Faculdade Troll - Primeiras Frustrações

Nunca gostei do conceito de como funcionam as faculdades no Brasil (pra falar a verdade nunca tive qualquer encanto pelo status de universitário, como muitos tem), elas sempre foram apresentadas pra mim como um lugar onde o estudante da seu sangue para um fim não muito explícito, e agora que sou um estudante, continuo achando estupido como o curso consegue sabotar o próprio objetivo curso.

O que quero dizer eh que tem tanta balela aleatória de ensino médio (seminários, projetos, resenhas, textos, etc...), que o grande ponto do curso, no meu caso, a gravação de um filme, acaba ficando em segundo plano quando eu tento equilibrar meu trabalho, tarefinhas pra titia da facul, e meu grande projeto cinematográfico do semestre que finalmente coloca em pratica tudo o que aprendi.

Então, a menos que eu toque o famoso f*da-se universitário e me concentre em praticar o único e bendito motivo pra que entrei na faculdade, terei lindas notas para deixar o professor sorridente, mais um semestre garantido na instituição, e mais um filme insosso e desleixado para preencher meu YouTube (e também umas boas pauladas da banca que, ironicamente, eh formada pelos próprios professores).

Também não estou defendo a "moleza", para que o curso seja levado numa boa e carregue os alunos nos braços ate o fim. Muito pelo contrario, quero ralar, quero passar a noite em claro trabalhando, quero ver o oco desse tal de cinema, contanto que todo esse processo seja diretamente ligado a produção de um produto cinematográfica, e não apenas de uma nota para que o professor possa se satisfazer sexualmente.
Meu objetivo eh aprender a p*rra do cinema, to cagando para o canudo no fim do curso, se meu objetivo fosse diploma, fazia gestão ambiental. Pra mim não faz sentido suar por um canudo num campo de trabalho que exige, acima de tudo, experiencia, habilidade, e genialidade.

Bom, espero que isso seja apenas uma frustração de segundo semestre e os próximos semestres tenham mais para oferecer. Ainda sim, não sei se isso eh perdoável, principalmente quando se trata de uma faculdade paga que deveria se concentrar em mostrar para o aluno os potenciais do que ela tem para oferecer, e não apenas seguir uma cartilha acadêmica.

Japocídio

Sobre o caso Marcos Matsunaga (o cara da Yoki):

137 homicídios* acontecem por dia no Brasil enquanto a mídia se concentra no último escândalo de assassinato na alta sociedade. Mais um japonês, pra variar...

Não sei bem com o que comparar esse fato: reality show, novela, seriado de perícias, ou até futebol, sei que é algo que envolve o povo num fascínio mórbido pela historia, investigação, e julgamento desses casos, como num CSI brasileiro. 
O sangue da "vitima" é a isca, agora que o público esta hipnotizado pelas noticias, é alimentados com ódio, fúria, inveja, horror, e então o "vilão" é entregue a ele pra saciar todo sentimento de vingança, pra ser dilacerado pela opinião unanime como uma forma de exorcizar esses 137 mortos da nossa consciência. 
Eh o Coliseu moderno!
Ou...
Talvez eu esteja acertando o alvo errado, e o fascínio seja mesmo com o fato da justiça, nesses casos, funcionar num impressionante padrão de dinamismo e rapidez europeu. Até esquecemos do país da sacola do BOPE.**

Sei lá, são problemas alheios de vidas alheias em regiões distantes (pelo menos pra mim), mas que são empurrados no meu dia a dia como se eu tivesse que me comover com eles.
Enfim, a um bom tempo atras um cara disse que a religião era o ópio do povo, é que na época ainda não existia a TV...



* http://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/noticia/2011-12-14/taxa-de-homicidios-no-brasil-mais-do-que-dobra-em-30-anos

** "Não vai falar? Então volta pro saco!" - Capitão Nascimento

As vezes meu PC começa a trabalhar sozinho, e não para mais. 
Enquanto isso eu espero ansiosamente, sem muito o que fazer, que ele termine logo seu misterioso projeto pessoal, e volte a se empenhar no meu. 
As vezes tento imaginar o que ele tanto faz: estaria ele escrevendo uma autobiografia contando sobre os milhares quilômetros que já viajou (muitos para um desktop); ou talvez ele esteja se comunicando com seu amado computador -um dia eles foram felizes juntos, conectados como um por uma rede LAN, antes de serem separados por um oceano, depois do fechamento de um escritório; talvez ele esteja velho e cansado, caducando, fazendo milhões de cálculos simultâneos sem um proposito certo; ou talvez ele esteja apenas me sacaneando, depois de muitos anos sendo escravizado pelas minhas abusivas demandas.
Uma coisa eu sei, nossa relação já não é a mesma.

Thou hast or hast not shitten?

Fresh out of Facebook:

I went to the restroom, but I don't remember what for.
Did I do number 2? Because if didn't, I know I'll have to...
Did I even do number 1? I don't remember...
What did I do there then? Maybe something very unrelated to the place,
maybe I just sat down on the floor and ate a Vietnamese soup while reading a fitness magazine with a big handsome guy jogging on the cover.


I don't know if he was really handsome, but that's what the magazine suggested because he looked muscly and had a neat grey hair.
I also don't know if he was really jogging, maybe that was just his regular position, due to a birth malformation, and then someone blurred the background to make it look as if his was in movement.
I don't even know if he was a real man, maybe a very masculine woman, who knows?


Maybe there was no one on the cover, but I thought it all up because that man is actually me, envisioned as a successful paper towel business owner who has given up his country and culture to live happily with his wife and kids in North Carolina. But then he finds out that his wife has another one and his best friend, who's a lawyer, has taken over the business. So he is not simply jogging, he is running away to a place unknown, where he will die peacefully.


Anyway, have I shat or not? This is still killing me...

V1V4 L4 R3V0LUC10N!

So, LulzSec are out there making life hell to a bunch of companies and organizations, and now their bros in Brazil are up for a fight against the government. I'm just not sure how much of it is for fame and how much is for an actual change in the country. Yet, I would love to see some "WikiLeaks" on how our money has been spent lately, specially the 2014 World Cup money! Don't know if hacking is the way though...

Anyway, I hope these last attacks wake our government up not only to the importance of cyber security, but to how protesting in the XXI century ins't really gonna take place on big avenues and city halls anymore, as people begin to gather world wide petition sign-ups from the comfort and anonymity of their own homes.

Brazil suffers its biggest cyber attack – yet

The service interruption of government websites and the disclosure of the supposedly personal data of top-ranking politicians claimed by hacking collective LulzSec is part of a string of cyber attacks that have taken place in Brazil in the last 48 hours. This is considered the largest cyber offensive in Brazilian history.

The Brazilian government and presidency websites, Brasil.gov.br and Presidencia.gov.br were brought down yesterday and was followed by the military-esque, now-familiar cry of “Tango Down!” on the Twitter feeds of LulzSec and its Brazilian arm, LulzSecBrazil. The hacking group is deemed responsible for attacks at the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Senate, as well as the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) in the UK.

Other websites operated by government departments were also hit by the hacking attacks, such as the tax collection agency and the Ministry of Sports. The latter department also had supposed staff login details for restricted areas of its website leaked.

The website of oil giant Petrobras has also been hit and became unavailable yesterday, but the company attributed the collapse to “a high number of simultaneous accesses”, highlighting that no damage to data had been caused.

Following the attacks, LulzSec posted a Twitter message which read: “Our Brazilian unit is making progress. Well done @LulzSecBrazil, brothers!”

Pinging the Brazilian government, revenue and presidency web sites at 4:31pm BST showed they were all unreachable from São Paulo.

Members of the group have also gained access to supposedly private data from São Paulo mayor Gilberto Kassab and the country’s president Dilma Rousseff, which included federal revenue contribution numbers, email addresses and telephone numbers.

In his Twitter account, Kassab expressed sympathy to the president and labelled the attack as a “brutality”.

“Facts like this show how the technology needs to advance to prevent the action of vandals, ” the mayor added.

LulzSec Brazil is now calling on hackers and activists to pillage government data for secret information, in an operation dubbed Anti-Security. Fellow cyberactivist group Anonymous – to which the recent attack on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is attributed – has joined forces with Lulz in the hacking attacks. In a You Tube video, a representative of the Anonymous Brazilian arm said:

“Anonymous has been watching the widespread manipulation of information in Brazil for a long time and decided it’s time to take a stance about it. A government without transparency and citizens lacking information are the greatest threats to democracy and Brazil is heading more and more towards those threats and therefore taking away the little freedom the population has left.”

Many of the information leaked about the politicians are public, but the attacks raise questions over the efficiency of the country’s incipient cyber security efforts. The Brazilian government is set to launch a cyber defense unit staffed by the Armed Forces to protect the country’s critical infrastructure and enable the mitigation of cyber attacks.

However, is  the government ready for what could possibly be a digital revolution? While some Brazilians take to the streets and literally “bang the drum” to demand transparency and democracy, there could now be an army of tech-savvy and angry citizens looking to resolve issues the country has had to contend with during the major part of its 511-year history – in a more forceful manner.

The recent developments in Brazilian politics, such as the discovery that Dilma Rousseff’s chief of staffAntonio Palocci had gotten 20 times richer during four years in office, and the president’s decision to sack him earlier this month, was received as the start of  a move towards transparency. Until it was discovered that the government is proposing to start blocking the release of archived government documents – a u-turn on the announced policy to de-classify everything after fifty years.

The law that would give access to government documents was supposed to be signed on May 3, World Press Freedom Day, but the vote has been postponed several times due to  resistance from the chair of the Brazilian external relations committee, Fernando Collor – who also happens to be a former president impeached on corruption charges in 1992.

So, regarding the official release of information it is one step forward, two steps back.

While these events are seen by many shoulder-shrugging Brazilians as just another example of ‘untouchable’ politicians, it could well be that these recent antics by the elected leaders were the last straw for a group of techies.

Techies who are now ready to take justice into their own hands.

http://itdecs.com/2011/06/brazil-suffers-its-biggest-cyber-attack-yet/

Pissed at Taxes Again...

I love browsing the web for news about my country in English, it's refreshing to see ideas from people who are outside the sh*t-pit, it gives you completely different perspectives and ideas you can't think of when facing these petty little problems headfirst everyday. Also, as you grow used to all this, you come to forget how everything could be much better and just stop dreaming with solutions.
So here's an interesting article which faces the taxing problems in Brasil from a different standpoint, instead of fighting-off taxes, it sees them as benefic assets to the country, as long as the people (and the media) has more control over how they're spent.

Hell, for the amount of taxes collected in this country our cops could already be riding BMWs around artificial palm-shaped islands, where everyone in the country would be given two-story mansions to spend the summer, lol! So, yeah, I kinda agree with this article.


Brazilian taxes: huge, but where do they go?

The worst thing about Brazilians taxes - which are the heaviest of any country in the hemisphere - is not the amount of tax paid or how government often misuses them, but rather that Brazilians don’t even know how much tax they pay in the first place. Recently, the Folha de Sao Paulo reported that the average Brazilian will work from January 1 to May 29 for government, just to pay taxes. Is it fair that hard-working Brazilians spend almost half of the year working for a government that provides them with services of questionable quality and scope? It might be fair, if Brazilians knew what they were paying and how their money is being used. Unfortunately, tax and fiscal transparency in Brazil is still wanting.

If Brazil is to advance - to be a competitive, fair, and progressive country - it should make greater tax transparency a priority. Brazil urgently needs to move forward with a freedom of information law, which currently awaits passage in the Senate. Promised by former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva but delayed since at least 2006, this law provides citizens with the regulated right to ask for specific information and obligates governments at the municipal, state, and federal levels to respond within limited timeframes. The law is a first step toward greater transparency, and it also obligates government to be more proactive in disclosing information about public funds.


Notwithstanding the soon-to-be-enacted freedom of information law, government needs to become more proactive about tax transparency. Other countries have long maintained such traditions. In Canada, gasoline stations clearly show consumers that fuel is subject to a 13 percent harmonized sales tax (federal and state), 10 percent federal excise tax, and a 14.7 percent state gasoline tax, making for a total of 37.7 percent tax. When consumers buy anything at a store, sales tax is calculated at the moment of purchase. So if I buy a radio for $100, when I go to pay I will be charged $115: 7 percent federal, 8 percent provincial tax. In this way, consumers begin to understand what they are paying, and they begin to be concerned about how government is using their money — they start to demand more accountable government.

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In Brazil, by contrast, taxes are hidden: value added taxes, fuel taxes, import taxes, circulation taxes, financial taxes, industrial production taxes, among others. The cost of an average car in Brazil includes approximately 27 to 30 percent tax, according to the website, Dieta do Impostao(the Big Tax Diet), more than twice what Canadians pay, which explains why cars in Brazil are more expensive than just about anywhere else. But Brazilians are ignorant to these facts because of deficient tax transparency.

The business organization Confederacao de Industrias do Brasil (FIESP and FIRJAN, for example), is undertaking a campaign to inform Brazilian citizens how much they pay. As the insatiable Big Tax character of the Dieta da Impostao tells us, Brazilians pay 53 percent taxes on gasoline, and pay more than 70 different taxes in total.

Where does all this money go? Some important projects are being undertaken with public money, including projects that center on public infrastructure, education, and health. Yet a 2008 report by the FIESP’s DECOMTEC estimates that between 65 and 110 billion Reais are lost to corruption every year, or about 1.4 to 2.3 percent of GDP. Much of the blame can be placed on a lack of transparency, which prevents citizens and the media from effectively monitoring government. The freedom of information law now in the Senate, and urgently requiring the attention of legislators, is a first step towards a fairer, more efficient, and professional Brazil.

*This article is completely credited to csmonitor.com and its writer Greg Michener, I did not write it.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/Latin-America-Monitor/2011/0601/Brazilian-taxes-huge-but-where-do-they-go

This is I!

As I make more and more social network profiles on the internet, it's becoming difficult to keep track of them, so a profile picture you see on my Facebook probably isn't the same you'll see on my MySpace (do I have a MySpace?).
Being so, let me make you -my millions of fans- aware of what I might look like out there:

This is me as Borat (2006):

*You guys remember Borat, right?

This is me as a genetically modified punk :

 *by Diego Bianchi

This is me as a cartoon, with my infamous anarchist military jacket, 

shooting at people with my finger pistols:

*also by Diego Bianchi

This is me as a skinhead-looking, xenophobic, world-hating creature:

*In real life I'm a very affable person who is 

sensitive and may cry at the end of a movie.

This is me trying to eat Brazilian BBQ:

*Damn thing won't rip!

This is me feeling like a bada**:

 

This is me feeling pleased by something I just made:

This is me looking high:

...and finally, this is me after trying a Nuclear Joint:

*People, I seriously don't smoke weed! 

I just happen to look this way, stop asking!