive firmware will lock the disc in the drive and prevent the machine from booting.

The protection mechanism works by putting a corrupt data track on the outside rim of the CD. This is ignored by standard CD players, but a PC CD drive will repeatedly try to read the track, without success.

However, vnunet.com has confirmed that it may be possible to sidestep such mechanisms simply by writing over the corrupt data track with a felt-tip pen.