'Hackers' from Romania salute you!

Today I've read the far most interesting news for today: "An article published in "Los Angeles Times", based on the testimony of an eBay employee presents the city Ramnicu-Valcea as a city full with hackers". This news made me laugh, we all know that Ramnicu-Valcea(a city in south-(wild)west of Romania) doesn't have any hackers. It would be an injury addressed to hackers world-wide because Ramnicu-Valcea(residence of Valcea county) a city with a population of 107.000 is filled with scammers. This kids(some of them at least don't even know other language than Romanian) can be at most called common thief. "Albena Spasova declared that the policemen have to stay in Internet-Cafe's so they could catch the 'hackers'"(yeah, we also leave in caves and hunt hackers with bats) a thing denied by the chief of Department of Fighting Organized Crime(we also discovered broadband modems, wireless technology and ISP a few years ago, so we're sitting in our caves with our wireless laptops connected to the internet searching for dinosaurs to hunt).

So some of eBay's people came in Romania in order to clear their name(sustaining that they're not affiliated with everything happening here) so they came with US Secret Service agents to sustain their words. Albena said that she was "watched" by the Romanian hackers(kids with age between 15 and 22) when she was on Romania(I guess kids can be very scary here in Romania).

My advice for those who call themselves "victims of the Romanian hackers":
- never buy an iPod/laptop/watch/phone/anything with 50$-100$(you'll get at most a potato or a rock in a box);
- never tell your Credit Card information(cvv, pin, expiration date, card number, account holder) to anyone;
- don't send money to you mail-ordered bride, she won't come to US(because you're fat and ugly);

Respect these three rules and you'll never get scammed again.

"L.A. Times" says:
Computer experts
Romania is a grim place in more ways than one. Former pro-Nazi regime, then Soviet outpost, then weird Communist dictatorship and now developing nation: Per-capita income here is just one-third the European Union average. Fearing a flood of cheap labor, most European countries have barred or restricted Romanians from job hunting in their countries.

Yeah, we have a lots of computer experts(but they've left the country working for MS or Google or other IT company) that's why there are still people who doesn't know how to install a program or how to check their email. I hope that after reading this article Google, MS and Y! will move to Romania, cause it's full with experts.

P.S. Happy New Year!

LaterEdit: "You don't know who to trust there. You can't use the hotel phone line. When you step outside, you can spot the local hackers in their cars, circling around," said Spasova, 33.

You can spot the local hackers in their cars, circling around... that is very funny you know why? Because the surface of that city is: 89,5 km². And that means it's a small city, so when they're not scamming the boys are riding their cars(as I heard all those who perform scamming drive BMW). As a joke: "Some of them bought BMWs but they don't have driver's license and guess with who's money they bought those cars? :)

'I Am Legend'(2007) Review

What would you say, if you will turn to be the last man on Earth? What would you do, knowing you are the last chance humanity has? Would you go crazy, if after three years of struggling your only friend is you dog and you can exit your house only from dawn till dusk? At this questions must answer Robert Neville(Will Smith), a high ranked military, who wants to find a cure for the virus that has corrupted the world. The virus was initially created to cure cancer and soon spread into the whole world transforming the infected ones into zombies. After three years of loneliness Dr. Neville and his dog Sam are fighting their way through what's left of 2012's New York City. Neville is among those 1% of Earth's population immune to the virus. After three years from the outbreak he's lost all of his hope because of not coming close in finding the antidote for the virus, always reviewing the time he lost his wife and daughter during the evacuation of New York City population Neville seems to be near losing his mind when his best friend, the dog, Sam dies in his arms.

After losing Sam, the only thought that Neville has is to die taking with him as many zombies he can. In his attempt of "suicide" Neville is rescued by a young girl Anna(Alice Braga) who heard Robert Neville's radio broadcasting and came to New York City. Although Neville considers the zombies are not human and the only thing that matters to them is providing food, they seem to be extremely well organized and lead by the most powerful of them.

Because Anna was careless when she rescued Neville, zombies followed her home, they are ambushed by zombies and when everything seemed worthless Neville realizes that he found a cure for the disease, but he sacrifices in order others to live.

In 'I Am Legend' Will Smith performed a beautiful interpretation of his role, a very dramatic one, and although there have been several movies made on the subject of global infestation and zombies this was the one i liked the most. With a hand of actors, the film director Francis Lawrence(the creator of Constantine) succeeded in making an outstanding movie.

*And because it's 24 of December:

"Merry Christmas to all! Wherever you might be..."

Continue loving Romania

Most of the time I don't like talking about same things over and over again, but things became really interesting the case from yesterday about Ludovic Orban. Some Press websites are talking about the sum of 3000 euro, this is the sum that a little girl received from Minister Orban to keep her mouth shut. This are the money that I make in about 10 months, and I don't have a big salary here, but are people who can gather this much money faster. So if you want to run over a little girl, get 3000 euro in your wallet and the pedal to the metal. For 3000 euro Orban get to keep his place at Ministry of Transportation and he also refused to get his resignation when Prime-Minister suggested that it would be better for him. His political party declares that the pictures with Orban's car damaged after the accident and the movie which shows Orban talking with the witnesses, the woman that it seems to be girl's grandmother and the other man(who's car he crash into). It's so easy to deny everything even when the people are showing you pictures and movies. "Ohh...so it's all fiction for you? People are getting ran over? No it's not a fact, it's fake!"

What are the opinions of the rest of citizens? Most think that Orban is guilty, others think that it's normal, that this could happen to anyone(to run someone over). Well, I don't care that the victim doesn't want to make a complain to the police, but the law here it's pretty clear: "If in a car accident there are victim, the person guilty for the accident can't leave the scene until the police arrives. He can leave the scene only to take the victim to hospital and only when there aren't any cars around. If the person guilty leaves the scene he will go to jail." Yeah... and the law also applies to Ministries and people with a lot of money.

Another news: Eighteen years ago Timisoara became first democratic city of Romania, being liberated from the domination of Nicolaie Ceausescu and the Communist Party.
"On 20 December 1989 almost 10.0000 people gathered in the center of the city and asked that the Communist power from Bucharest should leave.
The Army redraw their soldiers and their armored vehicles from the streets of Timisoara. From 20 December 1989 the citizens remain in the "Piata Operei" square, until the pressure of the demonstrations made Ceausescu to flee."

So 18 years since we've liberated from Communism and people like Orban are still making fun of the common people. Below the movie with Ludovic Orban, movie taken from http://www.hotnews.ro.

Orban
Uploaded by biancavoi1978

News, Wednesday 19 Dec, 2007

So, because this blog isn't only about reviews I make, today's news are:
- there is a new category called "News";
-VisUrat was fired because he told the truth;
-Cristian Nemescu's killer gets 7 years and deportation;
-Ludovic Orban claims he is the victim, after running over a 17 year old girl(LE: girl has 14 years);

1. As in today I've decided that this blog won't be only about reviews, so "News" category is here. :) "News" category will mainly contain news about my country: Romania, because all the good and bad happens here. :) And mostly because I like it here most of the time, when everybody smiles and they make you feel welcomed, but there are also downsides. About the good and the bad on "News".

2. VisUrat, a famous blogger from Romania, was threaten that he will be fired because he disturbed some important politicians. This is not the first time VisUrat is fired because he refuses to stop his writing about politics. I can only hope that VisUrat won't get down because of this and he will continue his writing. As for the politicians? There are not enough words to express the hate we feel towards you. This article was found on Arhi's Blog.

3. Cristian Nemescu was a young Romanian film director who died over a year and half ago in car crash. His taxi was hit by a Porsche Cayenne, drove by British citizen Ali Imran. In the crash died three: the driver Dumitru Arustei(24 years), Cristian Nemescu(27 years) and sound engineer Andrei Toncu(28 years). Cristian Nemescu's latest movie was California Dreamin'(Endless) starring Armand Assante. It took Romanian justice one year and three months to convict Ali Imran to seven years of prison and after serving his time will be deported back to his country. Seven years, for killing three human beings, driving with 63km over the legal limit, passing on red light and driving without license plates.

4. Ludovic Orban is a Romanian dignitary who is accused by Romanian Press of hitting a 14 years old girl and then running from the place of the accident after bribing the girl's mother. Orban is the Minister of Transportation, Vice-president of communications and public relations, Vice-mayor of Bucharest(the capital city of Romania). After the Press found out about what Orban has done, he declared that he was not driving that day, but his driver. Then he declared that there was no victim in the car accident, and he is a victim of the Press. The witnesses of the accident declared that Orban hit the little girl and another car, then he flee the place of the accident. For this he should go to jail, that if he was a regular person.

Next time, when we'll be asked why are we leaving Romania I'll answer: "Because Romania it's a great country and I don't deserve living in it!"

'John Doe' (TV-Show) Review

The story of "John Doe"(played by Dominic Purcell which you know from Prison Break - a review of that TV Show will came later - and Blade Trinity) begins when John wakes up on an isolated island and he realize that he has knowledge about "anything in the world"(literally speaking) but he don't know one thing: "Who is he?".

Using his talent John Doe starts making money and enjoying the life in Seattle. Until one day as he watches a news report about a kidnapped girl, John Doe realizes that he is seeing the child in color(John is color-blind), thinking that the girl might have something to do with his unknown life he decides to help the police with the investigation. This is the start of beautiful collaboration between John Doe and the police force. While solving the impossible cases and saving people to life John Doe finds time to search for his past, posting ads on the internet asking if anyone knows anything about him. John plays in Digger's bar each night and the two of them become friends.

While searching for his life, not knowing if he was kidnapped by aliens who erased his memories, or if he is a product of a special research made by a secret organization, John Doe finds that "The Phoenix Order" is trying to capture him. As he is being chased by "The Pheonix Order" some branch of government is offering the help to John Doe, no knowing who to trust John refuses the help continuing his fight against "The Phoenix Order". His only two friends are detective Frank Hayes and lieutenant Jamie Avery, Karen Kawalski and Digger.

The only bad part is that "John Doe" TV-Show has only one season, because he was left unfinished, but I'm sure that there is a lot of people who want to see the end of the the show and to find out if John ever finds his family. There is also a petition so the show will continue. 26206 people already signed that petition, I hope FOX will decide to continue John Doe.

'This is England'(2006) Review

As it was expected, it's movie time review.
'This is England' made in 2006 directed by Shane Meadows. The time of the story is placed in England, year 1983, main character is a small boy named Shaun(Thomas Turgoose), a 12 year old boy that lives only with his mother and who's father died fighting in Falklands War. One day when the schools were breaking for the summer holiday, after Shaun has a fight at school with a kids that picks about Shaun's dad, he meets Woody(Joseph Gilgun) - a teenager charismatic Skinhead - who seems to like Shaun and take him under his wing. Woody and the rest of the gang embrace Shaun and treat him like one of their own. Shaun also likes his new friends and shortly after joining the group he becomes one of them by adopting the same haircut, same clothes and always hanging around with his new friends.

The situation changes when one night at one of their parties recently prison released Combo(Stephen Graham) - an old Skinhead - returns home. Once best friends Combo and Woody now divide the gang in two. Blaming England's economic woes, growing unemployment and post-war grievances on the influx of foreign minorities, Combo persuades Shaun and other members of the pack to make a stand, preserving England for the English. After attending a meeting of right-wing nationalists, Combo takes his new found gang of hooligans to threaten the local Pakistani community.

The end of the movies reveals Combo's emotional battles with loneliness and isolation. Combo's hate and envy overflows when one night, he turns his rage against the only black member of the gang, Milky(Andrew Shim). Combo's explosion of fury ends tragically with Milky's death which changes Shaun's viewpoint.

For those interested in more details about this movie:
- pictures from making "This is England";
- trailer for "This is England";
- imdb page for "This is England";
- official page for "This is England";

Quinzelle's Blog Review

I haven't heard about Quinzelle until a few days ago. When I've first entered on her website I was struck by something, something red, because the background is red, the text is red. I was expecting to be just another website made in a hurry so she could post her thoughts, I was wrong so that's why I owe her(and Joker) some apologies!

Quinzelle website is not maintained by only one person(Quinzelle), there is second one named Joker. So Quinzelle and Joker are two complementary sides of a woman and a man. According to what Quinzelle wrote on her about section of the website there are two ways the website could be seen as:
-from "her" perspective;
-from "his" perspective;

Now to get back to the blog configuration, as it can be seen from the first time you enter Quinzelle's blog you will notice that there are no ads on her website. So everything she writes it's for pleasure and not for money. The blog is structured this way:
-a banner in the upper side of the page;
-after the banner comes a bar with four links(Home, Quinzelle&Joker-about, Pictures with Quinzelle&Joker, Contact);
-in the left side a column with categories and links to other blogs;
-in the right side a search bar, latests posts, latest comments, archive of posts, login section, how many people are online, and a calendar;
-in the middle between left and right column came the posts(a thing I like is that the post is not entire shown on the main page, you will have to click on the post to open it and to read it all);
-another thing I've observed on Quinzelle&Joker's page is that you can collapse the comments with only one click on them, but the default setting is so you can see all the comments when opening a post.

At the end, after watching the site one more time, I think that this website is the work of Joker, if I'm wrong I ask that Quinzelle to forgive me. :)

The worst thing is that the website is only in Romanian and not English(it's kinda hard to make a site bilingual) so because Quinzelle's site is only in Romanian I'll have to make another review in Romanian on my other blog on 360. :)

*As a later edit: I've found out that the website is the work of Quinzelle. And Quinzelle told me that she is proud of her work. Well, she should be. :)

Review my LCD Monitor

Well... I guess it is time to review my 19" LCD Monitor, it's more than a week since I've bought it. My 19" LCD Monitor is LG model L1919S-SF(it is silver).
I will start with technical informations and continue with my own opinion after that.

LG L1919S-SF Technical Informations:

Size of display: 19 inches (yeah...big...too big for me)
Max. Resolution: 1280 x 1024 (that's what I'm using now, on 75Hz)
Pixel Pitch: 0.294 x 0.294 (I've never measured the size of pixels, so it might be true)
Brightness: 300 cd/㎡ (well...if they've put that question mark there...)
Contrast Ratio:1400:1(that's due new technology used Digital Fine Contrast, I'm not using it to the full potential, I'm a vampire...)
Viewing Angle: 160/160< (that might be true, I'm only standing in the front of the display)
Response Time: 8ms (some websites say it's 5 other say 8)
Display Colors: 16.7M (never counted them)
Horizontal Frequency: 30 ~ 83 kHz (maybe it's never displayed, nowhere)
Vertical Frequency: 56 ~ 75 Hz (maximum it's 75 Hz)
Video Signal: RGB Analog (maybe)
Sync type: Separate, Composite, SOG (don't know, might be true :) )
...

You can find more technical information on LGe.com. Now let me tell you about my experience with this display.
After I've disconnected my old LG monitor model 500E Studioworks(15") and plugged in my new LG L19191S-SF. And I've just realized that 19" are just too much for me. At first I thought that I could never capture the entire display with my eyes. Eventually you'll familiarize with the display. And when you'll see a 17" you'll say: "wow! so small!". The colors looks ok, the contrast is nice. You'll get some time to set you monitor to optimal settings. I recommend you "Auto Image Adjustment" it the button labeled the same as "Enter" key, first button above power button.
Auto resolution after you exit from a game where you played in a lower resolution work really good.
A note from one(1) to ten(10) would be eight(8).

*As a little joke: everywhere I was looking for more information I was receiving different infos, some were saying 1400:1 contrast, others 2000:1, some were saying TCO99 others TCO03. But the best part was that the Romanian LGe site had the wrong picture for this monitor. So after installing it and entering on Romanian LGe site I had a shock: "Did they gave me a wrong monitor?"*

Yahoo!'s new feature "My Yahoo!"

As you may or may not know Yahoo! is testing it's new service: "My Yahoo!". I've just discovered "My Yahoo!" a few days ago, when I was trying to add some feeds to my 360 blog.
What I was trying to do(and I'm still trying) on my 360 blog(and that is add the feeds for some of my favorite webpages), I've done it with "My Yahoo!" in a few seconds. This new service from Yahoo! seems to be very handy, you can hear about:
sports(by http://sports.yahoo.com),
weather(by http://weather.yahoo.com),
tv(by http://tv.yahoo.com),
stocks(by http://finance.yahoo.com),
shops(by http://shops.yahoo.com),
music(by http://music.yahoo.com),
local infomations(by http://local.yahoo.com),
your favorite comic(mine is Garfield) and you can also share that page with your friends.

Also you can add your feed and you can read you favorite articles from your page. But the thing I've liked the most was: "You can set and alert for each feed and you can receive it by mail, phone or as an alert on your Y! Messenger." So you will always know when something new is on. So practically you'll be the first to read the news.
Yahoo! is still testing this service, but I think they will have a lot of success with it. :)
Good job Yahoo! you've finally done something that will come in handy after Yahoo! Messenger(also accessible as an web application with Yahoo! Web Messenger , I think My Yahoo! will be the next outbreak.

You! Get to the other line...

*This is the last post from my blog and the first one I translate*

I've read at Arhi's(from http://www.arhiblog.com) that Ciorapel began to split the world in two sides. That is:
-the ones that write on their blogs for money;
-the ones that write for their own satisfaction;

Well I guess i write for both of them, on 360 for satisfaction and here for money. :)

As I was saying on 360 for money I would like to write a book called: "Elodia, where are you?", which I think it would become a bestseller here in Romania. :)

First Entry, "About"

My name is keNnY(or at least this how friends call me), and this is my new project. KEN is meant to be a twin for my first blog. The blog from Yahoo is written only in Romanian, so KEN will be only in English.

My task is to translate each one of my posts from my blog in English and then post it here. Or to write it in English and then translate in Romanian.

It will be a little difficult at the start, cause writing the same text twice is not a pleasure of mine. :)

We shall see how will work out.