Blackmoor Vituperative

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.

Well, I’m still coughing, but I don’t think I am actually sick anymore. I think my lungs just haven’t healed yet. But they’re getting better. I cough less every day. It’s worse in the evening.

There’s a new update at the Tomb Raider web site. New trailers and downloads and other fun stuff. Check it out.

I’m still sick, but I’m on the mend. I still cough up a little hunk of my lungs now and then, but overall I feel much better.

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.

It’s no secret that I hate the Mac, but my reasons for hating it have to do with its usefulness and usability (to summarize: the Mac makes simple tasks difficult, and complex tasks impossible). However, it is interesting to see statistics on the vulnerabilities of the Mac, since that’s one of the things Mac users typically brag about (at least, that’s what the Mac users I know brag about).

According to Secunia, who tracks and monitors this sort of thing, here is how the statistics of the Mac and Windows compare:

(from ZDNet, Vulnerability statistics for Mac and Windows)

As a Windows and Linux user, I am well aware of the security vulnerabilities of those operating systems: that’s just part of being a competent computer user. What amazes me is that the Mac can have so many security vulnerabilities without Mac users being aware of it (at least, the Mac users I know certainly aren’t aware of it). This confirms something I have believed ever since I learned firsthand what a pain in the ass a Mac is to use: people who use Macs are not competent. Talking to a Mac user about computers is like asking a color-blind person to pick out your clothes.

Step one toward our dream house: buying property.

This is the land that we are currently intending to buy: 8.75 acres in Goochland County. Here is a link to pictures:

Dream House

And here is a link to the location:

Halls Road, Goochland, VA

Now I just need to get a long-term job in Richmond…

You know the tax laws are too complicated when someone whose business is tax preparation screws up their own taxes.

The income tax is out of control! No one understands it — not even the experts! H&R Block Inc., which provides tax advice to millions of Americans, made an embarrassing confession on Thursday. It goofed on its own taxes. Yes, you read that right! Poor H&R Block.

The company, which is in the middle of tax season preparing other people’s tax returns, said it had underestimated its own “state effective income tax rate” in previous quarters — meaning it owes another $32 million in back taxes! So here we have a tax giant — a veritable American icon of the tax-filing season — waylaid by the difficulty inherent in complying with the income tax laws. How can anybody defend such a system?

Read more here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/financial_hrblock_earns_dc .

April 17th, tax filing day, is coming soon and do your family members, neighbors, co-workers, and friends know about the FairTax? What a great time of the year to show others there is hope! Please encourage them to join by sending them an e-mail directly from our website here:
http://www.fairtaxvolunteer.org/tell_a_friend/index.html .

The key to passing the FairTax and replacing the income, payroll, capital gains, and other unfair taxes with HR 25 and S 25, the transparent national retail sales tax, will be found by having others join us!

Leo Linbeck
Chairman/CEO
Americans For Fair Taxation

P.S. Thank you for all that you do for the cause! Are your associates occasionally confused by the flat tax proposals? Does this keep them from fully understanding learning about the FairTax? Read some new good talking points and a full rebuttal to the Forbes flat tax book here:
http://www.fairtaxvolunteer.org/smart/rebuttals.html .

Day four of week four: almost halfway there. Still in Richmond, still living in a studio apartment. It pretty much sucks. I miss Susan. I miss my cat.

The Capital One gig is not a bad job at all (I’m not forced to use a damned Mac, for example). Like most contract jobs, the work itself is pretty easy, and the people are all competent. I would prefer to have more responsibility, though. On the bright side, the system I am working on runs Unix (HP-UX B.11.00, to be exact). On the down side, bash isn’t available: the only shell available is one from the 1980s called “korn“. I am not a huge fan of korn. Bash rocks. Long live bash. (Curiously enough, bash was written in part as an alternative to the proprietary korn shell.)

Incidentally, I mean “from the 1980s” literally: this is not the 1993 version of korn shell. This is the 1988 version. If the 1993 version were available, at least then I would be able to remap the keyboard so that the cursor control keys (left, right, up, down, home, end, page up, page down) would work. Not having access to the standard keys that we all take for granted is a little tedious. I can still do my job, of course, but I am not quite as productive as I could be, and that sort of thing bothers me.

It also doesn’t help that I’ve been fighting the flu for over a week. Being sick sucks: it muddles my thinking and makes me short-tempered. At least my nose isn’t running: I am just coughing all of the time. Hopefully, the worst of it is over. I think I’m getting better. I hope so.