The Devil's Excrement

Through John Fleck’s site I find out about a real hero, somebody who scammed the scammers for $3 bucks, not bad, getting three bucks out of a multimillion dollar scam, I am not sure what they did is legal, but I am sure the FBI will not prosecute. While this appeared to top my earlier post about Zach Beane, upon further research into this profound subject, I found out there is actually a full Scamorama  website on this anti-scam topic. Moreover, the three buck record has been topped by none other than Bart Simpson  who managed to get five bucks out of the mysterious Mr Ja. Another interesting link is found here about the mysterious Mr. Aba, who should be more carfeul about how he answers his emails. Thus, the counter scam marches on!!! I think we should launch a matching fund through Pay Pal for the person who gets the first $100 bucks out of the scammers……

I recently reported that Ken Fisher wrote a bullish article in Forbes calling the current Stock market “A beautiful Market”. The NYT has an article today with two economists who have been very accurate in the past at predicting what the economy will do. (Economists tend to be bad at this, they seldom catch the chnages in slope and always predict small changes from the cuirrent data). In the article, Nancy Lazar of Ed Hyman’s ISI group is quoted as predicting 4% growth in the fourth quarter this year. Lazar predicted quite well the recession as well as the growth this year as reported elsewhere they said:

“All considered, we believe growth in 2002 is likely to surprise on the upside in large part because expectations are so low.”

Hyman’s group was picked by thestreet.com as the top economic analysis team:

Macro Category
Economics			Voting Score
1	Ed Hyman	ISI Group	100
2	Ed Yardeni	Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown	38
3	Steve Roach	Morgan Stanley Dean Witter	35
Best Team	—	ISI Group	—

Dont know much about the other economist in the article. But since now Lazar and Hyman are saying things are going to remain strong, wthis should be good news for everyone. The two, Fishes and Lazar/Hyman) combined make for a very bullish case, you heard it here first!!! (well, you heard the combination….)

If the Chinese dont have access to google but can get answers from using a mirror and elgoog, should I advertise it and risk them from finding out about it? Or should I hide it and keep the people in China from laughing at the authorities? This is a true conundrum, I chose to advertise it and thank bigwig for pointing this beautiful piece of hraka to me. (By the way can they see the Google Dance from China, I still dont know, I suspect not, but the site says yes)

While the best technology does not always win, I would not bet against Carver Mead, inventor of the HEMT chip for microwave communications and one of the pioneers of VLSI technology, who has invented/designed a new way of capturing images by using three level photodetectors which are embedded in Silicon. What this does is to get all three color Red, Green and Blue at each pixel in contrast with ordinary CCD devices as shown in this figure  from Foveon’s

website. Foveon is the company founded by Mead to commercialize this technology. Basically in a conventional CCD device, each pixel in the array captures one color and then cameras use algorithms and software to mix them and create each pixel in the image. Mead’s system, also allows for variable pixels so tha the ISO (Sensitivity) of the picture can be increased to very high levels. In Foveon’ website you can see the difference between the two technologies, not only in color reproduction and sharpness but also in the absence of things like Moire patterns and the like. What is exciting is that soon a Camera will be available (if you can afford it) from Sigma, the Sigma SD-9 will cost around US$ 2,500. While cracking this market with this new technology will not be a piece of cake, I think that you should not bet against Mead. Interestingly, Foveon is a private company but National Semiconductor owns 49% of Foveon according to Forbes (Foveon does not say how much on its web page). National Semiconductor manufactures the chips, thus there is even a way to bet on the technology. Hopefully other camera companies will adopt the technology and prices may come down below $1,000. As an orchid enthusiast (orchididiot?) I would love to own one. Imagine a perfect picture!!!!!

I wrote earlier two articles about google searches. Basically, the discovery of a new orchid species made for a good subject to study google searches, given that June 18th. was the first report of a new orchid named Phragmipedium kovachii .  On August 16th. I began testing how many citations there were to this term and whether or not my blog was reported in the search. Surprisingly, what I found was that initially the number of references dropped and whether my blog was catalogued or not varied from day to day. From an initial 33 results, the number dropped as low as 22 with my blog showing up or not in apparent random fashion. Then it began to climb slowly reaching 42 results three days ago at which point I stopped checking. But lo and behold today the number is once again down to only 26, although my site is still referenced. Thus, Google operates in mysterious ways. One side result of my experiments is that the only search engines that comes close to finding pages with a result comparable to Google is ixquick which combines a number of engines in one. Today, while Google sits at 26 different unique pages, ixquick finds  36 unique websites, higher than the 26 Google finds today, but below the 42 it found earlier in the week.

Note added on Sept. 9th.: On Monday Sept. 9th. , the term generated 40 pages and my site was back in the list. If this is correlated with the fact that the Google Dance began sometime Saturday, it might be that while Google is searching the web periodically, the search database goes back to some earlier image, once the search is over, the new database takes over.

Well, as the details of the Government’s announcement are better known the more I reinforce what I said in the last post: Dream On. Moreover the Minister of Planning has left himself open for a fierce attack by all sides as two of the permanent advisors to his Ministry on the subject, have very strong Linux commercial interests.

The Announcement:

1) All information published by the State has to follow an international standard with at least one free implementation.

2) All projects for software production financed by the State have to be done on free and open software.

3) All Government databases must be convertible into other databases in transparent form, without any additional cost.

4) All purchases have been suspended and current licenses will not be renewed.

In the presentation the Minister said: “The bases for everything is cooperativism, free software is based on true love ” Note the quotes……He also said “Free software up to where it is possible, proprietary software when it is indispensable”…..Ummmm, do I see a hole here?

Well, given 4) I am sure the inefficient Venezuelan Government is going to become even more inefficient soon. Maybe it is irrelevant, it takes months anyway to get a passport or driver’s license or national ID card, all of which are issued on Windows based systems.

To complete the circle, the Ministers has three advisors. One of them is the owner of Corvus Latinoamerica a company that represents Open Linux, Caldera and Red Hat  according to today’s paper (They at least support RedHat, I haven’t been able to confirm they represent it). A second one owns a company called Linux Systems in Venezuela. I can’t imagine what this company sells. Thus there appears to be at least a strong conflict of interest, good message to start fighting corruption.

Get the feeling this project is starting with the wrong foot. To implement 4) the only possibility is simply to continue using software licenses illegally, but Venezuela has signed the WTO agreement. As usual in Venezuela, stay tuned….this does not end here.

 

Can’t help but comment on the report by Linux Today that Venezuela would go open source which was reported by slashdot linked by my tyromaniac brother and others. Besides the problems of inefficiency cited by my brother, there are many problems with the proposal. The main one is simply that there is no way to enforce it. The Minister of Planning may want the Government to go Open Source but each Minsitry, Institute and office makes independent decisions which will not only be difficult to coordinate, but are impossible to enforce. Moreover, in the Ministries, where Mr. Perez may be able to coordinate some action, mainframes and IBM rule the day. Any effort to go open source would also require funding at a time when the Government is late in payments to Governemnt Agencies by as many as six months, so it is difficult to see how he can convince turning over to open source without the training, the people and the tools, which are not free.

I have heard the Minisiter of Planning say that he will eliminate corruption using the help of the Open Source Foundation. I have heard him say that the open source concept should be extended to all sectors of the economy, whatever that means. Thus, the Minisiter is dreamer, I like dreamers, but somehow, I think you have to choose the right dream. So far, the dreams of the Minister seem neboulous and unrealistic. Venezuela needs a little realism and pragmatism before we can begin to dream again.

 

 

The NYT has an article today about how the number of fixed line phones is going down as people acquire cell phones, since rates have dropped and people find it convenient to have a single cell phone or multiple ones. An added advantage is the fact that when one moves one can keep the number as you change places.

 

It is interesting to look at what has happened in Venezuela in the last few years, with the caveats that Venezuela did not have the penetration of fixed lines that the US did when cell phones became widely available. Similarly, there is the fact that in Venezuela the billing system is “calling party pays”, which implies that people are more prone to give out their numbers to others since the caller pays the full call.

 

 

	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001
Fixed Lines	2,666,845	2,803,977	2,517,220	2,470,756	2,520,586	2,692,773
F.L. Penetration	11.95%	12.31%	10.83%	10.42%	10.49%	11.07%
Cell Phones	499,116	1,102,948	2,009,757	3,784,735	5,447,172	6,472,284
C.P. Penetration	2.24%	4.84%	8.65%	15.96%	22.54%	26.28%

 

 

Note that since 1996 the number of fixed lines has essentially remained constant, while the number of cell phones has increased from practically nothing to close to six and a half million phones in a country of 24-25 million people. The increase is very impressive. Obviously, phone companies have found it cheaper to sell cell phones in a country which had a deficient fixed-line infrastructure, but it is also true that cell phones are a cheaper alternative even in a country with a GDP per capita much lower than the US or other developed countries. It is also more convenient to have it on you everywhere, except perhaps for Internet access, which requires a fixed line. We suspect, the trend in the Venezuelan case will be followed elsewhere as time goes by and the NYT report is simply the first indicator of that trend.

 

NYT reports that Brasil (or is it Brazil?) has as many as 13% of all weblogs in the world. Moreover, Globo.com, the Internet division of one of the largest media groups will provide free blogging service. This is not only good for blogging, but it also shows the power of the Internet when a country can so quickly pick up on a trend from another country far from it. Way to blog Brasil!!Way to go weblogs!!

Added a new link on my site to :

 

Toby’s Political Diary – ‘Let it Begin Here’

not only did I like that site, but the spirit of his site is what I want, selfishly, to preserve in my country, justice, equality, liberty and the pursuit of happiness have been under attack in my country for the last four years by a band of primitive fascists. Unfortunately, the world seems to defend elections, not democracy. Our President was elected but he is no democrat. We had a chance to get rid of him in April and international groups defended that he was elected to help bringing him back. The fact that his Government had massacred 18 people appeared to be irrelevant. Hopefully, his day will come and he will be found guilty of crimes agaisnt humanity and his people. Sooner, better than later.