grep Chelo

I’ve been lurking around the sections for writers on Reddit and I’ve noticed that people don’t really pay much attention to protecting their work from plagiarism or misuse, and I thought I should try to give a little advice to the community there. I think the most important thing is to treat your work as valuable as the latest Stephen King novel. The rest of the world may not see it that way (yet!) but if you’re worried enough about it getting stolen, then you should spend the time to learn and do the legwork to protect it.

Now, I think I’m supposed to mention clearly that I’m not at expert at copyright law, I’m not a lawyer, and I may not even qualify as a writer. And the reason I’m not sure whether I have to write that is that I’m not an expert at copyright law, a lawyer, or someone who does this kind of thing for a living. I’m just a guy who was read like the titles of like ten articles about copyright. So, there it is. You’ve been disclaimed.

Now, onto the good stuff. I shall present this in the web’s favorite format: a list!

1.- You wrote it, you own it.

The moment you create some original content, it’s your own. You hold the copyright. You are the sole master of this piece of art. No lawyers, no government bodies, no forms to fill. It’s yours, universally and for all eternity. Since it’s part of your patrimony, you can decide who gets it in the case of your death if you put it in your will. It’s that simple. Congratulations, you’re a copyright holder!

2.- He who smelt it, dealt it (until proven otherwise.)

Just because you own it by the laws of gods, it doesn’t mean that you can’t lose it by the laws of men. If someone else has access to your work previous publication, then they can claim it’s theirs. And unless you have something to prove that you wrote it, you don’t stand a chance. Saying that your grandma read it last Christmass doesn’t count. Some people have suggested emailing a copy of it to yourself, but most courts would probably not accept it as proof because most judges are not über-hackers who can check Gmail’s logs with a flick of their gavel and confirm that the sheet of paper you printed at home is legit.

Having your first draft printed and notarized would be a great way to do it, I think, but it starts getting cumbersome, what with the physical aspect and human interaction and all.

3.- For the love of Thor, don’t Facebook it.

Do not, under any circumstances, copy/paste your work on Facebook, Reddit, or pretty much any other social website. Especially one that doesn’t have clear policies on user created content. Can you count how many times the Facebook policies have changed since it launched? Unless you have an extra set of hands in your alien/mutant body, you won’t be able to do it with your fingers. Even if you use another site that is more friendly to your stuff (I think tumblr is one of them)  you still need to read the fine print. Flickr is a good example in the photography realm, sure, they promise you that you get to keep the copyright, and they’re great at making that clear, but I think their default is to publish everything under Creative Commons. That’s not a bad thing, but not necessarily what you want.

If you want to make it available for lots of people to read, get your own blog or server where you’re completely in control, or just send files over email. But before you send anything, finish reading this list!

4.- Don’t let random people edit your text.

Sure, Google Docs is great for letting people read your stuff  as you’re working on it and suggest changes, but don’t post your document as public with write access to everyone! Think about it this way: if you let someone modify or add some lines, and then you sell your work and become famous, they can claim to be co-authors of the text! And if they have proof, you’re in for a real headache, not to mention that your new-found publishers won’t want anything to do with you in the future.

Sure, let people read your stuff, ask for their feedback, internalize their criticism. But unless you’re ready to give this person credit as a co-author or editor, don’t let them change your text directly.

5.- Atomicity!

I just wanted to use a word that made me sound smart. I’m not even sure it’s the right word to use, but what I mean to say is that you should always send your work to someone else in a bubble that makes it obvious where it begins and where it ends. If you were to send a manuscript to an editor you’d have to send your work in an envelope, any notes or comments you want to send to the editor in a letter in a separate envelope, and then put all that in a big envelope or box and send it. Do the same with your virtual works. Export your text to PDF or ePub or whatever the cool kids are using these days, and attach that to an email that contains any notes you want to send that person. That way it is clear what “The Work” is, even to a lawyer.

6.- Learn to love Creative Commons.

Creative Commons is a set of licenses that allow you to clearly express to the other party what you’re allowing them to do with your work. This way you can protect yourself from people copying, modifying, or reselling your work without your permission. Include a copy of the short version of the license and a link to the full license in every copy you send. Every copy, every time. I don’t care if you’re sure Mandy, the old lady from the hair salon, would never steal from you. This isn’t about trust, it’s about the legal ramifications of having a copy with no restrictions floating around.

Learn more about it at http://creativecommons.org/

6.1.- Creative Commons doesn’t make your work unsellable.

This is a common misconception of open-source and copy-left systems like Creative Commons. Since CC gives people the right to copy your stuff and passing around like a joint, it’s already public domain, no?

That’s totally false. You are still the copyright owner. You only gave the other person a license to your work, you didn’t give up the copyright. You can still sell the rights to a publisher for the paper version of your work. Or for the audio version. Or for the tramp-stamp version. And if you don’t believe that that’s possible, just ask Cory Doctorow.

One thing you may have lost (here’s a point where my knowledge fails me) is the electronic version of your book. So, for that reason, never distribute a copy of your final draft with a CC license unless you’re OK with losing the ability to sell the electronic rights, or if your publisher has given you the green light. But a first draft should be ok. If you make it big and manage to sell it, chances are that you’ll have to revise it enough that it’s technically not the same work and you’ll be ok.

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I think that’s it, for the most part. again, I’m not an expert, but it pains me when I see links to writable Google Docs documents and hopefully I’ve been able to help you traverse the weird world of copyright with a little more ease. But most importantly, have fun!

Hace un par de semanas fue el Dia Internacional de la Poesía y decidí escribir un poema para la ocasión. Pero, siendo un maestro al procrastinar, no lo terminé a tiempo, y cuando lo terminé, me tardé dias en subirlo. Pero finalmente aqui está. El Hombre con el poder del Sol.

La poesía no siempre es sobre amor o dolor, a veces toma la forma de narraciones que se prestan mejor a expresarse en forma de poema. Este poema es uno de ellos, la historia de un hombre con la dificil tarea de decidir si vivimos o morimos, y con poco tiempo para hacerlo.

Es curioso como la mente funciona, porque la idea para este poema la tuve podando el pasto una bella tarde hace alrededor de un año. ¿Qué tiene que ver cortar ramas con destruir el mundo? Mi mente dice que mucho, la suya probablemente dice que nada. Pero si hubieran visto la onda de destrucción que la podadora dejaba con cada uno de mis pasos, tal vez pensarían como yo.

El Hombre con el poder del Sol(PDF)

Today I was presented with a very interesting bug that shows with a very simple example why software people need to know how CPUs deal with the data and the ways that compilers can’t do everything for us.

The piece of code was very simple, but I’ll simplify it even more for the purposes of this example. Imagine we have something like this:

void myFunc () {
    uint64_t result;
    int32_t x = 495616;
    int32_t y = 8192;

    result =  x * y;
    printf("Result1 = %llu, Result2=%u\n", result, x * y);
}

That certainly looks simple enough, however, the result of running that code will look something like this:

Result1 = 18446744073474670592, Result2=4060086272

See the problem there? They’re supposed to be the same value! The correct value is the one in Result2, and that number certainly fits into a 32-bit field, so it’s not like we overflowed or got truncated. Let’s take a look at the hexadecimal values:

Result1 = 0xFFFFFFFFF2000000, Result2=0xF2000000

Now, if you know how conversions are done by the electronics and the compiler, after seeing those values, you know exactly what happened. But, if you’re not familiar with that, then you’re at a total lose here and you’ll probably never figure it out. This bug is being caused by sign extension.

Whenever you deal with signed numbers, when you convert to a bigger size, the sign is “extended,” or copied, to make sure the sign is preserved. That’s what’s causing all those ones in our Result1 print. So, even though our values x and y were small enough to fit in a signed int, the result of their multiplication wasn’t, it would only fit in an unsigned int. The number was so big that the most significant bit (MSB for those who still remember their computer architecture courses) was a 1, and since we were using signed values, that was supposed to be the sign. Since the compiler can’t read minds, it decided to preserve the sign and we end up with a 64-bit value that makes no sense in our application.

The fix is incredibly simple: use uint64_t for x and y. If that’s not possible, which could be the case if you are getting x and y as a result of other functions that you can’t modify, then the following will provide some protection:

However, that will only help as long as your values of x and y are small enough to not have a 1 in their MSB. If your numbers will be big and there’s no way to get those values as anything other than signed numbers, it’ll be time to get your hands dirty with some assembly to make sure that sign is not extended by the compiler.

So, the moral of the story is: don’t forget your computer architecture classes!

I love my Samsung Galaxy S. It’s a great piece of hardware with a great OS. However, I don’t love AT&T.

Us Captivate users have been waiting for the upgrade to Froyo (Android 2.2) for a while, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of progress in that area. Also, AT&T restricts installing non-market apps, they pre-install loads of software that I don’t use or even want, and their boot screen is just a big commercial for them. So I decided it was time to leave all that behind and get me a real taste of Android.

As many already know, Android is based on a Linux kernel, it’s open source and all that good stuff, so it allows for lots of customization. If you don’t like something about it, it can be changed. And thankfully, there are many developers already working of making things better, so there was no need for me to keep suffering about the same stuff that others have already fixed.

The ROM I chose was Andromeda. Their slogan is “insert awesome here,” giving me the first  sign of what I was to expect. This version is built specifically for the Captivate of the Froyo OS,  and lots of customizations have gone into it to make it awesome. Andromeda gets rid of all the crapware, it comes already rooted (jailbroken for iPhone users) and comes with a whole new orange theme and nice wallpaper. The boot screen is nicer, the default font is more stylish, screen and window animations are faster, and includes a couple widgets to make life easier.

But it’s not just bells and whistles. A GPS fix to the kernel makes GPS usable now. It formats the boot partition with ext4 for über-fast boot-times. It regularly performs backups of your system.Automatically blocks ads by not allowing ad servers to even be contacted. And it includes an app to keep the buttons backlight on, which may not seem like a big deal, but any Captivate user will agree that it was a major usability issue.

The only drawback is that it comes with a slim version of the TouchWiz UI, which is not my favorite, but that can be fixed in two minutes.

Something I found interesting is that while all of my apps got deleted, all my user data was saved, so there was no need to resync all my music and photos to it, it all got saved.

The end result is a faster, slimmer, oranger version of the OS that has all I had liked about it and nothing of what I loathed. The Andromeda guys did a great job with this ROM, and it helped me remember why I love Linux systems: if you get tired of it, you can always change it in a way that will feel new and exciting, without losing any of the features you love.

To read more about Andromeda: http://andromedarom.weebly.com/
For general Captivate stuff go to the Captivate XDA forum.

When I was about seven or eight years old, a friend of mine and I found a small book in my parents’s study on one of the shelves on top, never to be reached by a child, but easily within the reach of two of them cooperating. It was old, the leather that bound it was cracked, it was covered in dust, and it was very thick and small compared to the others in that bookcase. Yet the pages were mostly intact, as if it had been rarely opened, and always with the utmost care. My first suggestion was that it was a Bible, as the only books I knew back then with those interesting characteristics were all Bibles. However, as my friend quickly pointed out, the cover had a purple-ish tint, and an unusual repeating pattern formed on the sides when all the pages were held together. Our young minds concluded, given the overwhelming evidence, that this was indeed not a Bible, but a book a witchcraft. We wouldn’t dare to open it, as our young souls still had many other sins to carry, and we didn’t care much for the idea of adding wizardry to our list when the time came for our first confession with a priest.

Many times I saw that book; with it’s red, long, cloth bookmark dandling from its side. It was now atop other books, since we couldn’t get it back to its original place due to our short height. I could feel its demonic presence always poking me when I went near it. Little did I know that that book would eventually take my soul, and confine my mind to its pages for the rest of my life.

I grew up, we moved to a new home, and the new bookshelf wasn’t as high anymore. I was around twelve by then; a much braver boy than I had been in my childish youth. So I decided to take a peek into this mystical tome of black magic that my parents had decided to keep for whatever reason. I’d never seen them sacrifice a goat or call on spirits, so it might not be that big of a deal. Maybe magic wasn’t something to be feared at all.

I opened the book for the first time, and I made sure that I wouldn’t be disturbed. The door was locked, my mom and my sister far away, unaware of my sinister intentions. At first, it was very disappointing. I didn’t need to do any extensive searching to realize this wasn’t a book that held the secrets of the dark arts. However, it didn’t take me long to realize it had an immense power within, and cracked, leathery exterior wouldn’t be able to hold all the irradiating beauty in its thin and waxy pages. After the usual copyright and editorial notices, it read:

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Read more…

Como la mayoría de ustedes ya debe saber, llevo casi tres semanas trabajando en Rumania. Pero pues el trabajo es sólo de Lunes a Viernes, así que eso deja bastante tiempo para hacer otras cosas. Al fin tuve un rato libre para ponerme a subir fotos y aquí les dejo tres álbumes sobre lo que he podido tomar hasta ahora.

Padiș

Fuimos un fin de semana a las montañas en Padiș, donde nos quedamos en unas cabañitas bastante austeras pero que eran un lujo, considerando que para llegar necesitamos vehículos 4×4 y atravesar dos horas de brecha. Los cielos fueron piadosos con nosotros y, a pesar de las amenazas, no llovió en todo el fin. Ambos días caminamos por alrededor de 8 horas, con muchas subidas y bajadas — aclaro en caso de que alguien no haya entendido que estábamos en las montañas! Los paisajes eran impresionantes, y si no tomé mas fotos y videos es porque no tenía fuerzas suficientes para sacar la cámara de la bolsa

Fotos

Centro de Cluj

Cluj es la ciudad donde estoy viviendo. El centro queda a 0.0 metros de distancia del departamento, así que los paseos por aquí son bastante comunes. Sin embargo, el sábado pasado me dediqué a tomar algunas fotos del área en lo que salía a buscar un lugar donde comer. En un movimiento arriesgado, hasta entré a la Catedrál! Es Católica Ortodoxa, no Católica Romana como estamos acostumbrados en México, por eso no hay donde sentarse. La misa se atiende de pie. Una de las fotos muestra la zona donde están los restaurantes y bares, que tienen tenderetes en las banquetas del centro. Nada más llegas, te sientas donde quieras, y en dos segundos tendrás un mesero preguntándote que quieres. Es importante decirles TODO lo que quieres a la primera, porque después de traer lo que hayas pedido, se desaparecen por unos 20 minutos! Aún así, es bastante concha y el centro se llena de vida todas las tardes, incluso entre semana.

Fotos

Turda

Al día siguiente de mi paseo por el centro, fuimos a caminar a Turda. Esta vez fue algo más relajado; sólo caminamos por unas tres horas, y con sólo una subida difícil. La probabilidad de lluvia era alta y no queríamos arriesgarnos. Un cañón impresionante con un río que llega a crecer hasta dos metros por arriba de donde se ve en estas fotos; los rastros de la destrucción causada por el agua se ven por todos lados. Algo agradable es que, por ser parque nacional, los senderos están marcados con señales dibujadas en árboles y rocas. Mientras sigas los puntos rojos, no te puedes perder. Además, te llevan a los lugares con las vistas más interesantes. A la entrada del parque venden Michis, unas como salchichas tradicionales de la región, y ahí fue donde nos detuvimos a cenar. Lamentablemente, tenía demasiada hambre y me acabé la comida antes de poder tomarle foto.

Fotos

Y bueno, por el momento eso es todo. Ya luego a ver que otras aventuras tengo, y si no me distraigo demasiado, subiré fotos!

I just read this article about a biometrics company laying the groundwork for creating the most secure city in the world, and the Mexican city of León, Guanajuato. The way they’re doing it is by installing retinal scanners in several places around the city. They can use this technology to find known criminals walking around, arrest them if necessary, or flag them so everyone around them knows they’re dangerous. The machines can detect 50 individuals per minute, making it an impressive tool for finding people. Put a bunch of these around the city, and you know where everyone has been throughout the day. This sounds like awesome technology, it could revolutionize crime fighting in a time when drug wars are destroying the country and citizens don’t feel safe when stepping out of their homes. Once that’s all settled, they could be used to target advertising more effectively, and we would be living in a world straight out of The Matrix or Minority Report. This all sounds great, except for one tiny little detail…

IT’S ALL BULLSHIT

I’m not saying the technology is bullshit, it may be as effective as they say (I have no reason to doubt it, but neither to trust it,) however that’s not the problem here. The problem is that this is robbing us all of our privacy, our trust, and most importantly, our freedom.

Before I get into the ethical part of my objection, I want to start with the technical part. Be warned, there will be some (really simple) math involved. A single camera can identify 50 people each minute. That is 3,000 every hour. If we put this camera in a crowded area where it can function at full speed, like a bus station or a mall, we could see 9,000 people putting together the morning and afternoon rush hours. Let’s round it up to 10,000 in a day to make things simpler. The city of León has about 1 million inhabitants, so we could be monitoring about 1% of the population every day. That’s just one camera, if we set up a few more across other important points, we could probably get this number up to 10%. But I’d like to believe that most of the people in the city are good people, so the number of criminals should be nowhere near 10%, but let’s be pessimistic and say that 0.1% of the population is dangerous and the police knows about them and has at least photos of them. So we’re looking at 1,000 people that we could identify.

Read more…

This turned out to be longer than planned. So, here’s the short version. Me want audiobooks. Me found audiobooks. You find audiobooks too. You go Audible.com. You go Podiobooks.com too. So that was the abridged version, but not reading the unabridged is cheating! To find my views on this issue, read the whole thing

Reading is one of the things I enjoy doing most in my spare time. It usually trumps gaming, almost always wins over TV shows and movies, and it would’ve certainly been a better alternative to some of the matches in the World Cup this week (I’m looking at you, England vs Algeria.)

The one problem with books is that they require not just your undivided attention; they practically demand that you lock yourself in a room, turn off all communication devices, and settle yourself in a comfortable position. Even holding a beer becomes challenging, whether you’re dealing with a physical book or the e-reader of your choice. Many times I’ve felt like just laying down and reading for a couple hours, only to be frustrated by the sight of dirty dishes in the sink or a rumbling in my stomach. You can only ignore those for so long; eventually you have to get around to it, and it means solving your problems first (exposing yourself to further distractions), or a favorite classic of mine: “I’ll just read a chapter, then do the dishes.” This NEVER happens, so if it needs to be done, it needs to be done.

I’d never really considered audiobooks for a couple reasons. They’re way more expensive than a normal book, three to four times more money. That can amount to a lot of beers. Also, I was rarely put in situations where I was doing some mindless task that would allow my mind to freely lose itself in the narrative. Maybe driving, but that requires a lot of concentration, or you may forget to flip off the bastard who just cut you off. But most importantly, I felt like I was cheating. Taking the easy way out. Maybe like saying “Eyes? I don’t need no stinkin’ eyes! Reading is for literate losers!”. Also, it used to be that most audiobooks were abridged versions, and that really is cheating; it’s the equivalent of showing up to two classes in college and claiming you got a degree. A book has already gone through an editing process to take out the “unnecessary” stuff, so any further abbreviation is simply mutilation.

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To celebrate the beginning of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, I’ve decided to put together the most kickass team the world has ever seen. There are too many good players out there, so I had to leave out some of my favorites because they wouldn’t fit in with the rest of the team, but I think the end result is an unstoppable machine of football awesomeness. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m talking about the real football, the one where you use your foot to kick a ball, not the one where you use your hand to carry or throw an egg.

The classification rules for the team were really simple, if you’re famous, you get a chance to be considered. It doesn’t matter if you’re a boy or a girl; rich or poor; fictitious or real; made of flesh and blood, drawn on a piece of paper, or rendered by a computer.

So, to your amusement, here’s my formation for the 2010 Celebrity Football World Cup of Awesomeness:

Read more…

This is the first post on my Naturalistic Worldview series where I debate some issues on religion with my friend Brian. Refer to this post for an intro on the subject.

Brian’s post revolved around a couple main arguments, which I’ll try to address mixed in with a few ideas of my own.

The first point revolves around why believe in God but at the same time not believe in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy. I find this to be a somewhat cliché thing to say as an atheist. Yes, it raises some interesting questions on the nature of believe, but it doesn’t get us anywhere. I think that atheists need to understand that belief in God is not of the same nature as the one in fairies or ogres. We can agree that both fairies and angels share some characteristics; they’re both anthropomorphic beings with wings tasked with saving humans and grant the occasional wish or deliver a message. The difference lies in that angels live with God, and fairies with Peter Pan; which at the same time share the similarities of beings characters taken out of a book and have a nemesis. My point here is not to say that God and Peter Pan are the same, but that when dealing with religious belief we have to compare apples with apples. Comparing God and Santa Claus becomes silly because it’s not a real comparison, and certainly not one that religious people will take seriously, so atheists should stop using it if they want to have a real discussion instead of just mindless bashing.

Read more…