Illegal Dumping in Leningrad Region: Press Conference

There was a press conference on Tuesday the 19-th about illegal dumping in Leningrad region (Russia). I was asked to be the main speaker there and to present to the press my recent study on illegal dumping prevention. I've already had two presentations on this subject recently at the international scientific conference in St. Petersburg State University and at the round table for the discussion of the upcoming "Let's do it. Russia" clean up event.

Some video from the press conference:

The main conclusion that I made by investigating possible impacts on illegal dumping prevention (such as penalty increase, chance of being caught increase and waste disposal fare decrease) is that decrease of the waste disposal fare for population is the most efficient way. And I managed to find two other publications that came to the exact conclusion (for example, there is an evidence that 1% waste fare increase leads to 3% increase of illegal dumping cases).

By the way I was able to assess probability of being caught for illegal dumping in Russia. It is about 10^-5 (you can die while playing soccer with such probability).

The only way to reduce waste fares is to use waste as a resource. That means that the only way to prevent illegal dumping is to create waste management system that would be able to complete the zero waste goal.

And here is an abstract from my article:

Mechanisms of the land protection were discussed in this article. An algorithm of decision making whether to dump illegally or not was explained. Formulas for determination of profitable ration of expenditures per unit and amount of illegally dumping waste are substantiated. Effect from different types of impacts that can be used for land protection from illegal dumping were discussed (such as fares change, penalties change, penalty application probability change). Decreasing of waste disposal fares was acknowledged as the most effective way for illegal dumping prevention, but it is possible only if «zero waste» concept is implemented.

D&D: About Experience Awad

To my mind one of the most tedious part of the D&D game is an XP award calculation. DM have to spend hours and even days preparing adventure, so spending extra hours on XP award calculation seems quite expensive. Upcoming changes to the system wouldn't make a difference.

Would you really want to calculate all that CRs and ELs? Nine Hells, NO!!!

Smart people tends to save their time using own systems. This one for example is quite clever. In general - XP awarded for caused and taken points of damage. I have no intentions discuss its Pros and Cons, but would like to admit that this approach still needs calculation and statistics records. So it is cheaper (in terms of time) but still is expensive for my taste.

My system of XP award

MOSKitt Geo: a Tool for Spatial Database Design

I needed to create design for a spatial database and found out that despite of availability of the tools for a regular database design, there is a lack of such tools for a spatial database design.

Fortunately there is a suitable free cross-platform tool - MOSKitt Geo, which allows to design spatial databases for PostGIS and Oracle. MOSKitt is not quite user-friendly and if you are not an experienced software designer, you will need to read the f*** manual.

Installation

• Download MOSKitt itself and extract it (installation is not required). Note that x86_64 version (and version for MAC) is available for 1.3.2 and earlier releases (current is 1.3.8).
• Install MOSKitt Geo plugin using instructions from here. Note that for 3-rd step in instruction you may also need to type something and erase it in the search area of the dialogue to make list of plug-ins appear (at least I needed to). And one more thing - MOSKitt Geo repository is already there, so you don't need to add it - just choose it from the drop-down menu.

PostgreSQL/PostGIS database connection and reverse engineering

To connect to existing database go Window->Show View->Other->Data Management->Data Source Explorer

  

A new tab will occur:

Right click on Database Connections and choose New->PostgreSQL. You will see a dialogue for the DB connection settings. Note that there might be no PostgreSQL JBC Driver defined. In this case first download needed driver and then click on the icon to the right from the driver drop-down menu (New Driver Definition).

Connection settings

 In the Edit Driver Definition dialogue provide path to the driver and click Ok.

Driver definition dialogue

When database connection established, right-click on it and choose Reverse Engenieering.

My Gmail Content instead of video in YoutTube... WTF?!

A funny snapshot of what I sow instead of video on YouTube - a part of my current page from Gmail! And if I change page in Gmail, the video frame content changes respectively. This thing happened when the PC turned on from the suspend mode (but it never happened before).

This is an actual snapshot (not a photoshop) of the Gmail page instead of video

Universal Ecolabeling: an "eco-Black-Spot" concept

Nowadays  more and more people cares about environmental-friendly goods. Ecolabeling is often used to distinguish such goods from regular goods. 

But there are several issues:

• there are a lot of ecolabels, provided by different organisations with different standards so quality of the given ecolabel usually is uncertain;
• ecolabels are difficult to recognize: if you unaware about given ecolabel and know nothing about authority, that gave it - you are likely to miss the point that this is ecolabel, or even you can be tricked by companies with some green-coloured sign with a word "eco", this leads us to the following point -
• often they can't be trusted - companies like to place their own labels that states that product is friendly to environment to attract customers, but these labels are just a trick and has nothing to do with reality.

So I would like to propose another approach. Do you remember BP re-branding after  Deepwater Horizon explosion and infamous oil spill? I hope you do. What if we will oblige companies to put negative labels on the products which production causes significant threat to environment?! - A universal "eco-Black-Spot" for environment abusers!

Pros: 

• we won't need external sertification organisation to confirm that this company deserves an eco-Black-Spot - an environmental agencies already have the necessary information;
• nobody will forge eco-Black-Spot for their goods;
• forged (self-made) "ecolabels" will instantly fail being alongside with the eco-Black-Spot.
• companies will try to wipe out an eco-Black-Spot from their products by actual contribution for preservation of the environment.

Cons:

• m-m-m... I don't see any. Do you?

And what about design of the eco-Black-Spot? I believe it will be convenient to use something like this:

or this: