The Spirit of Discordance

Google Wallet, Hate and Gloating in Forbes

2011-12-18T02:43:00.000-08:00

When I read the Forbes article whose URL I include below, I was instantly reminded of a funny line from
the Cohen Brothers film "Burn after Reading" when one of the characters says "you´re worse than a moron, you´re part of a League of Morons".

http://www.forbes.com/sites/quickerbettertech/2011/09/26/google-launches-the-ultimate-jobs-killer/2/

Watch out for gloating about "killing unproductive jobs", and snide remarks on supermarket employees and, of course, government, who apparently can train people but "only so much" (ie "there´s little point in training idiots", seems to be his angle).

btw: his entire reasoning is flawed, he can´t just scan barcodes and walk away with his merchandise, because who will check he paid for everything he bought?, guess he will have to unload everything again.
;)

The solution to his "Problems" (if one can call it that) are two:

1. Web sites and home delivery. I don´t know about the US of A but down here all major supermarket chains have web sites where you can order stuff and have it delivered, in some instances the same day, in
others the next day, for really little cost. In two instances you pay on-line, in other the delivery cleak that arrives to your home carries a posnet card reader that works wirelessly (a card swiper connected
via GSM/3G)

2. RFID tags built into every packing container of stuff you buy at the supermarket. That would really help the supermarket tally everything you´re walking away without the tedious unloading-reloading
of stuff. But in this approach the cashier at the supermarket would keep his job (it has to, anyway, for people that would still pay cash).

In other words, payment is NOT the delay, accounting for stuff is, so Google Wallet or no-wallet doesn´t make any difference with regards to the "tedious process" of groceries shopping that this guy complains about.

FC

Thanks, Kirchner, we miss you

2011-10-27T23:14:00.000-07:00

Nestor Kirchner (Feb 25, 1950 - Oct 27, 2010)

Thanks, Nestor Kichner.

Néstor Kirchner: Argentina´s Independence Hero, by Mark Weisbrot
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/oct/27/nestor-kirchner-argentina-imf

Enough with wireless, it´s gonna get us all fried in microwaves

2011-08-06T22:17:00.000-07:00

A lawyer or lawyer wannabe from Harvard (sorry I haven´t had time to check his credentials) writes: "I’m also big on open spectrum and unlicensed wireless"

I used the opportunity to write a comment in his blog about why I think wireless sucks and why we should stop polluting the airwaves just to give business to the RF equipment peddlers and just postpone DOING THE UNAVOIDABLE, which is eventually digging ditches and laying out fiber to every home.

Here´s my comment to him:

You advocate "open spectrum and unlicensed wireless"... OH YEAH, the one with the most big-ass signal booster wins, and "overlaps" the less powerfull transmitters. That anarchic scenario was tried: it was Citizen´s Band. The one with the biggest bad-add booster won, overlapping all others around.

OF COURSE, I know, there are differences between wi-fi and CB.... modern technologies aren´t analog and they do spread spectrum and frequency hopping, along with time division and other techniques. BUT STILL, the base principles are the same: there is only a finite amount of bandwidth by going wireless. And in densely populated areas, there is not enough for everyone downloading 10mbit+ at once.

My biggest concern is that going forrward, advocates of this "free for all" mayhem are going to get us all cooked in microwaves. I´ve already seen Wi-Fi "signal boosters" available "under the counter" that exceed the FCC limits, yet are sold for point-to-point links to be installed by amateurs. And since they don´t have the technical means to aim the antennas correctly, it´s highly likely someone at a high rise flat is going to get beamed "by accident" with those signals.

THANKS VERY MUCH, but I pass. Why insist with wireless when FTTH is just around the corner?. With fiber, you can just lay out as many parallel fibres on a duct as you need, until you reach the bandwidth you need. If there´s more need, you dig another ditch and lay more pipes and fill those with fiber.

Give me a break with wireless, already.

Yeah, I know... but wireless broadband is so convenient! what´s the worst that could happen?

Boy, are CIA alumni hard to kill!

2011-05-02T05:02:00.000-07:00

The world´s most famous CIA alumni and famous mass murderer is apparently dead.

Now, I´m awaiting for Obama´s "Mission accomplished" photo-op a la GWB, and surely a total retreat of troops from the Middle East (sarcasm).

In any case, good news about someone who should have never been engineered by the USA.

Osama Bin Laden: supported by the US and Pakistan (BBC)
http://pages.citebite.com/k5c9g8r9ukgq

Some critics have called his death "cold-blooded murder or a gangland execution dressed up as 'justice'" which is a good point, why the killing and not detention. But think about it.... one would think that the capture of him alive would have ended in a months-long trial and, ultimately, execution. Besides, I don´t think that if he was armed, that he would have allowed that to happen.

FC
PS: The celebrations of "common people" in the streets are understandable. When was the last time the people of the USA as a whole -not republicans or democrats- celebrated something? I say good for you all. Even if it´s only a momentary illusion of achievement and collective cheering that actually means nothing for the inmediate day-to-day lives of most the people cheering.

Manufacturing Dissent

2011-02-18T22:31:00.000-08:00

Thanks to my colleague JohnO I get to read this FP article

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/16/revolution_u?sms_ss=email&at_xt=4d5ef64e97c4ebf6%2C0

"The Serbian capital is home to the Center for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies, or CANVAS, an organization run by young Serbs who had cut their teeth in the late 1990s student uprising against Slobodan Milosevic. After ousting him, they embarked on the ambitious project of figuring out how to translate their success to other countries. "

My take: Oh really?

U.S. Advice Guided Milosevic Opposition
Political Consultants Helped Yugoslav Opposition
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18395-2000Dec3?language=printer

Who really brought down Milosevic?
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DE6D81F3BF935A15752C1A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=4

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just how much money backed this objective is not clear. The United States Agency for International Development says that $25 million was appropriated just this year. Several hundred thousand dollars were given directly to Otpor for ''demonstration-support material, like T-shirts and stickers,'' says Donald L. Pressley, the assistant administrator. Otpor leaders intimate they also received a lot of covert aid -- a subject on which there is no comment in Washington.

At the International Republican Institute, another nongovernmental Washington group financed partly by A.I.D., an official named Daniel Calingaert says he met Otpor leaders ''7 to 10 times'' in Hungary and Montenegro, beginning in October 1999. Some of the $1.8 million the institute spent in Serbia in the last year was ''provided direct to Otpor,'' he says. By this fall, Otpor was no ramshackle students' group; it was a well-oiled movement backed by several million dollars from the United States.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
while the gains of the orange-bedecked "chestnut revolution" are Ukraine's, the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.

Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organisations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box.

Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role. And by last year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, he repeated the trick in Georgia, coaching Mikhail Saakashvili in how to bring down Eduard Shevardnadze.

Ten months after the success in Belgrade, the US ambassador in Minsk, Michael Kozak, a veteran of similar operations in central America, notably in Nicaragua, organised a near identical campaign to try to defeat the Belarus hardman, Alexander Lukashenko.

That one failed. "There will be no Kostunica in Belarus," the Belarus president declared, referring to the victory in Belgrade. But experience gained in Serbia, Georgia and Belarus has been invaluable in plotting to beat the regime of Leonid Kuchma in Kiev.

The operation - engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience - is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people's elections. In the centre of Belgrade, there is a dingy office staffed by computer-literate youngsters who call themselves the Centre for Non-violent Resistance.

If you want to know how to beat a regime that controls the mass media, the judges, the courts, the security apparatus and the voting stations, the young Belgrade activists are for hire.

(...)The Democratic party's National Democratic Institute, the Republican party's International Republican Institute, the US state department and USAid are the main agencies involved in these grassroots campaigns as well as the Freedom House NGO and billionaire George Soros's open society institute.

US pollsters and professional consultants are hired to organise focus groups and use psephological data to plot strategy.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Leaving aside the issue of the qualities -or lack thereof- of the respective governments overthrowed, I´d love to go to the US of A and start a "grassroots" spray-painting and civil disobedience campaign against the government of the US of A.... then see how far do I get before getting thrown into jail... ;)

FC

Otto Reich says Uncle Sam will use its whip at LatAm once again!

2010-11-05T04:37:00.000-07:00

US: Election results augur new policy toward Latin America – Americas Forum
http://www.hacer.org/latam/?p=6000

-----
"The November 2nd midterm elections that swept Republicans into power in the House of Representatives will bring in a more firm policy towards Latin America’s budding autocrats, Ambassador Otto Reich, former Assistant Secretary of State, recently told Americas Forum."
-----

Oh yea, Otto Reich...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Reich

Otto Reich´s legacy of white propaganda
http://rt.com/Top_News/2010-11-04/otto-reich-white-propaganda.html

Covert Propaganda: the Otto Reich File
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB40/

FC

Nestor Kirchner dies. A Statesman has left the building....

2010-10-27T08:33:00.000-07:00

For people of our generation (30-something), the death -today- of former Argentine president Nestor Kirchner, and husband of the current president Cristina Fernandez at age 60 due to a heart attack, has hit us hard.

There was a man that came in 2003, when the country sunk into the abyss of IMF policies and death spiral of high debt and austerity measures, and came with a different speech, something unheard of in previous decades... a speech about regaining trust in our abilities, rebuilding the role of the State and public policies, boosting education, science and technology, and kicking out the IMF and its failed policies.

And he did all that, plus repaying debt to the IMF, and doing the exact opposite of what neocons wanted. Argentina has been enjoying high growth rates and low unemployment ever since. Not to mention his human rights policies of prosecuting human rights abusers by repudiating amnesty laws that favored the torturers and killers during the late 1970s so-called "dirty war" by the military junta.

On the foreign policy level, Kirchner was essential in the regional integration policies and the creation of UNASUR, the union of South American countries, and thanks to it, solving political crises in Bolivia and Ecuador.

So, thanks Nestor Kirchner.

Thanks for creating "Encuentro", the public educative TV channel.

Thanks for ending the failed private pensions system.

Thanks for recovering the national public airline, Aerolíneas Argentinas

Thanks for recovering the national mitiary airplanes factory, FMA.

Thanks for the biggest public works programme in recent argentine history.

Thanks for boosting education, science and technology budgets.

Thanks for encouraging local production of all things tech, from software (with the Software Industry promotional Law), to High-tech (Radars at INVAP).

Thanks for having SANE fiscal policies, of DUAL SURPLUSES (fiscal and trade surpluses).

Thanks for recovering the role of public policies and public works.

Thanks for restoring our faith in politics, and sane public policies.

A Statesman has left the building.

I for one, will continue supporting your wife, Cristina Fernández, with my vote.

History will do justice to his work and vision.

FC

Ecuador Coup D´Etat proves Twitter is King

2010-09-30T14:41:00.000-07:00

Coup D´Etat attempt in Ecuador proves Twitter is King

A tense situation has been unfolding in the South American nation of Ecuador in what most if not all describe as a Coup d´Etat attempt, and once again Twitter is the medium of choice to get insight about what is going on.

Full Story:
http://ho.io/fanh

FC

Forget VNC, TurboVNC, TightVNC, UltraVNC, RealVNC... the good one is Tiger, TigerVNC

2010-07-19T00:14:00.000-07:00

It seems like it was only yesterday that a team of very creative people at a joint research facility in Cambridge, UK -operated at the time by Italian firm Olivetti and US database giant Oracle (talk about strange bedfellows)- created "Virtual Network Computing" or VNC for short.

Then, over the years, the concept of a free software implementation of a "remote desktop" began to catch on (once upon a time people would buy propietary products to do this sort of thing, like "PC Anywhere" or IBM Desktop on Call, Win2You, etc, just to name a few).

Well, the problem with VNC was that while the underlying RFB protocol was very strong, some bean counter *ssholes at AT&T who first bought the reserach labs later decided they´d rather use the money more wisely and proceeded to shut down the ORL research labs in Cambridge. The Guardian lamented it here.

Over the years, people started making VNC stronger, faster, and forks of the original VNC started to appear: TightVNC, TurboVNC, UltraVNC, and finally... RealVNC.

So, fast forward to 2010... What of all flavours of VNC to use?.

My answer: none of the above.

My choice is TigerVNC.

TigerVNC is a fork of RealVNC, incorporating many of the improvements from TightVNC and better security (which on RealVNC are features in the paid/commercial version only).

See:
http://tigervnc.org

Windows and linux builds are available at:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tigervnc/files/

From the site: “TigerVNC is an advanced VNC implementation. It is based on the fourth generation of VNC. TigerVNC also includes features from the TightVNC and TurboVNC projects.

This includes accelerated JPEG compression. TigerVNC supports the latest X.Org X server.”

Hope this helps...
FC

Calacanis pants on fire

2010-06-13T06:37:00.000-07:00

"Liar, liar, pants on fire!"
http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/11/facebook-calacanis-is-lying/

It seems "serial entrepreneur" or "Netscape.com portal destroyer" as I´d call him, is in trouble again.

FC

ICANN´s Tina Dam was a big deal

2010-05-09T20:22:00.000-07:00

ICANN´s Tina Dam, whom I had never seen before, was on CNN last Friday discussing the news story of native language domain names for Middle East languages.... and surprisingly, she said it´s "really hard to explain" why the new availability of URLs in Arabic is "such a big deal" (CNN anchor´s question) for Middle East people...

D´oh!.

Couldn´t she make the point that the current system of typing in western characters for URLs would be akin to us westerners having to type URLs and domain names in Kanji or some other foreign character set?.

Double D´oh!.

Like the saying goes... sometimes common sense is the least common of all.

FC
PS: Tina Dam is a hottie.

Still, maybe she wasn´t well prepared for such hard-hitting questions. ;)

Stephen Hawking says there are aliens, but we shouldn't talk to them...

2010-04-26T03:14:00.001-07:00

Reading the Aussie news wires comes this story about Stephen Hawking saying he surely believes there are Aliens, but that we shuldn't talk to them, as they're likely armed and dangerous. Well, not exactly his words...

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/sci-tech/aliens-exist-but-they-may-be-dangerous-hawking-20100426-tm53.html

/////////////////////////////////

"Aliens may exist but mankind should avoid contact with them as the consequences could be devastating, British scientist Stephen Hawking warned on Sunday."

"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," the astrophysicist said in a new television series, according to British media reports."

/////////////////////////////////

What can I say...

FC

Bad news, Iceland, and Bjork

2010-04-16T02:30:00.000-07:00

Local right wing paper LA NACION has this headline

"Iceland: from Miracle to cursed"

"Three years ago the country was the world´s most developed; now it´s engulfed by economic crisis and natural disasters"

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=1254753&origen=NLExt

My condolences to the people of Iceland who had embraced the "limited governmet" dogma.

Now, imagine with all these news the mood of Bjork nowadays...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYyyqIZTvYY

FC

Gavin Clarke is an utter moron, once again

2010-04-06T11:38:00.001-07:00

[I wrote the following to The Rogister's Gavin Clarke, the anti-Sun, anti-Java pundit always too happy to write something to smear Sun, or now, trying to muddy the Java landscape a bit more]

"In many ways, IBM succeeded. Eclipse became a more widespread and grass-rootsy movement than the top-down, closed-shop style of the JCP that alienated technology creatives. In pure market share, Eclipse become the preferred open-source IDE for Java developers."

You´re an utter moron, I´m convinced now. WTF does JCP, an enhancement-request process, has to do with Eclipse, which is an IDE?.

Sun has its own ide, Netbeans, and in any case, it´s as succesful -if not more- than Eclipse, why? Because it´s cross platform, it's written in Java itself, and it includes everything developers need, unlike Eclipse which needs commercial "plug-ins" for many things.

FC

It was about time Hollywood recognized JJ Campanella´s work

2010-03-08T02:49:00.000-08:00

This is the JJ Campanella the World+Dog now knows...

It was about time that Hollywood recognized Juan José Campanella´s outstanding work which won many awards both locally and internationally over the years.

Down here we knew him well, but not wearing a tuxedo, but more resembling something like this:

Yes, El Secreto de sus Ojos won the Best Foreign Film award at the Oscars tonight.

My hat´s off to Campanella, and the beautiful Sole Villamil.

It´s rarely mentioned in the foreign press that Campanella also stars one of the best educational programmes on the public TV (government-run) Educational TV channel Encuentro, created in 2007.

The TV program where Campanella shines as one of the hosts is dubbed "Invisible Environments (of Science and Technology)" (Entornos Invisibles de la Ciencia y la Tecnología) and explains how physics and basic technology works (from the electric grid , to Newton´s laws to.. you-name-it) with a large dose of humour thrown in the mix.

http://www.encuentro.gov.ar/Event.aspx?Id=263

It airs on Encuentro as mentioned, which is available on all cable systems for free, and soon free over the air too, thanks to TDT...

Sorry, you´ll have to learn Spanish first. :)
FC

Google continues ignoring SeaMonkey and firefox derivatives...

2010-03-06T06:26:00.000-08:00

Google has recently started informing users of Firefox 2.x that their browser will soon stop being supported for its web sites and web apps.

And they recommend other browsers that people can upgrade to:

IE 7.0, Safari, Firefox 3.6, and Opera...

Well, ¿Where is SeaMonkey?. SeaMonkey is based on the same Firefox 3.5+ engine, so why not mention it?. In fact, Firefox IS the son of the Mozilla.org browser suite, formerly known as just "Mozilla" and then renamed to SeaMonkey.

In fact, Google should stop sniffing for Firefox versions and instead check out GECKO RENDERING ENGINE versions. Plus, they should mention and point towards SeaMonkey, too.

All Mozilla-based browsers use the same rendering engine, and it's good programming practice not to check for browser version but actually checking Gecko in the user-agent string sent by the browser to the web server, as suggested by Mozilla.org itself.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Browser_Detection_and_Cross_Browser_Support

IDEA: Hey Google, why don't you guys suggest people using an unsupported or soon-unsupported gecko engine to upgrade to "a newer Mozilla.org based browser" and point towards http://www.mozilla.org/projects/#applications , which includes not only Firefox but also SeaMonkey?.

FC

Every software program should include a reinstall script

2010-03-04T12:25:00.001-08:00

It is my belief that every software program should include a "Re-install" script. Something that we can run from the command line and have all configuration values set up as new, without actually downloading and running the installer package again.

This allows moving apps from one system to another effortlessly, and recovering from a backup much easier than having to run a dozen installers and click a dozen times for each. Yes, I'm a command-line junkie.

IBM, back when it was a software firm with a clue, had the very bright idea to include a "rebuild.cmd" command line util with its IBM Works productivity suite included with OS/2 Warp 3.0 onwards.

Hence, the "reinstall.cmd Software Movement" is born, today, to replicate that kind of functionality as widely as possible for popular applications. Target systems are Windows mostly, but could also include OS/2 and Linux for closed source apps that might benefit from it.

I´ve created a redirector at [http://bit.ly/reinstall] that leads to this post, which will be updated to include new reinstall script developments.

My first target? Sun's Virtualbox. Find my re-install script here
https://sourceforge.net/projects/vbox-users/files/

I will release every one I code under a GPL license (they're just command line scripts anyway).

FC

GUI Design: will Egyptian Hyerogliphics replace CUA text menus?

2010-01-16T09:33:00.001-08:00

I am excited to join Mike Magee´s latest tech site, "Tech Eye" (www.techeye.net) as a regular writer, in addition to my ocassional INQUIRER piece.

Here´s my first article ... inspired by Google Chrome´s "Monkey Wrench" icon and the total disappearance of CUA menus.

Is this the future of GUI design, and are CUA menu standards going down the tubes, fast?. Should we despair?

And what´s with Google ignoring CUA on one app, but implementing CUA menus in Google Docs?. Guess that people ARE used to CUA style menus after all, huh?.

Feel free to read the article, and have your say in the comments section...
http://www.techeye.net/software/software-gui-design-going-to-hell-in-a-basket

FC

Finally Darth Vader will print more money so the US of A can continue its wars...

2009-12-24T01:39:00.000-08:00

I knew the Wall Street speculators have been always on the Dark Side. But knowing that Darth Vader himself took control of the trading floor is reassuring.

Maybe he can now print all the money the US of A needs before it sinks the World+Dog into another financial crisis.

Or maybe that IS the plan after all....

;-)

FC

Comments are often funnier than the story...

2009-12-01T23:36:00.001-08:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/30/solange-magnano-argentina_n_374716.html

Two comments caught my eye:

1. Reader thinks Buenos Aires is in Brazil

--
"Not to rain on the pity parade, but her fixation on having a firm, shakable booty is a symptom of Rio's rapidly-spreading 365/24/7 fixation on Carnival. Everything is connected. At least now it's not only Americans, who are fixated and spend all of their money on beauty treatments."

Another reader´s reply:
"um, lightning joe.....Buenos Aires is in Argentina, Rio is in Brazil. They are different countries that speak different languages. Also, South America is still considered America last time I checked, and thus, so are the people."

--

2. Too funny:

---

I regret nothing! Poor Argentinian girls must do what they have to do, to attract rich American politicians! My butt is so firm, St. Peter is bouncing quarters off of it as we speak! Ay, Dios mio!
---

ROF,L...

FC
PS: I´ve just returned on-line after six days without service. Thanks to my cable ISP.

Nine years later, where are the Bush supporters?

2009-11-10T21:24:00.001-08:00

About nine years ago, in the Dec. 1, 2000 issue of (print) magazine "Internet World", more precisely page 16, we could read readers´ letters squaring off in support of Al Gore and George W. Bush, both candidates at that year´s presidential election.

First, there was Ken Greenberg, president at the time of Edge Communications Inc.

He made a strong argument for Al Gore, and against GWB:

-----
"George W. Bush is simply the least qualified candidate of my lifetime. Leaving aside Al Gore´s very real role in marshaling Congressional support to fund the Internet, his economic and social policies argue strongly, even overwhelmingly, for his election."

"I find it laughable that so many dot-commers appear to find Bush appealing. Haven´t entrepreneurs done incredibly well under the current Democratic administration (whatever weight you give fiscal policy)? I certainly have."

"Isn´t it clear that a trillion-dollar giveaway and the undermining of Social Security will in fact be ruinous for everyone?"
------

He was, of course, right-on.

But then, the magazine featured a letter from a Duke Walls, president and CEO of "Sabertooth Systems, inc." in support for GWB. He claimed that

---
"A vote for Gore is a vote for dead Internet firms" and that "a vote for Bush is a vote for continued growth and innovation without interference and censorship".
---

So G.W.Bush ~~stole~~ won the election in 2000, and after two G.W. Bush terms, the business of Duke Walls´ firm must have done certainly well, just like the U.S. economy (joke), right? Well, I looked around and there isn´t a Sabertooth Systems Inc. anymore.

The web site at SaberToothSystems.com redirects to a non-existing page at Cology.com. Further googling around reveals a 2005 article showing it was acquired by Cology, a firm dealing with back-end processing of student loans.

And how did the future-reading, Al Gore supported Ken Greenberg fare?. Nine years later, he's still succesfully commanding Edge Communications Inc.

Need I say more about the wisdom and predictive powers of conservatives vs. progressive people?

;-)
FC

Toxic Sludge is Good for You!

2009-11-04T09:20:00.000-08:00

I read at Smartplanet here :

Radioactive waste near New Mexico water supply not a health risk, officials say
http://www.smartplanet.com/business/blog/smart-takes/officials-say-radioactive-waste-near-new-mexico-water-supply-not-a-health-risk/1875/

"Radioactive waste is seeping from mountain burial sites in the canyons of northern New Mexico and moving toward the area’s springs and streams, but officials insist it’s not a health risk."

Heh, that reminds me of a great book that I read more than once and which I keep handy in my bookshelf, whose title inspires this post...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1567510604?ie=UTF8&tag=mnmsprst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1567510604

FC

Why I love my Samsung digicam...

2009-10-29T22:34:00.000-07:00

...for its "night sky" mode...

FC

Cancer epidemic? You betcha!

2009-09-15T13:02:00.000-07:00

The recent death of celebrity Patrick Swayze to cancer brings a good opportunity to think about of what is causing the modern cancer epidemic and what can be done about it.

The video below comes from the excellent, award-winning documentary "The Corporation" by Canadian Mark Achbar, which you can find here.

Also worth reading are Dr. Samuel Epstein´s comments, available in this PDF.

http://www.thecorporation.com//media//Epstein.pdf

Enjoy
FC
PS: VIDEO FIXED. To the anonymous reporter: keep sucking it.

It was about time Palm put an end to Apple´s arrogance

2009-09-04T00:51:00.000-07:00

Palm PRE´s software helps it beat iPhone
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31093797/

Palm Pre beats iPhone 3G S in 2 out of 3 speed tests by CNET
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=20065

I´m anxiously awaiting the GSM version...
FC

Brag about your Mozilla / Firefox reported bugs on Wikipedia with my new userbox....

2009-09-01T05:05:00.000-07:00

My first Userbox for your Wikipedia user page! Proudly show on your user:page how many Mozilla bugs you've submitted to Bugzilla, and/or how many you've voted on...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fcassia/Userboxes/

^Instructions on how to easily add this userbox to your Wikipedia user page in the URL above.

Just change user@host for the email address you have used to file bugs at the Mozilla.org bugzilla page....

Enjoy...

FC

Viva Argentina

2009-07-09T09:21:00.000-07:00

Hillary Chickenshit Clinton

2009-06-29T22:27:00.000-07:00

Protesters Confront Soldiers After Military Coup in Honduras - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/world/americas/30honduras.html?ref=global-home

"In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the last senior
member of the administration to visit Honduras, just three weeks ago,
said that the United States was working toward “full restoration of
democratic order in Honduras.” She said that the situation in Honduras
“has evolved into a coup.” But when pressed by a reporter, she refused to say explicitly that the United States was demanding that Mr. Zelaya be returned to power"

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/chickenshit

On July 2007 Commondreams published this:

Hillary Clinton, Right-wing darling?
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/28/2829

Need I say more?. Empires can´t help being empires. They can´t change, it´s in their DNA. It doesn´t matter if the president is a Democrat or a Republican.

It´s like the fable of the scorpion and the frog. And now when Hillary has a chance to side with the people and side with democracy, she stops halfway across. Just because the deposed president wasn´t very warm towards the USA policies or POV.

FC
PS: The great blog BoRev.net has a pool of the "Most Retarded Justification for the Coup in Honduras". Some of the TRUE statements by local politicos as well as some in the US media are really hillarious, or tragic. And whom do we find there? My pet pevee Mary Anastasia O'Grady, the Queen of Freedom, the fighter against all evil populists and leftists in Latin America. Mary Anastasia O'Grady -referred to hereinafter as MAO -for fun's sake-, a former Merrill Lynch employee turned hatchet job hack at the Wall Street Journal.

Her statement? WSJ's MAO describes the military overthrow as all part of a country's democratic system of "checks and balances." PFFFT!!!!!!!!!

US Republicans to Democrats: "break a leg!!"

2009-06-18T14:03:00.001-07:00

It seems to me that a GOP top-secret cabal has hired a vodoo wizard to work on the message "Democrats, break a leg!"

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was working from home Thursday after fracturing her right elbow during a fall the day before, State Department officials said.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/18/clinton.arm/index.html?eref=rss_latest

Sotomayor breaks ankle on the way to Capitol Hill
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/08/sotomayor-breaks-ankle-on-her-way-to-capitol-hill/

The BBC gives Monsanto a little helping hand?

2009-06-13T02:56:00.000-07:00

Eco-farmer Jimmy in the streets of London

Most -if not all- of the BBC documentaries and investigative news reports I´ve seen are technically impressive. The guys do know their job, and they hire the best. From a content standpoint they are often progressive: from the war in Iraq, to the situation in Palestine, to Global Warming.

So I was a bit disappointed when I watched the Beeb´s program titled "Jimmy´s GM food fight" part of the otherwise great "BBC Horizon" series which I recommend wholeheartedly (For instance the one titled "The Ghost in your Genes" is great).

Jimmy gives the girls a taste of his sausage...
cooked with regular soybean oil and GM soybean oil

He mentions that one saves the environment, while
the other can give the world+dog enough to eat.
...It really goes downhill from there...

To put it in a few words, the program host starts with a supposed skeptical look at genetically modified crops, but soon (at around minute 12:00) the balance starts titlting towards the pro-GM side. I was actually dismayed when he started saying "we've been tinkering with plants for years" equalling genetic selection with genetic MODIFICATION. And more importantly, ignoring the chemicals that come with it, namely Monsanto´s RoundUp (Glyphosate and add-ons).

In short: overlooked was the chemical industry's big business with pesticides and herbicides. The dangers of Glyphosate are only recently being known. While Glyphosate itself might have low toxicity, the compound as delivered and sprayed over crops contains various toxic chemicals IN ADDITION TO glyphosate itself.

So "RoundUp" contains more than just glyphosate. Plus, "enhancers" are sold and mixed to RoundUp, to make it permeate the plant deeper, and be "more effective"..

A court down here in Argentina has recently banned crop dusters from spraying glyphosate near rural towns, where it affected the health of the local population.

http://bit.ly/glyphosateban-spanish

English version:

Court in Argentina bans crop dusters spraying Monsanto´s Glyphosate over soybean fields near urban areas. - AYN
http://bit.ly/glyphosatebaninargentina-english

More from the wikipedia:

--------
Scientific fraud

On two occasions the United States Environmental Protection Agency has caught scientists deliberately falsifying test results at research laboratories hired by Monsanto to study glyphosate
--
False advertising

In 1996 Monsanto was accused of false and misleading advertising of glyphosate products, prompting a law suit by the New York State attorney general.[13] Environmental and consumer rights campaigners brought a case in France in 2001 for presenting Roundup as biodegradable and claiming that it left the soil clean after use; glyphosate, Roundup's main ingredient, is classed by the European Union as "dangerous for the environment" and "toxic for aquatic organisms". In January 2007, Monsanto was convicted of false advertising
--------
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup

So as you can see things aren´t as simple as "toying with plants"... and GM crops aren´t as harmless as depicted in this BBC programme, because they aren´t just modified seends, they come with the added chemicals sprayed on them.

Here, an Austrialian study which confirmed Glyphosate´s toxicity to frogs,
http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/threatened/publications/frog-overview.html

Fortunately, an eco-friendly farming UK blog has noticed this little bias in Jimmy´s programme, and is asking people to file a complaint with the BBC.

Let´s hope Europe does not repeat our mistake, and that we can eventually get rid of GMs too.

FC
PS: He came down here and the first part of the programme shows neat images of Argentina's vast GM soybean fields, even from the air.

The G7 thinks about us...

2009-05-20T22:10:00.000-07:00

Yet another example of the developed countries caring about us... ;-)

http://tinyurl.com/GSMsecurity

Gavin Clarke is an utter moron...

2009-04-30T03:32:00.000-07:00

Frankly, I never heard of a Gavin Clarke before today. He seems to be one of the writers @ that OTHER NEWS SITE.

But after reading THIS and THIS and THIS other story... all on the subject of the Oracle-Sun acquisition, and reading his stupid remarks, I conclude the guy has an agenda against Sun or its products.

Not that there's anything wrong with having a personal agenda. I dislike Microsoft with a passion, for instance, for its monopolistic ways. But at least there's some substance to my claims (DOJ trial, UE ruling against MSFT, South Korea's competition commision, etc).

FC

Parasites of the World, unite!

2009-02-20T01:10:00.000-08:00

The Bible of Reaganomics-style Crapitalism and Creationism, the often partisan mag Forbes from the namesake Steve Forbes, has an incensing piece where one of its writers laments the downfall of traditional media, to the hands of e-pubs and those pesky bloggers.

"Bloggers are very useful but are essentially parasitic; they seldom produce actual news and are often factually challenged, repeating errors more often than correcting them. That is because there is generally no system of accountability. One second after a blogger gets a thought, it's effectively published, often without the blogger even bothering to do a spell check." says Bruce Bartlett @ Forbes magazine over HERE

FC

"Responsible" Tories blame irresponsible labour

2009-02-05T04:48:00.000-08:00

We were taking bets with my coworkers as to "where the first mass riots" will happen in Yurope due to the Global Economic Mess (TM) until someone said "it already started, yesterday, London".

U.K. Protests at Foreign Contract Workers Spread
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=ax5Mh9vDgyOU&refer=uk

And then I read over here, the "responsible tories" saying:

Tories blame 'irresponsible' Brown for wildcat strikes

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.2486466.0.Tories_blame_irresponsible_Brown_for_wildcat_strikes.php

"The Tories today blamed Gordon Brown's "irresponsible" comments over British jobs for British workers for the wave of wildcat strikes at industrial sites across the country. Shadow business secretary Kenneth Clarke said however aggrieved people felt, industrial action at power stations and oil refineries at a time of "national crisis" was not the way forward. "We don't want to see riots in Italy about British workers, working in Italy, at a time when British companies are seeking contracts on the continent for their British workers."

But he added: "Understandable worries at the present time have been turned into direct action as a result of the Prime Minister's irresponsible use of the phrase 'British jobs for British workers'."This was populist nonsense at the time he used it and part of some curious Britishness agenda, which he was pursuing for reasons of his own at the time.

"It was more concerned with his job security than anybody else's job security in this country."

PFFT PARP PARP PARP!

Thatcher's Trafalgar Square riots
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/31/newsid_2530000/2530763.stm

"Its unpopularity contributed to the downfall of Margaret Thatcher who resigned in November 1990 after 11 years at the helm of British politics."

The Enemy Within: Thatcher's Secret War Against Miners
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1844675084?ie=UTF8&tag=showitem-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1844675084

How Thatcher tried to dodge bill for policing the miners' strike
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/jan/03/uk.conservatives

FC

Mad Mike launches his own general-news site

2009-02-02T03:51:00.000-08:00

Kudos to Mad Mike Magee, as he launched his own news site "THE NEWS".

Find it over HERE

http://www.instantnews.net/World.aspx
FC

Damn you, Facebook

2009-01-29T23:18:00.001-08:00

[wrt health: I'm back. Sort of. Let's hope the pills continue working. I have a replacement pack of 20 so with 1 a day I should be OK for the next few weeks]

HERE IS THE NEWS: I finally succumbed (sp?) to the PEER PRESSURE factor and enabled all 20+ outstanding link requests on my FACEBOOK profile.

The original idea I had was to register an account on Facebook just to prevent identity theft, but leave it there, unused.

I was wrong. I spent most of the day yesterday answering invitations of all sorts and updating my profile. There. Done. Now don't expect me to waste any more time with it. I might answer personal messages but I made a resolution not to waste more time seeking groups and the like.

I think that what is currently there reflects my tastes, ideas, and personality quite well, so please everyone STOP BUGGING ME ON Facebook with games, polls, applications and the like. I will continue to add people I know but that's about it.

FC

Apologies for not posting

2008-12-14T15:48:00.000-08:00

As some of you have noticed, I haven't been posting news lately, and this blog hasn't been updated in a while.

The reason is that I've been having health issues. By mid-January I'll have a definitive diagnosis.

Until then, don't expect too many updates.

Have a nice Yuletide.

FC

Where have all the cowboys gone?

2008-11-04T22:34:00.001-08:00

Okay... so Americans refused the chance of having the Republican Party totally screw their country with another term so they wouldn't win again for at least a decade or two. An opportunity wasted.

Instead, they elected a Democrat, whom no doubt will start being blamed for "not solving the problems" (the same problems created by Bush and Co. over the course of 8 years!) ...in about 6-12 months time, I'm sure. Mark my words...

But the hole that GWB has digged the US into is so big that unless the new president is a magician it would take at least a decade if not more for the US to recover from its cronic deficits, crumbling infrastructure, and social problems.

My point is that if anyone thinks the Right Wing think tanks, CATO, AEI, the military industrial complex and the Halliburton(s) of this world in addition to its press corps (Fox) are going to call it a day, pack their bags and go home just because a black democrat was elected, then that person is very naive.

Yes, it's good from a collective personal growth and inclusive society point of view to see that a black man can reach the presidency of the most indebted deadly military superpower. But that's about it. Will Obama implement the kind of radical reforms that IMHO would be needed to get the USA (and the rest of the World) out of the current mess?. IBIWISI. (I'll believe it when I see it).

Two prophetic front page covers from the German
magazine "Der Spiegel" back in 2001 and 2003

One thing is for certain: "LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON". GW Bush has proven to be a failure of epic proportions, just like his father, if not much worse... and the low-regulations, laizes faire policies that have inspired the GOP since the Reagan years have crashed on a global scale as well.

I remember when GWB was elected the press was full of idiotic news pieces about the "landing of cowboy hats into Washington D.C.", or that Texas style boots were suddenly all the rage.

Now... where have all those cowboys gone?.

Source: allhatnocattle.net

FC
PS: Good riddance, Dubya! and don't let the door hit you on your way out...

India Goes to Space... will a "space tourist" from the UK be its first astronaut?

2008-10-21T21:15:00.001-07:00

You heard it here first folks... India is getting into space, and with it, we heard from a good source (the mail delivery boy whom sends wires from VNU to scribblers) that the next mission will be a manned one, and they have booked the first space tourist...

India launches first unmanned orbiter to the moon - International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/21/asia/22indiamoon.php

You might be surprised to hear whom that space tourist on India's upcoming first manned orbiter is...

Congrats Mad Mike!

Good luck with the training! ... look what happened to that other guy

FC

Only in Britain...

2008-09-07T19:18:00.001-07:00

My hat's off for the fine sense of humour of the British. From the classic "Monty Python" to the more recent "Trigger Happy TV" and masterpieces like "The Office" or "Extras", the British always manage to put a big smile on my face wheres U.S. versions (when avaialble) of the same programmes put me to sleep.

Again, I don't know how they do it, but my hat's off to the irreverent British humour.

----
According to a BBC report, Lloyds TSB customer Steve Jetley set his password to "Lloyds is pants" following an insurance-related disagreement. He was surprised - though amused - to discover it had been changed to "no it's not".

The BBC quoted Jetley as saying "But what really incensed me was when I was told I could not change it back to 'Lloyds is pants' because they said it was not appropriate. I asked if it was 'pants' they didn't like, and would 'Lloyds is rubbish' do? But they didn't think so. So I tried 'Barclays is better' and that didn't go down too well either."
-----

iTWire - UK bank pulls down pants password
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/20359/53/

FC

Here is the News

2008-08-17T19:24:00.000-07:00

"I love you, sincerely
Yours truly, yours truly...

I sent a message to another time
But as the days unwind, this I just cant believe
I sent a note across another plane
Maybe its all a game, but this I just cant conceive.

Can you hear me? "

FC

The Simpsons, Science and Borges...

2008-08-12T00:22:00.000-07:00

Talk about a strange combination.... Borges, Science, and The Simpsons.... a Google search for "Simpsons thermodinamics" -trying to find a famous quote- got me landing into Paul Halpern's blog. Paul is a book writer, Simpsons fan and Science buff.

As a fan of the Simpsons I was shocked, surprised, and pleased to find a great idea... a book on Science and The Simpsons! :o)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470114606?ie=UTF8&tag=showitem06-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0470114606

Just ordered mine! :o)

FC

Open your Firefox profile folder from FF 3.0+

2008-07-30T07:51:00.000-07:00

In some instances you might have to copy files to your Firefox (or SeaMonkey for that matter) web browser's "profile". The trouble is often finding that profile, as, for security reasons, the name of the folder is a string of random characters created at the time you created your "user profile".

An extension by some Japanese fellow is available, but he stopped updating it -along with much of his web page it seems- shortly after the Firefox 2.x release.

As a result, his extension refuses to install on Firefox 3.0, 3.01 and beyond. I did a quick tweak and fixed it. It works beautifully in Firefox 3.01.

Find my modded XPI extension over here.

http://fcassia.googlepages.com/open_profile_folder-1.1.5-fcassia-mo.xpi

Of course, as 99.9% of all XPI extensions, this is cross-platform and works on Windows as well as Linux.

FC

Microsoft is the Soviet Union

2008-07-26T01:20:00.000-07:00

"Microsoft is going the way of the Soviet Union. Their insular management culture simply can't accept that computing is leaving the IBM x86 PC behind, and is moving on to the web, mobile devices, and cloud computing. Apple knows what people want and builds it. Microsoft builds 90s tech and tries to persuade people to want it. Then, on the high end, low cost newcomers are delivering *more* performance and functionality for less money, or even free. I'm thinking of MySQL over MS SQL Server, and Salesforce.com for small to medium businesses. There's just no reason to buy Microsoft anything today." (logic Jul 25, 2008 4:23 PM GMT)

Reader comment at:
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jul2008/tc20080724_447840.htm?chan=rss_topStories_ssi_5

A couple from India almost killed me

2008-07-10T14:58:00.000-07:00

Today I almost die.... of laughter, that is.

Someone was kind enough to forward me the URL of this video

FC

Get this blog on your web-enabled cellphone

2008-07-09T11:28:00.001-07:00

Thanks to AdMob, it's now very easy to read this blog while on the move -not that anyone would in his sane mind would wish to do so, but anyway...-.

Type in your web-enabled mobile (HTML not WAP):
http://mippin.com/fcassia

Here, on my Palm Centro:

Enjoy!
FC

Good Riddance Bill Gates...

2008-07-06T21:23:00.000-07:00

I forgot to give my farewell thoughts after Bill Gates' departure from Microsoft. If I wanted to give this a serious tone, I'd perhaps write something along the lines of what Richard Stallman has said to the BBC.

But those who know me know that I'm not very serious or "politically correct". So here's my farewell message to "Bill #2" ... the only moment where I smiled after seeing Gates on TV!:

The pie-in-the-face. An hillarious and well-deserved moment.

The young people nowadays whom watch the clip on YouTube seem confused... and don't understand "why" someoone would even think about throwing a pie to the face of this "hero" of theirs, responsible for their "stable, lovely" Windows OS. This is the generation which has grown on Windows XP and think Windows has been stable all the time and they can't conceive or imagine that the company did something abusive and broke the law in the process to obtain its dominant marketplace position. They should know the truth about BillG's firm and its recurring abusive, restrictive behaviour.

I said Gates was "Bill#2". This isn't my own invention... I took it from a very funny book at the time of the Microsoft-DOJ trial aptly titled "The Secret Diary of Bill Gates". On it, the Bill Gates character calls Bill Clinton "Bill #2" -in his view he was always Bill the Numero Uno. [Well, I think the spots were reversed. I always thought of Clinton as "Bill #1" and Gates as "Bill #2" ;-)].

Let's just remember him with one of his internal e-mails that surfaced to the public as a result of the DOJ-Microsoft trial: "what things an app would do that would make it run with MSDOS and not run with DR-DOS. Is there [sic] feature they have that might get in our way?" -Bill Gates, to a number of his employees.

And the memorable response from one of his product managers: "What the [user] is supposed to do is feel uncomfortable, and when he has bugs, suspect that the problem is DR-DOS and then go out to buy MS-DOS" -Brad Silverberg

Good riddance, Bill Gates!

FC
PS: For those interested in the facts with regards to the pie-in-the-face greeting to BillG, you should read this very interesting cached interview with Noel Godin, the man behind it, and whom calls himself the leader of "Patissiers sans frontiers" -Pie Bakers Without Borders-

PalmSource / Access doesn't need a miracle

2008-07-05T08:09:00.000-07:00

With the upcoming entrance of Google into the mobile-OS market... the OpenMoko project... the LiMo Foundation and Palm's own solo Linux development, code-named "Nova" one has to wonder what the future holds for Access Software's own "ALP" Linux based OS with backwards PalmOS compatibility (Access Linux Platform).

One would think that Access needs a Miracle. But nosssir, they do not need a miracle.

They already have one:

Sorry, couldn't resist.
:-P

FC

Banana magazine "Forbes" mocks Argentina

2008-06-20T02:07:00.000-07:00

I should be outraged. But after reading Forbes headlines on my GMail Inbox, and occasionally some stories on the web (I´m glad to say I never ever bought the print version), I was not surprised. For the record: I think BusinessWeek is the (mostly) drivel-free magazine to read.

I´ll cut the babbling: It seems Argentina is a "banana republic" according to Forbes´ Tim Ferguson . Well, I guess he better tell Intel, Motorola, Google, Tata, Globant and other IT powerhouses which have selected Argentina as their regional HQ and to install their development centres down here instead of across the border or elsewhere in the Southern Cone.

Forbes reporters know in-depth the countries they write about.
While sipping coffee from the comfort of their local Starbucks.

This level of drivel and bias for countries that do not strictly bow to the financial pundits´ words of wisdom ( CATO / IMF recipe books ) is to be expected from them. As one famous lawyer and content licence author whom I won´t name once told me when I inquired him if a positive mention by Forbes was a compliment or a stain on my resume: "they're just buttering you up..." was his response.

We have to thank the financial press like Forbes for their wonderful analysis
and early warnings about the housing market crash, the dot-com bubble bust, and more!

Great Scandinavian Euro-Pop...

2008-06-08T23:58:00.000-07:00

The Cardigans, performing "Explode". This version performed Live is even better than the studio recording present in its album "Gran Turismo" !

Enjoy!

Butterfly effect causes fire in Mexico

2008-06-08T04:46:00.000-07:00

You might have heard about the "butterfly effect" ... the popular version of the Chaos Theory, stating that the tiny air disturbance from the flapping of a butterfly's wings in China ultimately can lead to a hurricane in Florida.

The butterfly effect is a phrase that encapsulates the more technical notion of sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory. According to it "small variations of the initial condition of a dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system."

[If you are impatient, skip the long paragraph below and go straight to the video below :)]

The Whackypedia enlightens us further by explaining: "The phrase refers to the idea that a butterfly's wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately alter the path of a tornado or delay, accelerate or even prevent the occurrence of a tornado in a certain location. The flapping wing represents a small change in the initial condition of the system, which causes a chain of events leading to large-scale alterations of events. Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different. Of course the butterfly cannot literally cause a tornado. The kinetic energy in a tornado is enormously larger than the energy in the turbulence of a butterfly. The kinetic energy of a tornado is ultimately provided by the sun and the butterfly can only influence certain details of weather events in a chaotic manner."

Well... I don't know if it's true that the flapping of a butterfly in China can create a hurricane in Florida, US of A, but it surely can create a fire in Mexico!!.

Whatch this poor lady at her 15th birthday party... (*)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWKNqIww-kc

I couldn't stop laughing for half an hour after seeing this one...

Watch out for butterflies!!

FC

(*) Note for readers in other cultures: I don't know if 15th birthdays for girls are a big thing elsewhere, but for us latins (the video is from Mexico, but it's the same down here as well) it's a big formal celebration, marking a girl's passage into adulthood. That explains the cake, the big attendance, etc. Down here the parent often wears a suit and tie, etc.

US of A needs four years of McCain to hit bottom, then real change will come

2008-06-05T00:12:00.001-07:00

I had hopes the Americans were smarter than that, and would elect Hillary as the Democratic Party candidate.

Instead, they selected this half-hearted "yes we can" empty speeches candidate, the smiling guy who's way too eager to please everyone. Thus, what can be expected from him are compromises, not real, drastic change.

Obama has been moving to the right since day one, trying to capture the Republican votes... and even praised Reagan and the GOP as the party of ideas...

Obama panders to the right, throws Democrats under the bus
http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/01/17/obama-panders-to-right-throws-democrats-under-the-bus/

http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/01/18/obama-alert-reagans-dismal-legacy-on-civil-rights/

It is thus with gread sadness that I say I expect John McCain to win!. Just as Roosevelt's New Deal needed a great socio-economic crisis as the motivation for such reforms, I think the US of A needs to really hit bottom before making real social progress once and for good, and a continuation of the GWB policies in the hands of McCain will surely accomplish that.

The Associated Press has a story here where middle-class women say they'd prefer to stay at home on election day rather than give a vote for Obama.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Amid all the talk about a first black president, many women are deeply disappointed, in some cases furious, that Clinton's own historic campaign fell short and that Obama's campaign undercut her along the way. Her loss was painful for women who have encountered sex discrimination themselves, especially older women who saw her as the best hope for electing a female president in their lifetimes.

Obama himself must heal the rift with women, said Clinton fundraiser Susie Buell of San Francisco, or a new brand of "stay-at-home moms" might sit out the election. "I know that women are very worked up right now," she said. Obama "has never apologized for the way Hillary has been treated."

"Worked up" could describe Cynthia Ruccia, a Democratic activist in Ohio who got a phone call from party chief Howard Dean about her concerns last week."Way too little, way too late," says Ruccia, who also says she'd prefer to see McCain elected over Obama based on how the campaign unfolded. "This is about feeling that the party completely disrespected us, let us down, and we don't feel that we want to be with the party," she said.

Emotions boiled over at last weekend's televised meeting of a Democratic Party rules committee, when some women chanted "McCain '08" after the Clinton team lost its bid to win more disputed delegates from Michigan.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If, instead, they elect Mr. Obama, his lukewarm "half-reforms" have a great chance of accomplishing too little, too late, and the Republicans will be breathing behind his neck, blaming him for all the consecuences of today's GWB policies.

Moral of the Story: Go McCain, go!.

This blog endorses John McCain, for real change ... in 2012

(if there is still a World then... and that's a big IF...). ;-)
FC

Too much smog? Blame Big Oil and car manufacturers

2008-05-07T01:23:00.000-07:00

The film details the California Air Resources Board's reversal of the "Zero Emissions" mandate after suits from automobile manufacturers, the oil industry, and the George W. Bush administration. It points out that Bush's chief influences, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Andrew Card, are all former executives and board members of oil and auto companies.

Well worth the viewing time.

Available for $9.99 with free ground shipping on DVD at Amazon.com, HERE.

FC
PS: I couldn't help noticing how the name of California's air-quality regulatory agency was changed over the years... yea, like the original "Motor Vehicle POLLUTION CONTROL" was too harsh on car manufacturers. Let's name it something more ambiguous... let's see... mmm... yea... "Air Resources Board" sounds meaningless enough, and no mention of "Pollution" next to "motor vehicles"! ;-)

Agency overview
Formed	1967
Preceding Agencies	Bureau of Air Sanitation Motor Vehicle Pollution Control Board
Headquarters	1001 I Street Sacramento, California
Annual Budget	$759 million
Agency Executive	Mary D. Nichols, Chairman
Parent agency	California Environmental Protection Agency

Earth to BBC: Bring Back Sebastian to HardTalk...

2008-05-04T00:50:00.000-07:00

Several years ago... on the brink of the Iraq invasion, I really really enjoyed the Beeb programme "Hard Talk" hosted at the time by Tim Sebastian.

However, for some unknown reason (to me at least), he's been replaced by someone younger but who is not nearly as good.

On the other hand, Sebastian has moved to host "The Doha Debates" a truly boring program with high aspirations, a mix of reality-TV voting system and debate, which ends up being neither.

If I had any power to influence the Beeb, I'd bring back Sebastian to Hard Talk.
I didn't always agree with him, but I really liked his style.

FC

Farmer dimwits put Buenos Aires under a big smoke cloud

2008-04-17T09:15:00.000-07:00

Once again, we're suffering the consequences in the big cities of irresponsible behaviour of the uncivil countryside farmers and ranchers.

Bloomberg has a nice report over here. Which reads, in part:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Smoke from fires set by farmers to clear fields for grazing covered Buenos Aires and shut down some highways leading into the Argentine capital.

Interior Minister Florencio Randazzo called the smoke a ``disaster'' and said 292 separate fires covering 70,000 hectares (173,000 acres) had been detected in the provinces of Buenos Aires and neighboring Entre Rios. The smell of smoke filled homes and offices across the city, and views of landmarks, including the downtown Obelisk and the Defense Ministry building, were clouded.

``Those responsible are farmers who are burning their meadows to cut their costs and maximize their profits without considering the consequences,'' said Randazzo in a news conference at the Presidential Palace. ``We are conducting investigations to find those responsible.''

The use of fires to clear land in the Argentine countryside and the Parana River delta is an annual occurrence. Randazzo said more land is being burned in the delta area near Buenos Aires this year as farmers seek new pastures for cattle that previously grazed on land now dedicated to soybeans.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's what it all looked like from my flat, yesterday night, and this morning.

I have to ask something more... the unaccounted damage to the city's image to the thousands of foreign visitors that choose Buenos Aires for their stay. I can imagine several thinking "never again, you can't breathe down there when the wind brings the smoke from the countryside farms".

Let's pave the countryside. There's plenty of other countries without land space which import wheat and and still manage to eat. We have plenty of cows on feedlots as well. The rancher and small farmer are a dying species, anyway. Yes, I'm mad at these morons and pricky rednecks. And the wealthy landowners whom surely gave the orders to start these fires, are even worse.

Here's a nice satellite pic from our Big Brothers up North, where you can see the extent of the fires and smoke damage created by these dimwits...

640px wide version uploaded to my blog just in case NASA.gov deletes it

[Click to zoom it]

FC
PS: These *ssholes caused several deaths due to the reduced visibility in several roads. has shut down airports and air traffic, as well as inter-state bus traffic. Two people are apparently in custody already for the illegal fires. I hope the land owners are sued to death.

PS#2: Even right-wing pro-agriculture paper La Nacion says it clearly here "the expansion of the agriculture frontier is being developed with great violence. There's a thirst for exploiting the fields that leads agriculture producers to an irresponsible management of their production. That's the reason why the smoke has reached Buenos Aires city" told LANACION.com Claudio Bertonatti, communications and Education manager at the NGO Argentina's Wildlife Fundation, Fundación Vida Silvestre."

and it continues:

" Soybean. The problem is that the soil there is fragile, say the experts, it might be useful for cattle but not so for agriculture 'while we do know that some soybean producers have bought cheap land there to use it for soybean, the problem is also the large number of cattle that is being entered into the area" said Gerardo Mujica, director at the INTA's Experimental Station at the Parana's Delta."

FUCK EL CAMPO, fuck them all... (no, really)

My love affair with a lovely bread maker

2008-04-11T12:13:00.000-07:00

Or "Make your own bread at home every day, with a

one-time, $45 investment"

If you told me several years ago that I'd be cooking my own bread, I'd have told you that you're nuts. Being a tech type I can't see myself "wasting time" (even if the alternative is sitting in front of the puter browsing random web sites :) with the sticky flour+water mess. (I used to manually do my own pizza once a month, but stopped because of the mess I created in the kitchen).

But then... I found about these nifty kind of tech toys... BREAD MAKERS!.

And not only that, but I found a VERY AFFORDABLE one (45 greenbacks in the US of A, and ~ USD $76 locally in Buenos Aires in 220v AC version, including 21% V.A.T. -remember the local version has local warranty, and the importer has to make a living as well, so they likelly make around USD $10 per unit discounting import duties).

While the local brand isn't Sunbeam, the Chinese manufacturer is the same. It works great!. In less than two hours after pouring the ingredients and pressing the right keys (make sure you put water first and powder dry yeast last), I have my own hot bread ready to eat (and the smell of fresh bread throughout the house).

The same exact China-made bread maker sold with the
local ATMA brand down here, sold as Sunbeam in the US of A

I've found that natural powdered "dry yeast" is readily available in 10 grams envelopes (keep in the fridge and it lasts several months!) in major local supermarkets like Carrefour, Disco or Coto (sadly the French chain 'Leader Price' across the street doesn't carry the powder version, just live yeast).

For comparison's sake, here's an off-the-shelf piece of commercially made bread:

And here so you compare the size with the machine's container. With the machine I bought, you get a ~680 grams to 950 grams (1.5 to 2 pounds) piece of bread.

What's best is that you pour the ingredients into the removable teflon-coated "cooking pan" (I really really hate teflon, but I have to agree that it'd be almost impossible to create this kind of device without it, and it's almost impossible to know if the commercially produced bread doesn't involve teflon along the way... so in the grand scheme of things, at least I do know what ingredients -or lack of chemicals- I put in my own homemade bread).

After pouring the ingredients, you set the program using the keys, push Start and go away!. You'll know when the bread is ready a hour or so after that because of the beeping, and fresh-bread smell.

The unit at work
(note: light is a flashlight I was holding to take the pic)

Work complete!

Here you can see the cooking pan out of the unit. (I did the first run with the unit standing on the floor and closely watching along the process fearing any spills/smoke/etc nothing happened! :).

As you can see below, the mixing-pad is part of the cooking pan and stays inside the unit, and inside the bread as well, but being all teflon-coated, it doesn't stick to it.

It's easy to recognize pieces of bread made with this unit because of the small hole made by the mixing pad that it leaves at the bottom.

And here, the tasty result!

In short: Highly recommend one of these contraptions!.

Not bad for USD $45 huh?
FC

PS: I'll see if I'm so happy when the first electricity/power bill arrives. This unit uses 600-Watt while cooking, and less than 100 while mixing.

A (North) American friend thinks GWB should end in jail

2008-04-11T01:29:00.000-07:00

I have a friend who lives up in Sunny Cali-Phone-Ya, U.S. of A.

Let's call him John.

He just emailed me this with his thoughts about George W. Bush and what should/might happen to him after he leaves office.

Worth a read, IMHO.

FC

Could Bush Be Prosecuted for War Crimes?

After re-reading the 2003 John Yoo Torture memo <http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_04/013450.php>
<http://gulcfac.typepad.com/georgetown_university_law/files/march.14.memo.part1.pdf>
<http://gulcfac.typepad.com/georgetown_university_law/files/march14.memo.part2.pdf>

I was reminded of Benjamin Ferencz, former chief prosecutor for Nuremberg war crimes trials comments there is a case for trying Bush for the 'supreme crime against humanity, an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation.'

Ben Ferencz also said "unauthorized war-making is neither legal nor inevitable." <http://www.benferencz.org/arts/92.html> and his views on "fair standards to prosecute terrorism" <http://www.benferencz.org/arts/88.html>

In July 2006 the question was asked "Could Bush Be Prosecuted for War Crimes?" <http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/38604/?page=entire>

So after the fall election will Bush Inc give themselves a "free pass" on being prosecuted for the illegal Iraqi war?

If there is an attempt to prosecute the Bush Inc White House will the new administration give a "free pass" to Bush - Cheney - Rumsfeld - and the rest of the neocon war mongers?

John X

Today´s coup d´etats are done with the media

2008-03-25T19:36:00.001-07:00

I was surprised today by a post from YANQUI MIKE. He reports on the "lack of meat" at the supermarket, and appears to blame it on government actions. The fact is that there´s plenty of meat to be delivered to supermarkets, but ARMED PICKETS by the wealthy landowners are PREVENTING FOOD AND ALL AGRICULTURAL SUPPLIES from reaching Buenos Aires.

There has been FOUR separate incidents of people getting hit by mobs and sent to the hospital for not stopping at the protest pickets on national highways. Try to do that in the good old US of A, land of liberty and freedom, you´d be sent to the clink faster than you can say ¨...wait!".

See:

In my view, this is a coup d´etat attempt by the same wealthy landowners that in past decades supported the military. If you or any serious economist looks at the figures, "el campo" (the countryside agriculture sector) is more profitable here than in Brazil.

I´m afraid that Mike, being a foreigner, doesn´t understand all the political and economic forces at play here.

Today´s news story

Argentine agriculture sector more profitable than Brazil, even after taxes
http://www.infobae.com/contenidos/371293-101092-0-El-campo-argentino-es-mucho-m%C3%A1s-rentable-que-el-Brasil

and here automatic translation...

http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=/language_tools&u=http://www.infobae.com/contenidos/371293-101092-0-El-campo-argentino-es-mucho-m%25C3%25A1s-rentable-que-el-Brasil

We´re calling a gathering for Thursday and Friday in front of the Sociedad Rural Argentina, Florida 460, to protest the armed pickets in argentinian routes and the fact that big cities are being held hostage by armed gangs of the wealthy landowners who´re doing an AWFUL LOT BETTER than they did in the 1990s at the time of the right wing Chicago-school ¨free market rules" economic programme.

Oh an another thing... as early as last THURSDAY, I saw commenters on centre-right paper LA NACION calling for "countryside patriots" to SABOTAGE THE ELECTRIC GRID, how about that?.

I continuously reported those messages as "inciting violence" but those were REPOSTED OVER AND OVER, for a period of SIX HOURS, from 1:00am to 7:00, by four different people.

COINCIDENCE?. If this wasn´t staged, I don´t know what was.

And how about the 2,000 people showing up with banners in Plaza de Mayo? Did they make the HUGE banners "supporting the countryside" on short notice? Or did they have those already prepared for the "event"?.

Argentina has a long tradition of infighting. And a friend says that Argentina is not a democracy, it´s a country in perpetual civil war, only that "it´s frozen from time to time, then the war is revived".

Dollar sinks even lower...

2008-03-13T04:49:00.001-07:00

``Sentiment for the dollar continues to deteriorate very, very rapidly and if we're not careful this will turn into a dollar crash, said Mitul Kotecha, head of foreign-exchange research in London at Calyon, the securities unit of Credit Agricole SA, France's second-biggest bank."

"President George W. Bush acknowledged the U.S. currency's decline was not ``good tidings.'' The dollar's drop may prompt Middle East central banks to reduce dollar holdings, Greg Gibbs, a strategist at ABN Amro Holding NV in Sydney, said in a report."

Dollar Falls to 12-Year Low of 100 Yen on Carlyle Fund Failure
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a8q2vC2.8OyU&refer=home

Argentina's Great Cellphone Heist

2008-03-05T12:44:00.000-08:00

Mexican Telecomms mogul and billonaire Carlos Slim -of TelMex fame battling Telefonica throughout LatAm, and his own Mexican monopoly infamy- got a truckload of cellular phones stolen in Argentina. Slim owns mobile provider "CTI" in the country, which has been and so far still is the most agressive and innovative -of the three networks available-, as I reported here.

Today, local news media reported a truck full of mobile phones and accessories imported by CTI into the country was STOLEN AT GUNPOINT by an unspecified number of armen men in three cars, right from the parking lot at the TCA Argentine Airfreight Terminal, right across the Buenos Aires international airport, Ezeiza. The value of the goods was reported at $800,000 greenbacks (USD), and it was stolen after it cleared the customs. There was no mention about the number or brand/model of cell phones, but if we assume a value of $200-400 USD per phone, it could be between two thousand and four thousand phones, which is an awful lot to sell on auction sites and street corners...

Horrible, broken, automatic translation, here.

Carlos Slim Image courtesy of Agência Brasil, a public Brazilian news agency. Image released under the Creative Commons License Attribution 2.5 Brazil, and found on the WikiMedia web site.

PS: If you want to see what the *cough* high-security *cough* TCA parking lot looks like, well it looks like this on a busy day (notice the reserved handicapped space).

I had to go there a couple times when PR bunnies fail to follow orders and ship items via DHL, ending up stuck at the TCA customs depot.

Another Frankenstein M&A, this time in the Public Safety space?

2008-02-24T20:43:00.001-08:00

The good thing about writing for the INQUIRER is that after years of practice (I started back in 2002) sometimes you find great news on your own. But even better, sometimes NEWS FINDS YOU, and in some cases, about companies you´ve never ever heard about .

In this case, people who prefer to remain nameless have expressed their worry and outrage about a probable M&A on the Public Safety space. The main source who sent me this rumor has been around public safety organizations for nearly twenty years and often hear rumors, most of those are mundane and without much consequence, but he swears this one is not that case.

From the heart of Texas... the rumor mill says the marriage from hell would involve tiny European EADS trying to match (or digest?) an unnamed West Coast public safety company several times its size.

--BEGIN OF RUMOR MILL--.

Here´s the first message I received, un-edited:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For nearly seven years, EADS - Security Networks - North America (a.k.a EADS-PS) has been educating American public safety officials about their multi-billion dollar parent company in Europe. EADS wants to escape their saturated market places in Europe, regarding Land Mobile Radio (LMR) systems, where they have the greater market share in Tetra/Tetrapol based radio.

The only problem is that the non-Tetra/Tetrapol technology based Public Safety first responder folks in North American and USA markets want to see an installed working fully mature LMRsystem without flying to Europe. These same Public Safety first responder folks want to obtain P25 technology (APCO and TIA-based current technology platforms) and do not want to fork-lift out all their working legacy radio and dispatch equipment aka infrastructure like reporting software and computer aided dispatching software).

Instead, they want to evaluate a functioning Public Safety first responders turn-key, LMR system, integrated to dispatching equipment of various types, which includes emergency telephone answering points, records management systems, mobile data, graphics and other database systems and equipment - _ALL of which uses standard-for-USA radio RF and dispatching protocols.

Some background info:

Since 2003, the U. S. Department of Homeland Security has been passing out big checks to the regional and state public safety organizations who will install a P-25 protocol based system. Only problem is that there are really only two folks who can install a complete turn-key, end-to-end, P-25 system -- namely Tico MA/COM and Motorola.

So to overcome the deficiency of having only 25 percent of their competitors’ capability, EADS is talking about buying an American public safety company. How does a big fish (like EADS) eat a small fish (unnamed American company) and not get a belly ache? It is widely accepted that merging two companies is never easy.

Accenture is a specialist studying this problem. They have over twenty years' experience and have looked at over 400 mergers and acquisitions Accenture agrees with a February 2003 Harvard Business Review article which says the results for a merger are determined by what is set up at the beginning. The biggest factor which leads to failures of a merger is cultural differences between the companies. Now, a group of business people with European backgrounds needs to buy a public safety vendor in the USA for one of their smallest divisions. Where should they look for such a deal?

For EADS, that is a triple whammy. Their parent is as big as Lockheed and, like Lockheed, their bigger customers are government organizations. If EADS European headquarters asks their European bankers, who in turn will ask American bankers, they’ll probably end up looking at someone who is larger and has a polished offering. There are two locations in the USA where European companies most often go to look for this sort of an offering: Boston and Silicon Valley. That is where the big venture capitalist firms are located. These are the VC who specialize in finding that “something special in our portfolio that just might fit your needs.”

Is the rumor true that EADS Public Safety has less than 40 people and that they are thinking about buying a West Coast company that has nearly 600 employees and five locations? The supposed West Coast company was created by at least four acquisitions since 2005. Hmmm, looks like there has to be multiple cultural dimensions for that West Coast company. Are all the hiccups of those multiple acquisitions completely worked out? The same Harvard Business Review article says that in the first year of a merger nearly 25 percent of the executives and other talented employees leave – three times the rate for a similar company without a merger. In the second year, an additional 15 percent leave, which is twice the normal rate. This high departure rate continues for up to nine years after a merger says Harvard Business Review. If you apply those percentages to that newly grown West Coast company with four mergers since 2005, it is probably a safe guess their best leaders and their brightest team members are probably already gone.

The goal of EADS Public Safety in Texas and their European headquarters, may be a good one, but the method of reaching it could leave them with more problems than they bargained for. Seems to me at this point, EADS Public Safety really needs to develop a clear plan for how they are going to integrate all these different cultures into their own giant European corporate culture.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

People from two affected companies see this as setting up a disaster which will hamper EADS over the long term. They think a completed buyout of PlantCML "would give backchanell info direct to Motorola". That "would keep Motorola safely in the drivers seat for controlling USA Public Safety even though that division is not profitable".

"It remains a part of the whole operation by having its low profitability folded into a larger division of Motorola." said one source.

Asked about why the disliking of Motorola, THE SOURCE told this scribbler that Motorola apparently has an arrogance problem "I have a long standing dislike of Motorola Public Safety telling cops and fireman that _only_ Motorola knows how tobuild Public Safety radio communications. This buyout will keep the USA on the path for non-world-side interoperability" he concluded "we have enough of that "not invented there" thinking in the industry now".

--END OF RUMOR MILL--.

Agree? Disagree with these sources? I admit in shame not being well aware of the U.S. public safety marketplace but I can surely identify with the "not invented here" syndrome which is and has been poisoning most IT firms I´ve known over the years, which a few notable exceptions.

So, do you have anything to do with public safety tech? Agree/disagree with this rumor and conclusions? Shoot out on the comments section.... Also if anyone from Hello Moto reads this and wants to comment, feel free as well. I´ll give equal air time to all positions.

Several warnings:

1. Take this as what it is, a rumor. It might happen, it might not. I´m just interedted in the "what if" factor. If what my source said is true, what will happen?.
2. I have to admit that I kinda agree with Mr. J in that in very few instances I´ve seen a small firm buy another several times its size. And he has a point with regards to the cultural differences (Mormon Utah based Novell and cold German Engineering based SUSE comes to mind).
3. I do not share my source´s contempt wrt Motorola. Well, I can´t speak about thier public safety division, but I don´t think Moto sucks, as a whole...

(OK, on second thought I do remember how they had the upper hand with the PowerPC and blew it)
4. I plan to buy myself a Linux-powered Moto A1200 soon. Wonder why Moto isn´t promoting these phones more. :-) :-(

Pacino and De Niro go for an ice cream

2008-02-20T12:25:00.001-08:00

I saw this on cable and while I didn't manage to record it, I looked it up on the Net until I found it.... Haven't had such a good laugh in a while. These guys are genius. ENJOY!.

Happy New Year. Now let's work to make '08 the best

2008-01-01T21:25:00.000-08:00

So... 2008 has already started. Now... enough with the partying and let's get to work.

I hope we can all make 2008 an even better year than '07, which for some of us was pretty good to begin with.

But let's all take things seriously... do not rush things. Let's take things slowly, nobody is chasing you. :-)

[ PD: Yes, it's a Honda CBR-600. Thanks, Gus. :) ]

Bush Diplomacy explained...

2007-12-28T02:51:00.000-08:00

My hat's off for the British for their top-notch humor...

Season Greetings.... or NOT

2007-12-24T00:20:00.001-08:00

Geek Gaucho decided not to "celebrate" Christmas anymore.

Anyway, since most of you readers surely do, here's my "gift" for this modern pagan consumerist festivity.

After the ORIGINAL "Badger Badger Badger", and the remixed Trance version, came also a Christmas version of it. I discovered it today, but it might be quite old. In any case, Xmas is also old and that doesn't prevent everyone from repeating the exercise.

HERE IT GOES: CHRISTMAS BADGER!

http://www.purple-twinkie.com/FlashMovies/badgerchristmas-song.asp

[More about BadgerBadgerBadger on the Whackypedia.]

If you want to send me [or someone else you know] a gift anyway, here's an idea.

http://www.cafepress.com/apoplecticpress/3908122

Installing dsniff in Fedora Core 6 / Blag 60000

2007-12-23T21:28:00.000-08:00

apt-get install libpcap libpcap-devel libnet libnet-devel
wget -c http://apt.sw.be/packages/dsniff/dsniff-2.3-0.rhel3.dag.i386.rpm
wget -c ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/fedora/core/development/i386/os/Fedora/openssl097a-0.9.7a-9.i386.rpm
#
# create symlink
#
ln -s /usr/lib/libpcap.so /usr/lib/libpcap.so.0.6.2
#
# install dsniff ... now it can't complain about anything...
#
rpm --install --force --nodeps ./dsniff-2.3-0.rhel3.dag.i386.rpm > /dev/null

See? it works....

# /usr/sbin/dsniff --help

/usr/sbin/dsniff: invalid option -- -
Version: 2.3
Usage: dsniff [-cdmn] [-i interface] [-s snaplen] [-f services]
[-t trigger[,...]] [-r|-w savefile] [expression]
[root@m6810]#

Free Markets at Work

2007-12-18T03:01:00.000-08:00

Racism can kill you

2007-12-08T07:59:00.000-08:00

This is one of the funniest music videos I've ever seen. And the remixed song by Fatboy Slim is cool as well.

Pride: Argentina's telecommunications ranking

2007-11-30T01:39:00.000-08:00

While the right-wing press who misses the "pro-market" State-free 1990s tries to smear the current administration day after day... we read some good news thanks to PRMinds's report on telecommunications in Latin America:

2007 Latin America Telecoms, Mobile and Broadband in Mercosur, Guyana, Suriname, Venezuela:

"Argentina: Argentina has one of the most solid state-of-the-art telecom infrastructures in South America. Fixed-line teledensity is around 22%, similar to Brazil and Chile. Like elsewhere in Latin America, the shift is away from traditional telephony and towards mobility. While fixed lines stagnate, mobile telephony is booming, reaching a penetration of over 82% – a figure that is well above the Latin American average, trailing only Chile and a few Caribbean islands. All telephony services are open to competition, requiring a single licence for any type of service. The country’s incumbents Telefónica de Argentina and Telecom Argentina still dominate the country’s fixed network [it's time to end Telefonica's Local Loop monopoly, Cristina!], but long distance telephony is highly competitive [who calls long distance from a fixed line?]. Three mobile operators, Movistar, CTI Móvil, and Telecom Personal, run a close competition for mobile market share. All three are planning network upgrades in 2007 to prepare for the launch of UMTS 3G technology. Argentina’s Internet market is the third largest in Latin America, and penetration is among the highest in the region."

Fernando in South Park

2007-11-27T21:22:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the amazing South Park Studio, here's a South Park rendition of me... ;)

I did my best... too bad they don't have a "total shaved bald" template for the head.

Thanks to fellow Argentine now-living-in-Euroland Open Kosmaczewski for the link!

FC

Building MIMMS on Fedora Core 6 / blag Linux - Download mms:// streams !

2007-10-24T22:29:00.000-07:00

PROBLEM: You want to download a mms:// video stream to your Hard Disk
You find about MiMMS but found no up to date RPM for your system, and soon find that compiling it is a total nightmare.

SOLUTION:
I'm posting this in the interest of helping folks running blag Linux or Fedora Core 6 to build the MIMMS client on their systems. MiMMS is a Free Software program that downloads MMS:// video streaming URLs to your hard disk.

EXPLANATION:
The original program is provided over here at GNU.org. The problem is that the build process (just running "make") will complain about AN AWFUL LOT of missing pieces and libraries, with no further help in finding what's missing.

Well, since I'm shaved bald, I've saved you from all the HAIR PULLING.

Here's an example of all the errors you might encounter (I'm pasting here so Google searches can find this entry).

Error #1: Missing QT4-make
===========================================================
# make
qmake-qt4 -o Makefile.qmake
make: qmake-qt4: Command not found
make: *** [Makefile.qmake] Error 127
[root@m6810 mimms-2.0.1]#
===========================================================

Error #2: Missing C++ compiler
===========================================================
# make
qmake-qt4 -o Makefile.qmake
make -f Makefile.qmake
make[1]: Entering directory `/incoming/mimms-2.0.1'
g++ -c -pipe -O2 -g -pipe -Wall -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -m32 -march=i386 -mtune=generic -fasynchronous-unwind-tables -Wall -W -D_REENTRANT -DQT_NO_DEBUG -DQT_CORE_LIB -I/usr/lib/qt4/mkspecs/linux-g++ -I. -I/usr/include/QtCore -I/usr/include/QtCore -I/usr/include -I. -Ilibmms -I/usr/include/libmms -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/lib/glib-2.0/include -I. -I. -o mimms.o mimms.cpp
make[1]: g++: Command not found
make[1]: *** [mimms.o] Error 127
make[1]: Leaving directory `/incoming/mimms-2.0.1'
make: *** [build] Error 2
[root@m6810 mimms-2.0.1]#
===========================================================

Error #3: Missing libmms development libs
===========================================================
# make
make -f Makefile.qmake
make[1]: Entering directory `/incoming/mimms-2.0.1'
g++ -c -pipe -O2 -g -pipe -Wall -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -m32 -march=i386 -mtune=generic -fasynchronous-unwind-tables -Wall -W -D_REENTRANT -DQT_NO_DEBUG -DQT_CORE_LIB -I/usr/lib/qt4/mkspecs/linux-g++ -I. -I/usr/include/QtCore -I/usr/include/QtCore -I/usr/include -I. -Ilibmms -I/usr/include/libmms -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/lib/glib-2.0/include -I. -I. -o mimms.o mimms.cpp
mimms.cpp:28:17: error: mms.h: No such file or directory
mimms.cpp:29:18: error: mmsh.h: No such file or directory
mimms.cpp: In function ‘int main(int, char**)’:
mimms.cpp:238: error: ‘mms_t’ was not declared in this scope
mimms.cpp:238: error: ‘mms’ was not declared in this scope
mimms.cpp:239: error: ‘mmsh_t’ was not declared in this scope
mimms.cpp:239: error: ‘mmsh’ was not declared in this scope
mimms.cpp:321: error: ‘mms_connect’ was not declared in this scope
mimms.cpp:330: error: ‘mmsh_connect’ was not declared in this scope
mimms.cpp:341: error: ‘mms_get_length’ was not declared in this scope
mimms.cpp:341: error: ‘mmsh_get_length’ was not declared in this scope
mimms.cpp:386: error: ‘mms_read’ was not declared in this scope
mimms.cpp:387: error: ‘mmsh_read’ was not declared in this scope
mimms.cpp:400: error: ‘mms_get_current_pos’ was not declared in this scope
mimms.cpp:400: error: ‘mmsh_get_current_pos’ was not declared in this scope
make[1]: *** [mimms.o] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/incoming/mimms-2.0.1'
make: *** [build] Error 2
[root@m6810 mimms-2.0.1]#
===========================================================

Error #4: Missing glib.h
===========================================================
# make
make -f Makefile.qmake
make[1]: Entering directory `/incoming/mimms-2.0.1'
g++ -c -pipe -O2 -g -pipe -Wall -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -m32 -march=i386 -mtune=generic -fasynchronous-unwind-tables -Wall -W -D_REENTRANT -DQT_NO_DEBUG -DQT_CORE_LIB -I/usr/lib/qt4/mkspecs/linux-g++ -I. -I/usr/include/QtCore -I/usr/include/QtCore -I/usr/include -I. -Ilibmms -I/usr/include/libmms -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/lib/glib-2.0/include -I. -I. -o mimms.o mimms.cpp
In file included from /usr/include/libmms/mms.h:41,
from mimms.cpp:28:
/usr/include/libmms/bswap.h:25:18: error: glib.h: No such file or directory
make[1]: *** [mimms.o] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/incoming/mimms-2.0.1'
make: *** [build] Error 2
[root@m6810 mimms-2.0.1]# locate glib.h
/mnt/Windows/Qt/4.0.1/src/3rdparty/libjpeg/jpeglib.h
/usr/include/jpeglib.h
[root@m6810 mimms-2.0.1]#
===========================================================

SOLUTION: Use apt-get to install all the required libs BEFORE running make:

apt-get install gnu-c++ qt4-devel glib-devel glib2-devel libmms libmms-devel

That's it!. Now we type make and everything's fine:

WE COMPILE IT!:

# make
make -f Makefile.qmake
make[1]: Entering directory `/incoming/mimms-2.0.1'
g++ -c -pipe -O2 -g -pipe -Wall -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -m32 -march=i386 -mtune=generic -fasynchronous-unwind-tables -Wall -W -D_REENTRANT -DQT_NO_DEBUG -DQT_CORE_LIB -I/usr/lib/qt4/mkspecs/linux-g++ -I. -I/usr/include/QtCore -I/usr/include/QtCore -I/usr/include -I. -Ilibmms -I/usr/include/libmms -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/lib/glib-2.0/include -I. -I. -o mimms.o mimms.cpp
g++ -o mimms mimms.o -lmms -lQtCore -lpthread
make[1]: Leaving directory `/incoming/mimms-2.0.1'
[root@m6810 mimms-2.0.1]#

AND WE INSTALL IT!

# make install
make -f Makefile.qmake
make[1]: Entering directory `/incoming/mimms-2.0.1'
make[1]: Nothing to be done for `first'.
make[1]: Leaving directory `/incoming/mimms-2.0.1'
install -m755 -D mimms //usr/local/bin/mimms
install -m644 -D mimms.1 //usr/local/share/man/man1/mimms.1

DOES IT WORK? YES!

# mimms -h
MiMMS 2.0.1 - MiMMS isn't an MMS Message Sender.
It's an MMS (e.g. mms://) stream downloader.
Usage: mimms [options] [output]
Options:
-c, --clobber Allow overwriting an existing file;
by default, this is not allowed.
-t, --time Record for the given number of minutes;
by default, record until the end.
-v, --verbose Print verbose debug messages on stderr.
-q, --quiet Don't print status messages on stdout.
-h, --help Show this help message on stdout.
URL Argument:
mms (MMS) i.e. mms://[:port]/
will try all supported methods.
mmst (MMS TCP) i.e. mmst://[:port]/
will only try TCP method.
mmsu (MMS UDP) Not currently supported; (poorly suited
for streaming downloads anyway).
mmsh (MMS HTTP) i.e. mmsh://[:port]/
will only try HTTP method.
http (ASX HTTP) i.e. http://[:port]/[.asx]
only the first supported URL is used.
- (stdin) i.e. look for an MMS URL on stdin;
only the first supported URL is used.
Output Argument:
none Streams to file named based on the URL.
filename Streams to the given file.
- Streams to stdout. (Implies --quiet.)
[root@m6810 mimms-2.0.1]#

FINAL STEP: WE TEST IT...

Fernando's outdoors adventure (Jungle computing)

2007-10-22T12:44:00.000-07:00

Some people who know me personally have criticized me, saying I'm a home rat, a hermit, a computer geek inmerse in his private world of software and hardware... and in that sense, they have been for the most part right. Very few things force me out, besides the usual buying groceries, attending a show of some sort, or the evermore scattered- exercise walk.

However, that doesn't prevent me from embarking into journeys of dangerous exploration of the wilderness aka "the outside world".

Here's a pic of me yesterday, writing from what looks like the middle of a jungle (which is actually my parents' patio) to Mad Mike and some of our Mad Readers who chastised me because of my DELL opinion piece -and among other abuse, accused me of "not knowing that the dot is the decimal separator for currency amounts in Argentina" (of course, I was right, and he was wrong, as usual with the most vitrolic complainers who preach from their high horse).

[Click to enlarge]

Who said the life of a computer geek can't be dangerous?. Look at that pot above my head? It's about to crush me!.

FC
PS: In case you're wondering, it's a beatiful old Lemon Tree.

Music for a Saturday Morning

2007-09-29T04:37:00.000-07:00

Turn up the volume... what a way to end the day a Saturday morning!. Just in case you don't want to fall asleep!.

Paul Weller doing "Sunflower" !!

I think he's a UK version of "the Boss" Springsteen, with a heavier voice..

Enjoy "dudes"!! ;)

PS: Any studio / tv set recording of this same song sounds much better. There's more on YouTube.

Bring back the 1920s

2007-09-26T22:23:00.000-07:00

Public TV has a bonus, and it's that it's not subject to the influence of Hollywood and the special interests, and as thus can have a very broad view, and some gems that focus on history and true art, not just the latest-movie-of-the-week peddled by the film distributors.

Such is the case of Argentina's public TV channel, Canal 7. The only one that survived the privatization wave of the 1990s. Surely it's a long way from the Beeb , but it's been improving lately. Such is the case of "Filmoteca" a daily programme by film collectors, for film buffs.

Today, I had the pleasure of watching a series of Buster Keaton short films from the 1920s.

The best, IMHO, was "One Week", which you can watch on Google Video over here.

Buster and Sybil are newlyweds. Among their wedding gifts is a portable house you can easily put together in one week... but things won't be as easy as it seemed.

A great laugh and the amount of Busters' falls and hits is mind-blowing, specially considering he used no stunt performers. All the falls are real, and the programme presenters even explained that Buster Keaton broke a few bones several times during his career, only accepting to use a stunt performer on a jump once, because the length of a javelin jump would have been impossible for him to perform.

Thanks, Fernando Martin Peña, for letting us know about these gems from 1920s cinema.

[Fernando M. Peña and Pablo Manes host this daily view on the history of cinema]

I wholeheartedly recommend this programme dubbed "Filmoteca". It airs Mon-Fri after 01:00am on Canal 7 in Buenos Aires and its network of repeaters that spans several provinces (Mar del Plata in Buenos Aires, Mendoza, Cordoba, etc).

Blu-Ray PS3 wins in dollars/features ratio over HDDVD+Xbox360...

2007-09-14T02:51:00.000-07:00

A lot has been written lately about the High-Definition standard wars of Blu-Ray vs HDDVD.

I only have enough money to buy a single console and HD movies player,
so I have done the math using prices from Amazon.com:

Sony PS3 (60 Gb) console: $499
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009VXAM0

Sony PS3 Blu-Ray remote $24
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000M17AVO

Sony PS3 cordless Media Keyboard $65
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000MFLBBK

Total: $ 589

Storage: 60GB
Full-size wireless Keyboard: Yes
Runs Linux without mod: Yes, [4, afaik] Yellowdog for PS3 , Fedora-PPC, Ubuntu-PPC, Gentoo

vs

Xbox 360 - 20Gb: $349
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000B43OY4

Xbox 360 HD-DVD player add-on: $180
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000JHO4L0

Xbox 360 Media Remote: $20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000B6MLSM

Tiny clumsy Xbox rubber mini-Keyboard: $30
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000UN3UDQ

Total: $579

Storage: 20GB

plays HD movies: YES, but with Bulky add-on

You fund an evil corporation which is also a convicted monopolist: YES
Runs Linux without mod?: NO
Full-size wireless keyboard: NO

Game over, Sony's PS3 wins. :)

Price difference:
Sony's $10 more expensive, big freaking deal. :)

Another 9/11 - but in Chile

2007-09-11T00:29:00.000-07:00

REMEMBERING SALVADOR ALLENDE, AND CHILE's own 9/11

When the new generations hear the words "September 11" they think about the attack on the twin towers in New York.

But there was another September 11 as painful -if not more- for Latin Americans...

Here goes my little homage to a man who valued and kept his words till the end. A man betrayed by power-hungry criminals because the Empire up North wanted to prevent him setting a "bad example" on the region.

Last words of Salvador Allende (Spanish):

Get this widget

Track details

[English translation here]

Some related reading... :

CIA acknowledges involvement in Allende's overthrow, Pinochet's rise
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/americas/09/19/us.cia.chile.ap/

Herald Tribune: Former aide links Pinochet and son to drug trade
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/11/news/chile.php

CHILE 1964: CIA COVERT SUPPORT IN FREI ELECTION DETAILED
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20040925/index.htm

Colin Powell: U.S. "not proud" of 1973 covert action in Chile
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2003/02/dos022003.html

Riggs bank hid Pinochet's fortune
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50222-2004Jul14.html

Tinker Bell, Pinochet and the Fairy Tale Miracle of Chile - Greg Palast
http://www.gregpalast.com/tinker-bell-pinochet-and-the-fairy-tale-miracle-of-chile-2/

Chile's privatization failures
http://www.tcf.org/list.asp?type=NC&pubid=962

The fall of a myth - Chile reforms its privatized Education and Social Security systems [Spanish]
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:IKZMLcmjmhoJ:www.cep.cl/Cenda/Cen_Documentos/Pub_MR/Libros/Libro_2006/Libro_2006.doc+chile+cuenta+secreta+pinochet+barings&hl=es&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=ar

The Case Against Pinochet
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB125/index2.htm

New Evidence: U.S. OK'd Argentina's 'Dirty War'
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1204-01.htm

"-This is admiral Caravajal, ¡I want to speak to the President!

-This is the president speaking
After a few moment, the president's voice lashed out like a whip:

-¡What do you think, you sh*tty traitors!... ¡Take your plane up your ass!... ¡You're speaking to the President of the country. And the president, elected by the people, does not surrender!

--Salvador Allende, under siege by the military coup, in La Moneda presidental palace, Sept. 11, 1973

[From "Salvador Allende: how the white house caused his death"].
[Published by El Ateneo. ISBN 950-02-7452-3]

"History is not stopped by repression or crime. This is a stage that will be overcome. This is a hard and difficult moment: it is possible they will crush us. But tomorrow will belong to the people, will belong to the workers. Humanity advances to conquer a better life."

-Salvador Allende's last words message, from La Moneda, Sep-11-1973

(full translation at "Allende's Last Words")

Humor: the "human age" of nations

2007-08-30T08:53:00.000-07:00

[I received this as a chain letter. The original was in Spanish and claims to be written by someone by the name Hernán Casciari (supposedly from Argentina). Here's my attempt at an English translation]

THE HUMAN AGE OF NATIONS
I read once that Argentina is no worse or better than Spain, only younger.

I liked that theory so then I invented a trick to discover the true "mind age" of nations, taking the "dog system" as a base, and thus equaling countries' ages with human ages.

Since our childhood, we were told that to know if a dog was young or old, to get its "human age" we should multiply its biological age by 7. I found that to find the human age of a nation, we must divide its historical age by fourteen, to get the corresponding "human age" value.

Is it confusing? In this article I'll give you a few revealing examples:

Argentina was born in 1816, so it's already 190 years old. If we divide that age by 14, Argentina has a "human age" of 13 and a half years. That means it's a wanker, a rebel, questions authority, has no memory, answers everything without thinking, and it's full of pimples.

Almost all the countries in Latin America have the same age, and as it happens in that case, they get together, hang around doing nothing, and end up creating gangs.

The Mercosur* gang (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay) are a group of teenagers that formed its own rock band. They rehearse in a garage, make a lot of noise, and still haven't got any album released.

Venezuela, which just got its tiny tits, it's about to join them to do the chrorus. In reality, as happens in most cases, she wants to have sex... in this case with Brasil, which has 14 years and a big penis.

Mexico is also a teenager, but with Indian roots. That's why it laughs so little and doesn't even smoke a joint, as the rest of their friends do. Instead, Mexico chews peyote, and hangs around the United States, a brain-damaged spoiled 17 years old rich kid whose idea of fun is attacking younger, starving six year olds in other continents.

In the other extreme is ancient China. If we divide its 1,200 years by 14 we get a "human age" of 85. China is a conservative old woman, that smells of cat pee, and which spends all day eating rice because it still doesn't have -but soon will- enough money to afford the machinery to create herself her own false teeth.

China has an 8 years old grandchild, Taiwan, which gives her hell. China says Taiwan is a walking menace.

China has been long divorced with Japan, an old grumpy man, which is living with the Philippines, a young bitch that does anything for money.

Then... we have the countries that are just old enough to vote and which go for a ride in their father's BMW... for instance, Australia and Canada, typical countries which grew in the safety and protection of its fathers, the UK and France, with a strict and aristocrathic education, and whom are now living a fast life.

Australia is a 18 years old bimbo, doing topless and having sex with South Africa, while Canada us a gay child living on his own... exploring the option of adopting Groenland as a baby to form one of those "alternative" families so much in vogue these days.

France is a divorced 36 years old woman, a sex machine, but very respected in professional and intellectual circles. She has a 6 years old son: Monaco, which is still undecided between being gay, a ballet dancer, or both.

France sometimes goes to bed with Germany, a rich truck driver which is married with Austria, which knows Germany cheats on her, but doesn't care.

Italy has been a widow for a long time. She lives taking care of San Marino http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/country_profiles/2669927.stm and Vatican, two identical twins, with an uncanny resemblance to the sons of Ned Flanders on The Simpsons.

Italy had a second marriage with Germany... it didn't last long, but they had a child: Switzerland.

Italy would like to be as Belgium: an independent, professional lawyer, wearing suits and talking politics with the men. Belgium, in turn, sometimes wishes she could cook good pasta.

Spain is the most beautiful womam in Europe -probably on par with France, but France loses points by using so much parfume-.

Spain likes to wander around naked and is often drunk. Sometimes, she gets fucked by England... Spain allows that, but then has second thoughts and goes crying to the police to denounce it.

Spain has offspring everywhere -most of them around 13 years old, that live far away, in South America, all wankers. She loves them a lot, but it bothers her that every time the kids are hungry, they show up at her door, get inside without saying hi, and take food from her fridge.

Another country with lots of offspring is England. He sails off at night and fucks with teens far away, and nine months later there appears a new tiny new island. These new babys are protected by the mother, which maintains them from afar.

Scotland and Ireland are brothers of England, living upstairs. They live drunk and they suck at football (soccer). They're the shame of the family.

Sweden and Norway are two lesbians in their 40s. They're very slim and attractive, besides their age, but they are very self-centered and don't talk to anybody else. They fuck each other and work, because they have a good paying job doing... well... something. Sometimes, they envite Holland to a party (when they need weed).

Other times they show themselves to Finland, which is an androgynous 30 years old who lives alone in a tiny attic with no furniture, and cares only for his mobile phone. Finland's only purpose in life is speaking on its mobile, most of the time with South Korea.

South Korea: she lives a separate life with her schizoid sister, North. They're twins. But North Korea swallowed amniotic fluid at birth, and got brain-damaged and delusional. She spent her childhood playing with real firearms and now, living alone and secluded, is capable of going postal any minute.

The United States, the rich 17 years old dimwit, keeps a close eye on her... not because he's afraid, but because he wants to take all her guns.

Israel is a 62 years old intellectual that lived a shitty life. Some years ago, Germany, the truck driver, ran over her. Since that day, Israel went bonkers. Now, instead of sitting on a rocking chair and reading books, she spends her days at her rooftop, trowing things in Palestine's general direction. Palestine is a poor, uneducated and religious girl who's only trying to do her laundry.

Iran and Iraq were two 16 year olds who nicked bikes and sold those as parts. Until one day they stole the United States' bike and now they're going thru hell and repenting.

The World was fine as is, until one day Russia coupled with Perestroika -without marrying- and they had about a dozen children, all odd, some retarded, others schizoid.

A week ago, and thanks to some shooting with plenty of deaths, we the inhabitants of the World discovered that there's a new country out there named Kabardino-Balkaria. Another new country. With its own flag, president, anthem, and flag. And even people!.

I'm a bit scared to see so many baby countries appearing without notice, all of a sudden. That we learn about them by pure chance... and we have to pretend that we knew about them all along, not to be taken as ignorants.

And I ask myself.... Why are new countries being born, if the existing ones haven't managed to get their acts together yet?

:-)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: I translated this as I received it. Before some moron without a sense of humor flames me, keep in mind it's a joke. I'm 90% certain the mention of Israel and Palestine will get emotions high on people without humor. If you want, feel free to switch descriptions around, and it'll be funny as well!. I didn't author this, just translated it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Is the supply-side school downplaying the news about Argentina's continued growth?

2007-08-18T10:46:00.000-07:00

I recently read an article by David R Butcher titled "Where the Offshore Outsourcers Offshore Outsource" and available HERE.

I had high hopes due to the title, and instinctively tried to read it while scrolling down to find what references about offshoring operations in Argentina were included. I was very disappointed, the word "Argentina" is not even there, despite the increase of Offshoring (IT, software and services) in Argentina, which surely added its part to the sinking unemployment rates and economic recovery the last four years'.

One paragraph reads: "where do India’s outsourcers outsource? China, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brazil, Romania and Morocco — you name it. ". Well, I guess "you name it" also ought to include Argentina. In fact, India's TATA Consulting Services (TCS) arrived five years ago. And success stories of firms offshoring and investing in Argentina in the last four to five years are easy to find if you look hard enough. But no, not a single reference.

But it's not this writer's fault. (if you're reading this, it isn't about you, read on, it's just that your story and the strange lack of mention of Argentina kickstarted my thought process).

Thinking aloud:

There seems to be a strange "vacuum of good news" about Argentina on the English language mainstream media (and my standard for doing this is simply typing word pairs like "inversion, argentina" (investment argentina-unquoted-) into Google News Argentina (news.google.com.ar) then repeat the search with the same terms, this time in English language and into the international "Google News" search engine (news.google.com).

My unscientific tests showed that roughly nine out of ten times, all positive economic news about Argentina appear ONLY in the local Spanish language news sites, but those news stories are usually -and suspiciously- RARELY echoed in English for the global audience, while short-lived political scandals involving Miami millionaires --once against Chavez but then flip-flopped and doing business with Venezuela's PDVSA (until a few weeks ago)-- caught trying to enter with a bag full of cash ($800,000) into Argentina are regurgitated ad-nauseum as some sort of "further proof of Argentina's corruption and hopelessness". Hrmm ... smearing PR campaigns to weaken the ruling center-left coalition and impose a more "pro-market", "pro-White House" candidate..... where have I heard of that?.

Just for the record: In the last four years, the country's economy grew like never before, plummeting unemployment, the number of unemployed people receiving government unemplyment subsidies fell 50%, and the country has been enjoying for the first time in several decades (it didn't happen since the 1920s!) year-after-year consecutive growth coupled with simultaneous fiscal surplus and a trade surpluses, all this due in part to a competitive exchange rate for Argentina's industrial and agricultural exports.

So is the majority mainstream trade press talking about the "Argentina Miracle". Well, no. Or at least not that I could see. Only BusinessWeek ventured to say so back in 2002, but it was a timid article and the recovery just started back then. When the press speaks about the region it often says "Good times in general for Latin America" and then proceed to name Brazil and Chile, poster boys for "good behaviour" because they never broke paths with the IMF. Coincidence? Don't think so!. (OK, I admit I might be wearing my tinfoil hat now).

Before you accuse me of irrational flag-waving, oldskool right-wing nationalism let me be 100% clear that it's not about this. I'm complaining from the economic policy angle. The failure of ANY major English language mainstream media reporting about the economic progress in the country, and the economic policy angle.

Perhaps the problem for the US and other western media is that portraying that Argentina is doing very well by NOT following the path preached by the right wing think tanks and the IMF would set a "bad example" for the rest of the countries still suffering the anvil's weight of the IMF and its laisez faire policies?.

Think about it... a government with a more progressive, demand side economics policy, that doesn't ask Milton Friedman for advice. A country who asks world famous IMF-critic and long time Washington Concensus skeptic Joseph Stiglitz for advice.

To top it all the results have been good, getting fiscal and commercial surpluses for the last 4 years -and more importantly, doing so for the first time in decades-. BUT, here's the surprise: reading the western English language media daily and seeing Argentina's good news virtually "blacklisted" (other than Reuters' quarter figures for the specialized economics media and speaking usually nothing about the human impact of this growth).

Why is this? I have a theory. I think it's because we pissed off a lot of Wall Street, AEI and right-wing economics technocrats followers of the supply side school, with our debt restructuring, -we paid the IMF and sent them packing-. Also, -now drifting into the political field- I suspect the lack of any good positive reporting is because we are doing good business with Venezuela and supporting projects like Stiglitz' praised REGIONAL INVESTMENT BANK.

That's my theory of why Argentina's good economic news and its social impact ended up blacklisted : due to political and ideological reasons, as it doesn't fit the wire editors' economic psyche.... in other words "nothing good should be said about it, because it didn't sign FTAA, bow to King George, or break relations with Venezuela's Chavez". Is that it?

Fifteen years ago when the country was going downhill and getting deeper and deeper into a cycle of debt yet Argentina was portrayed by the financial media as the poster boy of the IMF and magazines wasted pages and pages on the positive "reforms" that generated an influx of speculative capital (in other words, "mergers and acqusitions", that is capital changing hands, not very much NEW investment in production of real tangible goods and manufacturing) while the gates of cheap imports were opened and it de-industrialized the country sending unemployment through the roof... and culminating in the implosion of the economy when the facade fell....

Back to the news reporting angle: do you think I'm too far from the truth? Am I allucinating? Have you found English language news stories that talk about the revival of industry, the increase in manufacturing jobs,the increase of non-primary (industrial, manufacture, technology and services) exports in the last three years? Where? and when you find it, does it tie these events to the economic policy? or do they just mask it under the usual "it's a result of the increase of commodities prices?

If you find any story with that angle, PLEASE LET ME KNOW, because I've never seen all these elements together in a mainstream, English language story.

To end this long babbling, I have to wonder if perhaps all this is due to the fact that most americans DON'T KNOW DIDDLY SQUAT about Latin America as a recent Zogby Poll found?. Or is it because the American economists establishment has VERY LITTLE TOLERANCE towards dissent when it comes to the supply-side Dogma, as has been recently warned by the progressive U.S. economists?.

Just my $0.02 or $0.06 pesos. :-P

Thoughts, comments, expletives?

Food for thought:

U.S. Economists question dominance of Supply-Side Ideas
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/11/business/economics.php

"Americans know very little about Latin America"
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/345149/poll_americans_know_little_about_latin.html

Tinker Bell, Pinochet, and the Fairy Tale of the Chile Miracle
http://www.gregpalast.com/tinker-bell-pinochet-and-the-fairy-tale-miracle-of-chile-2/

Bank of the South: Toward Financial Autonomy - Worldpress.org
http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/2852.cfm

Chileans praise Argentina's economic wisdom wrt .IT policy
http://www.atinachile.cl/content/view/31289/Las_razones_que_explican_el_desembarco_de_Google_en_Argentina.html#first

There are the kind of stories NOT FOUND on mainstream US/western English language media*:

(*Spanish language stories, with titles translated by me):

AR: People receiving government unempolyment subsidies fell 50%
in the last 4 years
http://www.telam.com.ar/vernota.php?tipo=N&amp;amp;idPub=59388&id=143954&dis=1&sec=1

Spending by people with the lowest incomes grows in the farther/poorest BA city suburbs
LA NACION, Wed. 16/5/07
http://www.lanacion.com.ar/archivo/Nota.asp?nota_id=909024

quote/translation:
"The combination of union-management agreed salary increases for workers in the formal sector of the economy and the general drop in unemployment levels have begun to show results in the poorest areas of the greater Buenos Aires, which after the second semester of '2006 show consumer spending growth rates above the rest of the population"

Government launches tax reductions for tourism SMBs
http://news.google.com.ar/news/url?sa=t&ct=es_ar/1-0&fp=4626d4c2bd8b59cb&ei=9nMmRvicJZ_coQPyvbS9Cw&url=http%3A//www.adnmundo.com/contenidos/turismo/pymes_tu_180407.html&cid=1154259208

Air traffic between USA and Argentina grows
http://news.google.com.ar/news/url?sa=t&ct=es_ar/9-0&fp=4626d4c2bd8b59cb&ei=9nMmRvicJZ_coQPyvbS9Cw&url=http%3A//www.hostnews.com.ar/2007/sal/070085.htm&cid=1154211647

Google opens regional HQ in Buenos Aires, will hire up to 3,000
http://news.google.com.ar/news/url?sa=t&ct=es_ar/0-3&fp=4626fcdb3ae71ad4&ei=TnYmRtLHI5qKoQOg3ZW3Cw&url=http%3A//www.lagaceta.com.ar/vernota.asp%3Fid_seccion%3D8%26id_nota%3D202119&cid=1154204519

Argentina's Tourism sector now brings more dollars than grains and meat exports combined
http://www.diariohoy.net/notas/verNoticia.phtml/html/268469454/

17/4/07: Argentina's government launches fiscal incentives for the local software industry
http://news.google.com.ar/news/url?sa=t&ct=es_ar/0-0&fp=462657718885b933&ei=-3YmRq-1BoOSogP4z9GzCw&url=http%3A//www.infobaeprofesional.com/interior/index.php%3Fp%3Dnota%26idx%3D44640%26cookie&cid=1154211088

The latest boom: corporate software, made in Argentina
http://www.siliconnews.es/es/silicon/special-report/2007/04/04/boom-del-desarrollo-software

20/4/07 - Argentina's investment level the highest in the last 20 years
http://www.infobae.com/contenidos/310936-100896-0-El-nivel-inversi%C3%B3n-es-el-m%C3%A1s-alto-los-%C3%BAltimos-20-a%C3%B1os

Argentina widens trade surplus with the US
http://www.clarin.com/diario/2006/02/11/elmundo/i-03103.htm

Venezuela and Argentina duplicate its trade
http://www.adnmundo.com/contenidos/comercio/venezuela_argentina_ce_171106.html

"one of the most important aspects is the diversified nature of the current exports from Argentina to Venezuela. From (traditional products like) powder milk and meat to industrial goods like tractors, trucks, SUVs, pipes and valves for the oil industry, among others".

Consumer credit levels now above the historic highs before the crisis
http://www.infobaeprofesional.com/interior/index.php?p=nota&idx=44671&cookie

==========================================================

Two notable exceptions to the "information black cloud": BusinessWeek (US) and the IHT (FR)... two lone positive stories, but one is very dated by now, and the other too short (imho).

Argentina: doint it their own way - 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/28/opinion/edweis.php

Argentina: reversal of fortune (BusinessWeek) - 2002
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_19/b3932098_mz058.htm

The following, while good and positive spinned, are not from what I'd call "mainstream media", actually one is a progressive magazine's blogger and the other a little Italian news portal:

Argentina Heads Region's "Human Development" Index
http://www.portalino.it/nuke/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=13215

Beat the Press: Argentina's strong growth among Most Important news of '06
http://www.prospect.org/deanbaker/2006/12/most_important_economic_news_s.html

Thoughts? comments? Expletives? ;)
FC

VMware Player FC6 / blag installer for blondes ;)

2007-08-17T02:30:00.000-07:00

I'm sick and tired of having to do the work that paid programmers should do.

And no, I'm not thinking about the nice guys at blag Linux which work nearly for free :)

I'm thinking about VMWare, which distributes a "VMWare player" aimed at end-users but makes installation a nightmare full of pitfalls needing patches and lots of manual fiddling.

Don't believe me? Do you think things are "fine" as they are and there's no room for improvement? see the results of this web search on Google and compare it to this one.

In short: I'm tired of having to do the work that paid programmers, many of them surely earning 50x more than me- should be doing in the first place.

Now, to follow the suggestion of Steve from the blag forums, I will just "CHILL OUT , man..." and let you have my script:

... so you will hopefully end up with VMware Player 2.0 up and running in your blag 60000 linux box (or hopefully Fedora Core 6 as well) running the latest 2.6.22-1 Linux kernel and just pressing [enter] a dozen times....

ENJOY:
http://the13thfloor.org/musthave/easyvmware4blag001.tar.gz

FC

Extracting icon from win32 app (or apps) using WINE on Linux

2007-08-05T04:19:00.000-07:00

Native Linux apps are of course preferable to running Win32 ones under compatibility libs like WINE.
But when you install one such app on Linux, one of the problems of those apps is what icon to put to the launcher object(s) in our desktop or Gnome panel.

(It's not that I use a lot but the PMView PRO trial and WORDVIEW.EXE PPVIEWER.EXEs from MSFT come to mind (as my winders now runs under Win4Lin)...

I found THIS FREEBIE from MSFT (actually a coding sample from MSDN).
http://download.microsoft.com/download/win95/utility/1.0/w9xxp/en-us/4493.exe

Just extract it with unzip, find icontool.exe, and then run it with wine ./icontool.exe
There's an option in the app that allows to "Extract Icon from EXE/DLL", navigate to your Win32 installed app (usually in your $home/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Application_Name_here), find the EXE, and then use the option "EXPORT AS BMP" to save a BMP you can then use (after conversion to PNG) as icon for your win32 app under Linux. (Save it under /usr/share/pixmaps).

There you have. And if this helped you a lot, remember I always gladly accept $5 Amazon.com gift certificates delivered to my e-mail f c a s s i a @ g m a i l . c o m
:-D

Have a nice day!

FC

JAR is a bitch, and then you die!

2007-08-03T02:38:00.000-07:00

[WARNING: This is geeky stuff, if you're NOT a computer geek, then scroll down to the next post. Move along, nothing to see here!]

Instead of the old adage "Life's a bitch, and then you die" I propose a new version: "JAR is a bitch, and then you die".

In case you're living in a bottle or you're not a geek, JAR is the Java JDK tool used to build the compressed ".JAR" (Java Archive) files that contain a Java software application (all the different binary files inside it). It's a tiny command line application just like everything in the JDK that should be no different or more complex to use than ZIP or tar.

However, it proved to be a real pain in the ass and a TIME WASTING EXERCISE, just to update a SINGLE TEXT LINE inside an existing .jar file's "Manifest".

1. What I wanted to do:
Unpack an existing application,
update its MANIFEST file, to include the "Main-Class: ClassnameHere" statement, so I could just start the application by typing

java -jar applicationname.jar
instead of using the author's ancient approach of having to name the "Main-Class" on the command-line every time...

java -classpath applicationname.jar LongNameofTheStupidStartupClass
2. I unpacked the existing application's .jar file just fine with 'unzip', and created a text file with my favorite text editor which read:

Main-Class: LongNameofTheStupidStartupClass

I saved it as "./manifestinfo.txt"

3. So, not having used jar before, I go to a tutorial I find online here

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/deployment/jar/modman.html

which reads

"The basic command has this format:

jar cfm jar-file manifest-addition input-file(s)
The c option indicates that you want to create a JAR file.
The m option indicates that you want to merge information from an existing file into the manifest file of the JAR file you're creating."
...and thinking I know what I'm doing, I type:

$ jar -c jftpd.jar ./manifestinfo.txt ./ ./ftpserver/*

I get this as a result:

4. I had to close the terminal as I couldn't type anymore (I could type but I couldn't understand anything).

Then I found what I think is a more friendly explanation on how to update the "Manifest" of the .JAR file with new info, over HERE:
http://java.sun.com/developer/Books/javaprogramming/JAR/basics/update.html

(Later I realize that what happened in Step#3 was that I forgot to include the "f" parameter to indicate that I wanted output to a file rather than to STANDARD OUTPUT. What the **** is the purpose of having output of JAR to standard output?? I don't get it).

5. So I type

jar cf jftpd.jar ftpserver/*
and IT WORKS!

But I forgot about the new manifest info... so I type:

$ jar umf ./manifestinfo.txt ./jftpd.jar
...and I get this beauty:

java.io.IOException: misplaced continuation line
at java.util.jar.Attributes.read(Attributes.java:374)
at java.util.jar.Manifest.read(Manifest.java:182)
at java.util.jar.Manifest.(Manifest.java:52)
at sun.tools.jar.Main.update(Main.java:481)
at sun.tools.jar.Main.run(Main.java:184)
at sun.tools.jar.Main.main(Main.java:1022)
[fcassia@m6810 tmp]$

WHAT THE F#CK IS GOING ON NOW????????

6. You know what was the problem? the file "manifestinfo.txt" had TWO BLANK SPACES before the text "Main-Class: ..." and TWO BLANK LINES below it !! (I pressed [Enter] twice).

Apparently, JAR FREAKS OUT (this is JAVA 6.0 update 2 JDK's JAR, for crying out loud!).

7. I removed the two leading spaces and trailing blank lines and guess what? IT WORKED!.

[fcassia@m6810 tmp]$ jar umf ./manifestinfo.txt ./jftpd.jar
[fcassia@m6810 tmp]$

8. Done.... BASTARDS!!

9. Another Golden Rule when dealing with JAR:
JAR NAME APPARENTLY ALWAYS GOES LAST.

So, contradicting what would be the 'zip' usage of "hey zip, I want to update THIS ZIPFILE with THIS_DATA" (zip something.zip newfile.txt) in JAR is totally the opposite way: "hey JAR, I want THIS NEW FILE into THISJAR" (jar umf newdata ./intothisjar.jar).

GRRR

And finally, found this thread
http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=549376

See comment #11:
"The JAR tool is rather finicky. I have found that each HEADER:VALUE pair must be separated by a newline but not more than 1 newline. When I tried putting blank lines in the MANIFEST, I would get "Error: failed to load Main-Class attribute...". Sun needs to update their tutorials or fix this problem with the JAR tool's manifest parser."

FINICKY? That's being mercyful...

and then comment #15:

"One diference between unix and windows' file system is that text files in unix always have a final linebreak at the end of the file, while windows doesn't need to.

Java, being developed by Sun primarily for the unix comunity requires that the
manifest file ends with a new-line.

no new-line, no manifest file."

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Want more? See the comments on page #2 of the above thread at Sun.com, discussing the "joys" of the "jar" command:

===================================
Does this instruction really work???

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/deployment/jar/appman.html

They specify the following command:
jar cmf MyJar.jar Manifest.txt MyPackage/*.class

When I tried that with my classes and files (with different names, of
course), it didn't work. What worked for me is equivalent to the
following:
jar cmf Manifest.txt MyJar.jar MyPackage/*.class

The order is simply permuted. Maybe it's just Apple's Java
implementation. Is this what you were asking about?

-jonnie

==================

The Tutorial is wrong. It should be jar cfm, not cmf.
The order of the command must match the order of the parameters.

==================

Thank you. That is good to know.
===================================

I REST MY CASE:

JAR IS A BITCH, AND THEN YOU DIE

FC

A red mouse pointer in Linux - The REALLY Important Things in Life ;)

2007-07-21T01:00:00.000-07:00

For the moment -and for the last year or so- I'm running the free Linux distro "blag" from the UK. It's based on RedHat's Fedora Core 6 project, with a lot of stuff removed so that it fits on a single CD, and also a nice look, with custom visuals/login screen/backgrounds.

What it lacks, apparently like Fedora Core 6, is a set of NICE COLOUR mouse pointers. blag includes the default black cursors dubbed "bluecurve" and a white colour variation of the same. I didn't like those. I wanted a big red mouse pointer in Linux and the Gnome desktop.

Well, to make a long story short: I pulled my hair reading all the contradicting and conflicting info on changing mouse pointers. Most of the stuff on the net is seriously outdated. For instance you often find results from XFree86 lists several years back saying that Linux mouse cursors can only be black and white.

Here's how to install beautiful RED mouse pointers in blag 6K, and Fedora Core 6.x or higher for that matter:

I have settled on one of two choices: "red mix" and "Komix". I'll let you guys decide which ones are better...

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
1. As root, from a shell do
cd /usr/share/icons

2. If you want Komix...
wget http://art4linux.org/pages/download/cursors/Komix-0.1.tar.gz
tar xvfz ./Komix-0.1.tar.gz
tar xvfz ./Komix-0.1/Komix-Red-Regular.tar.gz
tar xvfz ./Komix-0.1/Komix-Red-Large.tar.gz

Go to System->Preferences->Mouse
Click on the "Pointer" tab, scroll down and find Komix_Red below LBlueCurve. Click on that option. DONE!

3. If you want "red mix"
wget http://www.kde-look.org/CONTENT/content-files/5605-cursor_mix.tgz
tar xvfz ./5605-cursor_mix.tgz
Go to System->Preferences->Mouse
Click on the "Pointer" tab, scroll down and find "cursor_mix" at bottom. Click on that option. DONE!
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

There you have, a nice red mouse pointer that you can ALWAYS see, even with the corner of your eye.
Enjoy!

FC

Argentina cartoonist and comic genius died today... Roberto Fontanarrosa, we will miss you!

2007-07-19T16:13:00.000-07:00

Today cartoonist, writer and humorist Roberto Fontanarrosa passed away.

Fontanarrosa was born in Rosario in 1944. Comic-clopedia describes him accurately: "He was a representative of the Argentinan sharp humor cartoonists that made their appearance in the 1970s. A very productive artist, he drew satirical comics and cartoons in such magazines as Boom, Hortensia, and (to this day) on the daily newspaper Clarín. Several compilation albums of his gags have appeared ('¿Who is Fontanarrosa?', 'Fontanarrosa and the medical doctors', 'Fontanarrosa and politics', 'Fontanarrosa and Relationships', 'The Sex of Fontanarrosa'). He has created numerous characters, the two most famous are the gaucho 'Inodoro Pereyra' and 'Boogie, el Aceitoso'".

If you are reading this outside Argentina, let me tell you that one of the characters of his comic, Inodoro Pereyra, a lone gaucho traveling the pampas with the companion of his talking/thinking dog, is a classic for argentineans.

I discovered him at around age 12, when I first read "Boogie, el aceitoso" (translated as "Boogie, the oily one" or the "slicky one").

Best described at Everything2, here: "First conceived when the Vietnam war was fresh in the mass unconscious of the world's peoples, Boogie is an extreme caricature of one impression the rest of the world gets from the United States. Since his birth in 1972 to the quiet retirement he faced in the late 90's, Boogie has participated in every major armed conflict that has involved the United States and is familiar with every imaginable form of inflicting pain on his fellow man (and oftentimes woman too). During peacetime, if it can so be called, for Boogie hates the word, Boogie is a professional assassin or a bodyguard, a mercenary. Occasionally, when his usual profession hits a slump, he will also accept other jobs such as babysitter (he'll give the kids plastic explosives for them to craft little animals) or romantic escort (you must understand that although he is a man, that lump you feel when slow dancing with him is in fact his revolver)."

If you read Spanish, you can have a laugh here by reading Roberto´s speech at the Spanish Language International Congress

http://www.me.gov.ar/monitor/nro3/dossier3.htm

But if you need any proof of Roberto Fontanarrosa´s genius, here´s an animation of one of his comics, with an embedded anti-war message, to boot... I don´t know about you, but if I were a foreigner, I would learn Spanish just to understand the funny animal names of this comic masterpiece, which reads as a mix of Darwin's theories of the Evolution of the Species, and a touch of "Discovery Channel" documentaries ...

(Too funny!. You can understand the meaning of it even if you don't understand a word of Spanish... he begins describing an imaginary cold dry plain... and the cold winds, and the 'threatening clouds' and then the whole ecosystem in that plain, funny creatures with even funnier names, that are eaten by predators one after the other until... watch and you'll understand :).

If you want to practise your Spanish, you can find almost all of Fontanarrosa's books on Amazon.com.

In short: the World lost one genius today. Goodbye Roberto Fontanarrosa, we will miss you dearly...

FC

Fernando's Crumbling Empire

2007-07-11T21:39:00.000-07:00

[UPDATE]: things are safe at my flat. An engineer was here and suggested the internal / hollow brick failure was either due to poor materials used in a modification of the wall or a water leak before I arrived.

Things are going to be repaired soon. :)

Sleep safe, the building where I live will not collaps@#@#@)
;)

Nieve en Buenos Aires - 9 de Julio de 2007

2007-07-09T12:42:00.000-07:00

Wow... since about 4:00 PM local time, it's SNOWING -albeit intermitently- down here in Buenos Aires.
More precisely in Almagro, as I can only speak about the view from my Windows... :)

How rare is this...? VERY rare. It "never snows" in Buenos Aires. According to what I found in the Net, the last recorded snow was June 22, 1918!!

The day started chilling cold, and it was only a handful of foreign tourists and myself at the Plaza de Mayo and surrounding areas...

And by later aftenoon, first a timid then full snowfall decorated the tops of the highest buildings

By night, even the international media started paying waking up to the newsworthyness of this ocurrence:

First major snow in Buenos Aires since 1918

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/09/america/LA-GEN-Argentina-Historic-Snow.php

Argentines have a short memory span - The "New Politics" -that are really oldskool-, won....

2007-06-25T06:37:00.000-07:00

Unless you've been living in a bottle, let me tell you that we had ellections down here for city mayor and the right wing candidate won.

"Moderate" Right candidate Mauricio Macri danced and was carried around by his supporters at PRO

¡Poor joke Mauritzio! ¡Saying that Argentina must get on its feet, with Michetti on wheelchair next to you!!
Very inconsiderate of you with your loved Free Trade Agreements expert at the WTO

¡"Speaking less" is "PRO" !

¡Speaking about "not speaking" is even more PRO!

According to "Mauricio" the middle class or "so-so class" as Mafalda called it will be able to "drink mate again in front of their homes" and Buenos Aires will turn overnight, by the power of his "magic" into a city "without security fences in parks, no security bars in shops, no security bars at homes, ENOUGH! Buenos Aires is not our (loved) city anymore!" .

Well, Mauricio, it's your turn now to see how you perform. That assorted bag of leftovers from different right wing factions that is PRO with people from the far right UCeDe, allong with collaborators of former finance minister Domingo Cavallo (or Sunday Horse as I like to call him), succeeded in convincing the -once again- "so-so (middle) class" that a businessman like you is more experienced and more trustworthy than someone from the academia.

And that your work experience "working on dad's firms" after a brief 6 months tenure at Citibank are better attributes than the vast academic experience of Daniel Filmus, someone with a remarkable background.

¡Thank the heavens your campaign manager Rodriguez Larreta was "very succesfull" at handling Social Security and even your conservative colleagues remember him!.

I'm sure you will turn the city upside down and that Utopian vision of grandmas drinking mate in front of their homes (with the door open behind them as was the earlier XXth century image), will become real. Yeah, right. I specially like your compaign promise about the parks without fences and the shops and homes without security bars at windows.

¡If you believed Mauricio's empty promises above, let me tell you I have bridge I could also sell you!. No city as big as Buenos Aires is without crime. That simply does not exist. For some reason (I suspect the reason but I'd be accused of being a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist) the local media seems to have established the notion that "the crime wave doesn't stop" assuming that it's even possible for crime to "stop". IF that would be the case, there would be cities around the world with no police, and that doesn't exist.

In fact, crime has been going up in the US of A in the last few years...

-----
Violent crime up again, more murders, robberies - US
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/usa/news/article_1313133.php/Violent_crime_up_again_more_murders_robberies

"The report showed that murders in big cities jumped last year by 6.7 percent. Robberies, an important indicator of crime trends, increased 6 percent nationwide. Cities with big increases in the number of murders included Orlando and Miami in Florida; Oakland and San Diego in California; Phoenix, Arizona; Corpus Christi, Texas; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Reno, Nevada and Little Rock, Arkansas.

Even though the higher violent crime numbers had been expected, they still represented bad news for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who has targeted violent crime as a top priority for the U.S. Justice Department. A department study released last month of 18 metropolitan areas cited more violence by local gangs or street crews, a greater prevalence of guns in the hands of criminals and younger, more violent offenders as key reasons for the rising crime rates.
------

But I digress...

¡Here comes the New Politics that is "non-partisan" ! ¡The new "sweetened" right! ¡Hooray for PRO! Hooray for the UceDe! Alvaro Alzogaray must be smiling in his rotting grave...

Two weeks ago I received one of those e-mail chain letters, forwarded by someone not too bright that I know, the kind of person who cannot send e-mail with bcc: and always copies his entire list, in plain view to everyone who receives each message, you know the kind of middle-class "so-so class". The mail content was 100% anti-Kirchner and had by subject line "I don't give a damn about politics!" and called upon the reader to "vote for change" and babbled about the 'new politics', pointing the blame on the K administration for everything from 'drugs and pickpockets' to car accidents and 'soccer hooligans'(!)".

But hey... we cannot ask the average Mrs. Jane Doe to distinguish between the current Mayor -who was not elected to the post but rather "landed" on it after Ibarra was ousted- and Kirchner's candidate.... Mrs. Jane Doe was ANGRY, angry at...well... something... and she voted for "Saint Mauricio!".

I end this analysis with a quote I've seen on the Net, used as forum taglines...

"In this town 5% are fascists, 30% indifferent, and 40% not
interested in politics. Total: 75% of fascists." From "The school of Barbiana."

¡¡So, let's enjoy the coming "City without fences" headed by the "New Politks" which are really oldskool rightwing!

FC

Natural alternative to Aspartame might come from Argentina

2007-06-01T21:40:00.001-07:00

Two years ago, I read this interesting comment about an unknown plant dubbed Stevia. I saved the post.

I was surprised this week to read that Coca Cola is going to use it as natural sweetener to replace controversial/unhealthy artificial sweeteners like Aspartame.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2005:
" Why not a STEVIA coke.. its about time these large companies got on the back of the FDA and got stevia legalised... its a sham that i dont have the choice to have that natural sweetner in products i like. Call your congressperson!"

http://www.diet-blog.com/archives/2005/06/14/coke_zero_confused_anyone.php

May 31, 2007:

Coke teams up with Cargill to launch new sweetener
"Giants of food and drinks aim to develop their own natural rival to NutraSweet and sucralose, to meet health demand"

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/consumer_goods/article1864667.ece

"It has spent the past three years developing Stevia plantations in China, Paraguay and Argentina."

For those who can read Spanish, more info about Coke/Cargill's moves in .AR, here:
http://www.clarin.com/diario/2007/06/01/elpais/p-02202.htm

My translation of a key paragraph:

"Originating in Paraguay and Northern Argentina, Stevia is produced in the country in industrial scale only by the Tobbaco Cooperative in the province of Misiones, which in 2004 used 100 has of land for the plant, and plans to produce about 500 tons. This co-operative associated with a laboratory from Mar del Plata for Stevia post-processing".
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So... I would start investigating this Stevia plant if I had a piece of productive land. Since I don't... I'll leave this exercise for young entrepreneurs like Mike... :). Who knows, maybe this natural sweetener without the health problems of Sugar or Aspartame could be even used in Cookies!. ;-)

Good for people like me with bloody chronic liver disease... my doc told me to avoid artificial sweeteners whenever possible, and it's harder to do every day as the profit-hungry companies are starting to add it to more products every passing day, from cookies to 'flavoured water' to gelatin (even the non-Diet ones, damn you, Royal!).

PS: This is the closest to an admission about the dangers of artificial sweeteners (if those were safe, why would they need to change to something "healthy"?.

If you think that artificial sweeteners like Aspartame are 100% safe over long term use... you are not aware of all the material casting doubt on artificial sweeteners.

Move on, Mr. Anonymous, there's nothing to see...

2007-05-30T18:55:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. Anonymous, please go away.

The post detailing the media reports on the young yankee busted on a disco, was removed.

I'm tired of having to read your irrational babbling in my blog comments.

There's nothing to see now.

Stupidity

2007-05-30T18:26:00.001-07:00

... a three-ton SUV to drive around a city like Buenos Aires....

Great American ambassadors

2007-05-30T10:28:00.000-07:00

I have to recommend two blogs from Americans who have settled down here in Buenos Aires: Frank' s Sugar&Spice -check out his cookies!- and of course Mike from "YanquiMike.com.ar".

¡Gracias por sus posts inteligentes!.

Estaría bueno que EE.UU. los tenga de embajadores.

FC

My first bash hacking in 7 years...

2007-04-24T05:09:00.000-07:00

Last time I did a BASH (linux shell) script was, I think, back in y2k. I ran Caldera Openlinux in an ancient underpowered 233Mhz Pentium I, and the desktop was then bloated KDE. Nowadays, I run Blag, based on RedHat's Fedora Core 6.
But now I was fed up with having to manually seek, download and install "pptpconfig" to get a friendly-easy to use PPTP VPN applet. (Blag includes PPTP but for some reason pptpconfig is not included).

So, I spent a couple hours tonight reading -once again- about bash scripting HERE and HERE, and thanks to a great tutorial on Gnome desktop integration at RedHat's site HERE - I was able to code a simple script which downloads the required RPMs from Fedora repositories, calls the YUM system updater, and installs everything required for PPTP VPN networking into blag, creating a default launcher with nice icon in the desktop. It's a pretty simple script, but nobody had done it before. So here it is. I have released it under the GPL, for what it's worth.

WOW,I can still code stupid little shell scripts!. What an ego boost!. ;-)

Specially since my attention defficit personality usually makes me leave my programming projects incomplete at the first sign of trouble... this time that didn't happen and it was kinda fun, reminded me of my first babbling with OS/2 Rexx...

http://the13thfloor.org/blagpptp/easypptp4blag6kv0001.tar.gz

FC

Proof that too much Oracle DB makes you suck at picture taking and writing

2007-04-18T00:33:00.000-07:00

Buenos Aires: "they don't bathe daily, and they have bad taste like the French"
http://dba-oracle.blogspot.com/2006/12/buenos-aires-paris-of-south-america.html

He must be on medication, I mean God, look at the blurred pictures! -or perhaps he was sweathing and shaking in fear while walking the streets with his armed bodyguard expecting an attack at any minute!!- LOL

I nominate Mr Oracle expert as the laughing stock of the Year!!!

===
Quotes from his "book"
http://www.rampant-books.com/south_america_travel_tips/t_buenos_aires_argentina.htm

"Buenos Aires is a city of contrasts, with virtually no middle class"

"Argentina has a history of civil unrest and the wholesale killing of foreigners dating back for centuries."
[!!!]

" and let's not forget the Americans who were tortured and killed in Argentina over the past decades. "
[huh? maybe he means the 30,000 disappeared thanks to Mr. Kissinger's attitude towards Latin America and the U.S. supported military coup in Chile and later the U.S.-tolerated military government in Argentina?]

"Buenos Aires has lots of police, but many are veterans of the Falkland invasion, so don't expect too much sympathy."

[huh?? Military =! police!! 90% of the soldiers who took part in the 1982 war were 18 year olds doing the mandatory draft]

"Simpson's re-runs are on the local television stations constantly and the translations are true to the English originals, and you can recognize Marge and Lisa even though they are speaking Spanish."

[Gee, has this guy ever heard of globalization and the concept of the international TV? Guess it' s not the same in every other country around the world huh? Only Argentina airs the Simpsons dubbed into the local language?? I have news for you: we grew watching "Knight Ridder" and "Get Smart" in the 80s, shocker!]

"Buenos Aires is plagued by “Ladrones”, local pickpockets who are found in all major tourist areas."
[No, stupid. Ladrones is spanish for Thiefs. What you are referring to is "pungas", local slang for pickpockets]

" Puerto Madero was built in-response to the complaints from the Buenos Aires women about all the streets of Buenos Aires having all-males names."
[AAHHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ROF,LMAO!!!
Yes, the women complained so much that we created Puerto Madero just because of their complaints... LOL]
===

I will leave aside for a moment the stupid and inaccurate references to the Falklands/Malvinas issue, but suffice to say that: a) it was a stupid act ordered by a military dictatorship trying to stay in power and supported by Washington at the time, b) the invasion of the islands was completed on April 2nd, 1982, with ZERO deaths on the part of the islanders, and one Argentine soldier dead. All further deaths were caused months later in the fight by the UK forces to retake the islands.

Get 1080i HD upscaling over component video with the Helios H4000 DVD player!

2007-04-02T10:05:00.000-07:00

A couple months ago, the nice folks at Neodigits were kind enough to send me a sample Helios H4000 upscaling DVD player for testing.

The small black H4000 over a Philips DVP9680

I'm holding out my review publication on the INQUIRER until I see if they release firmware fixes or not (I already emailed them some of my suggestions).

Another design win: vent holes!

However, that doesn't prevent me from wholeheartedly recommending this DVD player. If all you need is a DVD player for DVD movies and MPEG4 avis (DIVX or XVID) which also is capable of doing High-Definition (HD) upscaling to 1080i over component video, then look no further!.

Surprise: a VGA out!. You can hook it to a SVGA monitor, projector
or anything with VGA input!

The H4000 is well constructed, has an internal 5.1 audio decoder (no need for an external box!), a nice, big remote control with keys that glow in the dark (hurrah!), and ... get this... a POWER SWITCH in the back. This means you can actually turn the device completelly off, it cuts the AC power from the power supply!. No need to waste power in "standby" mode!. It also protects the unit from power fluctuations when not in use.

A built-in 5.1 audio decoder, to boot!

The player works flawlessly. It played every Region-1, Region 2 (Europe), and Region 4 (South America / Australia) that I threw at it. No need to enter region codes, the player arrived as "Region Free"!.

The H4000 hooked to my HD-ready 29" Philips CRT TV
which notably lacks HDMI inputs, so HD over Component
is the only way. To my knowledge the H4000 is the ONLY
DVD player capable of bypassing HDCP and doing HD over CVI.

So, do I recommend it? Yes.

Are there things that could be improved?

Yes. If you plan to use it for mp3 playback or if you have audio in .ogg (Vorbis) format, or if you plan to look at high-quality (2MP and upwards) photos with this player, be advised that these features leave a lot to be desired.

The Helios boot logo. Notice how the Philips TV shows HD 1080i mode!

R.E.M. DVD player in 1080i mode

For instance, photos look as if they are reduced to 640x480 then displayed (with visible dithering). MP3 and general data cd-r or dvd-r file browsing is limited because it doesn't support long filenames (Joliet). The names are shortened to the first few characters.

That's why I'm waiting to see if they fix these issues via a firmware update.

However, if all you want is a DVD player that does HD 1080i or 1080p upscaling via component video outputs, this is a must, get one while you can!.

See also my INQ article:

Big fat "HDTV-ready" CRT lack HDMI
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36644

Vista Aero even on old PCs, with Visiontek's 256MB, X1600 PCI graphics card

2007-03-13T14:45:00.000-07:00

This card supports dual displays, and HDTV TV-Out!

The nice folks at VisionTek sent me one of the company's X1600 PCI graphics adapters for review.

While I AWAIT (until hell freezes over?) for Microsoft to ship me a sample media evaluation copy of Vista, I want to give you a sneak peek of this impressive graphics card.

Front View. Yes, it' s PCI bus!.

In a nutshell, if you need to use Vista (I prefer Linux, yet I understand that people have no choice for work reasons), and want to experience "Aero" (the 3D interface eye candy), I suggest you get one of these cards. At ~~$210~~ [Updated June 1st : $154 at TigerDirect, here!], it' s a LOT cheaper than replacing your whole motherboard, graphics card, and probably RAM as well.

I have used it and it works very well. Vista Aero works beatifully, on my 2.4 Ghz P4 (800Mhz FSB) in the Supermicro P4SCA mobo. 3DMark scores and screenshots will be published on my INQ review. I would have published this months ago if it wasn't for the Vole. [Hello? Anyone reading?].

In short, if you have a machine with no AGP or PCI-X, just plain old PCI bus, I suggest you get one of these cards. I had no previous experience with this company, but from the way they communicated with me, the firm looks top notch!.

www.visiontek.com, and also www.froogle.com. Use Google, it is your friend!.

Dear Google, Spanish language =! Spain!!

2007-02-07T02:04:00.000-08:00

PLEASE Google... stop. Please. I mean it.

Why don't you ... STOP. Just STOP OK?.

I mean... STOP ADDING SPANISH LINGO that is written in Spain's Spanish. Try to use a more "neutral" Spanish (ask the guys who do TV and movie translations, they do know what a "neutral" Spanish translation is... that is, one free from Iberic terms and South American words).

It all started when I suddenly found my Blogger interface "automagically" switched to Spanish. Suddently I read "no tenemos mas Beta" instead of "we're out of beta!".

That is a POOR LITERAL TRANSLATION that can be read as "we no longer stock beta". The correct translation would have been "ya no estamos en Beta" o "salimos de la etapa Beta", o "ya no es Beta".

And now, the dreadful "que mola mas que una caja de lapices de colores..." advert, trying to promote Blogger's new customization features. Well, guess what Google? "mola" doesn't mean anything for us down in South America. "Molar" as a verb does not, in fact, exist in our vocabulary.

I guess the original English language text was "what rules more than..." and you hired someone in Spain to do the translation, so it ended up as "que mola mas que.."?.

If you had used a NEUTRAL Spanish translation that could have been translated as "¿Qué es más bueno que...?" or "¿Qué es mejor que una caja de lápices?". And it would have been understood BOTH by people in Spain and people in South America.

PLEASE, P-L-E-A-S_E, Google, start taking these localization issues into account when you start translating things.

PLEASE, STOP. Por favor.

¡Gracias!

FC

Joe from Neurostech thinks I'm a big thing (I'm not) - Still, thanks! :)

2007-02-07T01:56:00.000-08:00

Joe Born from Neuros Technology wrote something nice about me on his company blog. It's good to see a small company like his listening to constructive criticism from a computer geek like me.

Still... I kinda blushed when I read him calling me " prominent South America blogger...".

No, I don' t mean I want it removed. No, please keep it there. I always need an ego-boost.

Gee, thanks Joe!. :)

FC

CNN follows my lead wrt under-water life (OK, I wish ;-)

2007-02-04T20:51:00.000-08:00

Ocean living: From Hydropolis to Trilobis - Feb. 1, 2007
http://money.cnn.com/2007/01/19/magazines/business2/ocean_real_estate.biz2/?postversion=2007020210

"With land getting so crowded, the age-old fantasy of sea-based living is becoming reality.
Business 2.0 dives in."

Despite the hype, who said it first? me! ;)

As the underwater age approaches, a waterproof digicam is a must
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37325
Jan 31, 2007

A joyful and healthy 2007 to everyone!

2006-12-30T11:53:00.000-08:00

My best wishes to all my readers!.

I promise I'll give this blog more attention beginning in '07. Ok, at least I plan to do it. :)

Take care and drive safely...
FC

Sun kicks Microsoft's .Net in the teeth and makes history: Java is "Free Software" with GPL license

2006-11-13T14:23:00.000-08:00

Sun made history today and ensured the long life of Java by setting it free, releasing it under the Free Software Foundation's GPL license.

You can read my thoughts about the move, over here.

Contratulations to Sun!.

FC