Contra la inamovilidad y en favor del empleo

Todo empresario, o quien por la razón que sea debe tener empleados, sabe lo que la "inamovilidad laboral" produce: un deterioro de la moral y la motivación individual y colectiva en la medida que los emprendedores y responsables hacen el trabajo de los holgazanes e irresponsables. Es un efecto nocivo sobre los emprendimientos individuales y sobre la sociedad.

Pero Cómo mantener el nivel de empleo y evitar los abusos que se producen los sistemas de mercado con Davids y Goliaths?

Esta mañana obtuve la respuesta de un programa en la radio por parte de Alberto Cademus, empresario, y presidente de la Federación Venezolana de Porcicultura.

Él está dispuesto a garantizar el mismo número de puestos de trabajo, con los mismos cargos, y las mismas remuneraciones, siempre y cuando le permitan, cuando sea conveniente, cambiar a las personas en los cargos, incluso cesando a algunos de vez en cuando.

En contraste, la única manera de salir de una persona irresponsable y rompe-grupo en la actualidad es seguirle pagando su salario para que se quede en su casa, y abrir una nueva plaza.

Como Cademus también dijo, todo es cuestión de sentarse a conversar para encontrar soluciones inteligentes.

Camino al 4,30

Hoy el BCV hizo una segunda oferta de bonos por US$50 millones. Los bonos no pagan intereses, son vendidos con un 16,25% de sobreprecio, (Bs.4,30*116,25% más comisiones da Bs.5,10/US$), y maduran a los noventa días.

Hoy el cambio paralelo cerró en Bs.5,42/US$ en la oferta (bid), un descenso de más de 12% en la semana.

En la medida en que el precio del dólar paralelo se acerque al del dolar "petrolero", el BCV, a través de CADIVI, podrá otorgar los dólares que las empresas registradas requieran sin repararar en que puedan ser utilizados luego para especular en el mercado de papeles.

Un efecto adicional es que la persistente indexación de precios en bolívares contra el precio del dólar paralelo podría llevar a que los precios en bolívares de muchos rubros importados se mantengan estables o incluso desciendan.

Es una política cambiaria adecuada, aunque tardía.

Update to Off XP and into Ubuntu

I decided to install the Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) beta, and crashed the machine due to my impatience. After a reinstall of 9.04, the upgrade to 9.10 went well. It took only a few hours (a similar attempt with Windows would have taken days).

Now the update:

Bluetooth

It works, both with my favorite mouse (what will I do with the new one I bought?), and with my cell phone.

VPN

PPTP to Windows servers works if the configuration is set up right, both in Ubuntu Jaunty and in Karmic (I should write a post about how I got it working).

Off XP and into Ubuntu

This weekend I managed to take care of the problems that have kept me from transitioning my main workstation from XP to Ubuntu. The details follow:

OS Version

I downgraded to the 32-bit version of Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty). I found no advantages in running at 64bit, and plenty of hoops to jump through to to get some stuff to run. My opinion is that 64bit Linux is not yet mature enough for a desktop.

Work

I still have projects that require Windows, and WinXP virtualized with VirtualBox runs great, indistinguishable from native (of course, the virtualized XP is pristine, and doesn't have all the crap on the original, three-year-old installation). VirtualBox complains that I assigned too much memory to XP, but Ubuntu keeps running well when the virtual machine is up, which only happens when I need to be in Windows mode. I used the "bridged" network connection mode for the virtualized XP, so I can access it remotely using RDP, netbios, or whatever.

The exercise of bringing TRANUS compilation up on the virtualized XP helped me debug some unknown dependencies on the way stuff in my old XP was configured.

Repartitioning

I found that Linux already has stable read/write access to NTFS partitions through ntfs-3g, so I decided to keep my NTFS partitions:

• On the first disk, the old Windows partition, for "just in case", and for copying stuff to the new virtualized XP (more on that later).
• On the second disk, the partition where photographs, music, videos, and downloaded installers are kept. It has only 32GiB of free space left, so I expect to fill it up by the end of the year. When it becomes legacy, it won't matter the format it is in.

I upgraded the Linux partitions (the main one on the first disk, and the auxiliary one on the second disk) to ext4.

Printing

Printing works great using Ubuntu printer sharing for Ubuntu machines, and SAMBA for (the two remaining) Windows machines.

Scanning

The XSane image scanner works great. I hadn't grokked it on the first try.

Email

Since a learning curve was inevitable, and almost all my email is routed through GMail, I decided to try the GMail Web interface. It took some time to get used to it, but it works great. I enabled offline GMail in case my Internet connection goes down. I still log into the old XP every once in a while to backup my emails locally to MS Outlook PST files.

Web

The beta version of Google Chrome for Linux is very stable. Oddly, it still doesn't support Google Gears well, so I have to launch Firefox to get my email backed up locally.

VPN

I still haven't been able to connect to a Windows PPTP server from Ubuntu, but I can do it from the virtualized XP, so I consider this issue dead, at least until Ubuntu 9.10 comes out by the end of the month. I only need the VPNs for maintenance of Windows servers, so...

Bluetooth

Still not working. I'll wait for Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala). I got a Genius wireless (USB) mouse similar to the Logitech bluetooth I had to deal with the mousing problem.

Remote Access

Oddly enough, remote access to my desktop using Ubuntu's Remote Desktop Viewer sucks big time, but RDP to the virtualized XP using Terminal Server Client shines. I tried xrdp, but it sucks worse than Remote Desktop Viewer. I may try with plain tightvnc later. Remoting single programs using plain XWindows works great, of course.

Office

OpenOffice is diffrent enough from MS Office than some pain ahead is for sure. My MS Excel macros don't work with OO Spreadsheet, but I took care of the most urgent need with the Hamster time tracking applet. MS Office documents, including invoices, print fine from OpenOffice, and that takes care of the rest. As I mentioned in a previous post, most of my writing is nowadays done on Web applications.

Razón, Fe, y Religión

Pienso que es buen momento para salir de este tema.

Aunque a algunos les cueste creerlo, me considero una persona sumamente espiritual (no digo religiosa por las razones que expongo luego).

Tan espiritual soy, que estudio las enseñanzas de todos los sabios y profetas, tengo sumo respeto por sus dioses (o la ausencia de los mismos), y abordo con curiosidad las conversaciones sobre costumbres religiosas.

De las religiones monoteístas he llegado a la conclusión de que Dios nos ha otorgado dos dones para aproximarnos a Él: la razón, y la fe. La razón para encontrar el camino hacia Él, y la fe para creer en que al final si hay un sentido para todo, y que vale la pena recorrerlo.

Ahora, ¿Por qué no religioso? Porque el don de la fe ha sido históricamente usurpado por personas e instituciones que han cambiado su significado al de sumisión y obediencia a ciegas. Es el tipo de fe que ha llevado a marginaciones, abusos, torturas, guerras, esclavismo, y genocidios, y al "si no crees lo que yo creo, eres mi enemigo".

Con la razón que Dios me dio, prefiero comprender que las iglesias y parecidos son instituciones imperfectas creadas por hombres imperfectos, y que ambos se equivocan, se separan del camino, y se corrompen. ¿Permitiría Dios que sacerdotes que hablan "en su nombre" abusaran de niños inocentes? (¿Permitiría Dios la censura?) La respuesta de fe es que NO. La de la razón es que los sacerdotes no son de Dios ni hablan en su nombre; son sólo personas, como uno, que decidieron dedicarse a tiempo completo a asuntos de religión.

Razón y Fe son nuestros dones, y si ocurre alguna vez un juicio final, como el Catolicismo predice, creo que seremos juzgados no por nuestra obediencia a ciegas a personas autonombradas como únicos intermediarios con lo divino, sino por el buen uso que le hayamos dado a nuestros dones.

De corazón, para mis lectores, Sin-Lam-Min.

The Exagon

Since the early days of software development we learned that there were some forces that were determinant for a project's success. We identified the triangle of scope, time, and resources (effort), and used to say to our users: "pick two".

Soon afterwards we understood that those three dimensions were not enough when we found that we could build software that met its scope, was done in time, and reasonably within the estimated effort, but was unusable because it was ridden with bugs and had an unbearable user interface. So we added a fourth dimension to the forces that drive software projects: quality. The typical depiction is a thetraedron because in it every vertex is conected to the other three, but a fully connected graph drawn as a asquare would fit the same purpose. We told our users and customers "pick three", and went on, failing to keep our commitments in about half of all software projects.

What we have found after a couple of decades is twofold. First, that it is never a matter of picking the constraints but of balancing them; agile development, for example, aims for a balance that delivers value earlier, even if it means a longer project and more effort in the end. Second, we found that the four dimensions were not enough, and that we needed to consider two additional dimensions to have a project that converges to closure: architectural design, and project design.

The issue is that it is not possible to build any moderately complex piece of software any way you want. The "best design" may be the one that dooms a project to failure, and a typical per-module process may make a project never ending. Both software design and project design must be flexible and thought out as to accomodate and balance the other forces. The what and the how must be included in the plan. A time-critical project and a quality-critical (or resource -bound) project are totally different beasts, and they must be designed and executed differently.

An example. We all know what an automobile must do functionally, and how much it should cost, more or less. But there are infinite designs to meet the basic requirements, and many strategies to build those designs. Only some of them will be sucessful.

The new criteria add up to the forces that interact and must be balanced to have a succesful software project. They are now: scope, time, resources, architecture, and process. A fully connected exagonical graph.

Still on XP

It's been a while since I last wrote about my plan to migrate from Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux. The plan needed refining, and I needed the time to proceed with the migration. What follows is the transcript from my chalkboard with the current plan.

Repartitioning
The backups and repartitioning were successfully done, and I have read-only access to the remaining Windows partitions.

All of my files are still on the NTFS partitions, but they are well backed up. I'll move them to the Ext3 partitions on a need basis.

I'm reminded that I need to write a Python script to catalogue my backups. I didn't like any of the software out there.

Printing
It works, but the plan is to move the Epson three-in-one to a Windows computer. I'll probably get a new printer that has Linux drivers.

Scanning
I haven't made it work, , but the plan is to move the Epson three-in-one to a Windows computer. Scanning is not a priority for me.

Email
Old email is well backed up. Recent email is also backed up by Google Apps/Gmail. Two of the 12 accounts are not on Google Apps, but one of them is switching, and the other one is well backed up by its administrators.

As to clients, I'll have to learn to live with the GMail interface, and handle the rest with Evolution. I still use my inbox as a task list (even issues from the issue base land there), and

Contacts

They were imported to GMail, and they can be exported from there to VCard format, which almost any contacts software imports.

Just now I needed to find the license and code for Delphi 7, and it was in my GMail contacts, as it was in MS Outlook.

Calendar
It was exported to Google Calendar, with which I can live with. I love the email and SMS notifications.

Web
Firefox works great with every page I visit, thank you, and the Chrome-like skins are fine. The fall-back to a Windows session is still available in case of emergency.

Work
Assume the learning curve with Open Office. Any way, most of what I write these days goes to the Web, a Wiki, or to a PDF.

For graphics, Inkscape seems to be all I need. I've never used Photoshop, and there's Gimp in case I need to do manipulation of graphics.

Photography
Picasa3 runs fine in Ubuntu 9.04/64. I don't need anything else because I don't do much postprocessing these days.

Music
Rythmbox Music Player plays my music fine (I don't care about the files in Windows formats). There have been interruptions in the sound every once in a while, but they may be bacause the music is still on one of the NTFS partitions. The album artwork gets downloaded from I don't know where. Searching works fine.

I still have to test burning a CD to listen to in the car.

Skype
It works.

Teleconferencing
Ekiga works great since the admins opened up the SIP protocol route to my moday telemeetings.

VPN
I haven't been able to make VPN to Windows servers work, but I do very little work in those, and can fall back to a WinXP boot when I need to.

Programming
Python, Java, C++, etc. are solved business with native installations and Eclipse.

The only project that is tied to Windows is TRANUS. I'm testing how things work over the virtualized XP today. Delphi7 works fine, and it does so fast enough. I still need to test the Intel Fortran compiler.

Hardware
Bluetooth is not working, which means that my favorite mouse isn't working either. I'll either have to get a new mouse, or a new bluetooth card/dongle.

My keyboard works fine, but it will get some time to get used to the new US-International layout.

Other
I expected Ubuntu 9.04/64 to be faster, but, by today's standards, my Pentium D is an old machine with too little RAM.

Did I miss anything?