What would you think about the person who by any means is a sinner, but never harmed innocent. And never was indifferent when somebody was hurting those who can’t fight back. Does this man, even as he is full of sin, deserve to go to heaven? Can all people who were saved by him erase his misdeeds?
That were the questions I’ve asked myself today after seeing Bill Hickock being shot in the back of his head by some trash. This character from Deadwood was very deep. Entire show is quite interesting, but I will really miss this great gunman. I must admit that for the moment I’ve got a piece of doubt to his morals, I’m talking about the scene when he accepts offer from the saloon owner to trick the poor (well not so poor actually) widow. But he quickly recovered in my eyes and died in style. It was a death of a man who knew that he doesn’t fit to normal life, and has understanding that is getting too old to keep old habits. So he writes letter to his wife and goes to the bar to wait for destiny to do its job.
Yes Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m impressed by the personality of Mr. Hickock (and artistry of Keith Carradine). I prefer better one man who is sinner, but will never let good man die if he has anything to say, than hundred of people who live by the laws of faith, but don’t care about the others. True God’s man is the one who will fight the beast to protect the lamb, not the one who is bowing head in front of the altar and then turning it away to not see suffering of others.

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.

One of many great things about Mac is that you can do a lot of stuff just after launching your computer for the first time. So here is another one, you can create iso image of your CD/DVD just using apps which are already in the OS. Lets start then:

1. Put the disk into your drive.
2. Go to Apps -> Utilities -> Disk Utility.
3. Choose your disk from the list on the left and click New Image.
4. Browse to location where you want to save the image, put the filename you desire and select DVD/CD master as Image Format.
   It would create cdr image, so now you need to convert it to iso. You can do it with single command in Terminal:
   hdiutil makehybrid -iso -joliet -o .iso .cdr
   That’s it. You have created iso image of your disk without using any third party software! Isn’t it just great.

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.

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:)

Some time ago I’ve wanted to post excerpt from the book I was reading on Safari Books Online on my Facebook wall. Everyone who have ever used Safari knew that their books are displayed in special way, so you can only use their applet to copy text (probably they’ve done that to avoid people copying entire books). As a result you’ll obtain text which would reside in your clipboard. To publish it on Facebook you need just to paste it into appropriate field and…

Yes, Facebook limits text to be posted to 420 characters, so if you want to post something longer you need to find other way. And that’s how Text Hoster was born. It’s web application written by me to host text which can then be posted to Facebook. When you’ll go to fb.liox.eu you’ll find a field to enter your text and Send button, I believe it’s self explanatory. When you’ll click Send simple check is done to calculate length of your string, so if it’s less than 420 characters then it would not be hosted as there is no reason for it. Then you’ll see a page with your text, full link to your text, bit.ly shortened link and Facebook share button. After clicking Share you’ll be navigated to page as the one below.

It’s typical representation of Facebook generated link, as you can see there is shortened version of the text and bit.ly link, you can also add short description to it. Now click share again and voila your text is on your Facebook wall (of course you should be logged before sharing or you’ll be asked to log in), when somebody would click on it he would be navigated to hoster page and able to read full text.

Within past three months I was called couple of times by my ISP’s (UPC) representatives. They offered me to change my Internet plan from 15Mb/s to 10, of course price would be lowered by 80-100 CZK, but I’ve declined it as I prefer to have faster than cheaper connection. Last call wast a little offensive as guy when I’ve declined his offer became angry and was very close to call me an idiot (at least it’s my feeling). He was trying to daunt me saying that they’re planning to lower rates for everybody in my block anyway, so I would stay paying more for the same what everybody else got. I’ve refused it as I got my contract signed for certain speed. But on Friday they’ve called me again and offered 25Mb/s for 25 CZK more (around 1.20 USD), obviously I’ve accepted it and since Saturday I’m enjoying higher speed. Don’t let anybody fool you, if you have a contract it’s obligatory for both sides, not only you.

Quick note how to list files without directories.

Windows:
dir /a:-d

Linux:
ls -l | grep ^-

Second command should work also in Mac OS X from terminal, but will have to check it just to be sure.

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 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.