I’ve been invited to test threadsy.com which is some kind of aggregation site which combines your mail, Facebook and Twitter (and more) accounts into one data stream. After some troubles with creating my account (it’s still in testing phase, so it can happen) I’ve added my Gmail, Twitter and Facebook accounts into it and begin to play. It’s pretty impressive. Everything is divided into two streams. One on the left called “inbound” consist every message which is posted directly to you. Left stream, called “unbound” is everything posted by your friends which is not addressed directly to you. You can post comments to Facebook posts directly from the stream, you can “like” them as well. You can post your post from it either and it’s possible to post both to FB and twitter simultaneously. It saves some time. But two things are pretty awesome:

TechCrunch published interesting article about Boston’s Route 128 and why it lost with Silicon Valley, more here. I haven’t heard about it before. If I had then I would definitively tried to see this when I was there. It’s maybe not so surprising as MIT is there, so it’s normal that many of these bright people would want to stay there, but still. Second Silicon Valley, well how would you know:)

TechCrunch posted text about how Facebook is trying to help unpopular people by asking their friends to post more often on their walls, read more here. It reminded me that when I was 10 years old (more or less) I’ve had neighbors with exactly the same kid as described in article. He was a year younger than me and really nice guy, but not very popular. Even kids in the same age as he was preferred to play with me than with him. His mother was so desperate that she once come to me and my pal when we were playing, and dragged him by force to her apartment to play with her son. Yeah, I was shocked. My mate “escaped” after few minutes. Next day father of my neighbor approached me with very serious look in his eyes and told me that I’m stealing his son’s friends and that he doesn’t like it. I was really frightened (10 years old), but fortunately my other buddy was there with me, so it ended just with that. Anyway, as you probably suspecting, it doesn’t end up well to the kido. He became even more unpopular. So as TechCrunch already suggested, if you’re parent of not very “cool” kid, don’t try to make “artificial” friendships for him, it would end up even worst.

As newbie Mac OS user I’ve faced problem “where the f**k are page up, page down, etc. keys?”. A little of exploration and here it is (MacBook Pro):
fn + arrow down = page down
fn + arrow up = page up
cmd + arrow down = end
cmd + arrow up = home
fn + backspace = delete (this is quite annoying that on PC I’ve had one button for that)

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.

Since yesterday I’m happy owner of MacBook Pro! I’ve waited long time and had many other desktops and laptops in the past, but finally I have it:) And it was a good deal, so double win, or like Americans like to say win win. And guess what? Yes, you’re right I’m writing this message from my new Mac!

As I’m still a newbie everything keeps amazing me. I’m really surprised what Mac OS offers right out the box. I’ve read a lot before I’ve bought it, but still shocked how easy it is to do anything on this computer. From the moment I’ve took it out from the box to be completely operable passed like 2-3, and it was already connected to the Internet! No more drivers. Most programs I need for day-to-day usage was already there, so to customize everything to my needs took me a lot less time than with Windows. And of course my favorite terminal is here! I can now log in to my Linux servers without third party programs. Pretty amazing. Hope everything be so fine in the future of my Mac journey.

Have you ever seen something like it?! Wow! I’m impressed, hope it would find it’s way through market.

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

Amazon Kindle 2 with international gprs service would be available in Europe from October 19th! At last! Count me in as a first buyer.

UPDATE: It’s not so sweet as it first looked:( Instead of 279$ Kindle 2 when shipping to Europe (Czech Republic at least) would cost you 359$. It’s not so bad, still pretty cheap as other e-book readers cost more in this part of Europe. But when you’ll add to it the fact that every e-book from amazon would cost you more than your US based friends, then it’s not so good anymore. I would give it a second thought, but no first buyer anymore:(

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.

Today I’ve faced embarrassing situation, I’ve forgot my root password to my Debian VM. I know this is lame. But happened, so I’ve started looking for solution and after viewing few more or less helpful websites I’ve compiled my own solution. To reset root password on Debian (Lenny) do following:

1. During start of PC when there is your boot manager displayed press “e”.
2. Move arrow on the keyboard to highlight “kernel”.
3. Press “e” again.
4. On the displayed line change “ro” to “rw” and add “init=/bin/bash” at the end. Without quotation marks of course.
5. Press Enter and then “b” to boot your Debian.
6. Debian would boot to bash console with root privileges. Now execute “passwd” command and input your new password.
7. Reboot your system.

That’s it. Your root account is now back. Enjoy!