economy in general

hi !

I've recently seen these 2 videos on video.google.com:

Zeitgeist The Movie:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5547481422995115331

and

Money as Debt:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279

both quite interesting (though maybe not as scientific accurate and prove-bearing as exptected..)

those lead me to this interesting article on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seigniorage

"The revenue derived from issuing currency" from a goverment or private company as the FED.



I recently bought George Soros's Open Society, which I'm really eager to start reading... what might a pure-economist understand by "Open Society", as opposed to what a geek like me does understand ?

lets see !

I'll try to report about this in an upcoming post.

web 2.0 bubble song

can't help but blogging it ;)

artículo interesante "programming collective intelligence"

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2007/11/14/an-interview-with-toby-segaran.html

este tío dice:

"what's still lacking is something which finds information online for me that I will find interesting; I know there are a number of attempts to solve this problem and I've tried many of them but nothing has retained my attention so far."

éste, lo que necesita es un agregador de RSS 'inteligente' como el mio, que sugiera posts basándose en la probabilidad condicionada de Bayes de que te guste un post basándose en los que has dicho q te gustaban.

bueno, lo del bayes lo he metido a la fuerza para hacerme el interesante, pero + o - cuela, no ?

elias

nueva idea

Últimamente, cuando leo mis RSS, veo bastantes posts comentando otros posts que ya he leido (porque también los tengo en mi rss).

Esto es ineficiente (a primera vista).

La solución es : cada post lleva una etiqueta (o "tag") invisible, que apunta al post original que se está comentando.

Entonces mi lector de RSS, detecta que yo ya he leido el post original, o alguno que ya comentaba este tema, y me lo marca como 'menos interesante'.

Esta idea es genail. Si fuera a montar otra empresa, haría un lector de RSS online con esta 'feature'... pero ahora que lo pienso, los usuarios tendrían que indicar cual es el post original. O bueno, en realidad yo podria 'inferir' esa información de los keywords, y links del post. Eso añadiría la salsa mágica diferenciadora de mi lector de RSS.

Por otro lado, soy usuario de muchas redes sociales distintas. Según mi punto de vista, todas intentan crearse un 'perfil' de ti, de quién eres tu, de qué te interesa, quienes son tus amigos... para utilizar eso para enviarte publicidad 'enfocada' a tus necesidades. Esto da mucho dinero (preguntarle al zukerberg de facebook, sino ;P).

Realmente siento que si hay algo que es lo que define mejor mi perfil en internet, son los RSS que leo.

pues en la próxima red social que haga, voy a sugerir a los usuarios que sean amigos de otros usuarios basándome en la correlación de sus RSS. Si hay mucha correlación, serían buenos amigos, sin duda. Si no hay correlación, también podrian ser buenos amigos, pero con menos afinidades en el internet, por tanto menos interés de ser amigos 'a través de internet'.

esto creo que es una idea potentísima. Si conozco a alguien que lea los mismos RSS que yo, seremos amigos, sin duda.


Ejemplos de las 2 ideas expuestas:

Hoy leyendo el excelente Anarchaia, me he cruzado con la noticia de que Mauricio Fernandez ha lanzado ruby-wmii. Ya lo sabía porque estoy suscrito a eigenclass.org.
También ponía que google abría su highly Open Participation Contest. Lo sabía porque estoy suscrito a developer.google.com (o como se llame).
También ponía artículos de Lambda The Ultimate, a los que también estoy suscrito. Y a ruby inside, al q tb estoy suscrito.

También estoy suscrito a bubblegeneration.com, y a las news de sourceforge y developerworks, para estar siempre a la última de qué pasa en el mundo open source.
también estoy suscrito a xkcd y a "La viña del Señor" por la risa, y a fogonazos.com, por pasar 10 minutos al dia con algo interesante.

etc, etc.

te partes de la risa

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWyKOvX00h0


jjajajaja !!

es hilarante, como el gas !

my fingers hurt again

Did I tell you that I had Repetitive Strain Injury some time ago ? at that time I think I was using VI... or maybe emacs ?

I've heard VI is more ergonomic, that's why even though I love emacs, I'll start using VIPER mode, which uses some of the ergonomic-key-bindings of VI.

great stuff.

xkcd

I usually fear to re-publishing a re-furbished (like my Mac:) article I've read in another blog, because maybe my readers have also the other blog in their RSS feeds. but this time Icant help it. This is hilarious (for hackers)

http://xkcd.com/341/
http://xkcd.com/342/
http://xkcd.com/343/
http://xkcd.com/344/
http://xkcd.com/345/

elias

Mal parto me raya, se atormenta una vecina, el porro folar, y los conejos

A mi familia siempre le han hecho mucha gracia los chistes que solamente se basan en confusion linguística. A mi abuela le encanta el chiste "que le dice el gallo a la gallina ? 'qué-quieresque-te-diga'"... o el de "qué se ve desde la montaña más alta de Toronto ?": "Torontontero", que hace gracia solo porque decir "torontontero" es gracioso (y por lo de "toronto entero").

A mi hermano le encanta cambiar y modificar las sílabas de las palabras. Ahora recuerdo:

"Se atormenta una vecina"
"Mal parto me raya"
"Porro Folar" (en vez de forro polar)

las dos primeras las sacó de una obra de teatro (se las copió) y el porro folar no se de donde lo sacó. Pero cuando habla siempre cambia alguna sílaba y consigue resultados muy divertidos.

A mi también me hace bastante gracia, últimamente digo bastante "Estoy hasta los conejos", o "No me toques los conejos", (en vez de co-jo-nes).

Últimamente he leido bastantes posts sobre el tratamiento informático de las palabras y los lenguajes.

Por ejemplo hay un post del director de research de Google Peter Norvig que explica el algoritmo que usa google para sugerirte que has hecho un error en el 'spelling' de tu búsqueda (eso que te dice Google de ... "quizás quiso decir: sexo" cuando buscas 'seco' :P). Está hecho en python aquí: http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html
usa el teorema de Bayes de probabilidad condicionada.

Y los de PowerSet también están haciendo virguerias con el procesamiento del lenguaje natural.

y mi amigo Ero, un tiempo también estuvo muy interesado en el procesamiento del lenguaje, y llegó a descubrir por su cuenta los 'word-clusterings' (para luego darse cuenta de que alguien lo había inventado antes :P) también programado en python, y supongo que con el teorema de bayes.
Hace un tiempo también puso un post sobre python y procesamiento de palabras, aquí: http://blog.dkbza.org/2007/06/powerset-and-garden-path.html

Hace poco tiempo vi que Peter Norvig ha encontrado el Palíndromo más largo del mundo con un algoritmo hecho en Python (http://www.norvig.com/palindrome.html)

Y Paul Graham inventó el primer filtro anti-spam utilizando el teorema de Bayes, la probabilidad condicionada y python http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html.

total, que esto del procesamiento del lenguaje parece algo muuuuuuuy complicado pero se pueden hacer pequeños experimentos caseros, sin programar demasiadas lineas, que pueden dar resultados espectaculares.

Parece que Python y el teorema de Bayes son los elementos clave para hacer estos experimentos.


Mi aportación al tema:

Para aprender python y a usar el Bayes ese, voy a hacer un programa que tu le des un refrán o dicho, y él te busque todas las posibilidades de permutaciones y cambios de sílabas en las palabras del refrán, que den como resultado otro refran ligeramente distinto pero que en el cual las palabras también tengan sentido. Osea que a este programa tu le dirás

"Mal rayo me parta" y el te responderá:
"Mal rato me tarta", "Mal pato me raya", "Mal paro me tarta", "Mal parto me raya", etc.

o "Se avecina una tormenta" y él te responde:
"Se atormenta una vecina", etc.

molaría, no ???

bueno, tengo mucho trabajo y no creo q lo implemente. Alguien se anima ?

elias

Nostalgia

"I spend most of my life in anticipatory nostalgia, aware of the memories I’m creating. ”

jajaja

from http://project.ioni.st/

:P

linux,windows,linux,mac

Spectrum-Amiga-WIndows-Linux-Windows-Linux-Mac, this has been my Operating System periple. Some time ago I wrote a blog post entitled 'switch back to windows', when I recalled windows sucks, I got back to linux, and new I've got a mac with a Leopard in it.
In editors, I've been using VI *a lot*, also Eclipse *a lot*, then I learned EMACS and I loved it.

becaus I'm learning ruby, I have a mac, I bought TextMate, as all of the rails core developers use MAC with TM. 39 euros.
It works quite nice, but EMACS is OSS, so it has far more plugins, modes, and stuff. I got used to emacs keybindings, so after having spent 39 euros on TM, I'm sticking to EMACS again. It's just more powerful and it helps you to learn LISP which is also a plus.

Aquaemacs has nothing to envy to textmate. its MAC-OS look'n'feel, with keybingings, integration with OS and the like.

But its a *fkin* hell to configure it with the META symbol bound ALT key, and then also get the ç, {, }, á, ] and all that stuff, this was my first approach:
(when (eq system-type 'darwin)
(progn
(setq mac-option-modifier 'meta)
; (setq mac-pass-option-to-system t)
;and because the last statemet, we need all this weird stuff... no AltGr in mac!
(global-set-key "\M-`" (lambda () (interactive) (insert "[")))
(global-set-key "\M-+" (lambda () (interactive) (insert "]")))
(global-set-key "\M-7" (lambda () (interactive) (insert "\\")))
(global-set-key "\M-´" (lambda () (interactive) (insert "{")))
(global-set-key "\M-ç" (lambda () (interactive) (insert "}")))
(global-set-key "\M-1" (lambda () (interactive) (insert "|")))
(global-set-key "\M-2" (lambda () (interactive) (insert "@")))
(global-set-key "\M-3" (lambda () (interactive) (insert "#")))
(global-set-key "\M-4" (lambda () (interactive) (insert "~")))
(global-set-key "\M-º" (lambda () (interactive) (insert "\\")))
(global-set-key [(control return)] 'set-mark-command)))

but couldn't get the { and } to work, but I'm thinking the best will be to switch off the (setq mac-option-modifier 'meta)

UPDATE
I seem to have found the solution, just look at site-lisp/macosx/emulate-mac-keyboard-mode.el
and you'll see how to modify your .emacs to achieve the beautiful { and } and \ with your aquaemacs with spanish keyboard :D

back to electronics

I used to study quite a bit of electronics back at university. At some point, I assmebled a printed board with a microcontroller, 8052 or something like that. I knew voltages and so.

But I've been devoted to software for long time now, and I dont remember anything. I love the internet, so I found instructables.com and creationist.net, then I wanted to do electronics again.

These are my two next projects:

Build a laser burner:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chC8fz-RxTs

build a Time Fountain (this one is _amazing_):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvY7NGncCgU

yesterday I was trying to make the laser. I have lots of electronic devices in my room, because everytime a broken electronic gadget comes to my hands, I 'deconstruct' it and keep the interesting parts (for fun) (motors, lasers, sensors, etc) so I had 3 spare lasers from an HP laser printer and a DVD burner.

so I went to ondaradio and bought a power supply (110 euros), asked for 1W laser but they dont sell lasers anymore. They dont have UV leds (for the time fountain).

at home, I burnt the 3 lasers. Advice: a laser needs a resistor, otherwise it burns.
Next DVD burner I get, I'll have my laser, with a resistor :)

Interestingness

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult

also see

http://fogonazos.blogspot.com/2007/04/esperando-los-dioses.html

:)


this is also great :

http://www.behance.net/Gallery/energie-in-motion/42738

specially the video:

518171192062670.flv

whats 2.0 ?

lately I find myself using X 2.0 quite frequently... we're facing philosophy 2.0, the world is in its second review. the concept of God needs a 2.0...
yesterday I read what Tim o'reilly thinks is 2.0:

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/05/what_would_goog.html

Tim says it all depends on "the way these companies act with regard to the data they collect". 2.0 web services "mines its database in real time and builds the results right into its customer-facing applications" using some heuristics on this mined data, they achieve a far greater user experience. He also says its something about 'liveness' of the thing.

a Blonde 2.0, OTOH, thinks 2.0 is "a better and more effective way for us to act upon the same human needs that we’ve always had such as connecting, communicating, and receiving feedback from others" (http://www.blonde2dot0.com/blog/2007/09/27/the-death-of-web-20-cmon/)

2 faces of the 2.0: better understanding of the data collected, and better processing by the power of many to offer better user experiences.

I dont have an opinion, myself. Well, I guess I might have one, but dont regard it very relevant.

(UPDATE:)
well, putting it another way, I think the 2.0 is a marketing/social/business thing. I am an engineer, so I dont give much credit to these 'trends'. I remember talking to my partners about a web page, they kept saying 'yes, you do this in ajax', I didn't get the whole sense of what they meant, and I kept saying 'you mean XMLHttpRequest ?', so for me there's no AJAX thing, theres XMLHttpRequest, and there's no 2.0 thing, there's a bunch of new aproaches to web interfaces, application architecture, and yes, also a new way of doing web sites where the user is also the producer: a more social approach.
Amongst other reasons, I didnt get ajax because I was doing a firefox extension, so I had studied the APIs firefox provides, I didn't learn jQuery or prototype, where there's more a sense of 'AJAX'. Well, actually I did understood what they meant, but wanted to remain as much engineer and as least 'marketinian' as I could.
Hype makes economic bubbles, engineering never did any harm, it only delivers (hopefully)good technology.

regards

The world is opening !

Companies used to be the ones who worried most about their "competitive advantage".
But since open-source, the "competitive advantage" is no more the source code BUT the knowledge of their technical staff.

The code is everywhere. OpenSourced code is available for everything. The new breed of programmers do not "code" anymore. They integrate code from different places. "Being lazy is a good property for a programmer", so lazy that he doesn't want to code anymore. He wants to integrate pieces to work together. The work is no more writing new code (of course things will always advance, we need smart coders !) but the average programmer only needs to integrate opensourced codes.
This might be behind mashups.
Eric Schmidt already talked about this. No more coding. Stuff is already done (see http://khloud.wordpress.com/2006/11/22/google-ceo-don%E2%80%99t-bet-against-the-internet/)

companies that opensourced lately:

AllPeers
FaceBook
Sun (java, solaris)

many more that I dont remember. Pleas leave comments with companies that are opensourcing.

Internet is a shit ?

I've been in http://internetisshit.org/

What this guy is saying is that there's too much people writing shit to the internet, like everyone has a blog, and they put their shitty images to flickr, and their crappy videos to YouTube... so he says the Internet is a shit, because most of content is crap.

"Give an infinite number of monkeys typewriters and they'll produce the works of Shakespeare.Unfortunately, I feel like I'm reading all the books where they didn't. I can't wait for the day when the internet makes me rejoice in its possibilities again. But right now, it's shit."

Ok, for me thats the shitty part of internet 1.0, internet 2.0 means that if you gather those infinite number of monkeys with typewriters, and then you gather an infinite number of people reading that shit _and_ classifying the shit as "Very Shitty", "Not that shitty", "Not shitty at all", "Quite Interesting", "Good", "Brilliant" and "Shakespeare",

then you end up with lots of shakespeare quality level content, that has been classified and is easily accessible for everyone... thats _NOT_ thanks to the monkeys, that's thanks to all the people that are classifying the massive amount of shit the monkeys do. SO maybe the value is in classification, and coordination, and also the monkeys should take a part of it :)

ten tips to start a startup

Tip 1:

Dont read all the tips that you have on the web on how to grow a startup. Also dont read all the tips on how _not_ to grow a startup.

tip 2:

well... read some of them... but onece you're conviced that they're only confirming that you're on the right track, then LEAVE_THEM_BEHIND and stop reading ycombinator RSS or slashdot.

BTW, here are some good articles:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/organgrinder/2007/02/internet_people_how_to_make_su.html

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/03/entrepreneurial_proverbs.html

and

http://simon.incutio.com/notes/2006/summit/schachter.txt

(the last one's good)

elias

World domination ?!?! WTF

Hi !

I've been reading some posts and interviews to entrepreneurs lately, and one thing that I dont understand is the question "And what are your plans for world domination?".
Ok I get its a joke, but for example, dont-be-evil would be a corporate motto _totally_opposite_ to dominating the world. Domination is bad. "What are your plans for liberating the world from evil?" would be a much better question, maybe not that funny, though :P

http://www.google.es/search?q=plans+startup+%22world+domination%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.debian:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-a

Convergence

I'm tired of those bullshit-bingo marketing-crap like "Voice and Data Convergence", "Fixed-Mobile Convergence", IMS...

FME+IMS+NGN= Bullshit Bingo !!!
(you win a piece of shit if you use the three acronyms in the same sentence)

everything is actually converging, I'm more left-inclined politically (which traditionally has been called being "socialist") and one of my best friends is very righty, I have muslim,jew,christian,buddhists,hinduists friends, and they all expect the same from life,

If you look at the future, everyone aims at the same objectives for the world.
If you keep arguing about how has the world been in the past and who had reason and who was the best, then you are condemned to be angry and sad for the rest of your life.

elias

This new bubble 2.0

This whole web 2.0 thing is a bubble, no doubt, but this bubble is not bursting, it is going to fly, elevate towards the universe, bearing the earth with it, and elevating the world into a more social place where human race will develop and improve.

hahaha, ok, U caught me, geeky poetry doesn't sound so good :P

excuse me for being so hippy, my parents were hippies and I cant help myself

NDA ?? what NDA ?

some time ago, I read a blog from someone from Mozilla who did know a very important thing, but was unable to disclose it until some day, so he wrote the message and posted an MD5 of the message so that he could claim he knew it in the future. I'm doing the same today, here it goes:

0eb1f2890bdaf2601909b73a1321465c -


geeks of the world, break it !

elias

Apple for the masses ?

I dont own an Apple, though I like them. Once I asked my boss to buy me one, then he and another boss also wanted one, after 1 month I told him I no more wanted the Apple.

Apple works much better than PC/Linux, and for sure than Windows also. A friend of mine (Scott) once sent me this pic:

Ok, I have a dual-core pentium, with 2gigs or RAM with linux, and when I have 10/20 tabs open in ffox, it starts to go like crazy, burning CPU and memory consumption increases a lot. my friend’s computer may have 1 or 1.5 Gigs (speculating… )
I Think apple has always been the best for designers, and now also for programmers (freeBSD and so..). But anyway, it is a little bit elitist, there’s no way that in near future everyone can own an Apple, and I belive more in social-revolution than in good-companies, so I think eventually PCs will get better and cheaper, and linux is actually getting better and more reliable.

So by now I will remain with “the people”, who can’t afford a MacBookPro (or whatever its calld ) and who like programming and open standards, even if I can’t have 153 tabs open in firefox. it will eventually get better, I bet on that.

Furthermore, I know that Aqua interface is cute, and cocoa is cool also (ei, I dont have a mac, dont blame me if I mis-spell the names or whatever ) but I like being so frenzy on the new release of Beryl for linux, and I this feeling that invades me and connects me to all the other human-beings (or geeks ) that also are very amazed on what Beryl can bring to Linux.

thats it

Elias

I know the Internet !

Once my boss toldme that he had a friend that one day came to him saying “I think I already know the whole of the internet, the other day I came across the page that I had begun with”. Its clear that it was a joke, dont know if my boss joke or his friends joke.

I actually thought that something similar happens to me. From time to time, maybe following similar link paths on similar subjects, I come across a page I’ve actually been before (throught a completely different path), this might have something to do with the “clustering coefficient” of the internet, pages on similar topics must link one-another and thus must be clustered, son once u enter a cluster, sooner or later you will be in a page you’ve already been (one day u where “navigating the same/similar cluster”.

Today I found a very interesting book (I thought I came across it for first time), and when I wanted to post it in del.icio.us, I found it already was on my bookmarks, so it seems that del.icio.us will help-me track my “how-much-of-the-internet-I-have-already-navigated”

I would be great to have statistics on del.icio.us showing you how much of the internet you already know

of course, silly my-first-home-page pages shouldt count !!!

and also would be nice to have a sense of the Internet clusters and clustering coefficients (I’ve learnt this “clustering coefficient” term in “Six Degrees” by Duncan J.Watts).

elias

my explanation to the web 2.0 bubble

If someone asks me why do I think the 2.0 is not a bubble, I would tell him:

Investors need to learn where to put their money, otherwise we're lost. If u get enough hype, u can get investors for whatever you whant (that's what they call marketing).
SO in the web 1.0, there were these wealthy post-industrial moguls, that had their empire throught selling oil or manufacturing (shitty) things. When they saw the Internet (1.0) they thought "I'm the most clever of the rich, I'm investing in this revolution so I'll get richer than my friends". So they invested lots of cash into the 1.0, and the geeks all-over-the-world got a chance to get that cash. So after the 1.0 hangover, we had all these old riches without money, and all the geeks with lots of money to invest.
So at the 2.0, the investors are former 1.0 geeks, who are far more smarter, and care a bit more about the money (they don't invest in pets.com even if its social :P). So now the investors are the former geeks, who know how to run a technology business...

SO: the 2.0 is NOT a bubble, its the WORLD REVOLUTION !!!

elias baixas

My own response to Fermi's Paradox

Hello, the other day I was reading slashdot and came across this new:

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/19/1515205&from=rss

The Fermi paradox says that if extraterrestrial civilizations exist, at least one of them should have colonized the entire galaxy by now. But since there is no evidence of this, humankind must be the only intelligent life in the galaxy. The Space Review has an article on how the Fermi paradox can be applied to human civilization. It says that, like the extraterrestrials, humans have three choices: colonize the galaxy, remain on Earth, or become extinct.

So today I came with my own response to Fermi’s paradox:

As the technology and science knowledge of extraterrestrial civilizations advance, they feel eager to conquer the rest of the universe, but at some point in that way to the universe, they advance in science enough to know how does their brain work, and they realize that being eager to conquer the world is an impulse originated by their desire of power, which ultimately only gives pleasure because some neurotransmitters activate when “power” is achieved. So before they can even go and conquer the universe, they discover a drug which gives that same pleasure, but without conquering the universe, just eating a pill, so then they eat the pill, and dont want to conquer anything, because they are happy, and after that, they discover that disappearing is not such a bad option, so they decide to just disappear, so that’s why there’s no evidence of extraterrestrial life, it’s better to have drugs and disappear.

That’s the ULTIMATE ANSWER to Life, the Universe and Everything
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Answer_to_Life,_the_Universe,_and_Everything

and NOT 42

now you know what the life means, it’s just a self-replicating organism that when it will arrive to the point to think that disappearing is not such a bad option, we will disappear. Actually, that’s why in Spain, people have so few children
(see http://english.martinvarsavsky.net/new-ideas/why-is-it-that-immigrants-have-so-many-children.html )

Elias