The dot com bubble....

Watching a Frontline documentary on the Dot-com bubble has made me realize that the Dot-com bubble was quite different than what I had assumed it to be.  As a person growing up in the late 1990's, I had always assumed that the blame for the bubble bursting rested solely in the speculative nature of the consumer stock holders, but the aptly named documentary, "Dot Con," opened my eyes up to the true culprits.  Investment bankers and venture capitalists saw the excitement in the market directed at the internet industry and saw an opportunity to make a lot of money.  By pushing internet start-ups towards an IPO and then selling the stock on the first day, these investors were able to use the hype surrounding internet stocks to cash in huge amounts of money. It is quite scary how much profit was had by these companies. On another note, the crash was not as bad as I assumed, as Wikipedia states that half of these companies survived well past the bursting of the Dot-com bubble.  Avoiding rampant speculation is a new goal of mine, I don't want to be in a similar situation.

Are free open source alternatives really all that widely known among the general populous?

I recently began contemplating the influence of open source software after viewing the movie "Revolution OS."  I came to realize that while I had experience using Linux and other open source software, most of my friends had little to no experience with them.  As a Computer Science undergraduate, I have learned to use and appreciate many open source projects, but it seems that most people have not.  The example of Photoshop and GIMP came to my mind.  Ask anybody about Photoshop and they will tell you that it is a program to edit photos, but ask them about GIMP and they will likely have no idea what it is. Photoshop is maintained by Adobe and costs $700 for a full version, whereas GIMP is maintained by the open source community and costs nothing.  For the average consumer, both products can accomplish practically the same things. Why is it, then, that GIMP is not widely known and Photoshop remains the only option in the mind of the consumer?  I think that open source proponents need to be more vocal about the powerful open source options available.  I make it a goal to spread the word whenever I find useful free software. 

Protecting yourself from hackers.

I recently finished reading a captivating book on catching computer hackers called "The Cuckoo's Nest."  This non-fictional account of the endeavors of a man trying to defend his network of computers, as well as those networks connected to his network, has reminded me of the risks inherent to the public nature of the Internet. In the book, the threat of hackers connecting remotely to computers and mucking around is a real one.  Today, many of the limitations described in the book that limit the speed and effectiveness of the hacker are no longer present, and we need to be extra cautious because of it. As the Internet has progressed to be far more powerful and interconnected than the rudimentary Internet from the book, the threats everyday users face have grown continuously.
We need to reevaluate the security of our online accounts and our computer networks.  If a hacker were to intercept a password, would he be able to access your email, bank accounts, and credit card information?  I presume that most people reuse a common password for most of their online accounts.  Have you considered the implications of this practice?  Protecting our computers and our online information is much like protecting our homes.  We need to make sure that we are the only person who has the key and we need to be vigilant to notice any anomalies.
For more information on protecting our online presence, I recommend visiting the Internet Safety Wiki and reading articles of this nature.