Wordpress 2

Hello! In addition to continued outrages in Russia and China, there’s another change going on that you should know about: ¡Oye, vato! is now running on Wordpress 2, just in time for the New Year!

What Are We Doing?

What are we doing becoming so cozy with China? How long can we continue to turn a blind eye to things like this, a new crackdown on China’s most liberal media, as reported in the International Herald Tribune? Here’s some more coverage by Guardian Unlimited.

Ukraine and Yuschenko Stand Firm on Gas

Forbes reports that Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko has rejected a Russian loan as a means of coping with impending hikes in prices by Russia’s state-controlled Gazprom. According to the article, Gazprom is forcing a 4-fold increase in prices upon the Ukraine. Others have speculated that this action comes as retribution for the defeat of the Kremlin’s candidate in Ukraine’s elections last year, in which Viktor Yuschenko overcame poisoning and election fraud to stymie the Kremlin’s undue influence in that nation.

Congratulations to Ukraine for refusing to become entangled with Russia by accepting the Gazprom loan.

The Return of Russian Despotism

This Washington Post article sums up the state of affairs in Russia. Key points include:

• Supression of free media outlets

• Forced nationalization of key economic sectors, such as the oil industry

• Punishment of neighboring countries using oil prices as a weapon

• Manipulation of the national legislature to make it subservient to the Kremlin

The net effect is a removal of most of the checks that originally existed to contain the power of the executive. All of this prompted resigning Kremlin economic adviser Andrei Illarionov to say that “[Russia] is no longer a democratic country. It is no longer a free country.”

Please also see this Freedom House press release concerning recently approved legislation to restrict the activities of Non-Government Organizations in Russia. Note that Freedom House has recently lowered Russia’s rating from “partly free” to “not free.”

Longing and Delight

The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things — the beauty, the memory of our own past — are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. — C.S. Lewis

Performancing - What’s the License?

The folks over at Performancing are offering a pretty nifty Firefox extension that allows blogging integrated into the web browser. Here’s a screenshot. But what license is it released under? Is it open source so I won’t have to worry about it suddenly not being free anymore? If anybody knows, drop me a line.

Wikipedia: no muy autoritario

So, there’s all kinds of stink lately as a result of Wikipedia’s defamatory information debacle. Today, I got back a paper back in my Spanish Literature class. In that paper, I cited Wikipedia’s Spanish language article on the Ultraism movement in Spain in the early 20th Century. I also cited Wikipedia for some information on Jorge Luis Borges. My profesor wrote a comment referring to Wikipedia on my works cited page: “Cuidado con esta enciclopedia que es de entregas voluntarias. No es muy autoritaria.” (Caution with this encyclopedia, which is from voluntary submissions. It isn’t very authoritative). Of course, I know that already, but when you’re pressed for time it’s often the most convenient source. So my question is not, Should I find different sources? My answer to that is already “yes”; if I’m doing a research paper I’m never going to cite Wikipedia! (This paper was just a literary analysis.) My real question is, What can we do to make Wikipedia - or some similar project - factually reliable?

Over at j’s scratchpad, a blog by a news librarian over at Harvard, there is some convincing evidence that the majority of edits on Wikipedia come from registered users. The latest incremental reform attempting to make Wikipedia more dependable [is ???]. But that’s not enough. It doesn’t prevent the sort of defamatory comments that have gotten Wikipedia into trouble lately. Here are a few thoughts on what would be enough:

1. Create a fact-checking review team. These would be registered users charged with checking the validity of articles. These users would rate each other based on the accuracy of articles that have passed their inspection. Every article would show in a prominent location its fact-check rating, which is essentially a rating of the people who have reviewed the article. Because articles are frequently revised, readers would have the option of viewing a “certified version”, the version that the reviewers have approved. We do have to consider that Wikipedia sees 15,000 new articles a month. Odds are the fact-checkers would never in the near future get close to covering the entire encyclopedia, but it might lend additional credibility to the articles that are checked.
   Eventually, Wikipedia’s growth and modification rate may decrease as its topic coverage and article quality mature. This might allow the fact-checking teams to eventually cover a large proporcion of the articles.

2. Require an extensive bibliography for any article before it can be “certified” by the fact-checkers. Some articles currently include decent bibliographies, but many more do not. Additionally, there is little guarantee that the bibliographies are not simply padded. What I want to see is not just general bibliography entries, but specific citations. That means page numbers and text within quotes. That means some sort of a system of footnotes or in-line citations. This way, an article would be verifiable.
   I’m fortunate enough to have BYU’s Harold B. Lee Library just up the hill from me, but not everybody has access to such a research library. I imagine that there are a sufficient number of university students involved with Wikipedia that this isn’t an entirely unreasonable requirement. We have already discussed the point of the percentage of articles that can receive such detailed attention in #1.

I’m more or less a fan of the general idea of Wikipedia. A combination of these two and perhaps other “reforms” could improve the quality and reliability of Wikipedia without throwing out the speedy, wide-ranging coverage that its open editability provides.
Comments? Contradictions? It’s a very interesting debate.

Amigote: a blog identity crisis!

Ok, I’ve begun the process of developing my own theme for this blog. It’s ancestry goes directly to the c3ro theme, and basically it is exactly the same… for now! The name of my version of the theme is “Amigote” which as we all know is Spanish for “big jerk friend” (approx. translation). I figured, Hey, the name of my site is “¡Oye, vato!” for as-yet unexplained reasons, so why not make the name of the theme be “amigote” for similarly unexplained reasons?

Which leads me to a much needed digression: it’s time that “we” here at “¡Oye, vato!” suffer our first blog identity crisis! Everybody cheer!

The first problems are, What the heck does “¡Oye, vato!” mean? and ¿do you always have to write the upside down exclamation point? From the lovely website Pachuquismos we get this definition of ‘vato’:

Vato: Used instead of “homeboy”, “dude”, etc.

So pretty much this blog could be retitled en inglés, “Hey, Dude!” Except that’s not nearly as cool and was the name of a ridiculous TV show on Nickelodeon a million years ago (does anybody else remember that?)

Moving on (without addressing the exclamation point issue)…. “We” “staff member(s)” here at ¡Oye, vato! are realistic about the amount of exposure our astoundingly insightful commentary on world events and the state of software receives; so far, we know of one semi-regular visitor: The Shark. You know, the fellow who brought you such moving posts as Russian squirrel pack ‘kills dog’ and… Anyway, «the editorial board» here, while grateful for the consistent high quality of The Shark’s contributions to the ¡Oye, vato! community, acknowledges that a greater diversity of worldviews and a greater number of eyes looking for psycho news stories are both in order. For this purpose, we are now listed with Technorati in an effort to increase The Vato’s sphere of influence.

So, as we wrap up this identity crisis, let’s review:

1. always refer to the first person singular using the first person plural

And that’s pretty much it. Thanks for tuning in, and sorry if the sarcasm was a bit too thick. Good night!

Shanwei/Dongzhou Massacre

Please read and compare the Chinese state news agency’s report on the massacre to this one in the Epoch Times. As you can see, the official version of events is a bit watered down!

Additionally, there is a very good photo gallery by the Epoch Times. I’m surprised they were able to get these sorts of pictures of the villagers facing lines of soldiers.

Should we really be trading with this nation? We at least have reason to hesitate continuing our cozy trade relationship with the world’s largest totalitarian government.

What Happened to Open Debate? (More on Lieberman)

This article at the New York Times reveals an interesting perspective on Senator Lieberman’s position on the Iraq war:

[Senator Lieberman] said the two sides were making too much of his comments, and he argued that the overreactions reflected how politically polarized the debate over the war had become.
…
“The positive and negative reactions may have less to do with the substance of what I said than with the fact that a Democrat is saying it,” Mr. Lieberman said. “It reflects the terribly divisive state of our politics.”

The senator has a point. I made a big deal out of his seemingly pro-Iraq war comments in my recent post. I think my reaction and that of many others was guided at least partly by politically polarized, agenda oriented motives.

The general idea we can distill from all of this is that in the current state of things, there is little openness or even freedom of thought and expression for our nation’s leaders because partisans and special interests try to force them into one or the other ideological mold. Perhaps the most creative and effective solutions to our nation’s problems are being quashed in the contest of ideas that has become — instead of a fair fight in which the best ideas win — a war of attrition.

Date With Destiny

Here is my group’s film for the 2005 Oscars competition: Date With Destiny. [Note: Don't expect this to work any more!]

Firefox 1.5 Bursts Free? Sneaks Out

Firefox 1.5 has been released. For a list of the crazy new features, check here. I think that all the hype is waiting for the Firefox Flicks ad competition.

This release seems like a much more subtle event than the bold release of 1.0, for example. This is because when you open up the new version of the browser, all you notice (at first) is that some of the menus are rearranged, and the preferences window is horizontal instead of vertical. However, the things you don’t notice are more significant. Try, for example, integrated SVG support. Or XForms. Or the fast forward and back navigation. Or perhaps the expanded accessibility features. We shouldn’t fail to mention the new automatic updates, closing the only real gap between the security capabilities of Firefox and Internet Explorer.

One feature I’m not sure about is the “Clear Private Data” tools. This allows the user to clear all data such as browsing history, cookies, etc. that leave a trace of what they have been up to. This has some definite benefits, such as making it safer to use public kiosk computers. It just might also enable easier unauthorized or otherwise unwanted use.

And those are my thoughts.

Russian squirrel pack ‘kills dog’

Another sign that Russia’s welfare system has seen much better days. Read it here.

Thanks to Shark of The Shark’s Byte for the hilarious tipoff.