> Android is "a lot cheaper for HP to implement in a laptop; ChromeOS, in contrast, comes with more stringent system requirements that would cost HP a bit more."

It looks like sweet hardware. They may have good intentions re costs. But that's not how to define a product. The laptop form factor works against the touch interface by putting the screen just a little too far away. It also completely destroys the ability to hold a device like a sheaf of paper or clipboard.

The other side of the coin is that a browser-based UI is well-suited to using a pointing device instead of (or in addition to) touch.

Could have been a great Chromebook.

Going from "open government" to "outsourcing" is a non sequitur meant to set up a straw man. It is outsourcing that results in private firms treating government data as proprietary, and it is this kind of outsourcing that open government initiatives seek to avoid.

It's a long piece. Tl;dr: Think tank wonk mistakes Tim O'Reilly for a technolibertarian and turgidly tilts at windmills of his own invention.

Android app compatibility is available for Linux in several forms: You can install an Android distro in a virtualization container, Canonical's "Ubuntu for Android," Open Mobile's ACL (disclosure, I used to be CTO there), and others.

My view of the best way to do this (and not surprising that this is how Open Mobile does it) is that Android can be integrated into "foreign" desktop environments as if it were a Java SE-like runtime environment.

As for how I would want to use Ubuntu on a tablet, I would put it on a powerful tablet such as those Windows 8 will be shipping on. Then I can have my Android development tools in a tablet form factor, and I can run an x86 Android build in a VM or QEMU for testing/debugging.

Learn Android programming. While this advice is well-founded in personal experience, it may also be slightly self serving.

Not compatible with ASUS T-300 running Jelly Bean. :-(

The right to a patent monopoly is not a fundamental human right.

The US Constitution is written with a specific sense regarding rights. It grants no rights because it takes the point of view that you have human rights, with, or without any government's say so. Instead, the Constitution grants powers to the government.

The right to a patent monopoly is not one of the rights the Constitution assumes you have. That's because, in the eyes of the authors of that document, it's not really a basic human right. Instead, the government is explicitly empowered to grant patent and copyright monopolies. And that power is conditional: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

If it isn't functioning as intended, is it still legitimate?

We've put on Mars a large machine that blasts the landscape with a heat ray. A heat ray. And we have set the example that such a machine can be robotic, and impervious to microbes. That's sure to end well.

Is this some kind of weird expression of the New England work ethic? Make the driver work just as hard as ever, but should he ever falter, a superior system kicks in and saves his ass?

If I have a computer that can handle emergencies more reliably than I can, surely it can handle the mundane more reliably, too.