Browser Wars Reignite

informit.com: "Make no mistake: Microsoft really hates the web.

The new browser war may appear to be about the emergence of Mozilla and friends with their polished interfaces, but it's really about Microsoft versus the W3C. Internet Explorer is Microsoft's blocking tactic—never to be properly web-compliant, never to give the W3C a day in the sun—and Longhorn technology is the big-stick alternative being built.

One of the purposes of Longhorn is to destroy the web as we know it.

The web is used to provide a variety of services and communities. Part of the Longhorn strategy is to extract from the web all of the services with any profit model at all: web magazines, auction sites, news, online retailers, and so on. When Microsoft tempts these organizations and communities to Longhorn, the web suffers the death of a thousand cuts. Over here will be the standards-based web, with a gradually shrinking set of web sites. Over there will be the future Longhorn-based proprietary global infrastructure—a global version of the early Novell NetWare, a sort of stock market/CNN fusion for content delivery. For Microsoft, the best possible outcome is for the standards-based web to be reduced to the profitless: a few idealistic hippies, some idle perverts, and the disaffected. Few others will want to go there; so every day there will be fewer traditional websites, every day less relevance."

Change XP Start Button

theeldergeek.com
I’ve read a number of articles on the internet about changing the text on the Start button in XP. On more than one occasion I’ve seen references to a five (5) letter limitation when the button is renamed. I always wondered if this was true or just an assumption someone made because the default ‘start’ just happened to fit the button size. So, I decided to run a test and see if there really was a five character limit.

Spam two thirds of e-mail

lockergnome.com: "Statistics show that 67.6 percent of all global e-mail traffic is spam. MessageLabs said it scanned 840 million e-mail messages and found that 97 percent of spam is aimed at five countries: the United States, the U.K., Germany, Australia and Hong Kong. The United States has 83 percent of messages being classified as spam, while in the U.K. that figure stands at 53 percent." via Lockergnome Tech News

Try the Thumb Bot

shellcity.net says: When surfing the web do you often find sites where you're mainly interested in looking at the pictures and not in reading the text? Tired of clicking lots of links and wading through all that text to get to the pictures you really want to see? Wish you could view all of the pictures in one place and easily copy them to a local folder? Well now you can! ThumbBot™ will scan entire web sites for you and present all of the pictures it finds in a way that makes them easy to view and save, all without leaving your browser. You can turn your browser into a virtual personal picture search engine by using the scan options to choose which pictures should be returned.....(free).....GO THERE!

Neighborhood wireless

pbs.org/cringely: "The Little Engine That Could: How Linux is Poised to Remake the Telephone and Internet Markets -- a system that a local phone company simply can't compete against."

Trends in Blog Searching

LLRX.com: " To use Google to find information across blogs, enter your keywords then ~blog inurl:archives. Using blog and archives is somewhat redundant but using archives alone retrieves more newspaper articles and using ~blog alone works and gets more hits but with less precision because “log” is apparently a synonym for blog. For example, a search on hubble maintenance yields forums in the second group of hits, and the first blog in the third group of hits. The search hubble maintenance inurl:archives yields six blogs out of the first ten hits. The search hubble maintenance ~blog yields seven blogs out of the first ten hits. The search hubble maintenance ~blog inurl:archives yields ten out of ten, and only 54 hits total. Ari Paparo posted a large list of blog search engines on his blog (http://www.aripaparo.com/archive/000632.html). Bloogz has some very nice advanced search features. Waypath is one of the few full text blog search engines. If you need to do a very precise search, use Feedster." All this via anildash.

CDs can rot

cdfreaks.com: "A while back, we reported about the issue the risk of 'DVD Rot' and why it is recommended to make a backup of original discs. Now there is news about the 'CD Rot' issues of music CDs. "I remember when CDs first came out; indestructible; you could cover them in jam. Now it seems that’s not true."

Wide open secret

langa.com: "In the last issue, we discussed using various third-party tools to overwrite old, deleted files so that they'd truly be unrecoverable by normal means. I didn't know it until I was researching the previous item but the 'Cipher' command in Win2K and XP also can do this, and it's built in! See 'Microsoft's How To'

Using System Restore

camtech2000.net Straightforward, step by step help guide explaining how to use it with a minimal amount of disk space, what it does and how it works. System Restore can return your system to an earlier state if problems are caused by a program you installed, malicious web sites, recovery of deleted files even after you've emptied the Recycle Bin, a corrupted Registry as well as many other common problems. By using it regularly you'll always be able to fix a problem in minutes. The article is available for viewing online and as a downloadable Help file (.chm) for installation on your PC.....(free).....from shellcity.net

Tutorial for Photoshop

anildash says "I like this one because
it's simple enough to understand."

Move wires to the front

frontx.com Front X-tension is a new product invented to extend and transfer computer ports to the front panel of your PC system. The 5.25" FRONTX Casing has 4 port holding bays, i.e. 1 large bay and 3 small bays. The FRONTX Port is simply an extension cable fitted onto a custom designed port holder, which can be slotted into the port holding bay. Each port holding bay can hold a maximum of 2 computer ports, which means the FRONTX Casing can hold a maximum of 8 computer ports. Looks like about $40 after it's all set up.

World of Ends

worldofends.com: From the folks that brought you cluetrain manifesto, now there's "What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It For Something Else."

The Nutshell

1. The Internet isn't complicated
2. The Internet isn't a thing. It's an agreement.
3. The Internet is stupid.
4. Adding value to the Internet lowers its value.
5. All the Internet's value grows on its edges.
6. Money moves to the suburbs.
7. The end of the world? Nah, the world of ends.
8. The Internet’s three virtues:
a. No one owns it
b. Everyone can use it
c. Anyone can improve it
9. If the Internet is so simple, why have so many been so boneheaded about it?
10. Some mistakes we can stop making already

Color theory and matching

webwhirlers.com Colors are the way our brain, by use of our eyes, interprets electromagnetic radiation of a wavelenght between 350 and 750 nanometers. There are many terms which are used to describe colours, and often there is some confusion as to what each of the terms mean, plus descriptions of the psychological meaning of colors.

The Colour Wizard lets you type in the value of your colour and get an automatic return of that colour's complementary colour, split complementary colours, analogous colours, chromatic variations, shade and tint variantion and saturation variation.

Free Encryption Software

cypherix.co.uk CRYPTAINER is a free 128 bit file and disk encryption. It a simple, easy to use software that creates encrypted "vaults" mounted as a volume. Once mounted, the volume behaves as a standard windows drive. Files can be read, changed, as well as moved from one place to another. Store any kind of data. It creates a 128 bit "vault" that encrypts all files by simply dragging and dropping. Additionally it lets you create secure e-mail files that you can send to anyone.

One hand keyboard

gabrielor.com This keypad design supposedly puts all of the necessary key functions within the reach of one single finger. Whether this idea ever makes it into the next generation of cellphones, remote controls or other devices remains to be seen. From engadget

Record radio streams

ratajik.com: "StationRipper will allow you to 'record' various internet radio stations. It will allow you to get a list of available Shoutcast stations and start recording them, creating a single MP3 file for each song the station plays."

Change default directory

Check out this article from Microsoft's Knowledge Base.

The page will give you a list of command-line switches that you can use to change the way Explorer opens when executed from the command prompt, however, the information that you are looking for is found in the section at the bottom. Follow the four steps to change the folder Explorer opens on startup. From Lockergnome

History search toolbar

Seruku: "You saw a web page last week. You need to see it again."

Color Picker

iconico.com: "Ever tried using a color picker on a high resolution monitor? It's impossible. That's why the this color picker has a magnifier attached. Control it from the keyboard and grab up to 16 colors at once. "

Windows tweak and fix

mdgx.com Axcel's Windows tips site is ancient in internet terms and always competent. This site is huge... 100+ pages with 1000+ tricks and counting.

Password protected html pages

buildwebsite4u.com: "To keep a web page confidential but still easily accessed from a browser with a login and password, this free program can solve the problem. It takes any HTML file and creates new 'secure' HTML file that is encrypted and asks for a password when you try to open it. The browser caches the encrypted version of the file. Therefore, this method of creating password protected web pages is safer than many others. The program is able to restore the original file, so you can make changes to it and then encode it again. The main purpose is creating password protected Web pages for your home or office computer. However, you can place them on any Web server to make them available to somebody else. Just keep in mind that the encryption algorithm is simple and assures only 'home' security. Plus a Free Online Service is available."

Microsoft Word Tips

word-answers.com: "This is the place to find easy-to-use, succinct answers to your questions about Microsoft Word. There are 919 articles and tips available on this site, categorized across 112 topic areas." Link from Lockergnome.

Drag & drop blogging

kunal.org: "OutlookMT (MagicFolder) is a utility that monitors a designated Outlook 2003 folder for items. An item placed in the 'magic folder' will be posted to the weblog specified in the settings "

Computer Screens and Dizziness

vestibular.org: "Why do video display screens make some people dizzy? To answer this, we need to have just a bit of science; so click the link."

For high bandwidth only

zongrila.net An absolutely fabulous photo animation found at the Feedster blog.

Feed your search habit

voidstar.com: "An experimental convertor that takes a Google News search and turns it into RSS. Source is here."

Physics and technology...

physorg.com: "Shaped carbon molecules are known officially as fullerenes and unofficially as ''buckyballs''. Nanotubes measuring just 100 atoms in diameter have been created from designer molecules that were customized to self-assemble into angstrom-sized circuit elements. The news blurbs about Carbon-50, self-assemble nanotubes and fullerene transistors are circulating around the Net. But is this all still about a technology ''not for another few years yet'' or ''we are definitely getting closer''? "

Anonymity is not a crime

anon.inf.tu-dresden.de: "JAP makes it possible to surf the internet anonymously and unobservably. JAP is totally free and its level of secrecy is better than many commercial systems. Expect surfing to slow down -- you'll be relayed through a chain of servers -- and to change your browser settings to work through a proxy. Instead of connecting directly to a webserver, users take a detour, connecting with encryption through several intermediaries."

Nudging plain text

textpattern.com Quick conversion of plain text to valid XHTML for those who soldier on anyway... When it comes to publishing on the internet, beginners and experts alike are met with a bothersome paradox: word processors and graphics applications allow anyone to do a pretty good job of managing text and images on a personal computer, but to make these available to the worldwide web – a seemingly similar environment of documents and destinations – ease of use vanishes behind sudden requirements for multilingual programming skills, proficiency in computer-based graphic design, and, ultimately, the patience of a saint. Joel Dueck describes it’s workings. Link from branchLeft.

“Saying what we think gives us a wider conversational range than saying what we know.” — Cullen Hightower

Security: Detect a phish-y URL

Spoofstick is a browser utility that can help users identify phishing scams and associated nasty tricks. It is available for both IE (Windows) and Firefox. No fixes can solve every problem. [...] I honestly don't believe that there is a technical solution to every trick. Once installed, Spoofstick displays the real URL of the page you are on in the browser toolbar.

For example, if you're on the following URL (this is a real, legitimate ebay url):

http://signin.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?SignIn&UsingSSL= 0&pUserId=&ru=http%3A%2F%2Fcontact.ebay.com%2Fws1%2 FeBayISAPI.dll%3FShowCoreAskSellerQuestion%26requested% 3Ddominicsmusic%26de%3Doff%26iid%3D3711129021%26frm %3D284%26acceptcookie%3D0%26loginconfirmed%3D0%26re direct%3D0%26pass%3D%7B_pass_%7D%26userid%3D&pp=p ass&co_partnerid=2&pageType=711"

Spoofstick will say: "You're on ebay.com".

If you get fooled by going to a spoofed site, for example http://signin.ebay.com@10.19.32.4/ (a "spoof" example), Spoofstick will say: "You're on 10.19.32.4", but it will occupy a lot of screenspace and doesn't easily toggle on or off. [Link from Empty Spaces blog ]

Multiple IE's in Windows

insert-title.com Ways to test designs, css, etc. in multiple versions of Internet Explorer. Usually the only solutions were to have multiple OS's installed on multiple partitions, or running some sort of emulation software such as VMWare. Essentially this whole thing was stumbled upon out of necessity and a lawsuit that Microsoft lost. Also the fact that it was only a handful of files that made this browser version run was also interesting. And BAM!!! - you got yourself a standalone version of IE!

Not only can you download stand-alone versions of IE 5.01, 5.5, and 6 (and install them on one version of Windows, Ryan of Skyzyx has made IE 3 and 4.01 downloadable and installable.

Life before the web

ascii.textfiles.com Jason Scott dedicates a large part of his life to preserving the history of the BBS scene, from the amazing collection of vintage textfiles and e-zines, historic audio recordings, artwork packs from the computer art scene, interesting papers and books, a growing list of every BBS that ever existed, a comprehensive timeline, and a work-in-progress documentary with over 200 interviews.

Google owns machines

An interesting tidbit coming out of the Google S-1 filing is that they have spent about $250 million on hardware equipment. From there, we can get a few guesses at the magnitude of the Google system. Based on quick back of the envelope calculations, it looks like Google is managing between 45,000 and 80,000 servers. Here's how Tristan Louis arrived at this conclusion:

Ad blocking hosts file

everythingisnt.com: "What is a hosts file and how does this work?

A hosts file tells your computer what numerical address (209.61.186.253) is associated with what URL. This file is a very simple hack which takes ad server URLs and redirects them to non-existant numerical addresses. In other words we're fooling the internet. Its pretty simple and it works. Tens of thousands of people use it everyday with no problems. This is free only for personal/residential/non-profit users."

Staple of society

PublicRadioFan.com: "PublicRadioFan.com features program listings for hundreds of public radio stations around the world."

Google's S-1 filing with the SEC

* SEARCH VOLUME: In total, Americans conduct between 3.0 and 3.5 billion searches per month. More than one billion of these searches were conducted at Google. The average search engine user conducted 32 searches in February. The average Google user conducted 25 searches at the engine, more than twice the average number of searches (12) conducted by users of the top ten engines.

* SHARE OF SEARCH: In February, Google controlled approximately 35% of searches. Yahoo!, its closest competitor, conducted 30%. Among worldwide Internet users (Anglophone population), Google's lead is more than 43% of all searches. (Source: comScore qSearch)

Beyond your server's limits

Internet archive.org Freecache from the Internet Archive aims to bring easy to use distributed web caching to everyone. If you've a file that you think will be popular, but far too popular for your isp's bandwidth limits, you can just serve it as http://freecache.org/http://your.site/yourfile instead of the traditional http://your.site/yourfile and Freecache will do all the heavy lifting for you. Plus your users get the advantage of swiftly pulling the file from a nearby cache rather than it creeping off your overloaded webserver." From SlashDot

Soundless Music

npl.co.uk: "As part of a project to explore subjective effects of infrasound in live musical performances, the Acoustical Metrology Group have been assisting with the production and measurement of very low frequency sound and were asked to advise on the possible implications for subjects attending the recitals. The project entitled Soundless Music is a collaboration between a team including psychologists at Liverpool Hope University, exhibition musicians and engineers from SpaceDog and scientists at NPL. The aim of the work is to study the emotional response of an audience during a piano recital laced with infrasound."

WinUpdatesList v1.00

WinUpdatesList v1.00 displays the list of all Windows updates (Service Packs and Hotfixes) installed on your local computer. For hotfix updates, this utility also displays the list of files updated with these hotfixes. In addition, it allows you to instantly open the Web link in Microsoft Web site that provides more information about the selected update, uninstall an update, copy the update information to the clipboard, or save it to text/HTML/XML file.

Outlook Express tweak

IdenSwitch v1.00 This utility allows you to instantly open Outlook Express with the desired identity, without requiring you to switch the identity through the menu of Outlook Express.

Mapped the entire earth

keyhole.com: "Keyhole LT is a software application that you download and install. It’s only 4MB, but with an annual Keyhole subscription, you can fly through 7+ Terabytes of Earth imagery and data – spinning, rotating, tilting, and zooming. Think magic carpet ride. "

Ordinary personal information

boston.com "You should never put any personal information on the Internet that you wouldn't want to see in the newspapers. That's the government's job. With hardly any fuss, federal, state, and local governments routinely publish on the Internet a variety of sensitive information about us. File for bankruptcy lately? It's probably on there. Did you contribute money to John Kerry's campaign? That's online too. Here's hoping you paid up your property taxes and haven't fallen behind on child support; otherwise there may be an Internet page with your name on it." Amid the tremendous concern about the threats that hackers and cyber-criminals pose to our privacy, many people overlook the fact that the government publishes a great deal of ordinary citizens' personal information on the internet. Linked from FutureBrief, learn more in the Boston Globe.

AOL Email with Outlook Express

email.about.com AOL is good. AOL with Outlook Express would be better. If this is what you have been thinking all along, you can now turn this "would be" into an "is". Using AOL's open email access, any email client with IMAP support can read and send AOL email. Since Outlook Express is a very capable IMAP email client, it can be your very capable AOL email client, too. You get to use all the comfort, power and stationery of Outlook Express while keeping your AOL email address.

Free image hosting...

photobucket.com: "Photobucket.com is a leading image hosting company for ebay, live journals, message boards, online auctions and online photo albums. Photobucket is reliable, fast and very simple to use. With more digital cameras and photo editors being used everyday, users need a place to store and display images online. You can easily upload, link, categorize, add titles to images and add more albums as needed. Your pictures are safe and will not be deleted. Best of all, direct linking is allowed. Currently this site is free and has minimal limitations, however donations are appreciated!"

Checking in with the inventor

Christopher Lydon Interviews Tim Berners-Lee: "Sir Tim uses the word 'fractal' a lot. We live in a fractal world, he kept saying, meaning a world of many levels of structure, where the shapes of mountains often resemble the shapes of sand grains at a different scale; or giant clouds replicate tiny puffs of steam, or human communities at the village level tell you about affinities and tensions at a global level. One of his most compelling digressions was the thought that we should organize our days accordingly. We should live some part of our lives in each of the human orders of magnitude: from the family unit of six to the global population of six billion. Spend a few moments of the day with a consciousness of our individuality, then our closest family circle, our 60-member squad, platoon or company, our 600-member association, our 6000-citizen village in a 60,000-citizen city, in a 600,000 metropolitan area in a 6-million member state; then: our 60-million nation on a 600-million continent, and on to our full species extension. "

Copy old hard drive to new

Getting a new computer is great, BUT (there is always a but) it can sometimes be a pain to copy your old computer's hard drive onto the new system. You could labor with Windows to accomplish this, OR you could use the great freeware application HDCopy. It's a no frills, easy to use tool that will have your new hard drive set up identically to your old hard drive's Windows configuration, including hidden files. From Scott at Lockergnome.

Security tips...

To be safe and trouble-free,
it is critical to install
security and browsing protections.
Out-of-the-box Windows is a disaster waiting to happen.

Currently, an exposed system is guaranteed to be infected. Statistics show that only 30%-40% of private PC's are filtered !!! 80% of all infections !!!

Generally, every WIN machine on earth should have ample security tools until the primary [and costly] commercial code is strengthened.

I use a real time virus scanner. I pay about $20 per year from Computer Associates. It's a daily filter at half the price. Also real-time, the top-rated freeware version requiring manual updates is AVG. Trend Micro has a free online scanner requiring very manual operation.

The freeware ZoneAlarm is critical and only occassionally introduces a glitch. I bought the Pro version because it's allowed me to configure permanent cookies and provide switchable security far more conveniently than fiddling with the advanced settings hidden in IE6. But along with XP's improvements, IE7 is coming soon and may dilute ZoneAlarm's usefulness dramatically. Over the free version, ZoneAlarm Pro has much improved cookie, advertising, script, javascript and java filters and controls as well as an instant cache cleaner, but again, we can wait and see what happens when IE7 comes out. PLUS, XP's firewall is getting some good comments but techies show a need to tweak the settings a little bit.

Because of the increase in potent trojans, I recently installed a freeware real-time scanner for nuisance trojans and spyware. SpywareGuard from Wilder Security is a good site that is climbing the credibility chart. Without it, I need to empty my cache and index.dat with a washer tool immediately after the virus scanner detects a trojan. None of the virus scanners have adequately integrated trojan scanning.

For maintenance scanning, not real-time -- for use after exploring strange places or after long sessions of several days or more -- remove lingering trojans, adware and spyware with freeware's SpyBot and AdAware. Updating the listings of these programs is important and still manual in the freeware versions. To remove terrifically stubborn trojans, do a search for HiJackThis 'deep scans' the registry and helps manage an effective but cumbersome removal process.

SpywareBlaster is highly respected freeware for installing a trojan/spyware blacklist into your 'hosts' file. This prevents malicious code entering your system if generated at any of these blacklisted domains. Occasional updates are required.

Although there are several cache cleaners, there's a little IE freeware tool that's useful called IEPrivacyKeeper. It installs an IE menu item for wiping the IE cache including index.dat

Changing email to Mozilla's Thunderbird and the browser to Mozilla's new FireFox can help reduce invasions of junk and nuisances at least in the short run. The interface will not cause too many adjustments. Although Mozilla products are much improved, read the install readme in order to upgrade from previous versions.

Oh, almost forgot, Google's Toolbar is free, simple, tidy and handy. I pulled it upward into the second row IE toolbar so that I had more screen real estate, and I removed several of the extra toolbar buttons. It has a very robust ad-blocker that has made my browsing real comfortable -- almost old fashioned. Used with the free version of ZoneAlarm, nuisance advertising becomes a non-issue -- almost. Google may in integrating additional security features into their add-on strategy because there are murmers that Google is acquiring operating code.

On a 98 system, these procedures can slow the booting and execution a noticeable 10% or more. With 256RAM and up, any newer Windows sytem will be transparently stronger. If you do have enough RAM [ !!!! ] XP manages resident programs much much better than ol' Windows. Be generously safe and install all these links. You can spend one session per week to make sure everything is cleaned up plus be safer with the real-time scanning, blocking and filtering preventing stuff from getting into your computer in the first place.

Social & ecological wireless

wifinetnews.com: "The CUWiN project wants to allow self-forming, noncentralized, mesh-based Wi-Fi networks using standard old PCs with no configuration. Slightly more advanced units could be ruggedized boxes using Compact Flash, but the basic unit would be a 486 or later PC with a bootable CD-ROM or bootable floppy that bootstraps a CD-ROM. Once booted, a unit finds other similar units without any other configuration or control and forms a mesh. To test their current software, they put together a bunch of old Pentium 133-based system with off-the-shelf Wi-Fi gear, burned CD-ROMs, booted the boxes and watched the mesh network form within five minutes."

Following MIT's lead...

Utah State University’s Open Learning Support: a free and open resource for faculty, students, and self-learners around the world.

DLL source files

Free-Dynamic Link Library
DLL World -- dll database
Another DLL Files site
And another DLL Storage Site
DLL section at Top File
DLLStar site
Internet Helps DLL's
UFO DLL section
VB Runtime DLLs)
Microsoft's VB Runtime DLLs
Windrivers - Windows Device Drivers Website)
DriverZone Website
Driverguide -- Drivers, Resources & Utilities
Driverguide login
MrDriver
Drivershq site

Open Source search engine...

mozdex.com is a search engine seeded from the dmoz.org directory. mozDex uses open source search technologies to create an open and fair index. Our goal is to index the entire web in html content. We want to be able to provide a powerful and open search service to the community. Proprietary systems have already been done. We are here to utilize open technologies and open source to build an index that doesn't use proprietary software, processes or algorithms. Freedom of information and how that information gets to you is what mozdex is about.

List of XP sites...

accesscomm.ca/gbraun Guessing which Windows XP sites are actually worthwhile can be a chore. Instead of picking the treasure out of the garbage manually, A Faster, Better Behaved Windows XP has a helpful list of sites and tips that will come in handy. Best of all, it's organized on one page. Say goodbye to mindless link clicking. [from Lockergnome]

Free email encryption...

bytefusion.com: "Crypto Anywhere is small enough to fit on a single floppy or USB key chain drive and is very easy to use. Don't have a computer yourself but want to protect your web based e-mail at your local internet cafe? Crypto Anywhere is for you! If you suspect your employer is reading your private email, put an end to that. If you run Crypto Anywhere from a floppy disk or USB drive, you can encrypt your email without even installing software on your workstation. With Crypto Anywhere you can send and receive secure mail to and from anyone with an email account - the recipients do not have to be 'crypto savvy' or even have Crypto Anywhere themselves."

Gmail email tweak...

Gmail Gems Weblog for learning more about how to best use Gmail. You're one of the Gmail testers and you want more bang for the buck, eh? Try these tips on for size.

Gmail filters can separate mails sent to name+someword@gmail.com and name+anotherword@gmail.com.

Two examples:
1.Give your Gmail address to Amazon and Ebay as

name+amazon@gmail.com and name+ebay@gmail.com respectively

and subsequently filter the mails from Amazon and Ebay.

2. Make special address like name+love+special+somebody@gmail.com for that Special Somebody to write you.

salon.com: "From punch cards to Linux, hackers love to tinker and share. Even Bill Gates can't stop them."

This is an excellent article outlining the development of the PC and the attitudes of early builders and 'true' hackers. It's not about name dropping and making industrial celebrities.