+ Join Email List (+)
+ Blog (+)
+ Windows
+ Tips
+ Wintips Archives
+ Internet
+ Useful Websites
+ Interesting Websites
+ NetHack
+ Dvorak Keyboard
+ Anki
The Technical Geekery is an organization dedicated to providing help, tips, programs, and other information about computers. I also post whatever other things I feel like posting. If you're having a computer problem, feel free to send me an email, and if I'm feeling benevolent I'll try to help you. If you find incorrect information, broken links, or grammatical errors, I want to hear about it. You can find contact information at the bottom of this page.
Email List
I send an email to my list when I update my blog or newsletter, add a new feature, or encounter technical difficulties with the website (which hopefully won't happen). If you want to add yourself to the list, go here (link opens in new window). You need to log in with your Google account to do this, so if you don't want to connect it with your Google account or if you have problems subscribing this way, send me an email and I'll add you.
Announcements
- After a brief downtime for server maintenance, all service should now be restored.
- I have added the NetHack page. More edits to that page will definitely be coming.
Most of my content will include one of the following statements; technical documentation and programs should use the second, while blog entries and non-technical items should use the first. Unless a page specifically notes something different, pages without one of these statements should be considered as belonging to the appropriate one.
I use the following two statements:
Copyright 2010 Soren Bjornstad.
Verbatim copying and redistribution of part or all of this work
is permitted, provided this notice is preserved.
Copyright 2010 Soren Bjornstad, www.thetechnicalgeekery.com.
Modification and redistribution of part or all of this work is permitted,
provided the original source is properly cited.
("Work" may be replaced with
"article", "program", etc., as appropriate, "cited" may be replaced
with "credited", and the link may or may not be present, depending on
circumstances).Verbatim copying and redistribution of part or all of this work
is permitted, provided this notice is preserved.
Copyright 2010 Soren Bjornstad, www.thetechnicalgeekery.com.
Modification and redistribution of part or all of this work is permitted,
provided the original source is properly cited.
Using Content from this Site: If you want to use something, you may grab it or an excerpt from it (and if said license permits it, modify it), the only condition being that you leave the notice or a citation in the final work.
If you made a verbatim copy of an entire post and are simply redistributing it, simply leave the notice at the end of the post. If you copied part or all of the post and are using it as part of a larger work, include the notice somewhere and make it clear that that section goes with that notice. If what you want is missing the notice, simply copy and paste the appropriate one from this page and include it.
If you have modified a work (one using the second license), simply cite the original page in the final work. This can be done in some sort of formal manner, or simply by including a line such as "This work is based on documentation by Soren Bjornstad, found at www.thetechnicalgeekery.com/foo/bar." (Of course, replace /foo/bar with the actual URL.)
If you wish to use content in a way in which including the notice would be impractical or too much to ask, feel free to send me an email and ask my permission.
The rationale behind the difference between the two licenses is that programs are, by their nature, things that can be usefully modified; I may find a program that does nearly everything I want, except it's missing one feature. If I am permitted to modify the program, I can simply add that feature. If I want, I can also send my change to the author or publish my change with the thought that others might find it useful as well. If I'm not permitted to change it, I have to write the entire program over again, which is not only mindless work and a waste of time, but error-prone as well--if there's already perfectly good, debugged code for me, why should I need to write and debug it again? Technical documentation is similar; for instance, if I modify a program, I need to be able to change its manual as well, or the manual will be useless. Similarly, if I have an error in my directions for how to secure Windows, I'm hurting everybody by not allowing someone else to grab my documentation, point out that I have an error, and republish it.
On the other hand, blog posts represent my opinion; it's not right for someone to take my blog post, switch things around, and represent me as saying something I did not. However, I'm perfectly happy to let people copy the post or excerpts from it. As for attribution, it would also be wrong for someone to take my blog post, make a verbatim copy, and claim that they wrote it.
If you're interested in the idea of open source code and so-called free software, I highly recommend Richard Stallman's Free Software, Free Society, which considers not only this problem but a wide variety of copyright, patent, and other rights issues we are encountering in the modern world. It is available as a free PDF download (or as a real book) here. (UPDATE: They're busy making a second edition, and links seem to be broken at the moment. I'll let you know when things improve. I have the first edition available for download here, and yes, it's legal.)
I considered Creative Commons licenses, but I decided against it (for now at least) because, although they may legally be stronger, nobody really knows what the heck something like "Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike" means. I'm also considering the GNU GPL for future programs, but have not done that yet.
![Contact Information (webmaster[REMOVE_THIS_BEFORE_SENDING]@thetechnicalgeekery.com](Email.png)