Archives for March 2011
ошибка в расчетах
15 March 2011 | Hardware, Software | No Comments
меня всегда интересовало, как могла Нокия, компания, практически создавшая рынок смартфонов, потерять в итоге его чуть меньше, чем полностью. а между тем, все проблемы вытекают из одного очевидного факта: компания так и не смогла увидеть и оценить, когда наконец закончились ограниченные 90-ые, а на смену им пришли сытые 2000-ые.
несмотря на все возможные достоинства платформы, разработка приложений шла совершенно не туда и не там:
Here’s the problem: Hardware Rules at Nokia. The software is written by the software groups inside of Nokia, and it is then given to the hardware group, which gets to decide what software goes on the device, and the environment in which it runs. All schedules are driven by the hardware timelines. It was not uncommon for us to give them code that ran perfectly by their own test, only to have them do things like reduce the available memory for the software to 25% the specified allocation, and then point the finger back at software when things failed in the field.
задумайтесь, кого вообще может волновать подобная оптимизация сегодня? ровно так же, тем не менее, обстояли дела и со всем остальным:
A well-designed UX is consistent, forgiving and rewarding; Nokia’s user experience was inconsistent, unforgiving and hostile. Nokia’s designers honed in with meticulous attention to the wrong detail. Apple’s iPhoneOS UI had some unusual features – smooth graphics that played transitions at 60-frames-per-second, thanks to a dedicated graphics chip. Instead of redesigning the entire UX, Nokia acquired expensive professional-grade video cameras to determine the animation speed, and having confirmed that yes, it was 60fps, tried to recreate the transitions.
потрясающе.
статья, кстати, очень хорошая (плюс, многое тут), и я очень рекоммендую прочитать ее целиком — хотя бы для того, чтобы в полной мере оценить что именно (и как) было за все эти годы утрачено:
With both Linux and Symbian platforms, 80 per cent of the code did not need to change to make Nokia competitive once again. With Symbian, the code had been written over many thousands of man-years, and only the top 20 per cent (at most) needed to be refreshed. Yet Nokia couldn’t deliver this. For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost.
the chords that bind the earth together
15 March 2011 | Geography, Metaphysics | 1 Comment
из книги Барри Лопеса — отрывок о местах и пространствах:
he American geographer Yi-Fu Tuan distinguishes in his writing between concepts of space and a sense of place. Human beings, he says, set out from places, where they feel a sense of attachment, of shelter, of comprehension, and journey into amorphous spaces, characterized by a feeling of freedom or adventure, and the unknown. “In open space,” writes Tuan, “one can become intensely aware of [a remembered] place; and in the solitude of a sheltered place, the vastness of space acquires a haunting presence.” We turn these exhilarating and sometimes terrifying new places into geography by extending the boundaries of our old places in an effort to include them. We pursue a desire for equilibrium and harmony between our familiar places and unknown spaces. We do this to make the foreign comprehensible, or simply more acceptable.
Tuan’s thoughts are valid whether one is thinking about entering an unknown room in a large house or of a sojourn in the Arctic. What stands out in the latter instance, and seems always part of travel in a wild landscape, is the long struggle of the mind for concordance with the mystery entity, the earth.
One more thought from Tuan: a culture’s most cherished places are not necessarily visible to the eye – spots on the land one can point to. They are made visible in drama – in narrative, song, and performance. It is precisely what is invisible in the land, however, that makes what is merely empty space to one person a place to another. The feeling that a particular place is suffused with memories, the specific focus of sacred and profane stories, and that the whole landscape is a congeries of such places, is what is meant by a local sense of the land. The observation that it is merely space which requires definition before it has meaning – political demarcation, an assignment of its ownership, or industrial development – betrays a colonial sensibility.
так и есть, все мои города уже давно утонули в одном-единственном море.
раз в год
15 March 2011 | Design, Google | No Comments
Гугл в очередной раз промахнулся:
Last year, Google replaced SearchWiki with starred results. You only had to click on a star to bookmark a search result and to quickly find it later.
Unfortunately, this feature is no longer available and you have to find other ways to bookmark search results.
и дальше точно в цель:
Starred results and SearchWiki were really useful for refinding web pages, but probably not many people used them. These features were a lot more useful than Instant Preview, which is still available.
ухохотаться можно.
I’m an artist, and if you give me a tuba, I’ll bring you something out of it
14 March 2011 | Music instruments | No Comments
музыку, кстати, можно и нужно извлекать из чего угодно. вот, например, так звучат шахматные партии. а так — число π (тем более, что и повод).
но больше всего мне, конечно, нравится музыкальный инструмент awk — с прекрасным результатом.
вспоминая Штокхаузена
13 March 2011 | Geography, Music | No Comments
Сергей Курехин все-таки был великим композитором — ну, а природа уж постаралсь, подарила ему надлежащий фон.
иными словами, как ни крути, а все в этой жизни есть искусство.
алмазы и пепел
12 March 2011 | Cinematograph | No Comments
продолжаем экспедицию: целый день смотрим фильмы Михаила Калатозова (и Сергея Урусевского)– без ранних, правда, работ, но только “Летят журавли”, “Неотправленное письмо” и “Я – Куба”.
с замирающей вверх, к человеку, камерой, с удивительными всплесками и падениями душ и тел, с головокружительной энергетикой, бьющей вдруг из-под земли навылет, к звездам — как и Орсон Уэллс, Калатозов и Урусевский создали свой неповторимый узнаваемый почерк, заговорили на новом языке, раздвинув рамки[1] — вообще, смотреть такое дома есть невозможная глупость, но личный кинотеатр под боком давно уже переделали в театр бурлеска, поскольку остывающие кадры великих никому сегодня больше неинтересны.[2]
—
[1] — экспериментальные широкоэкранные съемки в “Первом эшелоне”, круговая операторская дорожка, рельсы в “Летят журавли”, ручная камера с широкоугольным объективом в “Я – Куба” и многое другое.
[2] — а еще Сергей Урусевский вместе с Григорием Чухраем поставили удивительный фильм “Сорок первый”.
boys don’t cry
11 March 2011 | Music | No Comments
вот она, музыка детства:
All nine mixes from the ’1981′ Box Set are now available in full! That’s hundreds of key artists, the famed and the forgotten, from the apex of post-punk and the ascent of new-pop, synth-pop, and related artforms. Links to every mix are below, at the “more…” link.
9 пост-панк дисков-компиляций из 1981-го года. эпоха усталой романтики и неслучившегося разачарования. кто еще ее помнит?
1981 probably wasn’t the peak year for any sort of “pure” cultural or musical strain of what defined “post-punk” as an ethos or as a sound (I’d give that title to 1979). But I chose to focus on 1981 in such depth because it seemed to me the year that that sound and way of looking at music had spread farthest without diminishing in intensity (few would argue, no matter how much they love the music of 1982, that even in that one year later there was not a bit of a come-down, or at least a diffusion into more disparate strains). The heroes of the first wave of post-punk were about to retire (like Wire, Buzzcocks, first-run Pere Ubu) but still hadn’t lost a step, and so many others were at their peak (and still many more greats just getting started).
in a new way
10 March 2011 | Art | No Comments
обожаю внезапные искривления давно устоявшихся понятий (ага). видимо, поэтому и очарован совершенно:
I think one of my favorite pieces is New Books of Knowledge (as shown above). I had been working on single books and began to experiment with combining multiple books around 2007-8. This piece was one of the first pieces to combine a complete encyclopedia series on one single piece successfully.
It works as a landscape but also as an organism, consisting of several singular components making a larger form. I began by bending all of the covers of the books on themselves and gluing them in this way. Then I experimented with the thin, pie like sliver shapes the covers made and realized I could get a radius from setting them onto each other. After connecting them all and sanding down the pages to create a large solid form I had a great block to begin carving. The development of the piece took weeks before I even began to carve. I had no idea where it was going to end up when I began.
напоминает известные шкатутлки, не правда ли?
под прицелом
9 March 2011 | Architecture | No Comments
а вот еще современная археология. каменные отражения наших усталых душ.
китайское чудо
9 March 2011 | Crime, Economics, Literature, Story | No Comments
еще одна неслучившаяся литературная героиня:
[Ms] Li Wei [a billionaire businesswoman] slept with up to 15 top business and party figures before turning on some of them in a series of corruption cases to save herself from a long prison sentence, according to Caijing business magazine. Her contacts book contained some of the most powerful men in the land, as she used her beauty to break into the secretive bastion of powerful men that tightly control China, according to the magazine.
очередная Элиза, разве нет? или, ввиду географии, может быть это Нелл?
“You cannot invest all your resources and opportunities into one person, you have to construct a huge relationship net, like an umbrella,” Ms Li was quoted as saying by Chinese media. Her empire at its peak consisted of more than 20 companies in Beijing, Qingdao, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and overseas, in industries including tobacco, real estate and advertising. She owned 183 petrol stations in Beijing.
настоящий роман. чистой воды бондиана, умноженная на учебник экономики и отлитая в золоте миллиардов юаней. плюс, как и положено высокой драме, есть и жертвы, и результат:
*Chen Tonghai
Ex-chairman of China’s second-largest oil company, Sinopec, given a suspended death penalty in 2009 for taking 196m yuan (£17.5m) in bribes.*Li Jiating
Ex-governor of Yunnan province, sentenced to death for corruption in 2003. Thought to be in Qincheng Prison, Beijing.*Liu Zhihua
The ex-vice-mayor of Beijing, who supervised preparations for the 2008 Olympics, was sentenced to death in 2008 for taking $1.45m in bribes. His sentence may be commuted to life imprisonment.*Zheng Shaodong
Ex-head of China’s Economic Criminal Investigation Bureau received a suspended death sentence for corruption.*Huang Songyou
The ex-deputy head of the Supreme Court is currently serving a life sentence for embezzlement and receiving bribes worth £500,000.
вот тебе и капитализм с коммунистическим лицом.