If I say Linus and you say Charlie Brown, you’re probably not a hard-core computer geek. If I say Linus and you think Linus Torvalds, the inventor of the free version of Unix, known as Linux, you’ll be delighted to hear that Torvalds, the current top-seeded Geek of the Week a la Bill Gates and Mark Andreessen, will address the April 19 Comdex computer show at McCormick Place.
The 27-year-old wannabe Windows killer from Finland plans to regale listeners with how offering Linux for free has won almost 17 percent of the world’s networking software business away from Microsoft.
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PUSHY ADVERTISING
YOU’VE GOT PORN
Playboy Enterprises Inc. lawyers have dragged the Netscape and Excite Internet search engine companies into court complaining that when customers type the word “Playboy” as a search term, the Netscape and Excite software calls up hits showing sites that mention the word Playboy and also advertising banners touting other soft-core/hard-core services whose owners pay for the keyword-triggered pop-up exposure.
Memo to the Hefners: When you get tossed out of court, you can always buy an ad.
SIZZLING STACKS
ONE DIGITAL DILLY
Bravo to the Library of Congress for “Eyes of the Nation,” the first of what promises to be a long string of CD-ROMs packed with digitized versions of the venerable institution’s most awesome holdings–everything from Matthew Brady photos of Abe Lincoln to a letter from Chris Columbus bragging about how he spent his 1492 summer vacation (www.southpeak.com/reference/).
Make sure you’ve got a free evening the first time you use this $40 treasure. With a stunning 3,000 of the library’s most valuable graphics, photos, maps, posters, manuscripts, movie clips and such, bet you can’t click just once.
PROMISE ‘EM ANYTHING
BUT HOLD THE E-MAIL
New woes for honchos. What if your worker bees send out e-mail promising something you can’t, won’t or dare not deliver? Terry F. Moritz, head of litigation for tech-minded law firm Goldberg, Kohn, Bell, Black, Rosenbloom and (yes) Moritz Ltd., warns that courts may soon rule that an e-mail tossed off in the trenches by and underling might carry the same weight as a signed contract.
Y2KORNER
TICK2K TOCK2K
Sure you’re worried about the Millennium Bug, but do you know exactly how long it is until the last tick of 1999 gives way to the first tock of 2000? Point your browser to Mitch Ratcliffe’s constantly up-to-date Year 2000 site for Ziff Davis Net (www.zdy2k.com) for a running countdown by the second from the government’s most decidedly Y2K-compliant cesium clocks.