10. Senate e-mail ethics monitor

9. High school computer teacher (an impressionable mind is a terrible thing to waste)

8. Director of product enhancement (DOPE)

7. John Ashcroft's constitutional consistency checker

6. The new Dell dude

5. Information assurance officer for Joe Millionaire

4. PR director for John Ashcroft's Total Information Awareness program

3. Security guard for Winona Ryder

2. Cab driver (a.k.a., a hack)

1. The Hamburglar

Thanks to Colin Chisholm, Ed Collins, William Cummins, James French, Bryan Jones, Richard Koppinger, Donna Michaels, Tony Mullins, Jiles David Neeley, Peter E. Schuelke and Neal Stein for their submissions.



Ripped From Today's Press Release Headlines

What they say (and what they mean):

Patent-pending technology (Hey, there are no laws against filing a frivolous patent.)

Multimode, multifunction handset terminal (It's a phone.)

Data-intensive application (Not one of those lazy applications that won't have anything to do with data.)

Smart device (Not so smart that it can beat Garry Kasparov in chess, but you know what we mean.)

Multilevel user management (Just like multilevel marketing, except it's not against the law.)

Spam-free e-mail (Of course, that depends on what your definition of "is" is.)

Picture messaging (You thought SMS was annoying ... wait until you get your first pay-per-bit bill.)

Universal Portal Service (In other words, the Web.)