CNN.com - Al Qaeda suspect reveals communication strategy - Aug 3, 2004
It's the little details that reveal all. From the caption of the photo that goes along with this story:
Police check all vehicles heading toward the U.S. Capitol at a roadblock on Independence Avenue.
Irony abounds... and yet, I can't laugh.
The question remains, "What next?" I used to be able to say, "O.K., rationality will prevail." But I can't say that it will for certian. The article linked talks about how Al Qaeda used the net to communicate. Will the net now be monitored because it could be used by people we don't like? And then, what about the phone system? What about the mail system? What about talking with one another?
Yep -- roadblock on Independence Avenue, indeed.
Creative Loafing Atlanta | COVER | THAT'S FUGLY
I'm in awe of this quote from this week's Creative Loafing, the alt-weekly in Atlanta:
One of the murals pictures Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa in front of a naturalist-style American landscape including what looks like a great river in which to catch you some bass.You know you're a redneck when this is your idea of opulence.
It's a hilarious read, and very, very true.
Bottom Ten List: Worst of the Laptops
I usually skip reviews by Dvorak; he's never approved of Macs. He doesn't like Apple's products and judges them differently than he would any other company's product.
Take, in the above link, his review of the early iBook:
3. Apple iBook (1999). This is the machine that I ridiculed in a column where I described it as a "girly" computer, literally meaning "for girls," as in 7-year-olds, since it has a Barbiesque look to it. This got me into a heap of trouble with politically correct Apple users who think the use of the word girly was a bad thing in itself. Even Salon magazine ragged on me about this since apparently someone had stupidly bought one and needed to justify his or her purchase. The computer came in various colors and was oversized (an Apple theme) and underpowered. It looked like a toilet seat.
Every other machine was ridiculed on technical or useability reasons. This machine, he didn't like how it was designed... and it got third place. Is he right in that it looked like a Barbie laptop? No question. He's right on the money with that. But that alone doesn't make the laptop crappy, and would hardly make it #3 worst of all time. One word in that whole paragraph has to do with the computer's capabilites: "underpowered". The rest is a diatribe about how people didn't like his opinion.
Well, here's one more person who you can rail at, Mr. Dvorak: get a life. Apple's no better or worse than any other computer company. Stop acting like a petulant kid and look at the computers for themselves, please.