‘The fall of France was astonishingly swift. After regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, it was only a matter of time before Tony Blair and George W. Bush said that they had “no plans” to attack France. The detested Jacques Chirac had long been a thorn in their sides. He was a past friend of Saddam Hussein, welcomed Arab exiles and had a suspiciously large Muslim population. Above all, he refused point-blank to disband his force de frappe weapons of mass destruction. As Donald Rumsfeld had said back in 2003: “Things mean consequences.” France posed a clear and immediate threat. The coalition acted in pre-emptive self-defence. It was a pity about the Louvre.’ Times of London

“While all news organizations prepare obituaries in advance of the deaths of famous individuals, the folks at CNN inadvertently gave the Internet-surfing public a chance to preview how the network’s web site would note the demise of Vice President Dick Cheney, Ronald Reagan, and a few other prominent figures. Until earlier this afternoon, a CNN server housed mock-ups of web pages announcing the yet-to-happen deaths. The CNN pages, which were discovered by the intrepid folks at fark.com, were yanked about 20 minutes after being exposed (though TSG was able to grab a few of the pages for posterity’s sake). The premature obituaries, housed in a publicly accessible area of the CNN server and searchable via Google, were apparently the work of Peter Rentz, a senior multimedia designer at CNN. The mock-ups are virtually identical to the obituary design currently used by CNN when a notable person dies (click here to see how CNN covered the Queen Mother’s March 2002 death). In fact, elements of the Queen Mum’s obit template can be seen in the below Cheney design. In addition to Cheney and Reagan, CNN also prepped online farewells to Fidel Castro, Bob Hope, Pope John Paul II, Nelson Mandela, and Gerald Ford.” The Smoking Gun

Sci-Fi Shrine for Seattle, Complete With Aliens: “In the nearly two centuries between Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and The Matrix, science fiction has captivated countless millions of readers, listeners and viewers. Now one of them is taking his obsession to a higher level, investing $10 million to $20 million to build a temple to the genre.

Paul G. Allen, a billionaire businessman and co-founder of Microsoft, is planning to build a “cultural project” in Seattle that will seek to draw visitors into the science-fiction experience.” NY Times

Re-Code.com Is No-Code.com As They Shut Down: Last week’s Salon article about re-code.com’s satire site offering printable barcodes at whatever price you wanted, combined with Wal-Mart’s threatening of the site received plenty of attention. Various blogs and newswires all picked up on the story, and now re-code.com has shut itself down. The 26-year-old art student who runs the site has realized that he might be in over his head, as hundreds of high-priced corporate lawyers swarm around him. I still wonder what is actually illegal about the site? Clearly, using such a barcode to change a price is illegal. However, that site is not illegal. Anyone could go out and make their own barcodes, if they wanted to. There’s nothing illegal about making barcodes. Using them to set your own prices, however, is a different story. This is, once again, a strategy of “security by obscurity”. Wal-Mart’s thinking appears to be “if we hide the information on our security weaknesses, then we can pretend they don’t exist”. Techdirt [thanks, walker]

I’ve followed the contention over cellular phone number portability ever since I became aware there was none. I’ve been with the same cellular carrier for ten years; having had a consistent phone number has been a fringe benefit more than a motivation not to switch, because I’ve been happy with my service, but it is clear that it prevents many from switching. The FCC is mandating number portability — which it rationalizes as increasing competition — by November of this year, after many postponements based on industry concerns that they are in effect being mandated to pay the expenses connected with losing customers. This latest lawsuit argues that the FCC is exceeding its statutory authority in requiring portability, which is a claim not given much credence by telecommunications industry observers. Portability has reportedly not damaged the European cellular industry and has its wisdom. However, it may lead to a shakeout in the industry and decrease diversity, it seems to me. Since infrastructure is a largely fixed cost, the companies threatened with financial losses will only be those whose customer base shrinks significantly if the new rules stimulate increased carrier switching — those which provide appreciably worse service. If marginal companies fail, competition in any regional market will suffer, not increase, no? It may in a sense be similar to the last decade’s airline deregulation situation, which was supposed to benefit the consumer and increase competition but was the beginning of the shakeout in the industry, which is now far kinder to business travellers whose fares are paid by corporate expense accounts than the casual vacation flyer like myself. Whether centralization of the cellular industry will on the whole be good or bad for the consumer is, it seems to me as an end user, an open question. I use my phone largely in a local market, so a larger national network with less out-of-network roaming is of less value to me than to a business traveller, although it is convenient to be reachable coast-to-coast on the five or six occasions each year that I am out-of-area. In principle, though, progress toward the ideal of a universal phone number which is fully portable, permanent, and through which one can be reached wherever they are in time and space, seems desireable. Now, if they would only combine that with number universality across media, so that with one address or ‘phone number’ people can reach me with voice, fax, email, paging and IM, I’ll be fully content — except when I don’t want to be reached…

Some facts you might have missed in the media hoopla over the ‘capture’ of Abu Abbas;

These facts are not meant to imply that those who plan terroristic acts that end in the murder of innocents should not be prosecuted, but only to remind readers of the disconnect between the facts and the overheated rhetoric of the United States and its media outlets. If Abu Abbas is indeed one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, than the world is a far safer place than we have been led to believe. — AQ Jensen, American Samizdat [via walker]

adopted in the wake of the September 11 attacks, arguing the United States cannot kill, jail or occupy all of its adversaries.

“And if they don’t, they can go straight to hell.” news.com.au

…(A)nti-capitalist protesters who fancy themselves cyberpranksters… drew the ire of Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, with a website that encouraged people to “name their own prices” by offering hundreds of substitute bar codes.

Wal-Mart considered the ploy an incitement to theft and sent a cease-and-desist letter dated April 2 to one of the companies that was hosting the website, Re-code.com.

Re-code.com’s operators responded by disabling the link on their website that allowed users to print sheets with a selection of bar code labels that could be slapped on store items.

(…)

Re-code.com still provides a database of bar codes that can be copied and pasted into printing applications. It suggests, for instance, that users stick a label for Nerf balls over the bar code on a box of rifle ammunition. Wired

Although he denies being among those inciting people to switch the bar code labels, the website’s owner is one of the renowned anti-capitalist pranksters The Yes Men.