2008 has been truly extraordinary, at least for me as a Chinese living in the United States. In China, the year started with the worst snow storm in decades, then the earthquake that killed almost 70000 people, then the unprecedented Olympic Games and China’s first time ever space walk. It is a year overwhelmed with glory and natural and man-made catastrophes. In the United States, the mortgage meltdown caused the worst economic recession in hundred years and took down Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual; at the same time, Americans elected the first Black president, who is supported by people of all demographic lines, with the big promise, HOPE!
As an effort to capture this eventful year, Boston.com runs a series of articles (part 1, 2, 3) that feature 120 photographs. It is not all wars, violent or fanfares. There are plenty of fun and inspiring moments.
I haven’t been able to update the blog for some time, because we are moving! We bought a house and just moved in last week. The main reason we started looking in May is that it supposed to be a good timing to buy a house in the 2nd half of this year. Now, as we moved in, we are not sure if the timing is good or not. The price is still not stabilized yet, and most people are just simply not buying. Let’s just wish that all the bad news has come out, the president-elect Barack Obama and the business cycle can bring the economy out of the bottom.
It is still exciting to have our own house. Much bigger kitchen and closet, especially I finally have my own office room now. Listening to the music while I am typing this – Life is Good.
It is fall time now. Squirrels become fat. They are busy with storaging food to prepare for the winter. They are interested in nuts mostly, but occasionally they can find something fancier.
Microsoft recently lauched a series of Ads featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld. The following is the long version of its 2nd episode, New Family.
The feedbacks from the Internet community are almost negative since the first episode. Users critize the Ads. being ambiguous as a marketing attempt – not mentioning ‘Vista’ even once; attack its worthiness – spending 300 million instead of fixing the problem in the product; or just simply label it as ‘stupid’ and ‘lame’.
However, the intention of the comercial is not to promote Vista or any Microsoft product directly, but to restore the public image of the company. Microsoft has been depicted as an “evil empire” for long time. It is a fashion that if you don’t say something negative about Microsoft then you are not cool. Looking at Slashdot website, it is easy to find many posts that talk something else but at the end add, “BTW, Microsoft sucks”. Although tech people have the tradition of being anti-authority, it has gone beyond that and become a bias. As an engineer in the network security industry, I know attacks that target Windows and its software are hundred times more than those to Apple’s OS. Not because Apple is safer, just attacking Windows can reach more so it is more profitable. In fact, it’s lucky that Microsoft won the OS war in 1980s, otherwise, a PC would cost $1000 instead of $300, and we could never order case, CPU, fan, memory, harddisk, power supply online and make our own PC – everything would be made by Apple.
It is unlikely that Microsoft could fix its image by this campaign, but it steps to a right direction. In the ad., Microsoft doesn’t put itself at the incumbent position, but more like a humble underdog who is easy to access and eager to learn. Because it doesn’t mention any product, the consumers feel it is not pushing anything, so they want to follow the story and feel the connection. To Microsoft, with 90% of market share, this is more important then a few Windows licenses.
As I am writing this blog, I read some articles that state Microsoft will stop the campaign because of the negative responses as planed. If that is true, what a shame.
Large Hadron Collider, built by CERN at Franco-Swiss border, started circulating its first beam on September 10th. It earned world-wide coverage and Google even dedicated a logo to the day (left). However, what made the event famous is not the fact that it is the highest energy particle accelerator in the world, but the controversy that the energy could create vacuum bubbles that expand in light speed and bring the world to the end. I was first introduced by this idea when I was in high school, through the book “The Last Three Minutes” by Paul Davies. It was translated by 方励之, who was also a controversial figure at that time of China. Here is the excerpt in chapter “Sudden Death – and Rebirth” from the book:
The worry is that the very high-energy collision of subatomic particles might create conditions – just for an instant, in a very small region of space – which would encourage the vacuum to decay. Once the transition had occurred, even on a microscopic scale, there would be no stopping the newly formed bubble from rapidly ballooning to astronomical proportions.
The book actually gives the exactly same answer as the LHC safety review committee:
… cosmic rays achieve higher energies than we can make inside our particle accelerators, and that these cosmic rays have been hitting nuclei in the Earth’s atmosphere for billions of years without triggering vacuum decay. … The real issue, however, is not whether bubble formation could occur on Earth but whether it has occurred anywhere in the observable universe at any time since the big bang. …
It’s funny while listening to LHC countdown, a voice of one scientist, “Five, Four, Three, Two, One, Zero, Nothing. OK.”
I am a long time subscriber of Time Magazine. I like its depth of coverage on various national and international issues. But, I was really disappointed when it started reporting Olympics torch relay since beginning of the year. It started with Simon Elegant’s article “China’s Olympic Shame?”, which was like most media of westen country at that time, pictured the pro-Tibet activists as heroes and totally ignored those violent actions towards the torch and the bearers. In the next issue, the same writer picked the most extreme responses, of course he was cursed by some, of his first article and tried to depict Chinese people as insecure and dangerous. It seemed things indeed going south as they wanted and China was going to blow it.
Then, the game started. It is a huge success. The world sees a confident, culture-rich and modern China. One week after the opening ceremony, Time Magazine dedicated 3 pages to the game. Hannah Beech’s article, “The Medal Machine is Cranking”, is surprisingly desperate. “The U.S. has dominated swimming and is expected to gorge on track medals. China mean-while, has churned out golds in weight-lifting, synchronized diving, shooting, fencing and judo. Not exactly prime-time viewing in the U.S.” I cannot believe this comes from Time Magazine, a world-wide respectful publication. Is Olympics just for prime-time viewing for U.S. audience? The article goes on attacking the fairness of the game and expecting Chinese athletes would loss the medals under the pressure. The fact that both authors actually wrote the articles in Beijing further proves they just eager to come out of nothing to criticize China.
Last weekend, I went to a small local restaurant to have a beef noodle. The soup is spicy and rich. I like the texture of thick noodle so I ordered it. Somehow I tried to use the ‘civilized’ way to eat the noodle, twirling the noodle by the fork. I couldn’t do it. Because the noodle is too thick and heavy. The only way to eat it is to put my head down, take the noodle into the month with the chopsticks and bite it.
At that time, I felt I realized something: there is no good way or bad way to eat the noodle. You cannot say slurping is bad because it is not civilized. In fact, the origin of twirling may not be related to if it is civilized or not at all. It is considered so only because Italians are seemingly civilized. Similarly, an unbiased media should not criticize someone or some country just because they are different. It should be more considerate when it puts its own standard and judgement on other people.
I attended ICSA IPS meeting in Las Vegas last Friday (8/8). The attendees were the mix of technical and marketing people from different security companies. It is not ‘cool’ to take pictures in a ‘hacker’s’ meeting, so here are some random snapshots outside of the meeting of Las Vegas Casinos.
The real hacker’s meeting, Black Hat, took place just before the ICSA meeting at Caesar Palace. The focus was certainly Dan Kaminsky because his founding of the high-profile DNS vulnerability. But, his founding actually won the Pwnie Award for the Most Overhyped Bug. It is said Kaminsky was outrageous when this’s announced. Quite a fun scene.
Inspired by the past, longing for the future. — China Daily
No word can describe such a magnificant event. Although not all chapters are equally astonishing, overall, this is an unprecedented and unmatchable live performance. Married with Chinese traditional cultures, modern lighting and electronic techniques and Yimou Zhang‘s signature bold usage of colors, the opening ceremony shows to the world a confident, ambitious and prosperous China. To me the most memoriable performance are the counting down by the lighting drums; the poping boxes replacing the great wall with cherry blossom, the colorful and inspiring pigeon and the painting scroll as the centerpiece through the show.
To Chinese people, this is a chance to demostrate the pride not only because of our five-thousand-year of recorded history, but the economic advance in recent 30 years. It is also an emotional moment. I almost broke into tears while watching ninty thousand audiences counting down together with 2008 drummers. What a night!
What is more important is that China decided to put hamony and humanity, instead of ideology, as the main theme throughout the show. The posters of thousands smiling faces, the earth village and the nine-year-old boy who entered the stadium with China’s most famous athlete, Yao Ming, these designs had never been seen in previous ceremonies in China. Although both are ideals, I think maybe Hamony and Peace (和) is a even better solution than Love (爱) to the crisis in this world. (Hamony is not exactly same as Peace in Chinese culture. It is more about the relationship between human beings and the nature. But I think Yimou Zhang meant to say more than that.) Love is a concept, Hamony is a methodology and practice. If people cannot love each other, at least they can make peace.
My wife and I go to Farmer’s Market regularly during the weekend. Here are some photos we took in May this year when we went to Farmer’s Market in Mountain View and Santa Cruz. More pictures are posted in my gallery.
