Gian Pablo Villamil

Gian Pablo Villamil

Solving new problems in video, electronics and strategy

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Archive for October, 2008

Campaigning for Barack Obama on Main Street

I spent the weekend volunteering for the Obama campaign, in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. This town is in the heart of Bucks County, one of the “must-win” counties in the coming election, according to politico.com. Main Street here is as close as you can get to the typical small-town “Main Street” that the candidates love to refer to in their speeches.

Volunteering for the campaign was a major watershed for me: I’ve never been so motivated by an election, and really think there is more at stake than in any previous election that I’ve voted in – and a lot of the people I spoke to over the weekend felt the same way. The experience was rewarding, and I felt that I had contributed significantly to a coming electoral success!

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October 28th, 2008 | Category: Commentary, Politics | Leave a comment

Warren Buffett on Class Warfare

Warren Buffett strongly supports increasing taxes on the wealthy. In this interview in the NY Times, he has this memorable quote:

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

I’d say that this is literally true: the current surge in military spending is disproportionately benefiting a small number of wealthy investors, while the human cost is being borne by thousands of mostly lower-income Americans, and even greater numbers of Iraqis.

Some have called Barack Obama’s tax plan “socialist”, for attempting to redistribute wealth from the wealthy to the middle class. What do you call it when you redistribute wealth from the middle class to the wealthy, as Bush has done for the past 8 years, and as McCain plans to do even more?

October 28th, 2008 | Category: Commentary, Politics | Leave a comment

Beware of “free” software download scams

I am a big fan of a number of Open Source software projects, including Filezilla, Azureus, Audacity, Firefox and others. These projects are essentially staffed by volunteers, collaboratively producing software of general utility and sharing it with everyone, for free.

Unfortunately, everything attracts predators and parasites, and I’ve lately noticed one particularly nasty little scam – people attempting to charge for Open Source software. Let me make it clear that the people working on the projects, the projects themselves, and SourceForge.net are in no way part of the scam – they are victims.

Here’s an illustration of the scam: note what happens when you search for Filezilla or Azureus on Google (here’s the Filezilla example):

Next to the legitimate download links on the left, is a sponsored ad in the top right, with all kinds of buzzwords – “latest version”, “100% guaranteed” – even the URL prominently features 2009, as if you’re getting “next year’s model”.

Of course, the sponsored link is a scam. (The other search results are legitimate.) The next page asks you for your email address, and then for payment! (Azureus example):

Note how slick the site is, and how it bombards the naive user with all sorts of “benefits” – download movies for free (for $14.95 extra!), CD quality music, technical support, etc. There is even a constantly updated “2 day promo” widget! I strongly suspect that giving a credit card number to these sleazebags is the portal to a world of fraudulent abuse.

What makes it easier for these scammers is that it is not often easy to figure out whether a website is legitimate just by looking at a URL: what looks likelier – “filezilla-2009.com” or “sourceforge.net/projects/filezilla”? (The latter is the legitimate download site.)

There is a bit of weaselly language hidden away in the FAQ: “The software is completely free of charge. What you pay goes towards supporting our technical team and paying for the creation of more user guides. If you’re unsatisfied, you can always cancel your membership and keep the software.”

I was not able to find out who registered these domains – the trail ended at godaddy.com.

What can you do to avoid falling for a scam?

Make sure that what you are after is genuinely available for free. In the case of projects like Filezilla, Audacity, Azureus, their sites will take you to a download page without having to register or hand over any information. (Of course, you can donate to support the projects, if you want.) Chances are that a sponsored link, or ad, is not going to be the legit download site. Legitimate Open Source projects will make their source code available, and be clear and upfront about the licensing terms.

Note that Open Source software is “free” as in “free speech” – the code is available to view, and can be passed on. It is also mostly “free” as in “free beer” – however, it is allowable for an organization to charge for packaging, installing and supporting Open Source software. Red Hat does this with Linux, for example. However, if a site does nothing except link to the existing (”free as in beer”) website for a project, then it’s a scam. Sourceforge.net is a good trusted source of Open Source software, and does not charge.

However, the scammers are clever – so use your judgement. Anytime a “free” site asks you for an email address and payment information, you’d better beware!

October 20th, 2008 | Tags: | Category: Commentary, Internet, Technology | Leave a comment

Updates to video, audio, photo pages

I’ve started to turn this site into a better showcase for my work, by adding dedicated pages for my audio, video and photography. There will be plenty of changes, so please check it out every once in a while.

October 18th, 2008 | Category: Music, Photos, Portfolio, Video | Leave a comment

The elephant in the room: violence in (and out) of the U.S.A.

I have been following the elections very closely, and am struck that there is a series of related issues that have not become part of the political debate, mostly related to the U.S.A. and violence. It is striking, since this is an area where the U.S.A. is an outlier, an anomaly among developed countries. I am fascinated that military spending, incarceration rates and violent crime are not more of an issue. Together, they point to a culture that has institutionalized violence as a way of responding to external and internal problems.

Starting with military expenditure, the U.S. currently spends about 54% of the federal budget (excluding Social Security and other trusts) on military, or military-related expenditures. Now, that figure is debatable, especially the $390bn of interest on debt incurred through military spending. However, take that and the Veteran’s Administration budget out, and you still have a clear 36% of the budget going to the military. That is more than the sum of the next 15 countries military spending combined, to fight what are basically guerilla insurgencies – not major wars. The U.S., with 21% of the world’s GDP, represents 47% of the world’s military spending.

This is problematic, to say the least. As Eisenhower warned in his farewell speech (Part 1, Part 2), the creation of a “military-industrial complex” in times of peace can lead to a situation in which military responses take primacy over diplomatic solutions, even when unwarranted.

In terms of incarceration rates, the U.S. once again stands out, with 2.3 million people behind bars (that’s 50% of the world total). China, with 4 times the population, comes in second, at 1.6 million prisoners. Most of the spread between the U.S. prison figures and developed country averages comes from the disproportionately high rate of imprisonment for black males. The existence of a “prison-industrial” complex, built around privately-owned and operated prisons, provides a huge incentive for the growth of the prison population, at the expense of a relatively poor and disenfranchised population.

This implies that U.S. citizens are either more criminal than people in the rest of the world, or that they tend to get imprisoned with much higher frequency. Since the overall U.S. crime rate is mostly comparable to the rest of the world, and has in fact been decreasing, the huge increase in the prison population must have another explanation. Superficially, a least, you need not go far to find this: a combination of mandatory sentencing rules and the war on drugs seems to account for a lot. However, this does not explain the massive racial disparity, or the reason why such judicial harshness was sought, especially with regard to drugs.

In most other ways, the U.S. is statistically comparable to other countries: GDP (21% of world) is comparable to energy consumption (25% of world), population is comparable to employment, etc. But in these two measures (military spending and incarceration), the U.S. is wildly out of line: 47% of the world’s military spending and 50% of the world’s prisoners, in a country with rougly 5% of the world’s population?

I suspect the corrupting influence of a philosophy that problems can be solved through the application of coercive violence, either against other countries, or against ethnic populations within the country, driven by a diabolical combination of political ideology and economic incentives.

For all the reforms proposed by Barack Obama (and to a lesser extent, John McCain), the U.S. can’t really move forward without addresssing these two elephants in the room. Health care, education, infrastructure: all of these can be paid for without tax increases, simply by bringing military expenditures into line with the rest of the world, and by trying to make 2.3 million inmates productive members of society. The rest of the world seems to be capable of it – why not the U.S.?

October 18th, 2008 | Category: Commentary, Politics | Leave a comment