Blackmoor Vituperative

CompUSA.com has the Microsoft USB Fingerprint Reader for Windows for $35 – $25 rebate = $10, with free shipping on $150 orders. Gummi bears and Microsoft Mark Of The Beast (TM) sold separately.

This isn’t exactly a scoop, but hey, I’ve been busy.

Some have recently argued that corporate executives face increased risk of criminal liability under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) if their companies develop and distribute code licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). The argument, as it has been made, raises significant concerns about SOX compliance, but it fails to clarify the scope and context of these points. We have reviewed these issues and, as discussed more fully below, there is in fact no special risk for developing GPL’d code under SOX. Under most circumstances, the risk posed to a company by SOX is not affected by whether they use GPL’d or any other type of software. Arguments to the contrary are pure anti-GPL FUD.

(from Software Freedom Law Center, Sarbanes-Oxley and the GPL: No Special Risk)

I’m not sure what Wasabi thought they were accomplishing by publishing their scare-tactics white paper, but anyone familiar with SarbOx and familiar with the terms of the GPL (and really, it isn’t hard to be one of those people, all it takes is some time to read up on them) can see that they’re blowing smoke. Shame on them.

VCOM Fix-It Utilities 6 Professional is free after rebate at Amazon.com. This a great utility suite at a fantastic price. I highly recommend it.

I switched from MS Office to OpenOffice.org several years ago, and I haven’t looked back. Quite simply, OpenOffice rocks. However, I still have one MS Office application installed: MS Outlook. I can tell you why in one word:

HotSync

I carry my Palm everywhere. Ever since I got my first Handspring Visor (back in the 20th century), a Palm has been an indispensible part of my life. I’d be lost without it. I currently carry a Tungsten T5, which is simply an awesome little gadget. Part of the magic that makes this machine so essential is that it synchronizes with my desktop, and my laptop, and Susan’s laptop, making it easy for all of our address books, calendars, and to-do lists to stay synchronized. This is no small feat.

While there are plenty of worthwhile alternatives to Outlook’s email capabilities (Thunderbird, for example), there is no one application that combines calendar, email, contacts, and to-do lists, which also HotSyncs with my Palm. So I am stuck using Outlook.

At the moment, the closest competitors for Outlook’s place on my desktop are Chandler, which has been under construction since 2002 and still does not have usable email or to-do list functionality, and Evolution, which might someday be ported to Windows. Someday. In the meantime, Mozilla is steadily plugging along getting Thunderbird and Sunbird to work together, but who knows when they’ll get a task manager into the mix, or manage to painlessly integrate them all and make them HotSync-able.

So for the foreseeable future, Outlook is on my desktop, and it’s going to stay there. That’s not the way I want it, but that’s the way it is.

Sun Microsystems issued a patch Tuesday to address seven “highly critical” flaws in its Java Runtime Environment that could allow a malicious attacker to gain remote control over a user’s system. Read the complete story here.

Antivirus vendor Sophos has sold ActiveState (makers of ActivePerl, the de facto standard Perl installation for Windows) to a Canadian venture capital company.

DesktopLinux.com has a pretty good article summarizing why Linux users want Photoshop. I know I do. Gimp just doesn’t cut it.

Thinking In Java, 4th Edition, by Bruce Eckel, should be in bookstores some time in the next week. You can pre-order the book now. You can also check out Eckel’s site to download the source code.

Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage.

(from Western Union, Western Union Telegram)

Messages announcing births, deaths, congratulations, and world wars came in Western Union’s cryptic telegrams for more than 150 years. The last one has been sent. […]

Western Union now wires nothing but money. It did not announce who sent or received the last telegram.

When the first trans-Atlantic telegram was sent in 1861, it was as astounding as the first computer, or the first fax. Telegrams were used to announce the first flight in 1903 and the start of World War I. During World War II, the sight of a Western Union courier was feared because the War Department, the precursor to the Department of Defense, used the company to notify families of the death of their loved ones serving in the military, according to Associated Press.

(from WhatsNextBlog, Western Union -STOP- EndsTelegram Service After 150 Years – FULL STOP-)

We are witnesses to the end of an era.

Massachusetts has appointed a new CIO and made it clear that his job will be to forge ahead with implementing the controversial OpenDocument format, set to go into effect in January 2007.

The new CIO, Louis Gutierrez, will step into the shoes vacated by Peter Quinn, who stepped down Jan. 9.

Quinn, the man who championed the adoption of ODF in Massachusetts, had been buffeted by the concomitant controversy and attacks that turned personal. In particular, the Boston Globe ran an article about Quinn’s purportedly unauthorized travel to conferences.

A subsequent review by the governor’s budget chief fully exonerated Quinn from any wrongdoing, but the damage was already done.

A request made to the Globe’s ombudsman two months ago to investigate the article’s origin has not yet been answered, according to Andrew Updegrove, a partner at the Boston law firm Gesmer Updegrove LLP and the editor of ConsortiumInfo.org.

The current policy of the Commonwealth’s IT Division mandates that documents created by state executive branch agencies must be saved in the OpenDocument format by January of next year, with the goal being to implement a standard developed in a standards body that would free the state from the control of one company over its proprietary code.

Massachusetts first moved to standardize on ODF on Sept. 1, when the proposal was first approved.

(from eWeek, Massachusetts Appoints ODF-Friendly CIO)

I’m glad that the lobbying from the forces of evil hasn’t managed to sway Massachusetts’ IT policy makers.

Virginia, wake up! You’re supposed to be the tech-friendly state! Where’s your initiative to move to OpenDocument? Get your act in gear, Virginia!