Please read my recent column on ClickZ:
“These two important differences lead to the very reason why a technology like real-time bidding can potentially create tremendous value for buyers and sellers simultaneously…
Creating Value in Real Time – My column on ClickZ
June 9th, 2010Sun VirtualBox is now Oracle VM
June 2nd, 2010I’ve been happily using Sun VirtualBox until version 3.1.8. It started to give me trouble when I upgraded Ubuntu 9.10 to 10.04 LTS guest OS. I suspected that the VBox version I’m running is out of date. However, when I ran “check for update” it happily reported that I’m “running the latest version”.
After several iterations of struggle, I came back to revisit the notion of “the latest version” by going directly to the VBox website. Sure enough, the latest version is 3.2.2. Shutdown, download, install. Out it popped the window indicating I’m about to install Oracle VM!
After some panic, I realized that it is not a trojan horse but rather the side-effect of Oracle’s recent take-over of Sun Microsystem. Because it was hastily rebranded from Sun VirtualBox to Oracle VM, even the software itself didn’t recognize it has a new owner and newer version available.
Emails with fancy signatures
April 29th, 2010One annoying thing about Outlook is that it will show emails with graphical signature line as having an attachment. Since having attachment sometimes is an important filtering criterion for me to search for important attached documents, this becomes a pain. I ended up hating all the people who have fancy graphical signature lines.
What I hate instead is that Outlook is not paying attention to many small usability issues. When I tested this with Yahoo mail and Gmail, both of them correctly identified inline images as not attachments.
Flying without ID
April 3rd, 2010Apparently you can. I just did it yesterday.
According to TSA, the protocol of flying without ID is: 1) prepare to answer a few identity related questions; 2) go through enhanced security screening. Chicago O’Hare airport followed the protocol very well. The whole process took about 25 minutes due to the lengthy process of verifying my identify through the antiquated phone system with the supervisor relying my answers to the hearing impaired phone operator. Afterward the supervisor apologized for the delay but of course I genuinely thanked him.
Privacy expert Chris Soghoian challenged the ID requirement in 2007 that got TSA to clarify the flying without ID protocol. I met Dr. Soghoian for the first time this year at an FTC event. He is a very nice young man and currently employed by FTC for consumer privacy protection. For fear of defiance and rebellious behavior, TSA further clarified its position in 2008 that would allow TSA operators ban access to people who are not cooperative. Since I lost my ID by accident and cooperated fully with the TSA operators, I wouldn’t fall into that category.
So don’t panic next time if you lost your ID. You can still fly safely home as long as you get to the airport with plenty of time to spare.
iLife patch fixed the memory leak problem
February 16th, 2010iPhoto 09 has been plagued by performance issues. One of the most annoying ones is the memory leak problem in slideshow mode. I used System Monitor and have seen memory footprint steadily grew from 200MB to 1.2GB while playing an endless loop of video files.
Last weekend Apple released a patch that finally fixed this problem. This feels great and we can now enjoy family video clips for as long as they want now.
Re: A Favorite Person Passes On
February 16th, 2010It saddens me greatly to learn a couple weeks ago after my travel that Maxine has passed away. It’s been a grave possibility ever since she was hospitalized a short while ago (see my previous post), but it still felt so sudden and unexpected.
It is also moments like this that makes us contemplate our lives on this planet – how do we take full advantage of it while we are still able, how do we spread the love to others in our lives. Maxine sets a great example for us to follow: always love what you have, love your friends and family, enjoy life fully, and learn as much about life as possible.
You will be deeply missed.
What will happen to Google China
January 19th, 2010By now, Google’s announcement to exit China market if the Chinese government doesn’t change their censorship policy has been discussed ad nauseam. The limited attention span of people also have shifted towards some real disasters in the world – like the Haiti earthquake. So what will Google China do? Here is my prediction.
Google will drag this out silently for a couple of weeks for good measure. Then it will post another blog, saying the following:
“After our announcement posted on Jan 12th, we have received a tremendous out-pouring of support from citizens and friends in US and especially in China. People have said XYZ and ZYX, …. they have done YYY and ZZZ and truly amazingly loyal to the Google brand and what it stands for. After some soul searching at the US executive office, we realized that our mission is to help the internet become a better place by organizing the world’s information. It will be a tragic setback if we give up that effort in the world largest internet market.
“In the meantime, we have held several open and candid conversations with government officials in China. We have achieved mutual understanding of our disagreement. We have agreed to continue to build an open internet while under Chinese laws. As a result, we will make certain adjustment to our scope and business models in the China market. We want to balance the importance of continue to help build the internet market in China and the importance of freedom of speech. But we will not give up one of the most important market in the world.”
In other words, show is over, back to business now.
Two Great Movies
December 20th, 2009I watched Invictus and Avatar this weekend. Very different but both are great movies.
Invictus is about how to heal old wounds. It takes courage, wisdom and determination. The nuance shown in the process of change is great to watch and appreciate. It wouldn’t be a great movie if the story behind it wasn’t a true story. Of course, that is not to say the presentation is sub-par in any shape or form. The pace of the movie is very nice, not rushed but always gripping.
Avatar on the other hand, is all about presentation. Completely 3D, extensive CGI. It is a beautiful story borrowing some bits and pieces from American Indians and modern day world-wide struggles. An entirely invented alien language and completely new alien world (Pandora) immersed you in a heightened sensory-overload experience. If you like Scifi movies, you’ll love this one.
Get well, Maxine!
December 17th, 2009Maxine and Don Huffman are both professors at Central College, Pella, Iowa. They are both very dedicated to education and especially cross border education. They have been using their own fund, time and other resources to promote the exchange scholars program between Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China and Central College since 1986.
They are big fans of the friendship between China and USA and have traveled extensively to China up until the last a couple years. In their senior ages, Maxine’s mobility becomes more limited and she has been mostly Pella bound recently.
Heading into the holiday season, Maxine unfortunately had a stroke after she fell at home. She is in stable condition while being treated at the Mercy hospital at Des Moines. Our prayers are with Don and Maxine. We hope Maxine will pull through and have a speedy and complete recovery.
Below are quoted from Zhejiang University website:
Maxine Huffman教授，长期以来致力于发展美中关系，发展美国中央大学（Central College）与浙江大学的校际合作交流，在她的积极努力下，美国中央大学与浙江大学自1986年起建立校际合作交流关系，中央大学英语系每年选派经验 丰富、学术地位高的专家来浙江大学任教，并使得我校多名英语教师在中央大学的工作学习中得到了业务提高，为我校的英语教学作出了巨大贡献。Maxine Huffman博士及其丈夫Don Huffman还经常在中央大学举行各种各样的专题讲座，介绍中国文化，让更多的美国朋友了解中国，成为中西文化的使者，中美两国人民友谊的桥梁。Maxine Huffman博士业务能力强，教学工作认真负责，一丝不苟，赢得了全体师生的好评。她曾多次受聘来浙江大学任教，所教授的课程包括英语语言学、英美文 学、英语写作、英语口语等，她所教授的课程内容丰富，形式多样，生动活泼。在课堂内外她始终把学生作为她的朋友，从学习、生活各个方面关心学生，成了学生 们的良师益友。在外语系组织的历次对外籍专家、教师的检查评估中她都获得一致的好评，学生们称赞她是他们所遇到过的最好的外籍专家。
Maxine Huffman博士始终如一地关心支持浙江大学外语系的发展，给外语系提出各种办学建议，并每年用自己的工资购买大量的书籍、资料寄给外语系资料室，为外 语系的资料室建设作出了巨大的贡献。外语系资料室为她设立了专柜，这些资料给外语系研究生、本科生的学位论文、毕业设计提供了大量有价值的素材。在他们夫 妇的影响下，他们的女儿也用自己的钱购买图书资料寄给外语系。
Maxine Huffman博士对中国大学英语教学也作出了巨大贡献。浙江大学外语系自1995年开始进行大学英语教学改革尝试，1997年学校正式立项进行教改，并 编写一套旨在培养学生提高综合应用能力的全新的大学英语教材。Maxine Huffman博士夫妇得知这一消息非常高兴，立即买了一台新的电脑，在国外帮助我们收集、编写大量时代气息浓、信息量大、语言规范、贴近学生日常生活的 材料，源源不断地发往中国，使教材编写工作进展顺利。
Virtualization on Windows 7
December 16th, 2009Windows 7 has been very robust for the last several weeks that I feel confident enough to push the performance boundary a little. I want to see how well Linux virtual machines (VM) runs on top of Win 7.
There are three popular choices to run VM on Windows 7: Virtual PC, VirtualBox and VMware Server.
Virtual PC is a free Windows update for Windows 7. It is intended to supply a Windows XP VM for legacy programs. I was able to boot and install Linux (Ubuntu 8.04) on it but couldn’t boot into the finished install at all.
VirtualBox (VBox) is an open source VM acquired by Sun. It is cross platform (OS X, Linux or Windows). VMWare Server(VMS) is the entry-level VM (freeware) from the virtualization powerhouse VMWare.
Both VBox and VMS install and run Linux VM successfully. Of the two, I feel VBox is more suitable for a desktop/laptop host environment because of its small memory footprint, nice “seamless mode” when guest and host apps run side by side and full snapshot capabilities. VMS is probably more suited for a server environment for its web-based remote management GUI. In my test VMS also has slightly better device drivers such as video that works more smoothly out of the box.
Some of the features VBox has are included in the VMWare Workstation version (or the VMWare Fusion for Mac OS X). It is not free though.