Where's Richi?

Yes, I'm not blogging here much these days. So what am I up to?

In addition to my Computerworld daily ramblings and Ferris Researchings, you can mostly find me microblogging on Twitter.

You'll also find me at Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, and FriendFace.

Here's a full list of contact details.

IT Blogwatch roundup

Here's a catchup of the last two week's of IT Blogwatching. Sorry I missed last week's post: I had a rush job on.

March 6, 2009 - 10:24 A.M.

TomTom fights Microsoft to protect GPL?

In a special IT Blogwatch Extra, Richi Jennings watches the growing disquiet over Microsoft's TomTom patent lawsuit. Not to mention what Darth Vader finds disturbing...

...Read more

March 6, 2009 - 5:28 A.M.

Obama: we need a CIO before a CTO

In Friday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches a surprise Obama appointment: a CIO (confounding commentators' CTO conjectures). Not to mention MeggySeq...

...Read more

March 5, 2009 - 5:37 A.M.

Windows 7 allows IE uninstall

In Thursday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches Microsoft allow users and OEMs to actually remove IE -- sop to Europe or misdirecting canard? Not to mention 3D street art...

...Read more

March 4, 2009 - 5:33 A.M.

Skype SILK codec set free-as-in-beer

In Wednesday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches Skype open up its fancy new voice encoding technology. Not to mention London Underground: run by people, not androids...

...Read more

March 3, 2009 - 10:39 A.M.

New Apple desktops: fanbois drool

In a special IT Blogwatch extra, Richi Jennings watches Apple quietly revamp its entire desktop hardware line. Not to mention Square Root Day...

...Read more

March 3, 2009 - 5:40 A.M.

Demonstrators demo at DEMO 09

In Tuesday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches bloggers watch the DEMO 09 conference. Not to mention what not to wear...

...Read more

March 2, 2009 - 5:37 A.M.

Iran leeches Obama's helo. plans, peer2peer

In Monday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches the fear, uncertainty, and doubt surrounding the discovery of Marine One blueprints on a peer-to-peer network. Not to mention how extra airline fees may have gone too far...

...Read more

February 27, 2009 - 5:16 A.M.

Windows 7 RC on its way

In Friday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches Microsoft announce tweaks to Windows 7 in time for the upcoming Release Candidate build. Not to mention Darth Walkies...

...Read more

February 26, 2009 - 5:28 A.M.

Microsoft "recalculating route" of Linux patents

In Thursday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches Microsoft sue TomTom over its Linux patent "infringement" -- is this the beginning of the end? Not to mention a Mac Mini inside a Disk ][ Drive...

...Read more

February 25, 2009 - 5:32 A.M.

Apple Safari 4: better, stronger, faster?

In Wednesday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches Apple launch the Safari 4 beta, claiming improved speed and standards-compliance. Not to mention paper computers...

...Read more

February 24, 2009 - 5:26 A.M.

Microsoft: "Just kidding; keep the money"

In Tuesday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches Microsoft overpay redundant employees, ask for the money back, then change its mind. Not to mention Error'd...

...Read more

February 23, 2009 - 5:40 A.M.

Steve Jobs is "offline"

In Monday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches the curious case of Steve Jobs' instant messaging presence (or recent lack of it). Not to mention exploding, flying, and crashing servers...

...Read more

IT Blogwatch roundup for w/b Feb 16th

Here's what I've been up to for those fine folks at Computerworld this week. Yes, amazingly, I've not been fired yet...

February 20, 2009

HP has "hurd" about a recession

In Friday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches HP CEO Mark Hurd impose pay cuts across the board. Not to mention misheard lyrics...

...Read more

February 19, 2009

Terry Childs speaks from SF jail cell

In Thursday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches former San Francisco network administrator Terry Childs speak out from his jail cell. Not to mention the end of U.S. analog TV...

...Read more

February 18, 2009

Cisco gets cozy with Trend Micro

In Wednesday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches Trend Micro slide its security software into routers from Cisco/Linksys. Not to mention how not to cross at a railroad crossing...

...Read more

February 17, 2009

Facebook TOSses out your privacy?

In Tuesday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches a row erupt over Facebook's new Terms of Service. Not to mention gaming in a world without bad guys...

...Read more

February 16, 2009

Downgrade to XP is $60: Microsoft sued

In Monday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches Microsoft get sued over a fee to downgrade from Vista to XP. Not to mention a special Valentine's Day gift...

...Read more

This Week's IT Blogwatch Roundup

Instead of posting links to these things each day, I'll do a Friday roundup of the week...

February 13, 2009 - 9:59 A.M.

1234567890 seconds since 1/1/1970: tonight!

In a special IT Blogwatch Extra, Richi Jennings watches geeks celebrate 1234567890 night. Not to mention more mayhem from the Improv Everywhere crew...

...Read more

February 13, 2009 - 5:30 A.M.

Industry gets serious about Downadup, aka Conficker

In Friday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches an industry cabal get off their collective backsides to do something about the latest 10-million-strong botnet. Not to mention conclusive proof that Google does have a sense of humor...

...Read more

February 12, 2009 - 5:49 A.M.

"Ditch XP for Vista," begs Microsoft

In Thursday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches Microsoft cajole and plead with IT customers to stop using Windows XP. Not to mention the oh-so-hysterical Cake Wrecks...

...Read more

February 11, 2009 - 4:48 A.M.

IBM floats big blue clouds

In Wednesday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches IBM get serious about cloud computing. Not to mention if Apple made batteries...

...Read more

February 10, 2009 - 9:50 A.M.

Google PowerMeter... err, powers your power meter

In a special IT Blogwatch Extra, Richi Jennings watches bloggers watch Google.org watch your power meter (phew). Not to mention Queen vs. Songsmith...

...Read more

February 10, 2009 - 5:40 A.M.

Kindle 2 to fan flames for e-books?

In Tuesday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches Amazon launch its "new, improved" e-book reader. Not to mention corpulence pedagogy...

...Read more

February 9, 2009 - 5:39 A.M.

OLPC throws in the towel

In Monday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches the One Laptop Per Child project give up on making laptops. Not to mention Ice Invaders...

...Read more

OLPC throws in the towel

In Monday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches the One Laptop Per Child project give up on making laptops. Not to mention Ice Invaders...

Update: OLPC PR seems to be claiming that Negroponte was misunderstood. Sounds like his talk was a little too "nuanced"...

Snow Leopard leaks: multi-touch; geo-location

In Friday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches Mac OS X 10.6 info. emerge. Not to mention Darth, as you've never before seen him...

Windows 7 vuln. in weakened UAC

In Thursday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches the egg on Microsoft's face, over Windows 7's tweaked User Access Control. Not to mention the man cold...

Jeremy Jaynes gets a free pass?

It's déjà vu all over again. I see that Jeremy Jaynes has won his most recent argument in Virginia that the state's anti-spam law is unconstitutional. (Once again, thanks to Slashdot for the heads-up.)

Jaynes would have us believe that spamming is protected speech under the U.S. First Amendment. The court didn't exactly say that, but concluded that the law as written was overly-broad, because it didn't explicitly differentiate between commercial speech and any other kind of speech (e.g., political expression).

While I agree that anti-spam laws shouldn't restrict political speech, I have a couple of issues with this decision:

1. Spam is spam, whatever the content; I'd hate this to be seen as a license for nut-jobs to fill my inbox with political rants.
2. Doesn't the U.S. constitution already make it clear that commercial speech isn't unprotected?

As I noted back in March, it was worrying that the previous decision was split 4-to-3.

Again, I say I find it really hard to believe that the American founding fathers intended my inbox be full of spam.

More at today's IT Blogwatch EXTRA...

Stephen Fry: Must Try Harder

Stephen Fry, we love you very much. You are a National Treasure.

But...

If you're going to expound the delights of free software, you could at least make an effort to pronounce Linus's name correctly.

Anyway, if you can't be bothered to muck about with Ogg Vorbis and such, I found this version of the video on the evil, unfree YouTube.



There's more at IT Blogwatch.

Video not displaying? Try this link.

Scott Richter Settles Another Spam Suit

Oh looky, it's our "friends" Steve and Scott Richter in the news again. This time, they've settled with MySpace for $6 million after being accused of spamming thousands of MySpace.com users -- and using phished accounts to do it (see today's IT Blogwatch for more).

Of course, Scott gave up spamming some time ago. Or did he? Brian Krebs today offers an interesting investigation into domain registrations of spamvertised Web sites:

More than three quarters of all Web sites advertised through spam are clustered at just 10 domain name registrars ... Out of the 15,000 spam-advertised domains we examined, nearly half -- 7,142 names -- were registered through a Broomfield, Colo. company called Dynamic Dolphin ... the seventh most-popular registrar among spammers ... [and] owned by a company called CPA Empire, which in turn is owned by Media Breakaway LLC. The CEO of Media Breakaway is none other than Scott Richter, the once self-avowed "Spam King" who claims to have quit the business. Anti-spam groups also have recently implicated Media Breakaway in the alleged hijacking of more than 65,000 Internet addresses for use in sending e-mail and hosting commercial Web sites.

Remember kids, Rule #1: Spammers lie.

Your humble, award-winning blogwatcher

Update: for those of you clicking through from Yahoo Finance's Apple page, no I don't know why, either. But welcome, anyway! Feel free to read some more of my stuff.

Golly. My IT Blogwatch thingy over at Computerworld was just recognized as one of three Computerworld blogs to swing a Jesse H. Neal Award.

If you peer really carefully at this pic, you'll see my idiot-grin in the screen shot...



The very not-dead Linda Rosencrance says:

Computerworld today won Jesse H. Neal Awards for best Web site, best online series for its coverage of Apple Inc.'s Leopard operating system, and best blog ... "I don't think it's a stretch to say this may well be the single most outstanding accomplishment in the history of Computerworld," said Don Tennant, vice president and editorial director of Computerworld. ... The blog award recognized three blog posts in particular, one from the Web site's daily IT Blogwatch written by Richi Jennings, and others written by Ian Lamont and David Ramel. more

Blush.

Email Address Typos can Spell Trouble

A quick extract from yesterday's IT Blogwatch, in which The U.S. Air Force gets caught sending classified data in unencrypted email:

Sensitive information ... swamped Gary Sinnott's email inbox after he established www.mildenhall.com ... Emails intended for Air Force personnel at the Mildenhall Air Force base (who uses the domain mildenhall.af.mil) were being misdirected to the owner of the .com site ... hundreds of classified emails were sent from around the world ... detailing all kinds of secret military information ... I ask you, what sort of drooling idiots do the US Military employ? Do they breed them in special farms?

And so on, and so on...

Reminds me very much of when I helped migrate Ferris Research's email accounts from The Electric Mail Company to Google Apps. -- I set up a catch-all account to make sure we hadn't missed any weird aliases or mailing lists. You've almost always got to do this when migrating an email setup, because it's so easy to miss a useful address. You'd be surprised how many times you can ask the question "Is this alias still needed?", getting the answer "no", and find that in fact it is.

Anyway, I was amazed how much misdirected email we received -- much of it meant for ferris.edu (Ferris State University, Michigan), as well as obviously confidential attorney-client communication, love notes, and more. All of human life was here for a while.

I guess it only goes to prove -- if proof were needed -- that .com is the only game in town, when it comes to domain choice.

Jeremy Jaynes Lost Appeal, but...

Hmmm, so I see that Jeremy Jaynes has lost his appeal in Virginia that spamming is protected speech under the U.S. First Amendment. (Thanks to Slashdot for the heads-up.)

Jolly good, and no surprise there, I think. However, why on Earth was it a 4-to-3 split decision? What were those three state supreme court judges thinking?

Well, according to the AP:

Justice Elizabeth Lacy wrote in a dissent that the law is "unconstitutionally overbroad on its face because it prohibits the anonymous transmission of all unsolicited bulk e-mail including those containing political, religious or other speech protected by the First Amendment."

Oh, balderdash. I find it really hard to believe that the American founding fathers intended my email to be full of spam.

Alan Ralsky Indicted

Well well. It seems the Feds have decided that Ralsky has been helping the Russian stock kiters...

A federal grand jury indictment was unsealed today in Detroit charging 11 persons, including Alan M. Ralsky ... in a wide-ranging international fraud scheme involving the illegal use of bulk commercial e-mailing, or "spamming" ... The charges arose after a three-year investigation ... revealed a sophisticated and extensive spamming operation that, as alleged in the indictment, largely focused on running a stock “pump and dump” scheme.

Much, much more at today's IT Blogwatch.

(Happy new year, by the way.)

IT Blogwatch roundup

As you may know, every day I write the IT Blogwatch column for Computerworld. The idea is to take an IT/tech news story from the past couple of days, and tell the world what bloggers are saying about it.

The column recently won an American Society of Business Press Editors award. Hurrah.

For your delectation, here's a quick roundup of last week's efforts...

Fri 10th: Untangle untangles AV testing mysteries (and ant joke)

Fancy seeing you here. It's Friday's IT Blogwatch: in which we find an interesting test of anti-virus engines at LinuxWorld. And did you hear the one about the ladybug and the ant?..

Thu 9th: Go green: climate change changing data centers (and !bug)

It's an inconvenient Thursday's IT Blogwatch: in which we examine power-saving data centers. Not to mention the classic QA joke, reinterpreted as visual pun...

Wed 8th: New iMacs, iWork, iLife, iEtc. (and pukelight)

Boom! It's Wednesday's IT Blogwatch: in which Steve Jobs unveils a load of new Mac stuff. Not to mention the LED flashlight that makes its victims vomit...

Tues 7th: Linux StinkPads ahoy! (and compendium vol 10)

Strike a light, Mary Poppins, it's only Tuesday's IT Blogwatch: in which ThinkPads are to officially run Linux. Not to mention something for everyone in today's "And Finally"...

Mon 6th: Dateline Las Vegas: hackers whack a mole hack (and outed-FSJ)
Monday's IT Blogwatch: in which an undercover NBC reporter gets busted at DEFCON 15. Not to mention Fake Steve Jobs revealed...

Last week's IT Blogwatch roundup

As you may know, every day I write the IT Blogwatch column for Computerworld. The idea is to take an IT/tech news story from the past couple of days, and tell the world what bloggers are saying about it.

The column has just won an American Society of Business Press Editors award. Hurrah.

For your delectation, here's a quick roundup of last week's efforts...

Who wants a free Google phone? (and comic() {comic();})

Can you hear me now? It's Friday's IT Blogwatch: in which the oft-rumored Google phone gets closer, perhaps. Not to mention a recursive comic-strip...

Something wireless in the AAir (and LOLpresidents)

I'm your humble blogwatcher, fly me. It's Thursday's IT Blogwatch: in which American Airlines and others test in-flight Wi-Fi. Not to mention some hilarious politician macros...

Microsoft's OSI open-source offer (and Nasha... hic!)

Rabbits, white rabbits on Wednesday's IT Blogwatch: in which Microsoft "embraces" open source licensing. Not to mention how NASA discovered those naughty drunken astronauts...

Grub-by open source searching (and weirdest mating ritual)

It's Ruby Tuesday's IT Blogwatch: in which Wikia buys Grub, in Jimmy Wales' bid to take over the world's knowledge. Not to mention the courtship dance of the waved albatross...

And so the iPhone class-action action begins (and recut trailers)

Yes, iT's Monday's iT Blogwatch: iN which we learn of an iPhone class-action lawsuit. Not to mention some more recut classic movie trailers...