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книги
Ну ничего ж себе ссылка где-то проскочила (англ. и другие языки).

Интересно, а есть в торрентах такие же коллекции русских книг? Ведь кто-то же наверняка сохранил всего Мошкова до того, как мерзавцы всякие заставили его кучу удалить, может добавил еще много чего итд?

stats for cyrillic services...
Stats are temporarily not working right for those who have them on Cyrillic services. This is due to a trouble at their data center. It's mostly been recovered, but for the rest of the week people might see oddness with their friending statistics and other bits that aren't quite working again yet.

Marina gave us a Russian stock that we can use on the board and I put it in the dropdown. More info in Russian is here: http://community.livejournal.com/lj_ru_support/453487.html

Current Music: John Mayer - I'm Gonna Find Another You | Scrobbled by Last.fm

ninety-sixopus

Current Music: The Oohlas -- Octopus

"George W. Bush Sewage Plant" makes the ballot

Satire at the ballot box to 'honor' Bush

They want to rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant the George W. Bush Sewage Plant come January, when the next president is sworn in. During the inauguration, the group also wants supporters to participate in a "synchronized flush" -- a way to send a gift to the renamed plant, which supporters say, would be a "fitting monument to this president's work."
It sounds like a harmless joke, or maybe a college civics lesson gone awry. But they have already collected 8,500 signatures in support of the plan - 1,300 more than the minimum needed to put the question to city voters in November.
The biggest opposition in this Democratic stronghold, McConnell said, is people who oppose naming anything after the 43rd president.
Officials at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which owns the plant, say they get the humorous intent. But they note that the plant is an award-winning facility that keeps the city's streets and the ocean clean.
"If you are looking for a place to make a negative statement about the Bush administration's impact on the environment, this would be the last place to do it," agency spokesman Tony Winnicker said.

Current Music: Placebo -- Brick Shithouse

smoking ban: level up!

HELL YES:

San Francisco smokers are already banned from lighting up inside restaurants, bars and public buildings. Now Supervisor Chris Daly is proposing tougher restrictions, including no smoking in taxicabs, at outdoor cafes, in lines at the ATM, at farmer's markets and within 20 feet of the entrance to businesses.
The city's Department of Public Health says there's no safe level of second-hand smoke. "There's been research that shows the exposure in outdoor areas. The levels can be as toxic as indoor levels," said Alyonik Hrushow from the San Francisco Health Department.
Smokers may feel like pariahs in this city, but according to the American Lung Association, San Francisco is behind other cities including Belmont, Berkeley and Ross when it comes to trying to limit second-hand smoke.

This will be a slight hassle for us at the club, since we'll have to make people move farther down the block to smoke, but that's fine with me, because I find it absolutely disgusting to have to walk through that gauntlet of stench on the sidewalk in front of the exit door.

You're welcome to smoke, and to play with your own poop. Just keep your smoke, and your poop, off of me.

Current Music: Alien Sex Fiend -- Smells Like...

TheSocialWeb.tv: Meebo Community IM

Shot another episode of TheSocialWeb.tv with John and Joseph yesterday. Focused mainly on Meebo's new Community IM and how it's continuing the trend of making the entire web more social. Check it out and I'll be at both Facebook f8 and OSCON next week.

жизнь в #FF007F
Те слова, что так красивы по-французски

Et ça m'fait quelque chose

(из песни La vie en rose, шестая строчка припева)

звучат так нелепо и приземленно по-русски

И это мне что-то делает

или по-английски

And that does something to me

или на иврите

וזה עושה לי משהו

Может, если бы я по-настоящему знал французский, я бы не думал, что они так красивы.

хватит надеяться -- давайте думать
Отличная статья (англ.) Дорона Розенблюма в "Haaretz". Не столько о недавнем обмене пленными, хотя и об этом тоже, сколько вообще об израильской политике последних 15 лет.

(via

efpod)

подслушанное в тель-авиве
Эта запись будет интересна (и то вряд ли) в основном программистам и веб-разработчикам.

Иду по торговому центру. 10 вечера, кругом пусто, всего несколько людей вокруг. Из закрывающегося магазина выходит парень лет тридцати, смуглый, невысокий восточный еврей, и беседует на иврите (с отчетливым марокканским акцентом) с девушкой, тоже "восточной", идущей с ним рядом. Они идут недалеко от меня в ту же сторону, и я, никого не трогая и думая о своем, внезапно улавливаю в его потоке речи сочетание "ASP". Становится любопытно и я прислушиваюсь:

"Они меня заставляли писать на ASP! Они меня заставляли писать на ASP! Ты знаешь, что такое ASP? Нет, ты знаешь, что такое ASP? Раббак [1], ты понимаешь, что такое ASP? Я даже HTML не знаю, а они меня заставляли писать на ASP! Я прочитал целую книгу, понимаешь, целую книгу, и все равно у меня ничего не вышло..."

Дальше они пошли в другую сторону, и продолжения я не услышал.

[1] арабское выражение, часть современного ивритского сленга, по смыслу примерно "черт побери"

Basic Accounts and X-Men
Account Structure Update
Back by popular demand, Basic Accounts will be available to all users again by the end of the (northern hemisphere) summer. More information on the decision-making process and proposals relating to the future of Basic Accounts are in

lj_2008.

New Themes
Two attractive and all-new Flexible Squares themes, "Circular" and "Circular Brown" are now available.

L to R: Circular and Brown

New V-Gifts
Give someone you care about the gift of enticement. With the new Chocolate Ice Cream, Vanilla Ice Cream, Tea, Coffee, Curry and Sushi v-gifts, all the significant people in your life will be able to share in the longing for the tasty edibles below. Plus, it reminds loved ones you think they're really sweet, really savory or just plain satisfying.

L to R: Chocolate Ice Cream, Vanilla Ice Cream, Tea, Coffee, Curry and Sushi

Ж-Men...but not the ones you might expect!
This week LJ Russia launched Ж-Men, a new comedy series about superheroes, inspired by the LJ communities dedicated to superheros, comics and cartoons. The title's "Ж" comes from ЖЖ, the nickname for LiveJournal in Russia.

Ж-Men's script is written by a group of LJ enthusiasts who also happen to be television professionals. Who knew? Following the premiere, five more episodes will be broadcast over the next two weeks. We hope you find the series fresh and enjoyable.

This is, of course, an experiment for LiveJournal. As always, we'd love to hear what you think!

Current Mood: awake

Fotobilder export
I'm having trouble with my Fotobilder client. I'd like to be able to export the user's pictures as a backup. I knew that the Perl client did this, so I looked at how it works. It's rather different to the rest of the Fotobilder stuff: it seems to get the export data by POSTing to http://pics.livejournal.com/manage/export, and it seems to authenticate by a challenge/response cookie. I hope I've understood this correctly.

My first problem is that when my client requests an export I get a 302 sending me to the LJ login page - presumably because the server doesn't like my cookie. To find out if it was just me getting it wrong, I tried running the Perl client. My second problem is that when I try ./fotoup.pl --backup it says

Fetching export.xml from server...
Can't locate object method "new" via package "XML::LibXML::SAX" at /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.10/XML/SAX/ParserFactory.pm line
 43.

Now I'm stumped.

Is the Perl client broken?
Does the Perl client work under Cygwin?
Does the server still accept this style of authentication?
Is there any way to get the export data through the normal protocol?

XScreenSaver 5.06

XScreenSaver 5.06 out now. Only one new hack this time, but it's a fine one, if I do say so myself. Also this includes a bunch of fixes related to adding, removing and resizing monitors (RANDR/Xinerama) on X11 systems, as I mentioned earlier. So please stress-test that junk. Or be devoured.

Current Music: Revolting Cocks -- Attack Ships on Fire

задачка
Эта запись будет интересна в основном программистам.

Красивая задачка, которую подкинули во внутренней рассылке:

Отсортируйте пять чисел, используя не более семи сравнений.

(комментарии оставлю скрытыми до завтра)

Update: уточнение условий: складывать/умножать числа не разрешается. Вообще разрешается только сравнивать их друг с другом, а больше никакой информации о них не дано. "Сравнивать", определенности ради, означает применять операцию "<" или ">", на выбор.

Update: открываю все комментарии. Довольно много правильных ответов, найденных с помощью "перебора" в определенном смысле. В этом нет ничего зазорного (и я тоже так решил), но если вы нашли решение таким способом, могу порекомендовать в качестве дополнительного упражнения - найти способ "объяснить" это уже найденное решение более кратким и понятным образом. Такие "простые" решения в комментах тоже есть, но всего два-три.

MultiLJ: Feedback request and poll
I've not gotten a lot of feedback yet about MultiLJ and I'm wondering to what extent those who have downloaded it have had success with it. I'm about to post a new version of it, with additional error trapping, bug fixes, and some minor cosmetic upgrades in the friends list. What I'm looking for is some feedback as to how things are going and what I need to concentrate on with it.

Also, I'm looking at several options for continued development. Development of a Mac client is right out for the present, as I'm running Tiger on my Mac and Apple is only distributing a development kit that's compatible with Leopard. However, I recently made my development PC a dual-boot box with Ubuntu, so Linux development is quite doable. So, here's what I'm considering - let me know what there's demand for:

1) An LJ client for Linux/GTK+
2) A LJ archiving program
3) More concentrated effort on MultiLJ, perhaps adding things like uploading photos

Comments would be appreciated.

Current Mood: curious

IPv6
I saw that this was open sourced today:

http://code.google.com/p/stubl/

I followed our internal instructions for using it and now I have IPv6 on my desktop at work. Any good IPv6 sites to hit? (besides the Great Experiment, which isn't quite SWF)

мысли в отпуске
Когда потомки будут оглядываться на наше время, если им захочется оглянуться, то, думаю, они сочтут весьма странным и непонятным -- помимо множества других вещей -- то, как мы культивируем уникальность культурных объектов. Почему нам так важно настаивать на этой уникальности, ставить ее в центр всех наших представлений об искусстве?

Возьмем пример знаменитых картин. У нас сейчас есть технологическая возможность создать очень высококачественные копии знаменитых шедевров. Эти копии будут (для всех, кроме горстки экспертов-специалистов) совершенно неотличимы от оригиналов. Почему же мы не создаем такие копии и не вешаем их на стены музеев всего мира? Почему, например, я должен посетить Париж и пойти в Лувр, чтобы увидеть Джоконду? Почему я не могу пойти в местный тель-авивский музей и увидеть там копию Джоконды, которая я никогда бы не смог отличить от оригинала?

Я могу понять логику, когда говорят, что постер, или репродукция в книге - это совершенно не то же самое, что увидеть оригинал. Но если речь идет о копии того же размера, что оригинал? Для всех, кроме ничтожного количества специалистов, увидеть такую копию - все равно, что увидеть оригинал, с одним только различием: мы знаем, что это не оригинал! Но почему это вообще для нас важно? Или, спрошу по-другому, поставив вопрос шире: почему это *так* важно?

Did you know that cable cars poop sand?

There's something you don't see every day:

A Powell-Mason cable car jumped the tracks while turning onto Powell Street just before midnight Sunday night, July 13, 2008, leaving at least four people injured.

I assumed they were, you know, attached.

Which led to me learning about that sand thing:

The track brake does the lion's share of the work. The friction between wood and steel is what primarily stops the car. Make that dry wood and dry steel. Wet equals slick... this is not good.
This is where sand comes to the rescue. A small pedal on the floor is pressed to drop sand on the rails. The wheels crush the sand into powder, the powder soaks up the moisture and provides -- the magic word -- friction!

Current Music: Big Black -- Cables

frickin' russian ravers with frickin' laserbeams in their eyes

Blind Russian Ravers

Ravers at the Aquamarine Open Air Festival in Kirzhach, 80 kilometres northeast of Moscow, began seeking medical help days after the show, complaining of eye and vision problems.
"They all have retinal burns, scarring is visible on them. Loss of vision in individual cases is as high as 80%, and regaining it is already impossible," Kommersant quoted a treating ophthalmologist as saying.
Partygoers say heavy rains forced organisers to erect massive tents for the all-night dance party. The damage seems to have been caused when laser beams that were intended for outdoor use to illuminate the sky, were somehow turned or reflected onto the crowd.

Current Music: The Human League -- Blind Youth

LET'S SPECULATE
Poll #1223227 Do you contemplate what a Grapenut is?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Which do you think is likely to happen over the next year?

View Answers

You will be able to buy out your debt at pennies on the dollar due to credit collapse.
9 (28.1%)

The US will nationalize its banks.
7 (21.9%)

The US will nationalize its healthcare.
3 (9.4%)

The US will withdraw from Iraq.
4 (12.5%)

The US will have gay marriage nationally or in more than half of states.
4 (12.5%)

Russia will start empire-building again. Up first: Ukraine.
2 (6.2%)

Russia will start empire-building again. Up first: Georgia.
9 (28.1%)

Russia will start empire-building again. Up first: Moldova.
9 (28.1%)

Kurdistan will break off from Turkey and Iraq.
14 (43.8%)

Some state will launch an offensive nuclear attack on another. (Ten point bonus if it's the US or Israel at Iran.)
10 (31.2%)

Current Music: Bloodhound Gang - Asleep at the Wheel

My Daily Tweets

09:49 Google Earth with 3D polarized glasses and huge LCD = f'ing awesome #

(posted using LoudTwitter)

dnalounge update

DNA Lounge update, wherein the clock ticks.

Current Music: Monsters Are Waiting -- Monsters

mixtape 039

Please enjoy jwz mixtape 039.

Current Music: as noted

Dirhash Low Memory Event Handling Patch

I now have some working code for my dirhash dynamic memory allocation Google Summer of Code project. It is currently being reviewed and needs further testing, but if you're feeling brave you can grab a patch against HEAD from my project page on the FreeBSD wiki.

What the new code does is add an event handler for vm_lowmem events. When one of these events happens, the kernel will try to delete dirhashes that have not been used for DH_RECLAIMAGE seconds. This is currently set to five seconds, but I have no idea if this will be an optimal time. A bit of benchmarking and testing will be necessary to sort that out. If all dirhashes have been used more recently than DH_RECLAIMAGE, instead the first unlocked dirhash on the TAILQ list used to keep track of them all will be deleted. Due to how the existing dirhash code organizes this list based on a scoring system, the first hash on the list should be a mix of the the least recently used and least frequently used.

If my code turns out to work as it should, then the default maximum memory for dirhash can be safely increased quite a bit. If the system has plenty of spare memory, then lots will be available for dirhashes. Then if the system becomes low on memory, some of this dirhash memory will automatically be freed up for use by whatever else needs it. Hopefully we'll see some performance improvements overall on systems with lots of memory that need to deal with large directories, but I haven't done the benchmarks yet.