I never bought DRM music so I'm not going to buy DRM books. I always bought the CDs and ripped the music in a friendly non-DRM format. Now, for books, I'll just scan each of my books into a friendly non-DRM format--one page at a time. That'll show the book publishers that their DRM can't affect my life!

It's definitely not new, but Unreal Tournament 2004 is available for Linux. Unreal Tournament 3 is still under development--very slowly.

I don't think the '90s qualify as the "early days" in reference to coding. When I think early days, I think '50s-'60s--others may think of something even earlier. If you are just referring to the commercial Internet, then the '90s could be considered the early days. But not for coding in general.

Getty-Dubay is the way to go. I learned penmanship in the late seventies. I was taught the "ball and stick" method for print and a version of the Palmer method for cursive (lots of loops). Taking notes in college was a struggle. I wrote faster in cursive but with all the loops, it became illegible pretty fast. I got Getty and Dubay's book Write Now and that changed everything. They use the "Italic" method which goes back to Michelangelo and Davinci. It has a very classic look. Italic is much easier and more natural to use. I highly recommend it.

"We want to know whether the universe simply happens to be what it is for no reason or whether there is a power behind it that makes it what it is. Since that power, if it exists, would be not one of the observed facts but a reality which makes them, no mere observation of the facts can find it."

--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, bk. 1, ch. 4, par. 3-4