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Giulalbez's comments

Giulalbez | 11 years ago | on: Inside the favela too violent for Rio’s armed police

> but the study was conducted by Amnesty International. Why the "but" in that sentence? I would say 99% of people in the favela I grew up are afraid of the police at some degree, and would prefer to meet an armed gangster in a dark alley to meet a group of policeman, for sure! > I can't imagine policing in favelas to be an easy job The police is unequipped, undertrained, underpaid and badly managed. Most of the military policeman are from the lower classes too, therefore lacking a good education since childhood. Is hard. Sometimes they bring the Army with heavy weaponry and occupy the place for a while, but this is not a long-term solution.

Giulalbez | 11 years ago | on: Inside the favela too violent for Rio’s armed police

I grew up in a favela of Rio [1] , it is a small one, but, because of its strategical position, fiercely disputed by the 2 major organizations, therefore constantly at war. There is so much going on there, that one could write entire papers about it. More than 90% of the people living there are good struggling working people, suffering not only the harm from the police and the gangs, but also from a mix of social and racial discrimination from the upper classes and from the legal system. There is no fast solution, as the mitigation of poverty is a slow process, and is the only way out. Reform of the Police and legalization of cannabis would help though, but only the elimination of the extreme inequality will bring a definitive change. Brazil is on the way, things have improved a little in those last years. [1] https://www.google.com.br/search?q=morro+da+coroa&tbm=isch&t...

Giulalbez | 11 years ago | on: Xiaomi raises $1.1B on a $45B valuation

Xiaomi recently bought large stakes in chinese "youtubes" companies, YiQiYi and youku, it seems those companies are investing in creating their own TV shows and stuff, and big brands are advertising on the videos people in China already watch on those sites. The quality of the advertisings increased drasticcaly recently, with even big international brands advertising on them. Maybe someday phones will be like video-game consoles, where they loose money selling the hardware to make money on apps or services.

Giulalbez | 11 years ago | on: Xiaomi raises $1.1B on a $45B valuation

It was known when they launched, that xiaomi's interface look was apple "inspired", but besides that I dont know why it can be called shameless ripoff, sure there must be other reasons. The feel and look of the phone actually have some kind of own personality, is different from IOS and different from stock Android, and probably will get more different with time. Apple, probably, somewhere in time also took "inspiration" from other companies ideas.

Giulalbez | 11 years ago | on: The New Computer Chess World Champion

Humans usually cannot take books or a printed compilation of all the chess games in history, while computers have a database with a lot of chess games. If humans could take a whole library with them to the match, things would be different, but then, the reading/writing speed of a computer is much higher then the human reading/writing speed, so I think the comparison between human muscles and a gasoline engine is fair. Kasparov playing with no time limit and his whole library at hand would still be a match for any computer.

Giulalbez | 11 years ago | on: Ways to learn a language as an adult?

I learnt a lot of English playing Runescape. You pass the mouse over any object and it shows the object name, all kinds of animals, trees, tools, furniture,food, etc.. in the game. It is possible to switch languages any time. The server in English is more crowded, but there is always a lot of people in the other servers. Last time I checked they had French, German, English and Portuguese. You can also see the dialogues of other players and talk to people. The bad side is that it can be addictive. If I had 10 million funny money i would do a "Myth The Fallen Lords" MMO, it's a great old game, and still get some support from volunteer developers, even being still a proprietary game (the guys have been trying to get it open for the community)
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