Oh, brother
– Bin Laden’s brother fears that strangers will hear his name and “get angry, or upset or horrified,” and so “he no longer uses his credit cards, indulges in his hobby of flying single-engine airplanes or goes jogging in Boston, where he lives.”
Does anybody like Microsoft?
– Newbytes says bin Laden terrorists infiltrated Microsoft to spread trojans in Windows XP. An alleged terrorist arrested in India “claimed that a member or members of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, posing as computer programmers, were able to gain employment at Microsoft and attempted to plant “trojans, trapdoors, and bugs in Windows XP.” [via Moon Farmer]
Don’t call him an ass
– OK, it’s juvenile of me to enjoy pointing this out, but the guy who recruited hundreds of Brits to fight for the Taliban is named Hassan Butt. The Mirror first reported that Mr. Butt couldn’t be arrested under British anti-terrorist laws because Butt’s a Brit. But now the Times of London says Butt can find his Butt in jail. And we know what happens to Butts there.
Sorry.
None of your business…
– I’m not a privacy paranoid; I don’t care if you cookie me or record what kind of cookies I buy at the grocery store. Still, I’m worried — though I don’t quite know exactly why — by all the talk of a new national ID card. Just as the Social Security number was not supposed to be used for anything other than Social Security — though it is — a national ID card will surely be used for everything from cashing checks to checking out videos under one easily reconciled ID number for each of us. Makes me hinky. Now I’m agreeing to lots of things that make me hinky these days to fight terrorism. But I’m not really sure how the ID card would do that. The terrorists got lots of ID cards. We knew exactly who they were. Didn’t stop them from terrorizing.
– Belgium wants a card for everyone in the world.
Dead men tell no tales…
– I like Instapundit’s speculation — just entertainment, folks — that Osama’s dead but we’re hiding the fact because: “(1) we don’t want to trigger any ‘sleepers’ who might be waiting for just that news to act; (2) we don’t want to anger the Saudis; (3) we want to maximize confusion among al Qaeda survivors — perhaps we were the ones broadcasting phony orders in Osama’s voice to increase this — while we continue to round ’em up; (4) Osama’s head, in brine, has been delivered to King Fahd with a message — if this happens again, it’ll be yours; naturally, that’s best not spread around.”
What he said
– I also salute Instapundit for pushing all Blogspot bloggers to go ad-free. It costs a mere $12 a year. Can’t beat that deal. I did it. I also bought a few text ads just to support the blog cause.
