It was very nice initiative, I was here in New York for the elections, and unfortunately I was not able to vote. I talked with some friends who were involved in some campaigning. However they were not campaigning for any specific party or candidate, they were campaigning against the vote and the whole electoral system. http://www.anulatuvoto.org.mx/

Lots of money is spent in the political parties, and none of the candidates is really offering any solutions or strategies to make any change.

Getting back to cuidemoselvoto, I see it as a very interesting beginning of something and hopefully it will take off for next elections as well. I wold love to see it not only implemented during election time, but rather during the whole term, so as to see how the elected officials keep up with promises they make.

this is a traditional mexican joke

A man dies and goes to the gates of Heaven. St. Peter greets him, asks him his name and starts searching his records. He searches, searches, then turns to an appendix and exclaims:

“Aha! What happens son is that you are caught in the Middle, you were neither too good to go to heavern nor too bad for hell. I am therefore going to let you choose where you want to stay”. He takes the man to hell, where he sees a crazy party with booty, alcohol, drugs and the best music you can imagine. Then St. Peter takes him to heaven where he sees all the saints praying and playing the harp. Then St. Peter speaks “Well son, what will it be?” – “Why hell of course!”.

Suddenly the man materializes in hell were it is all brimstone, flames and devils torturing people. In his pain the man sees the devil himself approaching. He of course ask “What happened? Yesterday, this was the place to be”. The devil replies

“Yesterday was elections, today you are screwed”

http://investment-blog.net/traditional-mexican-election-time-joke/

http://www.slideshare.net/marcocastrocosio/activistfuture

This is a project

http://www.netsquared.org/projects/freecycleorg-global-smartphonesms-gift-economy

I really like I have got very cool things through freecycle, I was thinking of doing some mobile application with them, but apparently they have already thought about it.

A cause I really can support is either one that promotes education and nutrition for kids, anything that promotes a healthier lifestyle to our environment, including a cause that can fight global warming.  I have helped some NGO’s in these regards before.    Recently one issue that I think is find very relevant is all the things that get thrown around in new york,  and how many useful things are left on the street to get rained on,  and how many of these things could be put for better use in schools and projects.  Many of these items not only do not go to hands that will use them but also end up in the landfills.

Some organizations are working to tackle this product of a consumer culture.  Such organizations are Build it Green, Materials for the Arts and Freecycle.

I would like to get more in touch with them and see how could I help them and perhaps come wiht a project that we can work together and all be happy.

Cory Doctorow

I read the book Little Brother.   I dont know how or why but I felt I had to dedicate a full chunk of time,  it seemed like a book I would enjoy,  and would not do so if I read it by small chunks.  I really liked for starters that the writer put it out for free on the website, very admirable.  And then when I started to read the intro on his point about ebooks and creative commons and piracy and all.  I knew I was hooked.

What I was reading really resonated with me, but had never heard or read in a way that made sense or wasn’t very unreachably utopical.    It was taking into account his publishers,  but also his readers and the actual pirate “industry” .

I highlighted  some things from the book.  I shall put them here together in a document.   first as a reference and then to use them to sort my thoughts.

Ebooks are verbs, not nouns!.

Ebooks are not substitute for paper books.

screen reading is not meant to be done for a long time, there is too much distraction.  (thats why I tend to print out documents) Little brother was  printed and highlighted in the physical world.  I really enjoyed it.

Copying is never going to get harder that it is today.

Art that’s not supposed to be copied is from the past.

Sueing 20,000 fans  exemplifies the absurdity of trying to get the food coloring out of the pool.

As the book went on,  I really enjoyed the change in type really taking into account what you see in the screen and what happens in real life.  The dedication of each chapter to a favorite bookstore was also very well done.  It provided food for thought in other directions,  it tempted the imagination, and made you want to visit the unique original bookstores.

The whole idea of Gait recognition ( word which I had never of)  was very interesting.
as well as Biometric Collision.

Arphid- Radio Frequency ID tag

Faraday Pouch – mess or mesh of copper wires

There were many phrases that were very visual. or at least were very vivid for me.
The microwave–which always reeked of popcorn and spilled soup–was right there, on top of the miniature fridge.

Botnet – are  where infected computers spend their afterlives.  when with a virus, the computer sens a message to a chat channel on IRC (Internet RElay Chat)

IRC tells the botmaster  that the computer is waiting orders.

Google “Spoof Caller Id”

Charles stared as he struggled with the demons that had possessed his most personal of devices.

Harajuku Fun Madness – I had never heard of this and it seems very fun.

They were neither rough nor careful — just…impersonal. Like someone at McDonalds putting together burgers.

They all carried guns.  It was like a Bennetton’s ad crossed with a game of Counter Strike.

I  loved the concept Esprit d’Escalier.  It happens to me a lot.

The story of the identity counterfeiter was very ingenious,   how people were getting new lives.  It reminded of insects changing skins and leaving them in the water, slipping away from bad marriages, bad debts and bad lives.

Learned about Pinhead video cameras and how they are everywhere.  very scary.

Never underestimate the determination of a kid who is time rich and cash poor.

ParanoidLinux.

Crypto is Math.   The suggestion to look it up on wikipedia made the whole narration very real.

Four parts to any crypto message
the original message = cleartext
scrambled message = ciphertext
scrambling system = cipher
key = secret stuff you feed into the cipher along with the cleartext to make cipher text.

Bayesian statistics.  technique used to  statistically analize  mountains of data super usefull for modern world’s info-himalayas.

indinet – the whole story on jolu and his boss and how she supports the movement is very compelling.

when things started getting very complicated, I stopped highlighting, the author had stopped introducing tech elements to talk more about the relationships and identities of M1k3y and his friends.   I did not have time to be highlighting everything I liked in the book,  the story was very intense,  at some point when I was reading I did feel very paranoid, and imagined I was really being watched or my house was going to be raided.

Only bad security relies on secrecy; good security works even if all the details of it are public.
dysfunction — autoimmune system disease, where an organism’s defense system goes into overdrive so much that if fails to recognize itself and attacks its own cell.

plus it was great to read the references he used to write the book in general.

The book is a very good read, I could not stop reading it.   It is very relevant and takes into account many trends going on in society, not only in the US but in other countries as well.

It makes the tech part be very approachable without feeling preachy.  And I love how it is science fiction it all feels very real.

I would love to read more books like this.