Peter's Blog

I’m reading Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy now (great book) and found this funny fragment.
Marge Saunders would drive to the Safeway every Saturday morning in the Volkswagen and upon her return ask her husband, “Would you like to help me bring in the groceries?” Bob Saunders would reply, “No.” Stunned, Marge would drag in the groceries herself. After the same thing occurred a few times, she exploded, hurling curses at him and demanding to know why he said no to her question.

“That’s a stupid question to ask,” he said. “Of course I won’t like to help you bring in the groceries. If you ask me if I’ll help you bring them in, that’s another matter.”

I love programmers way of thinking. It’s like in this joke:
Wife sent her husband to buy some groceries and said to him:
- Buy 10 eggs, if there would be pineapples buy two.
So guy gone to shop and asked seller:
- Do you have pineapples?
- Yes – said seller.
- So give me 2 eggs.

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.

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?

I’ve read about new service provided by GameCrush which is opportunity to play online with real girl, so you can chat with her while enjoying your favorite title (only on Xbox360 right now), more here. You even can choose between “flirty” and “dirty” mode when playing with beauty, interesting. I’ve decide to check it out, but failed. There is so big interest in it that I’ve got this page instead:

Are there really so many lonely men out there? Good advice, leave a console and get out. It’s better way to meet somebody.

UPDATE:
From GameCrush website:
“The GameCrush Public Beta is temporarily unavailable due to the incredible user response (more than 10,000 inquiries in five minutes). We are adding new servers to provide players with the best PlayDate experience possible. Games with GameCrush PlayDates start at $6.60 for ten minutes.”

I’m using Grooveshark as my Internet radio service now. I found it way more useful than Last.fm or Pandora, and it works in Europe without US VPN. You can even share your tracks as a links on Facebook and other sites. But this is not the point of this post. Today, for the first time since I’ve started using it, Grooveshark is experiencing downtime. But they’re doing it with smile. Check out the screenshot from their website!

Most famous Urban Legend for Mac computers is that there aren’t viruses for Mac OS. Wrong! There is at least one and it’s pretty cool actually:)

But seriously there are viruses for Mac, maybe not so common as for Windows systems, but still. So don’t bet on luck and install anti virus program.

If you like Mac vs. PC commercials, now you have all of them on one site. Enjoy!

Today I’ve received a call from my ISP, the lady who was talking with me offered me to change my current plan 15 Mb/s to new one 10Mb/s. She really made my day better. Still laughing when I think of it.

Just for the record, of course I’ve declined this “lucrative” offer:)