Felipe Contreras

I was looking at some Phillip De Franco post and due to some copyright he didn’t include the video. Fortunately he has a link to it on CNN, I just have to watch a couple of ads and then… nothing. I really hate to watch advertisements and not the content I want. Thanks to YouTube I could watch it, I’m not sure if it’s illegal or not, but I watched CNN’s ads anyway already.

That reminds of the constant ads I have to watch when I see some Colbert Report videos. I have almost memorized the same Doritos ad, at least the could try to put different ones to be less annoying. Oh, and I can’t find any Doritos on Finland, so it’s a waste of time for them and for me.

It also makes me think about DRM. A lot of companies put a lot of locks so you can’t download online videos, you need to watch their ads, or pay some money, or you can buy some music but you need a DRM capable player, which limits the platforms you can run that of.

Did these big companies missed the memo? Scarcity is over with digital content. Stop faking scarcity and just let me watch the content when I want it, where I want it, thank you.

For the record the day In Rainbows was released I tried to buy the thing, but I was too lazy to get my debit card, fill all those fields, get the notification e-mail and all that stuff. I got it from bittorrent, I listened to it and the next day I bought it online for 10 euros. I don’t like MP3’s but I don’t have any other option. When the album is available in CD format I’ll download the torrent in FLAC format from bittorrent.

• The Computer Language Shootout Benchmarks
  Benchmarks for different languages for certain specific tasks. Great idea!
• Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS, FOSS, or FLOSS)? Look at the Numbers!
  Extensive research paper about why Open Source Software is a good idea
• Pipes: Last.fm Recent Tracks Youtube
  An interesting Yahoo! Pipe that lists a bunch of YouYube videos of the music I like as last.fm says
• Tim O’Reilly: Web 2.0 Is About Controlling Data
  Web2.0 is about contrilling data; that’s the best explanation (only?) I’ve heard. An article worth reading.

Linux Journal provides an interesting interview with Tim Bray.

I didn’t know this guy, but his interests seem pretty similar to mine ones. Ruby, XML, Atom, equal oportunity to the world.

I specially liked the quote:

The Net itself is a contribution, by humanity to humanity, the engine of future contribution and experience.

I don’t know about you but I’ll definetly add his blog to my blogroll.

Thanks to LUG Paraná I found out this neat journaling client for GNOME called Drivel.

So far it has everything I need… multiple categories would be a nice addition though.

I hope my blogging speed improves with this tool.

Isn’t it amazing how similar minds have similar ideas?

I came up with this project which objective is to promote Free Culture through a video (main idea). I have thought exactly that too

I recommend everyone to check it, you might want to join this effort.

Again, an insightful thought from Jon Phillips.

He wants to find ways to improve USA’s government. His idea is to make a conference to put together people in the Open Source he knows have good opinions on the matter.

While I think that’s a good idea I believe putting together a bunch of Open Source people is to take too few people in consideration. Yes, the quality of the people might be great, but I still think other people’s opinions should be taken in consideration.

Actually, recently I have seen lengthy discussions about certain topics that makes me wonder: we as persons have too many drastically different opinions from one another, the idea that by elections we will have the kind of government we want is frankly silly. So how do we find what we think, or want, as a whole?

I think that’s the fundamental question. And I believe that we as an Open Source community can certainly build a system that allows us to maintain difficult discussions, and systematically arrive to conclusions that one by one define the wishes of a group of people.

Some of the things to keep in mind in my opinion are:

• We all have different backgrounds, so we all have different opinions and personal agendas.
• We all make mistakes.
• Every discussion must have limit in depth, otherwise we might end up discussing the very nature of goodness and badness.
• People are different, and some opinions have more weight than others in certain subjects.
• Each and every point must be discussed, and a consensus must be established.

Now, these are just a bunch of ideas, I certainly hope that somebody else has made a scientific study about how to arrive to useful conclusions from discussions.

I think technology now allows us to have much better communication, and probably with that help implement a good discussion system.

Isn’t it amazing how similar minds have similar ideas?

I came up with this project which objective is to promote Free Culture through a video (main idea). I have thought exactly that too

I recommend everyone to check it, you might want to join this effort.

MSNBC has an interesting article about WoW.

It makes many good points, and it mentions many crazy things I didn’t know; weddings, marches, funerals (in the game but real people died), slaughters in funerals, people gathering gold and selling it in real life, executives closing deals inside the game. The thing that impressed me the most is a girl that died of exhaustion after playing for almost a week without rest… that is absolutely wicked.

Edward Castronova mentions that “In 20 or 30 years the technology will be here to create incredibly more realistic and immersive worlds”. If video games have about 30 years, and information technology is growing exponentially, I have no idea on the things we might see by that time.

These are one of my favourite quotes:

“Yes, it’s just a game (WoW), The way that the real world is a game.” — Joi Ito (Level 60, Gnome Mage, Venture Capitalist)

“Warcraft is the new golf” — Ross Mayfield (Level 60, Human Palladin, CEO of an Internet company)