Blackmoor Vituperative

I love Lara Croft. I think she’s one of the best role-models that popular entertainment has to offer: she’s strong, smart, independent, adventurous, she knows how to fire a pistol, and her clothing is always practical (sexy, yes, but practical sexy, rather than Bloodrayne sexy). Well, there’s a new Tomb Raider on the horizon: Tomb Raider: Legend. Here’s a blurb I got in my email today:

Head on over to the Official Site and check out the massive update we’ve just posted!

It’s been a bit quiet on the Tomb Raider front lately but with this new update the site is busting at the seams with new downloads and information on Lara’s upcoming adventure!

We’ve got some hot new game info for you to check out — storyline, character bios, location information and much more! There are tons of new screenshots for all console versions — including the recently announced PSP version! We also have art from the game, early concept art, AIM icons & wallpapers and finally more ORIGINAL fan art from you — the Tomb Raider fans!

We’re also pleased to release DESKTOP LARA!

What is DESKTOP LARA you ask? Go to www.tombraider.com right now and find out!

Also, Lara needs your help! We are very excited to announce that Lara has been nominated as one of the greatest British Design Icons on the BBC’s Design Quest!

This is another great opportunity for Lara, so let’s all go show our support and cast your vote here now!

“Desktop Lara” is really cute, although I am suspicious of anything that downloads its parts from the Internet without telling me what it’s doing.

When I was seventeen
It was a very good year
It was a very good year for small town girls
And soft summer nights
We’d hide from the lights
On the village green
When I was seventeen

When I was twenty-one
It was a very good year
It was a very good year for city girls
Who lived up the stair
With all that perfumed hair
And it came undone
When I was twenty-one

When I was thirty-five
It was a very good year
It was a very good year for blue-blooded girls
Of independent means
We’d ride in limousines
Their chauffeurs would drive
When I was thirty-five

But now the days grow short
I’m in the autumn of the year
And now I think of my life as vintage wine
From fine old kegs
From the brim to the dregs
And it poured sweet and clear
It was a very good year

(from It was a very good year, by Frank Sinatra)

This is a really neat keyboard.

There was a time when SpamCop’s bl.spamcop.net was a useful blocklist. I say “was” because bl.spamcop.net is getting so many false positives now (several a day, from a variety of unrelated and non-spamming servers) that it has become more of a liability than a service, and I have removed it from my list of blocklists. I now strongly recommend others do the same.

I reported this problem to deputies@spamcop.net, including a sample of a dozen or so of the false positives, a week or so ago. I have received no reply. For reference, here are just a few of the erroneously blocked servers:

• synigent.com
• iconma.com
• ebay.com
• clicknfax.com
• intuit.com
• cardmemberservices.com
• dice.com

SpamCop as a service is a still useful, because it allows me to selectively filter using a variety of blocklists. So I will definitely be keeping my accounts. But I will no longer be using the unreliable bl.spamcop.net blocklist, and therefore there is no reason to take the trouble to “report” spam to SpamCop anymore.

MarsCon just keeps getting better and better. The dealer’s room and the gaming rooms are just spectacular now. The dealer’s room this year wasn’t the largest I’ve seen, but it was certainly one of the best: the sheer depth and breadth of the stuff available is just amazing. And the gaming room was very large, and just packed with people.

I remember the first year Susan and I went to MarsCon: there were three tables in the dealer’s room, and we had one of them! I think the other two were a used book seller, and an artist. And the programming was pretty much nonexistent, back then. It’s sure changed a lot. MarsCon has wall-to-wall programming now.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the excellent con suite. MarsCon always has the best con suite. This year’s theme was “Hogwarts”. I thought the floating candles were an especially nice touch.

I didn’t wind up running anything at this con, neither a LARP nor a Champions game. I enjoyed the break, but I also felt like I was missing something by not running a game. Next year I’ll definitely run something.

BB&T, the nation’s ninth largest financial holdings company with $109.2 billion in assets, announced today that it “will not lend to commercial developers that plan to build condominiums, shopping malls and other private projects on land taken from private citizens by government entities using eminent domain.”

In a press release issued today by the bank, BB&T Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Allison, said, “The idea that a citizen’s property can be taken by the government solely for private use is extremely misguided, in fact it’s just plain wrong. One of the most basic rights of every citizen is to keep what they own. As an institution dedicated to helping our clients achieve economic success and financial security, we won’t help any entity or company that would undermine that mission and threaten the hard-earned American dream of property ownership.”

(from Institute For Justice, BB&T Respects Property Rights, Won’t Fund Eminent Domain Abuse)

Way to go, BB&T.

The Castle Coalition (a nationwide grassroots network of citizens determined to stop the abuse of eminent domain in their communities) today launched the most comprehensive website on the issue. The fully redesigned site (www.CastleCoalition.org) provides information and assistance to journalists, legislators, homeowners, students and scholars. CastleCoalition.org features an interactive map (powered by Google Maps) tracking condemnations for private development nationwide, an up-to-date catalog of eminent domain reform legislation at all levels of government, and a new online publication (CastleWatch) frequently updated with original content. […]

CastleWatch, a new online publication of the Castle Coalition, will provide readers with news and information about eminent domain abuse in communities nationwide. The regular feature “Reality Check” debunks the myths proffered by defenders of eminent domain abuse. Other regular features include profiles of ordinary citizens battling to save their homes and small businesses from the government wrecking ball, eminent domain survival tips, and an ongoing photographic exposé of beautiful homes that have been declared “blighted” on bogus grounds so the government can seize them.

“The Castle Coalition’s new website is part of the Institute for Justice’s $3-million Hands Off My Home campaign to fight eminent domain abuse at the grassroots,” said Chip Mellor, president and general counsel of the Institute for Justice. “Legislators from 40 states are now working on or have passed eminent domain reform. We hope this site informs them and inspires them to create genuine reform that will protect homeowners in every state.”

It’s not the most attractive web site, but it’s functional. Check it out: <http://www.castlecoalition.org/>.

Wow. It looks like the Feds are slowly — oh, soooo slowly — creeping into the late 20th century:

Agencies setting up sensitive virtual private networks now have an open-source alternative.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has certified OpenSSL, an open-source library of encryption algorithms, as meeting Federal Information Processing Standard 140-2 Level 1 standards, according to the Open Source Software Institute of Hattiesburg, Miss.

“This validation will save us hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said Debora Bonner, operations director for the Defense Department’s Defense Medical Logistics Standard Support program, in a statement. “Multiple commercial and government entities, including [the Defense Department’s] Medical Health System, have been counting on this validation to avoid massive software licensing expenditures.”

Federal agencies must use FIPS-compliant products to secure networks carrying unclassified sensitive data. The FIPS certification of OpenSSL opens the possibility of using an SSL-based VPN to carry sensitive data, according to Peter Sargent, who heads the Severna Park, Md.-based PreVal Specialist Inc., one of the companies that supported the validation process.

Traditionally, agencies wishing to set up a VPN for sensitive data would use an approach that involved a secret key implementation of a cryptographic module, which is more expensive to implement and has limited the number of smaller companies that can provide such a product, Sargent said.

(from Government Computer News, OpenSSL gets NIST certifications)

This is great news for Federal agencies. And you would think that switching to OpenSSL would be a no-brainer, right? After all, out here in the real world, we’ve been relying on it for years. However, there is nothing so simple and easy that the Feds can’t find a way to screw it up:

Sargent added that few agencies would directly deploy OpenSSL FIPS. Rather, they would purchase OpenSSL-based VPN products from vendors.

“Yes, yes: I know we could get sunlight for free. But we’d rather pay for it. This tax money isn’t going to spend itself, you know.”

According to TV Shows on DVD, The Tick is finally coming to DVD!

The Tick, the super-popular 1994 animated series that ran on the FoxKids Saturday Morning Block after originating from the Ben Edlund comic books, is coming to DVD in 2006! The comic book character was also the inspiration for a 2001 live-action series that’s already on DVD, but fans of the original cartoon have been desperately waiting for news of a DVD release. […]

There were 36 episodes of The Tick, which came to be owned by Disney at the same time Power Rangers and X-Men did, as a result of the mouse-house’s purchase of the Fox Children’s Network block (who in turn owned many of the Saban shows as well). Our industry sources indicate that Disney will almost certainly release The Tick in a multi-DVD set, similar to DuckTales and Rescue Rangers releases last year. A release date has not been set, and anything can change to delay or scrap their current plans. But if things hold, we’ll see the set before 2006 is over, and probably released side-by-side with another Disney DVD animated TV show. What could that be? How about Darkwing Duck?

(from TV Shows On DVD, Tick, The – S P O O N ! ! ! ! !)

Spoooooooooon!

The first discussion draft of the GNU General Public License was finally released on Monday, and addresses the issues of patents and patent-related retaliation, as well as its compatibility with other licenses.

Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation and author of the original license, was the first to take the floor here at the First International Conference on GPLv3 at MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), to express his vision for the new license. […]

The biggest changes to the license were in the area of license compatibility, removing the obstacles that prevented it from being combined with code from other free software packages. […]

The other biggest changes to the license were regarding the issue of DRM (Digital Rights Management), which was seen as denying users the freedom to control the software they had.

“DRM is a malicious feature and can never be tolerated, as DRM is fundamentally based on activities that cannot be done with free software. That is its goal and it is in direct opposition to ours. But, with the new GPL, we can now prevent our software from being perverted or corrupted,” he said.

A patent license grant has now also been included, as well as a narrow kind of patent retaliation clause. “If person A makes a modified version of a GPL-covered program and then gets a patent on that and says if anyone else makes such a modified version, they will be sued, he then loses the right to make any modifications, meaning he can’t commercially use his software,” Stallman said.

While the license does not require that the modified version be released, it does ensure that others would not be prevented from writing similar modifications under the license, he said.

(from eWeek, GPL 3.0 Draft Tackles Patents, Compatibility)

These sound like good changes to me. If you want more detail (and you should), you can read the full text of the GPL 3.0. You may also want to check out the Free Software Foundation’s rationale for the changes in GPL 3.0.