• JDK and JRE 6 Update 11
• JDK and JRE 5.0 Update 17
• SDK and JRE 1.4.2_19
• SDK and JRE 1.3.1_24

PaperBack is a free application that allows you to back up your precious files on the ordinary paper in the form of the oversized bitmaps. If you have a good laser printer with the 600 dpi resolution, you can save up to 500,000 bytes of uncompressed data on the single A4/Letter sheet. Integrated packer allows for much better data density - up to 3,000,000+ (three megabytes) of C code per page.

You may ask - why? Why, for heaven’s sake, do I need to make paper backups, if there are so many alternative possibilities like CD-R’s, DVD±R’s, memory sticks, flash cards, hard disks, streamer tapes, ZIP drives, network storages, magnetooptical cartridges, and even 8-inch double-sided floppy disks formatted for DEC PDP-11? (I still have some). The answer is simple: you don’t. However, by looking on CD or magnetic tape, you are not able to tell whether your data is readable or not. You must insert your medium into the drive (if you have one!) and try to read it.

Paper is different. Do you remember the punched cards? EBCDIC and all this stuff. For years, cards were the main storage medium for the source code. I agree that 100K+ programs were… unhandly, but hey, only real programmers dared to write applications of this size. And used cards were good as notepads, too. Punched tapes were also common. And even the most weird codings, like CDC or EBCDIC, were readable by humans (I mean, by real programmers).

Read the whole thing here.

I am not sure what it is with Richard Stiennon.  Maybe his mom beat him with a NAC stick when he was young.  Hence his Jack Nicholson looks (more like the Joker in Batman, than Col Jessep in A Few Good Men) and his total disdain for NAC.  In any event Richard never seems to miss a chance to take a pot shot at NAC.  I have fired back and debated him many times on this.  In fact I am convinced that Richard's problem with NAC is that like Uncle Joe, he is just moving a little slow.  Richard still thinks of NAC as Cisco???s network admission control, circa Dec ???03.  He has not gotten up to speed on anything happening with NAC since.  Richard is going to debate NAC with Joel Snyder according to this article by Tim Greene today. My prediction is Snyder by a knockout in 3 rounds or less.

Richard???s latest NAC knock comes on a comment to an excellent article by the Hoff.  Chris takes a bold stand for someone working for a vendor and calls BS on the whole analyst thing (I will write more about that later in this article). Richard being an ex-analyst himself (lets face it, with Richard you can take the man out of the analyst job, but you can???t take the analyst out of the man), takes exception to Hoff???s ???whining??? (Richards words, not mine) and tries to tell Hoff that giving up is not the answer and the way to show up analysts, is to prove them wrong.  Great Richard you try to prove them wrong, when because of what they report you don???t have a market, can???t get any capital and have no visibility.  I guess that is when it is time to move on to the next gig, right? Then Richard has a bad NAC deja vu and feels it necessary to write this:

???Look how easy it is to one up the analyst firms, who as near as I can tell support Network Admission Control universally. Everyone except the folks at Updata Ventures know how seriously flawed NAC is with only one viable market, edu.???

I assume Richard is referring to Updata recently leading the Bradford Networks VC round. But more importantly Richard it is time to call a code red on you and give you the cold hard truth.  Richard the fact is that the edu market is not the only viable market for NAC.  In fact, one of the biggest customers of NAC is the DoD.  That is right Richard at least 3 of the 4 armed forces use NAC in helping to secure their networks. To paraphrase my friend Col Jessep - Richard, you want the truth, you can???t handle the truth!  You sleep securely under the blanket of protection that NAC provides.  If it is good enough to help ???clean the sand??? out of laptops coming home from SWA (that is SouthWest Asia, like in Iraq and Afghanistan, in case you don???t know Richard), it should be good enough for you. Think about that next time you are about to bad mouth NAC.

Let me give you some other truths you may not like Richard.  Why do you think every switch vendor (of which we partner with many of them) is lining up and bringing out NAC solutions?  Why has Microsoft put such a big push on NAP?  Why despite the Luddites like you does NAC still draw crowds at conferences like Interop (ask Joel about that).  Richard we are still signing new major OEM partners.  I am afraid you are the one sadly out of touch on this one Richard.  Just as you are out of touch in missing Hoff???s point in his article.

As to Hoff???s article, as I said I give Chris credit for speaking his mind. I spend an ungodly amount of my time speaking with analysts and trying to ???learn??? from them while at the same time trying to educate them.  I am constantly amazed that so many analysts (and press for that matter) just take a vendors word as gospel. I have seen research reports from analysts big and small, that I am sure did not have any more research done than calling a handful of vendors and listening to their spiel. Too many of these vendors if they do speak to customers, base their findings on such a small sample that it is impossible to have an accurate picture.

Personally, like Hoff says, who watches the watchers is the truth. I would like to see a code of conduct among analysts. I would start by dictating that vendors cannot pay analysts.  Take the payola out of the equation the way they did to the DJ/Radio business in the late 50s. Next analyst reports have to come with metrics to back up the findings. I want to know how many customers they spoke to, how big they were, how they were found, etc.  A vendor giving an analyst a real live???pet??? customer is not real research. I want to know if the customer pays the analyst. It is a dirty business.

Hey let me be clear, I play the game as well as the next guy.  But I agree with Hoff we need to clean up the rules to make the whole analyst thing more fair, viable and valuable.

I am not sure what it is with Richard Stiennon.  Maybe his mom beat him with a NAC stick when he was young.  Hence his Jack Nicholson looks (more like the Joker in Batman, than Col Jessep in A Few Good Men) and his total disdain for NAC.  In any event Richard never seems to miss a chance to take a pot shot at NAC.  I have fired back and debated him many times on this.  In fact I am convinced that Richard's problem with NAC is that like Uncle Joe, he is just moving a little slow.  Richard still thinks of NAC as Cisco’s network admission control, circa Dec ‘03.  He has not gotten up to speed on anything happening with NAC since.  Richard is going to debate NAC with Joel Snyder according to this article by Tim Greene today. My prediction is Snyder by a knockout in 3 rounds or less.

Richard’s latest NAC knock comes on a comment to an excellent article by the Hoff.  Chris takes a bold stand for someone working for a vendor and calls BS on the whole analyst thing (I will write more about that later in this article). Richard being an ex-analyst himself (lets face it, with Richard you can take the man out of the analyst job, but you can’t take the analyst out of the man), takes exception to Hoff’s “whining” (Richards words, not mine) and tries to tell Hoff that giving up is not the answer and the way to show up analysts, is to prove them wrong.  Great Richard you try to prove them wrong, when because of what they report you don’t have a market, can’t get any capital and have no visibility.  I guess that is when it is time to move on to the next gig, right? Then Richard has a bad NAC deja vu and feels it necessary to write this:

“Look how easy it is to one up the analyst firms, who as near as I can tell support Network Admission Control universally. Everyone except the folks at Updata Ventures know how seriously flawed NAC is with only one viable market, edu.”

I assume Richard is referring to Updata recently leading the Bradford Networks VC round. But more importantly Richard it is time to call a code red on you and give you the cold hard truth.  Richard the fact is that the edu market is not the only viable market for NAC.  In fact, one of the biggest customers of NAC is the DoD.  That is right Richard at least 3 of the 4 armed forces use NAC in helping to secure their networks. To paraphrase my friend Col Jessep - Richard, you want the truth, you can’t handle the truth!  You sleep securely under the blanket of protection that NAC provides.  If it is good enough to help “clean the sand” out of laptops coming home from SWA (that is SouthWest Asia, like in Iraq and Afghanistan, in case you don’t know Richard), it should be good enough for you. Think about that next time you are about to bad mouth NAC.

Let me give you some other truths you may not like Richard.  Why do you think every switch vendor (of which we partner with many of them) is lining up and bringing out NAC solutions?  Why has Microsoft put such a big push on NAP?  Why despite the Luddites like you does NAC still draw crowds at conferences like Interop (ask Joel about that).  Richard we are still signing new major OEM partners.  I am afraid you are the one sadly out of touch on this one Richard.  Just as you are out of touch in missing Hoff’s point in his article.

As to Hoff’s article, as I said I give Chris credit for speaking his mind. I spend an ungodly amount of my time speaking with analysts and trying to “learn” from them while at the same time trying to educate them.  I am constantly amazed that so many analysts (and press for that matter) just take a vendors word as gospel. I have seen research reports from analysts big and small, that I am sure did not have any more research done than calling a handful of vendors and listening to their spiel. Too many of these vendors if they do speak to customers, base their findings on such a small sample that it is impossible to have an accurate picture.

Personally, like Hoff says, who watches the watchers is the truth. I would like to see a code of conduct among analysts. I would start by dictating that vendors cannot pay analysts.  Take the payola out of the equation the way they did to the DJ/Radio business in the late 50s. Next analyst reports have to come with metrics to back up the findings. I want to know how many customers they spoke to, how big they were, how they were found, etc.  A vendor giving an analyst a real live“pet” customer is not real research. I want to know if the customer pays the analyst. It is a dirty business.

Hey let me be clear, I play the game as well as the next guy.  But I agree with Hoff we need to clean up the rules to make the whole analyst thing more fair, viable and valuable.

1. To permanently remove the ability to engage in unfair play;
2. To complete its investigation and come to a full understanding of what occurred;
3. To refund the affected customers; and
4. To implement measures that prevents future incidents.
   

• January 2008: UltimateBet is alerted to suspicions of unfair play on the part of the account "NioNio". Within 24 hours, UltimateBet contacts the KGC to provide formal notice that UltimateBet has initiated an investigation of the incident. UltimateBet subsequently forwarded a copy of all related data to the KGC.
• January 2008: The "NioNio" account and related accounts are suspended pending further investigation.
• February 2008: Preliminary findings indicate abnormally high winning statistics for the suspect accounts. After discussions with the KGC, UltimateBet engages third-party gaming experts to assist with the analysis.
• February 2008: Investigators confirm that the suspect accounts are associated with individuals who had worked for UltimateBet under the previous ownership.
• February 2008: UltimateBet discovers the unauthorized code that allowed the perpetrators to obtain hole card information during live play. The code was part of a legacy auditing system that was manipulated by the perpetrators of the fraud.
• February 2008: UltimateBet immediately removes the unauthorized code and works with the KGC and with third-party auditors to verify that the security hole has been eliminated.
• March 2008: Six player accounts are confirmed to have participated in this scheme. No accounts were deleted at any point, although some account names were changed multiple times. The following account names are known to have been used in the fraudulent activity: NioNio, Sleepless, NoPaddles, nvtease, flatbroke33, ilike2win, UtakeIt2, FlipFlop2, erick456, WhackMe44, RockStarLA, stoned2nite, monizzle, FireNTexas, HeadKase01, LetsPatttty, NYMobser, and WhoWhereWhen.
• May 2008: The investigation confirms that the fraudulent activity took place from March 7, 2006 to December 3, 2007.
• May 2008: Gaming Associates certifies that the software code that enabled unfair play was removed from UltimateBet servers in February of 2008.
• May 2008: Customers affected by this incident are identified, and plans for corrective action are reviewed with the KGC.
  

• The security hole identified in UltimateBet's investigation has been permanently eliminated.
• UltimateBet is establishing a state-of-the-art software Security Center that consolidates and greatly enhances existing security capabilities. The first release of the new Security Center focuses solely on the immediate detection of abnormal winnings. Gaming mathematicians, poker professionals, and security software developers have all contributed to the specifications for the new Security Center.
• UltimateBet customers are no longer permitted to change account names unless they have suffered abuse in chat rooms. Requests for changes must be supported by proof of abuse and must be approved by the Chief Compliance Officer.
• In addition to its existing security department, UltimateBet has established a new specialized Poker Security team of professionals dedicated to fraud prevention.
• The refund process will begin immediately. The accounts associated with fraudulent activity did not use an unfair advantage in all play sessions. Regardless, UltimateBet is refunding all losses to these accounts.
• Accounts related to the fraudulent activity have been disabled, and the individuals associated with those accounts permanently banned from the site.
• UltimateBet has worked closely and transparently with its governing body, the KGC and its designated expert auditors, to determine exactly what happened, how it happened, and who was involved, and has taken action to prevent any possibility of this situation recurring.
• Tokwiro is pursuing its legal options in regard to this incident.
  

Zipit gives away text messaging for a year, changes prices, options: The Zipit Wireless Messenger 2 (Z2) was introduced in Dec. 2007 with a number of interesting features for a messaging appliance targeted at teens--and their fretting parents. With no Web portal, the $150 device included unlimited Wi-Fi on Wayport's McDonald's network (now nearly 10,000 locations), and support for popular IM clients. It also included SMS with major cell carries, charging $5 per month for 1,500 incoming and 1,500 outgoing messages. Uptake must have been poor, as the manufacturer announced today that purchases until 31-July-2008 would include a year of free text messages. The company also modified its plan without noting that fact, increasing messages to a "reasonable personal usage" of 5,000 incoming and 5,000 outgoing messages per month. There are no overage charges. The service will now cost $30 per year instead of $5 per month for new purchasers starting 1-August-2008. That's a 50-percent price reduction (over $5 times 12), but it's often much cheaper to bill annually in advance.

Wi-Fi Alliance cited in WSJ as model for multipartner alliance: An interesting analysis in the Wall Street Journal's Business Insight section points to the Wi-Fi Alliance standards based, no-company-on-top approach as one that led it to win out through both technology and organization over other standards that might have taken precedence. I've been stunned over the years how a group that has a board comprised of the most powerful and competitive interests in this market segment, and which has hundreds of much smaller members, has managed to keep alive the notion of interoperability for the greater good of the industry and customers. 802.11n's long delay certainly threatened harmony--especially with some ugly proprietary slap-ons to 802.11g--but the alliance continues to keep the technology in equilibrium, while still allowing individual companies to differentiate their products with little difficulty.