France is no longer considered an ally, according to the Pentagon.

Rep. Howard Coble (R, NC) stated on Tuesday that he supported the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, suggesting that he might support similar actions toward Arab-Americans today.

They’ve configured their MSN site to render poorly in Opera, a competing and excellent browser. They’re doing this by checking the user agent and deliberately giving Opera a broken stylesheet. If you change the user-agent string to something else — that is, if you tell Opera to lie and say it’s not Opera — the MSN page magically works just fine. Opera software did a little investigation, which has a bit more technical detail.

If you’re annoyed by creepy big-brother-ism at airports, you’ll love this.

Lexmark has filed suit against a small company who had the temerity to reverse-engineer its printer refills and offer them at a lower price. Before the DMCA, this was known as “business competition.”

New York Times coverage of the case. I’m stunned this thing isn’t getting more coverage.

Many years ago, when God was a freshman, printers were big noisy things, not sleek desktop devices. They were also pretty fast, since they had to service lots of people. By combining noise and speed and the distinctive sound certain patterns made, certain hardcore geeks were able to make the IBM 1403 play music. ||||

You see, it’s very easy to win elections if you own the voting machines.

It appears North Dakota may be harboring nuclear weapons.

Extremely low-res renderings of “adult” images. They look like they might inappropriate as thumbnails, but you can scarcely tell they’re anything at all once you see the larger image.

The Iron Maidens are the world’s only all-female Iron Maiden tribute band.

We hope.

How about Flash-based Atari Adventure?|*|

William Gibson has a blog.

This Page Intentionally Left Blank.

Legendary producer Phil Spector has been charged with murder. [ MTV] [ CNN] (The MTV coverage is a bit more interesting, as it notes that Spector had a habit of rather odd behavior, including waving guns about.)

Here’s a list of a whole bunch of good ones.

Salon is running an interview with Hunter S. Thompson that’s well worth a read.

Transmetropolitan author Warren Ellis has a weblog.

I’m all for subtitles — they’re certainly better than overdubbing — but only if they’re actually accurate. In cases such as this one, it’s important to remember the lessons of Engrish.com.

Two teenagers stole a skeleton in order to dress it as Darth Vader and take it to a party.

In the conclusion of the Kafkaesque trial I noted earlier, Ed Rosenthal has been found guilty under Federal law of cultivating marijuana despite the fact that he had permits and permission from his city and state under local statues for medical use. He was not allowed to mention the purpose of the pot in question, nor could his attorneys mention the fact that what he was doing was legal under state law. So much for state’s rights. Rosenthal faces he possibility of life in prison for growing medical pot, something his state deems acceptable. On the other hand, Ken Lay walks free.

This week, another Internet worm did its best to crash countless Microsoft servers on the Internet. Microsoft, whose usual position is “just keep up with the patches and you’ll be fine,” was among those hit, as they can’t seem to follow their own advice.

Why do people keep using Microsoft server software? I understand having trouble abandoning Office, but if you skip the servers, omit Outlook, and ditch IE for Mozilla, your safety level rises dramatically even if you stick with Windows. Moving to a Mac or Linux makes you even safer. Food for thought.