kilps

Take a look at the South African Bill of Rights - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_South_Africa_Ch... - it includes rights to education, health care, water, access to information and human dignity (which many of the other rights are a result of).

Perhaps it is a result of our history, but I don't see why promoting a basic standard of living through socio-economic rights is a mistake - you can't properly exercise your right to freedom of speech (which I assume is the sort of right that you are in favour of) without food and water.

The author is right about PowerPoint wanting "to organize the talk" - does anyone know any presentation software which breaks from this?

I had no idea about this before this article (I'm not American...) - incredible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment

It's very different when you're at the game - the vuvuzelas near you are distinguishable and you can hear people singing.

Obviously that's not ideal for watching it on tv - the vuvuzelas tend to drown everything else out when it's all recorded - but I'm not sure what the ideal solution is, because there's no way that anyone here in South Africa would accept a ban.

I haven't really looked into it; but do open source contributors not have a problem with using a closed platform to manage their products?

The way for Buzz to instantly gain credibility would be for Google to take the Diaspora route and open it up as a decentralised platform.

What I've found interesting is that part of what seems to be making Buzz more engaging is how it is tied to your real name (assuming that is what you use for Gmail) - but at the same time that has been part of what has made me hesitant to fully adopting it.

What have all the other video-calling capable phones been using thus far? Is there no existing standard?

There is some info at http://www.siliconcape.com/ (Cape Town focused).

As an aside; is there a web based email service/client comparable to gmail? More particularly is there one which handles conversation view as well as gmail does? Until there is then gmail has a bit of a monopoly on users like me who love the client and everything that sets it apart from traditional email.

Sure - these are issues which need to be sorted out. But it's not the end of the world if the average user doesn't completely understand the system as long as it works.

I sure hope not - decentralised social networking (whoever makes it) is the only logical way forward. Imagine email was controlled by one company.

If it is true that it is impossible to create a video codec which doesn't infringe on existing patents then surely it is impossible for anybody to argue that there isn't something wrong with the patent system? My understanding is that the idea is to force innovation to find new ways of getting things done, not preventing them from happening all together. A compressed video file must be obvious enough for the concept itself not to be subject to patents.

Amongst all my friends Facebook is almost entirely the only communication tool save for cell phones. Any good alternatives which won't have the problems that Facebook does that I can work on switching them all to?

Right now I'm waiting for one of the open network projects to mature.

I keep hearing this 'don't post it if you'd never want it public' mantra; but surely there should be a way for us to post thoughts/content to friends with an expectation that only they will ever be able to see it?

The need to trust the person on the other side will always be there (people have always been able to pass on letters and repeat conversations) - but that doesn't change Facebook's role.

My first thought on reading the title was that they don't want the content accessible from the iPad so that they could charge for an app.

The other reasons discussed make sense (merits aside), but I still wonder.

You want to be careful of plain old proportional representation. We have that here in South Africa and the result has been MPs who toe the party and line and have no ties to constituencies (I asked a couple of parties which MPs they assigned to my area, they either didn't know or just didn't reply).

That said PR is still a better system for representing minorities and forming governments - so personally I favour a hybrid model, possibly with a different house for each system.

He does say that they have declined to purchase information in the past, which lends credibility to his claim.

Sure - you'll need to take a bit of a wait and see approach, but personally I'm hesitant to build anything at this point. If I wanted to build something serious on it I'd be relying on you to stay in business...

And when I suggest open sourcing I am thinking in terms of the bare minimum to setup an app on another server - so your very cool editing system wouldn't need to be part of it, that would be what makes you different from anyone else who sets up their own server.

Except how many developers want a random (to the user) shared login? I'm doubtful that logging into a non-Google site with a Google account or using Facebook Connect is yet a standard user experience. The way I see it, this could just confuse users.

Why not provide a login system specific to each app?

The authentication functionality demoed in the screen cast is cool - but looking at the notebook app it seems that it is a Akshell branded system. Are you going to offer customisation of that?

Cloning the core doesn't sound simple (even if it is).

Making it easy to move away lowers the potential cost of using Akshell - I really don't want to be locked in. How about open sourcing whatever is needed to run an app on your own server and then working on keeping customers through convenience and the interoperability between apps?

That's why the article argues that Google should be releasing tools to make this development easier - a framework can deal with a lot of the inconsistencies between browsers.

Your hotornot idea is great, so much potential to expand it... Might have just found a weekend project :)

The correct solution for Android would be for Google to release UI guidelines (perhaps these exist, I don't know) - but don't stop developers from innovating and then letting the users decide what is best.

The hate is because it doesn't make it right. You're just saying that it's not so bad.

This article has the prices... (though I see that they are listed in the comments of your link)

As others have said, the video tells me nothing so I look at the about page - the description sounds great but provides no incentive to sign-up. You need to get me interested in a topic straight off the home page, without having to register.

I'm still yet to see a convincing reason why those people could not have been brought out of poverty while there was freedom of speech at the same time.

Richard Stallman's article (http://bostonreview.net/BR35.2/stallman.php) is definitely worth a read.

But I have a problem with the solution that he proposes, that software should be peer-to-peer capable to allow for collaboration, because that ignores all the other reasons why SaaS is so useful. I use Google Docs primarily because I can get at it anywhere.

The way I see it, the future lies in self-hosted web based software, or at least web interfaces to desktop software. Sure not everyone would use this (think wordpress.com vs. wordpress.org) but then at least you'd have the ability to control your own data.

What about students studying outside of the US? Most universities in South Africa use the .ac.za TLD...