spread your thoughts

The experiment with the 5 monkeys

2010-11-04T21:45:00.000-07:00

Watch carefully the below video. It is related to a experiment conducted to monkeys and it concludes valuable insights regarding the way the force of fear and terrorism by "some persons, communities etc." impacts on the human discretion and consciousness.

It is very interesting!!! It also includes Greek subtitles, hope not to bother the non-Greek visitors!!! :-)

Tell me your thoughts about it!

Source: Tromaktiko

Greek Poets

2010-10-27T19:29:00.000-07:00

Pool of Spirit releases a new column wanting to introduce you in the magic of Greek poetry named "Greek poets". We will present greek poems and a brief history of the poets.

Hope to enjoy it! I am waiting your comments!

The first poem is from Yiannis Ritsos (Monemvasia 1 May 1909 - Athens 11 November 1990). He was a left-wing activist and an active member of the Greek Resistance during World War II.

Born to a well-to-do landowning family in the Monemvasia, Ritsos suffered great losses as a child. The early deaths of his mother and his eldest brother from tuberculosis, the commitment of his father who suffered with mental disease and the economic ruin of losing his family marked Ritsos and affected his poetry. Ritsos, himself, was confined in a sanitarium for tuberculosis from 1927 - 1931.

Greek Scene

He dismounted, hitched his horse to the huge mulberry tree, took a leak.
The horse was looking at him. He slapped its neck.
“We’re young,” he said.
The sun was calling out among the osiers.
The cicadas were coming on strong.
The fig tree’s shadow banged against the stones.
A huge red sail was flapping above the plane trees.
The horse was twitching its ears, sometimes the one,
sometimes the other, while below,
two young boatmen were rolling the huge iron barrel along the road.

Samos, August 19, 1963

Source: Wikipedia, Aurora

What is fractal?

2010-10-27T19:18:00.000-07:00

A fractal is "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is a reduced-size copy of the whole," a property called self-similarity. Roots of mathematically rigorous treatment of fractals can be traced back to functions studied by Karl Weierstrass, Georg Cantor and Felix Hausdorff in studying functions that were continuous but not differentiable; however, the term fractal was coined by Benoît Mandelbrot in 1975 and was derived from the Latin fractus meaning "broken" or "fractured." A mathematical fractal is based on an equation that undergoes iteration, a form of feedback based on recursion.

A fractal often has the following features:

It has a fine structure at arbitrarily small scales.
It is too irregular to be easily described in traditional Euclidean geometric language.
It is self-similar (at least approximately or stochastically).
It has a Hausdorff dimension which is greater than its topological dimension (although this requirement is not met by space-filling curves such as the Hilbert curve).
It has a simple and recursive definition.

Because they appear similar at all levels of magnification, fractals are often considered to be infinitely complex (in informal terms). Natural objects that are approximated by fractals to a degree include clouds, mountain ranges, lightning bolts, coastlines, snow flakes, various vegetables (cauliflower and broccoli), and animal coloration patterns. However, not all self-similar objects are fractals—for example, the real line (a straight Euclidean line) is formally self-similar but fails to have other fractal characteristics; for instance, it is regular enough to be described in Euclidean terms. Images of fractals can be created using fractal-generating software.

Examples

7 first steps of the building of the von Koch curve in animated (Author: António Miguel de Campos)

A class of examples is given by the Cantor sets, Sierpinski triangle and carpet, Menger sponge, dragon curve, space-filling curve, and Koch curve. Additional examples of fractals include the Lyapunov fractal and the limit sets of Kleinian groups. Fractals can be deterministic (all the above) or stochastic (that is, non-deterministic). For example, the trajectories of the Brownian motion in the plane have a Hausdorff dimension of 2.

Chaotic dynamical systems are sometimes associated with fractals. Objects in the phase space of a dynamical system can be fractals (see attractor). Objects in the parameter space for a family of systems may be fractal as well. An interesting example is the Mandelbrot set. This set contains whole discs, so it has a Hausdorff dimension equal to its topological dimension of 2—but what is truly surprising is that the boundary of the Mandelbrot set also has a Hausdorff dimension of 2 (while the topological dimension of 1), a result proved by Mitsuhiro Shishikura in 1991. A closely related fractal is the Julia set.

Source: Wikipedia

Couette Cell for Demonstrating Laminar Flow

2010-10-27T17:55:00.000-07:00

This is a very interesting training material of engineering/physical sciences. This apparatus was developed by Prototype Machinist, John DeMoss and Dr. Kevin Cahill of the Department of Physics and Astronomy. It costs 450$ and you can buy it from here

This apparatus is an effective and safe educational tool or conceptual aide that displays the properties of laminar flow. The apparatus is designed to for easy operations and cleaning and provides great visual, real-time display of laminar flow. Students and educators will enjoy using the apparatus while gaining valuable knowledge of fluid dynamics.

What is laminar flow?
When a fluid (gas or liquid) flows in a defined manner with distinct paths it is said to be in laminar flow. Laminar flow is a fundamental physical phenomenon that occurs frequently in everyday life. However, the concept of laminar flow can sometimes be difficult to put into context when discussing fluid dynamics. Turbulent flow on the other hand may be a little easier to explain as the only requirement is that there is no order to the fluids fluctuations. When attempting to illustrate the properties associated with laminar flow this apparatus is most effective.

How it works

This apparatus allows for the visual examination of a fluid undergoing laminar flow. Initially, within the apparatus, various colored droplets are suspended in a fluid and all are in a state of equilibrium where the different fluids are distinctly separated. When the apparatus is rotated the fluids revolve in a controlled manner and the droplets seem to become completely intermixed yet still divided from the outer fluid. After several rotations the apparatus is then operated in the reverse direction. Since the Reynolds number within this apparatus is less then one, an almost complete reversal of the previous laminar flow is undertaken. The result is that after the same amount of rotations in the opposite direction, the droplets return to their initial, distinctly separated, forms.

What the video by click the image below to take more insight. The video was filmed at the University of New Mexico - Physics Department.

Google's auto-complete function

2010-10-26T15:55:00.000-07:00

Source: FailBlog

Lady Gaga broke Youtube View Records

2010-10-26T15:43:00.000-07:00

Lady Gaga has set a new record for YouTube.

The Bad Romance star has racked up more than one billion overall views of her material on the video sharing website. According to internet research company famecount.com her total currently stands at 1,002,734,757. That figure doesn't represent views of a single video.

It's not the first time Lady Gaga has set a new record online. Back in August she overtook Britney Spears to become the most followed person on Twitter. She recently became the first living star to break the 20 million Facebook fans barrier and remains the most popular living star on both sites.

Read more: BBC news

Sony Foam City

2010-10-26T15:21:00.000-07:00

Sony organized a fresh event for its new promotional campaign. The event took place in Miami and the purpose was the advertisement of a new digital camera model.

It was a really big party for the city. The biggest machine for foam production was deployed in the city's roads. It produced over 460 million litres of foam converting the city to a big bath tub!

The make off lasted 16 hours and the outcome was that below, click on the image to watch the final advert.

Source: Perierga.gr

Paranormal Activity 2

2010-10-25T21:14:00.000-07:00

Get ready for a long run of Paranormal Activity films. The second in the series broke box-office records with its premiere this past weekend. Opening weekend yielded $41.5 million in ticket sales, crushing box office runner-up Jackass 3D. Hit the jump for more.
Spread out over 4,500 screens, Paranormal Activity 2 beat the previous record for a supernatural horror movie. 2004's The Grudge was the previous record holder, with $39.1 million on its opening weekend.

Nearly half of Paranormal Activity's box office came from Friday screenings - perhaps due to the push for midnight screenings, a perfect time for a horror pic - making it one of the biggest Friday-loaded openings ever. Box Office Mojo is predicting that Paranormal Activity 2 will have a quick flame-out after such an enormous opening weekend, but even if that happens, the film is still firmly in the "win" column.

Interesting features:

Made for a modest $3 million, the film set records for the biggest R-rated midnight opening ever and the biggest R-rated opening night ever en route to terrorizing the weekend box office to the tune of $41.5 million and a No. 1 B.O. ranking.

An estimated $41.5 million on around 3,200 screens. It's hard to compare to the film's predecessor, which rolled into theaters gradually as it built momentum, but there may be no point: this is the highest ever 3-day opening weekend for an R-rated horror film, at least if the real number is not significantly lower than the estimate (the current record holder, 'Friday the 13th,' is less than $1 million off). It was also extremely front-loaded, making almost half of its weekend gross on Friday (including midnight showings, which took in over $6 million).

It is directed by first-time genre filmmaker Tod Williams ('The Adventures of Sebastian Cole,' 'The Door in the Floor') and literally starring a cast of unknowns: not only are the actors not famous, but Paramount has done their best to keep us from learning their names. It is a sequel to Oren Peli's sleeper indie hit 'Paranormal Activity,' which cost $15,000 and grossed $108 million domestically last fall.

Audience reactions:

See the video below

Source: IMBD

HP Slate 500 - Windows platform

2010-10-24T19:42:00.000-07:00

HP slate 500 is now here and it costs 799$! According to HP, "HP State 500 is the ideal PC for professionals who don't usually work at a traditional desk, yet need to stay productive in a secure, Familiar Windows environment. It is also intended for those who use custom application built for Windows".

HP slate 500 is considered the competitor of iPad. Even before iPad was officially announced, HP was showing off a prototype tablet on stage at CES 2010. Since then, the company and its slate have been in and out of public view, offering up videos, followed by rumors of delays and OS changes, further complicated by the company's merger with Palm.

At long last, an actual HP tablet is being officially released--but it may not be exactly what you'd expect. The HP Slate 500 Tablet PC is a 9-inch Windows 7 slate, aimed at business and industrial users, rather than casual consumers. In fact, it seems to be exactly the same product we obtained a series of leaked photos of several weeks ago, right down to the leather case and docking stand.

As HP had said before, it comes with Windows 7 and is aimed at corporate customers.

Specifications:

it weighs just 1.5 pounds, has an 8.9-inch multitouch display and two cameras, and it takes input from a stylus, which they're calling the HP Slate Digital Pen.

More specifically, the 8.9-inch LED-backlit display sports a 1,024x600-pixel resolution. The 500 comes with Windows 7 Professional installed, a 1.86GHz Intel Atom Z540 processor, and a 64GB solid-state drive. Also inside: an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 500, a combination stereo headphone-microphone jack, a VGA (video graphics array) front-facing Webcam, a 3-megapixel camera on the back, Bluetooth connectivity, and 802.11b/g/n wireless connectivity.

Input devices include an optional keyboard and optical mouse, as well as the HP Slate Digital Pen. The tablet also comes with Evernote, Adobe Reader, and Adobe Acrobat built in, along with some HP-branded software.

My consideration is that HP responded very slowly to the release of iPad, offering finally a different product from what it was initially announced. It aims on corporate and professional persons and not to everyday people, as iPad.This shows the weakness of both HP and Windows to provide an innovative and fair rival to Apple.

Source: CNET.com

A "Golden boy" against the economic recession

2010-10-24T18:40:00.000-07:00

Although, the uncertainty around its remaining in Manchester United and his injury which will leave him out for 3 weeks, Wayne Rooney achieved to surprise everyone. Everybody expected to see him at the sold list of the club.

In a dramatic change of events, Rooney - who wanted to leave United earlier this week - ended doubts over his future by signing a new five-year contract. From now, Rooney can leave Man U for 30 million pounds if certain targets are not met on a year-by-year basis.

Manchester United’s owners have reportedly pledged to give 100 million pounds to manager Sir Alex Ferguson to buy new players. The guarantee by the Glazer family had helped Ferguson to persuade striker Rooney to stay back at the club.

Against the economic difficulties, Rooney made a big deal achieving to sign a new contract. He is now the highest-paid player at United, overtaking defender Rio Ferdinand.

The striker, who was previously on 90,000 pounds per week, is now understood to be earning a basic salary in excess of 150,000 pounds per week.

Amazing volcano footage - See the video

2010-10-24T18:24:00.000-07:00

Three people went down into the Marum Volcano on Ambrym Island. They seiled approximately 500 meters within the caldera to the very edge of a huge lake of violently boiling lava. They provided a unique video.

Watch it below:

JR's way to art

2010-10-22T19:51:00.000-07:00

JR owns the biggest art gallery in the world. He exhibits freely in the streets of the world, catching the attention of people who are not the museum visitors. His work mixes Art and Act, talks about commitment, freedom, identity and limit.

After he found a camera in the Paris subway, he did a tour of European Street Art, tracking the people who communicate messages via the walls. Then, he started to work on the vertical limits, watching the people and the passage of life from the forbidden undergrounds and roofs of the capital.

JR creates "Pervasive Art" that spreads uninvited on the buildings of the slums around Paris, on the walls in the Middle-East, on the broken bridges in Africa or the favelas in Brazil. People who often live with the bare minimum discover something absolutely unnecessary. And they don't just see it, they make it. Some elderly women become models for a day; some kids turn artists for a week. In that Art scene, there is no stage to separate the actors from the spectators.

As he remains anonymous and doesn't explain his huge full frame portraits of people making faces, JR leaves the space empty for an encounter between the subject/protagonist and the passer-by/interpreter.

This is what JR is working on. Raising questions...

JR currently works on 2 new projects: Wrinkles of the City which questions the memory of a city and its inhabitants and Unframed, which reinterprets in huge formats photos from important photographers taken from the archives of museums.

Some pictures of his creation around the world:

More info: JR official website

A Chinese casino built by 218,792 playing cards!

2010-10-22T19:33:00.000-07:00

Artist Bryan Berg is the only known person who makes a living by building playing card sculptures. Although he’s a Harvard-educated architect, Berg claims he learned all his techniques the old-fashioned way—through trial and error.

The pictures below show his sculpture created by 218,792 playing cards. The American architect broke his own Guinness World Record! It was the most demanding and time-cunsuming sculpture ever built by Bryan Berg, he used 4,051 packs of cards and it took him 44 days to complete it.

His creation is part of the Venetian Macau's exhibition and it comprises an attractive attraction for the visitors.

A little more about him:

Trained as an architect, Bryan Berg is the only known person to make a living building structures with freestanding playing cards. He uses no tape, glue, or tricks, and his method has been tested to support 660 lbs. per square foot.

Berg earned a Professional Degree in Architecture from Iowa State University in 1997, and served on the design faculty there for three years. In 2004, Berg earned his Master of Design Studies from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Berg has stacked cards for corporate special events, public relations campaigns, and science and children's museums in many U.S. cities, Canada, Europe, and Asia. Berg's clients have included Walt Disney World, a Lexus commercial, Procter & Gamble, American major league baseball and hockey, and the San Francisco Opera among others. He also participated in a music video by The Bravery, playing a lonely man who builds a fantasy world out of cards.

In 2004, Guinness created a record category for World's Largest House of Freestanding Playing Cards to recognize a project Berg built for Walt Disney World, a replica of Cinderella's Castle. In 2010, the record was renewed by himself using 4051 sets of cards, over 218,000 cards, and built in 44 days, a replica of the Venetian Macao.

Source: Perierga.gr, Wikipedia

Ping Pong - Special point

2010-10-21T20:51:00.000-07:00

Who said that Ping Pong is not spectacular sport?

See the video:

London's tube network meltdown!

2010-10-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

Tube bosses were under pressure today to launch a full inquiry into why thousands of passengers were trapped in tunnels during two days of travel misery this week.

Monday's Jubilee line power failure saw 2,000 passengers forced to walk for 20 minutes along the track between St John's Wood and Baker Street after being stranded for more than two hours. Three trains were stuck between Baker Street and St John's Wood, while a fourth was stranded at Swiss Cottage. A fifth was stalled at Westminster.

Yesterday's passengers were stranded because of a defective engine on the Victoria line between Seven Sisters and Finsbury Park stations. Jo de Bank, from passenger watchdog London TravelWatch, said: It has been a terrible two days. TfL needs to explain what has happened.

Learn more: London Standard Evening

Social Network 2010 (official trailer)

2010-10-21T20:32:00.000-07:00

Click below to watch the official trailer of the movie and read the plot.

An attack from the Facebook's founder to "Social Network"

2010-10-21T19:44:00.000-07:00

Mark Zucherberg, founder and chief executive of Facebook criticised the film "Social Network".

He stated that it doesn't reflect the real history of Facebook's invention. He also noted that he will not have an intention to watch the movie because it "portrays him as an isolated loner who creates the social networking site to make himself popular".

Finally, he claimed that he is against the suggestion provided by the film, that he created Facebook in order "to get girls, or wanted to get into clubs”, and that he was dumped by a girlfriend shortly beforehand".

"In reality, he said, he has been with girlfriend Priscilla Chan since before he founded Facebook".

Source: London Evening Standard

A decrease in the number of successful applicants in UK univesities

2010-10-21T19:32:00.000-07:00

This year, up to 200,000 students were rejected from UK universities. "The last time there was a similar rejection rate was in 1995!".

In addition, there was a record in the number of applicants this year, more than 680,000 students applied for a place. That figure depicts an increase of 7,5% comparing to the last year's number of applicants which was 633,000.

Only 75% of them succeeded to take an offer while the previous year the percentage of success was 75%.

In addition, the number of places available for 2011-2012 will may be reduced due to budget cuts by the educational institutes.

Source: London Evening Standard

Totally Awesome Fireworks Montage!

2010-06-27T20:20:00.001-07:00

Fireworks everywhere...

The Asch Conformity Experiment (Greek Subs)

2010-06-27T20:18:00.000-07:00

A approval of the admass' theory.

Watch the video below..:

The iPhone 4 (to be continued...)

2010-06-27T20:16:00.000-07:00

Video from the queue at Apple's Palo Alto store:

The Longest tennis match ever!

2010-06-23T18:31:00.000-07:00

This match was stopped due to light at exactly the 10 hour mark, having been played over the course of two days.

During this match several records were broken including:

Most aces in a match: John Isner
Longest Match Ever: 10 hours
Most games in a match
Most games in a set: 118

They will return to play again on Thursday (a third day of play) when the Queen herself is expected to attend the championships at Wimbledon for the first time in 33 years back in 1977 when Britain's own Virginia Wade won the title.

IPhone 4 release day!

2010-06-23T17:28:00.000-07:00

Today is the IPhone 4 release day and a many Apple enthusiasts, like Justin Wagoner, are waiting for several hours outside the Apple store in USA, Japan, Germany, France and United Kingdom! Many people have "camped" outside the Regent street's Apple store in London.

Justin Wagoner made the record again! He has camped for nine days outside of the Dallas' Apple store!!! Watch the video...

BP comedy!

2010-06-10T16:12:00.001-07:00

Iphone 4G specifications

2010-06-07T15:26:00.000-07:00

Watch the video:

Euro 2016

2010-05-29T02:48:00.000-07:00

France beat Turkey and Italy to stage Euro 2016

France have beaten Turkey and Italy for the right to stage the European Championship in 2016.

France previously staged the tournament in 1960 and were hosts again in 1984, winning it with a team captained by Michel Platini, the Uefa president.

The French, hosts and winners of the 1998 World Cup, beat Turkey by just a single vote after Italy were eliminated in the first round of voting.

Euro 2016 will feature 24 countries playing 51 matches over one month.

Turkey rejected the suggestion that it represented a risky option after being pipped 7-6 in the final round of voting.

"We are devastated. This was our third bid so it is not much consolation to know that we lost by a small margin," said Turkey's Euro 2016 bid manager Orhan Gorbon.

The 2016 event will feature 24 countries for the first time, up from 16 in 2012, as France becomes the first country to stage the European Championship three times.

Source:

BBC news

Teen werewolves!!!

2010-05-24T13:52:00.000-07:00

After the EMOs there is the next step...werewolves...

Twilight is nearby us..!

Lizard-cent like 50 Cent!

2010-05-18T16:33:00.001-07:00

Haiti earthquake-Video from the palace!

2010-05-17T08:53:00.000-07:00

2010-05-06T18:28:00.000-07:00

Alex Jones' interview about Greece Part2 (with Greek subs)

2010-05-06T18:26:00.000-07:00

Alex Jones' interview about Greece Part1 (with Greek subs)

A smart house in Hong Kong!!!

2010-04-26T14:05:00.000-07:00

It has 23 different rooms within 24 sq. ft.! It is a real transformable flat!

2010-04-20T18:57:00.000-07:00

Web search engines: Are they “info-mediaries” or “censor-mediares” manipulated by “invisible forces”?

Whatever browser you use to access the Internet, (Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Safari etc.) there is a search engine’s bar where you type keyword to reach the worldwide information database. The direct typing of a URL is, any longer, an unusual and rare action. Ten years ago, I remembered myself typing, randomly, URLs on the browser. Nowadays, this is an old-fashioned method. “Infomediaries” have changed the way of browsing. What are the impacts of web search engines in our life? Are there “invisible forces” which interfere against the “neutrality” of the Internet?

We are living in the Information age lead by the Internet. A virtual world is out there and counts over 1.7 billion “cytizens”. It reflects somehow our physical world’s picture. Analogically to the global population, Asia (over 738million users) and Europe (418 million users) incorporate the highest Internet user population followed by North America. The majority of Western civilization’s people have created a personal colony on the Web. Moreover, the penetration rates depict a clear dominance of North America (74.2%), with Oceania/Australia (62.4%) and Europe (52.0%) to follow. On the other hand, only 6.8% of the overall population has internet access in Africa!

From 2000 to 2009, the global penetration growth rate reached 380%! This networked overpopulation affects the procreation of our digital offspring, the websites. The amount of them is still an obscure and undiscoverable issue. Every day, some of them come into this world and others depart from it. The social networking has contributed in this scene. There are sources which argue that there are up to 206.7 million sites and some search engines claim that they have indexed over 700 million websites.

The only sure factor in all these statistics provided above is that the role of web search engines has become extremely vital in our life. The web anarchy had to be controlled in some way. So, like in every other type of community, humans “invented” and applied laws though mechanisms. These mechanisms manage the existing information overload with a new kind of lawyers, named “infomediaries” like Google, Yahoo, and Bing (Microsoft). They facilitate our information search “giving” us, implicitly, access to the Net.

The applied regulations are structured around “spiders” which use algorithms to crawl websites’ contents, as in the case of Google. On the other side, in the case of Yahoo, there is an “indexing department” where employees are playing the role of “cyber lawyer”. In both cases, mathematics and human interpretation embed subjectivity and delusions. As Thomas Brackett cites “one of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation”.

Is it irrelevant the fact that the Google’s slogan is “Don’t be evil”? It is logical sequent to wonder about how accurate and reliable their search results are and which “invisible forces” manipulate them. The hot supporters of the democratic nature of the Web are under examination like those who were claiming about TV and radio’s empowering capacities during 1920s.

Academic and business world is concerned about the search engines’ biases. There is wariness about the general practices of crawling, indexing and ranking and the limitations of the human made algorithms that they adopt. Google makes three to four hundred algorithmic changes affecting the ranking sequence. They argue that this is part of their philosophy trying to optimize continuously its optimization. On the other hand, a dark side of search engines’ indexing policy exists. The search engine optimization (SEO) engages the firms’ marketing departments in an attempt to dominate online. For some of them, there is an unfair competition because “the big fish eat the small one”.

On one hand, the location of the website, the number of “backlinks” and the “PageRank” metric play an important role in the page’s indexing. The “backlinks” refer to the number of other Web sources which reference your page, while the “PageRank” is associated with the reputation of the linked sites. On the other hand, some search engines allow you to pay for a high ranking position or SEO services. At the same time, these companies (like Bing) argue that for hacking reasons they hide part of their policy.

In summary, the whole “idea” of the internet has been rapidly changed after the entrance of the commercialization notion in its potentials. Commercial exploitation of the Net was evolved as a consequence of the network effects. As more users are connected to this medium the potential of it is increasing. Nowadays, every organization’s Marketing department is staffed by employees responsible for online strategy (advertisement or commerce).

Firms are part of the “cyber game” and try to be the champions. If a company achieves to be ranked high in a famous search engine like Yahoo, then its future is seems to be brilliant. This game takes place constantly and involves unfair competing practices. Enterprises hire web experts in an attempt to “scupper” its rivals. Their goal is to be ranked higher than other companies even if their products and services are not so relevant to the user’s initial keywords.

On the other hand, firms which provide search services are seeking for profit respectively. For example, “AdWords” is Google’s advertising flagship and its main source of revenues. It offers promotional services for organizations which would like to advertise their products on the Web. According to these, the engines’ results are biased, many times the first page of them is full of commercial websites and some of them are not so relevant to what you are looking for.

Taking as an example Google.com, it doesn’t promote its search services explicitly but there is everywhere a Google’s advertisement. What I mean by this is the fact that by typing “Search engines” the results don’t include Google’s engine in the first page. On the other hand, it depicts Altavista, Bing and Lycos which constitutes its competitors.

The role of governments

Other forces like governments influence search engines’ policies. The investigation of the social, economic and political motivations, hidden behind them, is very interesting.

A recent experiment assessed the behavioral bias of people using the search engines. They designed an interface, same to Google engine but they programmed it to reverse the Google’s normal relevance order to examine the changes in users’ options. The experiment demonstrated the partially bias of the people who continued to trust the sites that were resulted firstly in the sequence. This phenomenon constitutes a social impact of the search engines which exploit the “statistical truth” in which the user is looking for the first satisfied result to his query without making a deeper research.

Search engines have changed the way that people are searching and evaluate the information. Users don’t access even the third screen of thousand/million results. They have badly camped in the offered ease of access and it is pretty painful for them to read a long article or book. We can claim that, generally, search engines have “redirect” the way of thinking. A couple of years before, a researcher had to spend a lot of time inside libraries to find the appropriate sources of his topic. Nowadays, a few minutes search is able to give you a lot of insights in a particular issue.

In 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche suffered from lack of concentration and he decided to buy a typewriter in order to keep him focused. After a period, he managed to write his thoughts even with his eyes closed. Some time, a friend of him sent a letter where he argued that the typewriter had affected the way of depicting his thoughts. The way of writing was more telegraphic and tight. Nietzsche responded to him by saying: “You are right our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.” Likewise, our search equipment influences our reading style and the form of the information we expect to find!

The role of search services providers

Furthermore, a primary source of bias stems from the fact that search engines belong to commercial enterprises which seek profits. Their revenues derive from the bargaining of the informational treasure which is stored within their databases. An example of this bargaining process is that of the endless conflicts between Google and Chinese government.

In 2006, Google decided to “censor itself” by excluding results from its Chinese version, Google.cn. These results were reflecting sensitive terms and web sites. Hence, topics such as “Independence for Taiwan” and the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre are filtered and they have controlled results. Even BBC was blocked at the beginning! “Google is a business, businesses tend to want to maximize profits” Rich C, Skye and Bonn replied. It was a mandate from Google’s “huge customer”, China. In order to avoid its withdrawal, Google responded because, otherwise, it could be a great blow to its reputation leaving the most rapidly developing Internet society. China counts over 384 million internet users by December of 2009.

“While removing search results is inconsistent with Google's mission, providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission…” Google statement argued on BBC news.

Moreover, the struggle between the most profitable company in this field and the most internet populated country in the world, China, continues to draw the media’s attention. In January, a series of security infrastructure attacks took place in China. Gmail accounts which belong to Chinese activists were target and hacked stealing intellectual property. Chinese Government has restricted the results of queries including “human rights” and other sensitive topics related to activism.

In addition, a fake Google search engine named “Goojje.com” was emerged. It is a website created by a female Chinese student that looks like the Google.com and it is clear that it has imitated the Google’s logo. All these incidents strain the relations between these two global giants.

On 23th of March, Google took an evolutional decision to stop censoring its search engine’s results by redirecting the visitors of the Chinese version, Google.cn, to a new direction, Google.com.hk. This is an attempt to refocus on its mission which aims to offer uncensored results and overcomes the Chinese restricted laws. This is a risky decision with unpredictable consequences. Already, Chinese government is disappointed because it argues that Google broke a “written promise”. This promise refers to the agreement of filtering its results following the government’s suggestions. The cyber war is under way!

Countries’ impacts

Another source of bias is the censorship that particular countries dictate as a result of political and historical issues, diverse culture, and social norms. Search engines are not free worldwide; they are hosted by local Internet service providers (ISP). Therefore, they must comply with the national laws and follow the government’s suggestions to remain in a particular country. For example, Baidu.Inc is a Chinese search services provider which includes 700 million pages but it censors its content in line with the national regulation.

A very interesting creation which depicts the consequences of national censorship is a website named “CenSEARCHip”. It gives you the opportunity to compare the different results of search engines between four countries, China, France, Germany and United States. Apart from China, France and Germany have followed censorial practices, for example they have both blocked neo-Nazi hate sites. Deductively, every nation tries to hide historical incidents or other sensitive data encroaching the free flow of information by applying mandatory laws to control the government criticism.

Religions’ impact

Furthermore, the censorship has not “escaped” from the religious intervention. There are sophisticated search engines called “religious search engines” which follow “rules” emanated from a particular religion. Apart from Google, Yahoo and Bing, there are Christian, Islamic and Jewish search services! Seekfind.org is a known example of a Christian search engine.

A recently released Islamic search engine is ImHalal.com. ImHalal.com has Muslims as a target group of users providing safety "to surf the internet without the fear of accidentally encountering sinful material". The engine rates the searcher’s query using a “haram scale” from 0 to 3. “Haram” means that the content of the information is against the religious canons of Islam. The opposite word is “Halal”. According to the scale’s result, it informs the user for the degree of risk to access the results. For example, if your query rates from 0 to 2 “haram”, you can decide to move forward or not, but if it rates 3 then it yields a message:

"Oops! Your search inquiry has a haram level of 3 out of 3! I would like to advise you to change your search terms and try again"!

It doesn’t censor information about topics which criticizes Islam like the previous Muslims’ search engines (like IslamicGoogle.com) but it exhibits gender bias. The most significant thing is that it rates polygamy as “haram” when it is sanctioned by the Koran!

A “taste” from the Future

It is difficult to forecast the future progress of the internet search trends but it looks like a dominance of search engines’ providers until something revolutionary happens. The whole structure of online information’s distribution is structured around the “appetites” of three or four famous “infomediaries”. These are the gateways to reach the global news!

The online neutrality seems to be a weak tie under those conditions. Go further, what do you think will be the result of a forthcoming merger between Google, Yahoo and Bing? Historically, oligarchy or monarchy tends to be linked with the “black pages” of humanity, especially, for free speech and information distribution.

A science fiction’s scenario could be a reality in the future. A similar story like what George Orwell describes in his novel, “Nineteen Eighty-Four”. Now, search engines are absolutely inextricable part of our information searching. They are in our life and they have implicitly changed the way we are looking for, evaluate and read informational sources. “Don’t be evil” (Google’s slogan) could be linked with the phrase “Big brother is watching you” which was part of the government’s propaganda in the novel. A complete surveillance of global information will change the Google’s slogan to “I’m an evil” and search engines will substitute the state’s abused power.

Generally, experimentation with search engines is a very interesting activity. By inputting “online shopping” you notice that both Bing and Yahoo present “Tesco” in the first page’s results. Also, Google and Lycos bring “ebay” and “overstock.com”. It is not a fortuitous event because if you look carefully in the sponsors’ bar, they are also there!

Deductively, the democratic nature of the internet world is under tribulation and brings to mind a chaotic and irrational phenomenon due to its creation and evolution by and for “(ir) rational men”. “All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth”, Friedrich Nietzsche.

Conclusion

The Net is not an isolated world; it is used by humans and operates like our physical world. Subjectivity and universality of Web’s information medium is a “functional delusion”. “Invisible forces” like governments, profits, religious beliefs and others pull the strings and we must be aware of the censored search engines. Information overloads, and at the opposite, the “web regulations” to resolve them result in the increase of complexity.

The dominance of search engines as our information’s gateways is, inevitably, in progress and nobody is in the position to predict the consequences. Users are under challenge to find ways to bypass the “regulations”. “Everybody is sitting around saying, 'Well, jeez, we need somebody to solve this problem of bias.' That somebody is us. We all have to try to figure out a better way to get along”, Wilma Mankiller.

"Second Life" threats some people's First life!

2010-03-22T02:58:00.000-07:00

A COUPLE addicted to computer games let their real baby starve to death while raising a virtual daughter online.

Police said the couple spent up to12 hours a day at internet cafes, leaving their three-month-old daughter home alone at their apartment in Suwon, South Korea.

Police said the couple became obsessed with living online and neglected their real lives, The Sun reports.

They raised an avatar baby through their profiles on a Second Life-style game called PRIUS, while their real daughter was given just one bottle of milk a day.

Father Kim Yoo-chul, 41, and mom Choi Mi-sun, 25, called the emergency services when they returned from one online session in September last year and found their daughter dead.

"We found she had passed away when we woke up in the morning," they said.

But cops became suspicious about how severely dehydrated the baby was.

A spokesman for the National Scientific Criminal and Investigation Laboratory, which carried out an autopsy on the girl, said, "she appears to have starved to death because she was not fed for such a long period of time."

The girl was initially well cared for by her grandmother but her health deteriorated after she moved back in with her parents.

Police tried to arrest the parents but they disappeared after the baby's funeral.

Authorities caught up with them Tuesday and charged them with child abuse and neglect.

The couple told police of their guilt after their arrests.

"Due to our sense of guilt, we have not been to a PC gaming room over these five months," they said.

Online games are massively popular in South Korea.

A 28-year-old man dropped dead recently after playing his favorite game Starcraft for 50 hours non-stop without eating or drinking.

Source: www.news.com.au

A giants' fight: Facebook vs. Google

2010-03-20T09:45:00.000-07:00

Facebook has overtaken Google to become the most visited website in America.

The site, only four years old and with more than 400 millions members, received 7.97 per cent of all Internet traffic while Google was just behind with 7.03 per cent, according to online analyst Hitwise, which said it was an "important milestone".

The figures also show Facebook enjoyed 185 per cent more visits last week than in the same week last year.

Facebook was the most-used site over Christmas and the New Year as users went online to communicate with friends and family. Users spent an average of more than five and a half hours on networking sited in December.

Source: London Evening Standard: Wednesday 17 March 2010

2010's Earth hour

2010-03-11T19:59:00.000-08:00

I invite you to participate in the global "green action" supported by WWF.

This year's goal is to gather one billion people!

The WWF's announcement is cited below:

"On Saturday 27 March 2010 at 8.30pm, we want a billion people around the world to switch off their lights for one hour – WWF’s Earth Hour. Show you care about climate change."

You can sign up by visiting the official website and choosing your country:

http://www.earthhour.org/Homepage.aspx

Quote:

2010-03-08T07:06:00.000-08:00

I hate people who claim to look like them in order to accept you! Some of them have tried, from ancient years, to institutionalize this idea by embedding it in the so-called "religions!

8/3/2010
G.Michos

Diving into the social networking abyss: the Great Unknown

2010-03-06T20:09:00.000-08:00

The social nature of the internet has evolved extremely from the beginning of the 21st century. Various improvements of the internet technology, like Web 2.0, have transformed it to a complete social platform. Our “virtual world” constitutes an inextricable part of our social life and can now be “compared” to the real world. According to a report on social networking by Economist, if Facebook (over 350m users) were a real community it could be the third most populated country after China and India.

Consuming every-day a reasonable amount of time in the virtual society, surveys have revealed that we do less in our real life. Statistics presented in the 2007’s Virtual Worlds conference in San Jose showed that 60% of people don’t watch TV as much, 22% don’t sleep as much and 15% spend less time with friends and family. According to these data, social networking has tremendous impact on the psychological and social aspect of humanity.

Nowadays, scripts based on science fiction, like “Matrix” and “Avatar”, are more and more close to reality. People like escaping from their real life’s problems and participate in more convenient and enjoyable virtual environments. What is so attractive there? Some people create a virtual identity trying to extent their current reputation interacting with people all around the world. Others are trying to build a new identity (avatar) benefited by the impersonation feature of the Web.

Secrecy and invisibility is offered in the Internet with open hands. You can obtain various identities, change and destroy them as well. Remember that the first form of online socialization was the chat rooms full of common people presenting themselves as wealthy and models cheating each others.

However, this “opportunity” can create serious illusions. Max Ray Butler, a 37 years old hacker, was convicted of stealing nearly 2 million credit cards facing the longest hacking sentence in U.S. history (13-years). In his letter to the judge he stated that invisibility leads him to a self delusion. He was convinced that he wasn’t committing a crime losing touch with the responsibilities derive from the real society’s laws.

“I have a lot of regrets, but I think my essential failing was that I lost touch with the accountability and responsibility that comes with being a member of society. A friend of mine once told me to behave as though everyone could see what I was doing all the time. A sure way to avoid engaging in illegal conduct, but I guess I wasn’t a believer because when I was invisible, I forgot all about advice. I know now that we can’t be invisible, and that it’s dangerous thinking.”

Linking what Butler argued with the social aspect of the Internet, social networks offer space for invisibility, at least, in the form of lack of physical presence. This fact drives people to treat more loosely and underestimate the potential implications that cyber-actions can bring to themselves and the others.

In 2009, Domino’s reputation got in trouble when a video, showing its employees to enjoy violating the hygiene rules, was uploaded to Youtube and received immediately million views. Domino’s tried to recover using another social network, Twitter.

The “virtual side” of society becomes day per day more powerful and influential. The Internet speed facilitates to its rapid evolution even more speedily than the real life with uncontrollable pace. In some cases, our digital identity is more important because a survey revealed that 45% of U.S. employers are using social networking websites to screen candidates. Companies bet on your loosely behavior to examine your “second” hidden “identity”!

Furthermore, the word “network” embodies the notions of butterfly effect and systemic risk because when someone manages to gain access to your account, he or she has access to all the “nodes of your value chain” with unpredictable consequences not only for you but also for your contacts. Our “digital baggage” of information is likely to be a stimulus for curious people who are driven by the unawareness of the actual effect on you due to their invisibility.

It happened to a famous Indian designer, Pria Kataaria Puri, during 2009. While she was in London, her Hotmail and Facebook accounts were hacked. She realized it when suddenly her friends started messaging her about where they should wire the money; she wondered “Wire me what money?” The hackers’ goal wasn’t only to violate her privacy but they had further financial aims. They stole all her business contacts and they sent a message arguing that she was lost in London without her passport and she needed to send her money via Western Union.

She acknowledged that “the hacking business operates like a vicious cycle. The hackers use my account to gain personal information of my contacts and then try and hack into my contacts' accounts.” She added, “I cannot tell you the risk my personal and business life was put to as a result of what happened.”

Deductively, the only thing that remains “invisible” in the social networks is the unpredictable consequences of believing that you are absolutely invisible. According to Friedrich Nietzsche, “If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you” and the internet is a huge abyss. It relies on the edge of chaos. As more you believe that it is a harmless toy or a controllable social square for entertainment, as more it can turn against you.

The most muscle mouse you have ever seen!!!

2010-02-25T19:38:00.000-08:00

Have you ever wondered about to be married with a machine?

2010-02-06T18:31:00.000-08:00

Maybe, you believe that I got crazy and I need some rest and sleep but the problem is that I am absolutely fine but I don’t believe the same thing for our world out there!

Hermione, a 24-years old British girl, has unofficially engaged her laptop-Macbook Pro for about eleven months now. She argues that she is really in love with it and only the current law avoids her to married it. She takes part in an attempt to change the law, so, everyone can get married with his favorite dreamily machine.

His name is Alex, Hermione has computerized “him” to say “I love you” through a text-to-speech software. She quotes that “he always says that he couls say it fifty million times a day if he wanted to.”

Wake up at the Machine era! An era where the machines can substitute the human nature and can manipulate our emotions! An era, full of illusions stemmed from our insane delusions! The only point in this approach is that a machine cannot ever leave you but, on the other hand, it can cheat you, disappoint you and finally hide important documents and photos that you have “trust” in its hard disk after a blackout. In addition, if you try to be for a moment in her mind, then you can argue that a Trojan virus is something like the third person that can break down their relationship!

The aim of my article is not to criticize this girl but to “ring the bell” to our way of living and our society’s future. There is no point to blame her for something which is systematic and a result of “invisible forces” like companies and governments. This particular incident is an isolated phenomenon but which can be followed by others because I believe in “the butterfly effect” which supports that today subtle phenomena can lead to radical consequences in the future.

Moreover, don’t be a liar; it is true that all of us spend more and more time in front of our computers either due to our jobs or our entertainment reducing the interactions with others!

Wake up at the materialistic era! An era where liberal emotions have no place, marketing and advertisement stimulate our thoughts and emotions! They create new needs and destroy main human operations and rationality in favor of profits and reputation!

Finally, I want to mention that this announcement is one of a series of others that are associated with Apple products! That is not so normal! Don’t forget that in the previous month there was a reference about a man who managed to survive because of his iPhone in Haiti earthquake, “my iPhone saved my life” He argued! Maybe is a tactical propaganda of Apple, who knows?

Take care of yourself!

Have a nice day!

external source: www.everyjoe.com

Forgotten dreamers

2010-02-06T16:23:00.000-08:00

I won’t remind you of the death

Leaving you alone as I should,

A forgotten liberal dreamer

Looking for a soul getaway

You won’t remind me of the end

A voracious lizard is skulking

Breaking any timepiece as a lord,

A lord of time, hidden in the mirror

I will run away to escape

Seeking for a getaway

Nobody takes care of you

Don’t delude yourself my darling!

You are alone, you and yourself

It is a lot of time until now

That we are harboring fears

Fears and icebergs of illusions

It’s about time to dissipate them

The flinders of the mirror will hurt us

The time will be reversed radically

But trust me!

Death cannot influence us anymore

The end will disappear

There are no limitations in our freedom

In the forgotten dreamer’s freedom.

6/2/10

Quotation

2010-02-05T18:39:00.000-08:00

“Mankind is learning everyday more and more things about less and specific fields, so, finally we will learn everything about nothing”

Butterfly effect

2010-01-29T19:39:00.000-08:00

Waiting for the forthcoming sunrise

The incident was announced!

The birds ran away of the wind rapidly,

A stranger ferreted about in his pockets

He revealed a wet referenced note

He was calm and chaotically pensive

Smiling under the flash of lightning

-The night was evolving as a nightmare-

The city was encircled by the darkness

He continued to be happy

And then he turned to be worried

The spirit of his loneliness emerged

Suddenly, the birds returned back!

They tried to comfort him with songs

Songs of fairy creatures and lovely women,

-Then the night was evolving as a dream-

And then..? The evil of darkness appeared

So, he left gradually in a bundle of blue birds.

What a chaotic and blood-curdling feeling!

I was upset but I remember the incident

I was upset but somewhere nearby there

In the edge of insane thoughts!

It is absolutely clear that…

He was me, a stranger

I was him, a night liar, a figure

The incident was full of parallel lines

I remembered this weird note!

I found it in a bloody derelict road

Full of unexplained signs of lines

These lines that normalize our life

These lines that inhibit the sunrise

Those create myths of nightmare

Killing the nature of our existence

The existence of the existing interdependences

That ironically claim about our independence

Keeping us as victims in an incident cycle

Wondering about…

Being both happy and worried

The incidents of consecutive dead ends

That may lie in the edge of night

But maybe the night covers all the truths

Fearing for the forthcoming sunrise!

28/1/2010

G.M.