That bug called L0v3…

Hello again to everyone. The first thing I want to tell this time, is that I’m very happy because there was a lot of you reading my last post. The blog admin panel showed me that more than 800 people were checking my page at the first day, which was stunning for me. I have to say that I love to write on my blog because it’s a pretty nice place to express my ideas and feelings, and that’s all, but then, when you realize that a bunch of some geeks are paying attention to you, oh! this is great.
I’m just 18 years old, and maybe this is not a big deal for all of you, but I must confess that you made me feel like a rockstar for a minute, so that was pretty cool and because that I want to say: T-H-A-N-K Y-O-U!

Ok, now let’s talk about what happened the last week of my life. Ever since I can remember, I felt attracted to technology stuff: computers, Internet, gadgets, you name it. As a geek, the most time of my days has passed with a few friends in the real world and virtual spaces like IRC, MSN or Facebook have become the natural places where I show my face to the rest of the mankind. Definitely to socialize is not one of my outstanding skills, but anyway, what geek does it? We are always so friendly when we are on-line, aren’t we? when we are bits flowing through the network, when the computer screen becomes our shield against reality, but so quiet and shy when we are in the middle of a real party meeting real people. LAN parties are exceptions to the rule, of course!

I don’t want to stigmatize the “computer guys” generation that grew with me, but most of my geek friends are so reserved as me. But you know something? I think is right, I mean, it’s a feature! If Microsoft can label its bugs as “features”, why timidness can’t be a human feature? It shouldn’t be a problem, right? well, It isn’t… except when you fall in love.

Some days ago when I went out looking for CDs around the neighborhood, I meet this pretty girl. She isn’t the first awesome woman I meet, even more, there’s a lot of pretty girls at college, but this time something different happened. For some reason, when I saw her I got frozen. My operating system crashed down, it was in kernel panic, “init 0“, “poweroff“, “halt“, I don’t know how to explain it but that girl turned my world upside down and the only thing she had to do was to appear and since that moment I can’t stop thinking about her.

I wonder about this, I mean really, because this is the first time of my life that I feel all this stuff in just one dose: anxiety, uncertainty, stress, insomnia, worry, sorrow, adrenaline… all those emotions coming from your heart when you are in love. Yes, I’m in love for the first time and her name is Angie, no doubt about it.
Curiously, once I asked to Mom: “How can people know when they fall in love?” and she answered to me: “It’s simple, you just know it!“. In that moment I couldn’t understand it, but right know, I got what she meant exactly. Love is one of those experiences that you can’t explain with words but that you’ll only understand truly when you experience it.

If you ask me, I find a very close similarity between love and software vulnerabilities. In some way, I could say Love is a bug, because:

• It’s unexpected. You’ll never know when it’ll appear
• It changes the behavior of your system. Usually, strange features pop up where you wouldn’t guess it
• If you want to remove it from your box, it’ll take you some time
• Sometimes it can be a “zero day“, so you have no way to scape from it
• When you think your system is safe, then a new vulnerability appears and you fall again
• Any system is vulnerable. It doesn’t matter how young or old you think you are
• It takes many forms. There’s no just one kind of it, but a lot

Maybe I forgot to include some other points, but if you wanna help me with the list, suggestions are welcome

The curious thing about all this, is that Angie isn’t a geek. She is a normal person and I don’t know if a romance between us could work, but I bet it is too early to guess what will happen because, truth be told, she still doesn’t know me. What do you think about relationships between geeks and non-geeks? any story to tell? Comments and advices are very welcome, because right now I’m just a newbie of love platform (Oh God! I sound ridiculous :S)

Sneaking around the Internet, I was looking for information about the topic. As you already know, the Internet is a place where you can find data about everything, so I thought: “I need to find the Love Howto (if something like that exists)“. After a couple of hours I gave up, but I found two funny links that I want to share with you:
* Learn to love on-line
* How to write a love letter

I found some interesting tips there, but I already understood that love is a pragmatic science, so as I said before, only by living the process you can really learn. That’s part of life, I guess.

Like usual, Mom was right: “Every day has it’s own surprise“, now I have to deal with this new experience in my life. As far as I write this post, I’m a system infected with that bug called L0v3…

Skating time, see you later pals!

Teacher : 1 – Tito : 0 (Life is unfair!)

Hello pals! Here I am again! This time, I want to share with you something curious that happened at college some days ago. If you check my Twitter messages, maybe you noticed that I was working on my database final homework. The project scope wasn’t ambitious at all: I had to create some stored procedures in a relational database engine and then, execute them and show the results from a simple web application. Tricky? I don’t think so.
The funny thing happened when I had to present my project to the class and my teacher started to make questions. To make it easier, let me show you a little piece of our conversation:

My teacher: And tell us Tito, what software did you use for this project?
Me: Let me see… Apache, PHP and PostgreSQL
My teacher: PostgreSQL? Why?
Me: Well, it’s a relational database engine and that was part of the project requirements
My teacher: And it supports stored procedures?
Me: Yes sir!
My teacher: But… why didn’t you use Oracle? like the rest of the class?
Me: Because PostgreSQL is a good option
My teacher: Tito, the market says something different
Me: Well, my application is 20 seconds faster than the others
My teacher: You are missing the point… market choice is an important issue when you are going to look for a job
Me: And what’s the point about studying computer scientist if I can’t have my own criterion?
My teacher: Oh Tito, I forgot you are one of those “Free Software kids”… why are you always so obstinate?
Me: Because we think! (and then, I left the classroom).

In the next class, the teacher told us the grades and guess what? I got an “F“. My application was the fastest and well designed, but I got an “F“. ¿F? What the F…! This is unfair, oh! no doubt about it.
When I went to talk to my teacher about my grade, he said: “Nock it off Tito… you had to use Oracle and that’s all! please, stop complaining“.
Complaining? I didn’t have the chance to defend my point! Definitely, this post isn’t about technical stuff, this is about student’s rights. Students have rights… right? At least, I want to believe it.
I was thinking about talking to the college principal about this, but my classmates warned me clearly: that isn’t a good idea. They told me that if I try to argue about this, my teacher will take things in a personal way (I mean brutal revenge) and then, the database class is going to get _really_ tough. My classmates are afraid because if I do a pretty scandal on this, then, a war will begin and they’ll be punished. On the other hand, I don’t want to become the unpopular database class guy… so, my hands are tied for now while my teacher enjoys his dictatorship.

I wonder if someone ever experienced something like this? Did you? I would like to know about another cases, because I don’t know what to do. The only thing I know is that I want justice, I mean: I made the homework, it worked pretty well and I achieved all the project goals, but my prize is an “F“. Well, I don’t agree and I can say it thousands of times: this is unfair! It seems like my blog is the only place where I can relieve myself

I can’t stop thinking about it… What’s the crime about using PostgreSQL if making some improvements I can obtain better results in my queries? What’s wrong being a “Free Software kid“? What should I become? a “Microsoft kid”? an “Oracle kid”? I wonder about what’s the fact which defines my grade. Will I be an “F” kid for the rest of my life? If I keep on using Free Software to do my homeworks, apparently I will :S
After this issue, I started to think on the direct relationship between the Software Industry and the Education Institutions. I guess you already realized this, but I must confess I never did it and now, it worries me… I mean, really. Teachers help us to define a lot of our skills as computer scientists, they represent an strong influence in our career which is a blessing when you meet a great teacher. Unfortunately, you will meet bad teachers too and some of those will be fanatics of some specific software products that probably you don’t like.

I have no problem using proprietary software for some of my homeworks if that’s necessary to understand a new concept, nevertheless, if there are open resources to replace the closed source software, why is sinful to use it?
I mean, it’s our college experience a branding experience? I thought computer science was about concepts and techniques, ideas that you can represent in many ways, not in just one. What seems horrible for me, it’s that for some teachers there only exists the “put_your_company_here way“, and the worst part of all is that they have the means to oblige you to use the software they want: your grade.
Considering all the “Campus Agreements” signed between companies and universities, colleges and schools, it’s easy to understand why the branding experience seems to be a long-term institutional feature for the next generations of students around the world.

I confess I feel confused and powerless on this one… I only hope to pass my Database class

Any comments, advices or whatever are very welcome, my dear virtual friends!

Searching for the good programmer Howto

Hello guys! Welcome back to my place. This time I want to talk about programming. The reason came from my last class. When I got into the classroom, there was a big quote on the blackboard:

“Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.”
                                                            Brian Kernighan

My teacher uses to write famous quotes like that in every class, but I must confess this message shocked me deeply and besides, it inspired me to write this post.
Currently, I know the basics of some programming languages, no big deal at all. But now, I wish to learn the secrets behind good programming. I’m not talking about the tips for some specific language or paradigm, no, I’m talking about the essence of a good programmer. It’s like when you see a soccer crack player and you recognize his unique talent, his unique style. Definitely, I want to develop my own programming style… but, how to do that? Is there a real good programmer HowTo?

Ok, I’m a newbie and I need to learn to crawl before learning to run, I’m aware of that. The last two years I’ve been working with Bash scripting, C, C++, python, perl, java, C# and once I “tasted” the surface of assembler for one hour (tough stuff for me).
For now, it seems that I need years and years of practice. Anyway, I don’t care how much time it takes… from the beginning, I want to do things well.

Some of my classmates, believe that the key for being a good programmer is the IDE (Integrated Development Environment). They quit to their responsibility as developers and let it lies on the programming tool. I just can’t agree with this. I understand that a good IDE can help you to get more productivity, but where should be the talent? within the computer or within me? What’s the role of the IDE? The idea of depending on a software specific application to get my first job in some years ahead, drives me crazy! :S I want to develop my own skills as computer scientist and definitely, I don’t want to be a zombie behind a label like Microsoft .NET Framework or something. I want to be hired because my curriculum, I want to get paid because my work and not for the tools I use… too much to ask?

My neighbor Billy, on the other hand, says that the secret about programming is simple: learning the whole API of the language you want to use. He says that if you know all the functions or methods, then you can write any piece of code you need and that makes you a good programmer. Of course, I don’t agree with him. Programming is more about design, otherwise whether everything depends on the API, create a program should be done by another programs and not for human beings. Don’t you think that?

I know that some scientists are working on that way, using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create virtual developers, and maybe some day, they reach their goal. It sounds awesome, no doubt about it, even more, I can imagine it: high-speed big machines creating algorithms to resolve complex problems in a bunch of nanoseconds. Some of you could be thinking: “that’s not the future, that’s the present!” and I say: yes… but, can they solve any kind of problem? I don’t think so, and far away, I must say: I don’t care. Why? well, in my personal opinion, I feel programming is an art, like writing or painting… it requires you put some of your soul on it. How could a machine do that?
Of course, I understand the market approaching: code lines are just a set of cryptic messages behind the software, and the only point which matters is to sell that software (money talks again). “If it compiles, sell it!” is the favorite quote of my teacher when he talks to us about the way the big software companies work.

To think as an artist when I try to write a piece of code, is a mistake? Who’s a good programmer? That one who creates bigger programs quickly? or that one who writes correct software to solve a problem? What is the key of good software? millions of code lines? Who cares about the beauty of code on this days? If you have any hint about this, please, let me know.

In my programming class, I learned a few things about Software Quality Assurance (SQA). As far as I understood, this technique helps you to detect the errors in the software you are developing, which is good, because I don’t want to create computer programs to cause problems but to fix them. The point is, can be a piece of software either free of errors and ugly code at the same time? I would like to think it is impossible, but I have no enough experience to give a good answer. The only thing I can say is that I don’t want to write ugly code. By the way, who made the SQA test for Windows Vista? Someone did it before Microsoft started to sell it? I still remember reading in Dell’s websites: “Dell recomends Windows Vista” on those days when the whole world started to claim because the unstable product and the terrible hardware support (Vista capable sounds familiar for you?). Marketing is a dark art, isn’t it?

For now, I’m trying to find my own style looking into the code of famous programmers like Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox and Miguel de Icaza. I’ve been studying some of their projects and coding my own small programs, realizing the features they include in their code. The process is slow and I will need my whole life to get high skills, I know that and I have to do it because this is my nature, after all, I’m g33k and I love programming!

If you have any advice for me about this topic, any help is very very welcome

print “See you later! pals! Time to skate! \n”

PS: By the way, I recommend you to read the article “How to recognize a good programmer“. Nice stuff!

Linux Inside… Linux Everywhere!

Hi everyone… (Is there someone there? I hope so!). Last week I had to face the college exams season, yeah, hard stuff, so I had to study a lot and, of course, I hadn’t time to post (not one minute) but guess what??? here I’m again!

This time I want to talk about the quiet way Linux or GNU/Linux or FLOSS Linux or whatever you wanna call it, is spreading around the world. But I’m not talking about the desktop or server market, oh no, I’m talking about the invisible world of the embedded systems, I mean, all those gadgets running Linux that you could be using everyday but you just don’t know it; your wifi router, your cell phone, your pda, your game console or maybe another little closed box sitting somewhere in your house, who knows? if it’s an electronic gadget, then, there’s a chance that Linux is running inside.

The idea about this post started some days ago, when Mom bought something called TiVo, I guess you already heard about it, if you don’t, it is the pioneer of the digital video recorder (DVR), so, now Mom can record all the soap operas she can’t watch when she is working or shopping far away from home and then, when she comes back at night, she can watch all the TV shows she missed. Yes, handy stuff. So, I decided to look for more information about TiVo in Wikipedia, and it was when I realized that it runs Linux! Pretty curious thing, I mean, Mom uses Linux but she doesn’t know it!

Some people say that “Linux is hard to use for end users“, but I think that people can use it as long as nobody tells them they are using it. In fact, I know a business in my city which offers Internet access using Linux and most people don’t know it. The trick is simple, they installed Ubuntu with a Windows XP theme in every computer, so, if you are a basic user who just read your mail, write a letter or check out your Facebook account using a browser, well, you wont’ notice you are using Linux. The first time I went there, I said to the manager: “Hey! all these boxes run Linux, it’s great!” and he answered me: “Quiet kid! nobody knows it, that’s the success of the business; please, keep the secret“.

The curious thing about the people’s fear of Linux, is that their enemy (I mean Linux) is becoming invisible to them, so, every new day, it’s harder to know when and where you are working with it. How many people know what’s behind Google’s search engine? Everybody uses it, but too few understand that the large cluster doing the magic is made of Linux servers.

Now let’s talk about small gadgets, what about cellphones? If you have a G1 (the Google’s product), the software inside your phone is Android, which is nothing else but another version of Linux. Even more, sneaking around the Internet, I found out that with less than a year in the market, as of March, the G1 already got the 5% of the US web traffic market-share.
More on my investigation: On 2005, Nokia launched the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, not a cellphone, but maybe the pretext to start thinking about including Linux in their products. Now, they have Maemo (a Debian based distro) and they bought Trolltech, so they have Qt. The equation is complete! They can do it!
Unfortunately, I was looking for Linux-based cell phones in the Nokia website, but I couldn’t find one. Do you know of one? I’d appreciate if you let me know.
Definitely, FLOSS is introducing its roots in every pie of the techno-industry. I have to be fair saying that even iPhone OS (a pretty closed source product) has a past related with an open Unix version (BSD). Right now, with all the big players of the phone’s industry pointing to Linux, I ask to myself: What will happen with Windows CE? What’s your bet?

Looking around for more information about gadgets using Linux, I found this pretty place called “Linux Devices“. Please, take a look there. I got shocked when I saw the list of toys and let me tell you: it’s endless!!! A lot of small boards and cards support Linux, which means, you can create any kind of little electronic device: routers, switches, ip cams, you name it.
Did you name robots? No? well, you should, because they already do and they look handsome! Who knows? Maybe some day, we’ll send satellites to the space with Linux inside, or maybe we already did it!

To finish, I must say the future’s trend won’t be different, ¿Have you heard about the GENIVI Alliance?, well, me neither until today. Quoting from the official website:

“GENIVI is a non-profit industry alliance committed to driving the broad adoption of an In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) reference platform. GENIVI will accomplish this by aligning requirements, delivering reference implementations, offering certification programs and fostering a vibrant open source IVI community.“

About the platform, they say:

“It consists of linux-based core services, middleware, and open application layer interfaces and establishes a foundation upon which automobile manufacturers and their suppliers can add their differentiated products and services.“

And who is behind this proposal? Let me tell you: BMW Group, Wind River, Intel, GM, PSA, Delphi, Magneti-Marelli, and Visteon. Small group, right?

I have to say the future seems open. After this post, I look around my room and I can’t stop feeling that Linux is surrounding me, but not in my box, neither in my laptop… it’s beyond, it’s in the air… as a fresh smell of freedom

Ok, fair enough for now. I need to keep studying for my exams. Keep in touch kids!

Microsoft vs Free/Open Source Software: What’s the score as of now?

Hello GeeK people there!

The first quarter of this year came to us with a lot of memorable news and as usual in technology business, with many surprises. On the other hand, the tough fight between Microsoft and the Free Software movement never stops and headlines are popping up all the time around Internet news sites. There is always fun for techno-readers, isn’t there? Thinking about it, I decided to write this post.

Sneaking around some weeks ago, I found this bunch of interesting news:

• Canonical is close to being self-sustaining
• Microsoft to lay off 5,000 workers
• Brazil carries out world’s largest desktop virtualisation project (Using Free Software)
• Ballmer admits Linux, Android threat to Windows

After reading these articles, I had the feeling that something big is coming up… but don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to sound radical, I mean, the empire isn’t over and surely, a lot of years will pass by before Microsoft loses its worldwide monopoly. The real question is: How much power is losing Microsoft? Do you dare to give a percent in relation to past years? This issue picked my curiosity, even more, when the Internet media is full of FUD and disinformation. For example, my programming teacher told me about a Microsoft’s Campaign called “Get the facts”. Did you know it? I wrote about it before.

Things are changing, no doubt about it, but how far? I have no access to confidence numbers (though I was investigating about it in the Internet for days), and I guess too few people around the world really have it; you know, it’s a matter of business and besides, a very funny point: everything in technology is about bluffing, isn’t it? at least, that’s my impression every time I read the interviews to any CEO.
They are always trying to make you believe in something… but usually, the facts are absolutely different.
It’s like when Steve Ballmer blamed pirates for poor Vista sales, did you believe that? come on! I mean, the poor Vista sales have nothing to do with its excessive hardware requirements? or the high number of bugs people found while they used the operating system? With a simple search, you can find thousands and thousands of forums and blogs from users talking about it and even more.
When they launched Vista, from my point of view, they released a bugs storm (the product simply wasn’t ready) and that’s an irony, because Microsoft tried to “get the facts” to hold the market but now, the real facts have came back, but to strike it. So, What’s the lesson? Maybe: never play with facts.

But, let the past to pass… and let’s think about the future. Right now, the people in Redmond is fighting against the clock to get ready their new product: Windows 7. Ok, reading from Wikipedia I found this: Windows XP was released in 2001, and Vista in 2006. Five years passed by between these versions, and although Windows 7 will be developed in three years (in theory), Bill Gates has mentioned it could be released within 2009 (smell like bluffing? of course!). The million dollar question is: Will Microsoft make the same mistake it made with Vista? What could happen with Microsoft if Windows 7 becomes another buggy version of Vista? I wonder whether the market can resist another global bad product or the Redmond’s giant can hold its power forever (no matter of mistakes they do) just using money and influences. If you can remember, Microsoft has been involved in many scandals far away from business issues, I mean, political affairs. So, Are they invincible? What do you think? Make your bet!

This topic reminds me my History class in high school. My teacher said that slavery was a business model some centuries ago, then French revolution came bringing to the world the declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen. Many countries started to abolish slavery and a lot of people tasted the flavor of freedom for the first time in their lifes; but the thing wasn’t so easy. Slavery dealers had money, and with money you always can buy power, you know, politicians. So, in some countries freedom came later, because laws were modified to prolong slavery legally.
Now, I see something similar, people demands free access to software, to source code, but big companies don’t want to lose their power, so, they are doing exactly the same thing slavery dealers did a long time ago. Are we repeating history? My teacher used to say: “History is a loop” and I think he is right; after every empire, there is a revolution and then, the next empire (so on). Is this part of our human nature? Fortunately, the wish for freedom too

For now, the Free/Open Source Software movement keeps surrounding the planet with the strong support of companies like Canonical, Novell and RedHat and users (including me!!! ), like a big army of small ants; quietly but working hard all the time. When I think about it, that’s makes me feel good (I have to say it).
But, How far is the Free Software from conquering the 50% of the global market? I hope we are close to, the point is… How close? What’s the score right now? Any idea?

Chores time. College is getting tough… see you later pals!

Yes! GeeK women are for real! :)

Hello pals… here I’m again, blogging time!

As you already know, some days ago the world celebrated the “International Women’s day“, a nice occasion to congratulate to all the women I know, Mom first.
I think I love them all, but that day I was thinking about a little special kind of them: Oh! yes, the Geek women. Some of my friends think that they are a myth, a legend, something unreal. Nevertheless, I think they exist; not in my classroom, but in other places of the world, they do.

I understand the point of view of my friends, I mean, in my college there are many girls, but just a handful of them really love Geek stuff, you know: programming, hacking, reading Unix books and things like that. Why is this? I have no idea, but at least in my classroom is a fact.
Why are too few girls in my classroom? I don’t know it neither. I guess this deserves a new investigation… the subject: Geek women around the world… so, here we go!

Sneaking around Google, among a lot of links, I found an interesting article called “Top Ten Geek Girls“, it lists some of the most incredible girls in history of technology and science. When I read it, I feel myself so little, so insignificant… the achievements of those girls are awesome! and I have to admit I hope to be like one of them some day in my life.

I want to reference someone in special: Grace Hopper. As computer science student, I feel an special link with her career. Let’s quote a chunk of her life from the article:

“Hopper was the quintessential geek. Not content with inventing the Mark I Calculator, she wrote the first compiler (broadly, a piece of software that converts text written in a programming language into more efficient machine code). Her invention led to the creation of COBOL. Hopper’s contribution to the world of computers cannot be underestimated: she pioneered the idea of using programming languages that bear some relation to the English language, and then using a compiler to convert these into a form that a computer can rapidly digest. While this idea seems obvious to any modern programmer, in Hopper’s day it was a completely original philosophy. She also famously discovered a moth causing a computer to malfunction — the first recorded case of a real computer bug.“

What kind of geek wouldn’t dream of having a grandmother like her? She created the concept of “Bug” and I love to be a beta-tester, so, I feel a very strong connection with her. My admiration is endless, she inspires me (I have to confess).
Of course, Grace wasn’t the only woman in the Geek history; even more, the list of Geek women isn’t short. Maybe in the past, they were a small group, but now it’s quite different, not only in the academic scope, but in the technology business too.

Looking for names in the present, I found one of the many girls doing history in the Geek scene. She is Justine Cassell and I want to quote some words about her:

“Justine is now an Associate Professor at MIT’s Media Laboratory and the director of their Gesture and Narrative Language Research Group. With her students, Justine studies natural forms of communication with technology, particularly Embodied Conversational Agents. These Agents are life-size computer-generated figures that are captured on a screen and respond with appropriate speech, body movements, and facial expressions to the behaviors of a human standing in front of them.“

Oh my God! when I read things like this, immediately I want to finish my degree today and then start some kind of spectacular software project. Nevertheless, I have to wait four years more… unfortunately, patience is not one of my skills

But there’s something important to say about this topic, life isn’t so easy for this women or for any woman who wants to be part of the Geek elite. As part of my research, I found this interesting article called “Where are the Geek Women?“, talking about all the issues women have to face when they try to get success as professionals and entrepreneurs in the technology business. The conclusion is a little sad: currently, too few women can make it up. So, the list of geek girls I found is large, but it should be larger and maybe that explains why there are too few geek women in my college, and perhaps in yours too. Fortunately, there are some sites around the Internet focused on enforcing geek girls groups like Linux Chix, Debian Women and Girl Geeks (I hope to see a lot more in the future).

However, I was reading the stories of many Geek women (Indu Navar, Laura Demmons, Kristin Asleson McDonnell, Lissa Morgenthaler-Jones, Mary Tagliaferri, etc) and everyone was incredible, motivating. Definitely, the open source movement requires the women support to keep on growing, their contributions are great and I must say they have a special touch

Finally, I have to say that I am not expecting to have a Geek girlfriend (it would be great && not imperative) but the true is that they are great and they are for real!

Skating time friends, see you later

PS: If you want to help us to invite women to join to the Linux world, I recommend you to check out this Howto.

Cloud Computing… a cloudy concept

Hi… here I’m again This time, I want to post a note related to a very popular term since last year. Yes, “Cloud Computing“, as you already know it, everyone is talking about it. This time, I had no problem looking for sources, even more, I found too many links. The real problem was to select the best information, and that’s the point which worries me the most, I expend hours and hours reading, trying to learn about the topics I want to understand, but as try to cover a wider subject, there are more and more links to follow… becoming an endless task.
Don’t get me wrong, I like to learn and to read, but on the other hand, I don’t like to feel like I’m losing the focus of my research. Never mind.

Ok, let’s start defining the term from Wikipedia (it became my standard now):

Cloud Computing: it refers to the use of Internet (”cloud”) based computer technology for a variety of services. It is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualised resources are provided as a service over the Internet.

After I read those lines, I got very confused, I mean: Cloud Computing defines what the Internet has been from the beginning, nothing new (or I miss something?). At this point, I ask: Is this expression just a market concept created by companies to sell the next version of what was named as “Web 2.0“?
I have this feeling, because I found a lot of terms related to the first one: Cloud Applications, Cloud Clients, Cloud Infrastructure, Cloud platforms, Cloud Services, Cloud Storage, Cloud Computing Providers, Cloud Computing Users, Cloud Computing Vendors, Cloud Standards, you name it. I wouldn’t wonder whether there is Cloud Computing underwear :S

As far as I was reading, I found nothing really special or different to the services or proposals I already heard before: Ajax/HTML5 technologies (by the way, I am learning it and it’s pretty cool), Applications as Services (i.e. Google tools), Infrastructure as Service (i.e. Storage rent), Platforms as Service (i.e. Amazon EC2), Social Networking (i.e. Facebook), Virtualization (VirtualBox), etc.

Maybe I’m wrong… and if I do, please, help me to understand what is the actual innovation behind the term Cloud Computing? It doesn’t matter how many times I read the articles, the only thing I can find is a lot of people trying to speak in a fancy way about what the Internet use to be: a cloud of services.

I can’t ignore the consequences of the “Web 2.0″, definitely a new age for the Internet. With every new day, more and more of our data is stored in the cloud and less in our own hard disks. Think about it for a minute:

• In the past, people used to read their mail from his Pop client (Outlook, Thunderbird, etc), now everybody has a Gmail/Hotmail account.
• In the past, people used to store family pictures in their computers, now a lot of persons use Picasa and Flickr.
• In the past, people used to publish their personal home pages from different places, now they have blogs from centralized sites like WordPress or Blogspot (including me).

See what I mean? All our information is going to the network, so, ¿Is this trend what Cloud Computing means? the concept is still fuzzy for me

As part of my research, I found a post called “The network is the computer“, related to how Internet services are replacing the companies’ local infrastructure but the text was published in 2006, three years ago, which made me think about how recent or new the “Cloud Computing” concept really is.

Is Cloud Computing the “Web 3.0″? I don’t know… but I don’t think so. The curious thing about this topic, is that all the companies who led the Web 2.0 wave are the same leading the services behind the so called “cloud”. Google, Amazon, Yahoo and maybe Sun and Microsoft, among others.

Sometimes I wonder about the way big companies try to hit us with apparently new concepts, new products or new ideas in a desperate pursuit for selling something to the world. Then again, Is the “Cloud Computing” just a commercial way to speak about the future of the “Web 2.0″?
At this point, I can’t stop thinking about the fairy tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes” (Do you remember it from school?). After I heard so many times about vaporware, nothing surprises me.

Now, I would like to talk about the future, when the CPU disappears from our personal computers and all our data and applications can be only be accessed from a browser (Is this our reality already?), but this time, I feel lost in the middle of ignorance. For the first time, I give up rather than misunderstand what’s really behind this topic. I feel powerless :S

Cloud Computing?… definitely, a cloudy concept for me

PS: Any help or opinion is very welcome. I want to find my way back

Once upon a time… the patents

Ok, let’s do this again (I love blogging ). Some weeks ago, I read several headlines around the Internet talking about a pretty  big fight coming between Apple and Palm due to some possible intellectual property violations. All the discussion started when Palm launched its last pda model, a gadget very similar to the iPhone.
When you compare the interfaces you can note it immediately, the Palm product copied many features from the iPhone design. Surely, as you already know it, the flame blew out as gas and the executives from both sides have affirmed they are ready for a patent’s war. This is what I love about the technology market, there is always a funny story to talk about

Wait a second, Intellectual Property? Patents? I heard these concepts before, but let’s start as usual… once again, I had to read a _lot_ of links (but I like it!).

Quoting from Wikipedia:

Intellectual Property: are legal property rights over creations of the mind, both artistic and commercial, and the corresponding fields of law. Under intellectual property law, owners are granted certain exclusive rights to a variety of intangible assets, such as musical, literary, and artistic works; ideas, discoveries and inventions; and words, phrases, symbols, and designs. Common types of intellectual property include copyrights, trademarks, patents, and trade secrets.

Ouch! it sounds like lawyers stuff… I would like to explain it to you in my own words, but this time, I am not really sure, I mean the “creation of the mind” is an endless set of possibilities. How can you get the legal property over any “idea”? The human brain is a wonderful machine unable to stop creating… Are we going to label every human creation with a message like “I invented this, so pay me for it” ? Definitely, this time… I pass.

Patent: is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to an inventor or his assignee for a fixed period of time in exchange for a disclosure of an invention.

I bet you read this word thousands of times before, me too. The legal tool to ensure the promotion of  “Intellectual Property” and the cause of infinite legal battles between companies around the world. The funny thing about the “fixed period” is that lawyers are always trying to make it almost infinite, even for some applications which will be absolutely obsolete when they become “open and free” (i.e. MS DOS).

Is there a moral for this tale? Maybe: in the technology business, NEVER copy or you’ll get sued (that’s it, right?). In fact, I still remember my chemistry teacher in high school, when she said: “Please! don’t try to copy in your exam or I’ll catch you!” and I understand the point in that context, but the truth is, what Palm did is the same thing that all IT/software companies have been doing always. Excuse me if I am being naive on this, but I have watched thousands of cases like this.

Let me give you some examples: Did Apple invent the pda or the cell phone? No. Did Microsoft invent the windows environment? or the spreadsheet? or the word processor? No. So? Historically, every invention around the world is based on a previous proposal, it’s unavoidable and at least, for a young stupid kid like me, it’s obvious.
This remind me the favorite sentence of my Physics class teacher: “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of Giants“. Isaac Newton said it centuries ago and it’s a fact, along the history, innovation has been based on the basic principle of sharing new ideas… or am I wrong?

The history of patents started at 1474 (that’s what books say), but humankind history started before! What if the first man who discovered the way to make fire had patented the procedure? Think about the wheel, the first ship, the first hammer, the first dress. If you think about this for a minute, you should realize that innovation is an undeniable feature of the human being (it’s included in the box!). We love, we share, we innovate… we are humans, but I guess it isn’t so simple for the adults, in fact, a lot of them think that patents are an incentive for innovation (I really can’t understand/believe this!!! :S).

When I asked to my mother, she told me that the patents system is just an scheme to make money and that’s all, but it has nothing to do about making a better or modern world.  Even more, some days ago, my uncle Bob told me that oil companies spend millions of dollars in alternative energy research only to patent the new ideas and in this way, to make the new discoveries legally inaccessible for anyone. Oil companies are expecting to make us live in the Petroleum Age forever, when it’s pretty clear that we can’t keep destroying the planet with combustion technology.
Am I too young to understand this? Is this too complex for a teenager mind? or may I get older to understand it and then accept it? Well, I won’t… never!

Funny irony, isn’t it? The patents system which supposedly was created “to promote innovation” is helping us to destroy “legally” our planet. Money talks I guess… it always talks
As I already said it in some post before, laws and lawyers are messy stuff/people I will never understand.

But, let’s talk about good things, let’s talk about hope: the Obama’s speech about energy policy made me feel much better about the future of the world. I guess it just was a little step forward, but everything has a beginning. To think of a world with electric cars and less contamination is a good reason to believe in a clean future, isn’t it?

On the other hand, I have to admit that the Free Software Movement is doing a great job against the patent system, proposing a new way to create and innovate technology without legal boundaries, in a complete open environment without “valuable secrets” and producing pretty good projects as operating systems, hundred of thousands of applications and millions of truly open code lines.

The facts show us that is absolutely possible to create alternative and very productive models where the concept of patent or intellectual property are unnecessary. Linux distros and environments like Gnome and KDE are competing constantly to be the best project but none is worried about who is copying from who, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t stop you to keep innovating.

I could blog for days… but it’s enough for now. I don’t want to bore you to death (anyway, is someone there? )

Chores time… see you later my invisible friends

PS: As far as I understand the world we have created… I misunderstand the humankind :S

(GNU) Linux distros: What’s the best?

Sneaking around some news-related websites I found an interesting link, it is: “The Readers’ Choice Awards“, an initiative from LinuxJournal to find out what are the best open source / free software projects for their readers.
Anyone can vote, and as part of the questions, one I found pretty interesting was: “What’s your primary Linux distribution of choice?“.

Every time I talk with my neighborhood’s friends, this is one of the usual questions always come up… always! And the curious thing is that every one has the perfect answer: Debian! Ubuntu! Mandriva! whatever! Do you know how many Linux distros are available around the Internet? Too many!!! (You can check a huge list at DistroWatch).

I must be honest with you; I have no favorite Linux Distro. Maybe I am a bit weird, but I love to test distros… so I haven’t just one installation at a time, but several!
Thanks to virtualization (VirtualBox in my case) and a lot of hard disk space in my box, I use to have seven Linux systems installed on my computer, but don’t get me wrong, I don’t run them all at the same time. Normally I boot two or three distros just for testing new packages as kernel updates or new versions of KDE or Gnome, and of course, new versions of the most popular Linux distros, every time there’s a release. I was born to be a tester, I guess

Ok, let’s get back to the question that inspires me to write this post: “What is the best Linux distro?”. As I already explained before, I can’t answer the question (because I love them all), even more, that question brings more questions to my head: Who can answer that question? Some veteran Linux expert? Linus Torvalds? the market?

It’s hard to know it. After all, what are the points we must consider to define something is “the best”? Let me give you an example: How do you define what’s the best car for you? What are the parameters you should care about? design, speed, comfort, fuel consumption, traction, price, you name it. Additionally, you should care about two external variables: who will be the driver? and what are the tasks you expect to make with that car? take the kids to school or run the Formula One?
The first sentence coming to my mind when I think about this example is: “it depends”. My grandmother loves a very classic Cadillac, but I love Monster trucks… so, who’s right? Is the word “best” a very relative concept? Well, facts tell me, it looks like.

Ok, now let’s get back to the Linux distros issue. Currently there are many articles around Internet ensuring “Ubuntu is the best linux distro“, It makes me happy because I like Ubuntu, but I have to say that I am not pretty sure about how fair is this affirmation.

Don’t get me wrong, Ubuntu is a very well supported distro and it has a friendly interface which makes it a very good option for desktop end-users. But, Does it make Ubuntu the best Linux distro for every one? Mandriva and Fedora are very friendly too, they could give a good fight in the desktop market. So, Who should be the winner? the project with the bigger funds? What about the community behind? Debian has a pretty huge army of developers and fans; even more, Ubuntu is based on Debian, so it has a chance to be one of the best distros too.

Now, let’s add another variable to the equation: Server or Desktop? is the same environment? Of course, not. As you already know, Suse and Redhat are distros very popular around the enterprise market (servers). Is Ubuntu server enough mature to fight against them? I don’t know.
Now the question has been splitted in two: What’s the best Desktop Linux? What’s the best Server Linux?

As far as I try to find an answer, I get more and more confused. The question is complex, no doubt about it.
Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora, Debian, Slackware, OpenSuse, Gentoo… too many flavors, as in ice cream kiosk, with a clear difference: in ice cream kiosks there is no a flavor winner, the real winners are the kids, I guess. By the way, ¿Is there a “best” ice cream?
What if in the Linux world we don’t need a winner? What if the real power of Free Software is diversity and everyone makes his own choice and enjoy it? What if the real winners in the Linux battlefield are the users? Maybe “best” is a dangerous word, at least, in this context, maybe the word we must empower is “diversity”

For now, while the best Linux distro is discovered by the experts and my friends keep discussing about it, I will keep playing with the seven Linux flavors I have installed in my box!

Comments are pretty welcome. Gaming time (OpenArena session) ! see you later

Understanding the funny way the world economy works

As I mentioned in my latest post, I even don’t understand why the world economy crashed several months ago. The question was surrounding my mind for many days, so I couldn’t help to start looking for an answer.

If you know me a little, you should be aware I’m an excessively curious guy. I must be honest; this subject is really complex and broad… I had to expend hours and hours reading large boring articles, and nevertheless I just could understand too few. So, I can’t blame you if you get bored too.

So, here we go… let me show the results of my research. My starting point was some news headlines from the last months:

• http://www.globalissues.org/article/768/global-financial-crisis
• http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/08/news/international/world_crisis/index.htm
• http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/usa-2008-the-great-depression-803095.html
• http://www.lehman.com/

I want to remark some concepts from those articles. Quoting Wikipedia as usual:

- Stock: In business and finance, a share (also referred to as equity share) of stock means a share of ownership in a corporation (company).

In my words: A little piece of a company translated into a piece of paper similar to a bill.

- Stock market: is a private or public market for the trading of company stock and derivatives of company stock at an agreed price

In my words: A place where you can buy and sell stocks

- Broker: A broker-dealer is a company or other organization that trades securities for its own account or on behalf of its customers.

In my words: Someone authorized to buy and sell stocks

- Investment banking: Investment banks profit from companies and governments by raising money through issuing and selling securities in the capital markets (both equity and bond), as well as providing advice on transactions such as mergers and acquisitions.

In my words: The art of making money buying stocks and re-selling them adding some bucks to the initial cost. This transactions can include to buy and sell whole companies.

Of course, I could put a pretty endless list of terms above about financial stuff, but I want to keep things simple so far as I can. Believe me, this issue is really messy.

Ok, now that we got the basics, next question: How is defined the price of any stock? Well, here is where fun starts. The price is not constant at all because it depends on many factors:

• Stability of the stock market
• Current financial states of the company
• Sales Projections
• Others variables

Now, imagine you are a broker with a handful of stocks of the Company X. If the business goes bad, maybe you should sale your stocks, because your current price is falling and you don’t wanna lose money. But, if business goes well, maybe you should wait a while, then your initial price start to get up which means profits for you! When to sell? when to buy? that’s the key of everything.

As result of this model, the value of companies stocks change every moment. Brokers buy and sale stocks all the time while the market is open. Some people get rich and some other get poor. That’s the game… like in a roller coaster, you can get up or down in any moment.
Have you ever watched the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on TV? All those guys with elegant ties screaming together and pointing with his hands to another guys? Well, they are playing the game.

So, let’s try to understand what happens when economy crashes:

As far as I understand, around the world every some years occurs a phenomenon called “Economic Bubbles“. Let’s quote Wikipedia again: “trade in high volumes at prices that are considerably at variance with intrinsic values”
So clear! Isn’t it? Ok, in my words: A bubble occurs when for some reason that I don’t get yet, brokers start to sale and buy stocks using very high prices, assuming that companies they represent, are going to have a great year.
It looks like everybody get excited and start to buy stocks and more stocks, even asking for loans to pay them.

People bet their money expecting to get rich but then, companies production/sales are not so good, so stocks prices fall quickly and everyone starts to lose his investments. If you paid eight bucks for a stock, then now it’s worth five, so you lost three bucks. In a bad week, your stock could be worth cents at Friday!
Now, imagine that a lot of companies are having the same problem… how many money can disappear in one day? millions and millions of dollars! It’s like a domino effect.

The Dot-com bubble is one of the clearest examples of this situation. I could keep writing about this for the eternity, but I don’t want to bore you with this.

The truth is I even don’t understand why the world works in this “funny” way, the stock exchange model and all that weird way of playing with fortunes. I mean, where does all the money go when a bubble explodes?

For me, it looks like the Monopoly board game mixed with a lottery but using real money. Absolutely senseless! But, please, don’t blame me, I’m just 18. Now I see why I picked up Computer Science and not Economics :S Oh! yes, Computers and the Internet are my territory! my place!

Now I got a better idea about the world crisis. What I don’t know is: either should I feel better for that or scared? Is the world a “big casino” where few players bet the global fate? You tell me…

Have a nice day friends and watch your money! Chores time…