handyfloss

There was a time when Windows users would say there weren’t games that run under Linux.

There was a time when Windows users would say that Linux was technically inferior.

Later they would end up accepting that it was indeed technically superior, but that it would not catch on people because it was difficult to install and use.

Now, with distros like SUSE or Ubuntu, which are easier to install than Windows, they resort to saying that Windows does and will reign in the desktop, because they have had years of development, whereas Linux “consists on sucky black terminals with fosforescent text”.

OK, check about XGL on Linux. Both Linux and Windows (Vista) are able to move and resize windows with transparencies, shades, and elasticity effects… now, you can read here (Spanish), how a guy opened 17 simultaneous High Definition videos with transparencies and real time shades on his Linux Box, while Windows would barely cope with one or two. Check the videos in that page, and think again about Linux and his “sucky black terminals”.

Todo lector español estará al tanto de las acusaciones a Afinsa y a Fórum Filatélico de estafa, por parte de la Fiscalía Anticorrupción (noticia en El País).

Por cierto, que, buscando en Internet noticias a las que enlazar, además de las direcciones de ambas empresas (la de FF tarda muchísimo en cargar… será congestión de visitas de clientes iracundos), he encontrado sendos artículos en el diario El Mundo, fechados el 9 del presente (mismo día de la actuación policial, cuando, por ejemplo el Diario Vasco ya se hacía eco de la misma), con flagrante apología tanto de Afinsa, como de Fórum Filatélico, aunque el jueves 11, tras levantarse el secreto de sumario por parte de la Fiscalía, ya cambiaron el discurso y hablaban de las acusaciones de corrupción. Tanto cariño no es de extrañar, si son veraces ciertas acusaciones de connivencia entre Afinsa y El Mundo.

Pero bueno, el objetivo de este post no es implicar a los simpáticos periodistas de El Mundo en algun complot (más).

Primero, quiero dejar claro que esto ya se sabía. Que desde diferentes medios (por ejemplo, el sentido común), ya se decía, desde hace tiempo, que dichas inversiones eran arriesgadas, y que no era juicioso invertir. Para muestra, un botón: un comentario en un blog de HACE UN AÑO donde un tal hapasil recomienda a otra persona no invertir en ello. También parece que el Financial Times ya avisaba del tema en septiembre del 2005.

Pero voy más allá. Yo lo siento por los miles (se estiman en 350.000) de personas afectadas… pero niego tajantemente ninguna responsabilidad subsidiaria del Gobierno. Me niego rotundamente a que paguemos usted y yo y el de enfrente los errores de esta gente. No señor. En primer lugar, el gobierno no es responsable de las “sociedades de bienes tangibles”, sólo de las entidades financieras (p.e. bancos que quiebran). Esto queda bien clarito en el comentario de hapasil en el blog que menciono arriba:

Si te fijas, no están controlados por la Comisión de Nacional del Mercado de Valores, y siempre evitan el termino “financiero” escudandose en los sellos.

En segundo lugar, y por mucha pena que me den… ¿si hubiesen ganado dinero gracias a la estructura ilegal del negocio, habrían compartido algo conmigo? ¿Entonces, por qué cuando por culpa de la estructura ilegal del negocio pierden, yo tengo que cubrirles? ¿Acaso no sabían que era una inversión de riesgo? ¿Acaso no les parecía raro recibir unas rentabilidades que duplicaban y triplicaban las percibidas por el resto de los mortales con inversiones financieras convencionales (plazo fijo, bonos del estado)? ¿Acaso no les parecía inmoral? Claro que… ¿qué tiene que ver la moral con todo esto?

Usted, cuando se lo ofrecieron, pensó que no estaba dispuesto a correr el riesgo, y lo rechazó. Si ellos estaban dispuestos… ¡que lo demuestren ahora apechugando con las consecuencias! Claro, se creían más listos que usted y que yo, que eramos unos pringao a los que no daban nada por su dinero en el banco… y ahora quieren que estos pringaos les cubran las pérdidas cuando su “chollazo” se pincha… ¡Eso sí que es ser más listo que nadie!

Al fin y al cabo, y para enlazar con el título del post, estas inversiones funcionan igual que la mayoría de los timos, como, por ejemplo el tocomocho. En este tipo de timos, el timador cuenta con la avaricia de la víctima, la cual corre riesgos irracionales, cegada por la posibilidad de obtener un gran beneficio. Los timos más exitosos son aquellos en los que la víctima se cree más lista que el timador, y cree ser ella la parte que tima al otro. Todos conocemos casos (al menos, en películas) de tipos que saben de métodos “infalibles” para ganar al blackjack o a la ruleta en un casino, y acaban perdiéndolo todo, porque el casino es el timador y nosostros los pringaos, NUNCA al revés.

Al igual que los que invirtieron en Afinsa y Fórum Filatélico, este jugador del casino se jacta de lo listo que es, y de lo tontos que son los pringaos que le desaconsejan aplicar su “método infalible” en el casino. Y al igual que este jugador, los inversores de Afinsa y Fórum Filatélico han acabado convirtiendo sus risas en llantos…

Lo siento, pero este servidor, tan tonto que no supo ver lo chachi-guay que era esto de los sellos, no tiene ganas ahora de cubrir sus deudas. Apostaron y perdieron. Que les sirva de lección: cuando algo parece demasiado bueno para ser verdad… es porque no es verdad.

Reading FayerWayer, I found a reference to a comparison between these three OSs made by someone called Jasjeet Sekhon. As with any benchmark, it is only valid for the context it applies to, so take it cautiously, and read the original story for more details.

The benchmarks used by Jasjeet Sekhon are two calculations with some software called R Project for Statistical Computing. The results are good for Linux (of course), and bad for… OSX!! Yes, madams et monsieurs, even Windows beats MacOSX.

Yesterday I went to the cinema to watch Crash, and I have to say that I liked it a lot. The plot is very good, and the events flow naturally.

What I liked most was that the characters were, albeit sketchy (because there are many, and there’s no time for more development), quite more complex than your average black-or-white hero/villain type nowadays. There aren’t really good guys and bad guys. There’s racist idiots, but also people with prejudices learning to overcome them, apparently racist people acting as heroes, ethnic minorities clashing among them, appart from with white people, and “gangsta bros” becoming samaritans.

A great movie, really.

Don’t know about the reader, but I keep discovering little nifty tricks for LaTeX, Perl or Linux administration, only to hit my head against the wall some time later, when I encounter the same problem again, but don’t remember the trick, and have to invent a solution again…

Nevermore!

Yeah, I don’t have a better place to put my tricks. Got a problem?

Let’s move on to the tricks:

Q: How do I move a text X mm down (or up)?

A: Producing space between two text blocks is easy:

text1
\vspace{Xmm}
text2

Producing some space before any text in the page is more complicated, because the following will just not work:

\vspace{Xmm}
text2

However, we can force LaTeX to do our will substituting “text1” with a blank space “\ “:

\ \vspace{Xmm}
text2

Q: How do I produce a blank page?

A: This is something that should seldom be done, because paging is automatically controled, but some day you might need it.

To achieve this, you cannot simply put a \clearpage (or \newpage, or \pagebreak), because it only works after some text in the page. Anyway, we can use the trick above, and do:

% This is page 1, with a normal use of \newpage:
blah-blah-blah\newpage

% This is page 2, blank:
\ \clearpage

% This is page 3, normal:
blah-blah-blah

If we want a completelly blank page (i.e. without even page numbering or headers), use:

\thispagestyle{empty}\ \clearpage

I read in BoingBoing that at least one of the 5 finalists to the 2005 Hugo best science-fiction novel award has published his work (Accelerando) under the Creative Commons.

Yes, free to download legally. Yes, a novel that is among the finalists for an international prize, won by people like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, Orson Scott Card or J.K. Rowling in 2001 for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Viernes 5 de mayo, carretera N1 dirección Donostia, cercanías de Vitoria. Una inocente joven, a quien identificaremos como L., conduce su flamante coche nuevo con destino a Donosti, huyendo de la asfixiante y deprimente macrourbe conocida como “Madrid”.

No sabe si lo ha alcanzado o le acaba de adelantar, pero tiene delante un coche de siniestro aspecto, y con matrícula francesa. Hay algo en su manera de circular, lento pero con suaves acelerones ocasionales, que parecen indicar a L. “adelántame”. No, indicar no es la palabra adecuada. Retar.

“Lo que me faltaba, un pirado”. L. acelera y rebasa al amenazador automóvil, dejándolo fácilmente atrás. Respira aliviada, y prosigue su viaje.

Pero no todo queda ahí. Segundos más tarde un destello en el retrovisor la sorprende. “Si todavía hay luz, ¿qué hace ese tío?” Un rápido vistazo al retrovisor confirma su sospecha: es el coche francés de antes. “Bien, si quiere adelantarme, que lo haga”. Efectivamente el coche rebasa a L., pero en vez de alejarse reduce su velocidad hasta quedarse justo delante, como en la anterior ocasión.

L. decide no adelantarlo, reduciendo la marcha con la intención de dejarlo ir. Pero no será tan fácil… el coche también frena. Van tan lento que L. se extraña de que otros coches no los alcancen, pero el hecho es que van sólos por la carretera.

Al final, L. decide adelantar y acelerar hasta dejar el coche atrás. Pero este parece que no cede tan pronto, y acelera hasta alcanzarla. L. inicia una carrera desenfrenada por dejar al franchute loco atrás.

[…] Me salto 187 páginas de descripciones de acción a raudales, más que nada porque tengo más cosas que hacer […]

Cuando está llegando a Donosti, L. reduce la velocidad y se prepara para tomar la salida necesaria. El francés loco se posiciona a la par del coche de L. y por primera vez circulan en paralelo cierto tiempo.

L. mira horrorizada cómo dos pares de ojos rojos que parecen refulgir la observan desde los asientros traseros del coche francés. Fijándose más puede ver el contorno de unas cabezas enormes y ligeramente deformes, como la descendencia siniestra de una familia infernal. Lentamente, con exasperante deliberación, la ventanilla del copiloto se va abriendo, dejando ver tras ella la melena rubia de una mujer que bien podría ser una diablesa, con su rostro pálido pero hermoso entre la cabellera revuelta por el viento. Unos complicados gestos, posiblemente satánicos, de la mujer, empujan a L. a bajar su ventanilla, y prestar atención, contra todo lo que su ya torturada razón le avisa. Temiendo oir palabras terribles que perviertan su mente y la subyuguen al Señor de las Tinieblas, L. oye (en francés):

– “¡Gilipollas, llevas el intermitente derecho todo el tiempo encendido!”

Read in Kriptópolis: Microsoft patents an automatic censoring machine.

That machine would, allegedly, detect “phonemes and/or words derived from phonemes for comparison against corresponding phonemes or words included in undesired speech data”, and then “the input audio data stream is altered so that the undesired word or a phrase comprising a plurality of such words is unintelligible or inaudible”. This capability is available for recorded speeches (of course), and even in real-time.

I bet Franco, for one, would have loved this precious thingie, back then. And I bet that some governments today will put it to *cough* good *cough* use.

It seems that this year the prestigious prize Prí­ncipe de Asturias (precisely the International Cooperation Prize 2006), given by a Foundation lead by Prince Felipe (the son of the current king of Spain. Yes, we have a king… no comment) has been given to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

You can read about it in many places, e.g. the Fundación Prí­ncipe de Asturias site, a newspaper like El Mundo, or a news blog like menéame (all the links in Spanish).

Now, I am sick and tired of hearing this bullshit about “Maybe Microsoft is a bit on the dark side of the Force, but this Bill Gates fellow is not a bad guy after all. Hell, he gives away for charity a whole lot of money!”

This is false, for two reasons:

1) Giving away that much doesn’t have so much merit.

Bill Gates’ Supporter: He gives away so much money, he is Good.

Voice of Facts: False. He has so much money, that what he gives is not much.

BGS: Yes, but even as a percentage it is a lot. He gives away a x% of his income, and neither you nor me do it!

VoF: False. You and me spend 105% of our income paying our flat, our car, the gasoline, the food, the clothes… He is so rich that he could easily donate 75% of his possessions and still be so rich that he wouldn’t notice the difference.

Hence, comparing percentages of income is not fair, either. For most people, donating a 10% of their income amounts to the difference between having where to sleep tonight or not. That’s not exaggeration. That’s a fact.

BGS: OK then, but meritorious or not, he does give away an awful lot of money!

VoF: We get back to the first point. Maybe that money is peanuts for him, but that’s a lot in absolute terms. OK, true. But the whole point was to demonstrate how philanthropic Gates was!

2) For him that money is an inversion. It is well worth it in tax refunds and market revenues.

VoF: Did you know that Bill Gates saves a lot of money on taxes because of what he donates to his own “charitable” Foundation?.

BGS: That’s silly! If he gives away one billion, and saves x% in taxes, he would have been better of not giving away anything at all! How can donating be economically advantageous?

VoF: My friend, this is in our poor fellows’ world, not in the world of the super-rich. According to the merits the newspapers (see above) atribute to the Foundation, they have spent USD 10 billion since 2000. Now, according to the Wikipedia, as of 2005, they had USD 28 billion as endowment (that is, “money to spend”). According to US law, a foundation has to give away at least 5% of his assets, yearly, to be considered “charitable”.

If my math is not wrong, USD 10 billion since 2000 amounts to USD 2 billion/year, which is not much above the USD 1.4 billion/year that an endowment of USD 28 billion requires. If the Foundation had given away less than what they did, they would not even be considered charitable by the US government, so putting money into it would not ensure good ol’ Bill a tasty tax deduction.

Even if I try to put my best to it, I can not see why they don’t give away for charity all the money they “donate” to the Foundation. Either they give away the whole USD 28 billion, or they only put into the Foundation the USD 2 billion that they expect to give away! Oh, wait, maybe they get tax reductions for the USD 28 billion, but end up “losing to the poor” only USD 2 billion. How philanthropic!

Now, some people might say that the other USD 26 billion have indeed been “spent” by Gates… he also “lost” them. Not at all. The Foundation uses this money for many different things, most of which are beneficial for Mr. Gates. Look at that new at ZDNet Australia. In 2004, Gates offered the Australian government to spend:

“AU$40 million over the next five years to help improve technology literacy in under-privileged communities.”

However, Australian Democrats’ IT spokesperson Brian Greig calls this “tainted charity”, because:

“the software tycoon’s global philanthropy exercises carry a hidden agenda to persuade beneficiary governments to reverse policies promoting the use of open source software.

Greig claims Gates’ whistle-stop visit to the country was more likely to have been motivated by NSW Commerce Minister John Della Bosca’s intention to end the state government’s reliance on proprietary software.”

Graig recalls the case of India, where Gates spent USD 500 million in “charity” in 2002, after the government disclosed its intention of getting rid of proprietary software (that is, Windows). Of those USD 500 million, 100 where aimed at helping fight AIDS (highly commendable), and 400 to “improving computer literacy in the country.” (???). Craig’s words remind those of Sergio Amadeu, president of the Brazilian National Institute for Information Technology, who compared Gates’ strategy with that of drug dealers who give first doses for free, to get people “hooked”.

No wonder Microsoft’s lawyers sued Amadeu “for difamation”. However, the accusation hardly held any water, after Gates’ words regarding software piracy in China, in which he “difamated” himself:

“As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade”.

In summary, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is just a corporative arm of Microsoft, aimed at cleaning Gates’ bad reputation, spreading pro-MS propaganda, financing bribes to governments to perpetuate Windows use, and give free samples of their product to keep markets hooked, all of it under a charity mask.

Yesterday I went to the cinema to watch Failure to launch (Novia por contrato).

I went to Antiguo Berri, a cinema that is a 5 minutes walk away from where I live. That’s why I always get out 4 minutes before the movie starts…

Yesterday I got out 6 minutes before, congratulating myself because I had 1 extra minute. All was fun and rejoice until I arrived at the cinema ticket desk… and noticed I had forgotten my wallet at home (and had no time to go back for it). Wait, there’s hope! I had with me my coin wallet, in which I had enough money. The regular ticket is 5 euros, but a card issued to under-30s by my bank entitles me to a discount of one euro. Fine, I had 4.70 eur in my coin wallet! Now, the bad part: the discount card was in my other wallet, at home :^(

Now, I go to that cinema every week, so the clerk knows me. I thougth that she’d accept to make the discount even without the card, you know, my charming smile and all that… Tough luck, yesterday they had a new guy at the desk. My moral sank.

However, I thought “what the hell?”, and told him what the matter was. To my (mild) surprise, he accepted promptly, and issued me a discount ticket, making me pay only 4 eur. Bad part is he didn’t give me a “young discount” ticket, but one of “discount to the elderly” :^)

As for the movie itself, it is a romantic comedy, which says it all. It’s only moderately funny, but I had a good time watching it. It pokes fun at guys living with their parents, which is technically my situation… so I sometimes thought it was a drama, instead of a comedy!

I don’t think I spoil any big surprise if I disclose that the main line of the plot is that the parents of Matthew McConaughey hire Sarah Jessica Parker to make him fall in love with her, so that he quits living with them. Yeah, right, I thought the same thing: them bastards! My self-confidence was already low, I didn’t need the suspicion that next time a girl is “receptive” with me it’s because my parents hired her to make me move out of home, thanks!

I know, I know: it’s a movie. But… did they really think it would work? SJ Parker’s aim was to give MM self confidence, so that he’d shift to the next step in life, living alone. Now, if (or “when”) he did find out about the farce… wouldn’t his self confidence actually sink? Wouldn’t it be even more difficult to make him move away in the future (if it didn’t work out at the first try, as it was evident that it wouldn’t)? What kind of shit were those parents smoking when they came out with the idea, and were can I get some?