Spiders on Drugs

I think there's a lesson to be learned here.

Michael Jackson Transformation

Hard to believe!. A black boy who had curly dark hair in his early teens, who grew up successfully with his brothers, the amazing "Jackson Five". Who knew he would get addicted to plastic surgery. Definitevely there was a transformation. When he was 41 years old he looked like "The Joker". Nowadays he has fair-skinned, new chin, new nose, new cheeks, smaller jaw. He looks like "Ari from Planet of the Apes". Poor man...

BALANCING ACT

When you finish seeing The Remains of the Day (1993), you will realize that it is worth seeing it even twice or three times. It was directed by James Ivory and it is a screen adaptation of a Kazuo Ishiguro´s novel. If this were not a guarantee yet, you have a wonderful cast: the male lead is played by Anthony Hopkins -one of his best roles- and the female lead is for Emma Thompson; we can recognize Hugh Grant who plays the part of Mr. Darlington´s grandson, Christopher Reeve as the American Congressman and James Fox as Mr. Darlington.

The action is set in Oxfordshire, in Darlington Hall, in the interwar period. The subtitle is “Love and Loyalty” because, in fact, we have two stories in one. The most important characters are a butler –Mr. Stevens- (A. Hopkins) - and a housekeeper -Miss Keaton (E. Thompson)- who, without expecting it, will live the European political upheavals during a particularly difficult period when gentlemen are living their last days of influence.

Their lord –Lord Darlington- is an honourable, well-meaning gentleman who, for personal reasons, makes the decision of offering his mansion naively as a discreet venue where meetings and speeches about foreign policy are going to take place. We can see ambassadors, foreign secretaries and even the Prime Minister in his mansion. Traditions and a disciplined staff are put at the service of, in fact, a dubious aim: the recovery of Germany´s military power; ensuring the peace is only a ruse.

Nevertheless, all this is, apparently, the background of a more intimate story. The butler –Mr. Stevens-, in pursuit of professional dignity, devotes his life to Lord Darlington without agreeing or disagreeing; –“It´s not my place to be curious about these matters”. We can guess his personal problems, but however much he is pressed, he is unable to react. His father and Miss Keaton´s arrival will suppose an evident change; his only reaction is “I see” or “A little tired, perhaps”. His obsolete job “helps” him live out of reality. He does not want to get involved in politics or, above all, in love even though these matters will touch him very closely. It is a story of loneliness and powerlessness which turn his life into a continual loss. At the end, although he feels nostalgic, he regrets not acting in a different way, but the time is over.

Mr. Stevens and Lord Darlington both fail although they have made opposite decisions: abstention and commitment. Our life is a balancing act; standing on a rope is a very difficult task; we risk falling off.

As was to be expected, A. Hopkins´ acting is praiseworthy; we will remember his impassive face –sometimes almost a mask- fighting his emotions. E. Thompson is able to rise to the occasion; she gives a good performance. It is difficult to assess the scriptwriter´s work without having read the novel. Anyway, the audience should be attentive. First, because the story is told from the ending, after the war, in 1956, and when we begin, some statements, some gestures may be overlooked. It would be advisable to see it twice; only then do we appreciate the details. Second, because he uses many symbols, not only the dove in the closing scene but also (for instance) mirrors, windowpanes, keyholes to express his fear of reality. Last, because it is woven by parallelisms and contrasts which keep us active. As regards the photography, it is especially good; the photographer has paid attention to the details as well; we can remember two scenes; the first one when Mr. Stevens, through the window in the door, watches Miss Keaton coming up along the corridor; the second one when, in the foreground, they hold each other´s hand, but they cannot help letting them go. The technique is at the service of the plot. As far as the soundtrack is concerned, Richard Robbins makes a good choice: he uses the same melody in the most important parts of the film. Notwithstanding, at the beginning, the music may be misleading: when Mr. Stevens Sr. goes upstairs after having left the dust-pan on the landing, any person might think of a thriller and nothing could be further from reality; if it has been a deliberate effect, it has been in vain. In any case, it is just a detail. To sum up, I strongly recommend it. In spite of being a film shot in the 90s, it will survive in the audience´s memory. Seeing it is a pleasure.

-Reviewed by Luz

Top 10 Reasons to use Linux

1. Security - Linux is Open Source Software, while Windows is not. The simplest benefits of Open Source Code to demonstrate are increased security, reliability and functionality; because users of Open Source are readily able to identify and correct problems with the programs and to submit their own enhancements for incorporation into the program. Closed Source systems enjoy none of those benefits.

2. Scalability - Systems implemented under Linux can be cloned limitless times without paying additional software licensing fees - With Windows, you pay for each installation/workstation/server/cpu.

3. Power - Linux is made with the Unix design philosophy, which dictates that system tools are small and highly specialized. The result is an incredibly powerful and reliable system, limited in capability only by the user's imagination and ability to integrate the Unix utilities. The Windows philosophy is to create unwieldy swiss army knives, limited in capability by how many features the user purchased on their particular knife. Diminished reliability is arguably a side effect of increased complexity. Thus with Windows, the case is often that you have tools that ALMOST do what you want them to, if they didn't crash.

4. Reliability - The architecture of Linux is superior to Windows because critical operation system functions are implemented in such a way that buggy programs can't cause the computer to become unstable and crash. In fairness, though not quite as robust as Linux, Windows 2000 and Windows XP are much improved over Windows 9x and Windows Millenium Edition.

5. Advanced Capabilities - In addition to the system utility tools from the Unix world, Linux usually comes with the Apache Webserver, an email server, router/firewall capabilities and SQL databases. These are extras costing up to thousands of dollars on Windows. There IS free software to do these jobs on Windows, but it has mostly been adapted from Linux and loses some functionality when ported to Windows.

6. Compatibility - Linux is POSIX Compliant which means that applications developed for Linux can be operated on other POSIX compliant Unix derivatives with a minimum of reworking.

7. Support - For persons not familiar with the Open Source Community, the quality of free technical support on the internet may come as a shock. Sometimes knowing enough to ask the right questions can be a problem, but overall the best and the brightest are there to assist you at no charge when you run into problems that can't be solved by reading the documentation included with Linux. With Windows or other commercial software, your manufacturer support is only free for a limited time and is often of little value anyways.

8. Not Single Source Software - Linux is distributed by several companies, giving consumers to pick and choose the flavor that best suits their needs. Windows is the product of a single company, Microsoft Corporation. Windows users have no choice but to accept what Microsoft offers.

9. Rate of Advancement - Linux has and will continue to advance at a rate impossible for a close development project such as Microsoft Windows to sustain. A few factors driving this rate of progress are (in no particular order): the number of active developers; quantity and quality of feedback from the field; short development cycle from development team to the end user; absence of corporate "meddling" in the design process; independently developed open source subsystems frequently incorporated into Linux, giving it quantum advances in a short time.

10. Cost - That Linux is FREE deserves honorable mention and a bit of explanation. You can package and sell Linux for money. The competing Linux distributions all provide slightly different feature sets beyond the core system, including canned e-commerce solutions, printed manuals and phone support options. There is no rule that says you can't make money distributing Linux. For those who choose to download and install free distributions from the Internet, Linux is truely free. Some cynics have proclaimed, "Sure Linux is free now, but the Linux People will start charging for it once it catches on!". That statment is completely false. No single person or organization controls Linux, so that will never happen. In the unlikely case that Linus Torvalds (the author of Linux) adds some proprietary code and proclaims that all future releases will be $99.99USD, someone will simply take the latest "free" version and possibly rename it to Spin-UX. Then all the volunteer developers and contributors will jump on that bandwagon. Spin-UX will diverge from its Linux roots, over time becoming better supported and more advanced, rendering its ancestor obsolete, except possibly for purposes specifically addressed by that hypothetical proprietary added code. Furthermore Linux is covered by the Gnu Public License, stating that it and all derivative works must be distributed with the source code. This makes it extremely unlikely that anyone will wield monopolistic power in the Linux Sector.


To conclude this hopefully persuasive bit of Linux Advocacy, it must be stated that an Operating System without suitable Applications is of little use. There are free web browsers and email clients for Linux, as well as the free Star Office product from Sun Microsystems. Star Office includes the traditional productivity applications: Word Processing, Spreadsheet and Database. Corel Office is also available for Linux at little or no charge.

As more small businesses adopt Linux, the number of Indepdendent Software Vendors offering industry specific (Vertical Market) applications will increase. As I learn of business applications designed for Linux, I will document them on this site.

The Sea, by John Banville

John Banville's latest novel was one of the best that I've read last year. The Sea is where Max Morden, a middle-aged art historian, come back to the Irish seaside village of Ballyless after his wife dies of cancer. There he spent summer holidays as a boy and encountered with the wealthy and sophisticated Grace family, first with the mother, and then with the daughter, who mysteriously changed his life. While there, he alternately remembers his life with his wife and that summer holiday with the Grace family. These relationships with these three women have a decisive influence in his life. In his memory, he sees himself, ten or eleven, young and impressionable, voluntarily orphaning himself from his "transparent parents". The narrator looks back to the magical encounter in childhood that forever fired the imagination. He says that that was the year of the magical tide . Children and sex, love and death, happiness and sadness are the memories that will make he has come to be himself. Max is also the defeated man who receive the shake hands from doctor Todd -the doctor who treats Anna, his wife, who tells him in a cold way: “-Tell me the truth, doctor. -She is dying". I believe that John Banbille will be one of the most great writers in English like Conrad or Nabokov