Peter's Blog

I was checking a book I would like to buy on Amazon – How Risky Is It, Really?: Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts. As delivery from US takes long and is expensive I’ve wanted to check price for Kindle version. It’s easy as Amazon is providing you with such table:

As you can see Kindle (electronic) edition is almost 3$ more than hardcover. Yes, let me say it again, hardcover. Not even a paperback. I don’t see great future for the forests as paper is so cheap that even bits are pricey in comparison. I don’t get it, really. But it was probably some big marketing head who devised this “clever” pricing plan, so I’m for sure not seeing some great idea behind it. Or maybe Amazon decided to support post office. Don’t know. It would remain complete mystery to me I’m afraid.

I’ve just read on Noise’s blog (PL) information that Paragon is offering some of their software for free! Head to their website and enjoy following apps (serial will be provided to you after filling short form):

• Partition Manager Free Edition
• Backup & Recovery Free Edition
• Rescue Kit Express (also for Mac – Rescue Kit for Mac® OS X)

If they would give away their NTFS for Mac® OS X 8.0 for free as well, I would be in ecstasy, but still it’s a bunch of great programs. I’m using Partition Manager and it’s pretty good. Now would gonna give a try to Backup & Recovery. If you like these tools you can consider becoming a fan of Paragon on Facebook.

I don’t have anything to do with these company and have no benefits for promoting them, just wanted to share info about possibility of having useful tools for free.

Today I’ve read about new bot, HoneyBot. It’s bot designed to use on IRC and Facebook chat. The way how it operates is both simple and clever. It enters the chat and starts chatting with two people (preferably with different sexes, it uses nickname analysis to distinguish it), then it passes text from one human to another, so there is no way that they would notice a bot, because they’re indeed talking with human being. Now bot is waiting for the link to be sent by one of parts and then changes it to its own directing to malicious page. Smart. So listen to your mother and don’t talk with strangers:)

Again thanks to Techcrunch I’ve learned about cool new Internet service – CC Everybody. It’s a blogging/forum service where you can start or reply to a post/thread by sending email to designated email address. You can even cc your personal @cceverybody.com address when you’re exchanging emails with your friends and entire conversation would appear on website. It’s quite cool, I’m thinking about using it to exchange funny pictures with my friends and family. I don’t know about storing email conversation there as everybody can see it, but maybe some discussions on general topics, why not. It’s still in beta, but Techcrunch offers 500 invitations, so if you’ll be fast you should be able to join. One thing that is annoying, as for me, is the fact that when you’ll send email to your designated @cceverybody.com address from the account you’ve supplied when registering, you still have to approve it on site before it would be published. Maybe it’s meant to provide you with more security, as you’ll have another chance to check if you really want to post this content. But I find it really unfriendly.

It reminded me about situation when I’ve sent a joke to everybody in my company. Not everybody found it funny and I’ve got a conversation with my boss. So be careful what you’re posting as it’s very hard (or rather impossible) to delete something from Internet.

If you want to post something on my page you can send email to: pczajkowski @ cceverybody.com (delete spaces).

From the article on TechCrunch I’ve learned about new book “The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World” by David Kirckpatrick. They’ve posted two excerpts there and in one of them you can read:
“In the first week of his sophomore year at Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg cobbled together an internet software program he called Course Match. The idea was to help students pick classes based on who else was taking them. If a cute girl sat next to you in Topology, you could look up next semester’s Differential Geometry course to see if she had enrolled in that as well. Hundreds of students immediately started using it.”

Yeah, it’s always good to make choices in such field like education basing on such critical factor as other attendants. I know that perspective of sitting in the lecture hall next to hot chick is tempting, but common. I wonder if such people are really concerned about education and I believe answer is clear. But actually I was witness of same choices. When I was studying at university I was working in Dean’s Office and one of my responsibilities was assignment students to groups. I’ve often spoken with young people (mainly girls, guys seemed to care less about such things) whose main concern was to be in same group just because they were sitting on the same bench in high school. It even was going so far that some of them were changing their course of study (for instance from Management to Administration), just to be in same group. It was always making me laugh and now I can see that it wasn’t only my Alma Mater, and even not only Poland, but it’s happening everywhere. World is about to end I’m telling you.

Anyway, I’ve read these excerpts and I’ve enjoyed them so much that I’ve pre-ordered this book:) It’s coming on June 15th, so there is a little wait, but looks like it’s totally worth it.

Today I’ve read article on Polish security portal Niebezpiecznik.pl about a guy who was searching for information about his debtor and accidentally found a file with list of over 1000 debtors of PKO BP (Polish bank), more here (unfortunately only in Polish). First he was accused that he obtained this file illegally by breaking into bank’s network, but police found no evidence for that and file was indeed indexed by search engines. So after charges have been dropped bank’s spokesman informed general public that this file was, as he called it, “deep hide” and was indexed just after 4 years. Nice explanation. I believe this “deep hide” was some complicated folder structure like teenagers are using to hide porn from the eye of their parents, example below:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\Document Parts\1033\hot_teenage_girls

Yep, this is indeed security at its best:) And let me use nasty comparison here, this time bank performed deep… throat.

I was reading some stories today (as every day) and on some picture I saw Gerardo Medina as infant. From the title one can read that till the age of 10 he thought that girl (Lina Medina) next to him on this picture is his sister. But she was his mother, she gave him a birth when she was 5. Below is the picture I’ve found and you can learn more from article on Wikipedia.

In such occasions I really wonder if world would ever stop to surprise me. And disgust me as well.

Today is the great moment in history of this blog. I’ve added Facebook‘s Like button (). Yes ladies and gentlemen from now on you can easily show which of my posts you like:P

I must add that this button is here thanks to article of Mr. Ruhani Rabin.

Today I’ve found funny picture where present president of USA Barrack Obama says (my own translation):
“In the moment of such tragedy and such pain we all are Polish”

Although I know what he meant, comment under the picture is still quite funny. Here is what it says:
“We’re all Polish… but not all have visas”
It’s old subject about Poland having big problem with US visas. I understand my nationals as US has no-visas traffic with smaller countries which sent a lot less army to help the US forces fight with terror. It reminds me words of one Bloodhound Gang’s song “We’re all equal unless you’re Canadian (Polish)”:)

Microsoft announced new KIN phones. You can see them below. Take a look at the one on the left and let me say WTF?