On Food, Software Licence and Extinction by Starvation

In this collection of parables on free software, the first parable related to food struck a cord within me. For one, the food, or in broader sense anything we can acquire and consume, by virtue of the process we obtained them (i.e. bought the food to be cooked and eaten), should be considered already our own.This article won't discuss the difference and issues between the proprietary/closed source solutions and free and open source ones, it's already been discussed to death since the last quarter of the 20th century. In this article we discuss the issues on free and open source software licences (that's spelled with a 'c' rather than 's', I'll stick to real English on this one), particularly between the GNU General Public License (hereafter to be referred to as simply GPL) and the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), making it simpler when analogized with food preparation.

What a Tablet Computer Could and Should Be

With all the hype over Apple's iPad and the feasibility of having your own custom-made touchscreen tablet computer, I think we deserve a better user experience of how we can acquire and interact with a touchscreen tablet computer (which from here onwards we will refer to as tablet computers to save on tongue twisting effort). We will not discuss the usual desirables, like durable and eco-friendly parts and components, fast responding user interface, smooth graphics, and high fidelity (that's oldspeak for hi-fi) sound, they should be standard features.

Below is a list of proposed improvements every tablet computer could and should have:

• Have Dvorak keyboard layout as option
• Make Internet access via Wi-fi AND Bluetooth easy
• Fast, compact, standard compliant web browser
• Open standard video and audio support
• Text-to-speech book and news reader built-in
• Must be social network agnostic
• Interface port
• No cellular phone capability
• Use BSD operating system instead

Below are the rationale for the proposals we have above.