Monday, September 14, 2015

Realpolitik or the American reality show (Let's defeat Trump!)















I will make mine some good ideas from Michael Rosemblum.

(...)
We vote for the best entertainer. The most entertaining political figure is the winner. And that is Trump. He kills. The rest are dead.
Image result for pato donald trumpSo how can the Democrats defeat The Donald? Like the man in the movie says, you need a machine to beat a machine.
The Democrats should wake up, ditch Hillary (who has all the entertainment of a schoolmarm), and find someone even more entertaining and better TV than The Donald if they expect to win.

My suggestion: Take The Donald at his word and undercut him while you can. Draft Oprah. It's your only chance. Jon Stewart? Good TV but does not really rate big numbers. But Oprah? A ratings titan! And she doesn't seem to be doing much these days.
If you think the Fox GOP debates got viewership wait until you see the Presidential debate between Trump and Oprah. 90% viewership, I bet. The ad spots will go for more than the Superbowl. Battle of the Titans. The Thrillers in Cleveland (or wherever it takes place).
Of course, once the election is over, we'll all have to live with President Trump or President Oprah, But what the heck, move a few cameras into the White House and we'll have a Reality Show that will go on for years.
The country may go to hell in a hand basket, but at least it will be fun to watch.
Like they say in Hollywood: That's Entertainment!

Monday, June 29, 2015

A hacker's manifesto

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The following was written shortly after my arrest...

                       \/\The Conscience of a Hacker/\/

                                      by

                               +++The Mentor+++

                          Written on January 8, 1986
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

        Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers.  "Teenager
Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...
        Damn kids.  They're all alike.

        But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain,
ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker?  Did you ever wonder what
made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?
        I am a hacker, enter my world...
        Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of
the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...
        Damn underachiever.  They're all alike.

        I'm in junior high or high school.  I've listened to teachers explain
for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction.  I understand it.  "No, Ms.
Smith, I didn't show my work.  I did it in my head..."
        Damn kid.  Probably copied it.  They're all alike.

        I made a discovery today.  I found a computer.  Wait a second, this is
cool.  It does what I want it to.  If it makes a mistake, it's because I
screwed it up.  Not because it doesn't like me...
                Or feels threatened by me...
                Or thinks I'm a smart ass...
                Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...
        Damn kid.  All he does is play games.  They're all alike.

        And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through
the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is
sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is
found.
        "This is it... this is where I belong..."
        I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to
them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...
        Damn kid.  Tying up the phone line again.  They're all alike...

        You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at
school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip
through were pre-chewed and tasteless.  We've been dominated by sadists, or
ignored by the apathetic.  The few that had something to teach found us will-
ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

        This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the
beauty of the baud.  We make use of a service already existing without paying
for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and
you call us criminals.  We explore... and you call us criminals.  We seek
after knowledge... and you call us criminals.  We exist without skin color,
without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals.
You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us
and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.

        Yes, I am a criminal.  My crime is that of curiosity.  My crime is
that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like.
My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me
for.

        I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto.  You may stop this individual,
but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.

                               +++The Mentor+++

Thursday, February 12, 2015

SALVE MAESTRO MÁXIMO DAMIÁN

Máximo Damián Huamaní

(San Diego de Ishua, Ayacucho Perú, 20 de diciembre de 1936 - Forever) 



Los amigos de José María Arguedas




Sunday, January 04, 2015

Do not go gentle into that good night


Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan M. Thomas(1914 - 1953)

Monday, December 01, 2014

Pepe Mujica y 30 frases del presidente más humilde del mundo




El próximo 1 de marzo de 2015, José Mujica entregará la Presidencia de Uruguay a su correligionario Tabaré Vázquez. Durante los cinco años de su actual gestión, el considerado "presidente más pobre del mundo" debido a su vida austera, acuño una serie de frases que tuvieron gran repercusión. Seleccionamos 30 de ellas:
1) "A los que les gusta mucho la plata hay que correrlos de la política. Son un peligro".
2) "Los políticos tenemos que vivir como vive la mayoría y no como vive la minoría".
3) "Si tuviera muchas cosas tendría que ocuparme de ellas. La verdadera libertas está en consumir poco".
4) "La política es la lucha por la felicidad de todos".
5) "Pobres no son los que tienen pocos. Son los que quieren mucho. Yo no vivo con pobreza, vivo con austeridad, con renunciamiento. Preciso poco para vivir".
6) "Continuará la guerra hasta que la naturaleza nos llame y haga inevitable nuestra civilización".
7) "Estoy muy contento con el hoy, me tiene abrumado el pasado mañana".
8) "El hombre moderno anda siempre apurado, porque si la economía no crece es una tragedia".
9) "Yo quiero saber la verdad, pero en la justicia no creo un carajo".
10) “Quizá esté equivocado, porque yo me equivoco mucho; pero lo digo como lo pienso”.
11) “Hay cosas que tienen valor cuando se pierden”.
12) “Siento rabia, me caliento, digo disparates, pero no puedo cultivar el odio (…). Hay que respetar, sobre todo cuando más duele”.
13) “Ser libre es (…) gastar la mayor cantidad de tiempo de nuestra vida en aquello que nos gusta hacer”
14) “El poder no cambia a las personas, sólo revela quiénes verdaderamente son”.
15) “Esa vieja es peor que el tuerto. El tuerto era más político, ésta es más terca” (Sobre Cristina Fernández).
16) “Me comí 14 años en cana y dos horas después de que salí, ya estaba militando”.
17) “Lo inevitable no se lloriquea. Lo inevitable hay que enfrentarlo”.
18) “Nuestro mundo necesita menos organismos mundiales, que sirven más a las cadenas hoteleras, y más humanidad y ciencia”.
19) “Sí, es posible un mundo con una humanidad mejor. Pero tal vez hoy la primera tarea sea salvar la vida”.
20) ”Vengo del sur, y como tal, cargo inequívocamente con los millones de compatriotas pobres de América Latina, patria común”.
21) “La economía sucia, el narcotráfico, la estafa, el fraude y la corrupción son plagas contemporáneas cobijadas por ese antivalor, ese que sostiene que somos más felices si nos enriquecemos sea como sea”.
22) “Ocupamos el templo con el dios Mercado, él nos organiza la economía, la política, los hábitos, la vida y hasta nos financia en cuotas de tarjeta la apariencia de felicidad”.
23) “Hemos nacido sólo para consumir y consumir y cuando no podemos, cargamos con la frustración, la pobreza y hasta la automarginación y autoexclusión”.
24) “Si aspiráramos en esta humanidad a consumir como un americano promedio, son imprescindibles tres planetas para poder vivir”.
25) ”Enfrentamos el sedentarismo con caminadores, al insomnio con pastillas, a la soledad con electrónica”.
26) “El hombrecito promedio a veces sueña con vacaciones y libertad. Siempre sueña con concluir las cuentas, hasta que un día el corazón se para y adiós”.
27) “Prometemos una vida de derroche y despilfarro, que en el fondo constituye una cuenta regresiva contra la naturaleza y contra la humanidad como futuro”.
28) “Soy un paisano terco. No razono en términos económicos. Pero estoy peleado con la civilización en la que estoy viviendo”.
29) “Despilfarramos dos mil millones de dólares por minuto en presupuesto militar a nivel mundial. Decir que no hay plata es no tener vergüenza”.
30) “Vivir mejor no es sólo tener más, sino que es ser más feliz”.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Tuesday, September 09, 2014

América, no puedo escribir tu nombre sin morirme

Tomado de "Las Imprecaciones" 1955
(Manuel Scorza 1928-1983)

América,
no puedo escribir tu nombre sin morirme.
Aunque aprendí de niño,
no me salen derechos los renglones;
a cada sílaba tropiezo con cadáveres,
detrás de cada letra encuentro un hombre ardiendo,
y no puedo ni cerrar la a
porque alguien grita como si se quedara dentro.

Vengo del Odio,
vengo del salto mortal de los balazos;
está mi corazón sudando pumas:
sólo oigo el zumbido de la pena.

Yo atravesé negras gargantas,
crucé calles de pobreza,
América, te conozco,
yo mismo tendí la cama
donde expiró mi vida vacía.

Yo tenía dieciocho años
yo vivía
en un pueblo pequeño,
oyendo el diálogo de musgo de las tardes,
pero pasó mi patria cojeando,
los ahogados empezaron a pedir más agua,
salían de mi boca escarabajos.
Sordo, oscuro, batracio, desterrado,
¡era yo quien humeaba en las cocinas!

¡Amargas tierras,
patrias de ceniza,
no me entra el corazón en traje de paloma!
¡Cuando veo la cara de este pueblo
hasta la vida me queda grande!
¡Pobre América!
En vano los poetas
deshojan ruiseñores.
No verán tu rostro mientras no se atrevan
a llamarte por tu nombre, ¡América mendiga,
América de los encarcelados,
América de los perseguidos,
América de los parientes pobres!
¡Nadie te verá si no deshacen
este nudo que tengo en la garganta!

POPULIBROS


Wednesday, August 20, 2014

NSA Teams With Providers To Monitor Your Email - Twitter - Facebook


No Such Agency (NSA) Teams With 

Providers To Monitor Your Email

NSA logoSurely they were doing this anyway? Ellen Nakashima reports for the Washington Post:
The National Security Agency is working with Internet service providers to deploy a new generation of tools to scan e-mail and other digital traffic with the goal of thwarting cyberattacks against defense firms by foreign adversaries, senior defense and industry officials say.
The novel program, which began last month on a voluntary, trial basis, relies on sophisticated NSA data sets to identify malicious programs slipped into the vast stream of Internet data flowing to the nation’s largest defense firms. Such attacks, including one last month against Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin, are nearly constant as rival nations and terrorist groups seek access to U.S. military secrets.
“We hope the . . . cyber pilot can be the beginning of something bigger,” Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III said at a global security conference in Paris on Thursday. “It could serve as a model that can be transported to other critical infrastructure sectors, under the leadership of the Department of Homeland Security.”
The prospect of a role for the NSA, the nation’s largest spy agency and a part of the Defense Department, in helping Internet service providers filter domestic Web traffic already had sparked concerns among privacy activists. Lynn’s suggestion that the program might be extended beyond the work of defense contractors threatened to raise the stakes.
James X. Dempsey, vice president for public policy at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a civil liberties group, said that limiting the NSA’s role to sharing data is “an elegant solution” to the long-standing problem of how to use the agency’s expertise while avoiding domestic surveillance by the government. But, he said, any extension of the program must guarantee protections against government access to private Internet traffic.
“We wouldn’t want this to become a backdoor form of surveillance,” Dempsey said…

OTHER SOURCE:  

Mark Klein on AT&T/NSA Domestic Surveillance Program: “The NSA is Getting Everything.”

http://cryptogon.com/?p=1588 

The Grossman-Stiglitz Paradox

Source: http://jinsukpark.wordpress.com/2011/01/09/the-grossman-stiglitz-paradox/

PDF here

This paradox defies market efficiency, but at the same time, it contradicts market inefficiency arguments. We can clearly show this by modifying two essential assumptions of the paradox:
1. investors’ belief in market efficiency
2. information/transaction cost
 A. Belief in efficiency to market inefficiency Suppose market investors are rational, they believe the financial market is efficient (so, market prices reflect all available information). Then, they do not have any incentive to analyse information and initiate trades when the process of gathering information and making transaction is costly. Thus, they will just buy-and-hold their initial portfolios, that is, passive investment strategy is implemented all over the market. However, as time goes by, new (random) information will surely arise, but it is not going to be incorporated into the market prices since no one is willing to trade. Consequently, fundamental prices, which incorporate all relevant information, will deviate from the market prices. In other words, if all market participants truly believe the market is efficient, it will lead to market inefficiency. This is the paradox.

 B. Belief in inefficiency to market efficiency On the other hand, the opposite argument is possible. Suppose all market participants are irrational, that is, they do not believe the market is efficient. They will seek profitable opportunities and initiate market trade to exploit them. It will be strengthened if we further assume no information processing and transaction cost. However, as they intensify their efforts to search the opportunities responding the arrivals of new information, all profitable opportunities will be dried up and the market prices will eventually reach the fundamental prices (if exists). The paradox in here is that when market investors believe market inefficiency, they will drive the market into efficiency.

 C. Implications for rational investors If rational investors are truly rational, they will anticipate this paradox. Assuming rational and noise traders co-exist, the rational investors would let (or promote) noise traders fulfill their own beliefs in inefficiency. By their behaviors, market prices will remain efficient over time. The rational investors then simply can ride the market (e.g. using index funds) while paying little cost. Also, they would not spend much efforts to defy the market efficiency as the disbelief of market efficiency is essential to achieve their investment goals.
 D. The existence of fundamental prices On the other hand, whether the fundamental prices ever exist is another issue to test. It may be too volatile to be justified by ex-post dividend stream (Schiller). Or they consist of pure expectation of future cash flows, dividend payment or stock prices, which are hard to be tested by ex-post dividends.

El próximo mes me nivelo (Julio Ramón Ribeyro, 1969)

El próximo mes me nivelo El próximo mes me nivelo (no se publicó como un libro individual,  fue publicado en 1972  como parte del  segundo t...