During the past year, the scientists in Humorix's Vast Research Lab Of Doom have studied the behavior and attitude of the typical Windows and Linux user. They have found that the average Linux user goes through ten stages of development from a "Microserf" to an "Enlightened Linux User". An eleventh stage, "Getting A Life", has also been observed, but only on extremely rare occasions.

One of the founding fathers of "free software" and an esteemed elder of the hacking community, Richard Stallman has made defending people's freedoms his life's work. That usually means supplying hackers with software and attacking copyright law. But as he tells Michael Reilly, his advocacy of personal freedoms extends to the protection of true democracy and of the human rights increasingly being trampled on in the US and elsewhere.