IBM kills off BlackICE firewall: IBM is pulling the plug on BlackICE PC Protection/Server Protection, the highly-rated firewall product that came with last year’s acquisition of ISS (Internet Security Systems). BlackICE PC Protection, formerly known as BlackICE Defender, has reached “end of life” and will be discontinued. Existing customers will get support through next September. [...]

IBM kills off BlackICE firewall:

IBM is pulling the plug on BlackICE PC Protection/Server Protection, the highly-rated firewall product that came with last year’s acquisition of ISS (Internet Security Systems).

BlackICE PC Protection, formerly known as BlackICE Defender, has reached “end of life” and will be discontinued. Existing customers will get support through next September.

I’m not sure why BlackICE still ranks as “highly-rated” though; Windows XP SP2 rendered it pretty much obsolete in its current state, and after ISS acquired Network ICE they de-emphasized the consumer-level firewall to a point where there was no chance it would be updated and enhanced to be relevant in a post XP-SP2 / Vista world.

Still, it was a good run, and I’m proud to have been part of something so well known and mostly well received–Steve Gibson’s rants to the contrary.

Part of losing my job means I have to give back my lovely new Dell Latitude D600. I’m copying all my personal stuff off right now and will be wiping it and returning it later this afternoon. :sniff: As a consolation, and because my new persona as a semi-independent contractor really requires it, I’ve just [...]

Part of losing my job means I have to give back my lovely new Dell Latitude D600. I’m copying all my personal stuff off right now and will be wiping it and returning it later this afternoon. :sniff: As a consolation, and because my new persona as a semi-independent contractor really requires it, I’ve just ordered a Dell Inspiron 600m notebook. This is the consumer equivalent to the Latitude D600, identical in nearly every way. It should be here in a week or so and then I’ll be mobile again. Until then I’ll be tied to the Frankenbox at home.

For all that Dell refuses to upgrade their in-house BlackICE installation (oops, was that proprietary information? So what are you gonna do, fire me?), making extra work for the Desktop team any time there’s a security emergency, they do make very nice machines. Jennifer loves her desktop and I couldn’t be happier with the Latitude–hopefully the Inspiron will continue that tradition.


Edit: Just discovered this useful page which describes, in exhaustive detail, the steps and gotchas to installing various flavors of Linux on the 600m/D600.