If you’re wondering what prompted the mini-jeremiad about UCITA, I read a story in the Washington Post about efforts to pass the law in Maryland and Virginia. If you live in one of those states please, please write your state congressman or governor and let them know that passing garbage legislation like this is unacceptable.

Many people don’t know that lots of big software companies are big proponents of an extremely evil law called UCITA. The law is a classic Catch-22. It assigns liability for problems with software to the software developers. At the same time, it allows the company to eliminate their liability with a “shrink wrap license.” So even though it sounds like it’s tougher on software developers, it’s actually completely toothless when it comes to any companies that offer shrink wrapped software — in other words, every big software company. There are lots of other really nasty provisions in the law, too, like prohibitions on reverse engineering. You can also read about just how evil this law is at www.badsoftware.com. It’s dirty poker, and anyone who doesn’t like to get their teeth kicked in by big business should oppose it. This has been an rc3.org public service announcement.

I haven’t posted anything about the Cross Site Scripting security hole that’s been widely covered everywhere else, but I just noticed that the Apache Group has issued a statement about it on the Apache site. The synopsis for non-Apache administrators: the Apache Group is taking the problem very seriously, so you should too, despite the paranoid ramblings of John Dvorak (which I won’t link to because I think John Dvorak is an ignorant jerk).

Here at rc3.org, I try to avoid shooting fish in a barrel, but this time I can’t resist. ZDNet is reporting that Windows 2000 has 63,000 defects. Here’s the scary part: those are just the bugs they know about.

You know how AOL said that despite the fact that Time Warner owns a huge chunk of the cable market, they were still going to fight for open access? They lied. I wouldn’t have expected anything else.

Speaking of the 2600 site, the story of Walter chokes me up every time. It’s sort of an Old Yeller for computer geeks (except that it’s true).

tigris.org is a site that provides hosting for open source development projects (like SourceForge, I guess) and seeks to support and disseminate “open source best practices.” They’re also working on building and enhancing tools that support development, like CVS and Bugzilla.

2600 has issued a statement chastising the media for blaming the recent spate of DOS attacks on hackers.

Last night, SourceXchange sent out an announcement on their progress so far. (They’re the guys who are linking up companies that want to pay people to write open source code and people who want to get paid to write open source code.) They’ve got 11 open RFPs, and they’ve completed a successful project. Seems like things are going pretty well over there.

Anyone up for an illustrative example of how the Internet isn’t changing the record industry? The Web site/TV show combination Farmclub asks musicians who agree to be on the show to sign a contract that basically allows the show to own them (sorry about the ugly layout, but the site uses stupid frameset tricks). And you thought dirty record companies and manipulative managers were just on Behind the Music …