Interesting way of getting my attention and support for a cause I really care little about...

Why is Gattuso playing today if he has Two Yellow cards?

In football they play eleven per side and Germany always wins"
- Gary Lineker

Either the referee, from Slovakia, didn't have the guts or he was instructed to help the Germans through. But he didn't called a very clear penalty. The game is absurd. Small bumps are call fouls outside the area, but down right tripping inside the area is the fault of the falling player. What nonsense. And let me be clear, I don't care who wins this game, I'll be happy whoever gets through... But fairly please!

In the same play the Argentinean player was shown a yellow card for simulation. In a later play, Ballack fell on the area on a clear simulation, luckily he didn't get the penalty, but he didn't get a yellow card either. I don't like when referees are cowards like this. It's not that I pretend they won't make mistakes ever, but that the mistakes would be balance on both sides.

After the shameful spectacle of a year ago, some people have decided we are dumb, everybody knows what happened a year ago. A tire manufacture went to Indy unprepared. With only one set of tyres that wasn't suitable for the track. When it realized its mistake, having most of the cars wearing its tyres, they decided to put pressure on the organizers: Change the rules or we don't play. They claim they wanted to race for no points, but only if the cars that buy tyres from the other manufacturer also raced for no points! How unfair is that? Let's punished the guy who came prepared for our own mistakes! To repeat that version today is really mindless. To point fingers at Ferrari or Schumacher is insulting. The only guilty party is Michelin (and they lost a very faithful client in me).

I've been criticizing the Spanish referee for making a mistake in the recent game Italy-Australia. That has been my response to the Italian haters that were criticizing the italian player (Grosso) for diving. In this video you can see clearly that Neil (the Australian player) holds Grosso foot with his hand. That tripped Grosso. The referee saw it. Nothing to complain here. One more for the wrong history books...

It seems Spain has outlawed P2P traffic making the ISPs responsible to stop the use (legal or not) of P2P file sharing applications. P2P is 70% of the Internet Traffic for Telefonica (Spain biggest ISP). The law also caves to publishers lobby by levying taxes on blank media and the such. Steps back for Spain...

It turns out that rude drivers make traffic go slower. If everyone was polite we would get there faster. Another signal that cooperation is the way to success. Will we learn? Nah...

According to this Article by Ed Bott, MIcrosoft plans to implement a kill switch in pirated copies of Windows. If Windows doesn't pass the Genuine advantage test, then the software will give you 30 days to rectify the situation. An OEM copy of Windows XP Professional costs 130$ (and you have to buy it with qualifying hardware), making XP the single most expensive component of the modern PC. If Microsoft pulls this brilliant idea, and I am hoping they do, it will be the biggest push for Linux ever. Do you think people in the third world will spend 60$ (which may easily be one or two months of salary) for Windows? I think they will learn to live with Linux. I think Microsoft should do it, because it will put a stop to the hypocrisy of bemoaning piracy but benefitting from it. Furthermore, it may prove to others critics of piracy, that killing it means committing suicide.

Through Esfericas, that FIFA is not afraid at being ridiculously inconsistent. This article states:

[Markus] Siegler [Fifa communications director] said: "It is only where there is a clear disciplinary issue, which has not been acted upon by the referee, that the disciplinary committee can look at it."

Huh? So what about di Rossi, the Italian player who was justly taken out of the game for elbowing McBride? He was sent off with a red card (a referee action) and then punished with four games suspended (instead of one). Furthermore, the Portuguese want to overrule the referee and get back Deco who was thrown out of the game against The Netherlands... I hope FIFA doesn't allow this. The good news today is that Italy took revenge on Hiddink. They won the game with ten men (a ridiculous red card) with a last minute (an unclear) penalty. They showed will and spirits today, that should help them on the next game. They will be out of several players... Can they appeal? No way! I understand that FIFA goes to great lengths to protect its revenue stream, but when it gets ridiculous is... well, ridiculous...

Last year, I gave you the five secrets for a happy man.

Schumacher wins second place! and it's a firm candidate to become subchamp...

He breaks it with his hands. Great start for Montoya fighting and winning against Schumacher, who not content with starting fifth lost two positions on the start. But then Montoya does one of his trick managing to kick Nico Rosberg out of the race and braking the nose of his car in the process. Schumacher back in fifth, Fisichella screws up again on the start so Kimi is second. Which is as high as anyone not named Fernando Alonso will get...

Shoppers 'want longer Sunday'
A new survey suggests there is strong support for an end to Sunday trading laws in the UK. [BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]

You see, in most of Europe and in the UK there are prohibitions to opening a store on sunday. Only in some part of town, or out of town, or only at certain hours. They appear surprised to discovered that people want better chances to shop during one of their weekly off day. It took centuries for them to discover this.

Yeah, Alonso is first as usual... Schumy a stupidly slow number 5

There are six conferences in total and the number of countries from each conference that reach the final 32 in the World Cup is decided by a mixture of politics, number of countries in each conference and previous results. Of course, previous results becomes a very politicized matter, as this FIFA ranking sugest, with 8 teams of the top 20 out of the World Cup last 16. Now, look at what happen when we see how many places each conference has in the last 32 and how many they get in the last 16. Europe, with the most countries, and a second place record of champions had 14 in the last 32 and 10 in the last 16 for an effectiveness of 71%, Asia had 5 and none, effectiveness 0%, Africa had 5 and 1, effectiveness 20%, North America had 4 and 1, for a 25% effectiveness. But South America, who has the best record with the most championships had 4 teams in the last 32 with 3 getting in the last 16, for an effectiveness of 75%! Only Oceania did better with only 1 team in both and an effectiveness of 100%. It is very clear that South America has the toughest group of all and it is being short changed with only 4 positions (plus one that has to do an extra match with Australia). Even the rule change that decided that the Champion qualify automatically to the World Cup goes against us, since it means that more than half of the time we have one less place!

The logical thing would be to do something like the Davis Cup and let the previous championship determine the places in the next, not for countries (as the Davis Cup does), but for conferences. Something like one place for each of the last 16, 1 extra place for fourth place, 2 for second and third (after all they both win 6 games and lose 1), and 3 to the Champion. That leaves 8, that can be placed with different strategies, for example one for each conference and the other two to underrepresented ones in terms of number of countries. This will actually provide more variety in countries representation and better teams. At the end of the World Cup I'll let you know how many teams would go from each conference using my method.

Korea is out of the World Cup. The third team in Korea four years ago didn't make to Germany 2006 (Turkey), the fourth team has just been eliminated. Four years ago I predicted as much as a consequence of The Dirty World Cup. But I admit I was wrong. I was wrong about the Koreans, they played really good and was eliminated fairly by lesser teams playing the result (I'm talking about France). They are eliminated, but they'll be back. Not to fourth place probably but to the last sixteen.

Just got Vista installed on my MBP and I have to say I like it. I had some trouble because of the weird nature of the MBP, but once I got passed that I ended up with a nice installation, though Boot Camp is broken. You can't use Parallels for Vista yet. Vista looks very nice, they have ported a lot of things from Mac OS X. It is better than XP, but most of the difference is in looks.

One thing I don't like is the proliferation of Windows versions. Vista will come in several flavors, this beta 2 is the ultimate version which has everything including Media Center and Tablet PC. Why? to get us hooked, it will probably be very different from what most users will end up getting, but you may upgrade online by paying for a license. Of course, Crackers will defeat those security measures in no time. Between old versions of Windows and the flavors of Vista, there are like ten different animals developers will have to test their programs on. Mac OS X has only two. I wouldn't want to work on Quality assurance for a Windows developer.

Of course, Vista also gets security wrong. You get a lot of notices and warnings, but it never asks for a password if you are running in an admin account, which everybody will do. So despite the constant interruption (much worse than in Mac OS X or XP), a few minutes with someone machine will compromise it. No surprise there, Window will still be insecure.

Or in an even more important place. Forza Italia!

A few weeks ago we decided we needed to hire someone for a pretty important job. I thought of a friend of mine, mentioned her and was told to get her resume and get her into an interview as quickly as possible. My impression was that she would get the job on my recommendation. I was pretty sure my friend would be interested, because the salary was more than twice what she is making now. I called her and got her at a bad time, on her way to the doctor for her baby with fever. She said she would call the day after, I told her it was a job offer. She didn't call. I sort of got offended and told a good friend of both the story, who said maybe there was a misunderstanding, maybe the baby had more trouble than thought or that there may be a good excuse. I thought it through and IMed my friend asking her if everything was allright or if she had forgotten about my offer. She said she was too busy now and will call later. She never did, somebody else was hired... With an even higher salary than we had talked about. Now, I think that is pretty stupid of her. Even if she wasn't interested in the offer a priori, she should at least hear me out, say she was flattered but no thanks or whatever. There is no reason why she shouldn't hear me out that I can think of. As I see it she lost two things that are not that easy to get in life: A good job offer and a person that thinks about her as a potentially good employee. All that for not returning one call...

Jakob Nielsen thinks RSS and blogs are not as good as traditional newsletters to build relationships. The reasoning is that Blogs, and, hence, its RSS feeds, do not follow a strict publication schedule. I think he fails to realized that publications schedules are necessary when you have to either look or wait for something. When something is delivered, pushed onto you, there doesn't need to be a schedule, when it is produced it appears in your Box. You build a relationship not by satisfying a publication deadline, but by being intelligent and trust worthy. That's the future. The past is magazines and CD's published from time to time (as well as newsletters delivered to you by email every week or whatever). The future is that when something is produced and may interest you, then it is there in your delivery mechanism (Computer, iPod, Media Machine, or what have you). The biggest risk for a publisher is being ignored.

A friend came to me and asked me what she could do to make her ass wow... I said... "Tattoo a W on each butt cheek and bent down!" We haven't talked ever since.

This slate article criticized the recent Apple ads. At first, I found myself agreeing on some of the points, but then the author said the ads were lying because he has a japanese camera that works with PC and he found a thinkpad easy to set up. Well, I have heard several stories of problems using peripherals with a PC, those troubles are less common with a Mac (but, there are less peripherals for the Mac). The PC easy to install idea makes me think this guy has never used a Mac. He just doesn't know how on target that particular add was. I dare him to try a Mac and say it wasn't up and running much faster than any PC he has ever used.

When security experts give advice on Mac OS X they normally mixed good advice with false common wisdom and utter nonsense. This article is better than average, but still manage to get a lot of drivel out. Since I consider myself a security expert, with a specialty in Mac OS X here is my commentary:

1. Seriously consider using antivirus software

Why? There is no known virus for the Mac. Having antivirus software in a Mac is a bet that the antivirus company will see a virus before you do. It isn't worth it. Virus that are known before distribution are ineffective (and give you chance to get the antivirus then instead of now). If the virus is effective current antivirus solutions won't do you any good. They mixed the issue a bit by mentioning a software that can be used in a mail server. A mail server has to use antivirus in order to reduce traffic and because the clients may use windows. There are less than a 1000 active virus. Those are the ones you have to worry about, none of those work on the Mac.

2. Always install Apple’s security updates

This is true on a client computer, not so fast on a server. A server has stability consideration that prevail over blind security. You don't want to break a server just to have a security update that isn't really critical and on the loose.

3. Open files only from known sources

This is bull. Nobody does this. Sounds good and solid, but it is impractical. Yes, avoid anything that look shady (eg., files that come from hacker and porn sites or through spam). But a Mac file can be easily analyzed with the inspector and it is fairly rare that a script or an application is disguised as a data file (the later is very hard). The reality is that if someone recommends some program you are going to download it. Is that a known source? It is rarely malicious, but it could break your system. In the Mac, just have a backup of your files. If you live daringly you may have to reinstall. But it isn't a common occurrence for you to worry about.

4. Watch for macro viruses in your Office documents

Or don't. They don't do anything terrible and if you open a document with Macros Office will let you know. Just disable Macros if you think it is suspicious that a spreadsheet with grades have Macros.

5. Use a standard account for everyday work

Why? Mac OS X will ask for your password before putting anything in an important place. There is no need to use an special account.

6. Turn off automatic login

In a laptop or a machine that is not physically secure, sure. It won't hurt. In your house machine? Not worth the hassle probably.

7. Lock your screen when you step away

Same thing. A little paranoid for a home machine, but ok.

8. Give your Keychain its own password

Why? Two passwords are not better than one, specially if you are going to:

9. Lock the Keychain when it’s not in use

I don't do it, but I can see an use for that. Better yet, don't let your keychain handle the important passwords (banks, encryption etc).

10. Encrypt important files

Encrypt files that you want to hide from someone. Important files? define that. My work documents may be very important, but not very confidential. I will be in pain if I lose them, but not if someone reads them. No point in encrypting those. Encryption is to keep things secret. Use it for that.

11. Use a firewall

Sure, turn on Mac OS X firewall on a laptop, but in your home machine behind a Nat router? (like Airport or your DSL modem? Just not worth it. Check your IP number, if it has the form 10.x.x.x or 192.168.x.x or 172.16.x.x forget about it. There is no way somewhere from the outside can get to your machine. Now, ask yourself, I am at risk from the inside? In a company, a (non protected) wireless connection (even at home) you probably are. Turning the firewall won't cause much trouble, so if in doubt turn it on. The problem with this advice is that it says "a firewall" to which most people would answer "which one?" It is incomplete, turn on the internal Mac OS X firewall, more than enough protection for most people.

12. Protect your wireless network with WPA

Yeah, do this. It's easy and fairly secure.

13. Encrypt your wireless hotspot sessions

Good advice, but undoable. Making a VPN to your home or work connection would do the trick, but only the geekest of geeks would know how to do it. The advice provided will cause so many headaches (eg., Use PGP... I can't! PGP won't work on a shiny new intel Mac! ).

14. Don’t click on links in unsolicited e-mail messages

Click if you want, just don't provide information. It won't hurt you to follow this advice, but it won't hurt you not to follow it either.

15. Protect sensitive e-mail from prying eyes

Good advice but not in practice. If you have big secrets you should do it, but the advice provide it may not work or it may be too hard to implement.

16. Practice private surfing

Or not. Most of the time you'll see no difference. Nobody is really following you in the internet, because you are not that interesting to follow. delete your cookies from time to time and your history if there is something you want to hide. For most people, this is useless advice. By the way, your boss may be watching, but he has the right and hiding something may be even worse than not hiding it. iChat message can be easily encrypted.

17. Keep your chats to yourself

Yeah, that's what I am saying...

18. Back up your files

Do this and you'll be happy. Most people do not know how to do it. But if you read this blog... you already should know.