A critical factor in its success was that the X developers were willing to give the sources away for free in accordance with the hacker ethic, and able to distribute them over the Internet.

In early 1993, a hostile observer might have had grounds for thinking that the Unix story was almost played out, and with it the fortunes of the hacker tribe.

Linux evolved in a completely different way. From nearly the beginning, it was rather casually hacked on by huge numbers of volunteers coordinating only through the Internet.

The ARPAnet was the first transcontinental, high-speed computer network.

Thompson and Ritchie were among the first to realize that hardware and compiler technology had become good enough that an entire operating system could be written in C, and by 1978 the whole environment had been successfully ported to several machines of different types.

The beginnings of the hacker culture as we know it today can be conveniently dated to 1961, the year MIT acquired the first PDP-1.

A critical factor in its success was that the X developers were willing to give the sources away for free in accordance with the hacker ethic, and able to distribute them over the Internet.

The workstation-class machines built by Sun and others opened up new worlds for hackers.

Berkeley hackers liked to see themselves as rebels against soulless corporate empires.

For the first time, individual hackers could afford to have home machines comparable in power and storage capacity to the minicomputers of ten years earlier - Unix engines capable of supporting a full development environment and talking to the Internet.

If Unix could present the same face, the same capabilities, on machines of many different types, it could serve as a common software environment for all of them.

In the beginning, there were Real Programmers.

As a Facebook user, do I have control of the data Facebook keeps about me? Concretely: can I examine and modify that data using tools of my choosing which are built for my needs?

Does Facebook act as though I own my online life, or as though it does? Concretely: Can I control what data it shares with other users, with advertisers, and with business partners?

Does Facebook behave like a tool in my hand, or a firehose designed to spew at me in accordance with other peoples' agendas? Concretely: can I write my own client to present a filtered view of the Facebook stream, or have other people do that for me?

Money is just a way to keep score. The best people in any field are motivated by passion. That becomes more true the higher the skill level gets.

People are happiest when they're the most productive. People enjoy tasks, especially creative tasks, when the tasks are in the optimal-challenge zone: not too hard and not too easy. To some extent, that has always been true. But it becomes even more true as work becomes more about brains and creativity.

People who study primate societies make a distinction between two kinds of cultural interactions, agonic and hedonic. In agonic societies, you gain status by asserting dominance over others. In hedonic societies, you gain status by drawing attention to yourself. Open source is a hedonic culture.

When are programmers happy? They're happy when they're not underutilized - when they're not bored - and also when they're not overburdened with inappropriate specifications or meaningless bureaucracies. In other words, programmers are happiest when they're working efficiently. This is a general preference in creative work.

Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter.

Every good work of software starts by scratching a developers personal itch.

I love my DSL, but I love my WiFi more. And I probably get on the Internet 40 percent to 50 percent more because of the combination of those technologies.

I was stuck at home in bed with me and got more and more involved with the Internet. I used it to keep in contact with friends and to make sure I was up to date with everything that was going on in the world.

There's a statistical theory that if you gave a million monkeys typewriters and set them to work, they'd eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. Thanks to the Internet, we now know this isn't true.

Five or ten years ago, when it was clear the Internet was becoming a mainstream phenomenon, it was equally clear that a lot of people were being left out and could be left behind.

I got sick and tired of my lady wearing ugly underwear to bed, so I turned to the Internet.

At the bottom, the elimination of spyware and the preservation of privacy for the consumer are critical goals if the Internet is to remain safe and reliable and credible.

In my column series "The Main Thing," I often talk about how Internet technology can improve the way people communicate - both within a business and between a business and its customers and partners.

The Internet is not just one thing, it's a collection of things - of numerous communications networks that all speak the same digital language.

I don't know much about the internet, I'm afraid.

Congress will pass a law restricting public comment on the Internet to individuals who have spent a minimum of one hour actually accomplishing a specific task while on line.

The new information technology... Internet and e-mail... have practically eliminated the physical costs of communications.

Those involved in the program are interested in how to use photography, videos, the Internet, film, and anything related to communications and transmission of information in the most up-to-date modern ways.

There are some scary statistics out there: one in five kids aged 10-17 have received a sexual solicitation or approach via the Internet.

When I get back from this book tour, I'm planning to learn the internet. Maybe I can hook up in cyberspace.

You can browse to your heart's content but it's hard work and not easy on the feet unless you do it through catalogs or the Internet, and I like to touch and try on the things I buy.

I'm a babe in the woods when it comes to the Internet.

I read on the Internet that I was dead.

We are going after a targeted group of businesses that are creating opportunities for themselves using other people's property. The Internet has very little to do with this.

The Internet makes it possible for people like me to live the way I do now. Without it, I'd have to be in New York or some other city. I think the Internet is the greatest invention in history after antibiotics.

With over 1 billion users and counting worldwide, the Internet has quickly become a critical place for individuals, business communities and governments to share and distribute information.

Sooner or later the Internet will become profitable. It's an old story played before by canals, railroads and automobiles.

I don't really believe in the Devil, but if the Devil is the Father of Lies, then he certainly invented the Internet.

We'd been noticing how much more important the internet had become - once information is out there in the world now, anyone can get it. Since that was beginning to happen with the record anyway, we figured, OK, let's just stream it for free ourselves.

I think they called me the closest thing to a God of the Internet.

Well I'm a longtime AOL subscriber and I love the whole thing. I'm an email junkie and I love the internet, though 7th Heaven doesn't give me much free time to surf these days.

Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech the First Amendment protects.

Eventually, if you had a printer that is IPP compliant, that printer will have a Web address and anyone around the world who can get on the Internet can print to that URL.

The left and the right live in parallel universes. The right listens to talk radio, the left's on the Internet and they just reinforce one another. They have no sense of reality. I have now one ambition: to retire before it becomes essential to tweet.