RSR

AfterHalloween

2011-11-01T23:11:00.002+04:00

by Oilcorner from DeviantArt

A New Beginning

2011-10-31T15:22:00.002+04:00

This blog will continue to exist as "Yet Another Random Blog", while I'm preparing to open my second, topic-based, project. As for today... In memory of Steve Jobs, who made half a world (including our current president) crazy about shiny things with no buttons.

Case of Twixt: revisited

2011-05-21T19:26:00.000+04:00

Have you heard about Twixt case in City of Heroes MMORPG? Those who haven't, I strongly recommend reading the document under link. Long story short, David Myers, Loyola professor, sociologist, conducted a unique experiment, testing just how much the rules and laws can be affected and twisted by social interactions.

City of Heroes/Villains is more or less typical MMORPG, where players assume roles of, guess, superheroes and supervillains. It was released in 2004 and is still alive by now, with last revision dated to November 2010. When Myers started his experiment in 2006, it already was quite mature game with a lot of high-level players and established community. Myers' PC, teleportation-based hero Twixt, was well-known and respected by fellow gamers. And professor decided to do the unthinkable - to play according to official rules.

Namely, he started to employ each and every technique to make the righteousness side prevail and evil ones suffer, everywhere and anytime, which obviously included disrupting peaceful side-by-side farming of heroes and villains. His common trick was teleportation of foes into range of powerful NPC drones, which pulverized villains instantly. Regardless of means, over the next year Twixt managed to "win the zone" for Heroes literally hundreds of times, which was supposed to be the main goal for players... right?

Apparently, no, as Twixt was hated, hated, HATED in every server he appeared. From normal point of view, his actions were pure trolling. For complete description how he was threatened and ostracized see the link in the beginning of the post, but the most interesting result, IMHO, was that practically noone realized or even tried to realize the motives of Twixt's behavior, even though he tried to explain it at first. Once going against the rules of society the individual started self-enhancing chain of events, leading to complete isolation.

There may or may not be correspondences between game and reality, that's for you to decide. Why I decided to revive a story of 2 years old? Merely because I stumbled upon the blog of kind, kind professor. He actually writes quite interesting things both about game stuff and completely unrelated matters, I recommend you to glance it through. And check "CoH/V" tag for additional Twixt-related studies.

Du Hast

2011-05-17T15:24:00.002+04:00

That's Ukrainian miners for you. Instruments used are bayans and balalaikas.

Password security: dos and don'ts

2011-05-10T15:49:00.003+04:00

Stumbled upon this video randomly and thought that it's quite useful. BTW, have you seen Google password instruction? It actually have quite good method for password generation.

"Operation Pumpkin"

2011-05-10T15:33:00.003+04:00

Have you seen "Runaway bride"? It seems that English Royal Family have, and took some measures to prevent or at least to soften the impact of such possible tragedy at Prince William wedding.

"Frankly, it's a nightmare scenario," one highly-placed MI5 source confessed to the Reg yesterday. "But you have to plan for every possible contingency, and let's face it, this one's hardly that unlikely, is it? Obviously we had to get together with Clarence House and work something out.

"Naturally, they wanted us to simply make her go through with it - but we said you must be joking: in the UK, in front of millions of witnesses? No way. And the plods would never play ball anyhow.

"So we said, look, if she bottles it we'll just have to get her out pronto, helicopter off the roof maybe, then sort her out with a new identity and young Bill will just have to go on the honeymoon on his own."

[...]

On the other hand if Wills manages to come up with Kate he will be  allowed to attempt to persuade her to return with him for a limited  period.

"We got Clarence House to cut that by a few minutes by agreeing they  could put ringers in the crowd to shout stuff like 'Go on love, give him  a kiss'," reveals our source.

It sounds like an obvious fake, but the idea is brilliant, I think. Someone should make a flash game out of this:

In the event of Operation Pumpkin being put into effect Ms Middleton  will be permitted to run out of Westminster Abbey with her bodyguards  trailing discreetly at a distance. [...]  

Prince William will then have a limited time [...], in which the  path behind Ms Middleton will be kept open for him to go after her,  after which the mobile protective cordon will close again at the Abbey  end due to lack of manpower and the Prince will have let his bride slip  through his fingers.

If Wills reacts fast enough, however, he will be able to chase after his fleeing fiancee for just under half a mile.

"Clarence House wanted a full mile," says our source. "But we said  come on, play fair, she's in her wedding dress and there has to be some  limit on the overtime budget."

See here for a full story.

Watching you from above

2011-05-05T15:38:00.000+04:00

Obama Osama

2011-05-03T15:23:00.000+04:00

Okay, this seems to be the main piece of news, who I am to disprove that?

Money cloning technology

2011-04-30T14:31:00.003+04:00

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

-Albert Einstein

Saw a brilliant piece of news today. Novosibirsk policemen arrested two African citizens, who offered Russian businessmen unusual service. They claimed to bring in Russia some "money intermediate product", which can be turned into real euro, dollars and roubles with some real money.

The process looked as following: euro banknote was folded between two "special" pieces of white paper, then covered in special money-dust and soaked in secret reagent. After a while, you may take your 3 fresh banknotes of the same face. One of the victims gave them 100 000 euros for cloning!

I'm not making this up, you may look at 0:40, although video may be kinda slow for non-Russian users. Other pair of Libyan citizens in Moscow invented other scheme. They claimed to save a part of Libyan treasury from rebels, but they had to paint banknotes with black paint to get them through the border. But fear not, they need only a small sum from you for special dissolvent!

I just can't understand, exactly how stupid should a person be to believe in this...

PS: previous post proved that I should sleep more and proofread my texts. The post should have started with
"The majority of Internet surfers seems to know one and only Soviet piece of music - Trololo Guy. And I hope everyone watched more that first 10 sec of music-only =)

1000 views passed!

2011-04-29T21:49:00.002+04:00

Congratulation to everyone on passing this mark!
The majority of Internet surfers seems to know one and only Soviet piece of music. Well, I want to try and create another meme, or at least just share a piece of good music. This are the closing titles to "Dust" movie. The song is "Changement!" by Viktor Tsoi, and... performance is by Alexey Znamenskiy.

You may not understand Russian, but that is pure energy in the form of a man. Rough translation is after the cut

Instead of heat - green glass
Instead of fire - smoke,
The calendar grid loses another day.
The red sun is burned out,
Day is out with it,
On the burning city falls the shadow.

chorus:
"Changes!" - demand in our hearts.
"Changes!" - demand in our eyes.
In our laughter and our tears,
And in the pulse of our veins:
"Changes! We are waiting for the changes!"

Electric light continues our day,
And a box of matches is empty
But blue flower of gas burns in the kitchen.
Cigarette in hand, tea on the table - this scheme is simple,
And there is nothing more, all is up to us.

chorus

We can not boast of the wise eyes
And of the skillful hand gestures,
We do not need it all to understand each other.
Cigarette in hand, tea on the table - so the circle closes,
And then you become afraid to change anything.

chorus

IT-crime strikes back

2011-04-28T17:17:00.000+04:00

Translated from infowatch LiveJournal.

A man fell victim to web theft. Scheme was simple and common - bad antivirus, trojan program, credit card limit exhausted. But our hero happened to be IT guru of some kind, or probably had a wise friend. Together they somehow managed to extract the e-mail of trojan author, then found out his ICQ, then phone number and even name, and only then they went to the police.

Happy end? Not quite. Our hero proudly told policemen how he "hacked the hacker" and demonstrated final results. How does the situation seem from the police point of view? Original hacker is apparently in another RF region, so any awards for case solution will pass these particular policemen. Computer is long cleared from virus, all information is obtained with violations of Penal Code...

On the other hand, there's our hero, here and now. He's just confessed in privacy violations, has all the proofs with him... And next day he was in need of good defense attorney.

Tag line? Dunno, think, before you go to police in Russia.

A note for followers

2011-04-28T16:42:00.000+04:00

I read every blog that I follow, and I try to follow every blog that follows mine. This doesn't guarantee that I will comment all and every post you write, as I don't like completely meaningless comments. Just so you know.

Cover demonstrates the user in the process of reading.

Strange ads

2011-04-28T14:01:00.000+04:00

Saw this post by Dootzkie and remembered MTS advert campaign.
MTS is one of "The Big Three" mobile communication companies in Russia, and in 2006 they undergone total redesign. Their old logo was simple, just letters:

Their new logo was ... egg.

The company explained that it was allegory for "everything genial looks simple" or smth, but people en mass thought that it's just stupid...
Several months later some MTS employee made public that the company achieved not great but steady increase in income. Why? Because for a month every conversation ended in several extra seconds:
-Have you seen new MTS logo?
-Yeah, stupid it is?
-Sure, it is stupid.

Genial things are simple. What interesting ad campaigns do you remember?

About vanishing water

2011-04-27T20:16:00.004+04:00

Saw this post about "vanishing water" and remembered a true story from neighbor lab.

A student new to the lab threw down the pipe some gel after electrophoresis. Little she knew that it was one of these water superabsorbents... The pipe apparently became clogged, as no water could pass, but plumber couldn't understand how he still could lower his cleaning chain almost without resistance, hehe.

Dreaming of your love

2011-04-27T15:24:00.000+04:00

Be sure to turn the music on. Models were made by Sipho Mabona, check his site for other works

In memory of War

2011-04-26T21:37:00.000+04:00

Golf rules for playing during air raid.

I think you can guess the country.

Life is threatening

2011-04-26T21:30:00.003+04:00

A story from Russian Rescue Service.

One man was continuously annoying local police and rescue service with calls that his neighbors are irradiating him with death rays through the ceiling. When policeman visited him at last, he saw that the apartment walls were shielded with foil and equipped with some amulets, which the inhabitant claimed were protecting his life.

The situation was clear, but the policeman still visited the neighbors upstairs. And there he saw six microwave ovens positioned on the floor with their lids down and open. The neighbors explained that the occupant below is a hostile alien, who plans to conquer Earth, and only their efforts can save the planet. They were actually quite happy to see the visitor, as somehow nobody believed them...

Welcome

2011-04-19T15:25:00.001+04:00

Hi there, you reader. This is my first English blog, started mainly to train my language skills, so please be forgiving to possible mistakes. Any and all corrections are more than welcome, especially since I'm taking my English Ph.D exam (or rather Russian analogue) quite soon.

Privacy policy

2010-04-29T20:55:00.003+04:00

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