Blackmoor Vituperative

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.

ROSWELL, N.M. – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) special agents today arrested 15 illegal aliens who were working for a local company here that is under contract to paint U.S. military aircraft, including Lockheed C-130 military aircraft.

Some of the aliens were in the process of painting these aircraft when they were arrested.

[…]

The aliens were arrested after they were determined to be illegally residing and working in the United States. Those arrested are citizens of Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala.

“Aggressive worksite enforcement actions like this help deter aliens from entering the United States attracted by the ‘job magnet,'” said Troy Henley, special agent-in-charge of the ICE Office of Investigations in El Paso.

(from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE arrests 15 aliens in Roswell working for U.S. military contractor)

The flight recorder video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRgs-f6Niis

The Aircraft Occurrence Summary:

http://www.airforce.forces.gc.ca/dfs/docs/Fti/CT155202_e.asp

Note to self: The next time I am in an interview and I am asked if I am willing to provide support to users, do not simply say “Yes: I like working with end users because it helps me understand what the system I am developing is supposed to accomplish for them.” Reason: that answer assumes I am actually DEVELOPING something, rather than acting as a glorified help-desk for poorly designed COTS software.

Second note to self: The next time I am in an interview and I am asked if I am willing to provide support to users, make sure that such support is provided during normal working hours ONLY, and that the portion of my time spent on such support will be no more than 15% (rather 50%-70%).

I found this at Snopes.com.

Aggravated about paying for 411 calls that used to free? While waiting for connecting flights this morning, I stumbled onto this nifty money-saver: A free consumer service offered in the United States by Jingle Networks via a toll-free number, 800-FREE-411 (800-373-3411).

This free network works much like directory assistance, with one exception: It’s funded by advertising. Callers may hear a 13-second ad for a business in the region they’re calling. And, the business or residence being called will hear a message about advertising with Free 411.

Based on a test of three calls by Snopes.com, the service worked as described and callers heard only one ad.

(from Snopes.com, Free 411)

Kenneth Kwak, 34, of Chantilly, Va., admitted to installing remote control software on the computer and using that access to read his supervisor’s e-mail and monitor other Internet activity, the U.S Department of Justice said in a statement Friday. Kwak shared this information with others in his office, the DOJ said.

Kwak pleaded guilty last month to one count of intentionally gaining unauthorized access to a government computer and thereby obtaining information, the DOJ said. He was sentenced on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The five-month sentence is to be followed by five months of home confinement.

As part of the sentence, Kwak was also ordered to pay the U.S. government $40,000 in restitution. He will be on parole for three years.

Kwak was responsible for securing Department of Education computers. His prosecution was part of the “zero-tolerance policy” recently adopted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office regarding intrusions into U.S. government computer systems, the DOJ said.

(from ZDNet, Ex-government employee sentenced for hacking)

He should have known better. That was just stupid.