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From: spencer_katt@ziffdavis.com
Sent: Monday, May 2, 2005 12:39 AM
To: eWEEK readers
Subject: Muerte de Digital Lifestyles; Blowfish cracked? Viva Ututo-e
“Fiesta!” Lime juice intended for his Corona squirted El Gato in the eye, but no matter, he would be celebrating Cinco de Mayo all week long. As fellow reporteros tried to navigate around his suddenly festive cubicle, Spencerito cranked up his old Herb Alpert CDs and lazily swung an umbrella at a donkey-shaped piñata he had fashioned from rival trade rags.
The Puss observance of “Batalla de Puebla” was interrupted when a pal called to say financial woes had forced Digital Lifestyles to shut down. The company, which promoted its teen-friendly Hip-e computer at WinHEC, had been trying recapitalization to reduce millions in unsecured debt, according to its SEC filings. As it scrambled to handle creditors, demands for licensing fees from Microsoft for use of Windows caused the vendor to halt product shipments. Spence decided to enhance his own lifestyle by spreading fajitas on a George Foreman grill at his desk, but, his culinary reputation preceding him, his co-workers fled like there was no tamale. Alone, the Katt fired up a missed episode of Foxs “24” via BitTorrent. The Furball was enthralled as he watched an alleged computer expert from the fictional anti-terrorism agency CTU try to retrieve files from a terrorists laptop protected by Blowfish, a real-world block cipher designed by Bruce Schneier. The terrorists would-be girlfriend asked the agent if they could decrypt the files. The agent replied, “Its encrypted with Blowfish. But CTU has a proprietary algorithm, so we should be able to get through it.” Thought Spence, “Schneier must be paying for product placements, but maybe his check bounced.”
As the Mouser was shaking his maracas to “Tijuana Taxi,” un mensaje del e-mail from an amigo popped up on his screen. The note claimed that despite the excitement in the application front-end and WAN optimization space last week thanks to Junipers acquisitions of Peribit Networks and Redline Networks, all is not well for some of the small players in the market. The amigo said Expand Networks seems to be on day-to-day life support financially, and Allot Communications seems to be shrinking its enterprise business in favor of focusing on selling its wares to ISPs. And even though Wall Street reacted positively to Junipers acquisitions, the crony said the company hasnt presented a definitive road map to explain how itll integrate at least four software platforms it has bought in recent years (Redline, Peribit, Kagoor and NetScreen) with its JunOS. Soon, Spences celebration was broken up when a pingüinista dropped by the office to say that Ututo-e, a free GNU/Linux distribution developed in Argentina, may spark mucho entusiasmo. The Gentoo-based distribution may not fill every Linux lovers needs, said the pal, but the Free Software Foundations endorsement of it will make a lot of folks give it a look. “Hey, sounds like a good way for penguins tequila little time while waiting in line for the new Star Wars movie,” cackled the Kitty.