Just to end a day that should have ended way before: check this article
It explains how venture capitalists are not backing innovative technology companies anymore, because they are afraid of being sued. Investors put the Napster case as the example: innovative technology to swap files, ruined by the following lawsuits. The same is happening with lots of other companies, and for reasons you wouldn't believe. Check it out.

A look at the always interesting page of Internet and Law expert Lawrence Lessig
lead me to an equally interesting project, Creative commons. It is set to be something like
the software development method of Open Source Software, but extended to a wide range of domains: music, photography, cinema, literature,
scholarship, etc.

No more swapping on Itunes, or at least that's what Wired says. It turned out that the so much publisized Apple Itunes online service, a service to download songs for 99 cents each, actually turned out to be a very effective way to swap songs online, very much in the line of Kazaa, but with Apple's infrastructure and coolness :)
I wonder how long will it be until they discover that their service has been hacked again.

After some writing it was time for some reading.
Check this out:
apple and network economics
It's an article asking how come Apple has survived even though it goes against
the most basic principles of network economics. If you like it, you might want to get
a look at the author's webpage, Bradford DeLong's webpage. Scroll well down the page to find lots of stuff,
really lots of them, about economics, information technology and political economy. There's even
his celebrated book on macroeconomics there, almost all of it

Today I took a walk around my neighborhood. Exams are over, and so I am a normal person again. Normal, I mean, in my sense: that is, a person without nothing to do but walking around his or her neighborhood. People should be allowed to be like that, I mean everybody should have the chance to walk around a nice neighborhood once in their lives, for at least one year. Until then, every social democracy is but an utopia.

Anyway, judging from what I saw, there is quite a lot of normal people in my neighborhood. I live in Southwark, south of the river Thames, London. I took some streets leading to Tate Modern, can’t say which ones, because in London there are signs everywhere telling you where to go. That’s one of the reasons why I started loving London, being as I am quite a disaster with directions. And the funny thing is that as a child I was a sort of living map, I could spot the way to any place within a glimpse at the map. Now it’s all the opposite.

My purpose was clear: go to the Tate Modern, and have an ice tea in the balcony in the fourth floor, facing the river and the weird disposition of buildings along Bankside. And read, the breeze and the voices of tourists and locals the only elements of distraction. Before getting into the Tate, however, I spotted the Globe Shakespeare theatre. A friend of mine had told me about it, so I was curious to see what was it. And it’s that: a theatre just like the ones in the time of Shakespeare, where for 5 quid you can watch a play by Shakespeare standing. As one of my flatmates put it, it’s worth it just to see whether you can stand the whole Richard III. Stand, in the literal sense ;-)

I was tempted to buy a postcard and send it to my father, with the text “see dad, maybe we were wrong about London, maybe London is actually nice. Can you imagine something like that back home, a theatre build just to play Shakespeare?”. That’s the good thing about big cities: there’s public for everything, and so you can find everything. Anyway, I didn’t buy the postcard finally. Instead, I went upstairs, ending in a room where supposedly there had been a sort of private reception not so long ago. There was a balcony, and so I went there, quite afraid that somebody would tell me soon that I could not stay there. But it didn’t happen, and so I found myself right in the balcony of the Globe’s façade, I think some tourists captured me in their pictures in front of the building. Somewhere, someday, somebody will ask somebody else why didn’t they go up to the balcony and take a picture there, like the guy standing there, that is, myself.

After leaving the room, I spotted what looked like a bottle of some kind of alcohol. The thought passed through my mind of getting hold of it. Even while I was walking downstairs I thought of going back and taking it home. But finally I didn’t, you know, this ridiculous conscience made me think that it was actually nice that you could go all around the Globe, and nobody would tell you anything, and bottles of alcohol would stay there for me to grab them. English civilization, and after all I don’t want to change it.

Here goes the story, let's call it "The thought":

Berry woke up and stared at the room: there was the dry chicken skin in the plate from last night’s dinner, an ashtray full of disintegrated cigarettes floating like corpses in a brownish water, and loads of papers and books taking over the table with a disorganized but yet effective strategy. Then he remembered.

Ok, Joselito, more things will come after Tuesday,
maybe one of my amazing short stories. That way
you might find other interesting things in my page
than the link to Bernardo's crappy page. I am afraid
it won't be easy, though, his page is really crap :)

That's what José had to say about my page:
"... the best...
... is the link to Bernardo's crappy web page :)

--José's humble opinion in the Daily Web Reader"

i just got a call from joaquin, on his trip to the lake
with Alyosha, Gabor, etc... the complete set
should i say that? where are the limits of privacy?
well i guess nobody will read this crap
ah, jose called before, of course

grace thinks it's boring, because there's no fancy stuff
i say SHE is boring

i am talking to grace in the messenger now,
demonstrating her that this blogger thing
is so fast to publish stuff on the web!

I added some changes to the sidebar... quite easy
Unfortunately, I only thought of adding the link to
Bernardo's awfull webpage (although according
to him it provides the necessary information)
But he will work on it... Joaquin's one is kind of crappy too,
but there's a nice text about his late dog, very emotive
José had a great webpage, but suddenly changed it for this
very modest one... though he put one of my jokes there.
Alyosha's an example of what a personal webpage should be, plus
it has nice pictures.

So today I start this blogger thing... the day of my 25th birthday.
Maybe it has something to do with the feeling that I am getting
old, a quarter of a century... so I want to keep some sort of record
of my life.
And to make it even better, I am talking to Bernardo now. He had
to be in my first post.