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Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Blocking LJTiMES

Annoying shit

This new Life Journal's frame drives me crazy. If someone wants to get rid of this stuff (and I do know that there are a lot of people who do not even think about blocking ads and other unnecessary stuff), here is an option for the Firefox. I have the Adblock Plus addon (and Element Hiding Helper for it) installed. Unfortunately, right clicking on the frame and choosing option to disable the frame will work only for the current journal and this frame will reappear at another one. So you should chose an own filter option (after right click -> block the frame) and type: http://*/__rpc_lj_times_string.

Vandalism and maps

It was a shock when I saw these maps at the site of Russian Geographical Society. They put the name of the institution in the middle of the map! And it was the Geographical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences! What a shame...

Vandalism

Monday, October 18, 2010

Richard Dawkins on militant atheism

It is an interesting lecture of my favorite scientist since 2005, when I've discovered his book "The Selfish Gene".




If you liked this lecture, you might be interested in reading "The God Delusion", which was published 4 years later. They say the Russian translation is not that good (but still it is good enough to my mind), so I suggest to read the original version.

Friday, October 15, 2010

I'm counted

Russia needs everyone slave - it is important to know whom to milk.
 
Now they can sale the database with some information about me. The inventory-guy was a student from the culinary technical secondary school situated in front of my windows across the street. He provided me with information that it is quite safe to eat at "Dve Palochki" restorations (he is working in one of them), but it is better to abstain from ordering soups: they add an MSG (which cause an addiction and an impotence) in it. Now I know why I liked their spicy soups so much ((( It is good that my visits to these restorations were not frequent.

Despite the youth, the guy has a clear view on the impotence of our government, our people... I told him to learn foreign languages and leave damn country. He answered that Sweden is his goal.  Good choice. Farewell, comrade...

1 billion of roubles for the land assessment

1,17 - more precise value. Yea, baby! What about to gain some money?! Here you can find a contract conditions. Of course the price is so high for the reason, or a couple of them, but let's start step by step.

The obvious reason of the price is a number of lands to assess. I can't even imagine how many of them there are in 83(!!!) subjects of the Russian Federation... and there are additional conditions about some maps, etc. So not every cadastral company will even think for the moment to try to get the job. From this point we are very close to the second reason.

Actually, there are only 2 companies, which are potentially able do get this titanic job done. The first is VISHAGI and the second is FCC "The Land". Now it is more simple to guess who will hit the jackpot. Chances are 50%/50%, but I bet, FCC "The Land" will take the upper hand. Why? Ok, I have some information from the inside. VISHAGI do not like to play "Sharing is Caring Russian style", and FCC "The Land" is well known for determination of amounts and targets of  the kickbacks in advance. Nuff said.

This contest is for the only one player and the countless pockets of the bastards from the ROSREESTR. We'll see if I’m a good seer.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

QGIS manual in Russian

...is available now!!! Click here to download. Also several improvements were made in English version because of this translation. I'm glad I took part in it!

UPD: manual was updated to the 1.6.0.

Shearing is caring!

There was a scientific session at my university today. I've presented a report about waste management in St. Petersburg and Leningrad region. It was somewhat a "party" for the local scientists, so I was in doubt whether should I put the names of my Finnish colleagues as coauthors or not. It wasn't that level which would be valuable for them, besides this report was made of my part of our main article. Never the less the decision was made and I've put two more names on the front page. I've shared authorship of this report.

In the end of the session ex-dean of the faculty came to me and gave a special thanks. "Why? The report and following discussion were good, but there were better" - I thought at the moment. But he thanked me not for the report, but for the foreign coauthors! They brought an international status for our local party! So this publication (and others from the session) will be more valuable. The publication of report became more valuable just because the session became more valuable because of my report presence at the session! It is very interesting thought ;-) But the shearing was in the first place.

There was another shearing story at the session. Google is shearing imagery even if it doesn't want it))) One of the politicians(!) of the St. Petersburg reported about an expedition to the Altai. He mentioned that they have used an images from Google to create a 1:50 000 map... O_o ... Ok, even if he was not aware that for this scale Landsat was just good enough, wasn't this a violation of the Google's terms and conditions of usage? "Honestly, I do not know" replied politician to me...

Let's make it clear: I'm not against robbing Google, I'm against the ignorance.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Let's save the St. Petersburg!

Let's show to the "servants of the people" that they have to give some respect to the laws and human rights!


Rally's place:

Dreadful green ad

"Recycling owns the future!"     
I'm scared for future...