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Parking meters in Montréal are being replaced by smart Linux wireless solar-powered boxes. The whole of downtown is done by now.

To use them, you just need to note the parking spot number, then walk to the nearby pay station in which you key-in the spot number and pay (they take credit and bank cards) for the duration you plan to park. You get a receipt which you don’t need to put on your dashboard; the parking spot and duration is sent to a central server.

Parking enforcement agents (the legendary “ green onions ”) then are told by a hand-held computer which spots haven't been paid or are expired when they do their rounds. The computer only needs to be told the license plate number, and it prints the whole parking ticket automagically without subjecting the green onion to the risk of writer’s cramp (unfortunately, he still has to get out of his car and put it under the wipers).

Just have a look at what for example the Touchbook has to offer:

http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Always-Innovating-Touch-Book/

That's definitly some else then just a small laptop.

You sound like a socialist. That's fine, I'm actually a socialist too. It's still going to be a huge debate (at least in my country) if we should let them starve or give them free food, health care, housing, and education.

Certainly for the intelligent people, having a swarm of stupid lackeys would increase productivity. But the stupid people are still going to take more energy to run than a computer after one or two dozen generations (humans baseline energy consumption is around 72w, you can get computers that run on 5 watts http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/100-Linux-wallwart-launches/).

"A general consequence when putting code under the BSD license or releasing new code based on existing BSD-licensed code is that the code can be kept closed. E.g. when shipping hardware, there is no need to add the source."

"The BSD philosophy seems to hold that creating and giving away code, then seeing it used by others, is victory and reward enough. But most of the GPL supporters disapproved of allowing "others" to close off source code and hide enhancements."

"The BSD license allows someone to take the code, improve it, and not share the improvements"

I suppose you're going to say they are wrong too.

Falcon