Duncan Mac-Vicar P.

I don’t like to read about Mid East politics in planetsuse, as I don’t like to everyday be informed about private life of developers. Some times there are exceptions it is ok to see a vacation photo or some mumbling and ranting. It is even desirable. I respect other’s people blogging style so I just filter by topic and I just hope others do the same. I confess sometime I skip the filter because some planets give you some audience. So tagging for planetsuse or planetkde, etc is a good way when I want to create polemic with some post/rant.

Miguel is one of our bloggers who keep planetsuse updated with a weekly politics analysis of this chaotic world. His last post caught my attention, as it is an opinion related to Chile:

The same folks that were calling for “Iraqi Liberation” from Saddam are now pitching the need for a strong man. They never made any sense, but they are now venturing into new delusional grounds when they suggest that Augusto Pinochet is a good model to follow.

Of course, this particular columnist has always shown the intellectual prodigy of a clam, the wit and finese of a dumb rock.

His claim: Pinochet’s abuses “helped create a civil society”. Well, you can not get any dumber than that. All he knows about Chile he probably learned this week.

The journalist makes a big mistake when saying “the abuses created”, the abuses created nothing more than fear and deaths.

However, the topic is much more complex that that, and the world shows lot of arrogance when talking about the topic. This arrogance created a partial justice, which resulted in the military dictatorship being pure evil and the anti-democratic government of Allende in a process of international canonization. This attempt to make justice in just one side is what resulted in no justice at all, and still creates division and hate in the Chilean society.

So, it can get dumber than that. No big difference in an american conservative who learned about Chile this week, and any other auto proclaimed Chilean history expert.

• openSUSE 10.2 had a great reception. The feedback about the light updater and YaST improvements are positive.
• What do you think Chile’s media and people is talking about? Blogged it apart.
• My brother sent me this video of Hans Rosling at TED Conference 2006. Check this website after seeing the video.
• Nürnberg is starting to freeze
• Bought the Rapid GUI Development with QtRuby book, but still haven’t had time to look at it. I have played with QtRuby a lot anyway.

Hace poco, como parte del plan bicentenario, Microsoft lanzó en cooperación con el estado chileno un language pack (set de idiomas) para hacer funcionar Windows en mapuzungun, el idioma mapuche.

Pueden leer el anuncio aquí, cito parte del texto:

Con el objetivo de dar un nuevo impulso a la educación intercultural bilingüe y aportar a la inclusión digital del pueblo mapuche, Microsoft entregará al Ministerio de Educación de Chile el software Windows XP en lenguaje mapuzugun para que el organismo gubernamental sea el encargado de la difusión de esta herramienta que pretende conservar la lengua de los mapuches.

Esperaba muy buenas reacciones. Sin embargo hoy en CNN aparece una noticia de cómo Microsoft esta envuelta en problemas legales por el “pueblo mapuche” (léase Huilcamán y cia), que están molestos porque no fueron consultados, y se están violando sus derechos intelectuales de “conocimientos ancestrales”.

Pense que era una broma. Pero le enviaron una carta a Bill Gates (? por que no a Ballmer), y pusieron un recurso de protección en la corte de Temuco, la cual se declaró incompetente. Otros medios de fuerte tendencia política tienen artículos al respecto.

Microsoft no necesitaba hacer esto. Microsoft no tiene como lucrar con un idioma que seguramente producir la traducción es mas caro que la cantidad de copias que el gobierno seguramente pagó por ello. Esto es un programa de integración y preservación de una lengua, que beneficiará a muchos niños que tienen acceso a un PC en las aulas.

En lo personal hubiese preferido que la traducción se hubiese hecho sobre software libre, pero ese es otro tema, y es complementario, no excluyente.

Los que luchan en la sociedad por un conocimiento abierto, sin barreras, se darán cuenta que si los ingleses nos pusieran trabas legales cada vez que tradujésemos un producto nacional al inglés. Lo mismo podrían hacer los españoles con todos nuestros productos. Que poco romántico es ponerle “copyright” a un idioma. Que feo suena restringir a alguien a usar una lengua. Es restringir la comunicación y el acceso a la cultura.

Donde está el problema?, representación. El Sr. Huilcamán está (para variar) hablando en el nombre de un pueblo y definiendo su futuro, sin la más minima responsabilidad. Líderes que piden la igualdad, poniendo recursos por propiedad intelectual?

Preservar la cultura no significa guardarla dentro de un frasco y protegerla, como intentan estos mal llamados representantes. Preservar la cultura significa regalarla a todos, dar libre acceso a ella y eso es justamente a lo que apuestan estas sorprendentes iniciativas, opacadas por personas poco serias.

Iniciativas como esta, más el software libre (que es el software más traducido a otras lenguas, y de libre acceso), Wikipedia (enciclopedia abierta y colaborativa), Creative commons (para licenciar contenidos digitales con más libertad) blogs y medios ciudadanos son los que aportan al libre conocimiento y una democracia más transparente, donde la información fluye sin barreras.

Creo que todos quienes apoyan la verdadera causa mapuche. La de preservar su cultura, integrarse al trabajo digno, a la educación y de llevar su cultura al mundo, deben expresar el más fuerte rechazo a estos pseudolíderes inconsecuentes que confunden el ser chileno y ser mapuches como términos que a veces son sinónimos y a veces son excluyentes.

A veces cuesta tomarlos en serio.

Participating in a opensource community has lot of advantages, you get to know really cool people. You learn lot of new things… but also strange anecdotes happen.

Some time ago I was talking with Will, and we both remembered one of the most funniest (now) things ever happened in #kopete irc channel. We laughed a lot, until Will told me. “I still have those logs somewhere”. I said “Really! I think it is time to blog them.

April 3, probably 2003 or 2004. I was in Chile by then. It was sleeping time for Europa. In the channel you can see Sean Egan, GAIM’s lead developer, and myself. Until….

The following takes place between 5 am and 6 am… Events ocur in real time.

Read the rest of this entry »

“In a report commissioned by the UK government, respected economist Sir Nicholas Stern concludes that mitigating global warming could cost around 1% of global GDP if spent immediately, but ignoring the problem could cost between 5% and 20% of global GDP. The 700-page study represents the first major report on climate change from an economist rather than a scientist. The report calls for the introduction of green taxes and carbon trading schemes as soon as possible, and calls on the international community to sign a new pact on greenhouse emissions by next year rather than in 2010/11. At the very least the UK government is taking the report seriously; both major parties are proposing new green taxes. Stern points out, however, that any action will only be effective if truly global.”

Article here (via slashdot )

Update: you can read Nicholas Stern report here

Recently in some blog someone recommended to watch Press for truth.

Today I saw it, and I muss say that it is a really good documentary. Give a look to the timeline which is hosted in the cooperative research framework. The idea is interesting as it can be used by different groups in the society to do research the burochratic system can’t, either for capacity or political reasons (like the 9/11 ) case.

Trailer:

The whole video is also in google video.

download here (pdf)

Ok, Leo is back with cool links after a long period of duplicates, old stuff etc.

InfoGraphics maps.

he following six maps deal with an array of major current world issues, from the serious to the seriously frivolous. They were developed for the INA by Jonathan Harris of Flaming Toast Productions. The maps may not be reproduced or rebroadcast without express written consent of the INA. If you are interested in using the maps, please contact us.

here is a preview:

Leo sent me this interesting article to learn how the RIAA suing machine works. You will be really dissapointed how easy is for those pigs to abuse the court system and randomly sue people. Also, for further daily read about the topic, the blog Recording Industry vs The People has updated information about some cases.

Sometime ago from a comment in Slashdot I found my self in this website Shelley the Republican. You can find a lot in the Wikipedia article, where you can find also links to the articles about Linux:

Linux Being an European threat to America [1], caused a disturbance among the GNU European community, as expressed in some European message boards . [2]

The article claimed that Linux was based on Marxist and Communist principles, as well as used by notorious terrorist Osama Bin Laden. The article also claimed that the Operating System was extremely insecure and vulnerable to security exploits.

The site is a bit exagerated. The writing style is intentionaly intolerant and ignorant, using missinformation like facts and giving stupid and ignorant opinions about topic the writer has no idea about, like Linux.

It could be easily a satire. But as Einstein said:

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe. -Albert Einstein

So another website was created, Shelley Uncovered, which tries to reveal the stupiness of every post in Shelley’s blog. But now they report Tristan, one of the writers of Shelley’s blog is threatening with suing. Wait, wasn’t it a satire?.

To be honest I dont’t know. I do think it is exagerated and obvious. Hackers are communists, Punks ans Gothics are satan fans. Linux is a treat to the USA economy. Google is evil. Linux is stolen (from SCO) and ilegal code. Of course she does not know the 2 most important Linux companies are american. She doesn’t know also about the SCO case or the Linux source code license. Also, U2 is black metal

An ignorant with opinion, that’s the easy way to make the complete world angry, hehe.

But tiemsche wrote something interesting in Shelley Uncovered:

Don’t waste your time, man! Seriously!

Shelley’s blog is too exaggerated to be real. It is so obvious they make small little mistakes (like saying “In Flames” is a Finnish instead of a Swedish band) to provoke people so they vent all their anger.

Really, I think Shelley is 20 year old computer geek from Germany that listens to Heavy Metal and spits on the church who makes a laugh about people like you who take it all serious and start a critical blog about it. You are doing them a favor with this. I do not think that you are peeve in Shelley’s eyes which is probably your intention. Reaction like yours is exactly what they are seeking for.

Do you really think she would have allowed a link in her comments if this wasn’t all a fake? When I first read Shelley’s blog I was just like you. I was about to start in which I would tell her that she is nothin but a stupid bi***. I did some research and found there is another Shelley at http://shelleytherepublican.blogspot.com/ who is stupid Republican as well but who is less provoking. I guess this Shelley is the Original, the one you are complaining about is a parody, it is irony.

It is up to you what you do in your leasure time but just consider my words for a moment.

While others say:

Don’t belive these people who say it’s a satire… I’ve been doing some research too and Shelley is on all kind of serious Republican web rings.

She even has a GOP site: http://shelley.gop.com/ and appears to be on the Republican National Committee: http://www.gop.com/Blog/BlogProfile.aspx?nickname=shelley

Just because her opinions are unpalatable, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t real. And just because they get facts wrong that doesn’t mean they aren’t in earnest. i mean, look at George Bush. When has he ever got his research right, but we take him serious enough.

So, what is this?