Lakitas Matriasaya, a feminist musical group breaking the patriarchal hold on Andean music

Lakitas Matriasaya is an independent Andean musical band that consists mainly of Andean panpipes and two drums –a bass and snare drum (and a third percussionist by way of hand-held cymbals). Fifteen members make up the band at present. Twelve pipers sing and play the pipes, while three play percussion. The band formed in Valparaíso, Chile, six years ago –consisting of members from all parts of Chile which have encompassed (at one time or another), Vivi, Jime, Mariela, Vale, Cata, Pame, Nicole, Claudia, Nati, Anita, Marcel, Ange, Mapa, Anto, Leo, Marcia, Lore, Paloma, and Javi.

On November 22, 2009, I had the chance to see them perform at the Teatro Municipal de Chillán (municipal theater of Chillán), Chile –after which I was invited to tag along to a pizzeria with them. The following article is a compilation of that night.

Bell proposes end to ‘unlimited internet’

If there’s one thing I hate about Canada is how some companies there try to take advantage of the regulatory environment and the nation’s social net. They believe this net applies to large corporations, but in reality, these should only be considered under the gravest conditions –as they should be self-sufficient. After all they’re private businesses, not public. The technique usually involves a sappy story about not being able to stay afloat, because of current economic conditions, and how it’s necessary to give leeway. Sacrifices may come in the way of wage cuts, benefits, and/or demand public financial support, and as will be outlined below, also come as a costly –to the customer– billing system.

BSD Needs Spiced up Atmosphere-bsdtalk

I’m not sure why I can’t post comments to bsdtalk. Maybe it’s because I’m not signed up with the hosting service or because it doesn’t support Firefox. I can’t remember as I quit trying sometime ago. Anyways … seeing that I can’t post, I thought I’d post a comment on my own blog.

Note to Will Backman, bsdtalk Host
I like your podcasts but it’s starting to seem to me that the shows always have the same general theme, people sitting around talking about why BSD (and sometimes OSS in general) is so great –amounting to “feel good” interviews.

In episode number 139 you ask what “we” can do to improve BSD bookshelf visibility. I think generating interest might attract public attention and translate in hard book visibility. So, why not diversify and talk about threats to BSD development (whether they be internal/external, from proprietary competing OSS sources, and conflict (such as political/power struggles, or personality conflicts). Each postcast need not be entirely controversial as potential solutions to problems could also be pondered.

Here’s an idea I’ve thrown your way before. When are you ever going to cover comments by C. Hannum stating that”NetBSD is Dead”. See: <http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-users/2006/08/30/0016.html>.

Collanos Standalone Phone dead, & “Expropriated” into Workplace

Feb 14, 09 UPDATE: Peter Helfenstein has confirmed that a stand alone is in production. Read the comments section for details.

What irks me about big business is how they sometimes take GPL software, sometimes created by non-profit communities (let’s call it community software), and incorporate it into their product without regard for where the software originated and that community’s sensibilities and social contract.

This is what I feel has happened with the Collanos Phone, a product that I once believed to be a viable GPL replacement for Skype (I even recommended it to others) and the successor to WengoPhone. In fact, I think Collanos Phone was based on much of the same code as was WengoPhone, although the Collanos forum [1]¹¹¹¹¹¹ is vague about the exact providence stating, “Collanos Phone is based on many pre-existing open-source components and governed under the General Public License (GPL)”. True, Wengo might not qualify as a “software community” but I understand the code upon which WengoPhone was based was and continues to be community driven (ie., the libgaim library from Pidgin, previously known as Gaim).

If you haven’t clued in yet, Collanos has effectively cancelled the stand alone Collanos Phone. The download page now only mentions, “Collanos Workplace … now includes Collanos Phone”. The first of this that should have sounded bells off is a Dec. 16, 08 email I received from Peter Helfenstein and Franco Dal Molin mentioning the extension of Workplace’s capability to that of video and audio based telephony. It didn’t mention the killing off of the softphone project, but that’s public relations for you. You can “read into” this change-over on Helfenstein’s blog entry from January 28, 09 entitled “Team – It’s Time to Talk [2]²²²²²²“.

EndNote creator sues Zotero creator

Actually, it’s Thomson Ruerters (creators of EndNote) that is suing George Mason University (Virginia), which funds Zotero, They are suing for 10 million annually. As I understand it, there are two aspects to this. One, is that Zotero allows accessing EndNote’s proprietary format. Two, Thomson alleges that Zotero reverse engineered the proprietary format through decompiling EndNote.

I think icebergradio.com sucks!

IcebergRadio’s OS X support is terrible!

They are resistant to having their service heard on the widest possible range of platforms. This is
ridiculous. It’s like a tv station wanting to be solely watched on Sony television sets, and assuring it stay that way. You’d be out of luck if you had a Toshiba or any other brand tv!! The music was great, but their disregard for maximum interoperability is atrocious, meaning they’ve consistently shown they do not care about having their music heard by Mac users. I don’t have memories of getting it to work on Gnu-Linux, either.

Peter Grabriel a la Motown

And now something on music and technology.

Doghouse Riley has rendered a Motown version of Peter Gabriel’s “Shock the Monkey”, which placed third in a “re-mix technology/music” competition –hosted by www.realworldremixed.com. Comments from the site suggest that it sounds very B-52ish. I disagree. The organ-work, and brass section all sound like something Ray Charles might incorporate. The song also contains a bass line that makes for a marked dance groove, dated albeit.

Debian GNU/Minix

Finally someone has seen the light and started a project that I called for in a previous article. This melding of the Minix kernel with the GNU userland is called Preventa, and seems to poke fun at the name Nexenta –a similar project using the Solaris kernel– all in good fun I’m sure, considering that the project leader’s blog is called “La Salle Debain” (a play on “Debian” and the French for “bathroom”).

Linux has New MultiMediaCard Support

Liquidat reports, “Pierre Ossman, the MultiMediaCard (MMC) subsystem maintainer, announced the new related patches for the Linux kernel almost two weeks ago. He described the patchset as “probably … one of the biggest ones for the MMC layer so far” and highlighted the SDIO and SPI support as the major improvements.“

Sure, it sounds great but how long before a renovation wreaks havoc on users? I recall an issue where implementation of USB scanners caused such confusion because on my beloved Debian that scanners could only be accessed as “su”, and doing that invoked warnings. This occurred because people on the kernel side of things decided to change the infrastructure. And you know what? Nobody seemed to know what was happening, except the good old folks that were doing the renovating, and their documentation was useless –at least to the non-developer Gnu-Linux user sort. Yes, I read the documentation, and it was cryptic, decentralised, and seemed incomplete and contradictory.

Windows, a Victimized Hip Culture

In the years of his PC computer use, my younger brother got caught up with the “build your own custom computer, install pirated Windows and save money” movement. While I, at the time, recommended he buy a mac, he was told they were over-rated and expensive, thanks to his Windows karate friend named Jeremy who always thought he knew better. (If I recall, you could get an 400MHz G3 IBM processor in a second generation iMac, while Intel made lowly 200MHz processors on which Windows ran.)

Well, the “build your own computer mindset” lead to stability problems, presumably due to a lack of hardware support in the way of frequent system crashes that didn’t let up until Windows XP, which –by that point in time– ran slow on my brother’s ageing machine. Adding to his continuous stream of problems, lately, he has all sorts of trouble with his Windows installed laptop. He associates his Hotmail problems (he has problems receiving emails) to the fact that he runs a pirated copy of Windows. Because of this, he can’t update his system, either. So, his OS is a security powder keg waiting to happen. Not too impressive considering that he does intelligence gathering on the middle east for a think-tank on this setup.