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And why is it taking up space on the Web?

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I'm Jerry Maizell, computer columnist for the Near North News (NNN).

NNN is the largest paid circulation newspaper in Chicago's most prestigious community. It has been published weekly, by the same management, continuously for 43 years, under the watchful eye of editor and publisher, Arnie Matanky.

Not one to bend to passing fads, fancies or trends, Matanky hews to the traditional concept of a newspaper, packing more news in this small weekly than many large dailies do in their weighty volumes. My column, titled simply Computing , is an exception to the rule, proffering my opinions and prejudices on the PC technologies, hardware and software, happenings, events and controversies, that strike my fancy.

While I can't say there's been an overwhelming demand for an archive of my blathering, I've been asked sufficiently often for copies of earlier columns, both by vendors of reviewed products and by users, that I felt it a permissable utilization of a few bits of bandwidth to prepare this silo for those wishing, for whatever reasons, to voluntarily corner themselves with my commentaries. For the sake of history (surely too weighty a word for such light writings; I'm reminded of Kafka's story of the man whose coal bucket was so light he flew on it like a magic carpet over the houses of Prague), I will restrain the impulse to re-edit the columns, except for a few grammatical incongruities that even I cannot abide to have repeated, and which must have slipped through the proofreader's sieve while he was paying attention to important things.

Responsibility for errors and omissions, of course, is mine alone.

As for my qualifications to pronounce on the subjects covered, I can offer up only my limited education (which, to employ Dylan Thomas's phrase, "my critics say I have not got"); and years of struggle with these bewildering, bewitching, and often besotting boxes of technicityhoodness. A struggle that, perhaps, we may not be destined to win.

So, here's me, and here 'tis, for whomever falls into this cyber-abyss to make something of, or, of course, nothing.