Desde que volví a la universidad hace un año y medio ya, las cosas se han puesto bastante más duras: he engordado aún más de lo que ya estaba, soy más sedentario, y no necesariamente me siento más sabio. Vivo esa sensación de vacío que le queda a uno cuando siente que aún no completa un círculo necesario para madurar y declarar a una etapa definitivamente quemada.
No quiere decir esto que no vaya a estudiar más. Quienes me conocen bien, saben que adoro estudiar, y sí, pararé de hacerlo de manera formal algún día... pero mientras ese día llega, veamos hasta donde puedo llegar yo.
La maestría en gerencia de sistemas empezó con mal pie. Creo que para ese entonces todavía no había recuperado el amor por este asunto del blog (der vlog, como dirían mis amigos maracushos!), pero tuve gran frustración de ver que el nivel de exigencia era muy bajo. Sin embargo, poco a poco empecé a tomarme más en serio cada tema que me llamaba fuertemente la atención. Ya no me importa si el profesor es bueno o es malo... es simplemente cuestión de sentarme, al más puro estilo de un dedicado investigador, a perseguir el conocimiento por donde quiera que esté, y para hacerlo mío.
En línea con eso, dos herramientas bien interesantes han bien o vuelto a mi, o llegado a mi para brindarme paz mental: les hablo una vez más de Google... esta vez en su versión Scholar, una plataforma diseñada para que cualquier tema de búsqueda esté enmarcado en los documentos más serios del mundo académico que el poderoso buscador pueda conseguir. Realmente recomendado para quienes en serio no quieren verse inmersos en miles de resultados generados por gente que a la final sólo quiere un trabajito de "rincondelvago.com" o de "monografías.com" (mis respetos a las dos páginas por su intención... mi falta de respeto a quienes no tienen ética y se "fusilan" trabajos ajenos. Supongo que gente así existe con el mismo título que uno principalmente para hacerle entender que uno tiene un poco más de oportunidades en la bolsa de trabajo que ellos - fin de la reflexión)
El otro material viene gracias a la gente de Mindjet, que con su programa MindManager se la siguen comiendo. Ya hace años que usé esto, pero ahora lo vuelvo a poner en marcha por la universidad. La versión 6 pro, que sólamente tengo el placer de tenerla en beta, viene con todo para hacer las vidas de los diagramadores de sus procesos mentales, una más sencilla. Totalmente recomendado!
Cinco de la mañana por aqui... creo que es justo y necesario dormir!
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Mal fin de semana...
Ayer estaba por escribir sobre la caída del viaducto 1 de la carretera Ccs - La Guaira, cuando mi explorer se GUINDÓ de una mala manera... y bueno... ayer fuimos a ver "En sus zapatos" (buena película... mucho mejor considerando unos BUTACONES maravillosos del cine VIP del nuevo Centro Comercial El Hatillo), y súbitamente, no se donde carajo, pero boté mi teléfono celular. Como me dice Daniela (mi novia): "al menos no lo querías". Pero hay que verle mla cara a perder ese montón de plata... :(
Y ahora estoy podrido tratando de hacer trabajos para la universidad cuando en verdad no puedo vivir con mi flojera.
Y ahora estoy podrido tratando de hacer trabajos para la universidad cuando en verdad no puedo vivir con mi flojera.
Friday, October 14, 2005
Would you send your mom to jail to make money?
Real life reflections that we all can learn from... really good story (Thanks, Jaime, for forwarding this to me)
Taken from http://www.michaelrobertson.com/archive.php?minute_id=190
"Would You Send Your Mom To Jail To Make Money?
September 22nd, 2005
In a conference room at my office there's a giant photo of a lone Chinese man standing in front of a row of tanks. It's the classic photo from Tiananmen Square on June 4th, 1989, when 100,000 brave students peacefully assembled to protest the corrupt and repressive Chinese government. For their heroic actions many were crushed by tanks, beaten by soldiers, or jailed, and some of the protest's organizers were forced to flee their homeland forever. Sixteen years later, one can hardly pick up a business magazine without seeing a screaming headline about the importance of China. With 20% of all earth's inhabitants and a migration from communism to capitalism China is a tantalizing opportunity for virtually any corporation. What's rarely mentioned is that the brutal regime still in power continues to jail people for exercising even the most basic of liberties we take for granted in Western society. Recently, technology companies who have opened shops for business in China are confronted with an ethical dilemma. In a quest for growth and profits, how much do they kowtow to the Chinese government, which tramples human rights and demands corporations to assist in continued crackdowns of freedom? All the major search engines have given in to Chinese demands to throttle liberty in exchange for access to the Chinese market. Google has removed news listing from its popular news search to publications critical of Chinese policy such as Epoch Times, Voice of America and a dozen other publications. Microsoft has blocked users of its MSN site from using the terms "freedom," "democracy" and other concepts China has designated as "dangerous." The argument in favor of corporate self-censorship is that the massive amount of information NOT filtered is slowly informing the Chinese populace about freedom, which is another way of saying that the good outweighs the bad. There may be truth in this, but at the same time it's clear that the Communist oligarchy believes that they can extend their control of their populace with the cooperation of American businesses into the digital age. Most disconcerting are recent reports that Yahoo!'s Hong Kong operation is turning over emails which helped convict a reporter. Journalist Shi Tao was jailed and sentenced to 10 years in prison for "illegally sending state secrets abroad." The secrets that he revealed were information his newspaper received from the state propaganda department about how they could cover the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. He was identified because he had used Yahoo!'s free email service for which Yahoo! turned over log files to authorities that were later tracked back to his computer. It's easy to brush off the matter as an unfortunate incident that happens in a corrupt government on the other side of the globe. After all, Yahoo! has to respond to court orders in China just as my companies would have to respond to court orders served on them in the United States. In addition, they have obligations to their shareholders to grow the company, not battle against government policies they might disagree with. It's possible that Yahoo! did not know why the government was requesting the information or understand the implications of their participation. And maybe Yahoo!'s employees were even threatened themselves with jail if they did not comply.Still, I wonder how they would react if the court order was for information to identify their Mom instead of a faceless Chinese citizen? If their mother was at the center of the controversy and risked a decade-long sentence in a Chinese prison where torture and hard labor are not uncommon, would they willingly provide the information? It's one thing to engage in self-censorship, preventing someone from discussing "freedom" and "human rights" or blocking news sources. In those instances nobody goes to prison. Nobody is tortured. Nobody is physically harmed. It's an entirely different level to actively participate in turning over information which leads to jailing of citizens for the most basic freedom of press issues. It makes me wonder where the moral lines are when chasing a dollar. Would those companies turn over information that leads to executions for those that violate freedom of speech?With the secrecy shrouding the Chinese government, it's likely other companies have been forced to take similar actions. Yahoo! is in the unfortunate position of being the first Internet company to be publicly outed when they've cooperated with the Chinese in such a manner. Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft may act like they are powerless in this situation, bound by the laws of the countries they operate in, but that's ridiculous. Surely they recognize the power they have in going public with this information - the power to reach the media, influence their users and bring diplomatic and political pressure on China. It's no secret that as the host of 2008 Olympics in Beijing they are sensitive to public perception and scrutiny. For Shi Tao's sake, I hope we have not heard the final chapter of this story. I hope that Yahoo! is working behind the scenes to see that Mr. Tao does not spend the next decade in prison for sending an email message. It's important for Yahoo! to come out publicly as well and say they strongly oppose the Chinese government's actions and remind people of the basic liberties Chinese are still deprived of. It's even more important for the next Shi Tao. I hope he or she will have confidence that while American companies may be forced to cooperate in situations in which they do not agree, they do so under both public and private protest. I'm not naive enough to think that speaking out against the Chinese government won't possibly provoke retaliation. It is rarely convenient to do the right thing. But I hope Americans, from the safety and freedom afforded us in the United States, will muster a tiny fraction of the courage of the man in front of the tanks and speak out. -- Michael "
Taken from http://www.michaelrobertson.com/archive.php?minute_id=190
"Would You Send Your Mom To Jail To Make Money?
September 22nd, 2005
In a conference room at my office there's a giant photo of a lone Chinese man standing in front of a row of tanks. It's the classic photo from Tiananmen Square on June 4th, 1989, when 100,000 brave students peacefully assembled to protest the corrupt and repressive Chinese government. For their heroic actions many were crushed by tanks, beaten by soldiers, or jailed, and some of the protest's organizers were forced to flee their homeland forever. Sixteen years later, one can hardly pick up a business magazine without seeing a screaming headline about the importance of China. With 20% of all earth's inhabitants and a migration from communism to capitalism China is a tantalizing opportunity for virtually any corporation. What's rarely mentioned is that the brutal regime still in power continues to jail people for exercising even the most basic of liberties we take for granted in Western society. Recently, technology companies who have opened shops for business in China are confronted with an ethical dilemma. In a quest for growth and profits, how much do they kowtow to the Chinese government, which tramples human rights and demands corporations to assist in continued crackdowns of freedom? All the major search engines have given in to Chinese demands to throttle liberty in exchange for access to the Chinese market. Google has removed news listing from its popular news search to publications critical of Chinese policy such as Epoch Times, Voice of America and a dozen other publications. Microsoft has blocked users of its MSN site from using the terms "freedom," "democracy" and other concepts China has designated as "dangerous." The argument in favor of corporate self-censorship is that the massive amount of information NOT filtered is slowly informing the Chinese populace about freedom, which is another way of saying that the good outweighs the bad. There may be truth in this, but at the same time it's clear that the Communist oligarchy believes that they can extend their control of their populace with the cooperation of American businesses into the digital age. Most disconcerting are recent reports that Yahoo!'s Hong Kong operation is turning over emails which helped convict a reporter. Journalist Shi Tao was jailed and sentenced to 10 years in prison for "illegally sending state secrets abroad." The secrets that he revealed were information his newspaper received from the state propaganda department about how they could cover the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. He was identified because he had used Yahoo!'s free email service for which Yahoo! turned over log files to authorities that were later tracked back to his computer. It's easy to brush off the matter as an unfortunate incident that happens in a corrupt government on the other side of the globe. After all, Yahoo! has to respond to court orders in China just as my companies would have to respond to court orders served on them in the United States. In addition, they have obligations to their shareholders to grow the company, not battle against government policies they might disagree with. It's possible that Yahoo! did not know why the government was requesting the information or understand the implications of their participation. And maybe Yahoo!'s employees were even threatened themselves with jail if they did not comply.Still, I wonder how they would react if the court order was for information to identify their Mom instead of a faceless Chinese citizen? If their mother was at the center of the controversy and risked a decade-long sentence in a Chinese prison where torture and hard labor are not uncommon, would they willingly provide the information? It's one thing to engage in self-censorship, preventing someone from discussing "freedom" and "human rights" or blocking news sources. In those instances nobody goes to prison. Nobody is tortured. Nobody is physically harmed. It's an entirely different level to actively participate in turning over information which leads to jailing of citizens for the most basic freedom of press issues. It makes me wonder where the moral lines are when chasing a dollar. Would those companies turn over information that leads to executions for those that violate freedom of speech?With the secrecy shrouding the Chinese government, it's likely other companies have been forced to take similar actions. Yahoo! is in the unfortunate position of being the first Internet company to be publicly outed when they've cooperated with the Chinese in such a manner. Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft may act like they are powerless in this situation, bound by the laws of the countries they operate in, but that's ridiculous. Surely they recognize the power they have in going public with this information - the power to reach the media, influence their users and bring diplomatic and political pressure on China. It's no secret that as the host of 2008 Olympics in Beijing they are sensitive to public perception and scrutiny. For Shi Tao's sake, I hope we have not heard the final chapter of this story. I hope that Yahoo! is working behind the scenes to see that Mr. Tao does not spend the next decade in prison for sending an email message. It's important for Yahoo! to come out publicly as well and say they strongly oppose the Chinese government's actions and remind people of the basic liberties Chinese are still deprived of. It's even more important for the next Shi Tao. I hope he or she will have confidence that while American companies may be forced to cooperate in situations in which they do not agree, they do so under both public and private protest. I'm not naive enough to think that speaking out against the Chinese government won't possibly provoke retaliation. It is rarely convenient to do the right thing. But I hope Americans, from the safety and freedom afforded us in the United States, will muster a tiny fraction of the courage of the man in front of the tanks and speak out. -- Michael "
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Muy ocupado.. pero un breve cuento de Sao Paulo
Disculpen a todos quienes leen mis palabras... primero, espero que se hayan suscrito por correo electrónico a las actualizaciones de mi blog, para no perder tiempo viniendo a no conseguir gran cosa nueva. He estado extremadamente complicado con cosas de la oficina después de volver de Europa, y me tocó estar toda la semana pasada en Sao Paulo, Brasil.
Déjenme contarles un poco de la impresionante
metrópolis que alberga a 21 millones de habitantes, aproximadamente. Buena gente hablando en simpático portugués, dispuestos a flexibilizarse ante la presencia de no-portugués-parlantes :D, grandes congestiones de vehículos, edificios nuevos y viejos, pésimo pavimento en las vías, un aroma fétido de río siendo dragado y profundamente limpiado, el circuito de Interlagos, grandes centros comerciales y... Giselle Bundchen son las frases que resumen mi corta visita a esa ciudad.
Una ciudad a la que ciertamente, no creo que me iría a vivir. Bastante parecida a Caracas, pero parece que le están poniendo un poco más de corazón para evitar que se siga derruiendo. Las labores que están haciendo para mantener las "marginales" y expandirlas son geniales. El metro parece que funciona, aunque no lo probé, y la comida es baratísima - Dios bendiga los rodizios (all you can eats, bien sea de carme, los más típicos, o de pizza! SI, DE PIZZA!!! :D) -. Importante echarse unos palitos de Caipirinha cuando se vaya uno por allá, para no dejar de sentir que el aguardiente, definitivamente, es un licor MALO para la salud, aqui en Venezuela, en Brasil, y en la conchinchina! :D
Ya les escribiré luego... en Noviembre, Costa Rica. Luego, la fría Varsovia de nuevo. Veamos cómo se desenvuelve todo!
Saludos a todos!
Edgar.
Déjenme contarles un poco de la impresionante
metrópolis que alberga a 21 millones de habitantes, aproximadamente. Buena gente hablando en simpático portugués, dispuestos a flexibilizarse ante la presencia de no-portugués-parlantes :D, grandes congestiones de vehículos, edificios nuevos y viejos, pésimo pavimento en las vías, un aroma fétido de río siendo dragado y profundamente limpiado, el circuito de Interlagos, grandes centros comerciales y... Giselle Bundchen son las frases que resumen mi corta visita a esa ciudad.Una ciudad a la que ciertamente, no creo que me iría a vivir. Bastante parecida a Caracas, pero parece que le están poniendo un poco más de corazón para evitar que se siga derruiendo. Las labores que están haciendo para mantener las "marginales" y expandirlas son geniales. El metro parece que funciona, aunque no lo probé, y la comida es baratísima - Dios bendiga los rodizios (all you can eats, bien sea de carme, los más típicos, o de pizza! SI, DE PIZZA!!! :D) -. Importante echarse unos palitos de Caipirinha cuando se vaya uno por allá, para no dejar de sentir que el aguardiente, definitivamente, es un licor MALO para la salud, aqui en Venezuela, en Brasil, y en la conchinchina! :D
Ya les escribiré luego... en Noviembre, Costa Rica. Luego, la fría Varsovia de nuevo. Veamos cómo se desenvuelve todo!
Saludos a todos!
Edgar.
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Warszawa Centralna i Stare Miasto - Varsovia
Sabían que el 84% de Varsovia fue reducido a polvillo durante la invasión Nazi? En verdad que hay que ensañarse con un pueblo y su ciudad para hacerle tal cantidad de atrocidades a su historia y su presente. En verdad que lo lamento por quienes perecieron en el intento de sobrevivir, pero me alegro mucho por quienes recuperaron esta tierra de 2 millones de habitantes, porque han hecho un muy buen trabajo.
Estando en el Marriott de Varsovia (Warszava), se está casi en el corazón de la ciudad. Se erige frente al hotel un monstruo de incontables metros de alto, construídos por los rusos, luego de la segunda guerra mundial. Parece no ser muy bien apreciado por los polacos, y puede que tengan razón: nadie les preguntó si querían algo tan evidentemente discordante con su estilo. Pero bueno, ahí está, y me sirve a mi, y a cualquier mortal para nunca perderse. Desde casi cualquier lado de Varsovia (se dice que hasta 30 Km a la redonda) se puede ver el edificio que hoy sirve al Palacio de la Cultura. Justo detrás de él, la estación central de Varsovia, de donde salen trenes hacia las provincias de la nación, y hacia cualquier cantidad de destinos en otros países de Europa.
Justo entre el hotel, el Palacio de la Cultura y la Estación Central está la Avenida Jerozolimskie (Aleje Jerozolimskie), que, seguida hasta pasar por encima del río Wisla (Vistula, en español) y más allá, me lleva a mi oficina todos los días. Es una avenida bastante grande, tres canales por sentido, bien señalizada, y con unos DETESTABLES pasos subterráneos que ayudan a que el tráfico no se ponga peor (en mi mente no dejo de repetirme... estos pobres niños aún no tienen idea de lo que es vivir una cola)...
Tengo tanto tiempo escribiendo esto, que mejor lo publico de una vez... lo leen, y cuando lo termine - si lo termino - releen lo que venga nuevo... :)
Estando en el Marriott de Varsovia (Warszava), se está casi en el corazón de la ciudad. Se erige frente al hotel un monstruo de incontables metros de alto, construídos por los rusos, luego de la segunda guerra mundial. Parece no ser muy bien apreciado por los polacos, y puede que tengan razón: nadie les preguntó si querían algo tan evidentemente discordante con su estilo. Pero bueno, ahí está, y me sirve a mi, y a cualquier mortal para nunca perderse. Desde casi cualquier lado de Varsovia (se dice que hasta 30 Km a la redonda) se puede ver el edificio que hoy sirve al Palacio de la Cultura. Justo detrás de él, la estación central de Varsovia, de donde salen trenes hacia las provincias de la nación, y hacia cualquier cantidad de destinos en otros países de Europa.
Justo entre el hotel, el Palacio de la Cultura y la Estación Central está la Avenida Jerozolimskie (Aleje Jerozolimskie), que, seguida hasta pasar por encima del río Wisla (Vistula, en español) y más allá, me lleva a mi oficina todos los días. Es una avenida bastante grande, tres canales por sentido, bien señalizada, y con unos DETESTABLES pasos subterráneos que ayudan a que el tráfico no se ponga peor (en mi mente no dejo de repetirme... estos pobres niños aún no tienen idea de lo que es vivir una cola)...
Tengo tanto tiempo escribiendo esto, que mejor lo publico de una vez... lo leen, y cuando lo termine - si lo termino - releen lo que venga nuevo... :)
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