Netscape's Hail Mary

Jamie Zawinski had already toiled at two failed start-ups by the time he went to work for Netscape in 1994. Finally, he figured, things would be different. "These guys are going to be so rich, it's not funny," he believed. Not that Zawinski cared about money. Though Silicon Valley is supposed to be the new Hollywood for programmers, where ambitious code-writing kids slave at start-ups with every expectation of retiring by supper, Zawinski is a hacker of the old school. He has always aspired to something grander: to change the world. At the top of his resume, he'd carefully spelled it...