Tag Archives: Google

GOOGLE + in the Mood

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The proliferating pictures of “Google+ in the Mood” (see below) is the by-product of a slight change in Google’s+ logo from color to black gray and white to express mourning and sorry (see  above), for my next article on an hypothetical social net in WW2. ..

..We and each one’s Google+ mood:

Google+ Variations in Gray Snow.

Google+ Variations in Mi bemol Verdatre.

Google+ Variations in Slow Red.

G00gle+ Variations in Blue Major.

Google+ Variations in Gritty Mood.

Google+ Variations in Yellow Minor.

G00gle+ Variations in Devil Major.

Google+ Variations In Primavera  Green.

Google+ Variations in Ultramarine Cool

Google+ Variations in Shyness Major.

G00gle+ Variations in Pink – . And so on ad infinitum.

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Push Pull ‘Out of the Blue’

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The  SketchUp free application from Google is more than a nice 3D architecture software. For me the word ‘more‘ in the above sentence  points to the manner I use SketchUp.

I am not an architect, so I have no prejudices and no previous learning on how exactly to plan any building. But my use of the application create  unfamiliar forms, shapes and volumes  always on their  way to something unpredictable

The Push/Pull tool  and the Move/Copy tools used in non orthodox moves, not planned but more on the verge of a a spontaneous instinctive  ‘line drawing’ feeling,  produces a first unpredictable picture ‘Out of the Blue‘, as the song by John Lennon.

And  indeed the first picture’s appearance is in a non habitat mood. But when rotating the picture and taking snapshots at different intervals,  more unpredictable  views came into ‘being’, views which I never planned.

The SketchUp application acted here as a black box device: I made the first input, the black box did the rest by outputting the latter pictures.

Above. The first picture: my input, (click to enlarge).

Below. The black box output, (click to enlarge).

A technical note:  After resuming the above pictures in SketchUp 8, I exports them in tiff format to Photoshop, making color and contrast adjustments to get the above final  views.

Arab Terrorism and Israeli Cartoons

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There are many ways to laughing at ourselves. One of them is dark humor: if your life is in hell or if you feel miserable have a good laugh and perhaps you feel better.
 
The dark humor of  “Ahmed and Salim“, a South Park-style cartoon that makes fun of Palestinian terrorists, is supposed to mock terrorists without ridiculing Muslims, and may  provoke your uproarious burst of laughter, boosting  your blood stream to such a degree that your health will only benefit from it.
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The Israeli team Tom Trager and Or Paz create this provocative humoristic animated web series, describing the life of an Arab arch-terrorist and his two sons ‘Ahmed and Salim’.  Their web sitcom is becoming increasingly popular with surfers, while at same time stirring much controversy,  see here.
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 Well the United Arab Emirates officials have blocked the Israeli-based cartoon Ahmed and Salim from showing on YouTube in that country. Nothing new about that, see here. They blocks anything from Israel, a true Pavlov reflex.
 
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 Tania Tabar’s article “Israeli ‘South-Park’ style cartoon mocks Arabs” was published by Menassat, a Lebanese site. The verb ” to mock” is a trap of pejorative meanings. And indeed, the author in his indirect way, quickly take advantage of that , to show us that dark humor, despite being directed only against Arab terrorism, is synonym of global racism against all the Arabs in the world…Nothing new about that either, see here. I hope that  the learned author didn’t mean that all the Arabs are terrorists..?
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 But if we want to delve into carton dark humor, then the omnipresent Google search provides us with his statistical insight about the verb “to mock”.  The phrase “Cartoons mocks anyone” in Google’s search,  outputs,  that mocking Arab terrorism is not only their  privilege but that anyone mocks  anyone and anything… not a great surprise.
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 The first 20 entries, from1,050,000 entries in 0.29 seconds, upgraded our knowledge with titles like” Iranian TV Mocks U.S., Britain“, “Washington Post Cartoon Mocks Pentecostal Speaking in Tongues“, “ Crude Palestinian Cartoons Mock America“, “Christians AGAINST Cartoons“… to cite only a few, until the last unknown entry.
 
So the Israeli team’s contribution is only a drop in the sea of mocking cartoons. A Palestine blogger, Sameh Akram Habeeb, suffering from a mysterious blindness about what dark humor is declare  “These videos are dangerous and full of lies”…”I’ve never met someone like the cartoon character of Ahmed and Salim’s father. And of course, the authors never once mention the existence of thousands of Palestinian prisoners. “…see here.
 
To this can only be said that I too didn’t met such a real character. They live only in the realm of dark humor, made in Israel by Tom Trager and Or Paz. Only there you met them, ridiculous… or as they said.. ”  if you can take a good look at them without being afraid. Ahmed and Salim are just two nice naive kids who are just trying to make their terrorist father happy. ” see here.
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Their real counterpart, a relative small group of Palestinian terrorist live in our real live, hiding in their own natural darkness. To  perpetuate their terroristic goals they dond’ need any sense of humor. …, and as to the Palestinian prisoners: don’t do terrorism and there will be no need to imprison them, mister Habeeb.
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I like Google’s Chrome browser

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I never post anythings about browsers. But this time, for Chrome, the brand new beta Google browsers, I made an exception. The cause is that I like his spartan almost ‘nude’ graphic look . Usually the graphic look of all the important browsers like IE7 , Firefox3 , Opera9.5 and Safari   is based on the same graphical principles: like in a good car design all the steering tools are crowded  around the driver seat to achieve maximum availability and comfort.
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'Ghost World',Clowes
 
To my great surprise Chrome  does exactly the opposite, there is nothing to see, the design is minimalist, the main tools being the tabs and the address bar, also serving as the search bar. Is this comfortable? Well after some surfing to understand ‘the ghost machine’, I forget about toolbars, status bar and explorer bar.They are hidden but you now where they are if you need them.
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The minimalist look of Chrome reminds me of Daniel Clowes’s comics ‘Ghost World’. The same neat not overcrowded line, the empty space in the drawings. Chrome’s release is supported by a comics booklet beautifully done by Scott McCloudl , explaining how the browser works.
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 My first impression was the incredible fast surfing experienced, something like surfing…with ease, in the fresh air, on vacancy, far away from the dreadfully heavily armed browsers.
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 Will all this be enough to storm the average user who is used to work with his own preferred browsers ? I guess that as a first step, like me, many Internet surfers will be impressed. It is up to Google to add more tools (the older browsers are equipped with), but with the same discrete and hidden design, not to interfering with the freshness of the surfing experience, wich is all the fun.

Cyber Attack, Google and the Georgian War

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In the new web 2.0 era, preparation for physical warfare is preceded by cyberattattacks and by cyberdefence.

Here is the Georgian’s war cyberdefence ‘provided’ by Google, (from InformationAge)

…”Yesterday, it emerged that the company had removed details of all roads, towns and cities in Georgia from its Google Maps online mapping service, as well as from the maps of neighbouring countries Azerbaijan and Armenia. According to the Azerbaijan Press Agency, the relevant maps went blank as soon as fighting broke out. However, satellite information was still available earlier today.

Several observers highlighted the fact that Google co-founder Sergey Brin is Moscow-born.

Meanwhile, Google is involuntarily providing cyber-refuge to Georgian web sites that have been disrupted by Russian hackers. Georgian news site Civil.ge  (now restored) relocated to a domain on Google’s Blogger blogging infrastructure after a cyber-attack, reportedly originating in Russia, took the web site down.

Even Georgia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is using the Blogger infrastructure to disseminate information:see here “…… For the full article see here. For the map see here.

As for the Cyberattacks, the NYT published yesterday (August 12, 2008) that …

….”Weeks before bombs started falling on Georgia, a security researcher in suburban Massachusetts was watching an attack against the country in cyberspace.”…

An image from the Web site of the Georgian Parliament after it had been defaced showing Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili together with leaders of the Nazi regime

An image from the Web site of the Georgian Parliament after it had been defaced showing Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili together with leaders of the Nazi regime

   

Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks in Lexington noticed a stream of data directed at Georgian government sites containing the message: “win+love+in+Rusia.”

Other Internet experts in the United States said the attacks against Georgia’s Internet infrastructure began as early as July 20, with coordinated barrages of millions of requests — known as distributed denial of service, or D.D.O.S., attacks — that overloaded and effectively shut down Georgian servers.

Researchers at Shadowserver, a volunteer group that tracks malicious network activity, reported that the Web site of the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, had been rendered inoperable for 24 hours by multiple D.D.O.S. attacks. They said the command and control server that directed the attack was based in the United States and had come online several weeks before it began the assault.

As it turns out, the July attack may have been a dress rehearsal for an all-out cyberwar once the shooting started between Georgia and Georgia. According to Internet technical experts, it was the first time a known cyberattack had coincided with a shooting war. See here the full article.

So, perhaps the Holy Grail of anticipating an imminent war, is to monitor unusual Internet activity  on the globe, before there is any real troops displacement

Georgia war 2008

Georgia war 2008

Russian soldiers on top of an APC pass by a burning house on the way to Tskhinvali, capital of Georgian

Russian soldiers on top of an APC pass by a burning house on the way to Tskhinvali, capital of Georgian