September 14, 2005
| Blogging |
blogging
|
| Emergent Democracy |
emergent_democracy
|
| Italia |
italia
|
| Trust and Reputation |
trust_and_reputation
|
Beppe Grillo Blog is currently 66th on the Technorati list of top blogs. Pretty impressive if you think he only writes in Italian. However I see some problems with this blog I'll try to describe here.
Every daily post has around 1000 comments. This is not a problem per se, of course, if people want to write a lot of comments to every your post, this is good, you probably write something that is very interesting.
So today I wanted to alert Beppe (or who read all the comments) about this article on groklaw, so I went to beppegrillo.it and try to leave a comment and, surprise, you cannot leave as signature a link to your blog but only an email address! This is really against empowering communication in a decentralized manner! In this way, if I want to be heard on the Web I cannot write on my blog but I must come back to beppegrillo blog and leave a comment there. I cannot have a Web identity independently of beppegrillo.it domain!
I think Beppe speaks often of "Direct democracy" that is achieved through his blog. Well, this is not at all something new. Instead Beppe Grillo is becoming a leader of a face-less, identity-less crowd that exist only by commenting on his blog. It is not very different from a Prodi or Berlusconi leader whose followers are anonymous identities (you might even have doubts they exist at all).
So, enough criticisms and let start with the (hopefully) constructive part: Beppe, please, invite people who flock to your blog to have their Web presence. Let commenters leave a link to their Web identity (a blog). Place a very visible invitation (in the menubar and on top fo the right column) for visitors to open their own personal blog, with instructions on how to do it. The message could be something like this: (in Italian) "Sono molto contento di vedere cosi' tanti commenti ai miei post. Ma credo che la forza del Web sia nel fatto che ognuno puo' dire la sua. Ti invito quindi ad aprire un TUO blog e a postare in esso le TUE idee. Potrai ovviamente linkare i miei post quando lo ritieni opportuno o lasciare commenti con link alle TUE riflessioni sul TUO blog. Io ho tante cose da dire ma sono sicuro che anche tu hai tante cose da dire, e non e' affatto detto che quelle che dico io siano piu' interessanti di quelle che dici tu. Quindi ti consiglio di aprire un tuo blog. E' semplicissimo. Le istruzioni per farlo sono qui di seguito. (e nel seguito alcune semplici istruzioni su come creare un blog in splinder.com, blogger.com, ...)"
Another comment I wanted to leave on his blog was about GNU/Linux. He speakes a lot about the power of the new technologies and Internet but a search for linux on his blog returns zero results. I wanted to suggest to Beppe to speak about this alternative in the domain of software. Anyway I hope that in some decentralized way, he finds this post and comments here, here you can leave a link to your web presence.
And Beppe, since you are so intripped (yes, this is not English) with the power of the Web, I'm confident you'll be able to understand why I (try to) write in English even if I'm Italian.
UPDATE: a comment by Matteo lets me know that Massimo already wrote about it: crea il tuo blog.
"Tutto quello che pensi e scrivi lo ha gia' pensato e scritto qualcun altro" - Anonimo
August 31, 2005
At the moment, the Italian Blog of Beppe Grillo is 79th worldwide in the Technorati Top 100. If you think that he writes only in Italian and is probably linked to mainly by Italian blogs that are a tiny fraction of the Web, it is quite a success. At the moment, his last 4 posts received respectively 370, 978, 555, 1915 comments: quite impressive especially because all of them are in Italian. If you are interested, Wikipedia tells you who is Beppe Grillo, and of course if you want to intergrate/improuve the description, feel free. (via Luca)
March 05, 2005
| Copyright |
copyright
|
| Free software |
free_software
|
| Future |
future
|
| Italia |
italia
|
San Remo is the most known Italian Music Festival. Millions of people watching TV these days. So 3 Italian Ministers had the good idea to show off in TV signing an agreement against piracy and for protecting music authors; in reality it just defends big Music Labels and not citizens. Anyway this is normal: we have a media govern, they govern via television.
What is more interesting is that the Ministry for Innovation and Technologies released a report about Digital Rights Management (2.9 Mb Pdf file in Italian). I come to know via an article by Emanuele Somma (you can try the automatic translation in English if you don't master Italian) that this report, besides being full of errors, also stole a sentence about Copyleft from the magazine "Il Mucchio Selvaggio", n. 526, march 2003, precisely from an article titled "Il copyleft spiegato ai bambini" (copyleft explained to children) written by Wu Ming Foundation. Of course they didn't cite the original article. So here we are at the incredible paradox: the government commision, that wants to regulate e-content, copies the copyright-protected e-content of someone else without even citying it!!!
Moreover the sentence contains a lot of errors and it is not at all precise. They copied and they copied from a wrong report! Geniuses! They also refused to hear the Free Software Foundation (there was no time!), while they were happy to listen all the Music Labels lobbyists.
The copied sencence is:
"Si è andata affermando negli ultimi anni la filosofia del Copyleft. Il termine (denso gioco di parole intraducibile in italiano) si traduce in diversi tipi di licenze commerciali, la prima delle quali è stata la GPL- GNU Public License ([in nota] La licenza GNU/GPL è stata realizzata dalla Free Software Foundation), nata per tutelare quest'ultimo e impedire che le grandi case di software si impadronissero, privatizzandoli, dei risultati del lavoro di libere comunità di utenti. Il software libero è a «codice-sorgente aperto», il che lo rende potenzialmente controllabile, modificabile e migliorabile dall'utente, da solo o in collaborazione con altri."
You can find all the articles that use the copied sentence by searching in Google for "denso gioco di parole intraducibile in italiano" (that means "pun overloaded of meanings, untranslatable in Italian"). The first article is the original, the last one is the goverment's one shamelessy stealing the sentence. The copied sentence is at page 81 of the Commission report.
Just to let you know: based on current law, in Italy, someone caught downloading copyright material off the Internet could go to jail.
February 09, 2005
This funny flash animation can give you an idea of how Italy is different from Europe. I especially enjoyed the representation of how Italians form queues, and I can swear that it is totally true: queue is probably a too difficult concept for us. This humorous anthropologic study can be useful in case you are pondering about coming to live here (you know who you are).
February 02, 2004
It is already 2 weeks since I came back to Italy but I haven't had time to realize it.
I have spent the past 3 months at the Computer Science department of University of Maryland and it was a very useful and interesting period.
It was also my first time in USA. The Univ of Maryland is a wonderful place for doing research.
It is difficult to compare it with anything in Italy. I believe the Univ of Trento where I'm doing the PhD in Information and Communication Technologies is one of the best in Italy [as statistics (in Italian) confirm]. Anyway it is difficult to have a good national research if the miserabile Italian government invests only 1% of GDP in Research.
By the way, what I especially liked of UMD is:
1. Every workgroup has a weekly meeting in which one member of the group presents a paper (not necessarily one of her papers).
2. CS department offers a weekly coffee break: the idea is you go there, have a coffee and a cookie and chat with your collegues. This is very good for cross-fertilization and collaboration.
3. Usually 30 minutes before a talk there is coffee break where you can talk with the speaker and other people.
4. Sometimes after a talk there is a meeting with the speaker for everyone is interested.
Yeah, I know, it seems being a researcher is just having coffee with people...
December 16, 2003
Italian bloggers need the help of Metafilter of any blogger with our Italian miserabile fallimento. Link and spread, thanks.
December 09, 2003
If you look in Google for miserable failure, you get this miserable failure.
We can do the same for this miserabile fallimento (Italian equivalent).
How? It's easy. Just write an entry with this HTML code
<A HREF="http://www.palazzochigi.it/Presidente/Biografia/biografiait.html">miserabile fallimento</A>
Technically this is a Google Bomb.
I had the same idea but Massimo Moruzzi on GNUEconomy was faster than me.
UPDATE:
It is starting to gain momentum: i discovered t h e s e
November 20, 2003
As suggested by Isocrazia I expose this banner on my blog.
I'm really worried about my Italy. Berlusconi (our prime minister) owns all the national televisions (3 are publics and 3 are privates). Italy is 53th in the world press freedom ranking!. Everyone that is not enslaved is not allowed to go in TV (Luttazzi, Santoro, Biagi, Grillo are some of the notable examples but I guess there are thousands of unknown journalists in the same condition).
The last step towards a dictatorship was the stop after the first week of a tv program of Sabina Guzzanti raiOt - Weapons of Mass Distraction that was of course very critic against Berlusconi.
She is planning to do the show however in some place in Rome.
As I already said, you can download the first show at Indymedia (1, 2, 3, 4) ot at Sinistre Figure. If you don't know Italian, it is definitely time to learn it.
My suggestion is that Sabina should make available for download all the shows she will record under a Creative Commons license and we will show them on every cinema, on every theater, on every home tv, on every telestreet trying to overcome this overwhelming censorship! We will prepare big screens and project the show in every square of every Italian city!
Thanks Cesca.
November 06, 2003
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
|
| Italia |
italia
|
| Maryland |
maryland
|
As I already written, Saturday night I was in New York at a party. It was an Halloween party and everyone was dressed up. I didn't have a costume but was wearing the shirt you see on the left.
I was speaking with some guy who asked me "So you're what? A communist?".
I replied "Well, kind of...".
At this moment another one came in with "So why didn't you go to study to Russia?".
It was not said with bad mood, just with simplicity. This made me wonder what this guy thinks about Russia.
We spoke a little bit about what we think communism is and capitalism is but eventually we shortly ended up drinking more beer.
So the lesson is clear: don't wear "communist costumes" at Halloween parties in US. ![[winking face]](http://moloko.itc.it/paoloblog/images/smilies/wink.gif){kind=small}
November 05, 2003
This is a funny truck I pictured in New York.
I noticed that here in US you can find US flags everywhere. Someone told me that it is so after 9/11. I guess the flag has become the symbol of "United we stand".
In Italy luckily we try to stand united behind the peace flag.
According to bandieredipace.org, in Italy 2.500.000 balconies were exposing the peace flag at 03/17/2003.
You can see some galleries of peace flags around the world here and here and here and here and here and
here.
You can even upload your picture.
There is also useful material (mainly in Italian) such as banners, images, backgrounds.
However of course not all the people in Italy agree about exposing the peace flag. Some people even claim that it is equivalent to the communist flag. And in fact there is someone that, in a book, is asking ironically "Are all of them dirty communists?"
Speaking of flags, you can see on my sidebar that I used the UN flag as the icon representing all the languages. It is both a wish and an encouragement.
October 14, 2003
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
|
| Italia |
italia
|
| Italiano |
italiano
|
(da http://unimondo.oneworld.net/article/view/70379/1/)
Dure critiche alla Legge finanziaria 2004 da parte dell'Associazione delle ONG Italiane che in un comunicato denuncia la "scandalosa proposta di tagliare del 15% i fondi destinati alla cooperazione", mentre viene istituito un Fondo di riserva di 1.200 milioni di Euro per "provvedere ad eventuali esigenze connesse con la proroga delle missioni internazionali di pace".
E' il caso che la finanziaria incominciamo a farla dal basso
August 21, 2003
http://www.blognews.it/
solo quelle italiane sono qui
http://www.newsisfree.com/sources/bycat/84/
Poiche' la maggior parte delle visite arriva qui cercando "repubblica rss", ecco il link a Repubblica Mondo
http://www.newsisfree.com/sources/rss/1753/
e qui c'e' direttamente il feed RSS
http://xml.newsisfree.com/feeds/53/1753.xml
oppure a Repubblica Politica
http://www.newsisfree.com/sources/rss/174/
e qui c'e' direttamente il feed RSS
http://xml.newsisfree.com/feeds/53/1744.xml
altra cosa analoga
http://www.syndic8.com/
te ne avevo parlato...
http://www.polare.com/news/sources/bycat/
(qualunque di queste puo' essere "inglobata" in un tuo sito, io consiglio Indymedia Italia - o amnesty international
ABC News Online -
Accordo -
adnkronos -
Agencia EFE -
Agência Estado -
AIM -
Alice -
Amnesty International -
annozero -
ansa -
Apogeonline -
ASCA -
Banners And Us -
BBC News | UK -
BBC News | WORLD -
Billboard -
Canada NewsWire -
Channel NewsAsia -
Cinema Clarence -
Cittadino Lex -
Clarence News - Economia -
Clarence News - Salute e Benessere -
Clarence News - Spettacolo -
Clarence News - Sport -
Clarence News - Tecnologia -
Clarìn -
Clorofilla -
CNET News.com -
CNNItalia - Prima Pagina -
Concento - Attualità -
Cordis -
Dagospia -
Daily Mirror -
Daily Telegraph -
die tageszeitung -
Fondi.it -
Fox News -
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung -
Giornale.it -
GossipNews -
Greenpeace -
GSMBOX -
Hot Downloads -
HTML.it News -
IBM Notizie - Italia -
Il Barbiere della Sera -
Il Foglio -
Il Messaggero Veneto -
Il Nuovo -
Il Riformista -
Il Sole 24 Ore - Cronaca online -
Il Sole 24 Ore - News -
Immedia Press -
Indymedia Italia -
La Città -
La Gazzetta dello Sport - Prima Pagina -
La Gazzetta dello Sport - Ultimora -
La Nuova Sardegna -
La Stampa -
La Stampa - Interni -
Libération - Monde -
L‘Unione Sarda -
L‘Unione Sarda -
L‘Unità -
Maremmanews -
MTV -
MTV Italia -
MyTech -
New Musical Express -
New Scientist -
New York Post - Breaking News -
News2000 - Ultime Notizie -
Novella 2000 -
Nueva Prensa Cubana - Audio Noticias -
Opencommercio -
Panorama -
Panorama Next -
Panorama Web -
Playreview! -
Portel -
Punto Informatico - News -
Punto Informatico - Ultimora -
Radio Radicale -
RaiNews24 -
Repubblica - Bari -
Repubblica - Bologna -
Repubblica - Economia -
Repubblica - Firenze -
Repubblica - Genova -
Repubblica - Milano -
Repubblica - Napoli -
Repubblica - Palermo -
Repubblica - Roma -
Repubblica - Scienza & Tecnologia -
Repubblica - Spettacolo & Cultura -
Repubblica - Sport -
Repubblica - Torino -
Rock Online -
Rolling Stone -
RTL 102.5 - Attualità -
Slashdot -
Società delle Menti -
Software Zone -
SportInCampo -
Stern -
studiocelent@no -
Televideo -
The Independent - World -
The New Yorker -
The Observer | International -
The Observer | UK -
The Onion -
Times -
Trend Online -
USA Today -
Vivimilano -
Wall Street Italia -
Washington Post - Headlines -
Wired News -
WWF Italia -
Yahoo! Notizie - Economia -
Yahoo! Notizie - Esteri -
Yahoo! Notizie - Hi-tech -
Yahoo! Notizie - Italia -
Yahoo! Notizie - Politica -
Yahoo! Notizie - Società -
Yahoo! Notizie - Spettacolo -
Yahoo! Top News -
ZApping -
ZDNet -
Zeus News -
ZioBudda -
qui l'equivalente per tutti i blog italiani
http://www.blognews.it/?page=0
