Archives for December 2010
в духе традиций
17 December 2010 | Architecture, Lifeform | 1 Comment
еще руины — заброшенная Британия на этот раз.
сенсорика
17 December 2010 | Sex, Technology | No Comments
Recent events in the Kinect Hacker community and the Open Sourcing of device drivers have enabled the Kinect device to be used directly from connected PC’s operating on Windows 7. The Kinect interface provides another exciting interface option for users of the sex simulation software to control the experience in extraordinary new ways!
Controller free is the next generation of game user interfaces allowing users to use gestures, spoken commands, or objects to control in-game action that creates a completely new sex game activity and magical experience. “The Kinect Controller is astonishing new technology that allows users to experience cybersex like never before!” says Brad Abram VP of Business Development. “It’s novel, sexy, social, age-spanning, crazy, and a rush to have virtual control at this level”.
Users will ultimately be able to use full body or hand gestures, voice commands and even real world sex toy objects like vibrators to control interactions in-game and between two active participants.
очевидно, что это был лишь вопрос времени.
в озерном краю
16 December 2010 | Geography, Lifeform | 2 Comments
словами поэта, “больше всего я хочу, как северо–западный слон”.
ваши книги вам не принадлежат
15 December 2010 | Amazon, Censorship, Literature | No Comments
долго ждать не пришлось, история с изъятием книг повторилась снова:
The independent writers who publish on Amazon report that erotica books containing incest are being taken down with no explanation by Amazon, and removed from the Kindles of purchasers of the books.
с Софоклом, то есть, разобрались. кто следующий?
The Sprawl
15 December 2010 | Facebook, Geography, Lifeform | 4 Comments
материки и страны, тем временем, можно описать простыми Facebook-связями (предчувствую новый математический термин) — так, оказывается, если спроецировать эти дружбы на плоскость, то результат окажется максимально близким к физической реальности:
I began by taking a sample of about ten million pairs of friends from Apache Hive, our data warehouse. I combined that data with each user’s current city and summed the number of friends between each pair of cities. Then I merged the data with the longitude and latitude of each city.
At that point, I began exploring it in R, an open-source statistics environment. As a sanity check, I plotted points at some of the latitude and longitude coordinates. To my relief, what I saw was roughly an outline of the world. Next I erased the dots and plotted lines between the points.
<...>
I defined weights for each pair of cities as a function of the Euclidean distance between them and the number of friends between them. Then I plotted lines between the pairs by weight, so that pairs of cities with the most friendships between them were drawn on top of the others. I used a color ramp from black to blue to white, with each line’s color depending on its weight. I also transformed some of the lines to wrap around the image, rather than spanning more than halfway around the world.
и вот оно, небольшое чудо:
After a few minutes of rendering, the new plot appeared, and I was a bit taken aback by what I saw. The blob had turned into a surprisingly detailed map of the world. Not only were continents visible, certain international borders were apparent as well.
26-ой президент
15 December 2010 | Culturology, Literature | No Comments
поисковой запрос дня. 1’030 результатов, между прочим.
via.
quest for justice
14 December 2010 | Censorship, Lifeform, Politics | 4 Comments
хорошее интервью Евгения Морозова о WikiLeaks и непосредственно Джулиане Ассанже:
As far as I can understand Mr. Assange’s theory – and I don’t think that it’s terribly coherent or well thought-out– he believes that one way to achieve justice is to minimize the power of governments to do things that their citizens do not know of and may not approve of if they do.
так же, революция, говорит Морозов, на подходе:
What I think might happen is that WikiLeaks and Julian Assange in particular would emerge as leaders of a new political “geek” movement that would be built on the principles of absolute “Internet freedom,” transparency, very permissive copyright law, and so on. This movement has already been brewing globally – especially in Europe, where various local cells of the Pirate Party have proved remarkably strong. It’s quite possible that the “hunt for WikiLeaks” would further radicalize young people and make them join the fight for the “Free Internet,” however they choose to interpret.
вплоть до самых радикальных форм:
This may be wonderful news – especially if they renounce violence and start participating in mainstream politics instead, thus becoming something of a digital equivalent to the Green Movement in Europe. The other option, alas, is far less amenable: It’s possible that if Assange is really treated badly and unjustly by the authorities – and possibly even tried like a “terrorist” as some prominent US politicians have suggested – this would nudge the movement toward violent forms of resistance1.
ну, и вообще много интересного:
It’s inconceivable that on its one-year anniversary Hillary Clinton would be able to deliver a speech on Internet Freedom as pompous and starry-eyed as she did in January 2010. I never believed that Clinton actually very much pondered the implications and the assumptions implicit in her stance on “Internet freedom.” 2
—
1 — о, эти ласкающие слух звуки.
2 — прекрасная, к слову, была речь, прекрасная:
Now, in many respects, information has never been so free. There are more ways to spread more ideas to more people than at any moment in history. And even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable.
During his visit to China in November, for example, President Obama held a town hall meeting with an online component to highlight the importance of the internet. In response to a question that was sent in over the internet, he defended the right of people to freely access information, and said that the more freely information flows, the stronger societies become. He spoke about how access to information helps citizens hold their own governments accountable, generates new ideas, encourages creativity and entrepreneurship.
I’d like to slip into something a lot more comfortable, like a coma
14 December 2010 | Humour, Metaphysics | 3 Comments
к вопросу о смысле жизни:
Цитата #408933
from Bash.Org.Ru
xxx: Иногда чувствую себя сусликом во время Куликовской битвы — чувствую, что что-то происходит, а понять не могу.
натурально, так все и есть.
фееричные.
типажи
13 December 2010 | Cinematograph | No Comments
Майкл Дуглас определенно смотрел “Короля Лир” Григория Козинцева.
пропаганда
12 December 2010 | Art | No Comments
воскресная картинка:
via.