ACAPOR's President wants to silence people... forever

Remember Fran Nevrkla, Chairman and CEO of Phonographic Performance Ltd, a UK music industry association, that wanted death penalty for those who download copyright material from the Internet without the authors' consent?

It is possible that in Portugal we now have a radical of that kind. Someone saying he is Nuno Pereira from ACAPOR left a comment in the Portuguese newspaper Público (check out the first chronological comment) asking the Government to "eradicate pirate parties, Tugaleaks, Anonymous of every ages, Paula's somethings and filthy Ludwig's, whose minds only serve to destabilize our very fragile society, since they are the mentors for the computer criminality that terrorizes our country".

In parts:

Nuno Pereira, whom I've criticized before, is ACAPOR's President. ACAPOR, whom I've criticized before, is the Portuguese association of movie rental stores. You might remember them from the news, since they were hacked by Anonymous during Operation Payback.

Pirate Parties... Well, you know who they are, even if their target is the Portuguese Pirate Party, who have presented criminal charges against ACAPOR in the past, since ACAPOR has violated privacy laws.

Tugaleaks is a Portuguese website inspired on Wikileaks, who's aim is to do the same as Wikileaks but on a local (Portuguese) level. Unsurprisingly, they've also been vocally critical of ACAPOR.

Anonymous... well, not only I'm sure you've heard about them, but I also already told you about them hacking ACAPOR (defacing their website and leaking 650Mb of e-mails). This is Anonymous message to ACAPOR.

Finally... Ludwig and Paula: they're both Portuguese researchers, and both are bloggers. In their blogs, both Ludwig and Paula wrote more than once criticizing ACAPOR and their attempts to restrict free speech amongst other things. Of course, the name Paula might ring a bell if you're a reader of this blog: after all I'm married with her (and I have no wish to see her eradicated, mind you!). Why them? Well... There was a Portuguese Conference on "Pirate Culture" previously this year, and both the Nuno Pereira, the Portuguese Pirate Party, Ludwig and Paula were there doing presentations and debating.

And maybe those "minds only serve to destabilize our very fragile society, since they are the mentors for the computer criminality that terrorizes our country", since if you see the videos from the event (link above) you'll start thinking that Paula, Ludwig and André from the Pirate Party make sense, while ACAPOR's points of view seem more of those of some lunatic. Of course, the "fragile society" in question isn't "our society" but ACAPOR's association. And the "computer criminality that terrorizes our country" that they talk about is the fact that they "use computers to show their points of view in such a well-structured way that ACAPOR doesn't have arguments against them". Free speech, you know?

What scares me is that this guy is doing this kind of thing long enough to prove he's serious about it. And it scares me because he was there, face to face with Paula and Ludwig, debating issues on which they have different positions, but an... "wealthy debate", I guess I can say. And then, each of them went home... and one of them is crying out loud asking for the others to be eradicated.

Proper nouns and HTML

Rui wrote a post about the use of the "õ" character in XHTML. I tried to comment but something went wrong with it, so here's a post about it:

Propper Nouns are untranslatable, so my name is Marcos Marado wherever I am or whichever the language I'm talking is. The same way, Paula Simões is called Paula Simões either I'm talking about her in Portuguese, English or Japanese. So, if I'm talking in English and I want to refer to Paula, I should say "Paula Simões", and this doesn't mean that I'm "mixing languages": Proper nouns are universal, they have no nationality and are untranslatable. It's the same as "Internet", there's no translation for that. When you have to use such entities, you must write them this way:

ã turns ã
á turns á
à turns à
â turns â

...and so on. There's nothing wrong in the way Paula writes her name in her website, nor does it affect the page's ranking on search engines (not that I believe that she's trying to apply any kind of SEO technique on her website).

2008 is over, welcome 2009

2008 is over. It's peak, for me, was obviously the 27th of December, the day of my marriage. Being a married man is... not that different. I have a ring on my finger now, and that's a difference, but the really nice thing about being married is actually living with Paula, something that could happen without the ring :-) Anyway, the wedding went really well (and I even did something I wasn't expecting, and acted like a crying baby for a couple of minutes), and our honeymoon was excelent. Now that I'm back to "real life", working again, there are things that change. Living with Paula is awesome, but the adaptation has quite a few funny episodes. For instance, who gets to control the waking alarm and choose at what time it should be set to fire up, in which side of the bed is its place, or - most importantly - if it will wake us up by playing CD (my choice) or radio (Paula's choice). Or, for that matter, what CD should we be listening to at this very moment: I just had to change CDs! O:-) Oh, and where will we get space to store those tons of excelent books Paula have? She argues that we should use the space reserved to my tons of excelent CDs, but that's obviously not the right answer :-D

Another news from me is that I have now, as a birthday/Yule gift from her, a Stylophone. It's a cute little musical instrument, and a quite addictive one. I wonder how much time will it take to "suddenly disappear", as I tend to play it quite annoyingly for hours. Don't worry, I only plan to release stylophone-played tracks that were previously approved by her :-)

2008 was an intense year for Merankorii: two albums released ("A Viagem" and "Split") and participation in a few compilations: "Anti-Nuclear Music Compilation", "Killing In The Name of Reverend Murder ...Is Our Business (Vol. 1)", "Evocation", "The World Of All Evil" and "Okkulth Magick I". In this year I kept the "one track per month" iniciative, meaning that each month I published one new mp3 of Merankorii into the wild. One real interesting thing about this experiment is that, even if all my music is licensed with a Creative Commons license, there are a few Merankorii fans that, while liking the music enough to want to listen to them, don't actually want to pay for it. Thus, I'm pleased to make them happy by releasing one track per month. It's great to have the feedback I got from this: both from people telling me "thanks" for the iniciative, and from those telling me "hey, when is this month's track? Will I have to wait for the last day of the month to get it?" :-) 2009 will surely bring you more Merankorii news: I can tell you that Merankorii's 7th album is going to be released really soon now!

Speaking of music, and because people tend to do lists every time an year ends, here's my "top 10 2008 albums" list, that exclude everything with the hand of Merankorii or Noori Records. Here is it (without any relevance to the order, they're ordered by "when did I buy it"):

• Caprice - Kywitt ! Kywitt !
• ThanatoSchizO - Zoom Code
• Edo Notarloberti - Silent Prayers
• V/A - Fairy World IV
• Ashram - Ashram (2008's re-edition)
• Les Fragments de la Nuit - Musique du Crépuscule
• Sol Invictus - Lex Talionis (2008's re-edition)
• Marilyn Manson - The Early Years, Volume 2
• Cranes - Cranes
• V/A - La Nuit des Feés 2

Actually, this is the best time to revise my list of "best from 2007":

• Dismal - Miele Dal Salice
• Antimatter - Leaving Eden
• Tenhi - Folk Aesthetic 1996-2006
• V/A - Fairy World 3
• Ambience - As Dez Esperas
• Corde Oblique - Volontà d'Arte
• Knox Om Pax - Laudanum
• (r) - In Pink
• V/A - La Nuit des Feés
• Sol Invictus - The Killing Tide (re-edition box)

I guess someday I'll take some time and do the same for 2006... But not today.

Vacations

I've been thinking on writting this for a couple of hours ago, but it was "Are You Gone?", the song from Cranes that I'm listening now that made be start to write it. For various reasons I wanted to write something like this, but this music adds something else. I've heard Cranes for the first time with Catarina, a very good friend of mine (about whom I've already wrote about in this blog) that is no longer with us.

Are You Gone? I have countless memories of you, lot's of thoughts that make me laugh while a tear runs on my face. Thoughts, but like the pictures that I no longer have, memories can't be touched, can't be teached. I'm undoubtly a product of you, you made me be what I am. And those are the parts of me that I like.

But a person is more than his thoughs and oppinions: he is every cigar he smokes, every coffee he takes, every book he reads, every song he listens to. I'm on vacations - 7 non-work weeks in a row, and I've decided to give you - to the world, to everyone, a small log of what I've been doing on those days. Even just for the fun of it, you can read it and learn something more about myself, about the person behind this posts. You can also ignore, go to the next post, and imagine I never wrote this. There's no loss, only potential gain.

Day 0 (24)

Well, today I still worked, but since I went off the office I felt like vacations, so it's day 0 for me. Not that I'm very excited with this vacations, I have a lot to do. Went dinner with a couple of friends in Avenida, near a theatre where they went to see one movie from "Indie Lisboa", an independent movies festival. Came by subway till home and started packing. I'm changing (probably the lack of excitement comes from this) since I have this room only rented until the end of the month, and I'm looking to find an appartment to buy, so, in between, I'll crash here and there (hopefully one place will suffice) and I'm starting with my sisters' house. So, and since I wanted to go to Coimbra still tomorrow, I started packing. Three hours later I've packed something like 10%, the easy 10. I can't even think about how am I going to pack my music collection (this makes me think that buying hundreds of CD's and even some Vinyl discs have downsides too), books and clothes... I feel I'm basicly fucked up. Well, it's late and I've stopped to write for more time than I should - let's go back to packaging stuff.

Something like two hours later... I have something like half the room packed up, made a pile of closed boxes that is bigger than myself. I'm tired, really tired. Need to go to the street twice to dispose garbage, take a long bath and sleep.

Day 1 (25)

My head hurts. Got to start doing something useful, it's half past noon. I'm basicly fucked up - had a discussion by phone amd the deal I had to buy an houseappartement is no more. It's a feeling of loss, not only it was going to be a good deal but I lost something like two months because of that appartement. Oh well, I'll have to buy the one in the next building... But first, let me start with this moving to my sis' thing.

12:17 - time to turn off the computer and stop listening to music. I hate packing.

And so it went, I've packed and packed and moved the first boxes before lunch, then packed and packed until I could finaly leave the old house. No goodbyes, no sorrow, and I'll not miss any of it. The keys are given, I'm now officialy crashing at my sisters'. The worse of it was that, in between, hell started and only ended when I knew that the deal I had to buy a house is no more. There's a backup plan, of course, and I'll soon start trying to buy another house I had already envisioned. I did the path from my sister's appartment to my workplace (a new one, too) and back to know how much will it take (40 minutes), since I'm planning to do it by walk everyday, much like I used to while in the previous workplace. Two apples after, I was heading to Coimbra, where I had dinner. At night I went to cha0s' home and stayed there to brainstorm a bit on some of his and our projects. That allways feels good, too bad we don't manage to do this more often, if we did we would certaintly feel more fulfilled in our achievements... But, well, it's now 02:22 and it's time to play around a bit with the computer and then go to sleep. While walking home I was, as usually, reading my Planet (via cellphone) and read about a new service called "OurStage". I wanted to try it, but I'm having completely no luck in trying to connect to the internet via GPRS. Tomorrow's going to be another day...

Day 2 (26)

Woke up already tired, and went to DEEC where I spend the day with Paula: where I was casually surfing the web and doing almost nothing more than that while she was working. The casual interlude was at lunch time when we went to lunch in the FCTUC facilities in Polo II. It went quite well, too bad she's slightly sick, hopefully nothing big. I went to dinner with my sister and ended renting here appartment for the time being, until I get my own home. Now I came to Tropical and decided to write this until NomadWolf and subv3rsion don't come - I agreed to met them here to talk for a while. I'm tired, so I guess I'll be sleeping soon.

Day 3 (27)

Spent the day with Paula.

Day 4 (28)

Slept only two hours, and then went to DEI to attend to takeoff (see the "coverage" I did on the event). After it, I went dinner with Paula and some of her friends. Now I came back home and I'm going to try to sleep.

Rest of days...

I had quit to write this and decided not to publish it. Then I had some second thoughts. Anyway, the rest of the days were spent with less-than-the-needed sleep, valuable time with Paula and also with cha0s with whom I've planned some stuff to be done in the upcoming months. I also spent some time with other people I didn't see for a long time, like Spellbound. Then I came back to Lisbon, but I still have a lot to unpack and to do here until I can call this "home". Went to work, and after it I spent the time looking for an appartement on sale, which was an huge waste of time, and that made me arrive at my sis' almost at 1a.m.. Now now, I have stuff to do and than sleep.

How useless is this post? Hmm, maybe I should start rethinking my blogging habbits...

Got myself an Eee PC 701

I'm back from my vacations, and there's lots of stuff I want (and will) blog about. But this one had to be now: I got myself a new Eee PC! Well, as a matter of fact both me and Paula wanted an Eee PC, so this one is from and for us both (even if the possibility of getting another one was already discussed). As you might have noticed thanks to the previous blog posts I made about ASUS EEE PC, which made several people think I already had one, I really fancy this cute little laptoy. I only have it for a couple of hours, and the time with it is between me and Paula, so I still didn't have the time to play with it as much as I wanted to: I built a backup USB stick and a backup of the system as it was, fiddled a little with settings and preferences, played with some of the software it has (which includes playing OpenArena and hedgewars O:-)), and got it connected to the internet via Kanguru (3G service). And I had to do this blog post using it, the same as I did when I got my blackberry phone :-)

The next step is already decided: install Debian here!

And for those wanting pictures... Well, I'm sure that either me or Paula will be uploading some of those in the near future :-)

Weekend

Weekend, grandious weekend.

Went to Coimbra friday night, ate something on the way and ended the night talking with Paula, turning the hands dirty with the newspaper, talking about music and hearing Dwelling (that will make a showcase in Coimbra preety soon) and Tenhi (finally I have Kauan's edition with two bonus tracks).

While Oriente's CD fair isn't nice at all, my saturday was marked with a visit to the Quebra Costas market in Coimbra, looking to used books and a big load of used records...

A nice end of afternoon was passed in Tuttimedia's offices having a nice chat, and then getting ready for a travel to Porto, to attend to "Enough Dark Ambient" concert, where Falésia was going to be given. And so I went, it was a great event and in a great venue. Arriving after 5am, I was damn tired, and still am - I guess I'm getting old...

I took a lot of ideas for Merankorii from that concert, tho, so, Sunday, while heading to and on the train to Lisbon I started to make some ideas to start taking form. Also, I used that time to read some stuff on text-based virtual worlds, and also took some ideas from it.

Paula borrowed me the first season DVD of "My Family", and I wanted to see a couple of episodes of it on the train, but - guess what - while the DVD states that "This disc has been produced to meet or exceed all relevant DVD specifications", they keep going saying that "Should you experience playback problems, please contact your hardware manufacturer", which I won't. I plugged the DVD into my drive, and didn't manage to watch it because the DVD is corrupted (while they say they follow DVD specs, which they don't) and the justification is also written on the DVD box: a symbol saying "Copy Protected Macrovision", which is the same to say that this DVD has some sort of DRM that is keeping me from viewing it. Way to go, assholes, you just lost one potencial customer.

I just uploaded the gig's pictures, so, if you're interested, see part I and part II.

"Social DRM" is Anti-Social

In February 2007, right after Steve Jobs claiming to the world that he was Anti-DRM and that the fault of him having DRM in iTunes was that of the majors (which is nothing but a bunch of crap, but I digress), Adobe's Bill McCoy wrote in his blog about his vision of DRM, acting as agreeing with Steve Jobs. His ridiculous arguments leaded to a new concept: "Social DRM". I ditched the whole absurd idea and almost forgot about it. Until now.

It seems that there are lots of people thinking that "Social DRM" is a bright idea. Actually, I've seeing the term in my readings more, so I decided not to ignore the issue anymore, and write a quick post about why "Social DRM" is a really bad idea.

First, getting this straight: I really think that "Social DRM" is less bad than "traditional DRM", mostly because it isn't DRM at all. Yet, being less bad doesn't mean it is good, to the point of making me state that, like I don't buy DRM'd stuff, I wouldn't buy nothing with "Social DRM".

What is "Social DRM"? Well, nothing more than watermarking. Basicly, McCoy is trying to think of DRM on e-books, and his "idea" is to have a "Social DRM" that is in fact a mark in every page on the ebook, make it header or footer, stating something like "this book is for the exclusive use of [insert purchaser's name here]". Why is it bad?

Well, McCoy certainly choose the name "Social DRM" because he understands the "social" need consumers need to have in their "content". A book (or an album, or a movie) is social, because if you read and like it you want to share it, to recommend it to your friends, you're going to cite it on your blog, you'll make references to it in your day-by-day... you'll use it as a social tool. So, he [tries to] argue, when watermarking the book instead of making it have DRM, you're not taking the social part of having the book out of it. It is social because it isn't anti-social. But he's wrong.

Let me make a small and quick list of social things I can do with my books:

• I can borrow it;


• I can leave it on my desk and next time I know Paula is reading it;


• I can give it;


• I can sell it;


• I can trade it (bookcrossing-style);


• I can leave it on the bus bench after reading it;


• I can let it be used by everyone in the office;


• ...

Now, how many of this social things I can do with your "social DRM"? I can't borrow it, 'cause you're not "Marcos Marado", I can't let Paula wander around with it on her laptop, she's not "Marcos Marado" either; I can't give, sell or trade it, which means that if I abandon it (or loose it!) in my flash disk on the bus, I might get in trouble, 'cause you aren't me. Does this sound social to you? To me, like "tradicional DRM", this sounds exactly like "I'm having my freedoms removed".

Thanks but no, thanks, I'm too social to buy anti-social "Social DRM" stuff.

Five Movies

So, there's this meme out there, about "five movies you loved". Paula nominated me [1] to do this thing, so here it goes... Notice that this isn't the "best five movies ever" or "the five movies I recommend you to see" or "my favourite five movies". I didn't really think hard about this, so this is more "the five great movies I remembered of that I recommend you to see"...

Metropolis - Fritz Lang (1927)

A great movie to introduce you to the works of Fritz Lang, and that I'm not going to talk about here, since I already did it in the past [2].

If you already saw and liked it, than I recommend Fritz Lang's "M" as a way to keep knowing his work. I already talked about "M" here [3].

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb - Stanley Kubrick (1964)

This Kubrick's movie is one of those comedies that really have a message within: in this case a satire about power, politics, and the paranoia that usually comes with it. I could write extensively about the movie, but instead I'll link to a pretty small review [4], since, despite being small, it quite sums up what is this movie about.

The Wicker Man - Robin Hardy (1973)

Notice really well: this is the movie directed by Robin Hardy, not the stupid remake with Nicholas Cage. The Wicker Man is a cult movie (and awsome soundtrack, BTW), and was considered in Cinefantastique as "The Citizen Kane of Horror Movies", at Total Film as "the sixth greatest British film of all time" and won the 1978 Saturn Award for Best Horror Film.

So, if you're thinking about stopping now, 'cause you don't like horror movies or something, think twice. This is an horror movie even for those who don't like the genre. From Wikipedia [5], "the idea of an idealistic confrontation between a modern Christian and a remote, pagan community continued to intrigue Shaffer, who performed painstaking research on the topic. Brainstorming with director Robin Hardy, the film was conceived as presenting the pagan elements objectively and accurately, accompanied by authentic music and a believable, contemporary setting."

Take into consideration that there are several versions of this movie, and the most complete version of it is the one from Canal+ [6]. The soundtrack is a piece of work worth being analyzed for itself [7], since the movie is sometimes even considered a musical. To have an idea of its impact, just take into account that there's even an anual music festival called The Wickerman Festival [8], that happens where the movie was shooted.

Baraka - Ron Fricke (1992)

96 minutes that show you everything about the world and humanity. Baraka is an ancient Sufi word, which can be translated as "a blessing, or as the breath, or essence of life from which the evolutionary process unfolds." The movie has no words, actors or plot. It's a ride that will make you smile and cry, a touching experience if you let it be. This website tells you everything [9].

If you liked it, know that a sequel is going to be released named Samsara [10].

Lost Highway - David Lynch (1997)

Lost Highway is probably my favourite David Lynch movie. If you dislike David Lynch forget it: it's heavilly Lynchian. According to the official website,

"A 21st Century Noir Horror Film.
A graphic investigation into parallel indentity crises.
A world where time is dangerously out of control.
A terrifying ride down the lost highway."

It's website is full of info [11], so visit it if you want to know more about it.

If you liked it, be sure to check Detour [12] (since the movie is in public domain, I'm linking to where you can download it), the biggest "Lost Highway" influence.

---

The meme followup? http://remixtures.com/, Susana from http://blog.felisberto.net/, http://joaomartins.entropiadesign.org/ and http://blog.centopeia.com/.

[1] - http://paulasimoes.org/blog/?p=18
[2] - http://mindboosternoori.blogspot.com/2006/11/metropolis.html
[3] - http://mindboosternoori.blogspot.com/2007/08/2007-so-far-movies.html
[4] - http://www.opendemocracy.org/arts/strangelove_4001.jsp
[5] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wicker_Man
[6] - http://steve-p.org/wm/
[7] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wicker_Man_soundtrack
[8] - http://www.thewickermanfestival.co.uk
[9] - http://www.spiritofbaraka.com/samsara.aspx
[11] - http://www.lynchnet.com/lh/
[12] - http://www.archive.org/details/detour_ipod

Stuff

Last friday this blog made it's 2nd birthday. Of course, I've missed it.

The weekend was... awkward. Paula and I are both sick with a flu or something, the Portuguese trains company had one problem and all the sudden there were no trains working in the country, the ODF x OOXML debate went quite well (even if in an event no one knows about since there was pressure in the media to avoid talking about it), my kitchen got flooded since my laundry washing machine is messed up (I'll have to buy a new one, probably even today), and today I arrived at work just to notice that my laptop's hard drive is quickly dying (I'm trying to backup ~ , but I don't know if I'll make it...).

*sigh*

Social 3D Worlds

I'm now attending to "Social 3D Worlds" conference, where I'll see two workshops about Second Life, then do a presentation about "Virtual Worlds: pass, present and future", and finally see Paula's presentation about Education in Virtual Worlds. I hope it will be nice, but considering what I've seen for now, it will be.

For those not here, the organization told me they'll try to capture the presentations and workshops as video and then put them at their website: http://student.dei.uc.pt/~pgms/sites/social3dworlds/.

BTW, Alcides, your cellphone has bluetooth enabled and open O:-)

Event about Copyright in Águeda (Portugal), next May

A workshop about Copyright and Digital Rights Management and a monkey on the poster? Are you lost? Here's an explanation... this famous monkey is a pro in taking selfies. If you want to know more, the rest of the story will be told next 9th of May!
I'll be talking about DRM on an event next to Paula Simões (Portuguese Education Freedom Association) who's going to talk about copyright levies, and Teresa Nobre (Creative Commons) who's going to talk about free culture.
It promises to be a great afternoon, I hope you'll be able to join us!

eefoof turns VuMe

Last year I wrote about a new social web site called eefoof, where I said that it was both an exciting concept but also criticized it a lot in several things that they should have addressed before having the exposure they had. One year later, we can see in eefoof's website:

First off, I just want to say thank you for your continued support of the site. I started eefoof.com with the belief that it should pay to be creative — now we're taking eefoof to the next generation of media sharing. We've listened to your feedback and we have a cooler interface, faster load times and easier uploading. To help us launch our version 2.0, we have a whole new name:

Introducing VuMe.com ("view me"). It's easier to pronounce and easier to remember. VuMe is now a one-stop media posting site for video, audio, photos and blogs.

Here are some of the features you can expect. A user blogging platform, a faster/higher-quality transcoder for video/audio, a sleek AJAX upload interface, and many more additions to the site to make everything accessible and convenient. No matter what kind of media you post - video, audio, images or blogs - you'll get paid for it, based on the traffic it generates. After all, if we make our money from advertising, so should you.

At VuMe.com, we have an ongoing commitment to share our success. As we generate money, so will you. That's just one of the many differences that makes VuMe stand apart. Here's to our mutual success on VuMe.com. See you on the site!

Since I was quite critic on the service, but pointing out what was IMHO wrong about it, they've sent me out an e-mail, from which I'll post some "can be public" quotes:

First off, I just want to say thank you for your continued support of the site. I started eefoof.com with the belief that it should pay to be creative Ñ now we're taking eefoof to the next generation of media sharing. We've listened to your feedback and we have a cooler interface, faster load times and easier uploading. To help us launch our version 2.0, we have a whole new name:

Introducing VuMe.com ("view me"). It's easier to pronounce and easier to remember. VuMe is now a one-stop media posting site for video, audio, photos and blogs.

Here are some of the features you can expect. A user blogging platform, a faster/higher-quality transcoder for video/audio, a sleek AJAX upload interface, and many more additions to the site to make everything accessible and convenient. No matter what kind of media you post - video, audio, images or blogs - you'll get paid for it, based on the traffic it generates. After all, if we make our money from advertising, so should you.

At VuMe.com, we have an ongoing commitment to share our success. As we generate money, so will you. That's just one of the many differences that makes VuMe stand apart. Here's to our mutual success on VuMe.com. See you on the site!

Promising, it seems. While I was writting this, tho, Paula registred and is now facing so many "Oops, we had a little problem" messages that turns VuMe quite unusable... Maybe they still didn't get it right?

For eefoof I wrote:

they should had risk more and not only wait to get a more-beta less-alpha application, but mainly not to make the apliccation in such a raw-state to be widely reviewed (by being digg'ed and /.'ed)

Twice in a row? I don't know - She registred from scratch and is using Safari, I'm using Iceape and migrated my eefoof account to the new VuMe.

OK, I've tracked down that bug:

If you use that checkbox...

Oops! It looks like there is a problem.

* MDB2 Error: no such field in query:
_doQuery: [Error message: Could not execute statement] [Last executed query: UPDATE users SET bio = '', email = 'marcos.marado@sonae.com', comment_notify = '1', location = 'Portugal', website = '' WHERE id = 'MindBoosterNoori'] [Native code: 1054] [Native message: Unknown column 'comment_notify' in 'field list']

Another bug: I've tried to upload a song, and when it ended, I've got a blank page telling:

wget --spider "http://tc1.vume.com/audio/process/38/brixwEX6Yq/" > /dev/null &

WTF? Hmm, seems still in alpha stage to me... Maybe next year?

Vacations

I'm having a half a month vacations, and the plans were simply to rest. Went from Lisbon to Coimbra, and from there to Lamego, to show the city to Paula. We've seen some things already, like the castle, the now restaurated theatre (where we went to a piano concert from the first international piano festival of Lamego), the museum...

I already have my new cellphone, which I'm using to blog, and now that I'm used to BlackBerry's qwerty keyboard I'm really happy with the device, and I must say that using it to blog is quite a joyful experience.

But now, enough: I have good weather, a nice view, good cold beer to drink and a newspaper to read. See you!

Lately, on Second Life

Second Life is so hyped that it's no surprise to know that everyday someone is writting about it. But lately some nice writting appeared about it, so here's a small round of links for those interested in the matter. Freelance Samurai started playing with Second Life only recently, and three days after his first experience he was addicted. In his article he explains what is that he finds interesting in Second Life, in a "games perspective", considereing Second Life (or, I assume, these kinds of virtual worlds) a next-gen gaming experience. The article is not only interesting, but raised some nice comments, including one that reminded me that I need to write more about "centralized vs. de-centralized virtual worlds":

That's what's so cool about the 'net, and maybe before that BBSs - because it's here, and it makes sense TODAY. SL does not - it's controlled by a single company (if the 'net was like that, we'd have thousands of little 'internets' and would be stuck with paying tolls between them). It's not open, so security fears are a must. It?s too plastic! 'Cool, I'm doing the Travolta with my awesome textured suit and'*CRAP* my mouse's batteries are dead. shit, did I buy new ones?

While I don't think that this is the sollution, seems that the virtual worlds industry is starting talking more about intercommunications between virtual worlds, which will help solving these issues. OK, it's nothing like the web, but it might end being a usefull enough communication system between VW's as Fidonet was to BBS's: HiPiHi is aiming to establish "3D virtual world standards", which, I hope, can be combined to the old news from Linden Labs wanting to open their grid... While some people are starting to understand the potential in Virtual Worlds, and using Second Life in the propper way to achieve that, like helping deaf people or doing simple interfaces that can be used, for instance, by blind people, others just don't understand the concept behind virtual worlds, even if there are companies aiming to help you create a virtual shop, since the real issue here is that, as Paula said,

If you want to sell your product in SL, the best way to do it is to create a community around your product. Because SL is about communities, not about buildings.

Of course that others might be successful: for instance Thinkgeek has a virtual store in SL, and while I stopped buying from them IRL (issues with customs), I might end spending some linden dollars with virtual clothing from their store. Let me give you more examples: new forms of education are appearing there, aiming for a nieche market, but aiming directly for avatars, and succeeding. On the other hand, WWF didn't know how to play their game, while others succeded in getting environment consiousness in VW's.

Finaly Branding in Second Life matters, and don't forget to check out Second Life Insider if you want regular news about Second Life.

Microsoft Windows Vienna

I'm not sure why, maybe it was because this will make people stop talking about how bad Windows Vista is. Microsoft filled a patent application, obviously describing what are they planning to release as the next version of Windows, formerly known as Blackcomb, now named as Windows Vienna, and scheduled to be released between 2009 and 2012.

I read it yesterday and almost choke on my dinner, and probably my humor got affected by it in the Lisbon.pm social meeting that happened after it.

What's all this fuss about it?

Imagine a world where you have a really limited choice of hardware to buy. The brand and manufacturer doesn't really matter, so you'll ignore those. You'll just have the "bad motherboard", the "good motherboard" and the "awsome motherboard". And they're expensive - more than now. After buying your computer (and by computer I mean - for the desktop market - a black box, a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse), you'll have to buy the operating system. No, listen to me, you have to pay for it: your hardware won't run anything else but this Operating System. Right. Now, you bought it (well, probably it came bundled with the machine you just bought as well), go home and turn it on. WELCOME TO MICROSOFT WINDOWS VIENNA! And there are those... err... four big buttons: "Install Software", "Install Hardware", "Suspend" and "Shutdown". They can even do something like the actual Nintendo Wii interface: you have a square for one of those things and free space for some more. Now, you want to buy a word processor, because you bought this computer to write some documents, and you want to do it online because you don't want to get out of home. So, you connect your USB modem on your computer and you're notified "ILLEGAL SOFTWARE DETECTION - THAT MODEM ISN'T VIENNA CERTIFIED". Yup, welcome to the Trusted Computer Era. So, you call to your retailer and ask for certidied Vienna modems, you reserve one and the next day you go to the store to buy it.

Now, I could continue this story (I have better things to do, sorry) for a big load of time, to show you how desparetedly bad this is. If hardware manufacturers want to sell hardware where Windows runs, they'll have to pay - a lot - to Microsoft. If a user wants one functionality - any functionality (yes, including minesweeper) - will have to pay - a lot - to Microsoft. This is valid to any 3rd-party software: it will only work on Windows if Microsoft DRM system accepts it: pay. It will limit your hardware usage: if you want to have high bandwith you'll have to start paying twice: still to your ISP and now to Microsoft so they unblocks your hardware and let's it use another well-defined bandwith. It will even act on your harddrive space and speed, your processor, your motherboard, your life. Every site you visit must be "trusted" - by them. Maybe this will stop the worries of Google and Yahoo! on censorship: Microsoft will do it for them. Of course that, in this scenario, both Google and Yahoo! are useless... but I digress.

If you think that this dystopian view is way to exagerated, please read about this issue from some people that are better explaining the issue than me, or from those that are good in giving your a legal interpretation of the patent.

I have to start to agree with Paula about all this thing going around the "social web" - services instead of products and the lack of privacy and ultimately freedom that comes with it. Microsoft is aiming it fiercily - maybe it's time to really act and actively do something to fix Ubuntu's bug #1... Before 2009.

Public Domain Jazz

New free album: Public Domain Jazz

Despite being a long-living and rich musical style, Jazz is commercially undermined by the fact that most Jazz records with good recording quality are ridiculously expensive, and the market astonishing controlled by major labels, more interested in profit than in Jazz, their artists and their fans. With that in mind, the "Public Domain Jazz" project appeared, with the intention of creating an "as affordable as free is" compilation of great Jazz tracks that any person can have, making not only a fair deal to the Jazz listener, but also giving Jazz back to its own spirit.

If you like any of these tracks, remember that they are in Public Domain: you're free to do with them everything you want, including giving it to your friends. Also, there are many more where these came from: feel free to explore the Free World of Jazz.

This compilation is dedicated to Paula Simões.

Vacations - Second Wave

After some small vacations one month ago, now it's time for my second of four vacation waves for 2007. This vacations are also going to be spent in Coimbra. Time to get some rest, both mental and physical. I also expect to find some time to give a bump to several personal projects of mine, but the key things this time are going to be mostly to get some rest, free my mind from those things that are lately haunting it and spend quality time with Paula. The vacations will last until the 17th, so don't expect much online activity from me (including mail feedback) these days.

Music Media - are physical formats dying?

I guess that there are plenty of ways I could use to talk about this, and a lot of things I could say about it. So, since this comes as a reflection of two things that happened during my vacations, I'll just tell you about those two, talk only a little about my reflections about it... and let you do your own thinking.

The first one is about Stereo 8. What's in the picture is - for those that don't know - a Stereo 8 cartridge. Before the massification of the Cassette Tape, this was what people used to listen as a more portable (yet inferior) media for recorded music. After the event of massification of the use of cassettes, Stereo 8 lost most of their fans, with exceptions of truck drivers (most of their vehicles came with an 8-track player) and in some less developed countries. This one is mine, one of the two only 8-track I have that still play. The curious fact about it is that, for me, this is the best Tango album I ever listened to. In fact, I generally don't like Tango, but I really dig this album, and during vacations spent quite a few hours listening to it while playing Scrabble with Paula. Unlike the other 8-track cartridge I own, this one was never released in any other format. That means that if I want to listen to it, I must do it from the original source (well, maybe next time I go to Lamego I'll try to rip it to another format). This music is virtually lost: not only I don't believe there are that many 8-track listeners out there, but the probability they have this one, and still playable, is pretty much none. The format is so dead, that each time I tell somebody that the last 8-track released I know of was in 2004 (even if I suspect that if I dig enough I'll find that some crazy band released one more recently), their reaction is generally disbelief: they expected it was in the eighties. So, what happens if you want this music? Nothing. You simply can't have it. Of course it would done absolutely no harm if I made a copy and give it to you, but that would be illegal, this isn't in Public Domain. And since it only enters in Public Domain 70 years after its authors die, we both will be dead or deaf by then... you'll just have to believe this is good music. I don't really think that 70 years after-death for getting music into Public Domain makes any sense, but unfortunately EU is thinking in extending it even more...

The other one is about one music store in Lamego: Brincodisco. I had a quite long and interesting chat with its owner (that was already owner of that place even before I was born, my brother and older sister used to buy there their records...), and there were lots of things in that chat and my visit to the store that made me think in several things - so I'll probably end up talking about that store several times in the future. But, for now, the thing that made me enter into the store the most (well, besides being a music store and me being on vacations): there were several cassette tapes exposed there. But the shock was when I entered: my estimation is that the store sells (more or less) 40% CDs, 35% Vinyl records and 25% cassette tapes. That's right: one quarter of the items selling there are cassette tapes. How do you take this piece of information, when the trend nowadays is saying that all the physical formats are dead but CD, that is dying?

Reality check, please: physical formats are never going to die, and CDs and Vinyls have decades in front of them, before they disappear. You might not like this, you might want to ignore this when you make your business, prediction or whatever you do, but if confronted with this, you need to realize that, even if a niche, the physical music market is here to stay. And I'm glad.

Meme

'If consumers even know there's a DRM, what it is, and how it works, we've already failed'

Peter Lee, an executive at Disney

I've talked about memes on this blog before. One of them was about the use of memes on Planet Debian (an usual thing there), and how Planets can help the Open Source world. Another time it was a meme with my top ten unix shell commands. But those were not the only ones... Anyway, some memes are just that "units of information", while others are themed (like the top ten commands one), some are presented (I just write the meme and who wants follows the trend) while others are requested (you're asked to follow a meme chain, and when you do it you nominate others to do the same).

Paula just told me to follow a meme (post in Portuguese), and I decided to reply with that quote of a Disney executive simply claiming that DRM er... sucks. I chose this theme since it is about something I blog a lot about, and I chose this quote since it is not only from a DRM adopter but also telling that DRM is bad. A quote both shocking and amusing, unfortunately not as widespread as it should be. On the choice of people to reply to this post, I'll only choose people that blog in English (so readers of this blog can go fetch the replies) and that the chance of replying is big (I hope).

So, the call goes out to André Ribeirinho, Hugo Silva and Nuno Mariz. The choice was made in a simple way: I fetched three bloggers from this Planet that blog in English and that, while I don't know them IRL, their blogs make me curious about them.

Switched from Blackberry to Optimus Boston (Andoid)

Since I have this blog that I write here about each cellphone swap I do, even if this is the first time I'm writing about it only after the switch has been made. Part of the reason for that is that I wasn't really planing to swap phones: I've been really happy with my Blackberry Pearl, even if the 2 years old telephone was starting to ask for an update: GPS for the occasional walk in the city in places where I need Google Maps (I need that a lot more than you might think: I don't drive, and I don't have any kind of orientation skills - I lived 6 years or so in Coimbra, and with an effort I still can get lost in that city; curiously, now that I have a GPS on the phone, I didn't tried it yet) and HDSPA are welcomed. Yet, it was this phone appearing that made me change it - that and the fact that Paula was craving the Blackberry for herself (spoiler here: she now wants another one like mine). For comparison, here are two movies of both the phones:

Blackberry Pearl


Optimus Boston

But's not what you want to know, right? Is it worthy? Well, the summary is: Boston kicks ass. Two possible disadvantages, and my worries, are:

• I'm switching to a cellphone without physical keyboard, and I am used to type a lot on my cellphone;
• It was impossible for me, whatever I did to try it, to use up all the Pearl's battery in less than 24 hours. I'm not asking for 24 hours, but I would expect a phone to manage to stay on for the duration of a day - minimum 16 hours. I still didn't have one "usual day" with my phone to make sure of how much does it take to discharge to the point of shutting down, but I'm starting to think that possibly it won't stand on that long, for the kind of use I expect to do with it.

More stuff: migrating was totally easy - there a Google App called "Google Sync", available for lots of cellphones including Blackberries, that send your stuff (in my case contacts and calendar) to Google.

I just installed it, run it on my Blackberry (via EDGE, so I left my SIM card on Blackberry and started playing with Boston without SIM), and it just started uploading contacts on one side, and they were appearing on the other side. How? Well, one of the first questions the cellphone made me was something like "do you want google stuff?", so I said yes, inserted my credentials, et voilá - contacts, calendar, mail, all on the phone at once. Oh, of course it needed connectivity, so when it said to me "do you want to use wireless?" I said yes, configured the AP (because it isn't open WiFi), and I was online. What about exchange or other "corporate-stuff" Blackberries are so known for? Well, painless is the word. Boston comes already with Roadsync applications installed by default, with their icons and widget on one of the three virtual desktops. The name of the apps "roadwhatever" made me not to touch them, but touching on the widget it just told me "do you want to configure your exchange account?" Now, setting up an exchange account usually sucks, right? Not this time, it was just next-next-next-done. There, calendar and mail on the phone.

I am planing on writting a more interesting blogpost on the future (including pros and cons of this phone, Android, why isn't running Debian yet ;-) and stuff like that, but that will have to be for another time :-) If you don't want to wait, well, I sometimes kind of talk about it on my friendfeed...