MySpace.com
|

rss
|
iniciar sesión

domingo, noviembre 06, 2005

How I am going to vote Tuesday

Emoticón actual:  pensativo/a

This Tuesday, California is going to have a special election. This is how I am going to vote:

San Diego Mayor: Donna Frye

73 (abortion parental consent): No. I don't want 16-year-old girls with abusive parents to get beaten up by their fathers for being pregnant.

74 (increase teacher probation period) Yes. Once upon a time, I had a horrible fourth grade teacher who should have been fired.

75 (no union political funds): No. I'll vote yes for something that prohibits unions and corporations from making political funds; otherwise the scale gets tipped too much towards big corporations. Unions are not perfect, but they better represent the average worker than the big corporations.

76 (reduce school spending): Yes. As a general rule, everyone votes to increase spending and lower taxes. Since California is in a deficit, I vote yes for anything that reduces spending, and no for anything that lowers taxes.

77 (redraw district lines): Yes. One person, one vote. I don't like political games which make one person's vote less important than another person's vote.

78 (Prescription drug discounts): No. I vote to raise taxes and lower spending (see 76)

79 (Prescription drug discounts again): No again. See 76 and 78.

80 (Regulate PG&E more): No. The Democrats don't like it.

Actualmente leyendo:
NIV Audio Bible Dramatized CD
Por: James Earl Jones
Fecha de publicación: 01 January, 2002

21:12

0 Comentarios

(Comentario) |

0 Kudos

Traducir

Con la tecnología de

Inglés

Albanés

Árabe

Búlgaro

Catalán

Chino

Croata

Checo

Danés

Holandés

Estonio

Filipino

Finlandés

Francés

Gallego

Alemán

Griego

Hebreo

Hindi

Húngaro

Indonesio

Italiano

Japonés

Coreano

Letón

Lituano

Maltés

Noruego

Polaco

Portugués

Rumano

Ruso

Serbio

Eslovaco

Esloveno

Español

Sueco

Tailandés

Turco

Ucraniano

Vietnamita

viernes, noviembre 04, 2005

Some things I said in 2003 about file sharing

Back in 2003, when I had a blog at another site, I said the following about file sharing:

Piracy, a.k.a, "File sharing", sets up a very artifical marketplace: A marketplace where a given consumer can choose to buy an album, or to get the same music on the album for free. It is a done deal that someone will take something for free instead of buying it if feel they can.

If certain extremeists are right, then there is nothing wrong with file sharing. So, in this fantasy world, it is perfectly OK to share files. "Information wants to be free" of some such is usually used to justify this ridiculous idea.

What happens in a world when there is no moral wrong in sharing a file? No one buys CDs. CDs no longer have any value. This forces artists to make CDs for fun and for free, or to make all their money from concerts. There would be less economic incentive to make CDs. This will lower the number of CDs made, and, more importantly, the quality of CDs made.

Making a quality CD is not cheap. Most styles of music require a good room (expensive), good microphones (expensive), good musicians (expensive; have you ever priced an orchestra?), and so on. All of this is most definitely non-free.

99 times out of 100, the record company never gets the money they spend making a record back. The one hit record out of 100 has to pay for the 99 that flopped. This is why CDs cost $15, even though they only cost 20 cents to press.

In a world where CDs are free, very few CDs will sound better than a lousy garage band being recorded with a boom box in the corner.

Should music be free? Yes, if the artist agrees to make the music free. I am sure most two-bit garage bands would love to have more people actually want to listen to their music.

As for myself, I want to be able to buy CDs which sound better than you average garage band. File sharing has the very real risk of taking this privilege away from me.

There is a belief among some extremeists in the pirate community that copyrights should expire after a very short period of time (or not exist at all). They feel that a one-hit wonder should not be making money off of their one hit ten or twenty years later; that giving a copyright a very shourt duration (like 10 years) will encourage artists to make more recent music.

While I disagree with infinitely extending copyrights (I am no fan of the Sunny Bono copyright act, for example), I feel that a copyright should last about as long as an average human lifespan.

I will explain where I am coming from.

In the world of investment, there is always a balance of risk versus return. Sometimes, one chooses a investment with little risk, and little return on investment. Sometimes, one chooses an investment with high risk, and high return.

Making music is, at best, a high-risk investment. Most one-hit wonders have spent many years practicing in garage bands, taking vocal lessons, and otherwise becoming a decent singer. Additionally, they do not just record just their one-hit wonder; one usually records 30 songs for a given album and picks ten which go on the album.

As just one example, the singer for the Motels ("Only the Lonley" from 1982, "Suddenly Last Summer" from 1983) is still making a living off of her two hits. She recorded two albums. For each album, the band spent nearly a year in the studio recording the albums. It was hard drudgery; making bad music can be fun, but making excellent music is as much drudgery as not.

Out of these two albums, two songs became hits. She was very lucky; in most cases, people who record such albums have the albums flop, and have nothing to show for their months of hard work.

She took a high-risk investment, and got a healthy return. I think that is reasonable compensation.

Now, one may argue that she should just record more albums if she wants more hits. However, most bands are flashes in the pans. In this lady's case, it probably doesn't matter how many more albums she records; music styles have changed and no one will buy her new albums.

The average music pirate reasons like 4-year-old justifying why they should get more toys at Toys-are-Us.

15:03

1 Comentarios

(Comentario) |

0 Kudos

Traducir

Con la tecnología de

Inglés

Albanés

Árabe

Búlgaro

Catalán

Chino

Croata

Checo

Danés

Holandés

Estonio

Filipino

Finlandés

Francés

Gallego

Alemán

Griego

Hebreo

Hindi

Húngaro

Indonesio

Italiano

Japonés

Coreano

Letón

Lituano

Maltés

Noruego

Polaco

Portugués

Rumano

Ruso

Serbio

Eslovaco

Esloveno

Español

Sueco

Tailandés

Turco

Ucraniano

Vietnamita

martes, noviembre 01, 2005

Warning: Spyware on Sony Music CDs

Emoticón actual:  enojado/a

Look at this article. To summarize: The Sony Music CD "Get Right with the Man" by Van Zant has a nasty bit of spyware that is nay to impossible to remove and may make it impossible to burn CDs on your computer. Basically, do not buy any CDs from Sony Music and do not stick any Sony Music CDs on your computer unless you're running Mac OS or Linux.

My thoughts: I have always had qualms about downloading music without the music holder's express permission (and, ideally, some money getting to the record label and ultimately all of the talent needed to make a quality CD). My qualms have now greatly dimished. Sony is going to have have Hell to pay for trying to pull a stunt like this.

If you want Sony music, you can legally download it in mp3 format for about $1 a CD from All of MP3. It is cheaper than iTunes, better than iTunes (you can encode the music in just about any format you want to; anything from 128k mp3 to "lame --preset standard" mp3s to ogg files to WMA files to lossless FLAC), and is perfectly legal because of a loophole in Russian law; it's legal in the US since it's legal to import sound recordings from foreign countries.

(Update 2005/11/02: Sony has an update that disables this spyware's method of hiding itself from the user. This update doesn't uninstall the software; see the C|Net article for details)

(Update 2005/11/11: Sony has pulled this nasty software from all their CDs.)

00:28

0 Comentarios

(Comentario) |

0 Kudos

Traducir

Con la tecnología de

Inglés

Albanés

Árabe

Búlgaro

Catalán

Chino

Croata

Checo

Danés

Holandés

Estonio

Filipino

Finlandés

Francés

Gallego

Alemán

Griego

Hebreo

Hindi

Húngaro

Indonesio

Italiano

Japonés

Coreano

Letón

Lituano

Maltés

Noruego

Polaco

Portugués

Rumano

Ruso

Serbio

Eslovaco

Esloveno

Español

Sueco

Tailandés

Turco

Ucraniano

Vietnamita

martes, octubre 25, 2005

Lame settings for podcasts and spoken word

With the podcast revolution under way, the need for encoding low-bandwidth mp3s has greatly increased. This gives Lame a brand new challenge; the challenge to transparently encode music at the lowest possible bitrate requires a different development and testing methodology than the challenge to encode spoken word with possibly some background music.

The low bandwidths necessary for a podcast will never encode audio that passes a double-bind ABX test. We are in a very subjective land where it is up to the podcaster what compromises they should make to their audio.

After collapasing a stereo field down to mono (this is a given with any podcast), there are basically two ways one can compromise the audio for a low-bandwidth mp3:

The resulting mp3 can sound metallic and synthetic

The resulting mp3 can sound a little muffled ("warm", perhaps)

A metallic and synthetic sound is what Lame, at the low bandwidth presets ("--preset phone", "--preset sw", and "--preset voice") generally tends to give the user. With the exception of reducing the sampling rate of a low-bandwidth mp3, no real frequency-domain filtering is done on the audio. Most of the bandwidth of the original is preserved, but sounds more and more metallic and synthetic at lower bitrates.

This may or may not work; I was listening to a 16kbps podcast last night where the speaker sounded like as though his voice was being processed by one of those things Hollywood uses to make someone sound like an alien [1]. Now, most likely this podcast was not done with Lame; a lot of mp3s, for example, are made with iTunes' mp3 encoder, which is inferior, IMHO, to the Lame encoder.

The compromise I prefer is to aggressively place a low-pass filter on a file before encoding it with Lame. This gives the reduced-bandwidth mp3 a more natural sound; the human brain has an incredible capacity to accept reduced frequency content. The classic "warm" sound of vinyl and classic rock is based on the sound one gets when the high frequencies are reduced or taken away.

That in mind, I have set up some presets for Lame which give low bandwidth mp3s a warm, as opposed to what I consider metallic, sound. I found that a cutoff of 6khz is good for a 56k mp3, a cutoff of 4 khz is good for a 24k mp3, and a high-pass cutoff of 200hz and a lowpass cutoff of 2.5khs is good for a 12k mp3 (this sounds like a tinny radio, but is perfectly listenable).

Here are my lame presets for making low-bandwidth mp3s; these make for good sounding ("warm") mp3s that are good for the kinds of audio that podcasts have, including speech with music in the background:

This preset makes a good 56k mp3:

lame --preset voice --resample 32 --nspsytune -q 1 --lowpass 6 --noshort file.wav file.mp3

This preset makes a good 24k mp3:

lame --preset sw --resample 16 --lowpass 4 --highpass .1 --noshort file.wav file.mp3

This preset makes an acceptable, albeit tinny sounding, 12k mp3:

lame --abr 12 -a --resample 11 --lowpass 2.5 --highpass .2 -B 16 --noshort file.wav file.mp3

People will note that "--noshort" is here; while this does increase pre-echo, it reduces other artifacts which tend to show up in low-bandwidth mp3 files. The compromises one makes for a low-bandwidth mp3 are different than the compromises one makes for a high-bandwidth transparent mp3.

- Sam

[1] A pitch shifter, usually; a 16kbps mp3 sounds like someone processed the voice through a circa 1981 Harmonizer set to increase the pitch with feedback.

15:30

0 Comentarios

(Comentario) |

0 Kudos

Traducir

Con la tecnología de

Inglés

Albanés

Árabe

Búlgaro

Catalán

Chino

Croata

Checo

Danés

Holandés

Estonio

Filipino

Finlandés

Francés

Gallego

Alemán

Griego

Hebreo

Hindi

Húngaro

Indonesio

Italiano

Japonés

Coreano

Letón

Lituano

Maltés

Noruego

Polaco

Portugués

Rumano

Ruso

Serbio

Eslovaco

Esloveno

Español

Sueco

Tailandés

Turco

Ucraniano

Vietnamita

domingo, octubre 23, 2005

How to encode files with lame

Lame is a mp3 encoder that allows one to easily encode a file in wav format to mp3 format. It can be used to both encode music at high-quality, and to encode low-bitrate spoken voice podcasts. It is probably the best-sounding mp3 encoder out there.

To encode an mp3 at 128 kbps, simply type in:

lame file.wav file.mp3
If you have sensitive ears, and don't like the sound of 128k mp3s:

lame --preset standard file.wav file.mp3
This will sound as good as the original CD; if you're listening to something encoded at this setting and it sounds bad, it is because the original sounds bad. I have twice thought I heard audio problems with audio encoded at this setting; in both cases the problem was the source.

If you are encoding spoken word:

lame --preset voice file.wav file.mp3
If you're encoding a podcast, and want a mp3 at around 24kbps:

lame --preset sw file.wav file.mp3
("sw" means "Shortwave radio")

If you really want to save download time/bandwidth/disk space with a podcast:

lame --preset phone file.wav file.mp3
This will make a 16kbps mp3 file (an hour can fit in about seven megabytes at this bit rate)

There are a number of other presets, but the above presets cover all of the real-world cases of encoding an mp3 file.

21:24

0 Comentarios

(Comentario) |

0 Kudos

Traducir

Con la tecnología de

Inglés

Albanés

Árabe

Búlgaro

Catalán

Chino

Croata

Checo

Danés

Holandés

Estonio

Filipino

Finlandés

Francés

Gallego

Alemán

Griego

Hebreo

Hindi

Húngaro

Indonesio

Italiano

Japonés

Coreano

Letón

Lituano

Maltés

Noruego

Polaco

Portugués

Rumano

Ruso

Serbio

Eslovaco

Esloveno

Español

Sueco

Tailandés

Turco

Ucraniano

Vietnamita

sábado, octubre 22, 2005

Review: Creative Zen Nano Plus

Emoticón actual:  cansado/a

This is a review of my new portable player, the 1gb Creative Zen Nano Plus.

Summary:

Advantages

Very small

Runs on a standard AAA battery

100% Linux-compatible; acts as a USB flash drive when connected

Many features

MP3, WMA, and Audible.com compatibility

Setbacks

No OGG Vorbis support

Only 1gb of flash storage

Documentation errors

May be fragile; handle with care

The Zen Nano Plus is Creative's re-branding of their older MuVo Micro player; the name change is done to capitalize on the popularity of Apple's new iPod nano player. This player is very small, smaller than a business card and about the size of a lighter. As you can see on the right, this thing is a good deal smaller than Apple's iPod Nano. Unlike the Nano, they managed to find room to place an replacable AAA battery in this unit. This has two advantages over the iPod's built-in battery:

Rechargable batteries eventually lose their ability to be charged. When the iPod's battery stops working, you have to buy a new iPod; with the Zen, you just buy a new rechargable AAA battery at Radio Shack.

You can put in a newly charged battery when the Zen's battery is low on charge

Of course, the iPod has up to four times as much storage as the Zen. This may or may not be an issue. The Zen can fit about ten hours of good sounding mp3 music, over 17 hours of music if you don't mind 128k MP3 files, a little under four days of speech-quality MP3, and nearly six days of Audible.com spoken word (12 days if you really need more spoken word and don't mind the resulting loss in audio quality). Neither the Zen's one gig nor the iPod's four gigs is really enough space to fit an entire CD collection on a portable unit; in both cases you will need to upload and download songs to and from your computer to keep a steady variety of music on the go. The current technology does not allow an audio player without moving parts to store one's entire personal CD collection (barring spending a fortune on SD cards and using a SD card player).

Unlike the iPod, the Zen includes a FM tuner, a FM recorder in case you hear a really great song on the radio, a voice recorder with built-in mic, and a built-in mp3 encoder with line-in. The mp3 encoder can only encode mp3s at 96, 128, and 160kbps; this is mainly to allow people to make reasonable sounding mp3s in situtations where it is not feasible to rip and encode from an audio CD. Neither the FM recorder nor voice recorder encode to mp3; if this is needed, use an external radio/microphone and the line-level input (a preamp will be needed for a mic).

While the iPod Nano has a full color display, the Zen has a small backlit black and white display; to save battery charge, the backlight is only lit when you touch a control on the Zen. The iPod Shuffle, another competitor to the Zen, has no display whatsoever.

Unlike the iPod, the Zen is fully Linux-compatible. This, in fact, is why I decided to have a Zen instead of an iPod; I don't like Steve Jobs' habit of making his products proprietary and Linux-unfriendly. Every other portable audio player acts like a standard USB flash drive; I don't understand why Steve Jobs can't follow suit.

The Zen has some level of song management; it is fairly easily to jump from one folder to another folder using the "skip folder" feature. Folders are not hierarchical in the Zen's user interface; all of the folders are in a single list. This is reasonable for one gig of storage; The Zen can only fit about 16 albums at reasonable mp3 audio quality. Consdering how small the unit is, there really isn't room to have a hierarchical setup of folders.

The Zen has a number of play modes: Track repeat, all repeat, folder repeat, play one song, shuffle repeat, shuffle play once, shuffle folder, and "normal" (play all of the songs once w/o repeat). What is missing, annoyingly enough, is a "play all songs in folder w/o shuffle then stop" mode; I had to rename the folder with the Jonn Serrie I like to listen to before going to sleep "zzz_serrie" so that the Zen will play this music then stop at the end.

In addition to having a number of EQ presets, there is a customizable five-band EQ, which Creative's web page incorrectly describes as being as a 4-band EQ. Speaking of documentation, the documentation is missing or incomplete in some areas.

For example, the Zen Nano has support for playing those Audible.com books-on-DRM-media. This is mentioned nowhere in the Zen's packaging nor in their included documentation. I had to verify this by getting a free one-month trial subscription to a daily (M-F) one-hour audio summary of the Wall Street Journal, and playing the files fine on my Zen. The only hitches are:

While audible.com has a 32k mode (which, yes, the iPod supports), the highest bitrate the Zen supports is 16k. It sounds like a tinny AM radio.

Audible.com files are DRM laden

Concerning the DRM, I wouldn't buy a "book-on-tape" from them; I don't want to lose my investment in audio books if my Zen gets run over by a truck. That said, Audible.com offers an annual subscription to a daily (well, weekday) one-hour summary of the Wall Street Journal for only $70 a year; this works out to 30 cents a day. I won't cry if I lost last week's news. For anything else, I think it makes more sense to just buy a book on tape at bookstore, in a format that I can freely copy and encode. Another issue with audible is that their website and software are buggy.

Consdering the popularity of podcasting it is debatable whether it is worth it for me to pay for a WSJ subscription. Ironcally enough, one article in yesterday's WSJ is how Google ad revenue is cutting in to traditional magaine ad revenue.

Back to the Zen, like the majority of portable audio players, OGG Vorbis support is missing. I don't consider this a great loss; while this codec sounds better than mp3 at 128k, I feel that Vorbis files can't sound as good as a 192k or higher mp3 file. Then again, I think Vorbis has improved their higher bitrate support; I haven't tested the Vorbis codec since the summer of 1993. If you want a small player using an AAA battery with OGG Vorbis support, look at the Samsung YP-T6

The unit cost $140 at Fry's with a $20 mail-in rebate; it can be found online for $110-$120. The iPod Nano I keep comparing the Zen Nano to can not be had for under $199. The Nano includes headphones, an armband, and a belt clip--the armband and belt clip cost extra with the iPod.

It would be nice if this had more than one gig of storage; with the popularity of the iPod Nano, I am sure Creative and others will soon have portable flash players with more storage.

All in all, it's a nice little player, and a good purchase.

Actualmente escuchando:
Adicion
Por: Moenia
Fecha de publicación: 24 August, 1999

03:38

1 Comentarios

(Comentario) |

1 Kudos

Traducir

Con la tecnología de

Inglés

Albanés

Árabe

Búlgaro

Catalán

Chino

Croata

Checo

Danés

Holandés

Estonio

Filipino

Finlandés

Francés

Gallego

Alemán

Griego

Hebreo

Hindi

Húngaro

Indonesio

Italiano

Japonés

Coreano

Letón

Lituano

Maltés

Noruego

Polaco

Portugués

Rumano

Ruso

Serbio

Eslovaco

Esloveno

Español

Sueco

Tailandés

Turco

Ucraniano

Vietnamita

viernes, octubre 21, 2005

My laptop now runs CentOS 3.6

I have been using Linux on my laptop since, well, I originally got the laptop. My laptop is an older PIII/450 laptop withour 3d acceleration.

The last version of Linux on my laptop was Fedora Core Three. I was never happy with this version; bootup was slow; shutdown was slow and buggy. Telling the system to reboot would sometimes not reboot, but leave the laptop in a state where I had to unplug the system and disconnect the battery; my ethernet card would not correct uninstall, freezing up the shutdown process. X was slow; telling xterm to output a large amount of text would bog down the system. Backwards compatibility was a joke; I couldn't compile older program nor run older binaries without resorting to chroot() environments based on older releases of Linux. The entire release was just a big headache.

So I decided to upgrade, errr downgrade to CentOS 3.6. CentOS 3.6 is based on Red Hat enterprise Linux 3, which in turn is based on RedHat 9. I know this system works well on my computer; RedHat 9 worked beautifully when it was on my laptop.

After backing up files, I did a clean install of CentOS 3.6, formatting my Linux partitions. It installed within an hour. The resulting system is a good deal faster than Fedora Core three. Boot up is much faster than it was in FC3; X is a lot snappier; compiling is a lot faster; shutdown is a lot faster and is completely bug-free.

The main issue is that some newer programs are not happy with this two-year-old codebase. I couldn't get Abiword 2.4 to run; I had to search before finding an old AbiWord 2.0 for RedHat 9 RPM out there which installed just fine. This may be because I didn't install Gnome nore KDE; I use a fast, lightweight system based on a ten-year-old version of the FVWM window manager (from the days when Linux had window managers, not desktop environments).

I haven't had a chance to test binary compatibility with older programs; considering that I did get the old Loki games to run fine in RH9, I am sure they will run fine in CentOS 3.6; those games finally broke with the 2.6 kernel.

02:26

0 Comentarios

(Comentario) |

0 Kudos

Traducir

Con la tecnología de

Inglés

Albanés

Árabe

Búlgaro

Catalán

Chino

Croata

Checo

Danés

Holandés

Estonio

Filipino

Finlandés

Francés

Gallego

Alemán

Griego

Hebreo

Hindi

Húngaro

Indonesio

Italiano

Japonés

Coreano

Letón

Lituano

Maltés

Noruego

Polaco

Portugués

Rumano

Ruso

Serbio

Eslovaco

Esloveno

Español

Sueco

Tailandés

Turco

Ucraniano

Vietnamita

sábado, octubre 15, 2005

I found those Japanese Peanuts in the US

Emoticón actual:  alegre

When I was driving up to the Bay Area (I have a weekeng gig up there---errr here), I had to stop by the gas station. Guess what I found there? Hidden among the peanuts were some Sabritas Cacahuates Japones--yes I found some of these silly peanuts in the US. Very good, but I need to drink something with them because the Saboritas are a bit spicey.

Anyway, I'm working today. Back to work.

Actualmente escuchando:
Epitaph
Por: Front Line Assembly
Fecha de publicación: 09 October, 2001

12:47

0 Comentarios

(Comentario) |

0 Kudos

Traducir

Con la tecnología de

Inglés

Albanés

Árabe

Búlgaro

Catalán

Chino

Croata

Checo

Danés

Holandés

Estonio

Filipino

Finlandés

Francés

Gallego

Alemán

Griego

Hebreo

Hindi

Húngaro

Indonesio

Italiano

Japonés

Coreano

Letón

Lituano

Maltés

Noruego

Polaco

Portugués

Rumano

Ruso

Serbio

Eslovaco

Esloveno

Español

Sueco

Tailandés

Turco

Ucraniano

Vietnamita

jueves, octubre 13, 2005

Yummy Cacahuates Japones

Emoticón actual:  hambriento/a

OK, I got some of those "Japanese Peanuts" again...by going down to Mexico and getting them at the corner store there.  In fact, I didn't see them at the first shop I went to, so I asked the lady, in English, for "Japanese Peanuts".  She called up someone, and this 7-year-old girl came by with the peanuts in hand.  I got a single bag for 40 cents and shared some with Victor.

Victor didn't like them...he said they they were too sweet.  My mother said the same thing, but she also said they they were good.  I notice something which I didn't notice when I was down there...the peanuts have a hint of spicy hot to them.  I can feel their heat in my throat after eating a bunch of them.  But they are still really great!

Later on, I got two more packages of them for $1.25 at a liquour store when I was down there and taking them with me across the border.

Victor and myself also talked to Michelle while we were down there.  She is doing well with her job, and working hard every day.  I talked with her in Spanish for a bit, then handed off the phone to Victor; they spoke in English.  Victor was really impressed with Michelle's English.  Michelle has excellent English, actually.  I have some more beautiful pictures of her which I want to post soon.

I haven't found the "Japanese Peanuts" in any store on this side of the border.  However, I found a Web page selling Cacahuates Japones in the US.  Looks like I'll just have to get them by the case.

Actualmente escuchando:
Crackers International
Por: Erasure
Fecha de publicación: 25 October, 1990

02:34

1 Comentarios

(Comentario) |

2 Kudos

Traducir

Con la tecnología de

Inglés

Albanés

Árabe

Búlgaro

Catalán

Chino

Croata

Checo

Danés

Holandés

Estonio

Filipino

Finlandés

Francés

Gallego

Alemán

Griego

Hebreo

Hindi

Húngaro

Indonesio

Italiano

Japonés

Coreano

Letón

Lituano

Maltés

Noruego

Polaco

Portugués

Rumano

Ruso

Serbio

Eslovaco

Esloveno

Español

Sueco

Tailandés

Turco

Ucraniano

Vietnamita

sábado, octubre 08, 2005

The Internet in Mexico

Getting on the internet in Mexico usually consists of going to a cyber cafe; these cafes are quite common and are on almost every street corner. The price for internet access used to be $1-4 an hour when I was there three years ago; now most places have access for as little as 60 cents an hour.
The computers are usually older computers; I have seen old Pentium I and Pentium II computers at these cafes, including AT machines. The machines usually run Windows XP, although older computers will run Windows 98/ME or Windows 2000. The machines almost always use Internet Explorer to browse the web (I installed Firefox on more than one computer at a cyber-cafe down there).

Being older computers, the usual way of transferring files to and from the computers is via a floppy disk. I did not see one computer down there with a USB port on the front for connecting a USB flash drive.

A large number of these computers use pirated copies of Windows.  This may be shocking to some Americans, but keep in mind that the $200 needed for XP Home Edition is a non-trivial chunk of change when you earn $6,000 a year; it makes a lot more sense to buy XP Pro on a burned CD at a shop near the bus station for $5.  I wish Microsoft and the Mexican version of the SPA would actually bother to enforce anti-piracy laws; such enforcment would result in a dramatic increase of people using Linux in Mexico.

Spyware and viruses may be a problem.  Most computers I saw at cyber-cafes in Mexico had some anti-virus program installed on them.  This does not guarantee the non-existance of spyware, of course.  If this worries you enough, bring a laptop--a few, but not all, cybercafes let people hook up laptops to their network.  I took a compromise approach--I only logged in to non-critical accounts, and changed the password for any account I accessed from a cyber-cafe after returning to the US.

- Sam

Note: All prices have been converted from Mexican Pesos to American dollars; while the price of the peso flucuates, a general rule of thumb is that ten pesos are worth one US dollar.

14:55

0 Comentarios

(Comentario) |

0 Kudos

Traducir

Con la tecnología de

Inglés

Albanés

Árabe

Búlgaro

Catalán

Chino

Croata

Checo

Danés

Holandés

Estonio

Filipino

Finlandés

Francés

Gallego

Alemán

Griego

Hebreo

Hindi

Húngaro

Indonesio

Italiano

Japonés

Coreano

Letón

Lituano

Maltés

Noruego

Polaco

Portugués

Rumano

Ruso

Serbio

Eslovaco

Esloveno

Español

Sueco

Tailandés

Turco

Ucraniano

Vietnamita

Publicaciones más antiguas
|
Publicaciones más nuevas

Sam

Sam Trenholme

Última actualización: 16/02/2010

Enviar mensaje
Mensaje instantáneo
Enviar por correo electrónico a un amigo
Suscribirse

Sexo: Male

Estado: Casado

Firma: Escorpión

Ciudad: Puebla

Estado: Puebla

País: MX

Fecha de inscripción: 07/07/2005

Archivo de blogs

[Más antiguos

Más recientes]

Ene
Feb
Mar
Abr
Mayo
Jun
Jul
Ago
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dic
/
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
/
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025
2026
2027
2028
2029
2030
2031
2032
2033
2034
2035
2036
2037
2038
2039
2040
2041
2042
2043
2044
2045
2046
2047
2048
2049
2050
2051
2052
2053
2054
2055
2056
2057
2058
2059
2060
2061
2062
2063
2064
2065
2066
2067
2068
2069
2070
2071
2072
2073
2074
2075
2076
2077
2078
2079
2080
2081
2082
2083
2084
2085
2086
2087
2088
2089
2090
2091
2092
2093
2094
2095
2096
2097
2098
2099

>

Vínculos patrocinados

DJ Sega

Listen to free music! Over 1,000,000 songs
BlueBeat.com

Acerca de nosotros |
Preguntas frecuentes |
Términos |
Política de privacidad |
Consejos de seguridad |
Informe sobre contenido inapropiado |
Publicitar |
MySpace International ▼

©2003-2010 MySpace.com. Todos los derechos reservados.

Cerrar

Las Américas

Argentina

Brasil

Canadá

Canadá (Français)

América Latina (Español)

México

United States (English)

United States (Latino)

Asia y Oceanía

Australia

Chino (tradicional)

India

Japón

Nueva Zelanda

Europa

Austria

Bélgica (Nederlands)

Bélgica (Français)

Dinamarca

Finlandia

Francia

Alemania

Irlanda

Italia

Países Bajos

Noruega

Portugal

Polonia

Rusia

España

Suecia

Suiza (Deutsch)

Suiza (Français)

Suiza (Italiano)

Turquía

Reino Unido