Tsikbal: from my perspective

After the terrorist attacks in Paris last week, many have called encryption as something that we need to give up in the name of safety. Many of those voices say that encryption enabled the terrorists to carry out their attack, because it made it's movements to pass undetected. The truth is far more complex, and encryption was not an major factor in the terrorist ability to carry out the attacks. The whole intelligence gathering apparatus failed, since there are many other ways to gather information about people. Focusing on the communications made via smart phones, or the information stored on a hard drive, is to narrow. People moves no only on a virtual world, but they also need to contact other people on the real world. As such, saying that people who use encryption on their electronic devices must be doing something bad are evil is not only shortsighted, but dangerous. Most people who use encryption, myself included, just want to keep something private. The obsessiv...

As an free and open source software advocate, that actually uses it on my personal laptop on daily basis, I find most arguments for and against it a bit exaggerated. I do recommend free and open source software to be used by all, it's just a matter of finding the right software for the needs of the user. For most users, I'd recommend Ubuntu or Linux Mint since I've first hand experience with both of this distros and they cover the needs of most users with not that much of a learning curve. Most importantly, these two distros have all the software that most people normally uses on daily basis. As such, they wont miss their proprietary software all that much since they can do all what they are used too without a problem. With Ubuntu and Linux Mint they can still have access to software like Firefox, Chrome, Spotify and Skype. For other software, there are options available that work at least as well as their counterparts in Windows or Mac OS X while being user fr...

There are many arguments on how modern technology is dehumanizing people, yet I think that modern technology is changing what it means to be human. There has been several technologies that have changed the curse of humanity through out history, yet it's hard to pick a time in history in which technology has changed humanity as much, and as deeply, so many aspects of humanity in such a relatively short time. It's impressive how much technology has permeated to every day life, and how much we have come to expect it to just work. It has allowed us to do so much more, that it has augmented our experiences in ways that would be unimaginable just a few decades ago. Not just what we can physically has been enhanced, but our minds and senses have been enhanced in ways that we can really understand yet. In more than one way, this could mean a chance to make humanity better as a whole. Yet, it seems that how good this new chance is not yet certain because the signs are still...

Blackberry has been somewhat of a dilemma for me, since I like the security and the quality of its smart phones. Yet, that its OS is closed source OS is something that I don't really endorse as an open source advocate. Now that Blackberry has made official it's Priv smart phone launch, all changes. Since it's powered by Android, and it comes with Blackberry's security features baked into it from the start, it makes quite an interesting proposition. This combination makes it quite an interesting proposition for people who support FLOSS and those are mindful of their privacy. Now, we'll have to wait until the device hits the market to know how good Priv actually is. Yet, one can be hopeful that it will be quite a good handset, since Blackberry's hardware is quite solid and Android is quite the solid OS as well. The plus for me, is the fact that the Priv comes with a physical keyboard. Call me old fashioned, but I still prefer having a physical keyboa...

The news that Steam just crossed the 1,500 games natively available on Linux is great news not only for Steam itself, but the whole Linux ecosystem. While it still lags far behind the number of games available for Windows and OS X, that the mark is significant in itself. It means that Steam is viewed as a viable gaming platform by developers, since it has been adding about a 100 new games a month for a while now. And while Steam still has some pains due to the lack of driver support for some graphic cards, the fact that there people developing and buying games for Linux helps the ecosystem as a whole. Since it gives a reason to GPU manufactures to start supporting their cards on Linux, they are going to have to make available their drivers on the OS if they want to have a piece of the market for themselves. With this, all the Linux ecosystem wins as a whole. The game developers working to make their games on Steam, and the people buying those games, are a driving force to...

The irony of a 9th grader being arrested because he took a clock he made to school is not only big, but quite disheartening as well. One should think that schools would a place a student should be able to bring something like that without fear, specially of being arrested and suspended because of it. As a matter of fact, the reaction one would expect from the teachers and other staff would be the opposite. I mean, they should be quite interested in fostering that kind of skills and mentality on their students for the better. This issue is made even worse, when one takes into account that the US is starting to lag behind other developed countries on that skill set. Not only that, many of the teenagers and kids are loosing interest on perusing and engineering or science degree stuff like this will only push them further away from those fields. Schools should be one of those places where their students could safely share and practice building things like that. Specially, sin...

The news that the city of Munich is contributing upstream are good, really good, news. They mean two important things for open source software, and both can't be understated. To begin with, it comes to show that open source software can be successfully deployed even in places as important and complex and city governments. The argument that open source software can't compete with proprietary software has been rendered muted, and in such a way that its hard to dispute. There are a few other places where software could effectiveness could be tested more throughly than a government, even if it is at a city level. Secondly, it comes to show that contribute upstream is not something that just a few can do. The only requirement is to have an IT department that has the technical knowhow to implement the changes needed to the needs of the particular entity to then share does changes upstream. When there is that aspect, then it makes it more of a matter of will to contribut...