30. December, 2012
Shared posts
30 Dec 10:55
Rumors of an Apple/Intel Smart Watch
by John Gruber
Eric Slivka, MacRumors:
Chinese site TGBus reports that Apple and Intel are currently working together on a Bluetooth-enabled smart watch. According to the report, the watch will include a 1.5-inch OLED display from RITEK subsidiary RiTdisplay and will launch in the first half of next year.
Maybe Apple is working on a smart watch. Perhaps, if Apple is working on a smart watch, they are sourcing certain component chips from Intel. Maybe Intel is working on a smart watch. I’ll bet Intel would love to collaborate with Apple on a smart watch.
But there is no way in hell that Apple is working with any other company, Intel or otherwise, on the design of any unannounced new products. Think, people.
★
Tadeu likes this
29 Dec 22:56
Which are the remaining economically underrated countries?
by Tyler Cowen
We read about the Philippines in yesterday’s FT:
Last quarter, its economy again surprised on the upside, growing 7.1 per cent and notching up its 55th straight quarter of growth. It now seems to be growing at a steady 5-6 per cent, despite an adverse external environment, against a lowly 3 per cent in the 1990s. The finance ministry believes the potential growth rate can be lifted to 6-7 per cent and eventually to 7-8 per cent.
…The stock market, one of the world’s best-performing in 2011, is up 32.5 per cent in the year to date in peso terms. That makes it the world’s fifth-best performing index. The peso itself has strengthened 7 per cent against the dollar. There is even talk of new investor interest in manufacturing. Japanese companies, looking for an alternative to China, have been nosing around. Philippine exports, not as important to the economy as for many Asian countries, have held up well in spite of falling demand for electronics, suggesting a degree of diversification.
Mexico is now also widely recognized as doing quite well. So from the earlier list of undervalued countries, it seems all the pressure is on Pakistan. Please keep in mind, the place need only outperform the expectations.
29 Dec 22:13
Impunidade no Brasil no século XIX
by Leonardo Monasterio
Veja aqui (p.80-82 da numeração do livro, p.84-86 do arquivo pdf ) o relato do naturalista Tschudi que visitou o Brasil em meados do século XIX. Triste.
Parabéns para a Fundação Seade, por ter colocado essa e outras ótimas publicações históricas na sua biblioteca digital.
Parabéns para a Fundação Seade, por ter colocado essa e outras ótimas publicações históricas na sua biblioteca digital.
29 Dec 22:08
One of the more poignant moments in Nietzsche’s long and tormented career was when the catalogue of his many ailments, both mental and physical, started to include encroaching blindness. To remedy that he turned to experimentation with the (very primitive) typewriters of the time in 1882 – a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball. This was a major crisis in his writing as he had to accustom himself to what must have seemed almost an entirely new medium and led him to confess that “our writing tools are also working on our thoughts” (quoted in Kittler 1999). Nietzsche, who had dreamed of a machine that would transcribe his thoughts, choose the machine whose "rounded keyboard could be used exclusively through the sense of touch because on the surface of the sphere each spot is designated with complete certainty by its spatial position" (Kittler 1992: 193). Indeed, as Carr (2008) argues "once he had mastered touch-typing [with the new typewriter], he was able to write with his eyes closed, using only the tips of his fingers. Words could once again flow from his mind to the page." The condition of possibility created by a particular medium forms an important part of the theoretical foundations of medium theory, which questions the way in which medial changes lead to epistemic changes. This has become an important area of inquiry in relation to the differences introduced by computation and digital media, more generally (see Berry 2011). Indeed, in Nietzsche's case,
Nietzsche’s case seemed somewhat more promising as his attempts at typewriting were not only commented on by him but also made at a very early stage of mechanical text production – and at the overlap between discourse networks (Kittler 1992: 193). Although Nietzsche is thought to have only used the typewriter for a short period during 1882, an experiment claimed to have lasted either weeks (Kittler 1992), or up to a couple of months (Kittler 1999: 206) – although Günzel and Schmidt-Grépály (2002) more concretely state he typed between February to March 1882 when Nietzsche was also finishing The Gay Science. In fact, Nietzsche produced a collection of typed works he titled 500 Aufschriften auf Tisch und Wand: Für Narrn von Narrenhand. Nietzsche himself commented, “after a week [of typewriting practice,] the eyes no longer have to do their work” (Kittler 1999: 202).[1] Indeed, the technological shock may have been much stronger here than in the case of James or of authors who, some twenty years ago, enthusiastically exchanged white correction fluid for the word-processor delete button and cut-and-paste. Using the typewriter, Nietzsche’s prose “changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style” (Kittler 1999: 203). Indeed, Kittler argues that,
The turning point for Kittler (1999) is represented by The Genealogy of Morals which was written in 1887 – by now Nietzsche was forced by continued poor vision to use secretaries to record his words. Here, it is argued that Nietzsche elevated the typewriter itself to the "status of a philosophy," suggesting that "humanity had shifted away from its inborn faculties (such as knowledge, speech, and virtuous action) in favor of a memory machine. [When] crouched over his mechanically defective writing ball, the physiologically defective philosopher [had] realize[d] that 'writing . . . is no longer a natural extension of humans who bring forth their voice, soul, individuality through their handwriting. On the contrary, . . . humans change their position – they turn from the agency of writing to become an inscription surface'" (Winthrop-Young and Wutz 1999: xxix).
In the very tentative analysis presented here (and which must be redone with a greater collection of Nietzsche’s works), the standard stylometric procedure of comparing normalized word frequencies of the most frequent words in the corpus was applied by means of the “stylo” (ver. 0-4-7) script for the R statistical programming environment (Eder and Rybicki 2011).
The script converts the electronic texts to produce complete most-frequent-word (MFW) frequency lists, calculates their z-scores in each text according to the Delta procedure (Burrows 2002); uses the top frequency lists for analysis; performs additional procedures for better accuracy (including Hoover’s culling, the removal of all words that do not appear in all the texts for better independence of content); compares the results for individual texts; produces Cluster Analysis tree diagrams that show the distances between the texts; and, finally, combines the tree diagrams made for various parameters (number of words used in each individual analysis) in a bootstrap consensus tree (Dunn et al. 2005, quoted in Baayen 2008: 143-147). The script, in its ever-evolving versions, is available online (Eder, Rybicki and Kestemont 2012). The consensus tree approach, based as it is on numerous iterations of attribution tests at varying parameters, has already shown itself as a viable alternative to single-iteration analyses (Rybicki 2012, Eder and Rybicki 2012).
The first analysis was performed for complete texts of six works by Nietzsche: Die Geburt der Tragödie (1872) and Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (1878), both written before 1879, his “year of blindness,” and his typewriter experiments of 1882, and Also sprach Zarathustra (1883-5), Jenseits von Gut und Böse (1886), Ecce homo and Götzen-Dämmerung (1888). The resulting graph suggest a chronological evolution of Nietzschean style as the early works cluster to the right, and the later ones to the left of Figure 1.
Notes
[1] According to Günzel and Schmidt-Grépály (2002), Nietzsche typed 15 letters, 1 postcard and 34 bulk sheets (including some poems and verdicts) with his 'Schreibkugel' from Malling-Hansen in 1882.
Berry, D. M. (2012) The Social Epistemologies of Software, Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy, 26:3-4, 379-398
Emden, C. (2005) Nietzsche On Language, Consciousness, And The Body, University of Illinois Press.
Günzel, S. and Schmidt-Grépály, R. (2002) (eds.) Friedrich Nietzsche. Schreibmaschinentexte, 2nd edition, Weimar: Verlag der Bauhaus Universität, accessed 19/12/2012, http://www.momo-berlin.de/Nietzsche_Schreibmaschinentexte.html
Winthrop-Young, G. and Wutz, M. (1999) Translators' Introduction, in Kittler, F. A., Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, Standford University Press.
The Author Signal: Nietzsche’s Typewriter and Medium Theory
by noreply@blogger.com (David Berry)
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| Malling-Hansen Writing Ball |
One of Nietzsche’s friends, a composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had become even tighter, more telegraphic. “Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,” the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his “‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.”... “You are right,” Nietzsche replied, “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts” (Carr 2008).Stylistics and perhaps above all its younger and computerized daughter, stylometry, have already attempted to find stylistic or stylometrical traces (the "author signal") of similar changes in writing practices by authors – with little positive result. The case of Henry James’s move from handwriting (typewriting) to dictation in the middle of What Maisie Knew has been studied by Hoover (2009). Yet, according to the NYU professor, the author of The Ambassadors took this sudden change in his stride and, despite the fact that we know exactly where the switch occurred, stylometry has been helpless in this case; or, rather, can show no sudden shift in James’s stylistic evolution that continues throughout his career (Hoover 2009). In a way, a similar problem was addressed by Le, Lancashire, Hirst and Jokel (2011) in their study of possible symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease in Agatha Christie word usage and to confirm the same diagnosis in Iris Murdoch. From another perspective, many studies exist on various authors’ switch from handwriting or typing to word processing (see also Lev Manovich's [2008] work on cultural analytics).
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Letter from Friedrich Nietzsche to Heinrich Köselitz, Geneva, Feb 17, 1882. Earliest typewriter-written text by Nietzsche still in existence. |
Neitzsche's reasons for purchasing a typewriter were very different from those of his colleagues who wrote for entertainment purposes, such as Twain, Lindau, Amytor, Hart, Nansen, and so on. They all counted on increased speed and textual mass production; the half-blind, by contrast, turned from philosophy to literature, from rereasing to a pure, blind, and intransitive act of writing (Kittler 1999: 206).In other words, the inscription technologies of Nietzsche's time have contributed to his thinking. Nevertheless for Nietzsche the typewriter was "more difficult than the piano, and long sentences were not much of an option" (Emden 2005: 29). Although after his failed experimentation with the typewriter, he remained enthralled by its possibilities – "the assumed immediacy of the written word... seemingly connected in a direct way to the thoughts and ideas of the author through the physical movement of the hand... was displaced by the flow of disconnected letters on a page, one as standardized as another" (Emden 2005: 29).
The turning point for Kittler (1999) is represented by The Genealogy of Morals which was written in 1887 – by now Nietzsche was forced by continued poor vision to use secretaries to record his words. Here, it is argued that Nietzsche elevated the typewriter itself to the "status of a philosophy," suggesting that "humanity had shifted away from its inborn faculties (such as knowledge, speech, and virtuous action) in favor of a memory machine. [When] crouched over his mechanically defective writing ball, the physiologically defective philosopher [had] realize[d] that 'writing . . . is no longer a natural extension of humans who bring forth their voice, soul, individuality through their handwriting. On the contrary, . . . humans change their position – they turn from the agency of writing to become an inscription surface'" (Winthrop-Young and Wutz 1999: xxix).
In the very tentative analysis presented here (and which must be redone with a greater collection of Nietzsche’s works), the standard stylometric procedure of comparing normalized word frequencies of the most frequent words in the corpus was applied by means of the “stylo” (ver. 0-4-7) script for the R statistical programming environment (Eder and Rybicki 2011).
The script converts the electronic texts to produce complete most-frequent-word (MFW) frequency lists, calculates their z-scores in each text according to the Delta procedure (Burrows 2002); uses the top frequency lists for analysis; performs additional procedures for better accuracy (including Hoover’s culling, the removal of all words that do not appear in all the texts for better independence of content); compares the results for individual texts; produces Cluster Analysis tree diagrams that show the distances between the texts; and, finally, combines the tree diagrams made for various parameters (number of words used in each individual analysis) in a bootstrap consensus tree (Dunn et al. 2005, quoted in Baayen 2008: 143-147). The script, in its ever-evolving versions, is available online (Eder, Rybicki and Kestemont 2012). The consensus tree approach, based as it is on numerous iterations of attribution tests at varying parameters, has already shown itself as a viable alternative to single-iteration analyses (Rybicki 2012, Eder and Rybicki 2012).
The first analysis was performed for complete texts of six works by Nietzsche: Die Geburt der Tragödie (1872) and Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (1878), both written before 1879, his “year of blindness,” and his typewriter experiments of 1882, and Also sprach Zarathustra (1883-5), Jenseits von Gut und Böse (1886), Ecce homo and Götzen-Dämmerung (1888). The resulting graph suggest a chronological evolution of Nietzschean style as the early works cluster to the right, and the later ones to the left of Figure 1.
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| Figure 1, chronological evolution of Nietzschean style |
Yet the pattern above shares the usual problem of multivariate graphs for just a few texts: a possibility of randomness in the order of clusters. This is why it makes sense to perform another analysis, this time on the above texts divided into equal-sized segments (10,000 words is usually safe). Figure 2 confirms the chronological evolution pattern as the segments of each individual book are correctly clustered together. What is more, the previous result is corroborated by a very similar pattern in terms of creation date.
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| Figure 2, chronological evolution pattern as segments of each individual book are clustered together |
As has been said above, a greater number of texts is needed to confirm these initial findings. There is indeed a clear division of Nitzschean style into early and late(r). Whether this is a repetition of a phenomenon observed in many other writers (Henry James, for one), or a direct impact of technological change and therefore a confirmation of the claims of medium theory, remains to be investigated. Nonetheless, this approach offers an additional method to explore how medial change can be mapped in relation to changes in knowledge. It also offers a potential means for exploring the way in which contemporary debates over the introduction of computational and digital means of creating, storing and distributing knowledge affect the way in which authorship itself is undertaken.
This doesn't just have to be strictly between mediums, and there is potential for exploring intra-medial change and the way in which writing has been influenced by the long dark ages of Microsoft Word as the hegemonic form of digital writing (1983-2012), and which gradually appears to be coming to an end in the age of locative media, apps, and real-time streams. Indeed, with exploratory digital literature forms, represented in ebooks, computational document format (CDF) and apps, such as Tapestry, which allow the creation of "tap essays" (Gannes 2012), new ways of authoring and presenting knowledge are suggested. Only a short perusal of Apple iBooks Author, for example, shows the way in which the paper forms underlying the digital writings of the 20th Century, are giving way to new ways of writing and structuring text within the framework of a truly digital medium made possible through tablet computers, smart phones and the emerging "tabs, pads and boards" three-screen world.
With digital forms, new ways of presenting and storing knowledge are also constructed, not just the relational database, but also object-oriented, graph and other forms, and which people are increasingly familiar with as modes of practice in relation to manipulating knowledge. How this will change the writing of future literature remains to be seen, but Kittler clearly foresaw an important turn in the way in which we should research and understand these processes, writing,
To put it plainly: in contrast to certain collegues in media studies, who first wrote about French novels before discovering French cinema and thus only see the task before them today as publishing one book after another about the theory and practice of literary adaptations... In contrast to such cheap modernizations of the philological craft, it is important to understand which historical forms of literature created the conditions that enabled their adaptation in the first place. Without such a concept, it remains inexplicable why certain novels by Alexandre Dumas, like The Three Musketeers, have been adapted for film hundreds of times, while old European literature, from Ovid's Metamorphoses to weighty baroque tomes, were simple non-starters for film... It is possible... to conclude from the visually hallucinatory ability that literature acquired around 1800 that a historically changed mode of perception had entered everyday life. As we know, after a preliminary shock Europeans and North Americans learned very quickly and easily how to decode film sequences. They realized that film edits did not represent breaks in the narrative and that close-ups did not represent heads severed from bodies. (Kittler 2009: 108)
Equally, today in a world filled with everyday computational media, Europeans and North Americans are learning very quickly to adapt to the real-time streaming media of the 21st Century. We are no longer surprised when live television is paused to make a drink, or our mobile phone tells us that we are running late for a meeting and offers us a quicker route to get to the location. Nor are we perplexed by multiple screens, screens within screens, transmedia storytelling, social media, or even contextual navigation and adaptive user interfaces. Thus new social epistemologies are emerging in relation to computational media, that is, "the conditions under which groups of agents (from generations to societies) acquire, distribute, maintain and update (claims to) belief and knowledge [has changed] through the active mediation of code/software" (Berry 2012: 380). Again, a historically changed mode of perception has entered everyday life, and which we can explore through its traces in cultural artefacts, such as literature, film, television, software and so forth.
With the suggestive analysis offered in this short article, we hope to have demonstrated how computational approaches can create research questions in relation to medium theory, and which although not necessary offering conclusive results, nonetheless press us to explore further the links between medial and epistemic change.
David M. Berry and Jan Rybicki
Notes
[1] According to Günzel and Schmidt-Grépály (2002), Nietzsche typed 15 letters, 1 postcard and 34 bulk sheets (including some poems and verdicts) with his 'Schreibkugel' from Malling-Hansen in 1882.
Bibliography
Berry, D. M. (2011) The Philosophy of Software: Code and Mediation in the Digital Age, London: Palgrave.
Berry, D. M. (2012) The Social Epistemologies of Software, Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy, 26:3-4, 379-398
Burrows, J.F. (2002) “Delta: A Measure of Stylistic Difference and a Guide to Likely Authorship,” Literary and Linguistic Computing 17: 267-287.
Carr, N. (2008) Is Google Making Us Stupid?, The Atlantic, accessed 19/12/2012, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/
Dunn, M., Terrill, A., Reesink, G., Foley, R.A. and Levinson, S.C. (2005) “Structural Phylogenetics and the Reconstruction of Ancient Language History,” Science 309: 2072-2075. Quoted in Baayen, R.H. (2008) Analyzing Linguistic Data. A Practical Introduction to Statistics using R, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Eder, M. and Rybicki, J. (2011). Stylometry with R. Stanford: Digital Humanities 2011.
Eder, M. Rybicki, J., and Kestemont, M. (2012). Computational Stylistics, accessed 19/12/2012, http://sites.google.com/site/computationalstylistics
Eder, M. and Rybicki, J. (2012). “Do Birds of a Feather Really Flock Together, or How to Choose Test Samples for Authorship Attribution,” Literary and Linguistic Computing, First published online August 11, 2012: 10.1093/llc/fqs036.
Emden, C. (2005) Nietzsche On Language, Consciousness, And The Body, University of Illinois Press.
Gannes, L. (2012) When an App Is an Essay Is an App: Tapestry by Betaworks , Wall Street Journal, http://allthingsd.com/20121106/when-an-app-is-an-essay-is-an-app-tapestry-by-betaworks/
Günzel, S. and Schmidt-Grépály, R. (2002) (eds.) Friedrich Nietzsche. Schreibmaschinentexte, 2nd edition, Weimar: Verlag der Bauhaus Universität, accessed 19/12/2012, http://www.momo-berlin.de/Nietzsche_Schreibmaschinentexte.html
Kittler, F. A. (1992) Discourse Networks, 1800/1900, Stanford University Press.
Kittler, F. A. (1999) Gramophone, Film, Typewriter translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz, Stanford: Standford University Press, 200-208, quoted in Patricia Falguières, “A Failed Love Affair with the Typewriter”, rosa b, accessed 19/12/2012, http://www.rosab.net/spip.php?page=article&id_article=47#nb1
Kittler, F. A. (2009) Optical Media, London: Polity Press.
Hoover, David L. (2009) “Modes of Composition in Henry James: Dictation, Style, and What Maisie Knew,” Digital Humanities 2009, University of Maryland, June 22-25.
Le, X., Lancashire, I., Hirst, G., and Jokel, R. (2011) “Longitudinal detection of dementia through lexical and syntactic changes in writing: a case study of three British novelists,” Literary and Linguistic Computing, 26(4): 435-461
Manovich, L. (2008) Cultural Analytics, accessed 19/12/2012, http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2008/09/cultural-analytics.html
Rybicki, J. (2012) “The Great Mystery of the (Almost) Invisible Translator: Stylometry in Translation.” In Oakes, M., Ji, M. (eds). Quantitative Methods in Corpus-Based Translation Studies, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Winthrop-Young, G. and Wutz, M. (1999) Translators' Introduction, in Kittler, F. A., Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, Standford University Press.
29 Dec 21:33
Boas festas!
by Leonardo Monasterio
Albener PessoaAte deu vontade de asistir novamente "A vida de Brian"
Raphael Pawlik, Tadeu likes this
29 Dec 21:27
Para ser um bom empreendedor é preciso muito trabalho e também muitas qualidades. Uma delas é visão de mercado: entender quais são as tendências do mercado e tomar decisões que capitalizem mudanças atuais e futuras.
O quarterback do Denver Broncos, Peyton Manning, é conhecido por seus passes precisos e liderança em campo. O que poucos sabem é que Manning é também um grande administrador de empresas e de sua imagem.
Duas semanas antes da legalização do uso recreacional da maconha no estado do Colorado, onde fica o seu time, Manning adquiriu 21 lojas (no modelo de franquia) da empresa de pizzas Papa John's, uma das maiores dos EUA.
Vejam só a visão de mercado. O consumo de maconha é na maioria das vezes seguido de um aumento de apetite, a chamada larica. E, nos EUA, a larica é geralmente saciada com? Exato, pizza! Segundo o Huffington Post:
Not seeing the connection? It’s the munchies. Stoners love to eat pizza. It’s one of their favorites, due to pace of delivery, range of variety, ease of ingestion and just general deliciousness. So odds are in a state where recreational use of marijuana is legal, there will probably be way more people eating Papa John's.
Mais uma grande jogada de Peyton Manning.
Lições de Empreendedorismo
by noreply@blogger.com (Cristiano M. Costa)
Para ser um bom empreendedor é preciso muito trabalho e também muitas qualidades. Uma delas é visão de mercado: entender quais são as tendências do mercado e tomar decisões que capitalizem mudanças atuais e futuras.
O quarterback do Denver Broncos, Peyton Manning, é conhecido por seus passes precisos e liderança em campo. O que poucos sabem é que Manning é também um grande administrador de empresas e de sua imagem.
Duas semanas antes da legalização do uso recreacional da maconha no estado do Colorado, onde fica o seu time, Manning adquiriu 21 lojas (no modelo de franquia) da empresa de pizzas Papa John's, uma das maiores dos EUA.
Vejam só a visão de mercado. O consumo de maconha é na maioria das vezes seguido de um aumento de apetite, a chamada larica. E, nos EUA, a larica é geralmente saciada com? Exato, pizza! Segundo o Huffington Post:
Not seeing the connection? It’s the munchies. Stoners love to eat pizza. It’s one of their favorites, due to pace of delivery, range of variety, ease of ingestion and just general deliciousness. So odds are in a state where recreational use of marijuana is legal, there will probably be way more people eating Papa John's.
Mais uma grande jogada de Peyton Manning.
29 Dec 21:23
A ideia de reservar mercados nunca sai de moda no Brasil. Agora são os celulares estrangeiros que estão na mira dos "reguladores" brasileiros. A ANATEL quer impedir o funcionamento de celulares que não sejam homologados pela agência.
Trata-se de restringir o uso dos celulares trazidos do exterior e dos chamados xing lings, aqueles de dois chips e que são comprados facilmente nos camelôs.
Segundo a Exame (AQUI):
"... de acordo ele (Eduardo Levy, presidente do Sinditelebrasil), a proposta irá então atender a dois objetivos. O primeiro deles é a legislação, que não permite o funcionamento no país de telefones não certificados pela agência. O segundo é o de tentar garantir a qualidade das chamadas no Brasil, uma vez que, de acordo com ele, este tipo de celular impacta negativamente na rede em todo o país."
Se a pessoa sabe que o celular não é homologado (ou seja, não foi certificado pela ANATEL) e mesmo assim usa o aparelho, o risco é do usuário. Por exemplo, se eu uso um DVD pirata no meu aparelho de DVD, o risco de ele estragar é meu. A legislação que impede o uso de aparelhos não-homologados cheira a reserva de mercado escancaradamente.
Agora, o segundo argumento é ainda pior. A qualidade da chamada depende de dois fatores. Do sinal e do aparelho. Se o aparelho não é homologado, ele pode ter a recepção do sinal ruim. Pronto, o risco de novo é do usuário. Agora, por que esse aparelho impactaria negativamente na rede? Não faz sentido nenhum. Se a rede fosse comprometida pela qualidade do aparelho, então deveríamos ver isso em várias outras plataformas que possuem menos tecnologia do que os celulares vindos do exterior, que na maioria dos casos são modelos idênticos aos nacionais.
O que de fato deve estar ocorrendo é que o a entrada desses aparelhos deve estar colocando uma concorrência bacana no mercado de aparelhos celulares e smartphones. Os xing lings não só são mais baratos como aceitam dois chips, ou seja, a pessoa arbitra bonito no preço da chamada.
É meu amigo, o empresariado nacional não gosta de concorrência. Cada dia que passa eu me convenço mais disso...
O Problema é o Xing Ling!
by noreply@blogger.com (Cristiano M. Costa)
A ideia de reservar mercados nunca sai de moda no Brasil. Agora são os celulares estrangeiros que estão na mira dos "reguladores" brasileiros. A ANATEL quer impedir o funcionamento de celulares que não sejam homologados pela agência.
Trata-se de restringir o uso dos celulares trazidos do exterior e dos chamados xing lings, aqueles de dois chips e que são comprados facilmente nos camelôs.
Segundo a Exame (AQUI):
"... de acordo ele (Eduardo Levy, presidente do Sinditelebrasil), a proposta irá então atender a dois objetivos. O primeiro deles é a legislação, que não permite o funcionamento no país de telefones não certificados pela agência. O segundo é o de tentar garantir a qualidade das chamadas no Brasil, uma vez que, de acordo com ele, este tipo de celular impacta negativamente na rede em todo o país."
Se a pessoa sabe que o celular não é homologado (ou seja, não foi certificado pela ANATEL) e mesmo assim usa o aparelho, o risco é do usuário. Por exemplo, se eu uso um DVD pirata no meu aparelho de DVD, o risco de ele estragar é meu. A legislação que impede o uso de aparelhos não-homologados cheira a reserva de mercado escancaradamente.
Agora, o segundo argumento é ainda pior. A qualidade da chamada depende de dois fatores. Do sinal e do aparelho. Se o aparelho não é homologado, ele pode ter a recepção do sinal ruim. Pronto, o risco de novo é do usuário. Agora, por que esse aparelho impactaria negativamente na rede? Não faz sentido nenhum. Se a rede fosse comprometida pela qualidade do aparelho, então deveríamos ver isso em várias outras plataformas que possuem menos tecnologia do que os celulares vindos do exterior, que na maioria dos casos são modelos idênticos aos nacionais.
O que de fato deve estar ocorrendo é que o a entrada desses aparelhos deve estar colocando uma concorrência bacana no mercado de aparelhos celulares e smartphones. Os xing lings não só são mais baratos como aceitam dois chips, ou seja, a pessoa arbitra bonito no preço da chamada.
É meu amigo, o empresariado nacional não gosta de concorrência. Cada dia que passa eu me convenço mais disso...
29 Dec 21:21
Muitas pessoas não entendem como o governo americano consegue financiar seus enormes déficits. Pois o pessoal da escola de Direito de UPenn se juntou com os professores de Wharton para lançar um livro bem bacana sobre a dívida americana. O mais legal é que o livro é gratuito e está disponível em PDF. O livro conta com artigos de muitos professores de diversas escolas e especialistas que são referências na área. Recomendo!
PS: Dica do meu amigo Lourenço Paz.
A Dívida do Governo Americano
by noreply@blogger.com (Cristiano M. Costa)
Muitas pessoas não entendem como o governo americano consegue financiar seus enormes déficits. Pois o pessoal da escola de Direito de UPenn se juntou com os professores de Wharton para lançar um livro bem bacana sobre a dívida americana. O mais legal é que o livro é gratuito e está disponível em PDF. O livro conta com artigos de muitos professores de diversas escolas e especialistas que são referências na área. Recomendo!
 |
| Clique na imagem para abrir em PDF. |
PS: Dica do meu amigo Lourenço Paz.
29 Dec 20:27
NOTTING HILL - Um centro de pesquisas britânico especializado em estudos inusitados divulgou sua descoberta mais marcante de 2012. "Já provamos que os fetos podem bocejar, que as músicas de Adele são as melhores para adormecer e que o agrião ajuda a prevenir a hipocondria", comemorou o Dr. Graham Chapman, que completou: "Mas a descoberta de que Alceu Valença e Morais Moreira são a mesma pessoa redefine os rumos das pesquisas inúteis do século 21", concluiu, com os olhos marejados.
Cientistas britânicos comprovam que Alceu Valença e Moraes Moreira são a mesma pessoa
NOTTING HILL - Um centro de pesquisas britânico especializado em estudos inusitados divulgou sua descoberta mais marcante de 2012. "Já provamos que os fetos podem bocejar, que as músicas de Adele são as melhores para adormecer e que o agrião ajuda a prevenir a hipocondria", comemorou o Dr. Graham Chapman, que completou: "Mas a descoberta de que Alceu Valença e Morais Moreira são a mesma pessoa redefine os rumos das pesquisas inúteis do século 21", concluiu, com os olhos marejados.
29 Dec 20:26
BRASÍLIA - Após julgar o Fim do Mundo inconstiucional, o presidente do STF, Joaquim Barbosa, anunciou punição severa para quem atribuir frases de efeito a Clarice Lispector no Facebook. "Pelos poderes de Macabéa, condeno aqueles que difamam a obra de Clarice com frases de auto-ajuda a ler em voz alta 'Marimbondos de Fogo', de José Sarney". Assim que concluiu a sentença, houve certo tumulto entre os ministros. Ricardo Levandowski tirou um livro de baixo da mesa e leu, elevando a voz: "Até cortar os próprios defeitos pode ser perigoso. Nunca se sabe qual é o defeito que sustenta nosso edifício inteiro".
Joaquim Barbosa condena frases atribuídas a Clarice Lispector no Facebook
BRASÍLIA - Após julgar o Fim do Mundo inconstiucional, o presidente do STF, Joaquim Barbosa, anunciou punição severa para quem atribuir frases de efeito a Clarice Lispector no Facebook. "Pelos poderes de Macabéa, condeno aqueles que difamam a obra de Clarice com frases de auto-ajuda a ler em voz alta 'Marimbondos de Fogo', de José Sarney". Assim que concluiu a sentença, houve certo tumulto entre os ministros. Ricardo Levandowski tirou um livro de baixo da mesa e leu, elevando a voz: "Até cortar os próprios defeitos pode ser perigoso. Nunca se sabe qual é o defeito que sustenta nosso edifício inteiro".
29 Dec 20:22
REDAÇÃO – Inspirada pelo notável esforço do Congresso Nacional em votar mais de 3 mil medidas provisórias em menos de 24 horas, a laboriosa redação do The piauí Herald resolveu se dedicar à leitura atenta de todas as colunas de Merval Pereira publicadas desde 1o de janeiro de 2012. Quatro dias depois de tomada a corajosa decisão, e já tendo chegado à coluna de 3 de janeiro, fomos forçados a abandonar a empreitada quando a 18a estagiária colapsou no chão, vitimada, como nos dezessete casos anteriores, por um quadro agudo de estafa.
Retrospectiva 2012
REDAÇÃO – Inspirada pelo notável esforço do Congresso Nacional em votar mais de 3 mil medidas provisórias em menos de 24 horas, a laboriosa redação do The piauí Herald resolveu se dedicar à leitura atenta de todas as colunas de Merval Pereira publicadas desde 1o de janeiro de 2012. Quatro dias depois de tomada a corajosa decisão, e já tendo chegado à coluna de 3 de janeiro, fomos forçados a abandonar a empreitada quando a 18a estagiária colapsou no chão, vitimada, como nos dezessete casos anteriores, por um quadro agudo de estafa.
29 Dec 19:37
How can I get this man's job?
Submitted by: madeyoulol
Posted at: 2012-12-28 17:12:05
See full post and comment: http://9gag.com/gag/6192705
29 Dec 19:30
You came to the wrong neighborhood
Submitted by: rektadota
Posted at: 2012-12-28 04:50:53
See full post and comment: http://9gag.com/gag/6188890
29 Dec 19:24
Evolution in Science
Submitted by: agkhare
Posted at: 2012-12-28 05:57:40
See full post and comment: http://9gag.com/gag/6189136
Tadeu likes this
29 Dec 19:00
Some Smart Acts Of Vandalism
Submitted by: mi7ko
Posted at: 2012-12-28 19:13:08
See full post and comment: http://9gag.com/gag/6193535
29 Dec 18:58
Something that's so small
Submitted by: bananozkhi
Posted at: 2012-12-29 03:49:28
See full post and comment: http://9gag.com/gag/6196524
29 Dec 18:55
Phone Date
Submitted by: mante
Posted at: 2012-12-28 19:48:21
See full post and comment: http://9gag.com/gag/6193773
Tadeu likes this
29 Dec 17:58
Browsing through the readers' comments to this The Economist article on English skills across countries I could observe, once again, an interesting phenomenon: that many native English speakers don't realize, from their point of view, that international (globetrotter) English is a language variation in itself, spontaneously developing and adapting according to practical rules of intelligibility. Somebody that speaks Texan or Scottish English, for example, may be well understood in Amarillo or Kirkcaldy, but may also have a significant handicap as a globetrotter English speaker.
Business schools in the US and the UK have not yet, at least to my knowledge, considered international English intelligibility to be a skill that needs to be mastered. In advanced non-English speaking countries, on the other hand, the schools are somewhat aware of the problem, and have been tweaking their globetrotter English training programs accordingly.
Native English Is Not the Same as Intelligible Globetrotter English
by Pedro H. Albuquerque
Browsing through the readers' comments to this The Economist article on English skills across countries I could observe, once again, an interesting phenomenon: that many native English speakers don't realize, from their point of view, that international (globetrotter) English is a language variation in itself, spontaneously developing and adapting according to practical rules of intelligibility. Somebody that speaks Texan or Scottish English, for example, may be well understood in Amarillo or Kirkcaldy, but may also have a significant handicap as a globetrotter English speaker.Business schools in the US and the UK have not yet, at least to my knowledge, considered international English intelligibility to be a skill that needs to be mastered. In advanced non-English speaking countries, on the other hand, the schools are somewhat aware of the problem, and have been tweaking their globetrotter English training programs accordingly.
29 Dec 17:57
I just finished watching the first season of "Boss," a Starz series masterfully directed by Gus Van Sant. I judge it to be the most accurate depiction of politics I've ever seen on screen. It goes beyond the teachings of Machiavelli, becoming ideal groundwork for a series of lectures on public choice.
Advice to watchers: the series starts slowly, but picks up steam during the second half of the first season. It's extremely dark yet plausible. Kelsey Grammer grows in his role as the mayor of Chicago, episode after episode. What I find fascinating is the fact that party colors don't really matter for the story telling: the series works equally well would the mayor be a Democrat and his challengers Republicans or vice versa.
Warning: this series will forever kill any hope you may nourish about supposedly redemptive qualities of democracy and politics. No question that the world would be a better place if we could rely less on political representation and more on direct interpersonal relations and impersonal markets for collective action.
Enjoy the trailer:
7th Art: Boss (2011)
by Pedro H. Albuquerque
Albener PessoaAlguem assiste esta serie ? Fiquei curioso.
I just finished watching the first season of "Boss," a Starz series masterfully directed by Gus Van Sant. I judge it to be the most accurate depiction of politics I've ever seen on screen. It goes beyond the teachings of Machiavelli, becoming ideal groundwork for a series of lectures on public choice.Advice to watchers: the series starts slowly, but picks up steam during the second half of the first season. It's extremely dark yet plausible. Kelsey Grammer grows in his role as the mayor of Chicago, episode after episode. What I find fascinating is the fact that party colors don't really matter for the story telling: the series works equally well would the mayor be a Democrat and his challengers Republicans or vice versa.Warning: this series will forever kill any hope you may nourish about supposedly redemptive qualities of democracy and politics. No question that the world would be a better place if we could rely less on political representation and more on direct interpersonal relations and impersonal markets for collective action.
Enjoy the trailer:
29 Dec 17:51
Até agora
by noreply@blogger.com (Kenji)
Minhas impressões sobre minha humilde vida profissional.
- mais vale um cara dedicado numa velocidade normal que um superstar que não te ouve ou que não pode mudar um pouco por você.
- identifique o que é importante para quem está acima de você e invista nisso.
- existe o caminho mais fácil, o mais difícil, e o correto, geralmente, mais próximo do difícil.
- tudo o que você deixar de fazer hoje irá te perseguir no futuro. escolha com sabedoria.
- informação demais exige que você aprenda a aprender, a criticar e a buscar informação.
- a informação é perene mas a experiência não é.
- seu chefe dificilmente é mais burro que você.
- vale a pena ser sistemático em algumas coisas.
- vale a pena experimentar coisas e trocar abordagens.
- valorize quem está se esforçando.
- incentive as pessoas a crescerem.
- jogue no time da sua empresa.
- tente ajudar.
- seja generoso com seu conhecimento. seja o que você quer que as pessoas sejam. faça-se respeitar pelo que você pratica.
- não, o atraso não é engraçado.
- irresponsabilidade e incompetência não são engraçados.
- explicite os méritos dos seus subordinados aos seus superiores.
- não se envolva em joguinhos, manipulações e boatos.
- trabalhe bastante.
- não há trabalho que não seja importante ou honroso.
- faça o melhor possível mas assuma os riscos, eles são garantidos. Desconfie de períodos de calmaria.
- tente pensar 2 passos à frente no seu projeto, na sua empresa, na sua vida.
- insista no que precisa ser mudado. Melhor ser chato que irresponsável.
- ouça.
- seja honesto. não engane ninguém.
- devem haver vários estilos de GP. O que me pediram para ser foi o de servir.
- seja o RH do seu time e incentive-os como pessoas. Pense no que é melhor para elas, independente de qualquer outra coisa.
- assuma o que é de sua responsabilidade. Ofereça soluções, não desculpas.
- seja mais formal que informal.
- seja claro e sucinto.
- registre.
- automatize.
- estude.
- durma de consciência tranquila.
29 Dec 17:37
Filed under: 3d Printer hacks
3D Printing Records
by Eric Evenchick
Albener PessoaAgora todo hipster vai poder criar discos com suas musicas obscuras favoritas para ouvirem em vitrolas mesmo que nunca tenham sido lancados em vinil
This is a working record created with a 3D printer. [Amanda] came up with a process that converts audio files into 3D models. These models can be printed and played on a standard record player.
The real work is done by a Processing sketch that creates a STL file. [Amanda] started off by trying to create a sine wave. She used this test to optimize the printing process. Then she used Python to extract audio data from WAV files and modified the processing script to process the data. After more tweaking, she was able to get a reasonable signal to noise ratio and minimize distortion.
The resulting records have a sample rate of 11 kHz and 5-6 bit resolution. The sound quality isn’t going to be the same as commercially pressed vinyl, but you can still make out the song.
A Objet Connex 500 was used to print the records. This UV printer has a 600 dpi resolution, which is means it’s more accurate than extrusion printers. Your mileage may vary using different printers, but all of the Processing and Python code is available with the project write up.
After the break, watch [Amanda] spin some 3D printed records.
Filed under: 3d Printer hacks
29 Dec 17:23
Filed under: hardware, radio hacks
Open source software defined radio transceiver
by Brian Benchoff
As the year draws to a close, we must look back and look at the advances in amateur radio this year. The RTL-SDR tuner hack, a USB TV Tuner to create a software defined radio receiver, is one of the greatest hacks of the last 12 months and a great justification for 2012 being the year of software defined radio receivers. 2013 is shaping up to have even more advances in the state of software defined radio. This time we’ll be transmitting as well, possibly with [AE9RB]‘s Peaberry SDR transceiver.
The Peaberry SDR transceiver is a kit to both transmit and receive on every HAM band between 160 meters (1.8 MHz) to 17 meters (18 MHz). It does this through a USB interface and a 48kHz, 24-bit interface that is (or will shortly be) compatible with all the major SDR interfaces.
While the Peaberry SDR requires an amateur radio license to operate, we can’t wait to see what else will be coming to the software defined radio scene in the next year.
Thanks [Zach] for sending this one in.
Filed under: hardware, radio hacks
29 Dec 17:22
Filed under: Raspberry Pi
Raspberry Pi laptop is just a little too big for a pocket
by Brian Benchoff
Over on the Parts People blog, [Nathan] created his own Raspberry Pi laptop. It’s got all the bells and whistles, including a keyboard, trackpad, battery, and even a 3D printed case.
Of course [Nathan]‘s laptop contains a Raspi, but the other included parts are where this palmtop computer is turned into something useful. For powering the Pi and 3.5″ composite LCD, [Nathan] took apart the battery pack from an old Dell laptop. By throwing out the bits of plastic surrounding these rechargeable cells and reusing the battery connector, [Nathan] was able to power the Pi, and all the peripherals for 10 hours.
Also included in [Nathan]‘s Raspi palmtop is a 64 GB SSD connected to the powered USB hub. This, along with the 4 GB boot SD card, provides more than enough storage for listening to a music library, or even watching a few TV shows on the 3.5″ screen,
Filed under: Raspberry Pi
29 Dec 17:22
Filed under: chemistry hacks
Making graphene with a DVD burner
by Mike Szczys
A group of researchers have figured out how to produce graphene using a DVD drive. This discovery helps clear the path for mass production of the substance, which was discovered in the late 1980′s. More recently, the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to a team that produced two-dimensional graphene; a substance one just atom thick. One method of doing so used Scotch tape and is mentioned in the video after the break as a technique that works but is not feasible for large-scale production.
The process seen here starts with graphite oxide because it can be suspended in water. This allows a lab technician to evenly distribute the substance on a plastic surface. Note the use of optical discs. The second part of the process involves hitting the dried layer of graphite oxide with a laser. It just so happens that this can be done with a consumer DVD drive. The result is graphene that can be used in circuits and may have potential as a fantastic super-capacitor.
[Thanks Mark]
Filed under: chemistry hacks
29 Dec 17:20
Filed under: tablet pcs hacks
Sensor sleeve makes tablet use easier and benefitial for disabled children
by Mike Szczys
Pinch-zoom is a godsend (and shouldn’t be patent-able) and although we mourn the loss of a physical keyboard on a lot of device we use a tablet nearly as often as we do a full computer. But the touch screen interface is not open to everyone. Those who lack full dexterity of their digits will find the interface frustrating at best or completely unusable at worst. A team of researchers from the Atlanta Pediatric Device Consortium came up with a way to control touch-screen tablets with a sensor array that mounts on your arm.
The project — called Access4Kids — looks not only to make tablet use possible, but to use it as a means of rehabilitation. The iPad seen above is running a custom app designed for use with the sensor sleeve. The interface is explained in the video after the break. Each sensor can serve as an individual button, but the hardware can also process sequential input from all three as a swipe in one direction or the other. If they can get the kids interested in the game it ends up being its own physical therapy coach by encouraging them to practice their upper body motor skills.
[via DVICE]
Filed under: tablet pcs hacks
29 Dec 14:50
Thanks to protections enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, the government generally can’t snoop through your laptop for no reason.
But those privacy protections don’t safeguard travelers at the U.S. border, where the U.S. government can take an electronic device, search through all the files, and keep it for a while for further scrutiny – without any suspicion of wrongdoing whatsoever. (more) (pdf guide) 
Defending Privacy at the U.S. Border: A Guide for Travelers Carrying Digital Devices
by Kevin Murray
Thanks to protections enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, the government generally can’t snoop through your laptop for no reason.
But those privacy protections don’t safeguard travelers at the U.S. border, where the U.S. government can take an electronic device, search through all the files, and keep it for a while for further scrutiny – without any suspicion of wrongdoing whatsoever. (more) (pdf guide)