F/Red: Fedora/Red Hat Electric Devices

Ok, this idea woke me up: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Renich/Projects/Fed

I think Fedora/Red Hat could get into the device realm. Who would buy a Fedora/Red Hat tailored laptop? Imagine that? Or maybe an audio player? Or a phone?

# Raw Ideas
- Laptops and PCs
* Upgradeable hardware.
* A native GNU & Linux keyboard. I dislike the windows logo on my keyboard.
* 100% compatible and optimized hardware.
* Fedora Art on it.
* Linux native keys on the keyboard.

- Audio Player
* Plays open formats (ogg, webm, flac, etc)
* Upgradable (hdd, memory, processor, etc)
* Sync all (contacts, pictures, movies, music, etc)
* Share music (streaming, p2p, etc)
* Creative Commons Friendly (jamendo, libre.fm, etc)

- Phone
* Android and/or something tailored for it?
* SIP clients

- Camera
* Open formats
* shareable
* syncable

- T.V.
* Web enabled
* Upgradeable (hardware and software)
* Open Formats

I like the idea of generating an open hardware specification for these and some conceptual art. If you’re interested, please, lend me a hand. The idea rocks… to me at least ;)

Search Cards Interface

This is another search interface.

It would be cool to have a card interface too. You make a search, and a million cards open up bellow. Each one has a screenshot of the website with hilighted results. You would see 4 or so cards per line and the title of the website just bellow.

You could turn a card and see detailed info on the website and/or more stuff.

One card would have multiple sides or turns. You could keep turning each card and they would show content in different ways:

- They could show related or in the same category websites
- They could show related content (video, photos, blogs, news, translations, etc)

Also:
They could be expanded to a almost-full window (with the search engine on top) and let you keep on turning). This would let you browse stuff and do what you wanna do and, after that, go to normal size again and keep on browsing cards.

They should be storable and shareable; and function as a result filter.

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported or >
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Search Cube (polygon) interface

Today, I woke up with two ideas; here’s one.

The search cube polygon is an idea for the search engines. The idea is to search for something and have a 3D cube or polygon with a determined number of sides. Each side guides you through the search results; in different contexts.

One could use the cube to search in different ways and use different search approaches. For example, if you look for the word sex, the cube would present itself and determine 4 categories (based on common content) of the results of sex. You would turn the search cube in any direction and results would be filtered so, for example; in the rare case you’re not looking for porn, you could see clean results of it in 3 other categories. These could be, for example: sex (science), sex (porn), sex (culture) and sex (unfiltered)… bad examples but you get the idea.

So, if I’m interested in sex from the cultural point of view, I would turn the search cube towards that direction and see results in this category only. At any time, I can start turning it in other directions for different results. This solution would filter out all the porn when not interested and let me focus my search a lot more.

  sex (science)
  ---------------------------
s |                         |  s
e |                         |  e
x |                         |  x
  |                         |  (porn)
  ---------------------------
sex (culture)

This is one approach; the categorizing one. There could be a functional configuration of the polygon. For example, take google’s news, blogs, images, videos and search results. This would call for a Pentagon to do this trick so, you could use it, basically, the same wa you used the cube.

Oh, and, when I say “you turn the polygon” I mean it in a way as Compiz let’s you turn your desktop, but just bellow the search form in Google or any other search engine.

You should be able to build up various search polygons and store them.
They should be shareable too.
You could click on one and maximize it.
You should be able to combine them and store old versions automátically (wiki-like)
You should be able to import them to your web browser (open in tabs or polygon functionality)
They should be able to contain images, videos , results and whatever.

This is just an interface idea and introduces a whole new way of searching stuff. Feel free to implement since, here, I declare this idea as Creative Commons Attribution 3 Unported or >.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Good advice

I’ve been thinking,

I want to set up a website with good advice. One that attracts people that think things like: “I don’t want to live”, “I feel lost” or “what should I do with my life?”

I’m sure people google this from time to time… I have…

So, here’s a good idea:

Let’s set up a website and ask the search engines for help. The website should contain good advice: religion agnostic, well fundamented and written texts. With the necessary colors to make you feel comforted and, maybe, some music.

The website should be a first result and take you, immediately, to it (kinda like the “I’m feeling lucky” feature by Google). It should include no propaganda, google adds nor any “read more” links. Just plain “get you up” texts; devised by specialists in the matter.

Maybe the UN or some international organization would lend a hand. The texts should be translated in all languages. Possibly, it could have links, in the texts, foreseeing possible reactions, for example, a reader, in the middle of it, could think “but I don’t believe what you said” and, the link would elaborate, in a special way, so, the reader, could get more interested or convinced.

The cases that should be firstly developed should be suicide cases or similar desperation cases.

So, for example, let’s say I’m thinking of killing myself and I google “I want to kill myself”. This good advice website should appear and let me read a bit… maybe watch a video and some nice music.

Another case, let’s say Susan looks for “I feel lonely…” the website would present her with a relevant text/video whatever…

Anyway, just an idea that I think it’s worth exploring.

Open Letter: Audio development unification proposal

I’ve tried, in numerous times, to contact different audio companies and get them to develop their products for GNU & Linux. These companies are: M-Audio (Avid), Propellerheads Software, Ableton and Digidesign (Avid).

The petition, usually, was that they should count us in… and, that, didn’t work.

Ok, here’s a new approach. What if we, all, collaborate on a charity project to produce Free and Open Source audio software?

You could centralize in a non-profit organization with the following commitments:

Develop Free and Open Source Software for those who can’t afford your products

Look at this as a charity project. You could try and develop, alongside with your fellow competitors, a piece of software that would let people with low resources, to be creative and produce high-quality music.

Join forces with the competition and learn from each other

Ok, so you compete… right. What if you let your developers work together? I’m sure you could learn a lot from each other and gain ideas for new products.

Provide ground for testing and experimental design

You know your devs have millions of great ideas! Why not let them implement them on their free time; on a pice of software that would have tons of people providing feedback and working along with all of you to make round up these new features? Come on, you could get great code!

Besides, you have the possibility of learning from new technologies like Lv2, jack and others. I’m sure you would expand your horizons as a company and would have happy developers; working for a better world!.. a more musical one at least ;)

Give back, the Community, and let them give you

This spells benefit for all sides; all the time. People with look at you as better companies and, the Community, takes care of their companies! We support them and we develop with them; we stay with them when software fails and help them repair it; we rejoice and make parties when victorious! We rule!

Conclusions

I’m sure and, if your leaders read this, they will see the great benefit in working together with your fellow competitors. The Community can give back a lot of man power to you and you could expand the knowledge and horizons. The benefit goes back to your products, the community and the users!

Please, consider on making a non-profit organization where multiple audio companies can work together. I’m sure you can see benefit in the near future.

The future of P2P on the cloud

Last night, before sleep, I thought of this:

The new sharing system should be something as simple as a distributed, syncronized filesystem.

This new filesync should sync the files on a certain directory; for all it’s nodes (users). It should use rsync or something similar so it could send the changes only and calculate hashes to compare the files.

It should hold the list of nodes or, users, in the same dir; so everybody has the list.

There would be one master source and, when validated, the other nodes could become masters (multiple masters). Also, a node could “fork” the dir and add/change the files.

Everytime the master updates the share, you would have to authorize the changes.

This would let us share files easier and let us stop looking, eternally, for the updated torrent file or the rapidshare links to episodes of house! ;)

If done right, this could serve as a very cool replicated filesystem over Internet. Not only let us share files but, for example, share a whole server (google style; small spec nodes but millions of them!) in our machines. You could decide to “sync” some cool website you like and help them with the hosting.

Besides, we could add really cool features like encryption and stuff. Cool idea, huh?

Contpaq: abominación monopólica

Cada vez que tengo contacto con esta porquería de software, me pegan duro el cinismo y el sarcasmo. Cómo puede ser que una pieza de software tan mala sea tan usada y tan exitosa?

El éxito de contpaq es la prueba de la gran oportunidad que hay, en el campo del software, para México.

Contpaq no solo está mal hecho… es caro y tiende al mismo monopolio que otras compañías.

Primero, no es suficiente que cueste ~$5,000 por licencia… Tienes que pagarla cada año para tener acceso a las “actualizaciones fiscales”; cosa que es un robo!

El soporte es basura. Te asignan consultores, como yo (que soy distribuidor), que te cobramos un dineral por hacer que, la chingadera que, los desarrolladores, no han sabido hacer funcionar, funcione!

No es inteligente. Recientemente adoptó el uso de sql… y MSSQL para acabarla de chingar! Además, como si no fuera suficientemente inseguro, Contpaq, utiliza el usuario administrador para hacer sus movimientos! No tiene chequéo de errores ni es transaccional (el otro día perdieron datos y, mi socio, tuvo que reparar la DB manualmente!)

Por si fuera poco, requieren que, en el mundialmente reconocido por su inseguridad, Windows Vista, se haga todavía más inseguro desactivando el “control de usuarios” y demás cositas, como el firewall!!

Esta basura no merece ser utilizada por tanta gente! Señores, no sirve! Lo saben!… Y lo enseñan en las escuelas de contadores… por favor!!

Uno de mis proyectos es hacer un FOSS que tenga estas mismas funciones; al cual puedas expandir con módulos y que, los módulos, estén disponibles para la gente. Que puedas comprar buen soporte y que lo necesites poco. Que se puedas rentar el servicio a un ISP o instalarlo en tu empresa. Que sea compatible con todo sistema operativo y todo navegador (que cumpla con los estándares internacionales… no IE!).

Un software hecho con Zend Framework, MySQL y SQLite. Algo que puedas usar en línea y fuera de ella. Que aproveche la infraestructura de google, yahoo y demás compañías amigables.

Este software se hará para que sea útil para la gente y no para quitarles más su dinero.

Éste será un buen proyecto.

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Morphing the idea

He estado pensando y, cada vez más, se me hace ridícula la idea de un album.

Las bandas, desde que tenemos conciencia de banda, soñamos con sacar “el album” y nos obsesionamos con ello. Mucha gente me ha visto como un wey contreras pero, la neta, no es eso; tiendo a cuestionar mi entorno y a tener la buena costumbre de ponerle la etiqueta de la pregunta; a la que le debemos la innovación: “¿Porqué?”.

¿Porqué sacar un disco? No somos una banda igual a las demás que nos rodean. Somos Creative Commons. Publicamos las rolas en internet y las regalamos a la gente. Ponemos nuestros archivos de secuencia y, eventualmente; al llegar al punto de release, publicaremos el “código fuente”, o sea, los tracks de las rolas; para que puedan ser modificadas a gusto.

Cada día me gusta más la idea de hacer un release 1.0, hehe! Haremos un release 1.0 de nuestros 16 tracks. Que cada quien haga la compilación que se le de su gana… incluidos nosotros!

Pienso que, para sacar algo de fondos, voy a “venderle” compilaciones de 6 rolas (EP en disquera lingo) a compañías para que nos editen versiones físicas y poder hacerlos disponibles, a la gente; con el respectivo logotipo de la empresa que nos apoye.

No sé a donde nos va a llevar, musicalmente, esta aventura. Me vale madre si dicen que no va a resultar… es algo que suena muy bien y me pinta una sonrisota en la cara, MWAHAHAHA!

Terminaremos de grabar las rolas y veremos que pasa cuando hagamos el release oficial.

Programa 48

El programa 48 es muy sencillo.

En el supuesto de que tienes una empresa, contratas a la gente por 40 horas (5 días a la semana; por 8 horas). A los nuevos empleados se les ofrecerá el Programa 48, el cual, consiste en lo siguiente:

Tu horario de trabajo es de 9 a 5, los 5 días de la semana. El sábado, en vez de trabajar para la empresa, vas a donar 8 horas de trabajo a algún proyecto en específico. Éste proyecto puede ser de asistencia social o algún interés común que exista entre la empresa, los demás empleados y tú.

La empresa, en vez de pagarte esa lana, irá ahorrándola para que, al mes, tu decidas a quién se la donas. Tendrás la opción de retener la lana, para que se junte más, y poder donarla a quien tu decidas; después de 6 meses o un año. El recibo deducible, en caso de haberlo, se le dará a la empresa.

Los proyectos en los que puedes participar van desde proyectos FOSS hasta proyectos sin fines de lucro; en tu comunidad. Además, si te organizas con otros empleados, podrás llevar acabo proyectos, en equipo, desarrollados por ustedes mismos (los empleados) y, claro, se vale invitar a la empresa a participar en éstos.

Un ejemplo de un proyecto desarrollado por ustedes sería construir mejores instalaciones de cocina, financiado por el sueldo que la empresa donaría al proyecto en el que trabajaras.

Otro ejemplo sería que, entre todos los que conocen programación, hicieran una aplicación, FOSS, para el uso de la empresa y, a final de cuentas, quien quiera que sea.

Página para invitar voluntarios extranjeros a vivir un tiempo en México

Voy a hacer una página para invitar a personas de entre 18 y 30 años a venir a pasar de 1-3 meses en una casa mexicana. Que vivan aquí y que hagan trabajo de voluntariado. Yo les consigo la casa donde vivan y ellos, además, podrán ir de acá para allá y conocer México.

Lo más chido de todo va a ser que van a poder vivir una experiencia real: vivir en una casa mexicana. Tendrán obligaciones (pocas) y toda la cosa.

A las personas de la casa, les va a gustar porque, en general, voy a buscar personas que estén solas y que tengan feria para sostener a una persona más.

Será una situación de ganar/ganar porque, la persona que hospeda, tendrá compañía y revivirá su casa un poco. Los huespedes, además de tener estancia gratis y, probablemente, comida, podrán ir de aquí para allá, trabajar de voluntarios en una a.c. y conocer muchos cool mexicans!

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