There is something you all need to know about Brasil (do you prefer New York or Nova Iorque?), and I can tell, I'm not any proud of it.
The congress can aprove whatever law they want in Brasil, even DMCA-like, which I think it's very unlikely. Once aproved there are no grantees that the law will be respected.
Many laws in Brasil exists only on paper, and has't any kind of regulation nor enforcement. People simply ignore them, and even police, or official fiscalization, does nothing about it, the law is completely ignored by all sectors of society.
For example. Rip a CD or a DVD is not legal in Brasil. But everybody does it, and nothing is done about it. I have discovered about this a couple of month ago.
Another example. It's not legal to sell pirated CDs or DVDs. But in any city, even the smaller ones, it's possible to buy illegal copied CDs and DVDs for as much as US$ 2,50 each movie, US$ 1,50 each CD. It's very easy to buy a XBox 360 game for US$ 10. And as easy as find someone selling this CDs and DVDs on streets is to find a policeman buying from them.
This kind of attitude is not only found in copyrighted material. It's easy for a minor to buy alcoholic beverages or cigars.
So, the congress can even aprove a DRM-like legislation, but it will certainly not leave the paper. USA hungry for copyright protection will be pleased, but the society will ignore the law and thigs will remain the same as they are today.
Try to discuss something more practical about Brasil.
How much do you pay for broadband a month?
In Sao Paulo we pay about US$ 45/mo for a 3 Mbps link, and about US$ 60/mo for a 6 Mbps. But the ISP only garantees 10% of the contracted link. Another problem is that in many cities there is only one option, so the maximum link is 1 Mbps, and the price is about US$ 35/mo. For each of these options we always pay 40% in taxes. Note that all prices already have taxes included.
After working for a famous free software company I realized that among all solutions for production administration tools, there's no option on scheduling as Unix Administrators are used to.
Ok, we have crontab. But it has nothing really useful to job scheduling but running scripts at the right time. There are no control on what happened, there's no controle on how long did it take, there's no control even if it was really executed.
In times when cleverness is missing and the war is as near as 40 year ago I remembered an old song. It might remember many the rippies, but for me it remembers the peace propoused by them and the passive resistence against the war (Vietnam in that time, Korea and Iraq now a days)
This month I saw something I should already had previewed.
When I first have heard about The Matrix I refused to read any kind of article, synopsis or critic about the movie, I just went to the nearest movie theater and watched it (one of the best movies I have ever watched). I loved it, and since then I've been wainting for Matrix Reloaded.
Now I know that Matrix Reloaded will be launched in May 15th. But why waiting all this time to release a single movie? Isn't 4 years enough?
Two weeks after my new year resolutions, I'm already seeing results.
mini-pub is waking up. I submited several modifications and its activity raised to 60%. That's good, mainly because I still haven't released a new version and no news were posted anywhere.
I know that this can sound conceited, but this was one of the best comments I have ever done. It's about stupid linking polices and a German lawyer fighting against them. Take a look.
Here is the comment:
Every new year is the same old sh*t. We always want to do more then we have done in the past, and we always make new resolutions (I mean, they're always the same
"If I do not want others to quote me, I do not speak." -- Phil Wayne
