tripu

(References are at the bottom).

“It is almost impossible to exaggerate the ferocity of the copyright laws in America, which are in effect written by the large entertainment conglomerates. The most famous example of this is the Mickey Mouse effect, whereby every time the Mouse is about to come out of copyright, the term of copyright is extended. This has happened 11 times in the past 40 years.”

“There is a clause in US film contracts which awards the producers rights ‘in perpetuity and throughout the universe and for any and all forms of expression whether now existing or hereafter devised’. As far as I can tell, the only loophole in that is if you fell through a crack in the space-time fabric of the universe into a parallel one.”

“The idea of copyright began as an argument over books; and it is over books, both as intellectual property and as physical entities, that change and contention now looms.”

“A library is a machine for storing and retrieving information.”

“Google is digitising as much of the out-of-copyright sections of the collection as it can manage. That, in practice, means the 19th century.”

“Google never gives out figures about anything, but I was told that the Book Search programme already includes more than a million books; and the number is growing daily. Only the world’s very biggest libraries are bigger than that.”

“80% of everything that has ever been published is still in copyright; 10% of that is still in print.”

“Nobody even knows how many books there are. The best guess seems to be about 32m.”

“Sceptics point to a contrast between Google’s attitude to everyone else’s information, which it wants to make available free, and its attitude to its own proprietary information — the company is famous for its close-mouthedness; it won’t even say anything about how or where it scans the books.”

Last Saturday John Lanchester wrote in “The guardian” a great article entitled “It’s a steal”.

In a previous post we learnt what a “newspaper of record” is. Today I think Zugaldía may be delighted to read about “copyright libraries”.

The other day, as my train slowly entered the station and arrived to the platform, I noticed something falling to the floor when somebody got up to leave the train. The mature woman sitting behind me had dropped something accidentally. Or so I thought.

It was a book. I stooped to pick it up for her — trying to read its title at the same time, of course. It was “On Beauty”, by Zadie Smith. I already knew that book because it received very good critics and won some important prize, and had been since heavily promoted here in England. I had been seeing it in the hands of commuters lately.

I handed the book back to the lady expecting the preceptive “oh thank you very much” plus broad smile that I so much appreciate since I arrived to this country. Instead of that, the woman made me a gesture of subtle negation and stammered out something that I didn’t understand. Suddenly it dawned on me: this lovely lady is a bookcrosser in disguise!

I was happy with the possibility of rescuing a book from the wild for the second time in my life. But I saw no sticker of Bookcrossing on its cover. Why?

Then the woman, noticing my confusion, looked at me again in guiltiness and confessed in a whisper:

“I can’t stand it. I don’t like it. Do you want it?”

Sure.

Her guilty confession kept me laughing at intervals for the rest of that day. She was no bookcrosser. She was a bookdropper. Cool. Next time you realise that you actually loathe a book that you began to read just because all your friends were loving it, don’t suffer. Instead, perform a sophisticated act of generous bookdropping in some crowded place. (Just make sure before that nobody is close enough as to offer it back to you). That might save yourself hundreds of boring pages and quite a few pathetic attempts to highbrow comments among your mates. And it’s a smart, environmentally friendly move which Al Gore himself would be proud campaigning for.

I wonder how many books are bought (and maybe read) just because of ads and trends. I myself have put it now in my queue, but after some other more important books.

By the way, bookdropping.com is already registered, but bookdropping.info remains available…

Justo antes de ir a España por navidad leí este libro, «Sulle tracce di Kevin», que es una edición italiana del famoso «Takedown» que escribieran Tsutomu Shimomura y John Markoff tras la captura de Kevin Mitnick. Al parecer también se hizo una peli.

Leer en italiano un libro como éste es un poco aberrante, porque está plagado de términos técnicos cuya traducción del inglés al italiano suena a veces ridícula. Aproximadamente tan ridícula como nuestra traducción al español. Lo que pasa es que al leer esas palabras en un idioma que no es tu lengua materna, esto se nota más. («Log file» → «file-diario» :¬) Es una mezcla curiosa; el italiano, que a los hispanohablantes nos suena entre afectado y divertido, con tropezones en inglés. Tropezones cuyo género al ser italianizados a veces ni siquiera coincide con el que los españoles les hemos asignado (también muy caprichosamente, supongo).

Generalmente, si leo en inglés o en italiano intento que sean ediciones originales. Pero compré este libro en Milán hace seis años y me daría lástima no leerlo.

El libro en sí es bastante malo. Si eres un profesional de los computadores buscando un relato jugoso y detallado sobre crackers, phreaking y seguridad en los albores de internet… ahórratelo. Desde el punto de vista técnico, no cuenta mucho que no sepas, ni se mete en explicaciones de bajo nivel, que sí podrían ser más interesantes. Se nota que han cuidado el registro y han limitado mucho las partes con más enjundia para no asustar a ningún lector potencial con la jerga. Probablemente sea la mano de Markoff.

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I‘ve got a friend who is a software engineer too, but who has never worked with Linux or Unix. Now he wants to start learning something about it, so he asked me about good sources for beginners. My friend is a Java programmer with some work experience, so when I say “beginners” I just mean “newbies to Linux”, not “computer illiterates” or “programming dummies”.

What he wants to learn (or rather what I believe would be best for him to learn) are the basics about Linux installation, configuration and administration, command line rudiments and tools, typical open source programming languages and environments and general development methodology.

There must be some good general introductory-but-not-too-basic books, documents, tutorials and web sites out there. It’s just that the ones I can think of (which I may have used in the past myself) are either in Spanish (which he can’t read), a bit too old or centred on very specific aspects.

Can you recommend any good source? What was your first book about Linux? Any classic must for beginners?

He prefers books to web sites.

Está bien; es cierto. Lo confieso. No tengo ni idea de quién me ha enviado este libro a través de Amazon.co.uk… :¬)

Bueno, tengo mis sospechosos, pero ningún indicio. Seas quien seas, ¡muchas gracias!

(Una pistita al menos, ¿no? :¬)