Jack Thompson is at it again - he wants the US Supreme Court to overturn his disbarment.

The deadline for appeal was supposed to run out at Christmas, but he somehow convinced Clarence Thomas to grant an extension (boooo!). Here we go again...

Here's one for you - a kid who likes Sonic the Hedgehog so much, he got his city council to overturn a ban on hedgehogs as pets so that he could have one.

Isn't it cute, in a spiny kind of way?

"I was just playing with hedgehog pictures and then my mom comes in and says, "You are going in front of the city commission on Tuesday. I thought I would faint," Judson said.

At city hall, Judson arrived in a suit and tie and armed with personalized folders full of hedgehog facts for each of the commissioners.

It was no contest. Commissioners could not find a good reason why they were banned in the first place.

Emphasis added - and isn't it amazing how many stupid laws there are on the books?

The fake "Antivirus 2009" has infected a lot of people: over 400,000 removals according to Microsoft.

Time Warner and Viacom are having troubles, and as a result TW is actually having to tell their users how to find Viacom shows online should Viacom's cable channels go dark on the TW network...

Time Warner will respond to Viacom’s advertisement, Mr. Dudley said, by highlighting the availability of television content on the Internet.

“We will be telling our customers exactly where they can go to see these programs online,” Mr. Dudley said. “We’ll also be telling them how they can hook up their PCs to a television set.”

Shamus Young (over at Twentysided Blog) has something to say about games and controllers being too complex.

I think he's got a point. Part of the reason the Wii's had so much popularity is that in many ways, the controls are vastly simplified for many of the Wii games, which makes them less intimidating for a lot of "new" or "casual" gamers.

In another show of how daft and pointless "copyright" law has become, someone at Fox managed to convince a judge that Fox has "rights" to something they tossed on the side of the road years ago and now the movie's got more problems.

Sigh.

The last major VHS retailer is shutting down:

Those tapes went to bargain-basement chains such as Dollar Tree, Dollar General and Family Dollar, and Kugler's network of mom-and-pop clients and regional outlets, such as the Gabriel Bros. Stores in West Virginia or the Five Below chain in Pennsylvania. If you bought a Clint Eastwood movie at the Flying J Truck Stop in Saginaw, Mich., or a "Care Bears" tape at one of the H.E. Butts Grocery stores in Texas, Kugler's company probably put it there. He also sells to public libraries, military bases and cruise ships, although those clients now all pretty much want DVDs.

Kugler estimates that 2 million tapes are still sitting on shelves of his clients' stores across the country, but they are the last analog soldiers in the lost battle against the digital invasion. "I'm not sure a lot of people are going to miss VHS," he said, "but it's been good to us."

It's sad to see it go in some ways, but DVD's been a superior-enough format to warrant the change. Having a DVD video recorder, I haven't "taped" a TV show in quite some time now.

NORAD has their satellite tracker watching Santa.

Merry Christmas, folks!

Microsoft's given users yet another reprieve, allowing OEM's to ship out WinXP rather than the Vista Virus until right before Windows 7 is scheduled to be released. The goal? Let people skip Vista entirely.

Vista truly is Windows ME 2.0.

Pranksters in Maryland have discovered how easy it is to "spoof" those stupid speed camera / redlight "ticketing machines" that unscrupulous police departments have made the latest weapon of the Badged Highwaymen:

Originating from Wootton High School, the parent said, students duplicate the license plates by printing plate numbers on glossy photo paper, using fonts from certain websites that "mimic" those on Maryland license plates. They tape the duplicate plate over the existing plate on the back of their car and purposefully speed through a speed camera, the parent said. The victim then receives a citation in the mail days later.

Anybody notice this going on in other jurisdictions?