Tsikbal: from my perspective

You know trademark law is taken out of context when  anyone can make this use of it . That BSA(Boy Scouts of America) can force Hacker Scouts to change its name, or face legal consequences because BSA holds the trademark on the world Scout. It's quite offensive that anyone can deny the use of a word because of trademark. Specially in cases like this one, mainly because BSA is denying the use of the word Scout without a reasonable explanation on why Hacker Scouts are infringing on their trademark. Besides, Hacker Scouts aren't some shady organization. What they do something beneficial for both society and the individual, by giving kids the skills to help be better prepared to face the world or simply enjoy it more. They job is a great way to introduce kids to the world of technology in a collaborative way, while using open source methods. I believe that we need more people that work like Hacker Scouts do, because do all of a great service in our way to make a better socie...

It's rather surprising how many people lose their sense of wonder, and just stop asking questions about the world around them. They seem contempt to just cruise by, without wanting to know more about whatever they come across. Some even feel threaten by anyone wanting to know more, even if the answers to the questions being ask could be beneficial to everybody. Many fear that knowing how something works would make it less wonderful, that by the act of knowing you take value away. Knowing the inner workings of something would make it less marvelous, that it would make it less worthy in their eyes. I don't agree at all with that at all, knowing actually makes things more wonderful. The fact that we know more about something doesn't take away, but adds to it. That we know more, means that we've more to wonder about. Knowledge about the universe we live in, not only our world, makes for a more wonderful and magnificent place. That hunger of knowing how things w...

One of the good things that came from what was leaked Edward Snowden, is that security protocols and standards are being checked for flaws and vulnerabilities. Some have been found, no doubt more will come in time, with steps being taken fix them. With all the work being done to tighten security, and people being more aware about the importance of securing their systems to protect their privacy, it's important to keep an eye on that work so that their information is safe and their privacy respected. The importance of security protocols and standards are paramount on both cases, and thus the work to harden them is vital. That's why there is a need to have them developed in an open way, so that they can be constantly checked and improved by as a large a community as possible. They will never be completely fool proof, but the open development can help to minimize the risk by allowing patches to be submitted sooner later later. With more of our lives taking place on th...

I've thinking about getting a tablet, yet I don't really think that it would be all that useful for me. My needs are better covered by the laptop smartphone combo, and tablets don't really fit my needs. When sitting at home, the laptop computer is a lot better for me. I still use the keyboard a lot to write both on my blog or emails. While on the go, the smartphone fits my needs since it allows me to write short messages, share photos or short thoughts in a more practical way for me. The combination of computer, smartphone and tablet is still rather dependent on how do you access information and if you need to create things using a computer. What any person should get is dependent on what they are going to do with those devices, since that device needs to conform to what that person needs to do with it. What most people will have in common in most cases, is that we all are going to be using smartphones while on the go since they are the most convenient way to a...

While I was reading this  article at Ars Technica , I couldn't help but to feel a bit of sadness and nostalgia. I really liked Nokia's mobile phones, and I had high hopes for their Symbian OS. By the time they released the N8 smartphone with  Symbian ^ 3  on it, I was really hopeful about the OS. Another thing I really liked, was that Nokia had open sourced Symbian and that made it an option for me. The idea that my favorite mobile brand used an open sourced OS was very appealing, since I enjoyed using it. I would loved to see Nokia throwing it's weight behind Symbian, so that by now there would be two open source mobile operating systems at the market. The other being Android, which has matured a lot since it was released. In a way, I'd have loved to see Nokia adopting Android when it stop using Symbian on their smartphones. In that case, I would still be on Nokia's field. In many ways, I felt betrayed when by the switch to Windows. Ever since they did so, ...

One of the virtues of the Internet, is that it democratizes the flow of information. It allows individuals to share information, or to access it, in various ways, in any format they dim to be more convenient and at any time they have the chance to do so. Those who are interested on that information can access it the time that suits them best, and redistribute it to others that might find such information interesting or valuable. More than ever before, the flow of information is free to flow not only from hand to hand or to a hand full of people. Now, information can be flow much faster and to much more people than it has ever been possible. Not only that, it no longer has the constraints of time and location to tie it down. Information generated at one corner of the world, can reach anywhere around the world in an instant. It's sad, and enraging, that some governments try to limit that free flow of information or use it against the people. Even worse, is when they try to g...

There is a lot of people who argue that free software should be developed on a community level, and there is a lot of resentment when it's development it's constrained to the walls of whoever needs that specific needs. Yet, free software has nothing to do with how it's developed. It's about being able to access to the source code to study it, to modify it as you see fit, and to redistribute it without any restrictions that hinder you from doing so. If the license has no restrictions on those attributes, it's free software independently on how it's developed. The choice of how to develop any free software is from the people who are going to be develop it, and it has to suits their needs. At the end, development is independent complying with what free software guidelines ask for. If you don't want to use free software that isn't developed directly by the community, don't use it. But, that doesn't give you the right to go around telling...

It's hard to take any legal system seriously, when just about anyone can sue over how a word is used to name a group or a product without taking the context of how it's used into account. The lengths some take in order to "protect" what they think of as their intellectual property is just plain wrong. A case that comes as a perfect example of this point is the Boy Scouts of America treating to sue a group called Hacker Scouts over the use of the word Scouts. I don't really know why should the Boy Scouts of America need to do this, since Hacker Scouts are dedicated to teach children raging from eight to 12 do protects having to do with science and engineering. Which is not the things that Boy Scouts do, but not something that is demeaning or that's unlawful. Other than that both are Scouts, the other thing that both organizations have in common is that fact that both give out badges that earn by completing projects. I can't see how anyone c...

As someone that uses both Ubuntu and Windows on daily basis, I find it odd when I hear that you can't most of the things you can do with Windows on an machine running Ubuntu(or with any other GNU/Linux distribution for that matter). While it's true that there is some software that's only available on Windows, it's hard not to come across with an analog on the GNU/Linux camp that can do the job at least as good than it's Windows counter part. For general computer users, in many cases there are actually several options to choose from to fit their needs. For example, on Ubuntu you can use Firefox or Chrome to browse the Internet. There are several chat clients, like Pidgin and Empathy, if you are an active user of those services. Even Skype is available on Ubuntu, you can keep in contact with those of your friends and family who use it on regular basis. If you need a robust office suite to work with, you have the option to use LibreOffice or Apache OpenOff...

Another of the things that are beneficial about FOSS(Free and open-source software), is that it gives developers and programmers a common pool of code to work on. Thus, their work is make easier and faster since they get to use the foundations set by other before them. Not only that, it allows to innovations and improvements to come to the existing pool of code a lot faster. It also means that those innovations and improvements to spread a lot faster, since they are set on the common pool used by the people who actively use it to make their software. Meaning that all the software made from that pool shares from those improvements as they come. From the user point of view, using FOSS means that they get software that is compatible with other software that draws from the same pool. In essence, it means that the user is software built from a standard that gives the freedom to know that the data used isn't dependent on a the software being used, but on the code that came from ...

There is the misconception that just because you can get software free of cost, it means that it's free software. This is not the case, free software can cost money and still be free software; while close source source software can be given away. What make software free software, is not the price. What makes it free software is that the user can freely study the source code, make modifications and distribute the resulting software without any restrictions whatsoever. The price of the software isn't what makes free software, is that fact that there are no restrictions to access it's source code. When there are restrictions on imposed on the use of software, but it's given away for free, then it's freeware. Freeware can be both, open source or closed source(proprietary) software, since it just means that it's given away for no profit. Free software can be for profit, if it allows their users free access to their source code to be studied, modified and...