A patent scheduled for sale next month in San Francisco could threaten some of the biggest players on the internet leading Web 2.0.

In supporting documentation it is claimed that pretty much the whole of the web uses this method to operate AJAX-based applications. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple and eBay are identified as among those whose products "potentially" infringe on the patent.

Clearly if the claim is valid, the value of the patent - filed in 1999 and issued in 2002 - is substantial. It will be interesting to see who bids and what the new owner does with it. One possible option on the table is to prosecute claimed infringers, cashing in through the US courts.

The effect is pretty much the same as on the main Icanhascheezburger site. Except that, perhaps, the tone is a little bit meaner. One thing that it got me thinking as I waded through the submissions, is just how far will the site's administrators go in poking fun at politicians and the people who, er, love them.

The answer to that remains to be seen. But, with a stock of Pundit Kitchen submissions that already lampoons both sides of the political spectrum, I dare say the 2008 election season is finally underway.

Network Solutions has suspended a Web site that a Dutch lawmaker was using to promote a yet-to-be-released film critical of Islam.

The 15-minute movie, called Fitna--an Arabic word that means "test of faith in times of trial"--describes Islam as "the enemy of freedom," according to comments made by Geert Wilders, a Dutch lawmaker and the film's maker.

"In this situation with the dialogue that's happening throughout the world we've made the choice to suspend the site as of last night," Susan Wade, spokeswoman for Network Solutions, told the Associated Press.

If a law proposed last week in Maryland gets passed, intentionally using a neighbour's wireless Internet connection without permission will be a crime.

He cited the story of some man in Michigan who was prosecuted for parking outside a coffee shop and freeriding on its wireless network to check his email.

The man was charged with a felony and faced a fine of up to $10,000 and up to five years in prison.

As an alternative, the man chose a diversion program, a $400 fine, spending 40 hours in community service and six months probation.

Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House disclosed to a federal court Friday in a controversy over millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005.

In proposing an e-mail recovery plan Tuesday, Facciola expressed concern that a large volume of electronic messages may be missing from White House computer servers, as two private groups that are suing the White House allege.

At a House committee hearing last month, a computer expert who previously worked at the White House called the e-mail system "primitive" and said it was set up in a way that created a high risk that data would be lost from White House servers where it was being archived.

Under pressure to provide details about its computer system, the White House told the congressional committee that it never completed work that began in 2003 on a planned records management and e-mail archiving system.

When businesses want to communicate with their customers via e-mail, many send messages with a bogus return address, e.g. "somethinghere@donotreply.com."

As owner of www.donotreply.com, the Seattle-based programmer receives millions of wayward e-mails each week, including a great many missives destined for executives at Fortune 500 companies or bank customers, even sensitive messages sent by government personnel and contractors.

He says Capital One appears to have used donotreply.com as the return address for automated payment transfers and debits set up by customers.

"It's really kind of weird, because I'll get these faxes from Iraq, where they talk about various camps, when and where they're moving the support equipment, what they're buying, accident reports, and information on people applying for jobs," Faliszek said.

Faliszek said he is constantly threatened with lawsuits from companies who for one reason or another have a difficult time grasping why he is in possession of their internal documents and e-mails.

The FBI has recently adopted a novel investigative technique: posting hyperlinks that purport to be illegal videos of minors having sex, and then raiding the homes of anyone willing to click on them.

Undercover FBI agents used this hyperlink-enticement technique, which directed Internet users to a clandestine government server, to stage armed raids of homes in Pennsylvania, New York, and Nevada last year.

A CNET News.com review of legal documents shows that courts have approved of this technique, even though it raises questions about entrapment, the problems of identifying who's using an open wireless connection--and whether anyone who clicks on a FBI link that contains no child pornography should be automatically subject to a dawn raid by federal police.

Using the same logic and legal arguments, federal agents could send unsolicited e-mail messages to millions of Americans advertising illegal narcotics or child pornography--and raid people who click on the links embedded in the spam messages.

The National Security Strategy, published yesterday, was vague about how exactly the UK would fortify itself against cyber attack.

It's premise was a complex interplay of threats including ecological disaster, disease, crime, burgeoning world population, dwindling food and energy resources, terrorism and starker inequalities of wealth would challenge Britain's unusually prosperous world position.

Along with the economy and the global demands of population, the internet was one of the three greatest vulnerabilities for the UK, said the report.

The election officials have backed down and agreed not to send Felten the machine to test. News.com has more details on both the reason for the test and Sequoia's response to the whole mess. The reason? Shockingly enough, Sequoia's e-voting machines malfunctioned during the primary in a way that should scare you: it gave two different vote counts.

Sequoia has tried to explain it away as a bug, but that doesn't explain why the machines shouldn't be tested by a third party.

As a last resort, Sequoia appeals to the fact that such a test would break a licensing agreement, noting that "Licensing agreements are standard practice in the technology industry." That's clearly a cop out.

It would appear that the folks at Sequoia, one of the big three e-voting firms out there, is somewhat unaware of this aspect of Felten's past. In the past few years, Felten has been one of a few top computer science experts who have been picking apart the problems with e-voting machines.

Felten has become one of the go-to guys when various governments are reviewing e-voting machines, so it should come as no surprise that election officials in New Jersey (where Felten lives and works) would be interested in having him run some tests on a Sequoia e-voting machine.

Sequoia has, instead, sent a threatening email to Felten, saying that election officials who sent a machine to Felten would be breaking the state's terms of service with Sequoia.