Blackmoor Vituperative

So-called “Daylight Saving Time” is a conspiracy to waste hundreds of millions of US man-hours every years, setting and re-setting clocks and missing and re-scheduling appointments.

Who came up with this? Was it the Japanese? They seem to want to put clocks in every piece of electronics they make. The Swiss? They are clockmakers, after all, and they’ve been jealous of the USA for years. Benjamin Franklin is credited with the idea, but I think that’s propaganda. No one as wise as Franklin would conceive of such a ludicrous, wasteful notion. Maybe he suggested it as a joke.

The quantity of sunlight shed upon the earth does not change, regardless of what number the clock says. So-called “Daylight Saving Time” accomplishes nothing positive whatsoever. It’s a ridiculous, archaic drain on our entire society, and it ought to be abolished.

Write the President, your Senators, and your Representatives. We can eliminate this nuisance in our lifetime.

(No, I do not seriously think it was a plot by the Japanese or the Swiss. Get real.)

Domain name squatters are scum, regardless of the domain suffix. They occupy a niche between spammers, virus writers, and head lice. Re-selling domain names for any price should be explicitly forbidden, period. The sooner ICANN makes that a policy, and starts enforcing it, the better off all of us will be. It’s long overdue, in my opinion.

Sun Microsystems has fixed five security bugs in Java that expose computers running Windows, Linux and Solaris to hacker attack.

The flaws are “highly critical,” according to an advisory from Secunia posted Tuesday. Vulnerabilities that get that ranking–one notch below “extremely critical,” the security monitoring company’s most severe rating — typically open the door to a remote intruder and to full compromise of the system.

All the flaws affect the Java Runtime Environment, or JRE, in computers loaded with Microsoft Windows, Linux or Sun’s own Solaris operating system. This is the software many computer owners have on their system to run Java applications. The bugs could allow an intruder to use a Java application to inappropriately read and write files, or to run code on a victim’s computer, Sun said in three separate security advisories released late Monday.

(from TechRepublic, Sun plugs serious holes in Java

Go to the Sun Java web site, download the current Java runtime environment (or the SDK, if you are a programmer), and install it.

Earlier this year, I wrote about several major data breaches at ChoicePoint, then LexisNexis. Headlines screamed how thousands–and in the case of CardSystems, millions–of individuals had their names, social security numbers, and other personal information exposed to god-knows-who. These revelations came only because of a California law, SB 1386, which requires companies to inform California residents if any data breaches occur. The Senate is currently considering a national version of the California law, but a weaker House of Representatives bill is rapidly gaining influence in Congress. If the House bill passes and becomes law first, future data breach revelations will be silenced, and data thieves will be free to run amok.

(from CNet, Congress loves identity thieves)

Sun Microsystems has Sun Java Studio Creator 2004Q2 (full license) and Sun Java Studio Enterprise 8 (full license) for free via download. This is probably a bit of counter-marketing spurred by the release of .NET 2.0 last Monday. However, Java at any price is a better deal than .Net. You literally could not pay me enough to work with .Net.

All U.S. passports will be implanted with remotely readable computer chips starting in October 2006, the Bush administration has announced.

Sweeping new State Department regulations issued Tuesday say that passports issued after that time will have tiny radio frequency ID (RFID) chips that can transmit personal information including the name, nationality, sex, date of birth, place of birth and digitized photograph of the passport holder. Eventually, the government contemplates adding additional digitized data such as “fingerprints or iris scans.”

Over the last year, opposition to the idea of implanting RFID chips in passports has grown amidst worries that identity thieves could snatch personal information out of the air simply by aiming a high-powered antenna at a person or a vehicle carrying a passport. Out of the 2,335 comments on the plan that were received by the State Department this year, 98.5 percent were negative. The objections mostly focused on security and privacy concerns.

But the Bush administration chose to go ahead with embedding 64KB chips in future passports, citing a desire to abide by “globally interoperable” standards devised by the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency. Other nations, including the United Kingdom and Germany, have announced similar plans.

(from ZDNet Government Blog, Passports to get RFID chip implants)

By 2015, every US citizen will have a government identity card with an RFID chip (or similar technology), and having your identification card with you will be required for most activities which involve leaving your house — and many which don’t. Mark my words.

Why OpenOffice.org 2.0 Is Your Best Choice

It’s free and it works. Next question?

OpenOffice.org 2.0 is the productivity suite that individuals, governments, and corporations around the world have been expecting for the last two years. Easy to use and fluidly interoperable with every major office suite, OpenOffice.org 2.0 realises the potential of open source.

With new features, advanced XML capabilities and native support for the OASIS Standard OpenDocument format, OpenOffice.org 2.0 gives users around the globe the tools to be engaged and productive members of their society.

Download it now. If it is not ready today in your language, it will be shortly. OpenOffice.org 2.0 is yours.

PeerGuardian has been updated to version 6B. This is an important security update, because the list servers for the previous versions have been compromised. There is more to the story, which you can read at the new Phoenix Labs web site, but the bottom line is that you should update to the newest version of PeerGuardian ASAP.

David Wheeler has written a great article on Why OpenDocument Won (and Microsoft Office Open XML Didn’t). I won’t bother excerpting it here: you should go read the whole thing.