You already know I'm on a quixotic mission to get people, especially progressive activists to actually try the great noncommercial software that we should be using instead of the corporate stuff.

Today's riff is a little piece on how to scrub a hard drive before you get rid of it, without spending money (or risking your security) on trade secret computer software. It's in the CNet help forum, which I suspect gets more traffic than progressive political weblogs.

We scrub the drive with a utility program that comes with all Linux distributions. So we begin by making a bootable CD with Damn Small Linux on it. For people who already know how to burn a CD, that's pretty easy. I put that part in a similar piece on my Windoze monopoly blog. Damn Small Linux can also be installed on a USB flash drive, but I don't go into that.

The point being, don't just preach to the choir. Outreach means talking to people you never talked to before. There's a gazillion fora out there where you can sneak in a reference (with a link) in passing. But don't just junk them up with off-topic stuff; that's rude. The piece I posted is on-topic where I posted it.

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