This one is about software patents, and what I think about them. (Basically, I don't think too much of them.) I stop short of saying it shouldn't be possible to patent technologies in software at all; instead I call for reform of the patent system. A good idea, but maybe a little too timid to be really interesting to read about. I do think that, overall, my writing has improved over the years a great deal.

Another article on Apple, hot on the heels of one where I praised their strategy, only this time I'm a little mystified. I'd just got back from MacWorld Expo 2001 and I wasn't really sure what I was seeing there. I guess that, overall, I was disappointed because I didn't see Apple making any great leaps and strides in the year to come. Pretty much, they were going to have to struggle like everybody else.

I've mentioned before that I hate the idea of everything being subsidized by advertising. I want to feel like a person can walk down a street in the United States and not be inundated by product marketing. But what are the alternatives? I feel like the idea of "micropayments" isn't likely to work out. Here I explore how it might work with an alternate method — subscriptions.

Napster was pretty much a doomed idea from the beginning. Nobody could deny that its popularity came from trading copyrighted materials. The company was doomed; it was only a matter of time. But for a while, at least, it seemed like indie sites running on the Napster protocol might pick up the slack.

This has to be one of the top questions I'm asked repeatedly: Why does my DSL service suck so bad? The answer, basically, is that you aren't paying for it. The money the telcos ask you for DSL service doesn't cover their costs — at least, not enough to give you customer service too. The result? Everyone wants broadband, but DSL companies keep going out of business, mostly because the Baby Bells still have an unfair advantage.

You hear a lot these days about how open source software means better security. Provided the software is well-written to begin with, keeping the source open means anybody can find and fix bugs and security breaches. To some governments, however, it goes beyond that. They thing open source is the key not just to software security, but to national security.

I hate the idea of censorship. It's been constantly thrown in my face since before I was legally able to vote, back when Tipper Gore's PMRC was slapping labels on records and the Dead Kennedeys broke up due to legal pressure over a poster insert in one of their albums. So you can bet I wasn't too pleased with the movement from government to filter the Internet, again in the name of "protecting the children."

I still think of this as one of my most important articles. A number of my friends have been stricken with severe Repeat Stress Injuries from working on computers. And yet, because of the fast-paced, high-pressure nature of their careers, they keep working, compounding their injuries. I really hope some people read this article and think more carefully about their work habits.

Boy, all us geeks sure loved Kozmo.com while it was still around. If it's already faded from memory, this was the site that let you order a bag of chips and a DVD and have them delivered to your house within the hour. But whoever thought that would actually work? The business model just doesn't make sense. But I swear the title isn't a pun on a John Boorman film — or if it is, it's certainly not a reference to Kozmo's employees or investors!

Digital data preservation is still an idea that I find fascinating. The genesis of this article was when I heard an interview on National Public Radio with the author of a book on archiving in the digital age. His claim: that the digital revolution was causing more data extinction than preservation.

A lot of people complain that we're way behind the rest of the world in some areas of technology, particularly mobile phones. Both Europe and Asia pack way more features into their phone networks than we do, for various technical reasons. Gadget-happy geeks are always clamoring for us to catch up. The thing is, studies here have shown that most average Americans aren't even interested in tiny Asian-style handsets, let alone the so-called "wireless Web."

Here's a pattern that continues to this day. Software companies are always updating their software, irrespective of whether or not their users actually want an upgrade. As more and more users grow complacent about the next rev of the software they use, software makers are turning to different tactics, like licenses that actually require you to use the latest version, whether you think you need it or not.

Call me a complete nerd, but I've lately developed a fascination for databases and database software. So I was fairly excited when I heard that Red Hat would be coming to market with their own version of the PostgreSQL open source database. Since this column ran, however, Red Hat has backed away considerably from this product. Rumor has it that this is in response to pressure from Oracle, which is interested in the success of Linux, but not at its own expense.

Transmeta hated me for writing that their chips weren't particularly powerful and weren't particularly popular. They've kept me on their frequent press release list ever since then. But I maintain I wasn't wrong; at the time, Transmeta was banking on "tablet PCs" to drive the market for its new processors, and that still hasn't happened. AMD still seems to be doing well, though.

It was about this time that the question(s) of copyrights really started coming to the fore of tech industry press. This article is about the case of Dmitry Sklyarov, who was jailed for explaining how to defeat the encryption on Adobe's eBook file format at a conference. As of the end of 2002, a large number of activists are still trying to reverse some of the overly draconian copyright legislation in the U.S., such as the DMCA.

In hindsight, this article seems a little paranoid, and there hasn't been much talk of McAfee monopolizing the antivirus software market since then. At the time, though, it had come to light that McAfee held certain patents that might have let it corner the market on any kind of automated system maintenance software. This kind of thing is still a threat under today's intellectual property laws. This article is also the first one where I use subheads — which I think is an improvement.

Miguel de Icaza and his open source software company, Ximian, still impress me. I think they have the right idea about how to compete for a piece of Microsoft's market using open source software. Like some guys at Apple before him, de Icaza thinks user interface is key. Since this article was written, he's also begun work on a project to port Microsoft's .Net development environment to Linux.

Almost immediately after the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington D.C. on September 11, 2001, talk began about what role the Internet might have played. Bin Laden, it was said, was using the Internet to send messages. Terrorists could use the Internet to find plans and find out weaknesses in potential targets, like dams and nuclear power plants. Talk about filtering the Internet and taking down online content reached a fever pitch. The whole thing sounded like a big mistake to me.

We're used to thinking of Microsoft as a software monopoly these days. But have you ever stopped to think about the possibility of Microsoft leveraging its power in the software market to become an altogether larger and more threatening monopoly? Already it produces not just operating systems, but digital media formats, set-top boxes, handhelds, game devices ... all it needs to do is become the primary provider of content for all these systems, and it'll be bigger than Disney ever was. And it's already making moves in that direction.

The raw, unbridled, self-serving arrogance of some people just sickens me. Take, for example, Scott McNealy and Larry Ellison. Both didn't wait very long after September 11 to start proposing "solutions" to the terrorism problem that would benefit their companies — and their own pocketbooks — far more than the American people. But what does a police state matter to some of the richest men (or ghouls, if you prefer) in the world?

My interest in technology journalism reaches beyond just computers, though computers and the Internet are obviously my primary field of expertise. For this article, though, I thought I would try a little experiement, and do some legwork to find out exactly what we knew about the anthrax terrorism threat that was going on at the time, and how we could do something about it. I'd still like to branch out away from computers and into more "straight" science writing.

I never really had much of an appreciation of how involved the U.S. military was with computer technology until I attended a conference in Washington, D.C. and heard some of the government's plans for the future of warfare. I was so intrigued by it that I banged out this article on a pad of paper during the plane ride back to California. I still think it's one of the best, most enjoyable reads I've produced — but I got some flak from readers for having "turned warmonger" following September 11. Whatever.

Well, as of October, 2002, Microsoft's XBox still hasn't flopped. A lot of gamers like it, in fact, or so I'm told. But if Microsoft thought it was going to come storming out of the gates and take over the home gaming market as easily as it's dominated PC operating systems, it needed to think again. Sony and Nintendo both remain strong, respected contendors. So far as I know, the XBox is still costing Microsoft money, and unless it can capitalize on the hardware in a big way in the near future, it's only a matter of time before it fades into bad decision history.

I've remained fascinated by the rest of the world's reaction to the Internet and computing technology in general. Computers are fundamentally a Western invention, right down to the ASCII character set that presupposes a language that uses Roman characters. The rest of the world is catching up, however. Based on population alone, it seems inevitable that the Internet will one day become predominantly a Chinese phenomenon. But sadly, the actions of over-protected governments too often trip up progress.