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Had a fun Skype conference call with Carl Franklin and Dan Appleman tonight.  Dan's the Morpheus of our time.  Back in the VB3 to VB6 days, the first thing that a developer learned was that they were in the Matrix.  Visual Basic was the Matrix, and it's job was to hide the details of COM from us.  You could either take the blue pill and accept the Binary Compatibility radio buttons were a lie, or you could take the red pill and call Dan Appleman to pick up a VBX or OCX and start cracking Window messages and goofing with the message pump.  Dan and his contemporaries led opened the eyes of a whole generation of Visual Basic programmer.

Dan also mentions his upcoming book: Always Use Protection: A Teen's Guide to Safe Computing.

He makes some great points about the special needs that Teens have while surfing the 'net.  Teens are more likely to install multiple chat clients on their boxes and keep them open all the time or running automatically.  They are more prone to identity theft by other teens. He explores issues around Anti-Virus Software, spyware and malware and how Teens can protect themselves.  Since Teens are often the most technologically savvy amongst us, I think that Dan's message will hit the right ears.