Blackmoor Vituperative

An archive of 75+ inspirational messages from Despair, Inc., courtesy of TechRepublic.

For 37 years, Science Applications International Corp. has been owned by its employees. In that time, the company has grown from nothing to an $8 billion giant that does some of the government’s most sensitive work in intelligence, homeland security and defense.

But within days, those employees — 43,100 of them, more than a third of whom live in the Washington area — will have to learn to share their company with people who have never before had the chance to own SAIC stock: members of the public.

SAIC shares could begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange as soon as tomorrow in an initial public offering estimated to be worth $1 billion, which would be among the largest IPOs ever in the defense industry.

(from WashingtonPost.com, Filings Illuminate IPO’s Bumpy Ride)

It’s about time. I have a small amount of SAIC stock (I worked for them from 2002 through 2005), and this IPO has taken forever. I am really glad that they have professionals handling the stock program now. When I was there, it was handled in-house by Bull, Inc. (a wholly owned subsidiary of SAIC), and I had more than a few problems with them. As much as I took pride in being a SAIC employee-owner (and I would still be one if my management had permitted me to accept a job offer I received from a different SAIC division), I think it will be a good thing for SAIC to go public. I think it will make them more accountable and force them to make better business decisions, particularly in these post-Sarbanes-Oxley days.

I could be wrong, but that’s what I think.

“You got your Edsels, diesels, Dumonts, and Eddie Wilson all together forming our own incredible monument to nothing. Here’s to nothing, fellas, here’s to nothing.”

If you haven’t seen Eddie And The Cruisers, you won’t get it. You might think you do, but you don’t.

Operations of global software companies, financial institutions and government offices in India’s main technology hub shut on Wednesday after activists called a strike over a border dispute with a neighboring state.

The 12-hour stoppage in Bangalore, the capital of the southern state of Karnataka, was called by groups disputing claims by next-door Maharashtra over a small border town.

“The strike is going on very well all across the state. All works in government departments have come to a complete standstill,” L. Byrappa, president of the Karnataka Government Employee’s Association, told Reuters.

The streets of Bangalore, home to over 1,500 Indian and multinational tech firms like Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp. and IBM, were deserted as companies and shops shut down. Schools closed and traffic was sparse.

(from eWeek, Software Giants Shut as Strike Hits Indian Tech Hub)

This is what happens when you outsource your IT services to a third-world country.

It’s funny how human beings work. I can shrug off the deaths of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, as simply the way the universe works. Meanwhile, the story of one girl’s death makes me cry like a baby.

It shouldn’t. People die by the thousands every day. It makes no sense that I am crying.

A while back Gaim started crashing for me when trying to connect a MSN account. Gaim 2.0.0beta3.1 has been released which fixes this and other bugs in beta3. You can download it from its SourceForge file release page.

Has the magic gone out of magic?

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ordered Wednesday that Spamhaus must pay $11,715,000 in damages to e360insight and its chief, David Linhardt, who sued the U.K.-based organization earlier this year over blacklisting.

The court also barred Spamhaus from causing any e-mail sent by e360insight or Linhardt to be “blocked, delayed, altered, or interrupted in anyway” and ordered Spamhaus to publish an apology stating that Linhardt and his company are not spammers, according to a copy of the order.

[…]

Spamhaus appears unfazed by the ruling. In a statement on its Web site, Spamhaus dismissed the judgment as invalid and charges that the court was “bamboozled by spammers.” Spamhaus didn’t mount a defense in the case; the ruling was a default judgment in absence of counterarguments.

“Default judgments obtained in U.S. county, state or federal courts have no validity in the U.K. and cannot be enforced under the British legal system,” Spamhaus said on its Web site. “As spamming is illegal in the U.K., an Illinois court ordering a British organization to stop blocking incoming Illinois spam in Britain goes contrary to U.K. law which orders all spammers to cease sending spam in the first place.”

Linhardt and his company are indeed spammers and remain on the Spamhaus blocklist, Spamhaus said. Posting a note that e360insignt was inaccurately labeled as a spammer would be a lie, Spamhaus said. If Linhardt wants a ruling that counts, he needs to refile his case in the U.K., according to Spamhaus.

The Spamhaus blocklist is a database of verified spam sources that is supplied at no cost to help e-mail administrators clean incoming e-mail streams. Spam accounts for about 75 percent of all e-mail, and the Spamhaus list is one of the most popular such blacklists to help cleanse e-mail.

(from ZDNet, Spam fighter hit with $11.7 million judgment)

Spammers are scum. I’d never advocate violence against anyone, of course, but it’s a shame that people like Linhardt can continue to prey on society and make a mockery of our legal system, without any repurcussions whatsoever.

My apartment is a few blocks from a Costco discount warehouse store in Richmond. A friend of mine told me they have good prices on meat, and they also have good prices on gasoline (as much as five cents cheaper than the competition). But in order to shop at Costco, you have to buy a membership card. In the past two weeks I have visited Costco twice.

A week ago, I entered the store with the intention of looking around to see if I thought it was worth paying a membership fee to shop there. I wanted to check out the prices, the selection, and so forth. Upon entering the huge open doorway, a Costco employee stopped me and told me that looking around was not permitted, and that I had to go stand in line to get a temporary pass in order to come into the store. So I went over to the counter and stood in line. And stood. And stood. Ten minutes later I came to a realization:

I am standing in line to get into a store that I’m not even sure I want to shop at.

To hell with that. I left.

Today I returned to Costco, having decided that the price of their gas would, by itself, go a long way toward making a membership worthwhile (I drive back and forth between Richmond and Portsmouth at least once a week). I entered the store’s enormous door and walked past the long, long line of people waiting to leave (people are in line waiting to leave?) and approached the customer service counter to go ahead and get a membership.

“Sir! Sir!” called the long-haired man keeping people from leaving the store with their purchases.

“Yes?” I said.

“You need to go back out and come in the other door,” he said, gesturing toward the large doorway around fifty feet away, just like the one I had just walked through.

“Um… what? I’m here to buy a card — a membership,” I said, gesturing at the counter in front of me.

“You need to go back out and come in the other door,” he repeated.

Blink.

“Are you asking me to leave the store?” I asked, incredulous.

“Yes,” he said.

I am right in front of the customer service counter, I have told him that I am here to buy a membership, and he wants me to leave the store, walk sixty feet away outside, then come back in the store and walk forty feet back. I was speechless for a moment. Then I said a rude phrase to him that I have probably not said to another human being in twenty years, and I left.

I hear a lot about how evil Wal-Mart supposedly is. I do not see it. I get good prices on what I buy, the people who work there get paid better than they would at the mall, and I have never been treated rudely at Wal-Mart. No one at Wal-Mart has ever asked me to stand in line just to get in the store. No one at Wal-Mart has ever asked me to leave the store.

I have decided that since Costco clearly does not want my business, I will not trouble them further. There’s a Sam’s Club right across the street, and they have gas, too.

I indulged my curiosity and Googled myself earlier this evening after watching a few episodes of The Venture Bros. I mostly found a bunch of web sites I created back when I did that for a living, posts to bulletin boards, and so forth. Boring. I did find one interesting thing. Robert J. Hansen’s Crypto FAQ quotes something I said a long while ago. Check it out.