Blackmoor Vituperative

I am working on a short-term contract in Richmond, VA for Capital One. Here are some photos of my studio apartment.

Here is a photo of the desk I work at:

It’s not my desk. I have to clean it out at the end of every day. Capital One calls this “The Future Of Work”. Here is my crate of stuff I carry to and from my car each day:

I spoke to a guy on the way to my car.

“You must be in the Future Of Work, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I started last Monday.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ll get used to it.”

I wonder why Capital One would want people to get used to cleaning out their desks?

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.

Following egregious examples of anti-gun misbehavior by the New Orleans police during the “state of emergency” there, a pro-gun Virginia Delegate is taking action to ensure the same thing doesn’t happen here in the Old Dominion.

HB 1265 — introduced by Delegate Bill Janis (R-56) — would change state law to prohibit the confiscation of firearms and ammunition during a state of emergency.

On Friday, the bill was heard before the House Committee on the Militia, Police and Public Safety. The version which passed out of committee is strong, pro-gun language which deserves our support.

HB 1265 now goes to the full House floor this week.

The first Greyhawk novel (and the first of many truly dreadful D&D novels) now has a sequel: Return To Quag Keep.

I’ll pass.

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.

Microsoft has pledged to create rules on how it will deal with government complaints about Web sites and blogs hosted by the U.S. software giant.

Following concerns on how Microsoft pulled the blog of a critic of the Chinese government, Microsoft said that in the future it will only block access to diaries on its MSN Internet portal when it is presented with a court order or another legally binding decision.

But the blog will only be banned in that particular country.

“Going forward we will have a policy of removing access for the country where the blog was issued, but not outside that country,” Brad Smith, Microsoft ‘s chief counsel, said at a Microsoft conference.

Microsoft will find a technical solution to make sure the blog will still be viewable in other countries.

“We want to formulate a new framework and new principles. Principles need to emerge,” said Smith, adding that the need for clear guidelines became imperative after MSN took down the popular blog written by Zhao Jing last month.

Smith defended Microsoft’s decision by saying it had received an order from the information authorities in Shanghai, which Microsoft found to have legal authority to decide what can be published in China.

“That was one of the things that made us sit and think. [Now] it will be transparent what is happening and why,” Smith said.

Around 3.3 million bloggers in China publish their Web diaries on the Spaces pages of Microsoft’s MSN service.

Microsoft is not the only company struggling with China’s censorship rules.

Last month the country’s propaganda chiefs closed the outspoken supplement Freezing Point of respected newspaper China Youth Daily, and Web search leader Google announced restrictions on a new service for China to avoid confrontation with Beijing.

(from eWeek, Microsoft to Set Rules for Government Blog Complaints)

There is a very common misconception that obeying the law is right, and disobeying the law is wrong. From time to time, we in the USA need to get reminded that right and wrong have very little to do with the law, except by coincidence. All too often, the law is wrong. It was once illegal for slaves to flee their masters. It was once illegal for women to vote. It was once illegal to harbor a Jew from the German police. It was once illegal for a married couple living in Virginia to have oral sex (and that was only a year or so ago). It is still illegal to grow marijuana. In many states in the USA, it is legal for the state to seize your property and give it to someone else any time they want to.

Laws are made by people, and people are often wrong. Sometimes, those people aren’t merely wrong, but are actually evil, and the laws they make are equally so — and obeying an evil law is wrong. I think it’s only a matter of time before China reminds people in the USA of this unfortunate but inescapable fact.

AT&T is being sued in federal court for allegedly violating the Constitutional rights of Americans by enabling the National Security Agency to spy on citizens without court authorization.

In a class action suit filed Jan. 31, the Electronic Frontier Foundation accused AT&T of playing an instrumental role in “a secret and illegal government program to intercept and analyze vast quantities of Americans’ telephone and Internet communications.”

The EFF charged that the carrier violated customers’ First Amendment right to free speech and Fourth Amendment right to privacy and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, and also broke several wiretap and telecommunications laws.

The surveillance program, which was first revealed by The New York Times in December, was authorized by President Bush after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“But the government did not act — and is not acting — alone,” the EFF alleged in the lawsuit filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. “The government requires the collaboration of major telecommunications companies to implement its unprecedented and illegal domestic spying program.”

(from eWeek, EFF Sues AT&T for Role in NSA Eavesdropping)

Shame on you, AT&T. History is not kind to Quislings.