Today’s link round-up thanks major players in our lives for working to make things better for us:

• Thanks to the No-Fly list and the Department of Homeland Security for making sure that the 9/11 hijackers can’t ever fly again!
• Thanks to Microsoft for releasing tabbed browsing and improved web standards support in Internet Explorer 7. Welcome to 2001, guys!
• Thanks to Yahoo for releasing IE7 first.
• Thanks to Zalm at FromTheSalmon for writing the perfect upgrade pitch for IE7. Yes, for goodness sakes, everyone get on IE7. Web development is complicated enough without having to work around IE6’s buggy CSS implementation. Better yet, just go to Firefox.
• Thanks to the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority for saving me 60 cents a day in tolls—starting next June—and for creating a state revenue black hole and giving Kerry Healey a free political forum where she can do something other than scowl and run attack ads.
• Thanks to Doc Searls for articulating why pay-per-post services that turn bloggers into paid product shills are wrong, wrong, wrong. It’s too bad that someone actually has to explain it.
• Thanks to Corel for presuming that someone wants new features in file compression software. I’m sure you’ll find those people somewhere, guys, probably right next to all those WordPerfect users.
• Thanks to voting machine manufacturers for making life easier for blind Vietnamese speaking voters in California while simultaneously screwing the rest of us. Seriously, we already had enough of a political machine in this country without someone going and making the term literally true.
• Thanks to Salon for reminding me that TV On The Radio is a pretty damned good band.
• Thanks to Scott Rosenberg for a fascinating series on key written works that have influenced programming culture. I had never heard of Edsger Dijkstra’s “Humble Programmer” lecture but am fascinated by his early advocacy for test-driven development.
• Thanks to Peter Gabriel for hopping on the fan remix bandwagon along with Eno and Byrne. My Life in the Bush of Shock the Monkey mash-up in 3...2...