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):
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BamBook is a Kyiv-based internet shop.

On the 28th of February, 2007, I ordered a book from them, and paid for it with a 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.
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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:

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Avoid playing computer games.
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