The one-finger victory salute...

...from W. direct to the people!

no 2004 "Patterns of Global Terrorism" from State

When is no news not good news? When the State Department decides to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism--especially when combined with the US' top terrorism center saying that were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.

The annual "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report is submitted in compliance with Title 22 of the United States Code, Section 2656f(a), which requires the Department of State to provide Congress a full and complete annual report on terrorism for those countries and groups meeting the criteria of Section (a)(1) and (2) of the Act.

End of an Era? Adobe's buying Macromedia

I've not found anyone cheering yet but...many people blown away about the cognitive effect. Does anyone else remember the MA-based Allaire? Travel back to January 17, 2001: "The outlook for the next fiscal year is a little muddier as [Macromedia] today announced the purchase of Web applications platform developer Allaire (Nasdaq: ALLR), which owns the HomeSite webpage editor and the ColdFusion application server for developing scalable e-business software." (Courtesy of the Motley Fools.) Going forth to 2002, we have this commentary, courtesy of evolt.org posting:

Macromedia started out as a developer of animation products for the CD-ROM world only to find that market being quickly replaced by the burgeoning World Wide Web. Their product line was quickly changed to attack this new market. Two of the products it introduced, DreamWeaver and Flash, became the most widely used products in their respective categories. More recently, Macromedia acquired Allaire, which brought with it three important products: HomeSite, ColdFusion, and JRun. HomeSite, like DreamWeaver, was the most widely used product in its category and seemly competed with DreamWeaver. ColdFusion and JRun were both pioneers in the Web application world that had strong followings. These five products effectively guaranteed Macromedia a spot on almost every Web developer’s desktop, and in some cases, their servers as well.

Jeremy Allaire's still around; see a interview from just last week @ Engadget. So who fires the next salvo? Oh, yeah nobody...nobody else left standing but Microsoft. Here's a an alternate history in what couldabeen -- "Will Macromedia Soon Become Micromedia?" from 2003.

The 1st cell phone was a brick!

The DynaTAC8000X weighed 2 pounds See wireless evolution in photo of Rudy Krolopp, lead designer of the first cell phone, sitting with the DynaTAC8000X and Motorola's new Razr cell phone in Schaumburg, Ill. "The brick" weighed 2 pounds, offered just a half-hour of talk time for every recharging and sold for $3,995." And, I'm growsing b/c I didn't get bluetooth w/my Nokia 3120.

Planning as a Criminal Act

Palestine. Pretty much sums it up!!! Read it and think.

City Kid, Country Kid - a lot of the same needs

Harvard PR, but also a good read in "Urban Legends of Rural Schools" which is an interview with Donna San Antonio, a Harvard University School of Education lecturer and author of Adolescent Lives in Transition: How Social Class Influences the Adjustment to Middle School. Regardless of locale, schools still have work to do to:

• build diverse learning environments and the skills to teach in them
• invite more parent participation, and
• integrate experiential and inter-disciplinary methods of teaching and learning

One Conservative Hoping for a Change in Another

As blogs have shown anything is possible with the right amount of force. Fareed Zakaria thinks that the issues of the World Bank might bring about transformation in one Paul Wolfowitz, its quite-criticized incoming president. I'm not familiar with Zakaria but perhaps it's another dynasty in the making. Catch Brit-sounding Bombay-born neo-con/neo-liberal/yadda yadda yadda intellectual's new weekly show called Foreign Exchange on PBS.