Wall-E is an A rated movie!

Posted on Jul 02, 2008 under Movie | No Comment

Wall-E. I finally watched it today. Has been expecting this since Ratatouille. It is an amazing movie. With so little dialogs in this movie, it successful became the best Robot movie ever made, IMO. If you want a moving, touching Robot movie, look no further, A.I. or I, Robot are not comparable.

Aside from everything that’s great, the human plot is the weakest. I often felt it ruined some of the good about this movie. And it is not really convincing. However, an happy ending is always expected for such kind of movie. If only there is an artistic version of Wall-E may we see alternative ending. But I cannot really blame.

So apparently, Ratatouille is probably the best rat movie. Now introducing the best robot movie.

And, to some extend, this movie is indeed, sort of, an Apple commercial.

Oh, I think the soundtrack is nice too. Although sometimes I dislike some reprising at some scenes.

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Netflix and Blockbuster are in trouble because of iTunes

Posted on Jun 19, 2008 under 普通 General | No Comment

Today Apple announced that they have sold 5 billion songs. And now they sell or rent over 50,000 movies per day.

A while ago it is said that Netflix has 8 million subscribers. I believe many of those subscribers are not subscribed to unlimited plan. So a conservative estimation is, every customer rents 3 movies a month. That’s 24 million movies per month.

However, Apple sells/rents 50,000 movies a day. That’s 150,000 movies a month. iTunes has a market of 1/160 the size of Netflix. And that’s when iTunes has just started, and iTunes has only a little over 2000 movies, compared to about 100,000 titles of Netflix which is about 50 time bigger. Note that both of them have some quite old titles, so the selection of new titles is not a major issue. That is to say, Apple uses 1/50 of Netflix’s collection, and get 1/160 of Netflix’s rent amount. That’s impressive for a young service.

I used to subscribe to Netflix or Blockbuster. But they are not flexible, as I HAVE to rent a certain amount of movies so that my money is well worth it. Now I don’t have to . I just need iTunes to rent movie when I really need it. With better selection, iTunes will ultimately be a better choice for people who don’t want to watch a certain amount of movies a month.

And yes, Netflix is in trouble. Blockbuster has been in trouble for a long time because of Netflix.

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iTunes Movie Rental Total Movies

Posted on Jun 17, 2008 under 苹果 Apple | No Comment


60 Pages of movies, about 1260 titles as of June 16th, 2008.

And counting. Still a long way to go. And stop, please stop $0.99 rentals of western movies from the 1960s.

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Opera Chinese Font Problem Never Going to be Fixed?

Posted on Jun 11, 2008 under IT | No Comment

Default fonts for Chinese Simplified: Arial Unicode still??? NONE of the fonts for Simplified Chinese on Mac OS X is recognized by Opera. How long is it going to take for Opera to fix such a smaller problem? And they are going to release 9.5? The performance of 9.5 is already surpassed by Safari and Firefox. Sad!

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Movie: Ghost World, A-

Posted on Jun 01, 2008 under Movie | No Comment

Ghost World,一部美国现实主义青春电影。高中毕业,朋克,社会,谋生,爱情——步入成年人的世界,不是件容易的事情。

一部剧情片,非喜剧,非悲剧,缺乏戏剧高潮。但是,个人感觉这是一部类似Junebug的展示美国社会现实的电影。事实上,个人认为本片比Juno好不少;Juno就是吹捧出来的。Juno的剧本可以说可能还可以吧,但是表演上,个人认为Ellen Page太差。Ghost World里面各个演员的表演,才是真的好。

当对美国的印象完全是好莱坞式的时候,Ghost World,可以唤醒我们。我给这部电影A-的评分。个人认为,对所有intelligent的年轻人,可能都会有不少启发。

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Migrate Time Machine Backup from External Hard Drive to Airport Disk

Posted on May 29, 2008 under 苹果 Apple | No Comment

Time capsule, a combination of hard drive and airport extreme is a sweet idea. The hard drive is server grade, meaning it is much less likely to fail. However, Time Capsule is expensive, and cannot be easily expanded or upgraded.

Luckily Apple made Airport Disk compatible with Time Machine since Mac OS X 10.5.2, although it is an unsupported feature. But anyone who is budget sensitive can enjoy wireless whole system backup.

The problem is, many people like me have been using Time Machine with external hard drive for a while now. We don’t want to lose our older backups. However, Apple has not provided us a tool to migrate our backups from these external hard drives to Time Capsule or Airport Extreme Base Station’s Airport Disk. We cannot simply copy these files to Airport Disk, because of hard links. And Apple uses folders to store backups when the hard drive is attached to the computer. But sparse bundle disk image is used on Time Capsule or Airport Disk.

I searched online and could not find a tutorial to solve this migration problem. After doing some research, I have solved this problem, so I am sharing my experience with you, with the following tutorial I believe is easy enough for anyone to do it.

Read the rest of this entry »

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最近秦刚答记者问,显示中国政府态度转变

Posted on May 27, 2008 under 普通 General | No Comment

问:国际社会对中国的人权纪录,特别是对中国政府处理拉萨事件持批评态度。中方对此有何评论?

答:我们当然不能接受这样的批评和指责。

众所周知,中国这些年来,特别是改革开放以来,在人权领域取得了巨大的进步和举世瞩目的成就。中国人民依法享有的各项人权和基本自由是前所未有的。你生活在中国,一定能够体会到中国当今经济发展、社会进步、人民生活水平日益提高、依法享受的权利和自由都得到了充分的保障。通过这次地震灾害,你也可以看到,中国政府“以人为本”进行抗灾救灾。无论是中国政府还是社会各界,举全国之力投入到救灾行动中。这正是中国政府尊重和保护人权的充分体现。

至于你提到的在西藏发生的3·14事件是一起打砸抢烧严重暴力犯罪事件,已经过去了两个多月了。在这两个多月中,我们多次阐明了我们对这一事件的看法。中方有关部门、西藏自治区政府依法处置暴力犯罪事件,正是为了维护法律尊严,为了维护包括西藏同胞在内的各族人民的人权。我也希望国际上有关人员能够客观公正地看待中国的人权状况,尊重事实,放弃偏见。

我还要请你注意你的用词。你提到“国际社会”,不知道你所提到的国际社会代表谁?那些对中国进行无端指责,睁着眼睛说瞎话,戴着有色眼镜,鸡蛋里挑骨头的人,他们占世界人口的百分之多少?他们能代表国际社会吗?他们有什么资格代表国际社会?
—————–
最后一段和常见的外交部言辞不太一样,似乎暗示态度的强硬化。中国政府不足还太多太多,希望这个态度是切实的。

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Sharon Stone’s Cold Blooded Comments on Sichuan Earthquake

Posted on May 25, 2008 under 普通 General | 1 Comment

She is such a b*tch. You know, then, when you think about what kind of friends Dalai Lama has…

知道她是达赖的好便宜,但是,是好朋友也不代表道德可以败坏到这种程度,个人素质可以低到如此让人发指。She said she was going to cry? WOW. Honestly, when I heard what she said, I felt like I was going to cry. I was simply too sad to see celebrities so morally degraded and deranged.

Update:
It was reported that Dior claimed that Stone’s comments has nothing to do with the company. Also western mainstream media basically kept silent on this. And you know why.

And of course, her transcript, when asked whether she has heard about the earthquake in China.

Of course I have. Well you know at first I thought I’m not happy with the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans … and I’ve been concerned with should we have the Olympics because they’re not being nice to the Dalai Lama who’s a good friend of mine.

And then all this earthquake and stuff happened and I thought, ‘Is that Karma, when you’re not nice and the bad things happen to you?’

Update 2:
After a couple of days of lag, western mainstream media finally reported this, probably due to the high exposure of this matter among Chinese people.

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Apple Mac Music Video

Posted on May 10, 2008 under 普通 General | No Comment

A not bad song with amazing video. I believe this is a third party music video by Dennis Liu.

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Two Mid Aged Man: Fight!

Posted on May 04, 2008 under 普通 General | No Comment

Two Mid Aged Man: Robert Downy Jr. vs. Patrick Dempsey.
I think Robert will beat Patrick’s arse.

Now Patrick,

Take that!
Anyway, I think Iron Man is a B+ movie.

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Something bigger than CCP, larger than all these problems

Posted on May 02, 2008 under 普通 General | No Comment

From this video. This Indian living in Singapore said the following, shows intelligence.

I’m delighted to see there is such a disagreement of views here, because in many ways this program of yours makes me understand why a book like mine had to be written. Because you have to balance what I called this self-referential dialogue, that go in the west about Asia, China, and so on so forth. Here’s a quick word about Tibet, the issue of the day. Everybody’ve been talking about thousands of people protesting against Chinese government. You know what happened in Tibet? Hundreds of millions of Chinese have come together on the question of Tibet. Not just, by the way, Chinese on mainland, (but also) the liberal, western educated overseas Chinese. You watch the demonstrations of Chinese overseas, it shows you, that there is something happening within the Chinese nation, that is larger than the Chinese Communist Party, larger than all these problems. A new civilization is being reborn in China.That’s a much, much bigger story that the west doesn’t get, that you focus on all the details.

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‘07中国一号唱片 - 钟童茜:我想深情款款的爱上你

Posted on May 01, 2008 under 普通 General | No Comment

2007年中国一号独立唱片,虽然我没有听过其他的,但是我觉得,这张专辑八九不离十应该是第一了。钟童茜是一匹黑马,让我们眼前一黑。

《把自己消费掉》是最另类的一首,最让人眼前一黑,貌似引入一些民歌和戏曲的元素。《我想深情款款地爱上你1》则展示了她演唱和作曲的基本才华,有时候略有王菲的感觉,但是仍然绝对钟童茜。《无题》的配器简单但是是一流的,也非常好听,而且她似走调非走调的唱法,还是很有个性的。《老张的花样年华》是四川方言的另类独白,貌似是对社会现实的描写。

在《无题》中,钟童茜唱到,“我还没有找到我的心上人”。如此简单的一句话,却很少有中文歌曲能够把如此白话的歌词唱得如此动听。也许制作人的功力也蛮厉害哦。这张唱片让我觉得中国独立音乐和西方的距离是真的拉近了。

Update:
发现这位也把这张专辑定位第一。不过他是听了很多中国的音乐。我是只听了这一张。推荐前面链接的这个网站,有不少sample可以欣赏 。稍微听了一下,觉得国内音乐进步蛮多嘛,不过不知道哪些是大陆哪些是港台的。

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This kind of MV is IN

Posted on Apr 26, 2008 under 普通 General | No Comment

Well, maybe IN is an obsolete word already. I am so out-dated.

Music by MGMT, Song title is Time To Pretend.

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US Media Think 30-people Neo-Nazi Rally More Important Than 500-people Chinese Rally in Washington DC

Posted on Apr 20, 2008 under 普通 General | No Comment

Yesterday, over 500 hundred Chinese people, citizen of China and also United States, held a rally at the Capital Hill in Washington DC. The spot assigned to them was Upper Senate Park, a place very few people would walk pass by. It was a peaceful 4-hour long rally. No major US media reported this rally, as expected, because no reporters from any mainstream US media were there. Organizers said they notified many western mainstream media about this event, including CBS, Fox, ABC, Reuters, Associated Press, BBC, The Washington Post and The Washington Diplomat.

At the same time, about 30 people from National Socialist Movement, a self-claimed Neo-Nazi group, was able to march at important places in DC, including the National Mall. They denounced illegal immigration, and said white Americans don’t want those illegal immigrants here in the US.

Video from Associate Press:

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US Media Labeling Chinese protesters pro-Chinese government

Posted on Apr 20, 2008 under 普通 General | No Comment

After China and Chinese Americans and Chinese legal immigrants and students in the US demanded apology from CNN and Jack Cafferty for his comments. Yesterday many Chinese Americans and Chinese people protested in Los Angles. However, the US media tried to label those Chinese people as pro-Chinese government, because Jack Cafferty called “Chinese government goons and thugs”.

However, only in CNN’s statement they interpret Jack Cafferty’s comments that way. In his original transcript, he did not mention “Chinese government” but only “Chinese” and “they”. Even if that is really what he meant, many US media failed to inform readers that maybe Chinese people misinterpreted his comments. US media intentionally doctrine their viewers that these Chinese people are protesting because “their Chinese government” was criticized. For example:

AP reported:

Protesters are also lashing out at the CNN TV network over its commentator Jack Cafferty, who caused outrage last week when he called the Beijing leadership “goons and thugs” and slammed the quality of Chinese exports.

San Francisco Chronicles:

Chinese Americans rallied outside CNN’s Hollywood office on Saturday to demand the firing of commentator Jack Cafferty for calling China’s goods “junk” and its leaders a “bunch of goons and thugs.”

Abstract for this news:

Chinese Americans protest commentator who called China’s goods “junk” and its leaders a “bunch of goons and thugs.”

AFP reported:

Protesters are also lashing out at the CNN TV network over its commentator Jack Cafferty, who caused outrage last week when he called the Beijing leadership “goons and thugs” and slammed the quality of Chinese exports.

More neutral reports such as on Los Angles Times, did not use “Chinese government” but “China” as the subject of “goons and thugs”.

What Jack Cafferty actually said:

I don’t know if China is any different, but our relationship with China is certainly different. We’re in hock to the Chinese up to our eyeballs because of the war in Iraq, for one thing. They’re holding hundreds of billions of dollars worth of our paper. We are also running hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of trade deficits with them, as we continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export, you know, jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we’re buying from Wal-Mart.

So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed. I think they’re basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years.

From this transcript and using my naive English, I think it is absolutely not clear he was talking about “Chinese government”. Maybe he did not mean “Chinese people” but at least he meant “China”. Even if he meant “Chinese government”, there are at least two major problems:

1) Chinese government don’t produce these lead toy and poisoned pet food. Those products are not Chinese government’s property, but Jack said “their junk with lead paint… poisoned pet food”.

2) He said “places where you can pay workers a dollar a month”. This place is not China because China is not THAT cheap. And he totally missed the target. The real target is the capital in the US want to make more money by outsourcing these manufacturing jobs. The main problem is exactly within US; not in China, not the Chinese people, and not the Chinese government.

So apparently CNN and Jack Nasty is trying to excuse themselves for saying something inappropriate and insulting and even racist. And some US media are trying to “help” and infuriate other Americans by labeling those protesting Chinese Americans as supporting “Chinese government”. This is pathetic.

By the way, quality of many Chinese products are probably not top quality, but they are worth the import price. Wal-mart and such made a fortune buying those Chinese products at unbeatable prices and sell many times more the import price. Also, China is a developing industrial country. If China can produce everything the quality US would, it probably wouldn’t be US who is bullying China now, right? And from my experience with some Made in USA products, I don’t think they worth their prices. Sometimes the quality is also… unsatisfactory.

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A good article

Posted on Apr 16, 2008 under 普通 General | No Comment

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/14/8287/

Quote some important parts below.

Considering this context, China’s treatment of its minorities has been exemplary compared to what the Western world has done to its minorities. After thousands of years of Chinese dominance, there still are more than 50 minorities in China. After a few hundred years of European dominance in North and South America, the original minority cultures have been exterminated, damaged, or diminished.

Chinese currency carries five languages: Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, Uigur, and Zhuang. In comparison, Canadian currency carries English and French, but no Cree or Inuktitut. If the USA were as considerate of ethnic minorities as is China, then the greenback would be written in English, Spanish, Cherokee and Hawaiian.

In China, ethnic minorities begin their primary schooling in their own language, in a school administered by one of their own community. Chinese language instruction is not introduced until age 10 or later. This is in sharp contrast to a history of coerced linguistic assimilation in most Western nations. The Australian government recently apologized to the Aboriginal minority for taking children from their families, forcing them to speak English, beating them if they spoke their mother tongue. China has no need to make such apology to Tibetans or to other minorities.

China’s one-child-policy seems oppressive to Westerners, but it has not applied to minorities, only to the Han Chinese. Tibetans can have as many children as they choose. If Han people have more than one child, they are punished.

There is a similar preference given to minorities when it comes to admission to universities. For example, Tibetan students enter China’s elite Peking University with lower exam scores than Han Chinese students.

China is not a perfect nation, but on matters of minority rights, it has been better than most Western nations. And China achieved this in the historical context of restoring itself and recovering from 200 years of continual crisis and foreign invasion.

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Censorship in US Election 2008 on Ron Paul

Posted on Apr 15, 2008 under 普通 General | No Comment

Fox News did not broadcast the following piece.

Ron Paul supporter research on mainstream media censorship

Google Trends reveals that Ron Paul has a much larger search volume, but has much less media coverage.

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雪山狮子旗,Flag of Tibet

Posted on Apr 14, 2008 under 普通 General | No Comment

From English Wikipedia:

The flag of Tibet was reintroduced in 1912 by the 13th Dalai Lama, who united the army flags of various provinces to design the present one. Since then, it served as the all-Tibet military flag until 1950[1]. It remains the emblem of the Central Tibetan Administration headquartered in Dharamsala, India. As a symbol of the Tibetan independence movement, it is banned [1] in the People’s Republic of China, including the Tibet Autonomous Region which corresponds to the former area of control of the Tibetan government at Lhasa, as well as other areas in greater Tibet.
During the era between 9th and 18th century, Tibet did not have an official army. In late 18th century, after Qing government defended Tibet from outside invasion, they created a twenty-nine points resolution called “Imperial decree of protective procedures for Tibet”. The fourth clause of this decree stated “The lack of official military in the region of Tibet has lead to emergency drafts in time of crisis, which has proven to be harmful to the Tibetan people. The emperor has approved for Tibet to form a official troop of three thousand men. One thousand each will be stationed in front and back Tibet, five hundred in Jiangzi and five hundred in Dingri.” These three thousand troops became what is commonly known as the Tibetan Infantry. Considering that a military flag is a necessity for the daily training of this army, the central Qing government approved the “snow lion flag” as official military flag of Tibet.
This tradition is continued down to present day, where the Tibetan government in exile still uses the “snow lion flag” as their official representation.

中文维基

1912年,该旗首度启用。1918年,第十三世达赖喇嘛颁布,正式由拉萨的清政府采用。1950年,中华人民共和国政府与西藏政府签订《和平解放协定》,人民解放军进驻西藏后,该旗就由五星红旗取代。1959年,发生拉萨冲突,中国人民解放军占领西藏全境并下令取缔西藏政府,第十四世达赖喇嘛逃离西藏后,该旗被中华人民共和国视为西藏独立运动的标识,被严格禁止展示或使用。
9世纪中叶,吐蕃王朝分裂后,在很长一段时期里,西藏没有出现正规的军队,也就没有正规的军旗了。直到18世纪末叶,清朝在派兵击退外敌对西藏的入侵后,制定了著名的《钦定藏内善后章程》二十九条。其中第四条规定:“以前前后藏都没有正规军队,用时临时征调,不仅缺乏作战能力,并且造扰人民,为害很大。
这次呈请大皇帝批准,成立三千名正规军队:前后藏各驻一千名,江孜驻五百名,定日驻五百名。这支钦定额为三千的军队,就是后来人们常说的“藏军”。军队平时的训练和作战的指挥,都离不了军旗。于是”中央政府清朝政府制作了”藏军的军旗“雪山狮子旗”。这就是藏独所谓“国旗”和“军队”的来历。
目前,位于印度达兰萨拉的西藏流亡政府继续使用雪山狮子旗。

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拿政治绿卡的要搞倒杜克中国学生会

Posted on Apr 14, 2008 under 普通 General | No Comment

Duke校报一直是站在中国人的反面。因为王千源自称因为自己隐私信息被曝光,上了中国政府黑名单,如果她要为自己的安全考虑,她将无法再回中国,如果她回国,可能会被终生监禁。

看样子绿卡是拿到了,恐怕帮父母把绿卡也拿到了。中国学生会还被Duke各大学生会谴责,并且被要求接触学生组织的地位。以下是来自Duke校报The Chronicle。

“I think this is one of the turning points of Chinese history, and I want to be part of it,” she said, emphasizing that she does not support Tibetan independence.

The student said there have also been consequences for her actions in China.

“I know that I am on the Chinese government blacklist because of this,” she said, explaining that she had been informed of this by sources she declined to name. “It just means I can never go back to China if I care about my security. If I go back I might end up in jail forever.”

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来自法国的不同声音

Posted on Apr 13, 2008 under 普通 General | No Comment

很多话,是直击要害。
接受采访的是Jean-Luc Mélenchon。

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