I’ve been following the ongoing story of a $100,000 transfer made to Mohammed Atta. The Times of India originally reported that the transfer was made on behalf of the recently retired head of the Pakistani intelligence service, Mahmud Ahmad. Last week, a reader sent links to two articles (CNN and BBC), which point to a man named Sheik Syed making the transfer, but do not make the further connection to the general that’s made by the Times article.

Slashdot is reporting that Emacs 21 is out. (Here’s the official press relase.) With new major releases of vim and emacs this month, we’re entering an editor renaissance …

The Humanitarian Charter is a basic set of principles under which NGO’s operate.

I’m linking to David Talbot’s rant at Andrew Sullivan simply because it’s such a thing of beauty. One great thing about having your own widely read publication is that you can be sure that when you flame someone, plenty of people will read it.

More from MEMRI: an editorial from an Egyptian (government-sponsored newspaper) on the perks of dying for Islam. I find it odd that this piece would appear in a government-backed media outlet in Egypt because Egypt has big problems with Islamic extremists who very much want to remove the current government from power.

RMS has written a great overview of the dangers of the USA Act (link via Dangerousmeta) over at Newsforge.

I successfully nabbed the Emacs 21.1 sources from the FTP site and built it on my Windows 2000 box using Cygwin. The build process was surprisingly painless. It’s now up and running, and looks pretty darn cool.

Certified Macintosh god John Siracusa has written an in-depth review of Mac OS X 10.1 (is that really the name?) for Ars Technica. I haven’t read it yet, but when I do, I’ll probably end up wishing that I’d bought an iBook instead of the Toshiba laptop that I purchased earlier this month.

Take a look at this bizarre item from NewsForge: Disney worked an anti-music swapping plot into one of its cartoons. Perhaps next week we’ll have an episode explaining why CD prices have never gone down, despite the fact that the prices for CD media have dropped to near nothing since CDs were first introduced.

Robert Fisk’s latest dispatch from Pakistan discusses obsession with Osama bin Laden.