Tsikbal: from my perspective

This year my music listening habits have changed to listening to my music library and to Spotify . I found that I really like Spotify, since it gives me the right balance of the music I like while letting me discover new music based on my tastes. It also has the plus that the artist get paid for their work. There is only one thing that I don't like about Spotify, and it's use of digital rights management( DRM ). I can't agree on the use of DRM, since it restricts users right to control the software that runs on their devices. DRM is not the way to help artists make a living, since efforts should be concentrated on making it easier for user to support their favorites artists. Adding artificial restrictions like DRM doesn't do much for help artists, and harm the user in more than one way. Instead of restricting users, ways to make easier to support artists should be made available. In some ways, artists, producers and content creators should realize that ...

There has been a lot of talk in Guadalajara about using smart cards on buses of the public transportation system, the only step taken toward this has been that a norm has been approved by the local congress a few years back. So far, only the light rail system and the Macrobus use smart cards. The problem being that they are incompatible, which is at least problematic for riders that use both systems on regular basis. The ideal would be that the smart card system for all three systems would be integrated, allowing riders use one card for the three systems. That would facilitate things for everyone involved, which is one of the main reasons to adopt the smart card to begin with. Personally, I'd go one step beyond and allow users to pay with their smartphones. That would facilitate things a lot more, since a large portion of riders already use smartphones to begin with. I rather use a smart card, specially if it allows me to use it on the three systems. I already u...

After a couple of year using Nokia's E63 using Symbian's S60 platform and a year using a Blackberry Bold 9650 , I made the jump to Android via an independent manufacturer called MOBO (page is in Spanish since its a Mexican brand). To be honest, I was really a fan of Nokia's smartphones and of Symbian as an OS. For me it was sad to see Symbian being ditched, and worse when it's place was taken by Windows Phone OS. I've rather seen Nokia move to Android, since I believe that it would have made a much better match. Since I've being using Android, it has taken Symbian's place as my favorite mobile OS. As devices go, MOBO has become my go to brand since it sells unlocked smartphones at a decent prices that have good quality. And while the specs are not premium, they are more than good enough for most people. I'm also really conscious about the design of the devices I use, and MOBO's devices have the design I like. The only thing I miss i...

Many times when I talk about open-source software , the question of why the concept behind it hasn't been applied else ware if its so good come around often. It turns out it has, in the form of Copyleft , and there are many artists actually using it to license their work. The fact that Copyleft is expanding beyond software development speaks volumes. It tells that Copyleft works, and that its beneficial to creators and users alike. It might not be perfect, but it actually could mean that there be viable alternative to Copyright that benefits both artists and their fans. In more than one way, it could shift how artists relate to their fans and how their work spreads. It also means that their source of income is going to change even more, and it ways that aren't all that clear at the moment. The advent of the Internet, smartphones, and tablets has changed the dynamics of how people shares things and what owning ideas or art means. In a way, it has become ever harder...

October has come, and with it Ubuntu 16.10. Codenamed Yakkety Yak, it isn't that big an update over Ubuntu 16.04 LTS though it has some interesting updates like Linux kernel 4.8, Unity 7.5 and Nautilus 3.20. In general, so far Ubuntu 16.10 has been worth the upgrade. I haven't come to any problems or serious bug. Performance on my system has been better on some aspects, while on others it has remained the same. Though I'd like to have seen an upgrade to Unity 8, the improvements that came with the 7.5 are really nice. As it has been the trend for the last couple of years, each new Ubuntu release come with improvements not revolutionary changes. That's good for most of the people that use the OS, and why I really love Ubuntu. While I can expect some changes, I can also expect that those changes won't be at the expense of braking my system. That is something really valuable for the average user, that wants her or his computer to work as expected after...

Blackberry has become a shadow fo what it was a few years ago, in large part because of Apple's iPhone and Google's Android devices. I can remember a time when the smartphone to get was a Blackberry one, now most consumers wouldn't even consider one. Personally, my first smartphone was a Nokia E63 , which I selected because at the time I was a big Nokia fan. That device really made me a fan of the QWERTY keyboard on smartphones and of the Symbian OS. When time came to replace the Nokia E63 I briefly considered the Nokia N8 , in a way to see how having a smartphone without a QWERTY keyboard would work for me. At the time, Nokia made Symbian open-source for a time before making it proprietary some time later. To be honest, I really was rooting for Nokia and Symbian to be able to make themselves strong players along Google's Android on the smartphone arena. But that didn't come to pass since Nokia went and made a deal with Microsoft, and later sell i...

This article on Linux Journal , called " The Many Paths to a Solution ", really gave an idea to explain to people who don't know much about Linux why are the so many distros out there. Many seem to believe that the main reason that there are so many reason for there being more than 50 actively maintained distros, is that Linux must not be really that good. That's not really the case, since the users of most of those distros could easily make a point for why their distro is great for them. Each distro represents a path to a solution to a problem that a group of users have to solve. That's why not every distro is a fit for every user, and also why many become disenchanted with Linux. In many of those cases, the user wasn't matched to the right distro to begin with. While in other times, the expectations weren't meet to what the distro offered. That's why its vital to match new users to the distro that better suits their needs, not to the d...