A lot more pictures of the girl after the break, we also got her on the way out.

                          

See more pictures after the break

                          

If you didn’t get to choose your development team and your company doesn’t have a rigorous hiring process for software developers, you’re very likely to to be surrounded by a few idiots.

Constant interruptions are bad for concentration and they hurt productivity.

If this is your situation I recommend you start acting like an asshole and bring this mug to work.

The funny thing is that depending on the level of hacker literacy of those around you they might even have the naivety to ask you what the mug letters mean the first time they see it (if they have some curiosity for your geek toys), after a first explanation of the mug letters the next time you’re too busy to answer things which can be Googled just raise your mug and drink (or pretend to be drinking), a mean look while drinking helps too. If they remember what those letters meant they’ll start thinking about it before asking questions. It’s Netiquette applied to the real world.

If they keep asking stupid questions just send them this post and remind them about your mug.

                          

I’m not flipping the finger, I’m showing how to count to 4 in binary.
An old but great T-shirt I got back in 2004 on thinkgeek.com, I’m still rocking that shirt whenever I’m in a F-U mode.

See the Previous T-Shirt

                          

No wonder Adobe wasn’t sweating it much when Steve Jobs was bad mouthing them…

Check the HP Slate demo video by Adobe after the break, gotta love it when he rubs it in by saying that 85% of the Top Websites run flash. Sorry Steve, I’m not with you on this one, Flash is no dying technology and after all you can’t be right all the time. However… where will I put my money? certainly not on a Windows running device, find out about why I think you should not even consider the iPad, and what’s already more promising than the HP Slate.

Like I said before, iPad, iPass. HP has a huge corporate client contact list, they’ll be able to push this down to a lot of people at work if that’s what they intend.

It seems like this will be one of those cases where Apple tried to innovate in a stubborn way but others quickly stole the idea and marketed it better, Apple will have to adapt to the need of millions (if they want to go a little more massive and really “change the world” like they did with the iPod) just by not being stubborn and allowing flash in, otherwise it’ll be nothing but a product for Mac fans.

C’mon Mac Fans, Won’t it suck to not be able to watch Hulu on your iPad? or when somebody sends you a really cool video on Vimeo? iPad owners will probably not admit it, but it’ll be a thorn in the foot everytime they can’t see Flash content which is everywhere. The $500+ tablet that can’t surf the web, that has no camera, no usb, no multitasking and that has less storage than a cheap $200 netbook. You gotta think about this twice if you’re really buying the iPad.

Note: I’m an Apple user myself, ever since the Apple //c, I’ve had my fair share of iMacs, MacBooks, every iPod, an iPhone and an Apple TV that I returned cause the product sucked. If I think you’re wrong I won’t side with you, Mac Fans: you gotta admit when a product sucks, that’s the only way Apple will get it’s shit together and make better products for all of us. I hope Apple reconsiders Flash eventually, they only hurt the customers by being so selfish and stubborn.

The HP’s Voodoo Blog says:

“With this slate product, you’re getting a full Web browsing experience in the palm of your hand. No watered-down Internet, no sacrifices. We just posted a quick video showing some more of what that’s like as well as how the slate device will work as an eBook reader.”

Bottom Line, am I buying this?

No, even though it supports Flash it has one major flash that kills the deal for a geek like me. It runs Windows. I don’t want to deal with all it’s issues (viruses, antiviruses, spyware, BSODs,Microsoft)

Where am I putting my money? Probably on the ADAM

Introducing the ADAM

Why am I buying it?
OS: Android, Ubuntu, Chrome
Flash Support: Of course
Camera: Yes, 3 Megapixel and it rotates 180degrees front to back and in between. Skype has found the hardware it was meant to run.
No Hover Issues: It’s multitouch and it has a touch pad on the back.
Multitasking: Of course.
Storage: SD Card (Toshiba is offering 64Gb SD cards already)
Price: Starts at $327
When: June/July 2010

Let’s hope the ADAM guys will have the marketing muscle, it looks like it can kill the iPad on arrival, however I doubt most people will find out about it or trust an unknown company to buy it, they gotta get some big brand to back them, Google could be the one.

                          

If this is what you can see during the Winter in South Beach, can you imagine what’s coming in the summer?
I think I’ll start a piggy bank to buy a new 500mm zoom lense this summer.

We were looking for parking when we saw this beauty unlocking her Vespa motorcycle, I quickly wiped out the 300mm and started shooting from the side of the car.
Perfect timing. Hope you enjoyed it, it was hilarious, at the end she saw me, and she didn’t care, she must be used to it.

                          

I’m sad I didn’t have a wider lense, I didn’t have a chance to get her profile when she walked right past my table, her stomach was truly amazing, very flat and sexy, everything was well proportioned and she had all the heads turning.

Click to see the gallery

                          

It was a very strange experience standing up close to a sculpture that looked almost as if it was a living person, it was almost like invading someone’s personal space getting so close to it to take a photograph. I bet the artist never feels alone when he’s at his workshop.

Click for Gallery

Truly amazing work, I had to stand in line to enter the booth.

                          

More pictures of Lewis Tardy Robotic Sculptures.

Lewis Tardy from Kalamazoo, MI

Exhibit at the 2010 Coconut Grove Art Festival.

His art is not only extremely cool for the geek eye, he makes something out of nothing.

I heard him say how he has contacts in scrap yards and in the medical industry to get all these parts before they’re gone to waste. He also mentioned eBay as a great source for pieces, as well as consignment, thrift and antique stores.

www.tardysculpture.com/

                          

Threaded comments
Once a Buzz post becomes popular it’s impossible to keep the conversation in a linear fashion. The conversational nature of Buzz begs for threaded replies. Comments need to be collapsible

Buzz Stream Pause.
Real time updates are not cool when you can’t read a single one of them. When you follow over 500 people, it’s almost impossible to even read what they’re posting, you need to scroll down as the stream keeps coming in, a pause/play feature to stop messages from coming in would not also be handy for Buzz users but it’d also save Google a lot of HTTP requests that won’t really matter.

ReBuzz Button
Quickly repost a Buzz update on your own stream with a “ReBuzz” feature.

GMail-like Labels and Stars
Being able to add labels to people would be an elegant way to implement a similar feature to that of Twitter Lists. You could then decide to see updates from one or more labels, or search users you’ve labeled in the past.

Stars would be also an useful way to filter out buzz posts you might want to keep monitoring as they evolve.
(A star would basically be a “star” label, it’d just have a UI element of it’s own)

Content Source Filtering
Global (all the people you follow) and Specific (filter out one person’s content) source filters are needed to filter out updates that come from sites like Twitter.
For example, you may want to get twitter updates from everybody except a few people that post things that bother you on twitter… or maybe you just want to filter out Twitter completely.

Mute needs more options
Jon Sykes: “I’d like to be able to do something to a followee post that doesn’t make it vanish, but just stops it bubbling every time someone comments.”

You may or may not want to read Twitter updates from certain users or from all users.

Full featured Open API
Google says that they’ll soon add this one, but it’d be nice to have an open API for third party apps. To push content to my Wordpress or Blogger site, or to even replace your Wordpress commenting system for Buzz Threads.

Related Links
Google Buzz Copied FriendFeed’s Worst Features
Six Things to Change In Buzz

Submit your ideas to this Google Moderator page called How to Fix Google Buzz

                          

Here some pictures of Kimber Fiebiger’s Bronze Humpty Dumpties. When you see these you can’t help to smile.

Kimber Fiebiger creates bronze sculptures that range from fun and whimsical, to classical and contemporary. She lives in Minneapolis yet her sculptures have been sold all over the country where she has won numerous awards. Besides being a fabulous sculptor, Kimber has created a home/gallery/studio that will amaze and intrigue you upon viewing. Ask anyone who drives by her Gallery at Franklin and 31st Avenues. Her building has been described as having the artful complexity of Spanish designer Antonie Gaudi combined with Picasso. Her recent outdoor landscape brings to mind playful images of Dr. Seuss. You are invited to come and see Kimber’s amazing creations at the Joan of Art Gallery or right here on this web site.

These pictures were taken at the 2010 Coconut Grove Art Festival in Miami, FL.

                          

2. Enjoy the following Flickr Slideshow full screen

3. Raise the volume and dance

For a better experience, you can do the same on your Living Room using Boxee, it has Flickr and Pandora apps in it.

                          

with a “oh, that stinks” look, but I don’t care; she can get away with anything she wants.

and she was gone…

Taken by Gubatron

                          

See the Previous T-Shirt

See the Next T-Shirt

                          

Ocean Drive and 14th st, Miami Beach, FL.
Taken by Gubatron.

                          

This car was like a text-book definition of a beautiful ferrari

Dubble D (wonder if he like Double D’s)

Taken in Alton Road and Lincoln Rd by Gubatron.

                          

Not only this ad makes a stand in front of Sony and other big TV brands out there telling them “We have just advertised an Internet TV in front of 100 million viewers, you better get something out there soon or we’ll crush you”, but it also should tick you as a software developer. Now you’ll be able write software for the living room.

“VIZIO’s platform also includes support for the Adobe(R) Flash(R) Platform for the Digital Home, an optimized implementation of Flash technology that enables developers and content providers to deliver HD video, rich applications and other Web content to Internet-connected televisions, set-top boxes, Blu-ray players and other devices in the digital home.”

VIZIO Internet Apps (VIA(TM)) — Connecting to the Future of Television

(Good luck on killing Flash Steve Jobs)

Internet TVs will be huge if/when they support (open) standard technologies for media delivery used in today’s web and mobile devices, e.g. HTML5/JavaScript, Flash, Android SDK. It seems Vizio has gone the Flash route.

Thanks to @gliendo I understand that there’s still room for live tv content (sports, news and some events that are delivered in HD via Cable/Satellite networks), however for the rest of the stuff that I consume the most: TV Shows, Movies, Concerts, Documentaries… all of that I see it when I have the time, I just can’t be in front of the TV when they want me to. If I want to see a show, I don’t need to wait a week to see the next episode and be there like if it was a date, my time is way to valuable for that, I’ll do it when I can, how I can, and the internet has allowed me so far to be free of cable TV for over 2 years now, but that’s me, the majority of people watches TV in the living room, and a TV like this will also free them from cable channels when they figure the possibilities.

Ads on Cable and we still have to pay for it?
If a TV like this has support for Netflix, Hulu, YouTube or other existing online Video delivery services where I can get my favorite movies on demand (in the case of netflix for a flat fee and I can stream all I want from their catalog) why the hell would I need to watch TV on cable channels and with so many ads? you almost feel stupid for paying the cable company after they make you watch so many ads, in the internet world usually if you pay for something you never expect an ad, with such a high CPM on TV ads, why the hell do we pay for cable????

Cable TV Channels are so dead for me, a TV like this gives me hope that they will eventually die for millions of people once they realize this, the more internet tvs that are out there, the sooner it’ll happen.

http://vizio.com/via/

                          

Tango Legs


Blonde with nice ass

Classy and Sexy

Pompi

Asian Legs

Strongest legs of Lincoln Road

Babies have a Moment

Milf Legs

Tied Up

All rights reserved.

Contact me if you’d like to use any of these photos for any purpose.

                          

Some pictures of my first full marathon.

Miami, January 31st 2010.
26.2 miles (18 miles of fun, 8.2 miles of torture)

Miles Trained since July 2009: ~650 miles

Chip Time: 4:41:03
Average Pace: 10:44 per mile
Overall: 1636th
Sex Total: 1869 Sex Place: 1179th
Division Total: 300 runners Division Place: 199th
Age Grade: 44.4%
10 KM time: 56:01
Half Marathon: 2:04:50
30 KM time: 3:06:44

                          

I’ve tried to counter some of your points here as objectively as I could. For the record, I’m a happy Apple user, but consider myself to be open minded to all platforms.

Price
An unsubsidized iPhone is $599/$699 depending on the memory size. This thing is twice the size — physically and in available memory. That’s not that bad considering some sources were saying $999 as a possible price point, though I never believed that myself.

The A4
The chip is a BIG deal. The A4 is actually an ARM processor, just like the chips used to power all iPhones, so no platform switching here. Even so, the OS is platform independent, and they’ve shown they can manage that kind of switch easily enough if they ever want to do so.

PA Semi — the company Apple bought to make these chip designs — have a history with high performance, low power chips. Even the Military loved their stuff. The A4 is clocked at 1ghz — twice the speed jump from the iPhone 3GS than it took from the 3G, and Apple is still willing to claim super-human battery life. Even at a more realistic 5-hours max, that’s a lot of horsepower for a mobile device (though not for a full-sized laptop). Every hands-on account I read points to screaming fast responsiveness, but I reserve final judgement until I have that same privilege.

Connectivity
The fact they will sell a WiFi only model and you’re not interested is missing the point. Some will want the always on connectivity option, but what if you were happy just to play games, watch movies and read books while out and surf the net at home or a hotspot?

Plus, there’s the added cost of the 3G service. Considering my phone already lets me get to the net, I have a harder time justifying the added payments to AT&T. I could really see myself using the WiFi only version — that’s the same way I enjoy my laptop when I’m out and about. ^_^

3G Tax
$130 for the chips and radio equipment for 3G is bullshit, but I can’t say this is unexpected. Just like they get you on the price of memory with the built-to-order, there’s usually one spot where they hit you cause they can.

Storage Size
I would consider myself to be both a power user and a music connoisseur. My iPhone (16GB 3G) has 11 pages of apps and web shortcuts, and my music library is 30,000 tracks strong. I could never get that whole library into my phone, but I couldn’t get the whole thing on a laptop comfortably, either. I keep about 1,800 tracks and rotate albums in and out every few weeks. It’s worked for well over a year and a half.

Now answer this question: If a netbook was your only computer, would you have a music librabry as large as you do now? The large part of us who get a netbook or an iPad aren’t going to use it as their only computer, so I don’t think you should treat it like one in your example.

Flash Support
A whole ‘nother kettle of fish. I will admit that the day Flash is used more for content production and less for content distribution, the happier I will be. HTML5 is being built to supplant a lot of the jobs Flash does, and I think we’re starting to get to the tipping point. Apple and Google both use WebKit at the core of all their browsers — computer or mobile — which means you have two very ambitious companies with huge clout and their own good reasons for making WebKit be the best engine it can be, which is helping to accelerate standards support elsewhere.

In short — unless Adobe opens the source code for Flash like Apple did with WebKit, they will never put Flash on the iPhone OS. Web Devs will find a way around this, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Adobe be the one on the short end.

Netbooks aren’t that bad
Steve Jobs, as with any CEO, needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

Netbooks as a platform will remain, and they will still have their advocates. But I’ll bet it’s less than 18 months before someone gets an Android or Chrome-powered touch tablet to market — more hackable and working to compete on merit with the iPad. I’ll also bet Google forms a team to do that ala the Nexus, along with licensing to 3rd parties.

OS Choice
The iPhone OS is a scaled down version of OS X specifically with touch devices and low power consumption in mind. I really don’t see how you could have thought they’d use anything other than that in their tablet.

stevenf has a GREAT piece about “Old World v. New World” computing, which talks a lot about how the device is perceived by those who are used to their computers doing everything vs. those who are used to it doing one thing at a time well. They may be computers at heart, but they are built and designed as consumer electronics, which have higher expectation levels and less tolerances to things not working like they should.

That said, this relatively young branch of the OS X and more will need to be done to flesh out the platform. Moore’s law will help the hardware eventually handle most (but not all) of what one of today’s laptops can do. We know the OS can multitask because the iPod software runs in the background. You can dislike their decisions, but you can’t fault the reasoning: they want stability first, performance second, and multiple background apps put strains on both.

At some point Apple will ease the restrictions and let dev have multitasking apps. But not today.

                          

It’s been only 48 hours and you’re already killing it?
I didn’t even know this was up already.

You have to let the service up for a little longer to make any judgments of these sorts.

However… being Devil’s advocate I’m with you on this one, it’s not gonna fly far, not even with cool blockbuster movies.

You don’t have to be a genius to understand that $3.99 seems a little too high for “renting” a movie to watch it on your computer, specially for a crowd that’s used to come to youtube for a bunch of short free video fixes.

This business model down the line won’t be a significant source of revenue for youtube, they’ll have to revisit their strategy and copy the Netflix flat rate model; Pay every month a flat fee and stream all you want from the ever growing catalog.

The Netflix flat fee model is the best available and the markets also like it; Netflix’s market cap ($NFLX) is now over $3 billion and Blockbuster’s has been reduced to a mere ($BBI) $70 million.

From a customer’s perspective I would never rent “on demand” films at $3.99 each, not even from my cable company and I’d be watching it on a big screen sitting comfy in my living room couch.

I rather stream to my heart’s contempt all I want without having to take my wallet out every time.

Flat Rates FTW.

                          

If you’re giving me a great screen for video, powerful graphic processing capabilities and only WiFI connectivity you must think I will want to have a few movies, pictures and music stored in the device for offline use. WiFI is everywhere right? Wrong, most networks out there are password protected by the owners, so the only places where you’ll have WiFI access for free will be at home, at the office, maybe at your friends or a library. In most of those cases you will have a real laptop with you, or you won’t really be there to use the device.

Given the lack of real connectivity to the “cloud” when you’re on WiFI outside, when you’re “mobile”… you will want to have your entertainment on disk, with so little space you’ll be constantly adding and deleting stuff to it.

Now if you will get the 3G version, don’t even dream of HD streaming over that slow ass unreliable 3G AT&T connection, you will need the storage.

Pricing Pissed me Off

The pricing scheme really got me pissed, the lower end version costs $500 and it only gives you 16Gb; my phone has 32Gb!!!.

So you gotta be crazy to pay so much for the lower end, which is what they know, and they charge $100 for additional 16Gb, and $200 for additional 48Gb putting the 64gb model at $700 bucks.

You would think, “shit, it’s a tablet, multitouch, beautiful, for under $700″, but remember, it’s ONLY 64Gb. My humble mp3 collection alone takes 45Gb!!!.

I can’t even remember when was the last time I bought a 64Gb HDD. It all seems that they couldn’t wait more for SSD drives to finally drop their prices; There’s a big market in Netbooks and many companies are already there so they had to come out with something now, even if the storage will suck balls.

Other important flaws

Then you have to remember other big flaws, it runs the iPhone OS, which still does not allow for multitasking, iPhone users know that this is a bitch when they see Android users switching from GMail, to browser, to maps, to twitter and back all instantly, no need to close your apps and you keep your states.

Another great flaw comes because of Apple’s desire to destroy Adobe Flash. Steve Job has some motherfucking balls calling this device a better device to browse the web, even in his demo we could see a “missing plugin” on the New York Times. Every website out there embedding videos will have a flash player in it. Every social game in Facebook that attracts millions of players a month happens to be made with Flash (Farmville, Typing Maniac, Bejeweled, Biggest Brain, etc), but it’s the damn need to control what we do with our own computers that will make Apple force the stupid restrictions of the iPhone to this new device.

Thanks but no.

Netbooks aren’t that bad
Steve Jobs said that Netbooks aren’t better at anything, he’s right on that, but his new device sucks at storage and it’s not that great at web browsing either, no Flash support, no multitasking. Netbooks are not better, but they’re just as good as lots of high priced laptops a few years back, so I guess they’re better at doing the same job for a lot less money.

iPad’s limited storage capabilities for this first generation are a deal breaker for many of us that will wait for round two to see what they come up with.

Most of the things that the iPad does can be done with Netbooks, and Netbooks can do a lot of things that the iPad can’t, like multitasking for example.

Next version will probably include a web cam (would’ve been a great feature to use it with Skype), it’s an old trick of apple to not release stupid features at once so they can have you buying the whole thing again just for a few changes here and there next year.

What’s up with the CPU?
Did Intel get stabbed in the back? or it’s just an Apple branded / custom designed Intel CPU?

We’ll probably be hearing more about once it’s released.

$130 more for a 3G chip
This is probably Broadcom’s fault, but I refuse to believe that a 3G chip is that costly, they have to bank on that extra microchip and integration I suppose.

In the meantime I’ll keep using my lovely Asus EEE pc 1005HA, with 160Gb HDD (slower than SDD but hey, I’m not running mission critical apps here), multitasking, freedom of choice in free software, and a webcam.

Do yourself a favor, go to the Apple Store, test it, then think all the stuff you can’t have stored in it, and other things you could buy with those $700+taxes (2 netbooks, a ps3 with a bunch of games, $300 more and you could get an actual macbook, a kindle reader and shitload of books)

iPad, iPass

Update: Now read Andrew Fischler’s Point of View on each of my issues.

                          

My disclaimer is because recently president Hugo Chavez publicly accused the US government of using seismic weapon technology over Haiti in order to perform a military invasion. I hate the son of a bitch to pieces, but I can’t help to agree with him on this one.

For years I’ve joked about government being responsible for strong earthquakes or when warning ones hit nations (whenever the puppet dictators want to do things their way), so don’t think by any means that I got this idea from Hugo Chavez, but I found it interesting that a president of a nation actually had the balls (or the crazy loosened bolts) to make such an accusation openly. The world is not as crazy as me to digest such things. However with this post I intend to explain why it makes perfect sense to have tectonic weaponry.

Seismic Weapons can’t be more complex than Nuclear weapons
I believe that if in the 1950s we already had the ability to split the atom, why is it so crazy to believe that we NOW have weapons to create natural disasters? being earthquakes the easiest to create, just a big ass explosion, or several ones on the right spot(s) deep underground. Let your mind fly and it’s also doable causing other natural disasters like tsunamis or even hurricanes, we [humans] are smart motherfuckers when it comes to destruction.

Benefits of Seismic Weaponry

Imagine you are president Obama and you’re being briefed by high command military to make the decision to preemptively invade a nation for strategic purposes. The top generals enumerate the following benefits about Seismic Warfare:

• There is nobody to blame. And even if they blame us, it’s so far fetched that nobody will believe it.
• There are no battles to fight. We don’t loose any of our men.
• We go in to help rebuild and heal. We are looked upon as the heroes. Great for international perception and politics.
• No post-combat traumas to deal with, health care savings in soldier treatment, lower suicide rates.
• We can destroy as much or even more, further attacks are just seen as normal earthquake replicas in case we don’t take down intended targets.
• You don’t need to justify or create conflict to get our boys in. No need to attack our own people and blame it on terrorist groups or dictators, no need to blame anybody for having weapons of mass destruction, it’s as clean as it gets Mr. President, no politics or red tape involved.

If the US doesn’t have seismic weapons I hope they’re building them, if a lame ass individual like me can think of this, I don’t see why people with billion dollar military budgets and a bunch of geniuses working for them couldn’t think the same.

But again it’s all Just a conspiracy theory, any resemblance with reality is just a coincidence. This would make such a great season of 24.

                          

Yes, javascript doesn’t have a Math.log10() function.
I tried doing it by dividing by Math.ln10 constant but the function won’t return the correct number of digits when you pass numbers like 100,1000,10000,etc. So I just divided by Math.log(10) and it seems to work.

                          

The SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark was run several times on both phones and results were consistent.

It’d be great to compare with the iPhone 3Gs, If someone has an iPhone 3Gs, please run the test and send me the results to update this post.

============================================
RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
--------------------------------------------
Total:                 34157.4ms +/- 2.8%
--------------------------------------------

  3d:                   4277.6ms +/- 3.3%
    cube:               1212.4ms +/- 9.6%
    morph:              1680.0ms +/- 12.5%
    raytrace:           1385.2ms +/- 5.2%

  access:               4350.8ms +/- 7.1%
    binary-trees:        473.2ms +/- 7.6%
    fannkuch:           1959.4ms +/- 9.7%
    nbody:               985.2ms +/- 9.6%
    nsieve:              933.0ms +/- 39.8%

  bitops:               2921.4ms +/- 3.4%
    3bit-bits-in-byte:   545.4ms +/- 4.1%
    bits-in-byte:        735.6ms +/- 16.3%
    bitwise-and:         539.8ms +/- 9.9%
    nsieve-bits:        1100.6ms +/- 3.0%

  controlflow:           414.2ms +/- 8.5%
    recursive:           414.2ms +/- 8.5%

  crypto:               2064.4ms +/- 4.5%
    aes:                 859.8ms +/- 3.4%
    md5:                 638.8ms +/- 4.6%
    sha1:                565.8ms +/- 8.1%

  date:                 4434.2ms +/- 9.0%
    format-tofte:       1663.6ms +/- 6.7%
    format-xparb:       2770.6ms +/- 12.7%

  math:                 3223.6ms +/- 3.0%
    cordic:             1110.8ms +/- 6.2%
    partial-sums:       1264.0ms +/- 3.4%
    spectral-norm:       848.8ms +/- 3.2%

  regexp:               3980.0ms +/- 1.3%
    dna:                3980.0ms +/- 1.3%

  string:               8491.2ms +/- 3.8%
    base64:             1108.4ms +/- 7.0%
    fasta:              1683.4ms +/- 1.6%
    tagcloud:           1500.2ms +/- 9.5%
    unpack-code:        2456.2ms +/- 8.7%
    validate-input:     1743.0ms +/- 4.5%

============================================
RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
--------------------------------------------
Total:                 14706.8ms +/- 4.8%
--------------------------------------------

  3d:                   1593.6ms +/- 6.0%
    cube:                474.8ms +/- 17.2%
    morph:               566.2ms +/- 2.6%
    raytrace:            552.6ms +/- 1.0%

  access:               1885.0ms +/- 10.3%
    binary-trees:        202.8ms +/- 25.7%
    fannkuch:            819.4ms +/- 1.1%
    nbody:               406.2ms +/- 20.7%
    nsieve:              456.6ms +/- 28.1%

  bitops:               1640.8ms +/- 29.2%
    3bit-bits-in-byte:   300.8ms +/- 30.9%
    bits-in-byte:        390.0ms +/- 44.9%
    bitwise-and:         372.0ms +/- 55.7%
    nsieve-bits:         578.0ms +/- 36.8%

  controlflow:           200.8ms +/- 4.5%
    recursive:           200.8ms +/- 4.5%

  crypto:                880.8ms +/- 2.1%
    aes:                 385.6ms +/- 4.6%
    md5:                 254.4ms +/- 5.3%
    sha1:                240.8ms +/- 9.0%

  date:                 1843.6ms +/- 20.6%
    format-tofte:        840.0ms +/- 45.9%
    format-xparb:       1003.6ms +/- 1.3%

  math:                 1250.8ms +/- 1.6%
    cordic:              464.0ms +/- 1.1%
    partial-sums:        450.2ms +/- 3.0%
    spectral-norm:       336.6ms +/- 3.6%

  regexp:               2003.4ms +/- 15.2%
    dna:                2003.4ms +/- 15.2%

  string:               3408.0ms +/- 7.7%
    base64:              387.6ms +/- 2.4%
    fasta:               729.8ms +/- 3.7%
    tagcloud:            605.8ms +/- 4.2%
    unpack-code:        1019.8ms +/- 29.1%
    validate-input:      665.0ms +/- 1.1%

                          

Unboxing and comparing the Nexus One to the Motorola Droid. Audio is in spanish but you’ll be able to see and tell a lot from my video even if you are an english speaker (use this opportunity to practice your spanish)

                          

Tus conocimientos y tu experiencia son tus mejores bienes. En 1999 recuerdo que compre un libro llamado “Java In A Nutshell“. Era un libro de referencia completa al lenguaje, en aquel entonces la API era Java 1.1.8. Lei el libro de la primera pagina a la ultima pagina. En unos cuantos meses empece a ganar reputación en la escuela de Ingeniería Informática porque sabia programar (muy poco en comparación a hoy en día) en Java.

Estos conocimientos me llevaron a tomar una pasantia en el “Java Center” en Caracas, allí conocí ingenieros con experiencia en proyectos grandes, y empece a saborear desarrollo de aplicaciones web (Servlets, JSP, Templates), almacenando y buscando contenidos en bases de datos, aprendiendo HTTP, HTML y JavaScript en el proceso.

Durante los meses que estuve alli conocí personas que venian de Petróleos de Venezuela y luego termine creando sitios webs para ellos con los conocimientos que había adquirido. Con ellos desarrolle mi tesis de grado, y cuando todo el mundo fue despedido de Petroleos de Venezuela dada la crisis politica Venezolana muchos se fueron a Estados Unidos y gracias a ellos conseguí mi primer trabajo después de graduado desarrollando software en Miami para un startup.

Vaya que el librito pago sus intereses…

Tu Conocimiento como un portafolio de Inversión

Sin embargo, en nuestro mundo, los conocimientos técnicos tienen fecha de expiración, son bienes que se van depreciando, lo que quiere decir que vas perdiendo valor profesional. Las fuerzas del mercado pueden inclusive hacer tus conocimientos obsoletos en un corto tiempo dada la velocidad de los avances tecnológicos.

Como buen inversionista debes invertir constantemente, como un habito.

Aprende un lenguaje nuevo cada año. Cada vez que aprendes un lenguaje nuevo aprendes nuevas formas de resolver problemas, y al volver a tu lenguaje anterior puedes aplicar estos nuevos paradigmas, haciendote un programador mas versatil y atento a las posibilidades de solución de problemas. Yo he pasado de Java a PHP, programado PHP con una vision Orientada a Objetos, luego de PHP a Python aprendiendo trucos de programación dinámica y trayendo de vuelta estos trucos a PHP, luego saltado a aprender de Swing a Qt y traer ideas de signals/slots al mundo de Java, o inclusive de servicios en PHP.

Debes diversificar para tener exito en el largo plazo.

Un especialista es una persona que sabe mucho de una sola cosa. Generalmente no son muy utiles, mientras mas cosas diferentes sepas lo mas valioso que seras. Mientras mas tecnologias manejes mas listo y comodo estaras para los cambios a venir a futuro.

Los inversionistas exitosos tienden a balancear sus portafolios entre inversiones conservadoras e inversiones de alto riesgo pero con el potencial a altas ganancias.

Asi como hay inversiones con diferentes niveles de riesgo, tambien te pones a riesgo de aprender tecnologias muy novedosas que pudieran o no ser importantes a futuro. Por dar un ejemplo, en estos momentos estoy tomando una decision de alto riesgo al tratar de aprender a fondo las APIs de Android. Personalmente pienso que es una plataforma que va a ser adoptada por multitud de fabricantes de smartphones y el mercado de aplicaciones aun no se ha saturado (como en el iPhone). Si Android no llega a tener un exito comparable al del iPhone es probable que haya perdido mi tiempo, de lo contrario cuando haya un boom de desarrollo en Android ya estare posicionado como un Guru.

Intenta comprar barato y vender caro para maximizar tus ganancias

Aprender una tecnología antes de que se haga popular puede ser tan dificil como conseguir acciones baratas, pero el pago puede ser tan bueno como ya mencione

Esta experiencia me sucedió con PHP. Estando en la universidad decidi aprender PHP para desarrollar mi propia pagina y para hacer proyectos webs sencillos, me sorprendió la velocidad y simplicidad con que podia realizar proyectos web. Eventualmente estos conocimientos en PHP me ayudaron a conseguir trabajo en New York y hoy en dia todavía recibo llamadas de reclutadores buscándome por mis conocimientos en PHP. Lenguaje que se puso en gran demanda entre el 2005 y 2007. Luego lo mismo me ocurrió con Python, y estos conocimientos me dieron un rol importante en otro proyecto donde logre convencer al equipo de que Python era el camino a tomar y desarrollamos una aplicacion de gran escala desde cero utilizando Python y Qt.

La lectura de revistas y blogs de tecnologia pueden ayudarte a conseguir tecnologias prometedoras en sus fases iniciales. Recuerdo haber aprendido sobre ant y subversion en 2003 dado que lei al respecto de estas tecnologias en la revista Dr. Dobb’s Journal.

Revisa y rebalancea tu portafolio periódicamente.
Dado el dinamismo de esta industria, revisa que la tecnología que estas aprendiendo aun vale la pena. Lee noticias al respecto de tecnologías rivales. Lee revistas, lee grupos de noticias, haz busquedas en twitter, sigue personas que manejen conocimientos relacionados, haz preguntas, participa. Experimenta con diferentes ambientes, si trabajas en Windows intenta instalar Linux ( o viceversa ). Si utilizas una IDE, intenta compilar haciendo makefile a mano, o viceversa. Lee un libro técnico cada 3 meses, estudia sobre tecnologias que no esten directamente relacionadas a tus proyectos, siempre con una visión critica y analitica, no creas todo lo que lees, reta toda tecnología que se te presente dado que siempre hay intereses no faciles de ver detrás de toda promoción tecnologica.

Diviertete, Inspirate y Expande tus conocimientos
Generalmente leo muchas revistas, blogs y libros no relacionados a la tecnologia. Primero es relajante y divertido leer sobre otras cosas, segundo es un ejercicio de foco mental y tercero puede servir de inspiracion leer sobre otras areas lo cual puede ayudarte a tener ideas y
perspectivas frescas tanto para resolver problemas como para desarrollar nuevas ideas que pudieran convertirse en negocios exitosos.

Lecturas y Contenido recomendable:
Wired Magazine (Tecnologia, Innovacion y Entretenimiento)

Technology Review La revista de MIT que reporta sobre innovacion en Biomedicina, Nanotecnologia, Energia, Materiales, Telecomunicaciones y negocios. Enterate por ejemplo quienes son las personas que traen innovacion al mundo con edades por debajo de los 30. Leer esta revista ha sido una de las mayores fuentes de inspiracion en mi vida durante los ultimos años.

TED TED (Tecnologia, Entretenimiento, Diseño) es una organizacion sin fines de lucro que se dedica a dar a conocer ideas que valen la pena. Ellos realizan eventos anuales donde invitan figuras prominentes mundiales a participar y contar sus historias en charlas que no duran mas de 18 minutos.

Aqui veras muchas de las personas que aparecen entrevistadas en Technology Review. Asistir a este evento es casi imposible para personas normales. Primero debes enviar un curriculum con logros impresionantes junto con un ensayo de porque deseas asistir, y luego debes pagar unos $5,000 por asistir al evento como uno o dos años por adelantado.

Esto garantiza que no solo los ponentes sean interesantes sino que cualquier persona que tengas a tu lado te sirva para tener un contacto con el cual dos areas de conocimiento representadas por personas de influencia puedan interactuar y lograr innovacion.

Si logras ir a un TED, te podrias sentar al lado de Al Gore, Jose Antonio Abreu, Gustavo Dudamel, J.J. Abrams, Isabel Allende, Tim Berners Lee, y muchas otras personas que pueden servir de inspiracion para seguir llevando el mundo adelante.

Si estas en el resto de la poblacion que aun no puede asistir, TED hace disponible muchas de las charlas en su sitio web en video, y tambien por iTunes bajo la subscripcion gratuita de su video podcast.

Techmeme.com Agregador de noticias de la industria tecnologica. Uno de mis homepages. El cual te llevara a leer blogs como Techcrunch, GigaOM, Engadget, Mashable y muchas otras fuentes mas que cubren el mundo de la tecnologia minuto a minuto.

Business Week Semanario con lo ultimo en negocios internacionales. Excelentes columnistas e historias que te ayudaran a entender el mundo de los negocios y tener muchos momentos “aja!”

Historias Biograficas Siempre trato de mantenerme inspirado viendo como otras personas lograron hacer cosas importantes, o crear empresas exitosas. Recomiendo leer las historias de como empezaron empresas como eBay, Amazon, Google
. O Las biografias de personas como Einstein. Son lecturas no directamente tecnologicas de las cuales puedes sacar muchas lecciones y veras el mundo desde otro punto de vista. Al menos yo he quedado con un sentido de urgencia y de la importancia de mi tiempo despues de haber leido estas historias (y aprendido de sus errores y de cuales fueron los factores que ayudaron a estas empresas y personas a lograr sus metas)

Por ultimo ve a reuniones y habla de tecnologia con personas que no esten relacionadas a tu trabajo, es bueno tener contactos de “inversión” para buscar inspiracion en el mercado de los conocimientos, y en lo posible trata de reunirte con personas mas inteligentes que tu, conversaciones con personas interesantes pueden proporcionar gran cantidad de conocimientos en corto tiempo.

* Acentos omitidos por el autor.

Sobre el Autor
Angel León (aka Gubatron) es un Ingeniero de Software que ha desarrollado desde servicios webs distribuidos para millones de visitantes mensuales, a software p2p de uso masivo bajo las filosofias del software libre.

Estas crónicas son inspiradas en el libro “The Pragmatic Programmer” un libro que debería ser un texto obligatorio en todo curso de Ingeniería de software, junto con las experiencias de Angel León durante los últimos 8 años desarrollando software en Venezuela y los Estados Unidos.

                          

Si no has probado la marihuana (después de los 21) por miedo a todo lo que has escuchado y creído, deberías estar tan súper molesto o molesta como yo porque hemos sido victimas de viles mentiras para privarnos de uno de los placeres mas sanos de la vida.

La verdad es que no hay un motivo verdadero que me pueda convencer de la ilegalidad de la marihuana, y personalmente no solo estoy extremadamente molesto por su ilegalidad, lo que mas me incomoda es que tuve una opinión errada toda mi vida, donde veía con miedo, y donde juzgaba en forma despectiva a las personas que fumaban marihuana, todo por falta de pensamiento critico y de información.

Tantas veces repitieron la mentira que pensé que era verdad y no cuestione.

Mito #1: La Marihuana causa daño cerebral.

El uso a largo plazo y el uso diario de la marihuana no causa ningún tipo de daño cerebral. Expertos del gobierno de los Estados Unidos admiten que la marihuana no mata las neuronas.

Este mito vino de un pequeño numero de experimentos con animales en los cuales se observaron cambios estructurales en las neuronas de animales que fueron sometidos a tanto humo de marihuana que fueron depravados de oxigeno.

Este trabajo científico perdió todo crédito. El Dr. William Slikker del Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Toxicológicas y Charles Rebert y Gordon Pryor de SRI International no han podido encontrar en sus estudios sobre el tema ninguna evidencia de alteración física de las neuronas en monos expuesto a dosis diarias durante un año.

Estudios en Humanos de uso pesado de marihuana en Jamaica y Costa Rica no encontraron evidencia de anormalidades en el cerebro.

Vale la pena acotar que el uso de otras drogas, incluyendo el alcohol si causan daño cerebral.

Una forma de verlo mas fácil es la siguiente. Es fácil conseguir documentación de miles de personas que han muerto por sobredosis (envenenamiento) con alcohol, cocaína, heroína y otras drogas químicas.
No existe un solo caso documentado de sobre dosis con marihuana.

Mito #2: Si fumas marihuana caerás en otras drogas mas fuertes

Este es uno de los mitos que tiene mas éxito en asustar a la población de disfrutar de la marihuana. También es uno de los mitos mas persistentes.

Un ejemplo real de lo que sucede cuando permites que la marihuana sea accesible a la sociedad puede verse claramente en Holanda. Los holandeses legalizaron parcialmente la marihuana desde los 1970s. Desde entonces el uso de drogas fuertes como heroína y cocaína han DECAÍDO SUBSTANCIALMENTE.

Si la marihuana fuera una droga de introducción a las drogas mas fuertes, el uso de heroína y cocaína hubiera incrementado, no disminuido. Este efecto también ha sido observado en los Estados Unidos. Estudios realizados en los 1970s mostraron una co-relación negativa entre el uso de la marihuana y el uso del alcohol.

En 1993 un estudio de la corporación Rand comparo el uso de la droga en estados que habían de-criminalizado el uso de la marihuana versus otros estados que no, se encontró que donde la marihuana tenia mayor disponibilidad el numero de casos de emergencia en los hospitales por el abuso de drogas fuertes había disminuido.

En resumen, el uso de la marihuana, científicamente y en la practica tiende a remplazar el uso de drogas mucho mas peligrosas como el alcohol, la cocaína y la heroína.

En todo caso, cuando la Marihuana es prohibida te puedes ver en contacto cercano con drogas como cocaína, crack, heroína porque la persona que trafica la marihuana puede ofrecerte estos otros productos, es decir, una consecuencia directa de la prohibición, cosa que no sucediera si pudieras comprarla en cualquier tienda axial como compras una caja de tabaco.

Los cigarrillos en USA tienen 599 aditivos aprobados por la FDA, y crean unos 4,000 componentes químicos cuando los fumas.
Monóxido de Carbono, Oxido de nitrógeno, Cianuro de Hidrógeno y Amonia están presentes en el humo del cigarrillo.

En mi experiencia, la ultima vez que fume marihuana fue hace como 4 meses [es decir no es adictiva]. Me considero una persona sana, corro entre 15 a 35 millas semanales, No fumo cigarrillos (solo si estoy con amistades que no he visto en años), Casi nunca consumo bebidas alcoholicas, solo una copa de vino en una cena especial o una cerveza en casa de una amistad que me la invite. Nunca he probado cocaina, heroina, crack, speed, ni extasis.

Mito #3: La marihuana es mucho mas peligrosa que el cigarrillo

Para empezar el cigarrillo (tabaco) es la droga mas adictiva conocida por el hombre, mientras que la marihuana es menos adictiva que la cafeína.

La marihuana FUMADA contiene la misma cantidad de agentes cancerígenos que el tabaco, sin embargo dado el factor de adicción mencionado anteriormente la cantidad de tabaco consumida por el fumador pesado es mucho menor que la cantidad de marihuana consumida por el fumador pesado de marihuana.

De ser legal también estuviese disponible en bebidas, o en tes (legales en algunos países del medio oriente), lo cual es perfectamente seguro, libre de agentes cancerígenos.

Mito #4: La marihuana hace perder la memoria temporal

Esto es cierto pero mal entendido. Cualquier efecto negativo en la memoria desaparece una vez que el efecto de la marihuana ha pasado. No hay ningún daño permanente.

Mito #5: La marihuana “aplasta” las ondas cerebrales

Esto fue una mentira barata preparada por el Partnership for a Drug-Free America. Hace unos años pusieron un comercial en la TV que mostraba primero una onda cerebral y luego una onda cerebral mas plana de un adolescente de 14 años bajo los efectos de la marihuana.

Cuando investigadores llamaron a las televisoras para quejarse de la falacia de este comercial no tuvieron mas opción que quitar el comercial del aire.

En realidad, la marihuana tiene el efecto de incrementar un poco la actividad de la onda Alfa. Las ondas Alfa son asociadas con estados meditativos y de relajación, los cuales son asociados con la creatividad humana.

En mi experiencia personal intento hacer juegos mentales cuando estoy bajo los efectos de la marihuana y muchas veces termino sorprendido de las cosas que logro visualizar, recordar o entender desde perspectivas muy diferentes a cuando estoy completamente sobrio.

[ad#Gubatron-Adsense-336x280IMG]

A veces intento diseñar abstracciones complejas (como hacer software para interpretar la realidad visual) preguntándome preguntas difíciles y llegando a un nivel de detalle impresionante en mis reflexiones. Conversaciones sobre el concepto de realidad, del tiempo y cosas no tangibles puede ser realmente estimulante.

Realidad: Nadie ha muerto por una sobredosis de marihuana

La cantidad de canabinoides para que una persona se intoxique, es decir, empezar a “volar” tiene una relación de 1 a 40,000 para la cantidad necesaria para matar a esa persona.

En otras palabras, para sufrir una sobre dosis de marihuana tienes que consumir 40mil veces mas de lo que necesitas consumir para estar “en la nota”. Algo imposible en la practica, podrias fumarte 40,000 rolls en unas 4 horas? Y si pudieras de donde los sacarias?.

Con el alcohol esta relación es de 1 a 4 y de 1 a 10 dependiendo la persona.

Anualmente mas de 5,000 personas mueren por sobredosis de alcohol, nadie, NADIE NUNCA HA MUERTO por sobredosis de marihuana.

Adicionalmente anualmente 440,000 personas mueren (en USA nada mas) por causa del cigarrillo, en promedio hoy moriran 1205 personas y el gobierno anda preocupandose por los terroristas? Esto es un 9/11 cada 2 dias!!! WTF…

Si has leído este post y has estado conmigo durante la lectura, la pregunta mas obvia que te debes estar haciendo en este momento es la siguiente

“Entonces porque carajo es ilegal?”

Por muchos motivos, pero eso será tema de otro post.

Atribuciones Fotograficas
Pink por “thöR

Peazo Cogollo por r0bz

C A N N A B I S by Fucking Fantastic (*)

The Link Between Cigarettes and Cancer Illustrated by vvanhee

                          

They say you gotta make magic out of what you got. After leaving NY, it’s hard not to miss it, it’s an incomparable city and you have to find the highlights of where you live.

In Miami (thankfully I don’t have a jealous wife) I think one of the ups are the women. In NY at this time of the year you’ll hardly see any skin, in Miami there’s plenty to see and best of all the women are gorgeous down here. You got all sorts of latin curvy women and also the European models that come down here for the weather or swimsuit photo shoots, if you’re in South Beach you’ll have your head turning.

Enjoy the first of several volumes of my voyeur photographic adventures in South Beach, FL.

“There are so many models in South Beach, it may be the one city in the world where the average height of women is taller than the average height of men”

South Beach on the Net

” Everyone wants to stop and watch a photo shoot, and during “the season” (September to April), anyone walking around Ocean Drive or Lincoln Road will undoubtedly come across one, or more typically several. “

South Beach on the Net

                          

If you’re not scared it’s my intention to shake you up a little bit. Let’s see what Google has done and what it’s trying to do.

Google controls over %70 of the Web Search Traffic, and over 57% of all advertising on the internet

Google started as a Search company and they’re supposedly great at it (until someone else can show us better) so everyone uses their search and that means Google knows what everyone wants on the internet, therefore giving it one hell of an advantage over everyone else when it comes to decision making of any kind. What technologies to build, What websites are successful (which services should they buy or compete against). They know about all trends of all kinds. From lottery ticket search, to medicine search, to what new website is being searched for.

Their great search capabilities made them hit gold when they started advertising next to search results. They made so much money that they were able to buy lots of ad networks including very powerful ones like DoubleClick ($3 billion, April 13 2007) which together with Adsense control 57% of the market share of Internet advertising.

Just know that pretty much almost every ad printed on the web puts money in Google’s Pockets, the company that controls search. I wonder if their PageRank algorithm also includes the eCPM of the ads shown on the target sites, if not, it’s a direct consequence of being on the top search results that you’ll get more visitors thus making your CPM pay higher… it’s all a little fucked up the amount of control they have.

And let’s not to forget that the little publisher on Adsense Gets Pwned with probably less than 10% of the cost of the click (Google gets $2 a click, you get less than $0.20 for that click), a percentage that is never shown to the publisher, a percentage that Google can adjust to their liking however they want. If you can sell your own ads, do so (and then tell me how).

On top of that, there’s tons of money to make on statistics for all of that search data. You may want to read about a company called DemandMedia.com , in short they buy a lot of search engine data (probably Google’s included in there) so that they can generate a list of the things people want to know about every day, then they match that data to marketing databases (to see what the highest priced keywords are, data which may come from Google Adsense statistics) and they make a list of about 4,000 video titles, which they shoot and distribute EVERY SINGLE DAY.

Internet Video

YouTube… owned by Google, gets close to 100 million unique visitors every month. They’re the most influential video service on the internet. There are companies that exist and thrive (making millions a year) only because youtube is there (think again if you believe youtube is not making money). Oh and they know what you’re watching.

Privacy Stuff
Let’s forget about Search and Ad Monopoly, that’s their money maker, let’s start thinking about the creepier stuff, power.

GMail alone as of July 2009 had an approximate of 146 million unique users during one month. That’s a lot of conversations being tracked in one way or the other. Can’t imagine all the money they make on Gmail alone, since it’s one of the applications that people keep open most of the day, and that’s a lot of contextual ads right there, plus a lot of tracking on clicks to external sites linked inside the emails you read.

So they did Email great, you gotta give them that, but then they also have Groups, GTalk (instant messaging) and more recently they were talking about redefining email with Google Wave (which has been in my perspective a total failure, nobody is ever logged in or replying to the waves, it needs to integrate with email in order to replace it, maybe that’ll be the key and since they’re smart they should know this but they’re waiting for the right time…)

This year Google has gotten super scary with all the announcements they’ve made, one of the scariest is Google Public DNS, the service that converts a domain name like “google.com”, into an IP address so that your computer can connect to it.

Boasting on their excellence and good performance they’re trying to convince system administrators to switch over to Google Public DNS.
What do we know if already our local ISPs have turned off their own DNS servers and just redirected all requests to 8.8.8.8 (Google’s DNS) to save on costs and to have one less thing to manage?.

This is pretty scary because Google now would know where you go, even if you don’t use Google.com

Another really scary thing is having this company also build for you the web browser. Not only they control all the traffic, but they want to control the application that you use to browse the web. They already own Firefox (a nice +$50 million dollar/year tax deduction) whose default search is, you guessed it… Google, and now they even want to make an Operating System that runs only their browser with the purpose of having you log in with your Google Account every time you turn on your computer (currently aimed at Netbooks, please install Ubuntu Netbook Remix and be safe)

If their plans go accordingly, they’d be controlling everything, from every request that comes out of your internet connection (DNS), to the kernel and browser in your computer, to your email, to your documents (Google Apps), to where you go (Google Maps), to where you are (Google Latitude).

And if that’s not enough, they want to give you a phone number (Google Voice) and transcribe your conversations and voice messages… but wait I forgot they’ve also built an operating system for your phone, Android, and next month they will sell their own phone.

Are you scared yet?

Other Services:
Google Healthcare (They want your medical records too)
Google URL Shortener (They want to track all the clicks inside Twitter and Facebook, they couldn’t let other companies deal with this, bit.ly FTW!)
Google Finance (They also know what stock quotes a lot of people are looking for)
Google Reader (They know what news and feeds you’re reading)
Google News (They want to control what news are read)
Google Blogger (They know what you write about, and bank on you)
Picassa (They want your pictures)
Google Maps and Driving Directions on Android (They want to know where you’re going)
Google Product Search (They wanna know what you’re shopping for)
Google Checkout (Do they have your credit card number yet?)
GMail (They know your contact list, who you talk to, who you do business with, what you want, what you hate, everything)
and so many other scary things… they must be so pissed they don’t own Facebook. Way to go Mark.
Google Buzz (They want to know conversational trends and what people are linking to amongst themselves, They couldn’t let Twitter take that piece of the cake)

The scariest part however is that everyone is just looking at how convenient all this free services are, praising Google but not thinking if there’s a hidden agenda, it’s like nobody could ever suspect the real intentions. At least with Microsoft you knew what to expect. Doesn’t it all sound like an internet monopoly? It’s becoming impossible to compete with such a big monster… however like a friend said “History repeats, all Giants fall eventually”

Google wants every byte coming in and out of you, they own every major piece of the action, it’s all becoming like big media and newspapers, like the food industry which is controlled by only a handful of corporations and we really have no choice in what we eat because everything is so cheap and convenient.

Google at this pace will own the internet, or should we call it The Googlenet.

Suggested Reads

Google Hypocritical on the Importance of Privacy (Superb read)

                          

After working with Fitim and the crew at MyBloop, them being avid Starcraft, Diablo, WOW, Warhammer and many other RPG style games, they instilled in me the phrase “To Pwn” or “Pwnage” whenever we did something difficult in terms of programming or linux hacking when working on MyBloop.com. It was a way to say that we’d be superior to other developers who had no clue about the shit we were pulling off on that bare-bones-cheap-custom-hardware-file-server-cluster-web-app of ours.

When something was over the top we’d say “Sick Pnwage”. If we’d be coding during the weekend we’d say “I’ll be Pwning this weekend”, and so on.

I liked the phrase so much that had to make a t-shirt to commemorate it for years to come.

See the Previous T-Shirt

See the Next T-Shirt

                          

After I started working from home, and not commuting I realized the best time I had to read every day was the subway ride to and back from work.

I guess it was sort of a guilty pleasure to sometimes wish for the subway train to not arrive so early so you could read a little more before you got to work.

Now, between work, marathon training and life, I barely have any time left to read and I sometimes feel guilty to take the time to read. Usually I do so right before I go to bed, and I can only keep my eyes open for maybe 10 minutes so I’m not progressing in any of these very much.

I guess public transit commuting wasn’t so bad after all.

What do you advise? Should I read one by one? take a whole weekend and do nothing but read? How do you fight sleepiness?

                          

Wouldn’t it be nice to send a command to all of them at once? or to monitor all of them at once.

The following script can be used as a building block to more complex automation tasks for a small size set of servers. (If you’re managing over 50 servers, I’d probably consider looking a different way to arrange servers (map/reduce cluster), but if you’re doing something below that number this might suffice)

#!/usr/bin/python                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

#########################################################
# Author: Angel Leon (gubatron@gmail.com) - October 2009
#
# Invokes a command locally and invokes the same command
# in all machines under the specified username, servers
#
# Requirement: Have a public ssh_key for that user on all
# the other machines so you don't have to authenticate
# on all the other machines.
#########################################################
import sys
import os

# set the username that has access to all the machines here
user='safeuser'

# add all your server names here
servers=['server1.mydomain.com','server2.mydomain.com','server3.mydomain.com']

if __name__ == "__main__":
  if len(sys.argv) < 2:
    print "Usage: ssh_map_command "
    sys.exit(0)

  cmd= ' '.join(sys.argv[1:])

  #Execute locally first
  print cmd
  os.system(cmd)

  #Execute for all the servers in the list
  for server in servers:
    remote_cmd="ssh %s@%s %s" % (user,server,cmd)
    print remote_cmd
    os.system(remote_cmd)
    print

Save as ssh_map_command and chmod +x it.

Sample uses
Check the average load of all machines at once (then use output to mitigate high load issues)

$ ssh_map_command uptime

Send HUP signal to all your web servers (put it in an alias or other script… and that’s how you start building more complex scripts)

$ ssh_map_command ps aux | grep [l]ighttpd | kill -HUP `awk {'print $2'}`

Check if processes are alive, check memory usage on processes across different machines, grep remote all logs at once, svn up on all machines, rsync from one to many, hey, you can even tail -f and grep all the logs at once, you can go nuts with this thing. Depends on what you need to do.

Requirements

• For convenience you should probably set up ssh public/private keys between the main machine and the other machines (or they can all trust each other and you can execute on any) so that you can execute commands on all the machines without having to enter passwords.
• Put the script on your $PATH.
• python

Security Advisory
Make sure only the desired user has read/write/execute access to it and keep your private ssh keys safe (preferably only read and execute for the owner, and no permissions whatsoever to anybody else chmod 500 ssh_mod_map), if possible change them as often as possible, for it may become a big security whole if an attacker can manage to write code on this script, specially if you have cronjobs invoking it. Your attacker would only need to change code here to mess up all of your machines.

Disclaimer and Call for Knowledge
Please, if someone knows of a standard way to map commands to multiple servers, please let me know in the comment section, in my case I needed a solution and I wrote a quick and dirty python script and tried to secure it as best as I could, by no means I’m saying that this is the best solution to mapping commands, in fact I believe it might be the least efficient way, however it works good enough for my personal needs.

                          

…and follow the instructions on screen.

The process should look something like the following:

Select your Region

Select a city on your time zone

You’re done.

Tip
You can always check the status of your configuration using
sudo debconf-show tzdata

You could for example map that command via ssh to several machines and grep for “*”, that way you could easily spot servers with wrong timezones very quickly.

                          

Click here to see and read the rest. Check out the descriptions and mouse over the images to learn the details.

                          

I made this one when I was at the peak of my PHP fever. It was an homage to perl’s “use strict”

See the previous T-Shirt

See the next T-Shirt

                          

The purpose of this post, is to keep track of those “a-ha” details as I come across them. I’ll update this post as more details come along on my day to day.

• The Power Adapter of the Mac is magnetically shielded. You can put it on top of your computer while it’s still on and you won’t be afraid of loosing data. Not IBM’s Thinkpad’s power adapters are magnetically shielded
• The Ethernet port on the Macbook PRO makes regular ethernet cables work like Cross-over ethernet cables. This really comes in handy if you have another computer next to you and there’s not an ethernet switch nearby. You can just connect directly to that machine, share your internet, transfer files, no need to ask anybody for a cross over cable. This has been this way for years (at least since 2006), I’m not sure if HP or other laptops have these super duper ethernet cards in them.
• Back-lit keyboard. A blessing when coding in the darkness for those of us that sometimes need to look down for a special key. Oh and it will light up when it’s actually dark, freaking awesome.
• Multi touch touchpad (way before many other laptops started implementing it). Double finger tap for right click? can’t live without it
• Awesome battery life, and this is a pretty known fact about macbooks
• I haven’t had my OS crash in … I can’t remember last time it crashed fully
• Very quiet fan
• The power adapter connector has that little magnet, people can trip over it and it won’t pull your laptop to the floor




• The power adapter is modular, basically you can decide whether or not to carry with you a long ass cable or keep the adapter with the smaller patch cord that goes to your computer. Also you can switch it’s connector to the European style connector which comes with the computer. It seems apple knows its user base might travel abroad sometime




• The power adapter has these two ears which can open and close. Their purpose is to let you wrap the thinner cable that goes to the computer. It’s great if you don’t want to have too much cable laying around or when you’re on the go and you need to wrap up things inside your bag. Kudos to the designers of the Power Adapter




• As for the OS goes, I consider it a Linux where everything works right off
• In Mac OSX everything just works as expected or better. Some good examples of things that work better than in other OSes are Wireless configuration, Internet Sharing, Multiple Display configuration is amazingly intuitive to set up
• My last Macbook PRO I’ve been using it for almost 3 years and there’s no real need to get a new one, it’s still pretty fast after 2 major Mac OSX upgrades
• The Sleep and Wake up functionality actually work, I can’t say the same for my Alienware and Vista, where sometimes it will never wake up, or it won’t really be sleeping and it’ll get all hot and kill the battery
• If you ever open the Macbook, it’s a like a “work of art” inside. The way they’ve arranged everything, changing a hardrive or the keyboard is very easy and quite fun
• The native tool for screen shots is really convenient, not only for all the different ways in which you can snap your screen, but it’s also a nice pixel measuring tool for web developers and graphic designers
• Having a console, which comes with all the standard linux tool makes you remember windows and it’s cmd.exe and laugh about how arcaic it is
• Being able to have the Automator to Visually Script things like Resizing a Bunch of Pictures and copying them somewhere else once you’ve downloaded big resolution images from your camera and you want to upload them to flickr… priceless
• /Applications/Utilities/Console.app – a debugging blessing to find out why things might be going wrong with a specific process. I should probably not brag about the software since that’s getting into Mac OSX realm and that’s a whole different subject of why you can’t go back, again Linux that works right off, or Linux for Dummies.
• Pressing Space bar over files on the Finder brings that super fast preview for Images, PDFs, Videos and even audio files
• Being able to Customize the Finder adding and removing buttons to simplify or specialize it (equivalent of Windows Explorer)
• Burning CD/DVDs is amazingly simple, no need for 3rd party software
• Typing on a Mac keyboard is addicting, feels really good on the finger tips, the sound of it is music to my ears
• No more viruses to fear, or antiviruses to slow you down

                          

cat ~/.bash_history | sort | uniq -c | sort -r | head

In my case they are (for this week)

ls
fg
svnSync (script I created)
stats_fetch; stats_display (other scripts)
cd
crontab -e
ps aux | grep
ssh_map_command (another script)
python
emacs -nw

                          

It’s very interesting and sad to see what are the top 10 “why” questions from about 148 million people that used Google as of last month.

Top 10 “Why” questions in English

Why Poems?
I guess some people are very jaded, or don’t get why do we have poems. I’d say this would be the same as “Why Music”, “Why Movies”. Sad… or maybe they’re looking for poems that ask the question “why”? I don’t get this one.

The top 3 US states asking “Why Poems” are Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.

why live
A lot of suicidal people looking for answers in Google, crazy shit. Let’s hope Google’s first result page is very encouraging to keep living. The first result goes to suicide.com. Again, Sad, but interesting to see that there’s a lot of people who ask themselves that question. I must be one very happy person, never crossed my mind such a thing.

The top 3 states with suicidal tendencies on Google seem to be Kentucky, Iowa and Rhode Island. Things must be hard in those places these days.

why jokes
There seems to be a bunch of “why” jokes around. The first search result takes you to a long ass list of jokes that start with the word “why”. For example:

Why is “abbreviated” such a long word?

The top 3 states in need of why jokes are currently Michigan, Indiana and Iowa.

why jason aldean
No clue who’s this dude, but let’s see why they ask why him…
First search result takes you to a YouTube Music video of a country love song. Good choice of a word, I bet there’s been lots of “Why” songs, but this one is the one kicking ass now.

The top 3 states where this question comes from are, West Virginia, Kentucky and Maine.

why is the sky blue
This is a very popular one, and Google often uses it on it’s PSAs for Google Adsense.
The answer lies in light and the atmosphere.

The top 3 states wondering about the color of the sky are Michigan, Kentucky and Utah. They must have pretty blue skies over there.

why to men have nipples
Good one! This is a very tough to answer, there’s really no definite explanation, mine would be that we have still a few thousand or more years to go until we mutate and get rid of them, pretty much evolution in the process is my belief.

Top 3 states wondering about man nipples are Nevada, Tennessee and Indiana.

why did michael jackson turn white
This one truly cracked me up. Out of all why questions in the world, the majority of people using google are wondering about what happen to one man. Leave the poor guy alone. The first search result takes you to a cronological essay about Michael Jackson’s morphosis, I bet it does answer it. The second result is an answer in Wiki Answers which tells us 3 theories, but in the end none knows how he actually did it, it’s all rumors that eventually will come out unless all the parties involved die and no documentation is left behind about the procedures.

I guess if someone knew how to do this and it was an easy process there would already be one huge industry for self-racists to convert to white. I know a few myself that would be inline as soon as they’d have the money.

The top 3 states wondering about Michael Jackson’s pigmentation changes are Florida, New York and New Jersey.

why do dogs eat grass
So I guess a lot of Dog owners can’t figure out why their carnivore pets tend to be mowing the lawn or eating grass and then vomiting.

Top 3 dog owner states wondering about this behaviour are Oklahoma, Louisiana and Kentucky.

I’m starting to think that people in Kentucky need to have a lot of questions answered, where the hell did we ask for questions before Google, I guess we lived in a world ruled by rumors and miss-information since most people didn’t really go to the library to have mundane questions answered.

why did I get married
Again, some people think of Google as their psychologist or as a frustration release text box… or maybe they’re just looking to find out about a movie, which comes up as the first search result.

Top 3 states having second thoughts about their marriage are Mississippi, Louisiana and Georgia.
What’s with the people in the south of this country?

why is my poop green
This tendency seemed to have picked up towards the end of 2008 on Google trends. The first result takes us to a Yahoo! Answers page, and it seems to be related with vegetarians pooping green, with iron, with colorants in food, or deficiencies in the digestive process.

Top 3 states pooping green are Wisconsin, Missouri and Indiana.

Sources: Google and Google Trends.

                          

Minutes later we were talking business, I’m not sure if it was his dad but I know I was supposed to start up an export company in Miami.

Then I’m in New York, somewhere in Brooklyn or Astoria, I had to look up for my mom since I was bringing her down to Miami, she did not live with Nicole. She lived atop a latin restaurant that now was claiming was a healthy place. Outside there was a sign that said “I Lost ___ pounds eating at [I can't remember the name of the restaurant]“, and when I saw it I was like “yeah right”.

I went up stairs, now I remember, this place reminds me of the first room I got in West New York, NJ. It was old, seemed unsafe, and I barely fit through the spiral stairs which were surrounded by white metal bars. I only had the key to downstairs, before I called my mom looked out and saw me, can’t remember what she said.

Next thing we’re somewhere far, the dream or what I remember from it mixes parts from a long river with yellow transparent waters, a beach area of my childhood, and the mountains of la guaira. It was day but it looked like the night. Then I was showing my mom about a kid who could control the water, and he and a friend came close to where we stood, some sort of cement pier, they came with surfboards and they controlled the water. Then I told her how she should see what he does in the winter with almost frozen water.

She told me to jump and swim in front of them, I looked down, there were rocks at the bottom, but very far down, there was somebody walking down there without a tank, and I said to her no way, she asked why, I bullshitted her about the rocks, I was just afraid to jump.

The water I remember had like a membrane of dirt on top.

I can’t remember much more, but I know the dream goes on to a part where I’m doing some exports and everything is doing well.

September 24th 2009
Dream Log to help achieve Lucid Dreaming

                          

I’m still doing my research on what phone I should get.

How it looked the first day (August 1st, 2007)

                          

If you’re a Ubuntu or Debian user you can try the ones I use by installing the following packages.

sudo apt-get install iptraf ethstatus dstat iftop ifstat nload bwm-ng

Then try each one of those on your command line and have fun exploring what they can do.

If they’re not on the path of your user account, then try them using sudo.
eg. sudo iftop

If this short list of the tools I use does not satisfy you, I suggest you read this more comprehensive list of monitoring tools