2008 South Ossetia war

These are the addresses for those who would like to travel lightly, meet new people, get new friends, hang out with interesting people, or just find a shelter for a night in the foreign country.

I’m now registered in both systems (and getting “verified” in CS), and so far I stayed with three people (at two places) found via HC and CS. Both experiences were highly positive. Actually, my world outlook changed quite a bit after my first stay: I heard from someone that

it’s better to trust wrong person once, than always distrust all the people

But building trust, despite being central to HC ans CS, is only one - basic - component. Cultural exchange and knowledge sharing are also important, though so far I was unable to comprehend these components sufficiently to write on them.

At the CouchSurfing.com website, it appears to be popular to put some test/quiz results into profiles. These are the tests:
Read the rest of this entry »

It has been over 18 months, since I started this post. As a result, it has gone through some (though not really extensive) internal reviews and modifications. I have no doubts there will be more comebacks and reviews and edits to this topic.

On Sunday, the 10th of December, 2006, the grandmother of my wife died - almost three days after she had a cardiac infarction.

She was a kind, calm, warm-hearted old woman. She was just a little bit over 79 years old.

What did she leave behind?

She had brought up and educated her children and grandchildren to be People. None of her offspring went the way of crimes, or even disrespect towards others. The likes of her children could form a quasi-ideal ethical society, with no exaggeration - given she would be able to teach and bring up all of them.

She served the society well, working as a psychotherapist at a hospital. She helped people regain peace of mind, she cured mental diseases in the best way she could. She happened to meet her old-time patients in the street from time to time, and they expressed gratitude for her help.

She left a memory of a good, reliable, helpful person. This memory lives with all the people who were lucky to know her.

———

Death is the final evaluation for the person’s deeds during life.

What are the measures for this evaluation? What is really important? What matters after death?

First, it appeared to me that human memories are what matters. Memories of good deeds, memories of helping others, memories of being valuable for the society and mankind. “To put the mark on history” and “to be placed on record” are the expressions of the desire to have people remember someone even after death.
Read the rest of this entry »

Ukraine is the most dangerous country in Europe. That is, in terms of road safety and driving culture (or, to be more precise, the lack of both).

In 2007 in Ukraine, there were over 62 000 road accidents with over 9 000 killed and 77 000 injured.
This is 20% increase comparing to 2006.
And this is also almost two people dead from road accidents per 10000 of population, and 16(!) people injured per 10000 of population.
Based on these numbers, every Ukrainian is (on average) at 0.16% risk of being injured and at 0.02% risk of being killed in a road accident.

(An increase in the number of new cars sold in 2007 relative to 2006 was 46.1%: from 371000 sold in 2006, up by 171000 to 542000 new cars sold in 2007.)

On average, road kill accidents take 3-8 times more lives in Ukraine, then in other European countries.

If you visit Ukraine - watch out for reckless, drunken, stupid, blind, ignorant drivers and violating, unpredictable, dummy pedestrians.

The further from the Kyiv’s downtown you are - the more watchful you should be.

This post used the numbers from this press-release (in Ukrainian).

Warmest greetings to ladies!

A lot was said about Google becoming the Big Brother of the internet. A lot was said about the quantity of personal information, available to Google via it’s numerous services. It was even discussed (elsewhere), that the history of someone’s Google searches might be used (or even is already used) to identify candidate’s fitness for the position in question (e.g., if you were once searching for child porn, then it automatically marks your “Google search profile” as illegal; the same goes for the searches like how to make a nuclear bomb, idiot’s guide to making biological weapons, terrorism how-to for dummies, how to join Al-Qaeda, and even smuggling a gun in and out the aircraft ).

What I’m taking you to: Google sends out PIN codes to AdSense account holders, to verify that the postal address is correct. As you already understood, this binds your postal address to your Google account (with all it’s services), and if police decides to check your search history, and finds some nasty query, they will already know where to go and get you.

So, if you are one of those how-to: nuclear bomb searchers, and you accumulate money for that bomb using AdSense - then either use “on demand” postal address (which is slightly more secure - but you’ll have to hire bodyguard services, when checking mail), or move regularly

Or, ask everyone you know to search for the linked phrases from the post above . In this case, the “noise” may just well overcome the “signal”, to render “Google search profile” verification practically useless.

Also, you can just use filtering alternatives like scroogle.

I know it’s kind of old now, but check this image out:

Via webplanet.ru - reddit.com.

Found this one very informative: 6 steps to stop content theft.

Also: 5 content theft myths, and why they are false.

And more links:

• free internet fax
• anti-spam email 1 (recommended)
• anti-spam email 2
• create on-demand snapshot (archive) of the cited web-page

My expectations were half-satisfied: Socialists didn’t make it into the parliament! Great lesson for them, and a new example of political death in Ukraine. (Though I do think that Socialists have resources to return in 5 years, when new elections are due.)

On the other hand, Lytvyn’s block did jump the 3% barrier. By the way, if we take the absolute number of votes Lytvyn had in 2006 elections (619 905 votes), and the number he had at the 2007 snap elections (924 538), the difference is only 304633 votes. When multiplied by 20$, it gives 6 million USD - which isn’t too high a price for getting into the parliament, isn’t it?

Overall, I’m satisfied with these elections. Politicians this time were wise enough to avoid prolonged court trials over the miserable, non-differentiating numbers of votes in distinct voting districts. It saved both time and money. It’s also good to hear that immediately after the official results announcement, the Our Ukraine - Self Defence block and the Block of Yulia Tymoshenko agreed upon the coalition treaty. It’s not yet evident if the treaty will hold, or if it won’t be beaten by the PR - Lytvyn - Communists probable political block - but that is still a good sign of political agility, unseen since the end of 2004 between the two political forces.

I’m also glad that society intelligently handled these elections, which were unfavoured by many. Everything went overall smooth and with no troubles.

The only thing, which is not directly elections-related, is the fighting over the status and interpretation of the OUN-URA (Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists - Ukrainian Rebel Army) during the World War II. But I hope that in part with the help and actions by the President, this issue will be settled and finally resolved as soon as possible (I expect this to happen within 10 years from now).

Today was the voting day in the snap parliament elections-2007 in Ukraine.

Early in the morning, I heard from my wife’s sister that some of her friends were offered 100 UAH (20 USD) for promising to vote for the Lytvyn’s political block (based on his People’s party - “Narodna partiya“, in Ukrainian only). I said “that’s ugly, and they could just take the money and vote for whomever they want, as it’s impossible to enforce them to vote exactly for Lytvyn”. But that was it as for my reaction in the morning.
Read the rest of this entry »

Found this video via BlindSpot:

At the end of the video, when future supercomputers are described, it hinted me at two distinct long-living ideas: that of singularity (in the sense of a breakthrough leading to the immediate exponential growth and even probable abrupt mankind transformation), and that of Artificial Intelligence. The video suggests that this will happen somewhere between 2013 and 2049, which is hard to believe.

Information overload is definitely a feature of the modern world. There’s still space for further overload, but what will be the result? Psychotic workers, or super-intelligent and hyper-efficient “infohumans”?

China, India and their bordering states (sorry, no offence here - just to shorten the list) were long known to constitute the largest mono-national parts of world population. It’s clear that after fairly recent joining of the Asian states into a superstate cooperation commonwealth, half of the world’s population already resides in that commonwealth. This projection for the future seems the strongest of all shown in the movie.

I would strongly doubt the “largest English-speaking country in 10 years” to be China. Imagine: you live in a 1+ billion people country, and you are financially stable (we all know that China is the fastest growing world’s economy); why would you need to learn English, which is so different from your native language? Chinese language is the way - so start learning it as soon as you can (BTW, seen somewhere that the number of Japanese blogs, as expected, became larger than the number of English blogs. Now waiting for Chinese blogs? )

Watch this:

If it’s convenient and well-designed, I wouldn’t mind visiting such a fast food once in a while. Though it’s hard to imagine having breakfast there every day: too dull, I suspect. But have to try first to be sure.

Some more videos of delivery and disposal:
Read the rest of this entry »

Out of roughly 100 spam messages, accumulated in the one of webmaster@-type mailboxes, there were two about the forthcoming parliamentary elections in Ukraine. Both seemed to have originated from the same political party: they have links back to their website, and also their contact emails. One had apologies inside, saying “We don’t use the money of others, thus we had to contact you the way we did” (approx. translation from Ukrainian).

I do not yet know (and might never know for sure, actually), if this is a true spam-campaign, or a “black PR”. Though “black PR” scenario seems highly unlikely - the party didn’t get into the parliament during two previous parliamentary elections, and has a negligible expected electorate percent (I’d say below 0.2%).

If it’s not “black PR”, then we’re seeing a new trend leading us to the truly “electronic government”.

We now only need some web-resource to become sufficiently popular and conduct law-enforced elections on-line - of course, with IP blocking to disallow repeated voting, and other pseudo-secure whistles :)

I wonder if other countries have the experience of true (non-fake, non-black-PR) political unsolicited bulk mailings.

Anybody? Examples, study references?

I added a new video to my Conspiracy theory in gallery.

I am an advocate of the official position: that is, HIV causes AIDS. In the movie description, I put my comments which dis-approve the point set and mentioned in that movie. I would strongly recommend that you stick to the official position in everything that is related to your health!

And now, with all the warnings, you may want to see it (326 MiB):
Read the rest of this entry »

BamBook is a Kyiv-based internet shop.

On the 28th of February, 2007, I ordered a book from them, and paid for it from the credit card at the time of order. Soon I had a confirmation email, which said that the book will be delivered not later than the 16th of March (they promise 10-working-days delivery, so the date looked fine).

At the end of March, after writing several emails to BamBook, they responded with an official-looking “sorry for delay” and “we’ll do our best to deliver soon”.

After calling them on the 3rd of April I came to know that they at the moment actually do not have the book I ordered. They asked if I’m willing to wait for around two weeks, so that they “try” to order that book and then (add 10 working days) deliver it to me. I said NO, I WANT MY MONEY BACK with that kind of service you have! OK, they said.

Nothing changed until April, 23. So I called them again. They promised to return money again.

Another call was on the 3rd of May. They said that “refund is being processed”. I hope you imagine what kind of a company they are, if a simple refund processing requires whole month to be complete… or not complete, as nothing changed as of today, the 5th of May.

Update: as of May, 27, there are no changes, despite some more efforts put into getting anything from this real crappy Bambook internet-shop.

Conclusion: avoid BamBook internet-shop at all costs. Better go give your money to the beggar on the street - faster, with no troubles, and no waiting for anything.

HD-DVD AACS Processing Key number: 09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0.

Personally, I have no idea how to use this number. However, below are some links which will give you more clues…

And, also, it should be easy to follow the events with the collection of links below.
Read the rest of this entry »

About half an hour ago, the President of Ukraine Victor Yushchenko announced that he signed a decree which dissolves current Parliament.

According to the Constitution of Ukraine, the President has the right to dissolve the Parliament if it fails to function.

Recent events, which involved the attempts of the situational majority in the Parliament (around the Party of Regions) to usurp power in Ukraine first by limiting the President’s influence, and recently by giving out minister positions to the key people from the (”orange”) opposition and making people join the majority, forced the President to use his right and dissolve the Parliament.

There is much more to add and comment on this. However, it is already evident that Ukrainian members of parliament aren’t going to just give up. They had just passed a law which… prohibits publishing the President’s decree. And the decree comes into effect only on publishing. At the same time, some of the Ukrainian MP’s applied to the Constitutional Court to decide whether the President’s decree is a legal attempt to dissolve the Parliament. I think it’s more of delaying action, than action itself.

More to come, for sure. I only hope the situation will not be pushed to the sane limits - where the militia, controlled by the pro-Parliament minister, and the military forces, possibly loyal to the President, will have to stand against each other. I also hope that there will be no violence, and law-abiding citizens won’t get hurt.

Do you know what is parkour? If not - this videos collection will tell you

(But, in short, the philosophy is: “100% efficiency in urban movement”.)

All the videos (except for two) are embedded from the Parkour series at ExpertVillage. As a side note: ExpertVillage shows ads before the video from time to time.

To start with, you may want to know the short history of parkour. Here is a movie from one of the parkour-evangelists:

Read the rest of this entry »

Avoid playing computer games.
Read the rest of this entry »

I wish all of you, that the next year be better than the previous.

Let it be the year of peace, development and prosperity!

Let humanity think ahead, not cure the symptoms or fix consequences.

Here’s some snow for you, if you lack it.