Blackmoor Vituperative

When the law does not protect people, people will protect themselves.

Vardan Kushnir, notorious for sending spam to each and every citizen of Russia who appeared to have an e-mail, was found dead in his Moscow apartment on Sunday, Interfax reported Monday. He died after suffering repeated blows to the head.

(from MosNews, Russia’s Biggest Spammer Brutally Murdered in Apartment)

All I can say is that it’s about damned time. I’ve been wanting to bludgeon spammers, virus writers, and phishers to death for years.

Inkscape Announces 0.42 Release :: http://www.inkscape.org :: Draw Freely.

The Inkscape community today announced the release of Inkscape 0.42, a cross-platform Open Source Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) drawing tool.

Inkscape 0.42 is the most feature-filled release to date, with an exceptional number of major and minor new features, usability improvements, and bug fixes. While some of the new features simply fill long-standing functionality gaps, others are truly revolutionary. Inkscape 0.42 is one step closer to full SVG compliance. This release adds:

• Flowed Text: Text objects that automatically re-flow to any shape (and not just a rectangle).
• Text Selection: One can now select part of a text and apply any style to the selection, just like in a word processing application.
• Gradient Tool: A completely redesigned and much easier to use on-canvas gradient interface with handles displayed directly in the drawing.
• Effects: These are now usable from within Inkscape on all platforms. This version ships with a collection of effects including path interpolation, randomization, and various fractal algorithms.
• Color Swatches: This standard facility of most graphics software is now a part of Inkscape.
• Colored Clones: Clones may now be painted differently from their original.
• Tile Tracing: The Tile Clones dialog can trace an existing image with tiling, producing a multitude of exciting effects.
• Grid Arrange, Baseline Align, Unclumping: There are new, powerful ways to arrange objects.
• Better PS/EPS Export: PostScript level 3 gradient support, better text handling, and a command line option for batch export are in this release.
• Command Line SVG Analysis: Inkscape may now be used from the command line to query coordinates and dimensions of objects in an SVG file.
• Better SVG/CSS Compliance: Notably, internal CSS stylesheets are now supported (read-only).
• Mac OS X Support: In addition to Linux and Windows, Inkscape 0.42 is now available as a fully self-contained dmg package for Mac OS X.

There are also dozens of smaller features and usability enhancements (especially in the Fill & Stroke dialog, Node tool, and drawing tools). In this version the development community closed 404 bugs, some quite serious, and 165 feature requests. Overall, the Inkscape developers are very excited about this release and heartily recommend upgrading.

There are several recent software updates you should be aware of. Most of the changes are security fixes, so you should install these right away.

• 7-Zip 4.23
• Avast! Antivirus 4.6.691
• Firefox 1.0.6
• Gaim 1.4.0
• SystemSuite 6

WinRAR and OpenOffice should have new versions soon, as well, so keep an eye on those projects. OpenOffice 2.0, in particular, is going to be a significant improvement (and OpenOffice is already superior to Microsoft Office, in my opinion, so that’s really saying something).

An amusing exchange between David Berlind and on-line help specialists who are trying to explain to him why one would want to pay $59 extra for the “Centrino” sticker:

On HP’s web site, I can configure two notebooks exactly the same way except for the WiFi radio that’s installed. If I use the standard 802.11b/g radio, I save $59. If I use Intel’s Pro 802.11b/g radio, I pay extra and the system gets the Centrino sticker on it. Why should I pay $59 more to get the Intel radio and the Centrino sticker?

(from HP’s Threadlogs: How to Mess with a Buyer’s Head 101, ZDNet)

According to Reporters Without Borders, Microsoft (along with Yahoo, Cisco, and Google — et tu, Google?) is helping the Chinese government oppress its people.

“Reporters Without Borders has been able to check that, as reported by several news agencies, when a Chinese blogger attempts to post a message containing terms such as “democracy”, “Dalai Lama”, “Falungong”, “4 June” (the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre), “China + corruption”, or “human rights”, a warning displays saying, ‘This message contains a banned expression, please delete this expression.’

Generally, “subversive” messages are displayed on Chinese-hosted forums and blogs but the banned words are automatically replaced with blank spaces.

The Chinese version of the MSN portal, along with the blog tool, were launched as a joint venture with a local state-controlled company, Shanghai Alliance Investment Ltd (SAIL).”

Okay, so Microsoft is helping Big Brother oppress the people by censoring what they may read and write. So? That’s nothing new. Microsoft has always been happy to get into bed with the government, and use as much power as the law will let it get away with (such as using the police in Kenya and Brazil to prevent students from studying its code, or preventing competitors from starting new companies). I think it’s only natural that Microsoft would want to get on the good side of one of the most successful dictatorships on the planet.

Tavmjong Bah is writing A Guide To Inkscape. Inkscape, in case you did not know, is an excellent open source drawing tool with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, and CorelDraw, which uses the W3C standard scalable vector graphics format (SVG).

Check it out.

There’s a really good article by Peter Coffee in this week’s issue of eWeek. How do you do quality control when you are manufacturing something that’s as small as you can build something out of atoms?

I found a great site which walks you step by step through setting up Fedora Core 3: Fedora Core 3 Installation Notes. This is the clearest, most complete walkthrough I have seen so far. Well done, Stanton Finley, whoever you are.

While I’m at it, here’s a very helpful how-to for setting up a Linux server on a home network to connect to your broadband provider’s SMTP server. Marvelous!

Here’s a factoid for you: my Creative Zen Touch MP3 player has 40GB of storage. In the year 1956, that would equate to a stack of punch cards roughly 56 miles tall.

Windows patching: cheaper than open source?

Excerpt: “And if you believe that, Microsoft has a nice bridge in Brooklyn it would like to sell you.”