Decisions decisions…….

I went over to Sip Wine Bar and Restaurant today for lunch. The two times I have been there I have not even had a sip of the wine collection but it’s starting to quickly become one of my favorite restaurants to go eat.  Reason being, there is a lot of room to stretch out and just relax. I have been working through a pretty rough schedule lately so a nice lunch at Sip was just what the Eric ordered.

When I go to restaurants I try not to go through the menu and find something that I would like because what ends up happening is that I never get to try anything different….the first thing I saw that I wanted was the Flat Iron “Chivito”….I’m sure it’s amazing and that’s what I’m ordering next time….or will I?!?!.  Also, sometimes a menu item says something like, “tuna melt” and the first thing that pops up in my head is a traditional, well, tuna melt.  What ends up happening is that I look through the menu and pick a few things in my head and when the server suggests something different I always go for it….I know, it’s weird but I haven’t had a bad experience doing it yet. Also, I control what I cook all the time so it’s nice giving someone else the choice!

The server suggested the Tuna Melt which I immediately which I was hesistant with for .5 seconds and then said, “that sounds great, let’s do it after she explained it had two big pieces of seared Ahi Tuna and was served open-face.  How could I not resist?   Also, she asked me if I would like my choice of fries or salad or if I wanted I for a dollar more I could have a butternut squash cream soup…………No brainer, soup it is!  That was a great decision on my part

Tuna Melt with Ahi Tuna, Baby Arugula, Sweet Onion, Tomato, Fontina, and Herb Mayo served with Butternut Squash Cream Soup

The portions are perfect. I cut into the sandwich and immediately saw the perfectly cooked Ahi hidden under the nice layer of cheese……drool!  The entire sandwich was amazing, every little bit was exciting and serving it open face is perfect for someone like me because it allows me to take a little bit more of this or a little bit more of that into each bite….open-face sandwich + Eric + A.D.D. = one entertained guy!

Then the soup..

Ok, I have made a few soups on this blog and now I know what to shoot for. After eating this soup I believe I will now be able to perfect soups from now on.  It was amazing and I loved the sage garnish with the toasted pumpkin seeds, and a just a few small dabs of olive oil.  Fan-f’ing-tastic!

Thanks again Sip!

Eric

Kevin Beale,  AMTELCO’s Director of Product Development  gave an informative presentation this morning on one of AMTELCO’s new products.  Simply put Mitey-Mite is a multifunctional desktop  software tool that allows users to search multiple databases within an organization, call phone numbers located within those databases using line-side SIP technology, and record user selected calls or portions of calls. Approximately twenty 1Call hospital customers attended the on-line preview and shared thoughts on features and uses within their healthcare organizations. Mitey-Mite will also have the ability to access employee directory and on-call information that resides in their 1Call Infinity call center/switchboard systems. RED ALERT AMTELCO’s emergency and event notification system also has the ability to send notifications and alerts to the Mitey-Mite desk-top application.

"Mitey-Mite" search tool and SIP soft phone.

Additional technology associate with Mitey-Mite include SMS text messaging, RSS feeds and e-mail.

Please feel free to comment on this topic. If you would like additional information on Mitey-Mite send a request to info@1call.com

SIP combined with Elastix is nothing short of amazing.

Cost savings, flexibility, functionality, and I’ll say it again: Cost savings!

When deploying Elastix to use SIP over ADSL (for example), many find their existing Broadband connection does not quite provide satisfactory call quality, usually due to sharing the connection with other traffic.

We will follow this post up later with another on Diagnosing connectivity / quality issues.

NOTE: This is not the only way to do QoS, but after having struggled with the likes of pfsense, the budget / useless junk that many routers build in, and a host of other software / hardware solutions, I found Tomato did it the easiest, the best, and the most reliably! It’s a breeze to setup, and you’ll be kicking yourself for not having set something like this up earlier.

Requirements:

• Administrative access to the ADSL Router
• The Router must either do DMZ or (most ideally) Half-bridging. The Linksys AM300 is recommended
• A Linksys WRT54GL or Asus WL-52oGU — The WRT54GL was easiest to flash, but the WL-520GU is un-brickable
• The Tomato Firmware, available from polarcloud.com/tomato
• A quiet afternoon in the office, where nobody will jump up and down too much if you take down the internet for a little bit.

NOTE: I would *strongly* recommend you get permission to take and test this out on your home connection prior to trying to deploy it in a production environment. I promise you will suffer much less heartbreak compared to tearing down a corporate network and finding you cannot easily repair it to its original state.

Step 1) Selecting the Hardware

I’ll be honest, the Linksys WRT54GL is probably the easiest, and at around NZD$100 it’s a bargain price! See xe.com/ucc to convert that price to your currency, or check out the price at Newegg.com

Make sure its the GL model, the L standing for Linux, as some of the non-L models aren’t compatible, namely the WRT54G v5.

You also need a router that will hand the IP address / port-forwarding over to it, so you’re going to want something such as the Linksys AM300, it’s cheap, reliable and known to work well. Just make sure it has Firmware 1.19.04 or half-bridge won’t work. Other products such as the NetComm NB6PLUS4Wn will suffice if you put the Tomato in a DMZ, but half-bridging is a nicer solution than a DMZ, due to the Tomato router thinking it’s pretty much *the* connection to the Internet. I’ll leave the getting-connected-to-the-internet part to your imagination.

Step 2) Flashing Tomato

If you have the WRT54GL then this is dead easy. If you’ve previously used it, then reset it back to factory defaults. Connect via a cable (safer than wireless, even though technically speaking WiFi does work for upgrades), go into the Admin settings, select the firmware: WRT54G_WRT54GL.bin

Hit Upgrade, sit back, wait 2-3 minutes and then try re-logging in to the Web Interface.

devices such as the Asus WL-520GU also work well in my experience, though the WRT54GL is definitely the easiest.

Now there is a ton of features that we could go into which you may find useful, but now’s not really the time to go into all those. With that in mind we’re going to dive straight into the deep end. Fire up the WebGUI, Login with the default username:password of admin:admin and click on QoS –> Basic Settings on the left-hand side.

Step 3) Determining your speeds

This may sound like a silly thing for me to mention, but you absolutely must get this right. First stop: Speedtest.net !

Run a speedtest and see what speeds you get. Also if you check the sync speeds in your router, they’ll give you a rough indication of what speeds you’ll be getting.

Now, you’re not going to want to set your Max InboundBandwidth & Max Outbound Bandwidth in Tomato to your actual line max. For example if your DSL connection is sync’ing at 4.8m/bit down and 950kbps upload and you specify those values in Tomato, not only will you never actually attain those speeds, but if you re-sync at a slightly lower speed, it’ll throw things even more. Speedtest for me shows I’m getting around 4300kbps down and 890kbps upload, so we’re going to round things right down to 3500kbps download and 800kbps upload. Seriously, I can pretty much promise that none of your staff will notice the difference between the internet speeds downloading at 4300kbps vs 3500kbps so don’t feel as though you’re going to be slowing down their internet. You won’t! If anything, they’ll “feel” like it’s going faster by the time we’re done.

So, enter in those values of yours in the Max Bandwidth for inbound & outbound. Up the top we’re going to set:

• Enable QOS
• Prioritize small packets with these control flags: ACK
• Prioritize ICMP
• Reset class when changing settings
• Default Class: C

Your Default Class can change, I’ve set it to C for un(C)lassified. Honestly it made sense when I first setup the router…

Now, we’re going to set the Outbound values, these are the most essential. Here’s a bit of an example of how mine looks:

• Highest / 80% / 90%
• High / 20% / 80%
• Medium / 5% / 70%
• Low / 3% / 60%
• Lowest / 2% / 20%
• Class A / 90% / 100%
• Class B / 1% / 5%
• Class C / 1% / 10%
• Class D / 1% / 5%
• Class E / 10% / 20%

Now I’ll explain my madness here. Class C is the default, so if it’s uncategorized it’s because it’s not important enough for me to spend the time writing rules for it, so you don’t want to give it much. Class B & D don’t get used by me, so again I leave them very low, as nothing should be using them. Class A is going to be my VoIP so I want it to always get priority.

Here’s a summary of my understanding of how the QoS works. It could be totally wrong, however it’s done me well thus far:

You’ve got a limited amount of outgoing bandwidth, lets say for arguments sake its 100kbps.
Now lets pretend you’re saturating that with a variety of traffic, including VoIP, sending email attachments through Gmail (http traffic) and FTP uploading (website changes?). So, VoIP is only going to use a tiny little bit, if you’re using iLBC then it’ll be 13.3kbps + overheads = 44kbps (See here). If you’ve classified VoIP to Class A, it’s going to try and reserve 90% at least. You only need 44kbps so that’s still leaving 66kbps for HTTP & FTP. Now, if HTTP is Highest, then it’s going to try and reserve 80% of the 100kbps for it, essentially leaving FTP with nothing. For this reason you’d set HTTP to High perhaps, and FTP to Medium. Both have a “max” of 80% & 70% respectively, so it’ll do it’s best to share the remainder after VoIP between the two of them, at all times giving HTTP a minimum of 20% and FTP at least 5%.

In a nutshell, set the minimum amount to be reserved on the left, and the max that it should be allowed on the right. Assume worst-case scenario that your line is going to be 100% full all the time, and try and give each a bit of “wiggle room”

Next we setup Inbound also:

• Highest / 90%
• High / 80%
• Medium / 70%
• Low / 60%
• Lowest / 20%
• Class A / 100%
• Class B / 5%
• Class C / 10%
• Class D / 5%
• Class E / 5%

You can turn on TCP Vegas if you want, I choose not to, you can read more about it and what it does on Wikipedia. Scroll down and hit Save.

Now on to the next part:

Step 4) Classification of Traffic types

On the left-hand side we’re now in QoS –> Classification

We need to classify the types of traffic that fall in to each of the classes we setup just earlier. We’re going to start by going through and clearing out all the standard rules and we’ll put in a few of our own:

• UDP / Src or Dst / 5060 / Class A / SIP
• UDP / Src or Dst / 10000-20000 / Class A / RTP
• TCP or UDP / Dst Port / 53 / Highest / DNS
• TCP / Dst Port / 80,443 / High / HTTP & HTTPS
• TCP / Src or Dst / 25,110,143 / Medium / Email (SMTP POP3 IMAP)
• TCP or UDP / Src or Dst / Class C Bulk Traffic
• GRE / Src or Dst / Class E / PPTP VPN (GRE)

Why? We prioritize VoIP first of all, at all times we want our voice to be perfect. Next we do DNS so that pages “feel” like they’re loading quickly (Especially with OpenDNS). We want HTTP & HTTPS in their own little queue, followed by Email.
Im also putting PPTP VPN into a class of it’s own, as I use that a bit myself for a variety of things.
Finally, we’re already technically classifying anything that isnt classified as Bulk Traffic / Class C, but this rule just re-affirms it.

Scroll down, hit Save, then make a call to a local freephone number out your local SIP connection to see if this is working.

Step 5) Confirmation and Corrections

Now comes the testing part. You should be able to click on QoS –> View Graphs, and while you’re on a call you’ll see Class A has a bit of traffic in it. If you click on the Class A title it will take you to a screen where you can now also see the IP that the traffic is going to. With a bit of luck, this should be your Elastix box (If you’ve got a remote extension) or your ITSP (If your Elastix box is local).

From here, it’s a matter of keeping an eye on the graphs over the next few days / weeks and seeing what really goes on through your Internet Connection. You may be quite surprised at what you see.

If you run into any troubles, feel free to post on the Elastix Forums and either myself or one of the many other helpful regulars will be able to assist.

Located in Issaquah, Gig Harbor, and finally Seattle! Took long enough!!!

Hey, you said it….not me. I had the chance to visit Sip for their preview before they open this Friday and let me just say this, I think something special is about to happen to Seattle. I really don’t know how to explain it yet so let’s just call it a hunch.

Eric, what the hell are you talking about…that doesn’t really make sense?

This is what I’m talking about.

(video)

done

Yes, that’s right. There is an outdoor seating area with some nice grass. I can’t wait for summertime to come around so I can just sit out on the grass, watch the sunset, and have a glass of wine. Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. You saw the inside right?

Amazing. Tons of seating!

Today was the preview day, like I said before, and they were serving free sliders to the crowd which were pretty darn good but I’m excited to see what’s on the main menu. I’ll let you know what’s the deal with that on Tuesday!

I really can’t wait for a special occasion to happen so one day I can rent out the semi-private table (birthday is in December!).  It’s a great table that overlooks most of the restaurant.

So there! There is your picture/video preview of the new Sip Wine Bar and Restaurant in Seattle, WA opening this Friday! You know how it looks now so go check out the drinks, food, and service and let me know what you think.

Click below for more information, directions, and hours.

Sip (click)

]]> http://lahistoriadeldia.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/la-sip-confia-su-presidencia-al-hijo-de-un-viejo-socio-del-agente-cia-jules-dubois/ Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:33:48 +0000 La historia del dia http://lahistoriadeldia.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/la-sip-confia-su-presidencia-al-hijo-de-un-viejo-socio-del-agente-cia-jules-dubois/ http://lahistoriadeldia.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/%c2%bfque-es-la-sip-sociedada-interamericana-de-prensa-video/ Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:24:24 +0000 La historia del dia http://lahistoriadeldia.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/%c2%bfque-es-la-sip-sociedada-interamericana-de-prensa-video/ http://kalmetov.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/podfm/ Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:17:51 +0000 Игорь Кальметов http://kalmetov.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/podfm/ http://openjunk.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/add-google-voice-to-empathy/ Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:36:40 +0000 rdesfo http://openjunk.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/add-google-voice-to-empathy/

You can add Google voice to empathy with the telepathy-sopfiasip package.

First install the package.

1. Systems > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager
2. Search for “Empathy”
3. Then add add the package telepathy-sopfiasip
4. Restart Empathy

Then add your gizmo5 account

1. Empathy > Edit > Accounts
2. Select SIP
3. add your number 1234567899@proxy01.sipphone.com (no spaces or characters between numbers)

Now you can make free calls using Google Voice and your Desktop. 

Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa

La SIP –Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa- estuvo en Argentina, criticó el trato del gobierno nacional con la prensa y aseguró que “La virulencia registrada en las cuantiosas acciones dirigidas desde el gobierno argentino o sectores afines tienen como objetivo intimidar y afectar el normal desarrollo de la tarea periodística”. El dilema, viene a la hora de querer saber cuál es el objetivo, los intereses y la historia de este grupo. Para saberlo, no hay que ir muy lejos.

Earl Maucker - Presidente de la SIP

El grupo, presidido hoy en día por Earl Maucker, dueño del Sun-Sentinel de estados unidos, estuvo involucrado con varios gobiernos defactos en la época en que en Latinoamérica no existía la democracia y si las dictaduras.

Danilo Arbilla Frachia, ex presidente de la SIP, dice haber sido un ferviente luchador por la libertad de expresión, pero fue director de prensa en Uruguay durante la dictadura de Juan María Bordaberry entre los años 73 y 76. Durante su gestión se realizaron 14 clausuras definitivas de medios de comunicación, 159 transitorias, se requisaron tres diarios extranjeros, se confiscó la edición completa del libro “Paren las Rotativas” de Federico Fasano Mertens e incluso se llegó a secuestrar una edición de la prestigiosa publicación cultural internacional “El Correo de la UNESCO”. Además, se encarceló y torturó a decenas de periodistas: Héctor Rodríguez periodista de Marcha (detenido y torturado), Edmundo Rovira, del diario El País (asesinado), Norma Cedrés, funcionaria de El Popular (asesinada), Julio Castro, subdirector de Marcha (desaparecido), Carlos Quijano, director de Marcha (detenido), Eduardo Viera, director de El Popular (detenido), entre varios más.

Salvador Allende

Otro de los miembros que tiene un C.V. bastante raro para integrar esta asociación es el chileno Agustín Edwards, que fue vicepresidente de esta sociedad y a la vez fue dueño de El Mercurio. Él, recibió un millón seiscientos mil dólares de parte de la CIA para realizar una campaña en contra de Salvador Allende, primer presidente socialista electo por el pueblo, a través de su periódico. El objetivo inicial era lograr que no asumiera, como eso no se consiguió pasaron a intentar desestabilizar su gobierno y permitir el ascenso del dictador fascista, Augusto Pinochet. Además, se sabe que Edwards tuvo acceso privilegiado a las oficinas del presidente de estados unidos Richard Nixon y su asesor Henry Kissinger, y que su voz se hizo oír fuerte para centrar el miedo anticomunista en el país de Sudamérica.

¿Es esta una organización a la que habría que respetar? Avaló dictaduras y desequilibró gobiernos democráticos. Hoy por hoy critica a los gobiernos socialistas, a los integrantes del ALBA: Raúl Castro –Cuba-, Hugo Chávez –Venezuela-, Evo Morales –Bolivia-, Rafael Correa –Ecuador- y Daniel Ortega –Nicaragua-. Y a la vez critican que estos líderes intenten obtener la reelección pero si acepta y defiende que Álvaro Uribe –Colombia- quiere reformar la constitución para internarse en el poder ¿Uno no, el otro si? ¿Por qué? Para saber el por qué sólo hace falta leer en su web que el primer Vicepresidente de la SIP es Enrique Santos Calderón, primo del ex ministro de defensa y hermano del vicepresidente del país cafetero. Nada más que agregar.

El revolucionario Augusto César Sandino

Bordaberry y Pinochet no fueron los únicos dictadores aceptados por la Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa. Anastasio Somoza, golpista nicaragüense apoyado por estados unidos para eliminar al gran revolucionario Augusto César Sandino; Hugo Ballivián, dictador boliviano que impidió la asunción democrática de Víctor Paz Estensoro, líder del Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario; Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina en República Dominicana. Todos estos gobiernos de facto, y otras más, fueron saludados con honores por la SIP. También, se sumaron al fenomenal accionar mediático cuando en abril del 2002 intentaron derrocar a Chávez y hoy tratan al dictador hondureño, Roberto Micheletti, como la “nueva autoridad” o “el nuevo gobierno”.

Su labor no sólo fue la de apoyar dictadores, sino la de defender los intereses de las grandes empresas periodísticas en caso de que ocurra “un ataque a la libertad de prensa”. Es decir que defienden nada más que a los grandes monopolios.

Nunca mas dictaduras

La SIP es una organización que tiene todo el derecho a expresarse, de decir lo que desee sobre la prensa. Sin embargo, tenemos derecho nosotros a saber que esta asociación empresarial -a lo largo de su historia- se mantuvo en un silencio encubridor con aquellos regímenes leales a los intereses de estados unidos, cuando en esos países se llegaron a producir las más desgraciadas y públicas violaciones de los derechos humanos o de la libertad de expresión. Hoy, con democracias instaladas en toda Latinoamérica, salvo en Honduras, esta sociedad se encargó de atacar, agredir y expresarse en los tratos con la prensa. ¿Deberían ser realmente valoradas sus palabras hoy en día?

The long awaited BBTelsys VoIP web portal release is just around the corner. We are testing the beta version now and it is pretty cool, let me tell you what. Call list, call forwarding and voice mail access, just to name a few. The call log is a sweet feature, a list of past calls, made, missed and received. Being able to access and delete voice mail as easy as checking email is nice. There is even a feature that lets you call straight from the portal. It will ring the number and then ring your phone after they pick up. Another cool feature is the phone book with programmable speed dials. Call forwarding on the fly. I might not get to talk to our customers much anymore, especially with simultaneous and sequential rings. The star codes that we had to learn and write down on a cheat sheet, still work. Call blocking is a feature that caused some trouble but, with the launch of the portal, it should be fully functional. Be sure to subscribe to the blog for more VoIP news and promotions from BBTelsys.

- John

http://sipsorcery.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/big-step-towards-simpledb/

phew… and I thought it was my fault

all the same I shall continue shopping for another ATA until I can convince Orgasmatron to play nicely in someone’s Virtual Machine… maybe my SPA2102 (fw 5.2.10) cannot play nicely with the new SS date format

Conviene tomarlo como de quién viene: del “Periódico del Estado boliviano”, que en este caso significa “Periódico del gobierno del Estado boliviano”, sin embargo, la nota editorial que reproducimos es una clara, contundente y valiente respuesta al pronunciamiento de la Sociedad Interamericana de la Prensa (SIP) en torno a la situación de los medios (por favor, no del periodismo) en Bolivia. Un texto digno de leerse… y de discutirse.

Tomado de Cambio, 11 de noviembre de 2009

La SIP y la libertad de prensa

Editorial

Seis meses después de que una misión de la Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa (SIP) visitara el Palacio Quemado y constatara que en Bolivia rige una irrestricta libertad de prensa, esa entidad que aglutina a los propietarios de los medios de comunicación escritos del continente ha vuelto a su andanzas y sin el mayor rubor nuevamente ha afirmado que en el país “la libertad de prensa se encuentra bajo acoso”.

Esta falaz interpretación sobre la situación de la libertad de prensa en Bolivia fue expresada nada más ni nada menos que por Enrique Santos Calderón, presidente de la SIP y codirector del diario colombiano El Tiempo de Bogotá, en la Comisión de Libertad de Expresión e Información que sesionó este domingo en la ciudad de Buenos Aires.

No obstante, el 27 de mayo, el propio Santos había certificado en la Casa de Gobierno: “Hemos podido constatar que en Bolivia existe libertad de prensa. Por todo lo que uno escucha, oye y lee, aquí no se puede decir que no hay una prensa de oposición, que no hay críticas al Gobierno (…) Esta constatación me parece que es importante dejarla en claro”. Pero, a la luz de los hechos, parece que no quedaron en “claro” las palabras de ese mismo personaje que hoy echa sombras sobre la vigencia plena de uno de los derechos constitucionales sobre los cuales se cimienta la democracia boliviana.

El jefe de esa entidad que aglutina a propietarios de 1.300 diarios y revistas impresas del continente también olvidó en Buenos Aires que en aquella reunión de los jerarcas de la SIP con el presidente Evo Morales y las principales autoridades nacionales, en el Palacio Quemado, el Gobierno boliviano les demostró —con abundantes pruebas documentadas— que en el país no sólo se respeta la libertad de expresión, sino que, amparados en su pleno ejercicio, oscuros personajes, a través de las pantallas de televisión, principalmente, habían desatado una vil campaña de oposición en contra del Gobierno legalmente constituido.

No faltaron en esta cruzada, presuntamente en “defensa de la libertad de expresión”, palabras soeces e incluso aquellas que abiertamente convocaban a terminar con la vida del presidente Morales y del vicepresidente Álvaro García Linera, amén de otras autoridades, en un contexto político en el que las corrientes ultraconservadoras preparaban el frustrado golpe de Estado cívico-prefectural de agosto y septiembre del año pasado.

Es decir, bastaron seis meses para que Santos y los jerarcas de la SIP se olvidaran de que pudieron “constatar que en Bolivia existe libertad de prensa” y que esa verdad era “importante dejarla en claro”.

Pero lo sorprendente y hasta tragicómico es que quienes se solazan y brindan en nombre de la libertad de prensa no son precisamente los periodistas que ejercen su noble oficio en las calles y en las mesas de redacción, sino los patrones, los dueños de los medios de comunicación privados, quienes —con honrosas excepciones— asumieron la libertad de expresión como “libertad de empresa”; secuestraron la noticia como bien social y la convirtieron en un bien comercial; sepultaron la verdad periodística y la cambiaron por la verdad del mercado, donde todo tiene precio, incluso la libertad de conciencia, requisito sin el cual no se puede ni se podrá hablar de libertad de prensa.

En este contexto, los jerarcas de la SIP actúan en consecuencia porque, en un ámbito estrictamente comercial, será el dueño del medio el que defina qué tipo de información recibirá el pueblo y —ni duda cabe— será aquella que preserve sus intereses de clase, la que no afecte el statu quo, la que defienda los privilegios de pocos, y la que banalice las reivindicaciones sociales y de justicia de una mayoría sometida secularmente por las élites señoriales. Es decir, lo que la SIP defiende en nombre de la libertad de prensa es el impune poder mediático para manipular la verdad periodística y adormecer a las audiencias. Por eso, en sus informes arremete en contra de gobiernos soberanos que asumieron el camino de la soberanía, la dignidad y la justicia; en este marco, la propaganda ha usurpado la información y los medios de comunicación corporativos han suprimido al periodismo, al periodista.

En palabras de Noam Chomsky, el ámbito comunicacional se ha vuelto un campo de batalla donde las fuerzas imperiales han convertido los televisores, las radios, la prensa y los espacios cibernéticos en laboratorios de operaciones psicológicas, con campañas coordinadas desde el Pentágono, el Departamento de Estado y la CIA para promover mentiras sobre gobiernos revolucionarios, generando matrices de opinión falsas y negativas, reciclando mensajes fabricados en la gran prensa internacional y proyectando montajes mediáticos para justificar agresiones, intervenciones, invasiones y guerra contra nuestros pueblos.

Lo que defienden los dueños de los medios es la exclusión del pueblo del poder y del acceso al conocimiento y a la información, hoy rígidamente limitado por una minoría elitesca que mantiene acaparado el poder económico, mediático y político. La SIP promueve una realidad fabricada, donde los países más libres son los represores, los más controlados son los democráticos, y la prensa no es la voz del pueblo sino un arma imperial que distorsiona, manipula y masacra la memoria colectiva.

Por eso, quizás haya llegado el momento en el que una “especie en extinción” —el periodista— haga escuchar su voz y salga por los fueros de la libertad de conciencia para ejercer la libertad de prensa que recupere la esencia de la noticia: un bien social.

I was at C’est What a couple of weeks ago with some friends, and given the plentiful options on their beer menu thought this would be a great time to try something new. For those of you that have never been, C’est What has a fantastic selection of micro brews and only serves beer that is produced in Canada. Don’t bother looking for Molson or Bud on the menu, and make sure you don’t ask for it either so you can avoid the sneer it will derive from the waitstaff.

Generally I tend to prefer dark brews, and given this I tried F&M Brewery’s StoneHammer Dark Ale and McAuslan Brewing’s St. Ambrose Oatmeal Stout. I’ve had the St. Ambrose Oatmeal Stout before when I was at the Canadian Brewing Awards (it won Gold in the Stout category), but it was just a small sample and I had several other samples before then so the flavour didn’t come out as clearly as it could have. The Oatmeal Stout was very rich and flavourful, with notes of espresso. The StoneHammer Dark on the other hand had more of a nutty finish that was very different from many beers that I’ve tried in the past. That being said it was very enjoyable and I certainly could enjoyed a few more pints of it!

Our lager
Which art in barrels
Hallowed be thy drink
Thy will be drunk, (I will be drunk)
At home as it is in the tavern
Give us this day our foamy head
And forgive us our spillage
As we forgive those who spill against us
And lead us not into incarceration
But deliver us from hangovers
For thine is the beer, the bitter, and the lager
Barmen

New image in the transparancy drawing contest

…
Take a sip! drawing picture

Folha e O Globo aderiram, na semana passada, à Declaração de Hamburgo, um documento da indústria dos jornais que clama pelo “respeito às leis de propriedade intelectual para textos jornalísticos reproduzidos na internet”.

O problema é que a carta (PDF), como quase sempre acontece quando neófitos tentam falar ou legislar sobre a web, imagina ser capaz de definir limites absolutamente incontroláveis porque a internet, e quem não sabe disso parou no tempo, é dominada pelo usuário, não por grandes corporações.

Primeiro que os publishers deixam claro que a cobrança por conteúdo é uma prioridade _quase uma panaceia que estabelecerá paredões pagos cujo único efeito prático será o desaparecimento das marcas (e de seu conteúdo) da internet “legal”.

Claro, se você se fecha totalmente a assinantes, se esconde do resto do mundo que usa as ferramentas de busca para encontrar o que deseja. Sem contar que nem isso garante a proteção ao seu rebanho _seu conteúdo será distribuído de um jeito ou de outro, e na maioria das vezes por pessoas que amam você.

Outro erro da indústria jornalística é investir contra agregadores como o Google News. Pode ter certeza de que eles não estão usurpando seu conteúdo, mas o divulgando e levando a lugares que você jamais esperava alcançar.

E não me venham falar no exemplo do The Wall Street Journal, que a cada dia amplia sua carteira de assinantes on-line (eles já são bem mais de um milhão). Informação econômica (e que se reverte em dinheiro) é precisamente a única que o ser humano não está disposto a compartilhar.

Bem por isso Rupert Murdoch adiou recentemente seu plano de cobrar pelo acesso aos sites jornalísticos sob o seu comando. É que é preciso uma justificativa muito forte para fazer as pessoas pagarem pelo que é de graça há tempos na internet.

Trabalho para um psicólogo mesmo.