Leopard & Microsoft-free computer from now on

Ok, here I am again.

Those of you who know me from other sites are probably surprised due to the lack of comments about one of my favourite topics: computers et al. Or, more precisely, Apple gear. Well, the time has come.

I just finished doing a clean install of Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard, on my PowerMac G4 QuickSilver. And given I erased the hard disk, I think it was a good time to try something I have been considering for a while: a fully Microsoft-free computer.

Thus far, I have used Microsoft Office for convenience reasons, since I receive often (as anybody else) documents created with Word or Powerpoint. But luckily enough, Apple offers a suite called iWork, which includes three apps: Pages, Keynote and Numbers, which respectively are the Apple counterparts for Word, PowerPoint and Excel. Thus far I have only used Pages and Keynote, and I clearly prefer both over the Microsoft apps (no big mystery here: the Microsoft apps are far from a favourite of mine). And the good news for people like me, is that iWork apps read and write documents in .doc, .ppt and .xls formats, thus enabling you to share information with Microsoft Office users.

So I decided to not install Microsoft Office this time. I'll let you know how it works, but I suspect I will avoid loads of troubles.

As for Leopard, I can only say that it looks stunning and the new features seem very interesting to me. But I'll post more detailed comments once I get used to the new system.

10 years & feeling lucky

Yesterday my wife and me celebrated the 10th anniversary of our marriage.

It's been a long and extremely worthwhile time: sometimes funny, sometimes exhausting; yet all this time, we have felt a very lucky couple.

A favourite Spanish writer of mine, Antonio Gala, says often that one of the main virtues of people in Andalucía is their wisdom to reduce their needs, in order to feel fulfilled with few things.

I personally agree with that. Even if you intend to accomplish further things in life, the value of every moment has to be enjoyed. The small things. During all these years, with the highs and lows, the good and bad, we tried to keep the perspective and focus on the truly important things. I think we succeeded. Alba, Manuel, Lucía and Irene helped a lot for doing it.

Happiness is not getting everything you dream about; rather, it is to enjoy every second, realizing about its value.

Soul in photography

This week, the longtime awaited Olympus E-3 dSLR camera has been officially introduced, and it has made quite a few waves of noise along the internet fora and blogs dealing with photography.

Since I have been looking on this field for quite some time, I have read with great interest some of the comments at a few particularly interesting web pages. And when a controversy on the treatment of media regarding products from different brands started at The Online Photographer, I decided to write a fairly long comment on what I call the soul in cameras, and how it is lacking in many sites doing camera reviews.

Maybe you find it interesting: it's here.

Evolution

Yesterday I attended a brilliant conference by Spanish (but longtime stablished in the USA) Professor Francisco J Ayala, a world leading expert in Genetics. It is one of those occasions where you feel you are listening to a really wise man.

The topic of the conference was "The evolution", a subject which is lately the core of heated arguments in the USA, where some people are trying to make others believe that the Intelligent Design blah-blah is in fact a scientific theory, instead of disguised religion (which is the actual core of such "theory").

Beyond the interest of the conference, I thought that such very concept, Evolution, was a good one to switch the route of this blog. As some of you remember, this blog was born out of a burning conflict with a superstar musician. Now I'd like to discuss other topics interesting to me, while keeping the personal perspective of the headline.

So for better or worse, this blog is evolving: the single topic discussion is over, and from now on I will post on other stuff. Those of you who have followed my posts elsewhere will certainly find familiar material here, but I guess you will also find some surprises.

Hopefully you will enjoy the ride and contribute your comments, as my goal is to keep an open conversation and not a monologue.

Housequake.com is back

Coming back home is always good news.

So I'm happy to let you know that we come back home today.

Hopefully this is the begining of the end of the issues discussed here thus far.

Copyright: how long can you go?

I am following with interest, long time ago, different cases regarding copyrights. But sometimes you see specific examples that make you wonder: are we all going nuts, or will someday a clear line be stablished to know what is a serious matter of copyright infringement, and what is basically an attempt to cash-in for unjustifiable reasons?

And this is exactly what I thought after seeing a recent entry in Slashdot. In very short: a company of car repairs deals with customers by phone. The employees are listening to radio at work. And therefore, customers can listen to radio while having a call with this company. Well, all that is normal.

What is unbelievable to me (yet it is actually happening) is that the Performing Rights Society started legal actions, asking to get money since they think that the radio being heard by customers implies there is a copyright infringement.

I'm speechless.

A feature often mentioned in this blog (the common sense) should join, the sooner the better, the legalities of copyright, so that this concept is used in a fair manner, and not in attempts to cash-in at any price, like those discussed above.

There are ways and ways of treating fansites (I): Grateful Dead

As promised in a previous entry, I think it's well worth to have a look at other artists/bands and see how is their relationship with their fans.

An interesting (and exemplary, in my view) case is that of Grateful Dead. I had heard about their very friendly and supporting attitude regarding their fans, but after having a look, I am just stunned.

At their official webpage, you can see a number of interesting features.

The first one you notice (if you are a Prince fan) is a feature entitled "Taper's Section" (!!!!!!!), with this heading:

"Taper's Section

In this space, every Monday, you will find information on the recorded history of the Grateful Dead’s music as it pertains to that week, specifically focusing on the shows for that week, through the band’s 30 year performing history, that reside in the Grateful Dead’s storied tape vault. Although not everything is in there, with more than 1,600 of the band’s 2,400-odd shows represented, there is plenty about which to talk. Check back weekly for new entries and insight into the vault, as well as exclusive audio clips relating to that week in the Grateful Dead’s recorded history.

Please note that beginning today all Taper’s Section audio streams are served via a new media player in both Windows Media Audio and QuickTime Audio formats."

Yes, I am no joking: they are offering at the official website a sampling of their huge career of live shows. Can you imagine that??? It would be a dream come true for any hardcore Prince fan, if it happened one day for us.

But wait: there is much more. Among other things, in the "Community" section, there is another interesting  link:

Guess which one?

Yeah, you got it:

FAN PICTURES (!!!!!!). Look:

"Share your memories with the rest of us! Upload your photos by clicking the button below. Add your story, link the photo to a show, or just put it where we can all see it. File size limit is 1.2m. (Photo may take between 1-12hrs to appear on the site.)"

Is anybody listening near Paisley Park?

Other bands welcome fans to upload their own pictures of shows AT THE OFFICIAL SITE of the band.

Free Burma

As you know, this blog started due to a very specific conflict, and all entries thus far have been directly dealing with it, providing different perspectives.

But we live in the real world, and way beyond conflicts that are comparatively minor, out there, in the real world, there are many, big problems. And in a blog which started speaking about Freedom of speech, I think I should mention Burma now.

I won't enter the discussion, since there are loads of articles and blogs if you digg a little bit around the net. A good start could be http://www.avaaz.org/ and www.freeburmacoalition.org

The point of this entry is to stress that in no way is this blog a closed-minded resource to focus on a single issue. The real (as opposed to the virtual) world is the place to act. And although the matters discussed thus far are important to me, I am no confused, and I am not putting it at the top of my priorities.

A tangled web & the photography copyrights

Sometimes the random browsing leads you to unexpected, yet extremely interesting findings.

As most of you know, the issue that provoked the start of this blog was dealing with the copyrights and the ownership of certain photographs. Since I'm interested in photography, I visit often a few websites, including the very useful The Online Photographer. And just today, when I went there, I found an entry entitled "A tangled web". It explains the curious story of a picture from a girl, shot by a church youth counselor, then uploaded to Flickr by him, then used by a publicity agency (who thought was complying with the Creative Commons terms of use, as explained in the Flickr page). Weirdly enough, it finished in a lawsuit since apparently, the girl complained against the publicity agency since she felt "being insulted" due to the use of this picture in a publicity campaign.

Mess as a mess can be.

But bottom line: all these stories deal with the commercial use of a photograph.

In most websites of fan communities of a musician, there are many pictures of the musician being shown without any commercial interest. They are shown under the terms of fair use, and nobody is making any profit out of them: the only object is to pay homage to the musician. Furthermore, in most cases, the musicians are rather happy about such communities, since they are making a huge promotion for their careers, and it's all for free.

Obviously Prince does not belong to this latter category.

But that is matter for another comment.

Working out conflicts

I found today an interesting webpage, and I thought I would comment on its content for reference, as it might be relevant for the topics discussed in this blog thus far.

The page is entitled "Teaching guide: Working out conflicts for grades K-5". It's a nice read, containing some of the basics to solve conflicts with other people. And it's for grades K-5, which is also interesting.

I was planning to reproduce some of its paragraphs here, but just noticed that they request not to do it, unless you have a written permission. But believe me: it's a nice read.

There's much more to be found/read if you google a bit on "Solving conflicts". But one of the key ideas is that no conflict will be solved if one party does not try to understand the issues from the other, and if no compromise acceptable for both parties is reached. In which case, the conflict remains, and usually a conflict unsolved is the seed for further conflicts.

I know all of this is just plain common sense. But sometimes, it's worth to repeat such kind of stuff.

BTW I'd like to make a side comment:

I started this blog on October 1st, and 61 people from 13 countries have visited it thus far. I truly did not expect it. So thanks to all of you for reading this little blog.

There were others here with us

A blast from the past

"Time is a trick: history repeats itself, going round in circles"

Uptown

Sevenmag

Prince Family

Controversy

Online Prince worshipers turn the tables on the Artist

RESPECT

That was then; this is now

1994-1996. After a number of disagreements with his all-time records company, Warner Brothers, Prince starts a campaign to make public his attitude. He appears at different events with the word "Slave" written on his face, and asks media to call him "O(+>", or The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, in an attempt to let the public know that he feels not connected to the "Prince" which has been publicized for so many years by WB.

Most of his hardcore fans (and that includes me) try to explain the story to friends, families, cowokers... by saying that Prince did not go nuts: he was (to our eyes) honestly fighting for his rights, because the music system was extremely unbalanced so that the economic income is basically going to big corporations, while the creators receive a minor part of the money their creations are earning. Once more, fans supported Prince in spite of his very controversial actions, and once more, fans accepted being considered "weird people, just like him" due to justifying his actions.

2007. During a most successful series of gigs in London, Prince announces he does not want to be photographed (let alone filmed) during the live performances. The advertisements to fans reach ridiculous levels at the O2 auditorium entrance. Furthermore, some fans are actually catched while taking pictures and banned from the event, much to the disgust of them who didn't think they were making any harm by taking a picture to remember such stunning show. However, and although most fans accept that Prince is in his right to prevent making pictures within the auditorium, they can not understand the message he sends to most fansites on internet, asking "respectfully" to not post pictures taken at the shows. Many of those sites, with the goal of avoiding further trouble, accept that requirement, and no show pictures are shown.

Yet in Housequake.com, after consideration between the team of moderators, it is concluded that once fans leave the O2 auditorium, if they could get pictures, these pictures are owned by them, and thus they can show the pictures, even if Prince does not like the idea. Pretty much the same reasoning by which many pictures of other famous people taken in public places are published (both in magazines and in internet) by papararazzi, against the wishes of the photographed people: as long as the privacy was not invaded, there is no law in the world preventing these pictures from being shown. This reasoning is not accepted by Prince; rumours suggest that the genius musician is planning to file lawsuits in order to force Housequake.com to remove the pictures.

I post both stories, from the early 90s, next to the current controversy, to evidence the contradiction in Prince behaviour.

Back in 1994-96, he was openly looking for support from fans to help him in his fight against WB.

Now in 2007, fansites are being threatened by Prince, who "respectfully" asked for something which is only his WISH (NOT the law), and later, forgot about the "respectfully" word to, plainly, use all his economic power in order to pressure fansites to comply with his WISHES, regardless of the law.

It is hardly surprising that more and more fans of Prince music keep on having the highest regard on his live shows, while at the same time, his consideration as human being is much more controversial.

Freedom of speech

I never published a blog before, although I have been thinking on this possibility for a while.

A few recent happenings pushed me to start this blog today, because I felt that freedom of speech was being harmed at another website that I love, due to external pressures driven by money. I will elaborate further, later on.

Now is time for acting. And is also time to use alternative pathways of communication.

I don't know if this blog will last for only some weeks, and maybe nobody will read it.

But I felt the need to express my opinions on a few matters, and now it seems a good time for doing it.

Therefore, for those of you who know who Cateto is, thank you for coming and welcome here.

And for those of you who don't know, thank you for coming and welcome too.