Various articles (some most excellent) about America, freedom, and lack thereof...
Some links to free literature - one scifi novel, one Neil Gaiman novella, and one fairly amusing book.
A story about how Open Source makes you give birth to horses...
And stuff about privacy.
America:
"Patriotism (and shame) on the Fourth of July."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/07/04/EDGD56N5O81.DTL
How fares American liberty on their independence day, 2004?
http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/010555.shtml#010555
The continued scandal about the Patriot missiles (designed to automatically select baddie targets and kill them, but took out various friendly targets too):
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/06/patriot_plot_thickens/
"America's war with Blogistan": Blogs are entering the mainstream of accepted media, and becoming the political tools that all other media is:
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64113,00.html
The poor besieged movie industry, so damaged by such rife piracy, has made record earnings yet again:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/06/1828221
Fiction
My Tokyo Death Cult is the story of the end of the twentieth century and the birth of a new era where you no longer have to be a superpower to end the world.
http://home.earthlink.net/~mytokyodeathcult/
Dr Lewis B. Turndevelt's Big Book of Forewords:
http://www.davidrperry.com/
A short story by Neil Gaiman, "A Study in Emerald", awarded "Best Novelette" in the Locus awards, and nominated for a Hugo:
http://www.neilgaiman.com/exclusive/StudyinEmerald.aspOpen Source and Privacy
Surfers urged to stop using Internet Explorer, and switch to Firefox. The funny thing about the second article is that it is published on MSN. However, it does imply that the only reason Firefox is more secure is because nobody uses it, so nobody wants to hack it. A bit of a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing, but still.
http://www.newsisfree.com/iclick/i,43317286,7221,f/
http://slate.msn.com/id/2103152/
The 2004 Big Brother privacy awards:
http://www.theregister.com/2004/07/05/privacy_awards/Open Source software makes you give birth to horses:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/06/sourcenext_horse/