Blackmoor Vituperative

“This is very significant. It shows you how bad things are for the retail industry,” said George Whalin, president and CEO of Retail Management Consultants.

Whalin said management mistakes over the past few years combined with the recession brought down Circuit City.

“This company made massive mistakes,” he said, citing a decision to get rid of sales people and other mismanagement.

(from Circuit City seeking to liquidate, CNN Money)

This is a shame. Circuit City is been one of a handful of larger companies with their headquarters here in Richmond, VA, and has been here for years. But what Whalin says is true: they have been making huge mistakes for years: mistakes that were obvious to everyone who worked there (I used to work there, as did a good friend of mine until they outsourced his job to IBM). Mistakes that were obvious to everyone, I guess, except the upper management.

Such a shame.

Why I do not have children.

Novell is doing Apple one better with their new Linux ads.

Now, I happen to like the Apple ads. I am sure that I am not the only one who empathizes with the bespectacled, slightly pudgy PC, rather than the smarmy, slacker, smugly “I’m cooler than you” Mac, but I think it was clever to have Linux represented by an attractive young woman. Everyone knows that women are smarter than men. 🙂

I am in the midst of upgrading from WordPress 1.5 to WordPress 2.1.3. Better features, better security, all around better. But I need to update the Blackmoor Vituperative theme to work with the new version of WordPress, and until then the blog may look a little wonky. Bear with me.

Update: That was easier than I thought it would be. If I’d known how simple that would be, I’d have upgraded months ago. This has been on my to-do list for the better part of a year.

Last month Circuit City announced it was closing 70 stores and separating around 400 employees.

Today they announced that they are separating another 3,400 associates. That by itself seems pretty bad, but look at what they told the people they are letting go:

The company has completed a wage management initiative that will result in the separation of approximately 3,400 store Associates. The separations, which are occurring today, focused on Associates who were paid well above the market-based salary range for their role. New Associates will be hired for these positions and compensated at the current market range for the job.

“We can get cheaper people than you, so we’re firing you and hiring some mooks off the street.”

I can believe that there might be a few people who are overpaid. It’s a pretty big company. But 3,400 people? That’s not an attempt to hire people at the “current market wage”. That’s an unabashed attempt to lower the “current market wage”.

And how does this mesh with the company firing 130 employees in the technology infrastructure division and replacing them with IBM contractors who cost the company two or three times as much? Circuit City has a lot of legacy systems (they never throw anything away, they just bolt on new pieces to what they already have), and it will take months, maybe years for an outsider to come in and get a handle on that. I think it’s crazy.

As you may recall, e360 Insight wasn’t exactly pleased when Spamhaus labeled it a spammer last year; in fact, e360 Insight’s owner sued the UK-based company. Now, in an ironic taste-of-your-own-medicine twist, e360 Insight is being sued for (allegedly) spamming an individual in California.

(from WebProNews, e360 Pulls 180 On Spam?)

I covered the Spamhaus suit in this blog back when it happened. The short version is that notorious spammer David Lindhardt sued Spamhaus for adding Lindhardt’s company to their list of spammers, and a judge was incompetent enough to rule in the spammer’s favor even though Lindhardt was and is violating Federal and state law.

Well, now people are finally suing David Lindhardt. It’s about time. Spamming scumbag.

Don’t expect a reversal of the ruling against Spamhaus, though.

Incidentally, the article to which I am linking is misnamed. e360 has always been a source of spam. There’s no “180” involved in this. I think the author just thought it was clever to have “360” and “180” in the same title. I guess it didn’t bother him that it makes no sense.

While the operating system market is still dominated by Microsoft and shows little sign of changing that doesn’t mean that all other options have failed hopelessly because there were some significant gains made over the past 12 months. Below are some good examples:

1. IBM will not use Windows Vista — but will move to Linux desktops
   IBM cancelled their contract with Microsoft last October which means that they will no longer use Windows for their desktops. Beginning July, IBM employees will begin using a Red Hat-based platform.
2. The City of Chicago goes Linux, saves over 85 percent in the process
   Big elements such as the vehicle registrations
   system, online job applications, restaurant inspections and more were migrated to a Red-Hat system in order to reduce costs and improve support, performance and scalability.
3. Munich opts to use Debian version of Linux
   The city of Munich has opted to use the Debian
   version of Linux for a high-profile, 14,000-computer installation, passing over Novell’s Suse Linux despite its regional popularity. Another massive win.
4. Ubuntu is noted as being #27 in PCWorld’s 100 Best Products of the Year
   Clearly a great result being placed above the iPod, iTunes, Google Desktop, Flickr and other good products.
5. Linux cuts Kent Police system costs by 90 percent by using SuSE
   Kent Police has cut the cost of running its major criminal investigations system by 90 percent using Novell Open Enterprise Server, the company’s version of SuSE Linux.
6. Kerala (an Indian state) goes Linux
   Children in 12500 high schools in the state will not be taught Windows. Instead instructors are lining up Linux for them. Another good win for Linux.
7. Venezuela’s Government Shifts to Open Source Software
   According to government sources in Venezuela, the South American nation has announced an official policy that exclusively calls for the use of open source software in that government.
8. Korea migrates 120K civil servants to Linux desktop
   The Korean government is to buy 120,000 copies of Hancom Linux Deluxe this year, enough to switch 23 percent of its installed base Microsoft user to open source equivalents. So another 120,000 users.
9. Dell refunds Linux users who ditch XP
   Dell, a massive player in the computer market have obviously accepted the need for this as an option for those users who do not wish to have Windows. A reasonably good gain as far as the consumer is concerned.

(from TechRepublic.com, Nine reasons why 2006 wasn’t a lost year for Linux)

2006 wasn’t a great year for me — I spent most of it alone in Richmond, away from Susan, doing one short-term contracting gig after another — but at least something good happened.

Troy Hurtubise, the Hamilton-born inventor who became famous for his bulky bear-protection suit by standing in front of a moving vehicle to prove it worked, has now created a much slimmer suit that he hopes will soon be protecting Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan and U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

He has spent two years and $15,000 in the lab out back of his house in North Bay, designing and building a practical, lightweight and affordable shell to stave off bullets, explosives, knives and clubs. He calls it the Trojan and describes it as the “first ballistic, full exoskeleton body suit of armour.”

(from Hamilton Spectator, From bears to bullets)

Who Wants To Be A Superhero?

Jeffrey Brett Goodin, 45, of Azusa, was convicted Friday on multiple counts by a jury in the U.S. District Court for Central District of California in Los Angeles, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement.

[…]

The Goodin conviction is the first by a jury under the Can-Spam Act of 2003, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Goodin was convicted on multiple counts in addition to the Can-Spam conviction, including wire fraud, unauthorized use of credit cards, misuse of the AOL trademark and attempted witness harassment, prosecutors said.

(from ZDNet, AOL phisher faces up to 101 years in prison)

One down, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine to go.

I have updated the site statistics, featuring the IP addresses of idiot hackers from around the world and the search terms that lead people here. Here’s news: Prussian Blue is beating the Fantanas 6 to 1! I would never have predicted that.