Society – Here we are

Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice

I discovered today this essential document any software engineer should always keep in mind. It was written in 1999 by the ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Task Force on Software Engineering Ethics and Professional Practices and approved as the standard for teaching and practicing software engineering. The full version is a must read.

In my very personal opinion, a lot of the ideas expressed through the preamble and the eight principles in the document, motivate and support the free software movement and go directly against (not only software) patents.

Lume Nunca Mais

Gnome to Sponsor female developers

The poster is available in pdf format. The press release can be found here.

A bit of politics

Recently I have read two very good political texts that I whould like to share:

“Las guerras mienten” (in Spanish), by Eduardo Galeano
“Sexta declaración de la Selva Lacandona” (Parte I, Parte II, Parte III), by the EZLN

(also available in English as the “Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona”: Part I, Part II and Part III)

The second text is a very complete description of the vision of the world from the point of view of the Zapatista community of Chiapas, and explains also their understanding of real democracy.

The Ten-Percent Myth

This article explains why the myth that says that we only use the 10% of the brain is so widely accepted.

Talking about Myths, I would recommend Urban Legends Reference Pages.

Ilha das flores

Today, almost 10 years after the first time, I have just seen again lha das flores (“Flower Island”), a shocking, 13 minutes long, brazilian short film.

It can be seen at PortaCurtas in original version (brasilian portuguese). It’s low quality, but if you have never seen it, stop doing wathever you are doing, take 13 minutes of your precious time, and learn more about capitalism with the awarded work directed by Jorge Furtado.

The oldest known color photograph: 1872

Taken almost 50 years before the used method was perfected for commercial use. More info here.

The Catholic Church against “The da Vinci Code”

It’s quite shocking the effort that the Catholic Church is putting in fighting what they call the lies inside the best-seller “The da Vinci Code”.

In my opinion the book is just a very addictive, entertaining and enjoyable piece of quite simple literature, which makes the reader reflect a bit on the elimination of the feminine side in most of the theories of the Catholic Church. The main discussion should not be if Jesus had descendents, but rather if the role of women in general should have been much more important both in the history and the present of the institution. Well, nothing really very different to what happened and still happens in the rest of the society.

Manuel Castells and the needs of learning English

La Vanguardia, a newspaper from Catalunya, publishes today an article of Manuel Castells in Spanish talking about the importance of learning good English for non-native speakers. Unfortunately, due to several reasons, the English knowledge level inside the Spanish State seems to be dramatically low.