First Prototype of Open Source TechCrunch Tablet

holy_calamity writes "Big mouth tech blogger Mike Arrington decided earlier this year to 'teach gadget-makers a lesson' and make his own portable, touch screen web tablet. The first, very rough, prototype is complete. Despite the claims it would be fully open source — even the hardware — there's no sign of a project site or any other openness yet."

Opinion in the OP

[Kid Zero]

I know this is hardly a journalism site. And let's face it the MSM does the same thing the Author of this piece does. Crap like "Big mouth tech blogger Mike Arrington" isn't proper journalism, it's insulting. The opinion of the writer should never go in the story.

Yeah, I've given up on the networks already.

Inflammatory summary...

[Fegmaniac]

Come on....dude posts a pic of a prototype (pre-alpha), and you're already slagging him in the summary? No idea who he is, but seems a bit premature to rip him, at least to someone not following his concept. I don't expect a full schematic from other open source hardware projects this soon in the pipeline.

(1140543) (4866)

[Anonymous Coward]

No you are new here. I think this guy has been on slashdot since before you were born.

Wow, very cool!

[Creepy Crawler]

Well hell, Compiz already has the basic handwriting tools: Annotate.

It'd be cool to hook up a handwriting detection engine (theres already one for kanji in Linux) so that one could annotate ANYTHING on any screen. There could even be layers to show different annotations on what date.

Beautiful, for pre-alpha hardware. Too bad theres no pics of it being used. Probably cause the software needs to be re-written for proper usage.

As for the slamming and openness: Im up for him making profit on it. After all, thats what the patent and copyright clause is for in the Constitution. He's furthering the arts and sciences. We need more people like him.

Re:Stop whinging

[Creepy Crawler]

And after reading the comments on here, no wonder why people think that Linux people are freeloaders and whiny asses who want everything for FREEEE.

Im up for capitalization on his product if he can make it mass market. All the better is if he offered schematics of the PCB, firmware, and software source used. It's just like the old tvs, radios, and other electronic devices that had the whole PCB on a paper attached on the inside of the box.

Re:Opinion in the OP

[Kev Vance]

Exactly. I GPL almost all of my projects, but not my *prototypes*. It's a shame that this "opinion" got to the front page.