网瘾战争

连TechCrunch都报道了，这部勇夺2010年土豆奖的游戏影片在Youtube上也能找到。有很多典故我也是第一次听到，不过还好有fans做了一个详尽的桥段考据故（譬如：舅舅，两盒三厢），也有人制作了一个docs总结页面。以下是一些经典台词回顾：

• 绝对不超70码
• 涉嫌非法营运，事实清楚，证据确凿，取证手段并无不当
• 明显与常理相悖
• 台词临时性即意掉线
• 心神不宁
• 跨省追捕
• 永远会有87.53%的人支持我们

一周IT新闻•评

乔大帮主关于Google和Adobe的言论（Wired）：这个其实是上周的言论了，乔帮主称Google "Don't be evil is a load of crap"，称Adobe "They are Lazy"。乔帮主是很多人崇拜的偶像，包括我在内，而往往这些偶像说话做事都是很有个性的。这话一出来，Adobe不得不严肃得发博客来澄清，可惜我不是特别了解flash的这些技术细节；而另一边不难听出其中的火药味。对于用户来以及市场来说，竞争是好事，可就人的感情来说，当一个最好的朋友变成最大的对手。某种程度上，乔大帮主的这番言论确是肯定了竞争给他带来的郁闷。能被对手肯定和重视，未尝不是一件好事。

Amazon电子书遭遇价格危机（WSJ）：自水果公司的平板出台之后，各大发行商仿佛抱到了一根救命稻草，Macmillan领头想Amazon施压，把畅销书的价格从$9.99向上提，随后HapperCollins以及Hachette纷纷效仿，一场价格战正在上演。消费者，发行商，电子书阅读器，大家总要打一架才能找到平衡点。看热闹的总是大有人在，最后还是要等东西真正开卖，能卖多少出去说了才算。我家Kindle除了刚开始心血来潮的时候买过总和约摸50刀的书，之后都是去找些免费的书看。虽说我不是那么看书的人，但想想Kindle还是改变了我买书的习惯：如果真的有什么书一定要买，如果不是太多彩图（譬如摄影一类），电子书即使比纸版贵也还是值，至少搬家的时候不用到处找人去送书。不过第一代ipad真的今年就能成功么？

微软遭遇创新危机（NYT）：这一大早的新闻出来没有几小时就成为所有人嘴边的话题，其最主要原因还是发布这个言论的人，微软前VP，Dick Brass，所谓之自己人掌自己人耳光，以至于逼着微软的PR当天发表博客回复此事。创新这个词很具有感情和神秘色彩，对于一个有品的公司来说，你可以骂它业绩烂，但绝不可以骂它没有创新精神，因为这太损公司形象了；可创新又往往没有一个可以量化的指标来衡量，于是公说公有理，婆说婆有理。其实我还是很敬仰微软公司的：Win7用久了发现也还满顺的，和Mac是不同风格，但是很多细节处理你不能不说没有创新；Bing虽然市场份额未见大涨，搜索结果也马马虎虎，但是它有很多处理方式（譬如Entity Card，无穷图片搜索）确实是给用户一种全新的体验，尤其是能赶着竞争对手去思考这些问题不能说没有创新。只是有两点：第一，大众对于牛公司总是有更高的期望值，你去把已有的东西做好不叫创新，你必须做个东西大家从来没有听说过，而且很炫才叫创新；第二：公司大了自然人就多了，人多的地方多多少少政治就多些，各个组为争夺资源必定少不了口水，从而有些东西就显得执行起来慢了，这是放之四海而皆准的真理。

A-ha reading

It is all FAKE. However, it's quite a pleasure to read those sarcastic argument with some interesting perspectives. As always, I won't comment on the matter.
in reference to:

"These black market sites where hackers sell whatever new exploits they’ve discovered in Internet Explorer — who do you think is the biggest customer on those sites? It’s our government, operating through fronts. Trust me, when they buy an exploit in IE, it’s not so they can alert Microsoft and get it fixed. Um, no. Quite the opposite. Part of the reason IE continues to suck so much, in fact, is that fronts working for the CIA and NSA buy up all the exploits and keep them secret."
- http://www.fakesteve.net/2010/01/yes-i-support-the-government-of-china.html (view on Google Sidewiki)

六月二日屏蔽日

传闻伟大的长城将一系列国外网站集体屏蔽：bing, twitter, flikr等等，使得中国的互联网成为名副其实的局域网，sigh……回忆起当年我出国申请的时候也是好多国外网站被屏蔽，还要找师兄帮忙把Duke网页打包下载发给我的经历。叹息政府对舆论控制的力度，以及手段之粗陋。同样是为政体或者大集团服务的媒体，怎么国外的愚昧了民众之后还要被民众表扬说自由无偏见；而国内的非得暴力打击引起公愤而不懂得分流制洪呢？

阅读的习惯

此相片是我每天等bus地方空空的报纸杂志自动售卖机，sigh。目前除了每天查阅自己订阅的rss feed之外，偶尔也去tianya，mitbbs之类的地方随意看看水，再有的阅读内容就是好友们通过各种方式(twitter，共享，收藏之类）显示在facebook的一些文章了。期待Kevin描述的下一代digg……

Setting Up Airport

There are two types of apple router: airport express and airport extreme. In fact, the set up is not as trivial as I though it should be, unless you follow the right steps, which is poorly documented in the accompanying booklet.

1. Get internet connect from a regular moderm, test the direct ethernet plug into the computer works.
2. Get a fresh set airport. If you messed up with the setting, restore back to factory setting by pressing the reset button while it is plugged with power, wait until it quick flash amber light, and wait it restart.
3. Now your computer, with appropriate software, can detect a wireless signal. Connect to it, and open up the airport utility, select the appropriate airport device.
4. Go through the recommended set up steps, DO NOT try manual set up for now. Everything is straightforward, use DHCP automatically to find the IP, gateway, DNS etc. You may not want to set up password for this time.
5. Update the airport, and wait for the device to reboot. Now you should have internet connect now. Try to look at the advanced manual set up, change wherever you want, and be sure to add WPA/WPA personal password.
   

My Mac Software List 4 - internet connection

Besides the web browser, there are many other important ways to connect with the internet. First of all is instant messenger (IM):

 Adium, freeware
The best IM on mac: integrates all your IM clients (MSN, QQ, icq, gtalk, ichat, Yahoo! Messenger, AOL etc); lots of customization (skin, icon, message/panel display), and FREE. The only downside is no voice/video chat yet.
 Skype, freeware
Good reception for voice/video chat, and call to phone numbers too.
 iChat, build in iLife, but need MobileMe for advanced features
Very nice video chat interface, including presentation style (showing you slides along with your video chat), but need MobileMe subscription (not quite worth the money in my opinion).
 MSN Messenger for mac, freeware
Workable, but lack lots of features compared with windows version. Suggst use Adium to replace it.
There is also the Yahoo! Messenger for Mac (freeware), but I never used it, no comments.
There is no standalone Google Talk application, you can either use firefox to chat, or use adium to for the features. Also, if you use Internet Relay Chat (IRC), don't miss Colloquy  freeware, or Linkinus  shareware.

For FTP connection, I strongly recommend Cyberduck  freeware. It is so great that I don't even need to compare with other similar applications. Of cause, you can also use the Terminal  build in for sftp connection with usual linux/unix commands. For bit-torrent downloads, try Transmission  freeware, good enough for casual use.

For Virtual Network Computing (VNC), Chicken of the VNC  freeware used to be great, but it seems to have a little bug on intel macs (under fullscreen mode), and lacks support/update for over two years. There seems no perfect solution, but Jollys Fast VNC  freeware is worth trying.

For Virtual Private Network (VPN), for exmaple, download papers from Duke subscription using netID, you can use Cisco VPNClient  commercial, or download it from Duke OIT website.

To access windows machines remotely, you can configure Remote Desk for windows XP professional, or Vista Primum, and access it uisng Remote Desk Connection Client for mac  freeware. See my other post for details, you might also need to configure your firewall property.

For old fashioned people still use old terminal style Bulletin Board System (BBS), the best application on mac is iTerm  shareware. It is actually a full featured terminal, which can run usual shell commands, but also can display BBS nicely.

My Mac Software List 3 - web browser

Now talk about the internet related applications. First of all, the most important application is the internet web browser. The build in Safari is pretty decent, until Firefox 3 came out. There are also a bunch of other web browsers, freeware and shareware, such as Camino, Opera, Omniweb, but I would like to say, it's more like a matter of taste, and they are almost on the same level. You will fall in love with anyone of them if you use it for more than two weeks. Summarize as follows:

• Die hard mac fan stick with Safari 3  build in in leopard
  
• Die hard mozilla fan stick with Firefox 3  freeware
• Lovers of both mac and mozilla use Camino  freeware
• Cool people use Opera  freeware on their computers/cellphones/wiis
• "Rich" people use Omniweb  shareware (used to be much superior than others, but now Firefox etc caught up)

I think Firefox is better than Safari for now, but I will definitely give Safari 4 (promising much faster speed on javascript) a try when it comes out later this year/or next year. If you use Firefox instead, please check my experience with Firefox 3.

If you do use Safari, check out the plugin Inquisitor  freeware, which makes your search bar more powerful, and you can configure it through Safari preference panel (command + , ). There was a bit of scadal about the developer earlier this year, but David acknowledged this problem in time. I think Inquisitor joining Yahoo! is a great move, and I'm happy to see the developers getting revenu without cutting user experience.

The password manager in Firefox seems to be decent, but I am already a 1password  shareware user. For my two years' experience with Agile, I feel quite happy with them, and now I've owned two licences. But I haven't quite compared it with the firefox manager, maybe that's also good enough. The only downside again is the steep price, but I got both licence from bundle sales, so I'm happy with it.

Another related software is Speed Download  shareware, a download manager for web browsers. Again, good to have if cheap, and I probably won't purchase it at full reatail price. And Yazsoft is quite mean at the beginning of its bundle sale.