Oh, those pesky weasels at Microsoft are at it again.

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.

Dept. of Geek Resourcefulness

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. ||||

Ed Rosenthal Found Guilty

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.

And people keep using this crap for what reason?

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.