Interesting news for dyslectic people. Although the article states that the called gene is only responsible for 20% of the cases, it's still better then nothing.

I can't tell you how though it has been for me, in all those language classes throughout my school years. And back in my days it will not widely accepted yet, as it is now. It runs in the family though, so I'm a little worried about my little boy when he starts to go to school and learn to read and write.

There is a small crisis going on in Belgium. The government wants to raise the retirement age from 58 to 60. They want to do this because in the future it will be next to impossible to keep providing pension funds as the populace ages.

A lot of boo-ha for 2 years more work, and then I bumped into this article. So, if you want to enjoy your pension and live longer you're better of retiring at 60. Hey, I'm all for that!

I bought the Tacx Flow Egrotrainer to get me through the cold months up ahead. It really is a great piece of kit, the display gives you a bunch of information that helps your training a lot. On the Tacx website you'll find a bunch of training programs you can use with each of their trainers. The included booklet also includes some basic trainings and so I quickly followed the endurance program, which is a 45 minute course which pushes you into the +100 rpm zone for several minutes a few times.

It also displays the watt-power you are producing, my average (during the 45 minute endurance program) was 180, which is pretty sad when you imagine pro-cyclers push out 400 watt on average. I'm interested in the climbing training programs, which i'm going to try out tomorrow. It must be said that the device mimics real road conditions fairly realistic, ofcourse you don't have any hindrance (or aid) from strong winds. Can't wait for the cycling season to start again next year!

After all these years, Bill Gates still hasn't figured it out.

When you read that article you'll discover that he says Microsoft has free software (as in 'gratis') too, but that is not what Free Software is about. OK, I admit, it will probably be a factor for some people, but you'll only find this to be true in a very few specific cases. The price point is important in the few cases where people have grown tired of illegal software, tired of hunting down cracks, downloading warez from the net, especially since every little stupid tool or programs has a rather high price. For them, an OSS program will be just the tool for the job for an unbeatable price.

Though, for most people who turn to OSS, this will not be the driving factor. The quality will be (i'm not saying all OSS is high quality though), another important feature is that OSS gives power to the user and not to the vendor. These are the two important advantages to 'Free Software' that flow from the fact that the source code is available for the user.

As long as Bill Gates keeps his focus on the free (as gratis) piece of OSS we have nothing to worry about.

This was rather surprising. I remember Quake3 and UT actually running better on Linux, now according to these benchmarks Doom3 really lags behind XP by 25% (for HQ, no AA at 1024x768).

There are some interesting interviews on Mad Penguin with the OOo developers regarding the pending 2.0 release.

The part worth a read is on page 2, where it is explained more in detail what dirty tactics Microsoft is playing. Here is hoping OOo2 gets a lot of good press and publicity, thereby increasing its popularity just enough to stop this massive tie-in MS is looking at with the new release of MS-Office.

You know the world is in serious trouble when you read this. Tell me how this is any different from an Islamist fighting for his believe, his God?

I hope he understands that makes him an extremist as well and it's a very dangerous situation when two extremists are fighting each other. They're both sure 'God' is on their side, so how could they possibly lose? Well, you just have to check your history lessons to see how that ends.

I sometimes wonder how certain people got their jobs as a tech writer, take this guy for example.

It's just mind-bending how he confuses a standard file format with a closed proprietary one because it has the biggest market penetration. It also doesn't matter how many applications can 'read' a document format, but it seems he hasn't figured that out yet either.

Mostly this kind of article isn't worth anybodies time, but there is something going on, I tend to, dare I say it, notice some kind of trend. I won't go into it this time, stay tuned if you want to know more...

A new version of the GPL is in the works. The thing that got the most attention on /. was the fact that the source of web services based on GPL software should be made available.

Well, isn't that a very good idea? With the rise of AJAX applications, which are getting more and more impressive each time. Indeed, since an AJAX application is not distributed, but accessed via your browser, there is no need to make the source available if it is build on existing OSS. And that is a dangerous path, because people who choose for a GPL license want information to be free.

For me personally, the most interesting change is that 'a clause to penalize companies that use software patents against free software and a clause to prevent companies from using digital rights management in free software applications.' and while the part about DRM is explained, nothing is mentioned on patents and what measures they would like to take. Software patents are just another tool for multi billion corps to stay multi billion corps. It is their ultimate weapon, it allows them to kill or neutralize others as they please. The only valid penalty is that patents used in programs making use of GPL code will have to make that patent free for all other programs using the GPL license.