"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"

The Back Page

About This Month's Authors
Not Linux

About This Month's Authors

Marius Andreiana

Marius is 20 years old, student in the second year at Politehnica Bucharest, Romania and working as a web developer. Besides Linux, he also loves music (from rock to dance), dancing, having fun, spending time with friends. He is interested also in science in general (and that quantum spooky connection :)

Bryan Brunton

With a degree in philosophy and as a reformed Visual Basic programmer, Bryan Brunton is a software engineer who wants to work with whatever tools allow him to never again use pointers while remaining platform agnostic.

Shane Collinge

Part computer programmer, part cartoonist, part Mars Bar. At night, he runs around in a pair of colorful tights fighting criminals. During the day... well, he just runs around. He eats when he's hungry and sleeps when he's sleepy.

Matteo Dell'Omodarme

I'm a student at the University of Pisa and a Linux user since 1994. Now I'm working on the administrations of Linux boxes at the Astronomy section of the Department of Physics, with special experience about security. My primary email address is .

Chris Gibbs

I'm a mad, sad geek with three dogs, a network and a cat living on top of a mountain in a Welsh valley. So I'm a contradiction! All that is good is either caffine, chocolate or Linux, so send me lots of chocolate or just point me at more great stuff to run on a salvaged 486!

Mark Nielsen

Mark works at ZING (www.genericbooks.com) and GNUJobs.com. Previously, Mark founded The Computer Underground. Mark works on non-profit and volunteer projects which promote free literature and software. To make a living, he recruits people for GNU related jobs and also provides solutions for web/database problems using Linux, FreeBSD, Apache, Zope, Perl, Python, and PostgreSQL.

Ben Okopnik

A cyberjack-of-all-trades, Ben wanders the world in his 38' sailboat, building networks and hacking on hardware and software whenever he runs out of cruising money. He's been playing and working with computers since the Elder Days (anybody remember the Elf II?), and isn't about to stop any time soon.

Kapil Sharma

Kapil is a Linux and Internet security consultant. He has been working on various Linux/Unix systems and Internet Security for more than 2 years. He maintains a web site (http://linux4biz.net) for providing free as well as commercial support for web, Linux and Unix solutions.

Irving Washington

Irving Washington (pseud.), as witnessed by his personal server www.fifthgate.org, is mostly interested in creating useful web services.

Not Linux

Here are some screenshots of lesser-known features of Microsoft Office. made the last one. Neither of us know where the other three came from.

[Word menu with options for 'Read Boss's Mind', 'Adjust Subordinate's Attitude', etc.]

[Office Assistant that looks like a superhero dog offering to hump your leg, chase a car or shit on the carpet.]

[Default Settings dialog with options to crash every 2 hours, create incredibly large files, and to disable the ability to type during auto saves.]

[The ever-helpful Office Assistant says, 'It looks like you're writing a suicide note! Office Assistant can help you write your suicide note. First, tell us how you plan to kill yourself. Pills, Jump, Pastry?']

We have changed the Linux Gazette logo at the top of the page to an 8K PNG image for your fast-downloading pleasure. Thanks to for the suggestion and the image. Here is also a small version (200 pixels wide) for those who want an icon on their site to link to LG site with.

Happy Linuxing!

Michael Orr
Editor, Linux Gazette,