Blackmoor Vituperative

IBM’s global procurement headquarters is moving from Somers, NY, north of New York City, to Shenzhen, China. This will be the first time the headquarters of an IBM corporate-wide organization has been located outside the U.S.

According to the company, the move illustrates a shift underway at IBM from a multinational corporation to a new model — a globally integrated enterprise. “In a multinational model, many functions of a corporation were replicated around the world — but each addressing only its local market,” said Chief Procurement Officer John Paterson, who is relocating to China. “In a globally integrated enterprise, for the first time, a company’s worldwide capability can be located wherever in the world it makes the most sense, based on the imperatives of economics, expertise and open environments.

(from IBM News, IBM moves procurement HQ to China)

The world isn’t cyberpunk yet, but it’s getting there.

As the Buggles told us, new technology kills old technology. Thanks to the DMCA and the media robber barons — aka the Digital Rights Mafia — DRM is killing innovation. In the latest death to functionality, the TiVo To Go is no more. TiVo Series 3 HD is Defective By Design.

If you want to help fight the Digital Rights Mafia, please also tell Congress to reform the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which limits unlocking DRM even to make legitimate uses, like moving recorded content to your portable video player.

You know you’re visiting a different kind of trade show when the signs for the new GUI on a product refer to an automatic weapon. You get a better idea when you find yourself standing beneath the main gun of the new Stryker mobile weapons system. But it really hits home when you visit the usually benign world of iRobot and find not Roombas, but instead autonomous killing machines.

(from eWeek, War Robots Invade Washington)

I want one. 🙂

Massachusetts has a problem. The Commonwealth can’t keep its CIO or pass an IT budget. Louis Gutierrez, the of CIO Massachusetts’s Information Technology Division, resigned earlier this week. Does this mean the end of the state’s pioneering ODF (Open Document Format) rollout?

First let’s look at why Gutierrez is leaving.

As he said in his resignation letter, it’s because, “IT innovation in Massachusetts state government ran out of steam in August, when the legislature closed its formal session without action on the IT and facilities bond. I am presiding over the dismantling of an IT investment program — over a decade in the evolution — that the legislative leadership appears unwilling to salvage at this time.”

This is widely seen as a blow to open-standards. In particular, this won’t do the planned rollout of the ODF for state use in January 2007 any good.

The use of ODF has been a controversial subject in Massachusetts for over a year now. Peter Quinn, Gutierrez’s predecessor as CIO, resigned on January 9th because of personal attacks based in part on his support for ODF.

While Massachusetts is theoretically still switching to ODF for its official documents, without a budget to implement the change, it’s hard to see it happening.

(from Linux Watch, Massachusetts CIO change worries ODF supporters)

Hopefully, the troops who do the actual work are still pushing the ODF train uphill, and the musical chairs for CIO is just a bump in the road.

“It really is a nightmare. User education is a complete waste of time. It is about as much use as nailing jelly to a wall,” Overton said. “There is no good trying to teach them what phishing is, what rootkits are, what malware is, etc. They are not interested; they just want to do their job.”

[…]

Jill Sitherwood, an information security consultant at a large financial institution, has seen education both fail and succeed. “I have to believe it works,” she said. “When we give our awareness presentations, what signs to look for, I have seen a spike in the number of incidents reported by our internal users.”

But online consumers are a tougher crowd to get through to.

“We have a special page on our Web site to report security incidents. We had to shut the e-mail box because customers didn’t read (the page) and submitted general customer service queries,” Sitherwood said.

(from ZDNet, Security expert: User education is pointless)

I have been saying for years that most people are too stupid to be safely allowed near a computer, and for years I have been getting criticized for saying so. When computers can be made as safe to use — safe for the user, safe for the machine, and safe for the rest of the world — as a VCR, then and only then should they be placed in the hands of an average person. And even then, there will still be a significant number of people for whom the time will always blink 12:00.

Join us for Monster Fest! Saturday 2006-10-14

All day Monster Fest horror convention plus all-night Fantasmo Horrorthon! Doctor Madblood will be taping a TV show there in the afternoon. 1:00 p.m. Horror Host Summit with Madblood, The Bowman Body, Count Gore DeVol, Penny Dreadful the 13th and More! Don’t miss it!

Chesapeake Central Library
298 Cedar Road
Chesapeake, VA 23322
(757) 382-6591
http://www.chesapeake.lib.va.us/Fantasmo/FlyerInformation.htm

For 37 years, Science Applications International Corp. has been owned by its employees. In that time, the company has grown from nothing to an $8 billion giant that does some of the government’s most sensitive work in intelligence, homeland security and defense.

But within days, those employees — 43,100 of them, more than a third of whom live in the Washington area — will have to learn to share their company with people who have never before had the chance to own SAIC stock: members of the public.

SAIC shares could begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange as soon as tomorrow in an initial public offering estimated to be worth $1 billion, which would be among the largest IPOs ever in the defense industry.

(from WashingtonPost.com, Filings Illuminate IPO’s Bumpy Ride)

It’s about time. I have a small amount of SAIC stock (I worked for them from 2002 through 2005), and this IPO has taken forever. I am really glad that they have professionals handling the stock program now. When I was there, it was handled in-house by Bull, Inc. (a wholly owned subsidiary of SAIC), and I had more than a few problems with them. As much as I took pride in being a SAIC employee-owner (and I would still be one if my management had permitted me to accept a job offer I received from a different SAIC division), I think it will be a good thing for SAIC to go public. I think it will make them more accountable and force them to make better business decisions, particularly in these post-Sarbanes-Oxley days.

I could be wrong, but that’s what I think.

I have been watching the recent re-release of Star Wars (the movie George Lucas later renamed “A New Hope”, so that he could build a franchise out of the name “Star Wars”). It has weathered the past 30 pretty well, all things considered. The DVD set also includes a more recent revision, courtesy of Lucas’ obsessive desire to keep tinkering with a classic. I will admit that the revision has better sound and visuals than the original. I still do not like some of the changes — I see no reason to clutter up Mos Eisley with a bunch of random CGI monsters, for example, and the added scene with Jabba is dramatically and cinematically superfluous. Not to mention the completely gratuitous take to the camera by Boba Fett. But overall, I think the current revision of Star Wars is a pretty decent movie. Not as good as the original, but still, pretty good.

What I simply can’t abide is the commentary. Yes, I listened to it. I kind of had to, Star Wars geek that I am. But I am apparently unlike most people who listen to this drivel because I was alive when Star Wars came out, I was a huge Star Wars fan, and I actually paid attention to what Lucas said at the time. And his story has changed a great deal since then. I am listening to this nonsense about how he wanted to “re-create myths and the classic mythological motifs”, and I just want to interrupt him and tell him, “George, the suckers may buy this line of crap, but I know better. So save the song and dance and just talk about the movie, okay?”

But what the hell. It’s still a great movie.

P.S. Go read Galactic Gasbag, by Steven Hart.

Julie Harris-Hulcher has an interesting article about Lovcecraft’s work and how it thrived while eschewing the protections of conventional copyright. It is worthy of serious consideration.

The article itself is part of The Reader’s Guide To The Cthulhu Mythos.