June 8, 2006 at 9:45 am
· Filed under Entertainment and humor
OK, I wanted to watch Jet Li’s Fearless (Sin miedo), but I was late for it, so I dumped it for What the bleep do we know!? (¿¡Y tú qué sabes!?). In my defense, I’ll say that the other options where X-Men III and Crash, which I had already watched and commented here.
Everything was odd from the start. First off, the ticket clerk made me repeat the title of the movie. I thought that he hadn’t understood it the first time I’d said it, but retrospectively I wonder whether his “Sorry, what movie?” wasn’t an exclamation of disbelief.
I then entered the theater room, just to find out that I was the only one there. Once the movie started, a young couple came in too, making a grand total of 3 people.
If you want a short comment of the movie, here you are: For God’s sake, never ever watch it!
The long story: the movie is a blend of a fiction story and some documentary-like interviews and voice-over comments. It comprises three stages: in the first one, a pseudo-scientific discussion of Quantum Physics is given, strongly focused in the state superposition theory (that there are infinite “realities” happening at the same time, and we see a “sum” of all of them. The view of the movie is that we see “one” of them), and the effect of the observer in the observed (Is reality there when we don’t look?). They take it to stupid limits, like implying that we create the reality (and can therefore twist it at our will), because the reality doesn’t exist independently from the observer. I am finishing a Ph.D. in Quantum Chemistry myself, and trust me: the quantum theory doesn’t say that.
The second part of the movie is devoted to explaining the molecular chemistry behind the feelings and the way the brain works. This part was quite interesting, and, from what I know as a Bc.S. chemist, mainly correct (Disclaimer: I am not a biologist).
The third part was a presentation of the conclusions “based on” the “scientific evidence” presented in the first two sections, which mainly consisted on some New Age sect ideas (go to “Beliefs” in the preceding link), chiefly the belief that consciousness creates the reality, a diffuse idea of God (instead of its denial), spirituality above all, and ad hoc inclusion of scientific theories into that spirituality.
I find it sad to make such a max-mix of science and pseudo-science to justify funny ideas dope smokers come up with, but… that’s New Age for you.
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June 7, 2006 at 6:54 am
· Filed under This evil world
Hace tiempo que vengo diciendo esto a quien me quiera oir, y hoy me he dicho ¿pa qué está el blog?
Todos sabemos que las compañÃas aseguradoras son unas hijas de la grandÃsima… madre que las fundó, asà que básicamente no voy a decir nada nuevo. Lo que sà puede ser esclarecedor es una reflexión sobre cómo nos timan.
Tomemos una de las cláusulas de las que más se vanaglorian las propias aseguradoras (hablo de seguros de coche), y que más valoran los propios asegurados: la bonificación por buen conductor. Señoras y señores, esto es un TIMO.
Todos tendemos a pensar que somos los mejores conductores del mundo, y que los demás son unos torpes. AsÃ, nuestro egoÃsmo nos hace considerar que, dado que otros van a causar más gasto a la aseguradora (porque sus accidentes van a ser más frecuentes), y nosotros no vamos a accidentarnos nunca, pues deberÃan ser esos otros los que pagaran más. Las aseguradoras saben que somos unos cabronazos egoÃstas y, sobre todo, unos egocéntricos y unos chulos y que vamos a pensar aplicando el razonamiento anterior, asà que nos ponen la trampa con el queso delante, y picamos como tontos.
¿Están deseando distribuir las cuotas más equitativamente entre sus asegurados? No, claro. Lo que desean es ganar más dinero, como es de esperar (y legÃtimo). ¿Qué es lo que realmente ocurre? La aseguradora tiene un seguro a todo riesgo con una cuota X, igual para todos. Ahora sube la cuota base a 2X, y dice que hace un descuento del 50% a los “buenos conductores”, que se definen como aquellos que no reportan un accidente en, digamos, 6 meses.
El resultado es que, en el mejor de los casos, casi todo el mundo sigue pagando lo mismo que antes, pero creyéndose afortunados por beneficiarse de un megadescuento del 50%, mientras que algunos pagan el doble. Pero no solo eso. Es que, además, cuando los “buenos conductores” tienen un accidente leve, no dan parte por miedo a perder la jugosa “bonificación” del 50%.
En el fondo, la “bonificación” del 50% no es más que una coacción, en la que nos amenazan con cobrarnos un 100% más de lo que ya pagamos si nos atrevemos a exigir la contraprestación contractualmente estipulada para un hipotético accidente. ¡Es realmente vil y retorcido! Se comprometen a compensarnos económicamente en caso de accidente, a cambio de una cuota (ese es el fundamento de un seguro), pero luego echan mano de todos los mecanismos que puedan para coartar nuestro derecho a pedir esa compensación cuando la necesitamos, Y ENCIMA NOS HACEN CREER QUE NOS ESTÃN HACIENDO UN FAVOR, COBRANDO MÃS A LOS “MALOS” CONDUCTORES.
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June 3, 2006 at 16:40 pm
· Filed under Entertainment and humor
Pues sÃ, tras el de Sabina el domingo pasado, he ido (ayer) a un segundo concierto en apenas seis dÃas, pues tocaba El Canto del Loco en el Velódromo de Anoeta (Donosti).
Dani, el cantante
Esta vez era de un estilo de música más comercial y “juvenil” que Sabina… Y lo de juvenil va en serio, porque yo doblaba en edad (literalmente) al 90% de los asistentes. O mejor dicho, LAS asistentes, porque habÃa más niñas que en el patio de un colegio femenino.
No puedo por menos que resaltar estas y otras diferencias entre ambos conciertos, porque eran realmente llamativas. Este concierto, por ejemplo, ha sido bastante más multitudinario, y el escenario lo han colocado en un extremo corto del óvalo del velódromo, mientras que Sabina lo puso en un lado largo (dejando menos sitio para la gente).
También es cierto que, con todo lo viejo y cascado que está Sabina, se pegó dos horas y cuarto pasadas cantando, mientras estos apenas llegaron a hora y tres cuartos, ¡con todo los jóvenes y llenos de energÃa que se supone deben ser! Y, a mà al menos, se me hizo más corto aquel concierto que este… o sea que igual me estoy haciendo viejo.
Otra diferencia es que para la iluminación del concierto de anoche tuvieron que volver a abrir la central nuclear José Cabrera, y me han dicho que se consumieron un par de toneladas de U-235… ¡o más! Si no se ha visto una mezcla de Star Wars y el episodio de Pokemon que provocaba epilepsia, no puede uno hacerse a la idea de la cantidad e intensidad de luces, colores y destellos. Durante un rato creà ver un elefante rosa… y de hecho quizá lo habÃa.
El concierto en sà estuvo muy bien, con ritmos muy pop y mucha pose de niño malo, pero con la música pegadiza y fácil de escuchar que buscamos cuando escuchamos al El Canto del Loco, añadido a la frescura de la actuación en vivo. Yo me lo pasé muy bien, por mucho que no sean mis Ãdolos.
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June 1, 2006 at 10:15 am
· Filed under Evil software
[Last reviewed 12-Feb-2007]
I have read at menéame (Spanish) about a Windows Vista review, and I have decided to comment about it here. The original review (in English) here.
The first thing one notices is the blatant copy of many MacOS (as usual) and FLOSS project (Linux and Firefox) features.
1) The Aero User Interface allows for window transparency. Wow, I’d be hard pressed to name a Linux desktop environment that couldn’t do it long ago.
2) You can Alt-Tab (Win-Tab, really) between open windows, having them appear in 3D. This is nice, but similar effects are obtained with 3D-desktop for Linux (only for desktop switching, not window switching), and now with XGL, which I expect to be fully functional much sooner than the Vista release date (mark my words).
3) The desktop supports applets, that, in the long standing Microsoft custom of reinventing the wheel, and then renaming it to pretend it’s something new, they call “Gadgets”. Such gadgets would be things like calendars, weather forecast indicators, clocks… Such things have been long present in Linux with SuperKaramba, gDesklets, and adesklets.
4) IE7 can now read RSS, and supports tabbed browsing. Again, Firefox supported it long ago.
5) IE7 now supports international URLs, such as www.müller.de. Firefox, of course, already supports them. Moreover, the URL display is not correct in IE7, whereas it is in Firefox (see images below):
Figure 1: Internet Explorer 7
Figure 2: Firefox 1.5.0.3
6) IE7 is said to come with anti-phising settings. Firefox already had extension for that, namely Google safebrowsing, Personal Anti-Phising Sidebar, FirePhish Anti-Phishing Extension or TrustWatch Search Extension by GeoTrust.
7) IE7 has a “MSN search” box next to the URL box (IE6 has it too?), but now it permits to add other search engines. Firefox has had it for ages:
Figure 3: Internet Explorer 7
Figure 4: Firefox 1.5.0.3
8 ) IPv6 support, I think was present at XP (through obscure commands), now is properly handled. How long has this been correctly handled under Linux?
9) UAC (User Account Control). A garbage far inferior to the user management in UNIX-like systems (I added the boldface bits):
A new User Account Control (UAC) function enables those whose accounts possess administrator-level privileges (or who log on using the Administrator account) to perform actions unavailable to other types of user accounts [it always was like that for UNIX]. Those who lack such rights will be informed that they lack the privileges necessary to run the program [it always was like that for UNIX], and that they should execute it under a different account instead. This doesn’t mean logging out and then logging back in is strictly necessary [it never was in UNIX. su to different user, then exit.], though, because those who have access to privileged account information can always use the “runas” [another MS reinventing and renaming, now for sudo] command to access more privileged credentials.
The guiding idea behind this technique is called the “principle of least privilege” [used in UNIX since the down of times]. Under this doctrine, users who normally work on a Windows machine should log in using ordinary user accounts, so that if they contract a virus or other malware, that unwanted software is a lot less able to do serious damage than if they routinely log in using administrative privileges. But Microsoft hasn’t taken this principle entirely to heart, either. The first user defined during installation is automatically granted administrative privileges. Worse yet, the reserved account named Administrator is not required to have a password to log into the machine!
Moreover, unless under Windows, in UNIX-like systems different users have different privileges regarding reading, writing and executing not only root’s (again, MS renames to “Administrator”) files, but also each other’s files. Maybe I can read some or your files, but not write to them, maybe you can let me write to some of your files, maybe I let you see what’s inside one of my dirs, and open (but not modify) some files in it, and not even open some others.
10) Windows Updates has been improved, but still I can’t see anything that Debian APT, SUSE YaST or RedHat RPM can not do. I can’t see, either, some things that APT, YaST and RPM can do. I don’t know if Window Updates has those capabilities, the review just doesn’t mention them.
11) At startup, it checks whether hard disk defragmentation is necessary. What kind of shitty filesystem needs defragmentation nowadays! Journaled filesystems such as ReiserFS and others certainly don’t!.
12) I quote: “Some things never go away: even for Windows Vista, installing some new system components still requires a reboot.” This is really garbage. In Linux only a kernel reinstall forces a reboot (you can choose not to reboot, just the new kernel won’t be active until you reboot).
13) The review spends 7 of its 40 pages commenting games included with Windows Vista (such as Minesweeper or Solitaire, but also a 3D chess game and some others). While critics for that excess should go to the reviewer, not MS, it is still true that with a long overdue OS, any delay that the polishing of the games could have caused would be criminal.
14) I read in the #218 issue of Computer Hoy (Spanish computer magazine), that the Windows Search utility in Windows Vista has been highly optimized. Basically, so far Search looked up the actual filesystem when looking for some file, whereas now it makes use of periodically renewed indexed lists, that say what is where, so the lookup is much faster. While this is a vast improvement, the Unix/Linux users must be far from impressed. The wheel that Microsoft smartasses reinvented here is the GNU locate, an oooold friend of GNU/Linux users. What the Windows Search did, was similar to the alternative program find.
All in all, I would say that they have spent a few years since Windows XP just polishing the look of Vista, and trying to copy what the FLOSS movement has been innovating. To me, an OS should be completely independent of the look of the desktop, or the games it includes, or how utility applications work. But, well, maybe it’s just me.
Read also: 20 things you won’t like about Window Vista.
