Computers, Web & Electronic Privacy

• The Hackable Devices projet on Open Source objects.
• Pierre Barbaud, the inventor of algorithmic music.
• The Turing Archives for the history of computing.
• The Human Interface site: JefRaskin.com Jef Raskin is the author of The Humane Interface (2000) Addison-Wesley, and, among other things, the inventor of the click and drag (with the computer mouse).
• Roland Moreno the inventor of the memory card.
• A few sites on the history of computers: the National Museum of Computing is dedicated to the first computer, the Colossus, the design of which is explained in the article by Tommy Flowers, The design of Colossus, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing (1983) vol 5, 239-252. DOI This AMS page gives an account on the initial codebreaking works by Marian Rejewski.
  This site is on the portable Curta calculator.
• The Tor project website. Tor was originally designed as a third-generation onion routing project of the U.S. Office of Naval Research Tor is now a free software and an open network that helps you to defend personal freedom, privacy, confidentiality of business activities and connections on the internet.
  You can help the Tor network in several ways. The best and straight way is to donate bandwidth and run a Tor relay
  Once Tor is running, you can torify Mozilla Thunderbird by using the Foxyproxy addon configured to use a SOCKS v5 proxy at 127.0.0.1 port 9050.
  Tails is a live operating system, that can be installed on either a CD or a USB flash drive. Tails relies on Tor for protecting online privacy, i.e., all outgoing internet connections are forced to go through Tor.
  The confidentiality of connections can be insured with OpenVPN, a free and open source software application which implements secure and private virtual networks.
  The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Electronic Privacy Information Center websites provide detailed accounts on the issues of privacy and confidentiality.
• The Software Protection Initiative is issuing the Lightweight Portable Security (LPS) operating system, based on Linux, which can be installed on a CD or a USB flash drive. This light bootable system allows to securely browse the internet and connect to a remote network. This software is regularly updated.
• Diaspora is an open source alternative to Facebook, that respects privacy. A complete list of open source alternatives to fb is given by the Free Software Foundation
• Privacy Box provides non-tracked, encrypted and anonymous contact forms.
• Enigmail is an email plugin for Mozilla Thunderbird and Seamonkey that allows to send and receive messages encrypted with OpenPGP.
• Jitsi is an open source VoIP and video conferencing software, which supports various protocols and networks: XMPP, SIP, AIM, ICQ, GoogleTalk, Yahoo Messenger, MSN, etc. All communications are encrypted by either SRTP, ZRTP or SDES depending on the protocol and network.
  Zfone is a VoIP phone software for encrypting phone calls. Its principal designer, Phil Zimmermann, is the creator of the famous and useful encryption program: PGP (a non-encrypted e-mail has the same level of confidentiality as a postcard).
  Ekiga is an open source VoIP and video conferencing software. These phone calls can be encrypted using Zfone
  Simon Singh's Code Book is an interesting introduction to the history of cryptography and code breaking.
• My first computer, in 1982, a Tandy (Radio Shack) TRS 80, Model III. This site is for geeks nostalgic of this computer.
• The Apache HTTP Server Tutorials are very useful for managing your own web site.
• Pour les francophones : AlsacréationS est une communauté dédiée à la conception/création de sites internet conformes aux standards du World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Ce site contient des tutoriels très intéressants.

Linux

Since 1997, I'm mainly using Linux as Operating System. Linux is a Unix-type OS, running on PC, Macintosh, and other systems. As Linux is developed under the GNU General Public License, its source code is freely available to everyone, so that occuring bugs are quickly spotted and corrected.
Linux is now very easy to install and update. Furthermore, most Linux versions, called distributions, have a live CD/USB flash drive version, so that you can try several versions before installing the one you prefer on your computer
The choice of a particular version is a simple subjective question of tastes and habits.

• Major Linux distributions include openSUSE Linux, Ubuntu Linux and its variant Kubuntu Linux with the KDE environment, Debian GNU/Linux, gNewSense, Red Hat Linux Linux can also be downloaded from the Linux Kernel Archive. Some distributions are 100% free
  Linux for Power PC is the Linux kernel running on a PowerPC processor. This site contains also links to Linux distributions for Macintoshs.
  Further information on Linux can be found on the following sites: the Linux Foundation, the Linux Documentation Project, the ibiblio linux archive and the Linux Kernel archives, and the Linux Journal
• The Lightweight Portable Security (LPS) is a light Linux OS that can be installed on either a CD or a USB flash stick that allows to securely browse the internet and connect to a remote network.
• Tails is a live operating system based on Debian Linux, that can be installed on either a CD or a USB flash drive. Tails relies on Tor for insuring your online privacy.
• Cygwin is a GNU Linux-like environment for Windows.

Free Software

The number of Free software packages is growing exponentially, so that one can use them for a large number of purposes. Furthermore, they allow to ensure the privacy of personal and private data. Here are a few websites on GNU, Free Software and Open Source software packages (see also the logos in the margin of this page):

• The Free Software Directory is a repository of free softwares with free documentation, managed by the Free Software Foundation
• The GNU Project (GNU is a recursive acronym for GNU is Not Unix!).
• The GNU Press (published documentation), and a directory of Free Books, i.e., released under a free documentation licence, from other publishers than the Free Software Foundation
• The Open Source Initiative website.
• The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure
• Fractint: a free software for generating fractals.
• The GIMP, i.e., the GNU Image Manipulation Program, is a powerful free software for handling pictures.
• Jarnal for annotating PDF files, taking notes, etc. Very useful for editing documents.
• Code::Blocks is a free and open source integrated development environment for C++ programming.
• Some of these softwares have a portable version that could be run on a external portable device, i.e., USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive, etc. These versions could be downloaded from the PortableApps.com website.