Ocelopotamus

• A pair of hackers are promising to expose a month’s worth of MySpace bugs to draw attention to security problems with the site.

… two hackers going by the names of Mondo Armando and Müstaschio promise to begin disclosing security vulnerabilities in MySpace, News Corp.’s popular social networking site, every day next month.

“The purpose of the exercise is not so much to expose MySpace as a hive of spam and villainy (since everyone knows that already), but to highlight the monoculture-style danger of extremely popular websites,” wrote Mondo Armando in an e-mail interview.

“We could have just as easily gone after Google or Yahoo or MSN or IDG or whatever. MySpace is just more fun, and is becoming notoriously [obnoxious] about responding to security issues,” he said.

• A St. Patrick’s Day parade in Colorado Springs turned ugly when organizers decided that peace was too controversial an idea for their parade, and sicced police on some of the parade’s participants for the crime of carrying peace banners and wearing T-shirts with peace symbols. A 76-year-old woman who walks with a cane was taken to the hospital with a leg injury, and a retired priest wound up in a chokehold. The fact that the peace lovers had purchased a $15 permit to march in the parade didn’t matter to the police.

Parade organizer John O’Donnell told the Colorado Springs Gazette that political candidates could participate in the parade, but people with opinions on “social issues” could not. Colorado Springs police said that they plan to review the chain of events, but said they were forced to act when the protesters refused to follow orders to leave the parade route.

“Peace was too controversial for the parade,” said Jim White, the interim director of the PPJPC and the retired pastor at Colorado Springs’ First Congregational Church. “I didn’t get to see what happened, but I talked to people at church this morning and they said it was horrible. People were crying, children were crying.

“It was clearly police brutality. The people I talked to just couldn’t believe what happened.”

• Scientists are working to develop portable bird flu testing kits.

• A good reason to avoid buying Chiquita bananas: Chiquita knowingly gave $1.7 million to right-wing terrorists in Colombia.

• What a long and winding road it’s been: Jury selection begins in the Phil Spector trial.

• An update on the Heroes character who was going to be gay, but isn’t anymore, and why.

• Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant decide to cruelly deny us a third season of Extras. The poncey gits.