Peter's Blog

I’ve seen trailer to Virginity Hit the other day and must say that I’ve lost faith in humanity, again. Are teenagers really such stupid now that they’re willing to watch such stuff? For sure in High School I was watching, listening and reading a lot of bullshit, but there are limits. A movie about a guy who is about to loose his virginity, common. It’s supposed to be para-documentary, at least looks like it, but actors are so weak that one must be retarded to find it even partially true. I don’t know even why I’m wasting my time to write about it, maybe it’s just too much of bollocks for me and I’ve had to express myself to not explode. Ehh, lame times we’re living in. Trailer is below, if you’re still interested in watching it.

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 was really excited when ABC launched Happy Town. I thought that at last there would be horror TV series to follow. I’ve watched first episode and it was not bad. It had mystery, some suspense, town was like from Stephen King’s books, mysterious lady was hot. What else do you need from decent horror? And then in second episode it started to collapse. Focus was set to dilemmas of main characters more than to mystery and thrill. It started to be another typical American TV series, just in creepy setting this time (and not such creepy as well). I’ve decided to give it a chance and watched third episode, but it sucked even more. So no more Happy Town for me. It could be good, they’ve made it as usual. With Heroes at least first season was cool, then they’ve ruined it. With this series they’ve killed it in second episode. Shame.

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 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)”:)

I’ve seen Cop Out recently. I was really waiting to watch this movie, mostly because Kevin Smith has directed it. But also because of Mr. Bruce Willis, who, by the way, seems to be getting old a lot slower than other movie stars from his era. What can I say about this picture? Well, it was average. Average when comparing to other similar titles. But we’re talking about Kevin fucking Smith here, the man who brought us Clerks, Mallrats and Chasing Amy (yeah, I know that the last one is gay, but I really like this film). So when I’m trying to rate it from this angle I must say that movie was lame. Really, it’s not the right way Mr. Smith. I know that everybody must eat and do stuff they don’t necessary want to, but have to in order to pay rent. But please, there are better ways to earn money.
What is this movie about? Two really strange cops are getting suspended after disastrous action (BTW. black guy in cell phone costume is not funny, at all). One played by Willis must get money to be able to pay for his daughter’s wedding, so he is trying to sell his valuable baseball card (how original, we haven’t seen it in cinema before), but unlucky for him store he is visiting gets robbed and robbers took his card (one of the robbers is Stifler who also got better roles in his life). So they’re (he and his partner) chasing them in order to retrieve this precious sport gadget. Of course (what a surprise) it brings them to the main bad guy involved in the case they were working on before they’ve got suspended. And finale is of course happy end with big wedding and bigger disappointment. I’ve watched entire movie, this wasn’t the worst one I’ve ever seen, it’s not even in first ten of the worst ones. But as I really like Smith’s work and value him as screenwriter, director and actor, I was feeling betrayed after watching it.

P. S. Calling John McClane Jimmy is not cool. Not cool at all!

I was reading news on Polish portal gazeta.pl and at the bottom of the page, in entertainment section I’ve noticed this:

News with the picture is about shocking discovery. Polish actress Alicja Bachleda-Curus has been using the same purse for 5 years, and was even showing with it at official events. Wow! I’m shocked! It’s indeed complete faux pas. Ehh, looks like our world is about to end if such news are hitting main page of big portal.

As new Mac user I’m reading a lot of stuff about it. And I’ve realized that apps helping you to focus on some subject are becoming more and more popular. Just to name two there are: Concentrate and Think. They have only one purpose to isolate apps you need to work with at the moment and let you concentrate on your work, so you’re not being distracted by incoming mails, IM messages and so on. I wonder if people really hit this level that they can do it by themselves. When I have a work to do I’m just doing it and have no problems with paying attention. Or maybe users just want to feel like some writer or artist with only typewriter or easel in front of them, completely targeted at the subject. Maybe, but still I find it weird. But maybe I’m weird, not buying this entire “go to Starbucks to write a blog post” thing. Possible.

As I have new toy (MacBook), I need new software for it. As I’m a little paranoid about security (yeah, I know, there are no viruses on Mac) I’ve wanted to add some antivirus to my new system. I’ve worked with many such programs in the past, so I know that sometimes (or mostly) it happens that they’re slowing down computer. I’m new to Mac OS and very happy already about it performance, so I don’t want to ruin it. Obvious thing for me was to try some trial version, before I would buy it. As I’m using Norton on my desktop PC I’ve wanted to buy Symantec product also for Mac, I’ve didn’t noticed any trial version on their website, but didn’t gave up and called support. They’ve told me that indeed there is no trial, but I can buy it and return it if I’m not satisfied in 60 days. OK, it’s not bad I thought and was planning to buy it as soon as I would get back from work. When at home I’ve recalled that Kaspersky was about to release antivirus for Mac, so I’ve checked their site and yeah, there was trial. I’m using it right now and didn’t noticed any slowness (well, system is starting up and shutting down a little longer), so I would probably buy it after 30 days trial. Even though it’s 10$ more expensive than Norton.

Why companies are killing trial version? It’s so good method to sell the product.

Bruce Schneier is the person well known to everybody interested in IT security. Recently he published blog post about why two-factor authentication is not solving all security problems. For those who don’t know what this term means, two-factor authentication is basically system where first you’re giving your “constant” password (password which doesn’t change), then if you’ve provided correct password system is sending you another one which is generated for you just for this single use (this password can be generated also by some small device provided to you by system admin). When you’ll provide valid second password system would let you in. Mr. Schneier is writing that it’s not as safe as many people used to think, because it can be intercepted (for details read his post), so he suggest to use transaction based authentication, instead of session.

And here come my bank which is using transaction based authentication, but only partially. How it goes, when I’m going to make a money transfer:
1. I’m logging in to my bank account (using “constant” password) and fill information about transaction into web form.
2. After submitting a web form, bank is sending me one-time password via text message to my mobile.
3. I’m filling this one time password along with my main password into web form and my transaction is being processed.
Problem is that when I’ll authorize one transaction this way. Every other transaction during this session would require only “constant” password to be provided. So, if somebody would want to steal my money, he just needs to use one of the techniques described by Bruce Schneier and wait till I make my first transaction, then he is free to do anything as to intercept main password is not big challenge.

I hope that my bank’s admins would rebuild this procedure to comply with good security practice which is transaction based authentication. Till then I must be double careful:(