Category: PC World

Property Rights Protection: A Conceptual Problem

好久没有更新博客了。最近因为忙于准备毕业论文和博士入学考试，我也就无暇顾及这片天地了。同时，最近也似乎实在没有什么值得去深究的题目。本打算就林妙可在今年春晚的直播现场不尊重老艺术家，后来想想也算了。俗话说的好，子不教，父之过。恐怕林妙可这个小丫头的所作所为也并非出于其自愿，而更可能是父母的功利心在作祟。考虑到这种现象也属于个案，大多数的中国人还是非常懂得尊老爱幼的，故而我也就就此搁笔了。但是今天早上QQ群里转发的一条消息却让我来了兴趣。如果说林妙可只是个案，那么我们国人当前的羊群行为和对知识产权的不尊重则是到了发指的地步了。

  1. 一条来自QQ群的群发短信

    如下的消息应该是大伙儿都在QQ群啊，BBS上屡见不鲜的。如我今天中午看到的一条：

    用电脑的朋友注意了啊：具体时间是从二十号开始 !!! 如果大家在使用电脑的时候系统提示你所使用的微软产品是盗版软件等等，而且还会在右下角出现蓝色的小星星～～这是因为： 由于美国最近要针对中国上诉WTO知识产权保护问题，微软正在为美国政府搜集相关证据，在最近自序，为了咱中国利益，请大家不要开启自动更新。如果起诉成功,中国将要赔款几百亿.已经开启当提示要你安装“正版增值计划”请别安装！安装后会在任务栏右下角出现一个蓝色五角星符号！这样就会被微软追踪锁定，以向美国政府提供证据！ 请大家转到其他群上顺带一个，大家转发，这个直接影响所有中国电脑用户的利益 提醒大家，以后去麦当劳，肯德基一定要记得要发票。麦当劳，肯德基每年在中国因为我们不习惯要发票的原因而掠走将近２亿的税收，把这条信息完好（不加任何修改复制）发至其它群是中国人的就转发一下 累不了你

    说实话，看到这条消息我非常痛心，也非常遗憾。在我指出这条短信的问题后，对方的回复更让我无语：

    行了，我只是尽个中国人的义务而已

    你传就传，不传拉到

    对此，我不得不问：RT此类消息真的是“中国人的义务”？事实上，这是在给我们敬爱的祖国抹黑！俗话说家丑不可外扬，而事实上，我们正在外扬我们的“丑陋”，同时也暴露出了我们教育与经济发展不均衡的一些现象，尽管他们只是暂时的。

  2. 经济发展与基础教育的不对称

    其实这样的无知，从根本上讲，与其他的社会科学所关注的问题一样，都是有着深刻的制度背景的。而这里的制度背景则主要基于教育相对于经济发展而略显滞后的问题。我们这一代其实是处在经济和教育的双轨转型中。这种转型注定了我们的不平凡，也预示着我们会遇到更多的困惑。

    想想几十年前我们父母一辈与命运抗争的历史，我们作为80后无疑是幸运的。相比较他们，我们可以接受更好的教育，我们可以说很好的英语，我们可以阅读国外的英文原版小说，而这些也给予了我们与国际接轨的机会。我们不再受累于意识形态的问题，我们不再受制于“阶级斗争”，我们也不再为了想读书而没书读郁闷。在我们的记忆中，政治因素尽管没有如90后般一无所知，但是却也没有深刻到左右我们的想法和言论了。即使我们在遇到一些隐性限制的时候，我们也有了爬墙的技术。四角的天空不再属于我们，我们正在拥有更广阔的天空。

    但是几十年前的社会变革对我们的影响是深刻的。以前我一直不理解为什么我做的财务研究都要去考虑经济后果，现在我明白了。如果将社会发展看作一个可以无限延伸的时间轴，而将大小的社会事件（Social Events）作为其中的一分子，我们就会发现：一些事件的影响是深远的。在我小时候的影响里，我一直坚持着“无神论者”该有的一切，我坚定的认为“迷信”是不对滴～～。似乎只有那个长得酷似KFC门口的大爷的言论才是真理。同时我也坚定的认为：一切旧思想都是糟粕，唐诗宋词也不必过度关注。然而，随着教育的深入，我发现，我是彻底的错了。宗教是一种人类心灵的寄托，它本身无对错可言。更何况很多宗教都崇尚人性的善良本质。这不是我们需要的么？而至于古典文学知识的缺乏，更是让我羞愧。我真不知道遇到一个比我精通中国文化的老外时我会做何感想。

    一场变革所带给我们的不仅仅是知识的缺乏。更多的其实导致了很多人的道德层面的部分缺失。当然，我这里所指的并不是说“良心”的缺乏，更多的，我需要讨论的是对别人劳动的尊重，对环境的重视以及团队贡献方面的缺乏。而这种观念的缺乏则会导致大量的“愤青”和“五毛”。其实不客气点说，我所指的“愤青”基本可以属于“脑残”级别了。因为他们往往不会去独立思考，会做的只是人云亦云。而“五毛”则在此层面上与“愤青”保持着高度的一致。

  3. 这条消息的背后：盲从与无知 

    我不知道为什么有那么多人会不加思考的去RT这类消息。作为饭后谈资，我们不如来分析一下这段话的逻辑。首先分析关于盗版的一段。

    由于美国最近要针对中国上诉WTO知识产权保护问题，微软正在为美国政府搜集相关证据，在最近自序，为了咱中国利益，请大家不要开启自动更新。如果起诉成功,中国将要赔款几百亿.已经开启当提示要你安装“正版增值计划”请别安装！安装后会在任务栏右下角出现一个蓝色五角星符号！这样就会被微软追踪锁定，以向美国政府提供证据！

    我们可以作出如下逻辑推演：我们使用盗版-微软会检查-微软检测到盗版会起诉-我们就会赔钱-免费使用泡汤。而据此，我们提出一个逆否命题：若要免费，则不可让微软查到盗版，所以我们要阻止微软的搜集证据。大伙儿不觉得这个很可笑？其实这不仅仅是一个冷笑话，更深入的思考我们会发现至少两方面的问题，而这两个问题看起来就不是那么好笑了：

    1. 版权意识缺乏严重

      俗话说，亡羊补牢，为时不晚。其实对于大多数人而言，了解和尊重知识产权并不难。但是可悲的是，在知识产权面前，大多数人集体失言了。而上文则很好的说明了这一点。习惯于逻辑推理的人会很快发现，这段看似逻辑严密的文字底下其实隐藏了一个非常要命的前提，那就是：使用盗版是理所当然的！如果说个人把这个强盗逻辑奉为圣贤尚情有可原，给其套上“国家利益”则是要命的错误了。难道我们的国家利益就是这么掠夺来的？我想没人会这么认为吧。

      事实上，Windows并不是一个开源软件，而是一款商业软件。作为商业软件，我开发，你付费是很符合逻辑的行为。毕竟天文数字般的代码行数背后折射出了巨额的人工和智力方面的投入，而作为一个商业公司，不计回报是不可能的。我们付费使用Microsoft的产品，其实本身也是对广大程序员工作的一种肯定。毕竟不要忘了，微软亚洲研究院是微软产品开发一支非常重要的主力。而其中有为数不少的员工是我们同胞。其实我们无视版权，也大大损害了我们自己的利益。

      价格昂贵永远是一个千年不换，万年不改的借口。不可否认，尽管微软已经在中国地区给予了更低的价格，但是与国民的人均可支配收入而言，还是比较贵的。但是这绝对不是借口。因为对大中型商业公司、科研院所以及高级知识分子们而言，软件价格并非承受不起。而对个人用户而言，其实很多商业软件，甚至操作系统都是可以用开源软件代替的。我曾因为科研工作在Ubuntu下呆了一个礼拜，通过各种方法，我的工作和娱乐都得到了保障，并没有太多的问题。只是大多数人不愿意去钻研罢了。或许这就是“习惯的力量”吧。下图是某网站Win7售价：

    2. 没有隐私保护意识

      之所以说到隐私保护策略，是因为太多愤青认为微软会利用后门程序达到一些“不可告人的目的”，同时提到WGA验证机会是为“美国政府”提供证据，从而建议关闭Windows Update。事实上，我早期也是此说法的坚定拥护者，甚至于我从来不去打补丁。但是结果呢？微软没有提醒我，但是“冲击波”却给当时我们几个人上了一课。自此以后，我就打补丁了。电脑系统出问题可不好玩。

      其实作为一个商业软件，搜集数据是无可厚非的。毕竟相关的数据可以帮助他们更好的开发，但是大量的数据搜集是在用户知晓的情况下进行的。比如最著名的“用户体验改善计划”，就是典型的数据搜集程序。但是需要注意的是，这种数据搜集并不是没有限制的。在微软的说明书和网站提供的隐私保护条款中都明确说明了数据搜集的范围和用途。我知道大多数的国内用户都是不会去看这类长篇说明的。但是你没看到可不代表别人没做啊。

      当然，通过WGA的统计来搜集盗版数量就更正常不过了。俗话说的好：若想人不知，除非己莫为啊！

  4. 结论与思考

    其实版权意识也好，隐私保护也罢，甚至于缺乏独立思考的能力，都有着深层次的原因，不是我们这里一两句话讲得清楚的，同时有些话也是不能说的。其实对学术界的同僚们而言，我们也希望我们的成果被引用，而不是被直接“参考”；对于广大的博主而言，我们希望我们的文章合法转载而不是被“采集”；对于广大的设计者而言，我们希望我们的创意被肯定，而不是被“山寨威武”。既然如此，我们为什么不从消灭自己电脑里的盗版软件开始呢？

    至于麦当劳的问题，我就不提了。毕竟这个跟我这篇文章主题出入大了点。不过建议愤青们去学习下税法和财务相关知识。中国的税务机关也不是傻瓜。发票是税务机关控制税源的一个重要渠道，但是却不是唯一的渠道。要知道，美国的餐馆也是只给Bills，而不给发票的。难道美国餐馆都免税了？

Online Cheating: A True Story

话说这年头的诈骗行为真是如雨后春笋般层出不穷。我们的智商也在一次次的大浪中接受着考验。在这场攻防战中，诈骗技术和防诈骗技术都在你来我往的交手中大有长进。看来，与高手过招这句话果然是句放之四海而皆准的经典语句啊。而QQ上时不时的“中奖陷阱提示”，MSN上的“不要透露信用卡信息”的警告以及各大报纸上的诈骗故事时时都在提醒我们：社会有风险，领奖需谨慎啊。而我今天要讲的就是我遇到的一个真实的欺诈案例。

  1. 收到垃圾邮件

    具有讽刺意味的是，我今天收到了一封诈骗邮件。如果是平时，我会一删了之。而今天我打算给它“晒晒太阳”。毕竟真的去点击这些网站的人是少数。不过这个邮件多少看着有点山寨。而且Outlook也把这个邮件放到了Junk Mail中，其中的超级链接也被自动disable了。

    email

  2. 垃圾网站历险记

    为了试验这个东西的真假，我直接打开了上述网址。其实这是个冒险行为，万一网站被挂马，说不定哥们的系统就会不幸效忠党国。不过兴趣还是高于一切啊。于是我看到了如下的一个半山寨页面：

    win3 

    是不是觉得这个网站比较山寨？注意用户协议上写的是“雅虎邮箱”，而页面的其他地方都是Google。哎，看来作假的哥们不够细心啊。建议这个哥们雇佣个美女把把关。一般我的经验是，女孩子大多是非常细心的。此乃天性也。为了验证这个系统的真假，我随意输入了一个用户名，结果出来一个提示框：

     win1

    哈哈，看到没，58000的现金和14988元的笔记本哦！超级诱人。不过呢，我从来是相信天上不会掉馅饼，而是宁可相信天将降大任于斯人也，云云。在按下Ok以后，页面显示正常登录。

     win2

    在页面的下方则要求填写领取资料。注意：个人资料搜集开始了。怀着好奇的心情，我又进入了下一个页面：

    win4 

    从这个表单来看，需要的资料还是不少的，尤其注意的是，居然最后还要输入银行帐号和户名。我不知道是不是真的有傻瓜会去填个人资料。不过我想，大千世界无奇不有。被一时的贪念冲昏了头脑的人肯定也不少吧？而我的网站探险也到此结束了，毕竟我可不想让他们真的骚扰。

  3. 基于域名的一番“折腾”

    事情到这里远没有结束。非常感谢Whois系统，我们可以很容易的知道域名的注册信息。而且考虑到域名注册的规定，这些信息我想至少有部分是真实的吧。出于对美国Privacy法律的考虑（我的服务器在美国），我只公布域名基本注册信息，而不包括注册人等信息。有兴趣的童鞋可以去whois查看。

    whois 

    从注册的信息来看，这个域名居然是几天前才注册的。而且呢，网站的服务器也在美国，是Windows主机。Okay，我对这个不熟悉，有专业的访客可以查下比如这个服务器在美国的哪个机房云云。
    注册的联系人信息显示此人在云南昆明，并且还提供了一个手机号码。但是检索发现，此号码是海南号码。呵呵，骗人的就是骗人的，没办法啊。

     tele

  4. 结论和建议

    我的测试到此就结束了。毕竟这只是出于娱乐所做的尝试，而并不是什么正规的法律手段。法律手段还是留给专业级玩家去玩吧。但是关于这个诈骗我有两点要说明：

    1. 现在的诈骗技术是越来越高超了。域名也从早期的info等便宜货过渡到了com上来了。同时，山寨的网站也越做越好了。而越来越好的网站往往意味着更大的杀伤力。比如前阶段沸沸扬扬的假淘宝、假工行、假中国银行等。不知道坑害了多少人。俗话说：害人之心不可有，但是防人之心真的必须有啊！
    2. 其实假冒网站还是很容易发现的，只是我们需要细心和耐性。从上面的这个站点分析我们可以看到，其实这个网站的漏洞非常多。除了自爆的邮箱名不统一以外，我们也可以利用Whois系统甚至我们的直觉来发现这些欲行不轨的家伙。

PS：其实对于做这些网站的人而言，他们不缺技术，而是缺德！

Freedom on Internet: An Alternative Explanation

image Abstract: This article mainly discuss the production of regulation on Internet, as well as its anticipated consequence, grounded with the traditional economic theory. i argue the appropriate regulation on Internet is necessary due to the existence of naive users of Internet as well as the herding behavior. But I also argue that strict censorship can also mean cliff effect, which is a tragedy for the users. The contribution of this article is that it is the first time to link the development of Internet to the economic understanding. And the conclusion is also of practical meanings to the academics and practitioners who are focus on the investors protection in emerging markets.

Keywords: Internet Censorship, Naive Internet Users, Tendency Protection

DISCLAIMER: THIS ARTICLE IS ONLY A PERSONAL ARGUMENT THAT CAN HARDLY FULLY REPRESENT THE KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING THAT BOTH THE AUTHOR AND THE OWNER OF THIS BLOG OWN. PLEASE BE AWARE OF TAKING YOUR OWN JUDGEMENT FOR ANY PART IN THIS ARGUMENT. NO LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY WOULD BE AVAILABLE FOR ANY PART OF THIS ARTICLE FOR BOTH THE AUTHOR AND OWNER OF THIS SITE.

  1. Introduction

    The gambling between the freedom and regulation on Internet in China is now becoming quite a popular topic, especially when Google announced a preliminary decision on its willing of exiting, a direct way expresses his arguments and annoy to the regulations in China. Various discussions and arguments are available in numerous BBS and blogs. Obviously, the freedom on Internet is becoming a new instrument for the US government to criticize the weak protection of human rights in China. A speech made by Hilary Clinton, secretary of US, would apparently concentrate the attention all around the world to this topic. I don’t know if it is necessary to treat it as an important speech or just some words by a politician, since such arguments in really common to see. But in fact, in this post, I would like to provide some deeper understanding on this topic, providing academic explanation for this gambling.

  2. Regulation: A Production of Non-Rationality.

    1. Internet Under Ideal Conditions: A Rationality Hypothesis

      According to the traditional economic theory, we can suppose that the behavior of an individual would be unlikely important to the decisions of others’ given the setting that the participants in an environment is numerous and countless. In fact, the Internet can provide us such an ideal environment. Considering it as a globally connected network, and the cultural differences exist for users from different countries and regions, various concept of value would be conflict that eventually form equilibrium. But do remember that the equilibrium is a general one. Under such anticipation, the arguments and issues provided by individual to the Internet can hardly affect the others. In fact, the Internet is playing as an pot, integrating various opinions, understandings, and even trivialities. Thus, the regulation on such pot is meaningless since they can hardly affect any one else. The regulation on such behaviors would be meaningless and contradict to the principle of ‘cost-efficiency’.

    2. Internet in Real World: Naive Users and Harding Behavior

      However, be aware that the setting described above is likely to be ideal, since there is a fundamental assumption of economics that, I assume the individuals using Internet are totally rational. That is, they can fairly judge and decide what to do without any influence from others, which are regarded as exogenous. While whether such assumption can fit the reality is a question. In fact, it is widely acknowledge that the knowledge an individual matters can significantly affect his attitude and depth of though for an event, and such attitude is also related to the characteristic and some psychological factors. For this reason,i shall hereby expand the rationality hypothesis, admitting that the attitude and style of decision-making is differentiated.

      Given the differentiated understanding, the interacting influence between the individuals can be anticipated.  For differentiated individuals, two types can be generally distinguished, one is holding information advantage and good master of knowledge, who can fully think and express their opinions independently, while the other is comparatively weak on their knowledge and expression. Under such pyramid structure, those individuals with full knowledge and comparative information advantage can thus conduct the fashion, while the others would follow. In such setting, the interacting influence is formed. And the equilibrium I argued in ideal settings are now transformed into a Nash Equilibrium.

    3. Regulation on Internet: A Protection Mechanism

      Thus the herding among the Internet users forms. Following the terms in capital, I define the users without sufficient knowledge to conduct their own decision as naive users. Due to their disadvantage on knowledge, such naive users would prefer to follow the fashion conducted by certain mature users. Under most occasions, such following can help hide their weak mastering of knowledge, which can be regarded as tendency protection. It is easy to anticipate that the pursuing of such protection can, under some occasions, lead to misleading by those who are conducting the fashions. Such misleading is from the conflict between the personal understanding and accepted virtue given a specified social environment. Related explanation would not be given here since its complexity. And it is the misleading, or say gaps between the understanding and accepted virtue that form the regulation.

  3. Regulation on Internet, Be Appropriate!

    The regulation can be important to constrain the fashion that is contradicting to the accepted virtue. In fact, FBI is taking real-time monitoring on the Twitter, a popular micro-blog service in US, to find the clues for both existing and potential victims. And the Emails to and from US is also filtered by the network gate for security purposes. In China, such monitoring is more severe. Messages and posts on BSP and BBS are totally filtered. Any contradicting information is abandoned by such filtering. Undoubtedly, such filtering offers us a better environment, protecting us from harmful information. Just imagine the Internet without regulation, virus, Trojan and trivialities would be the main stream of the Internet.

    But we must also be clear that the monitoring, or say regulation should be appropriate. Too strict censorship can lead to ‘cliff effect’, a term used in economics and finance, representing the depression on information announcement in capital markets due to a strict regulation unacceptable to the investors and managers. Similar effect can also be anticipated in Internet as well. A good example on the censorship from China can obviously provide such explanation. Since the 7*5 Event in Xinjiang, China, the Internet service in Xinjiang Province is strictly controlled till now. No Email service, no instant messaging. Taking a surf to the BBS in Xinjiang, though accessible to the citizens there, little information can be found. The other example is on Google.com. There is little report in China, but it becomes a hot topic in WSJ, a top newspaper in the field of finance, in the next two days.  Obviously, the censorship in China leads to the serious cliff effect. While, jokingly, I wonder, is the cliff effect just what the government want?

  4. Censorship and Cliff Effect: A Tragedy for Most Chinese!

    Admittedly, appropriate regulation on the Internet is unquestionable. Such behavior is meaningful to the protection of naive users, who takes up the majority. But too strict censorship in China has changed its purpose. In China, the censorships is being blindly expanded. Nearly all the excellent Web 2.0 service has been abandoned in China, the personal websites, including the BBS and blogs has been strictly controlled. Anything that is contradicting to the governmental willing, even the potential ones that can hardly be observed, would be deleted. Democracy has lost its meaning here. i don’t want to underestimate the brain power of the leaders, but frankly, such censorship is a tragedy.

  5. Enlighments to Research on Capital Markets: A Joke

    Literature on accounting and finance provide us evidence that the protection of investors is quite weak in emerging markets, and the governmental organization for regulation is seeking for an efficient way for solution. Now I suppose the answer has been out. That is, they can learn from the censorship of Internet, a good lesson on how to build a solid firewall against its citizen!

Google in China: To Be or Not To Be

It would be amazed to see that a young man who works at the computer for eight hours and more that is ignored about Google. For us, the coming out of search engine has changed our lives. Their service make the seeking of specified information from the pool of Internet become easy. Among the numerous search engine, Google is undoubtedly the most famous one due to its advantage on technology and service. And in less than a decade, the Google has developed from a small workshop, settled in a garage, to a global company that integrated various services, like online photo album, Email service, Books, etc. However, it is this large firm that announced his willing of exiting China this morning.

The respect of freedom is a virtue of the Internet, and it is proposed to be a bottom line for Internet as well. In a virtual environment of Internet, people from everyone corner can share their understanding on public affairs, political events, and technical issues. It is the application of the Internet that boost the development of international trading and academic exchange among the institutions around the world. No matter if you are an expert, professor or just an ordinary citizen from a small town, the Internet is served as a public dictionary, from where you can look up historical events, statistical data, or even the pricing vegetables in a town that you are living in. Any attempt on preventing the users of Internet from obtaining certain contents can thus be regarded as a volatility to its virtue, except for some cases like threatens to the national security.

But in a mystery China, everything can happen, including the governmental control of the usage for this network. For decades, the information from the Internet is carefully filtered, which is generally introduced in a previous post. Such filtering also exists on the controlling of paper based materials. Materials and publications that are against the communism are fully controlled, especially when such materials are written in simplified and traditional Chinese, which is comprehensive for most readers hereby. That’s why for decades, the custom between Hong Kong and Mainland is caring much more on the publications within the traveler’s luggage, comparing to the custom in Shanghai, who are welcoming most travelers from US and Europe.

Google’s respect to the virtue of China is apparently conflicting with willing of the Chinese government.  For Google, they are willing to present every result that they can obtain from the Internet based on their automatic indexing service, which is regarded as both the virtue of Internet and their customers. In contrary, for Chinese government, such service may not be that pleasant. Since the result presented by Google can offer news reports and analysis from other news agencies that are inconsistent to the Xinhua News Agency, which is regarded as an authority of news in China. To prevent the readers in China of reaching such ‘invalid information’, the links to the ‘invalid information’ that is regarded by the government would be reset by a firewall, known as GFW. The service of Google would down for minutes when such volatility is detected.

The reset by the GFW greatly reduce the user experience of Google. To reconcile for this action, Google.cn, a special edition of Google in China is coming out. His result is artificially intervened and all the ‘invalid information’ would be excluded. By using Google.cn instead, the user experience is much better, but, the accuracy for the result is totally lost. Frankly, the result presented by the Google.cn is biased, which is criticized by numerous mediums overseas. 

i don’t know if it is the criticism or some other reasons promote Google for an announcement on his official blog this morning. According to the announcement, from today, the Google.cn would stop his artificial intervene and provide unbiased result consistent to the Google.com, his global site. And the Google.cn would be abandoned if the government refuse to accept this decision. It is obviously a good news for most users of Google. However, it means much more than only a piece of good news and the freedom for Internet in China.

Abandoning the Google.cn can directly be regarded as its abandon of markets in China. For Chinese users, Google.com would be their only choice, as what we did prior to the release of Google.cn. But don’t forget that the domain of Google.com can be locked by a firewall, just like what they have done for YouTube, Flicker, Face book, etc. Problems can be more serious if the IP of Google.com is located in the black list  for Email service providers in China. Such action can prevent most Gmail users to the friends in China if they are using the mailbox provided by an national ISP.  It is of some probability to happen due to the official announcement from Google, which shows evidence on the concerns of Email accounts from some persons from the Chinese government.

Besides Email, numerous services would also be unavailable once Google is locked in China. For webmasters of certain websites, including myself, the Google Adsense, Google Analytics, Google Webmasters would out of use. For academic and graduate students, they would never expect the Google Scholar for certain academic references. The life would be totally changed, and we are forced to seek for numerous alternatives for these services. The transition cost can be expected to be large.

I don’t know who would this even further go, but I do appreciate the excellent services that Google has bring us. It is hard to imagine how the life would be once Google is prohibited. Let’s just wait for the governmental response for this announcement.

Repairing My Laptop: A Visit To Shanghai

dell-icon It is of great difficulty sometimes to anticipate what would happen, even in quite a near future as one or two days. I am just suffering from this unexpected experience with my laptop. This story was started in a cliff morning of a Thursday when I suddenly found my laptop did not work. After an in-depth explore of the whole morning, I gave up all the attempts. Because what I have done is of no significance to the resolution but only the damage of some components, like the switch for the battery, and a plug-in on board. Fortunately, they are of little importance to my usage of computer.

A call was made this morning to the headquarter of Dell in Xiamen for negotiation on my repairing. But the answer seems to be disappointing. The custom center for Dell is only available in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. For the customers like me in Suzhou, the only solution is to contact with Dell via an email identifying the problems, and the paid service would be arranged based on my agreement to the price they suggest, which would be offered as a reply to my mail in a working day. Considering the day today is Friday, and a reply would be available no earlier than Monday, I decided to travel to Shanghai with my laptop.

After a call to the center in Shanghai, the staff there told me free service would be available if there is no serious problem. Considering my familiarity of the streets and locations in Shanghai and an electronic card for subways and public traffics, there should be no great problem for my travel. What’s more, I can talk with locals with fluent dialect of Shanghai.

The travel gets quite smoothly except for the ticket. There are too many scalpers that control nearly all the tickets and a 5-yuan premium is added for each ticket to Shanghai. Thanks to the express train that 46 minutes is sent for this trip to Shanghai ( The speed is reduced due to some accidents some months ago), which is nearly identical for my travel from the railway station to the custom center. The sight along the road from the subway station to the center is quite beautiful and classic. You can see many old buildings on both sides, which used to be the gardens of the riches before the liberation. Now, they are mostly served as the restaurants and cafes. Both English and Chinese are written on the board, which presents the feature of an international metropolis.

The repairing of this laptop seems to be quite a simple process. The engineer just helped me re-install the memory sticks and take some adjustments on the plug-in. Some tiny problems are detected on my motherboard but they were of little influence. Obviously, i would not spend 1000 yuan for a motherboard on a laptop that is nearly 4 years old.  It is really convenient for the customers of Dell in Shanghai, since I saw most services they offer are quite fundamental, reinstalling the system, adjusts on the components etc. What’s more, most service they offer are FREE, no matter whether your laptop are under warranty. Of course, high price may be encountered if your computer is suffering from severe problems, and what’s more, you are out of warranty.

More or less, the computer is fixed, though I don’t know when it would die. Wish it can work fine for next few years, before I would afford to a new module.

PS: The time without computer is also quite luxury, watching TV or reading a book is also a good style of life, but unfortunately, it has be overlooked by me for years. Thanks for this accident, it gave me the chance to remind me of the life when I was a student without a laptop.

Internet Constraints: Sounds Kidding but Real!

image It is quite amaze to hear that there are some country that are trying to constrain the usage of the internet from their citizens, with the reason of preventing them from the ‘bad things’. But it is really happening now, and increasingly famous software are obeying this governmental willing. The failure of some largest firms, like Wal Mart and Bol-China, both tell us the importance of running a business with political connections in China.

When checking the hotmail box, I got a strange mail from TwitOnMSN, a robot that I use for twitter. Since the forbidden on twitter, this has been the only way to use my twitter, though I doubt its protection on my accounting information. Do read the suggestions in this mail, you will find something strange.

Hi,

As you may noticed, people who added TwitOnMSN to their contact list, occasionally fail to login Windows Live Messenger Chinese Version since 3rd of Dec.

If you are suffering a landing problem on WLM with a good network, you could try the following measures to resolve it:

* If you can, please reinstall your WLM in English version or other non-Chinese version. They should work just fine.

* If not, you need to login your account with other client, like meebo , and remove TwitOnMSN from your contact list. Then you might can login again in a couple of hours or a day.

We do not know the specific reason why this happens. We are terribly sorry for the problem and hope it would go away soon.

FYI. We are making a survey about TwitOnMSN. Please come in to help us to improve it:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dFlmSkVYdUVaVVVBUUlBUFlYa3lnOXc6MA

Thank you so much for your time!

Best regards,

TwitOnMSN Team

For people with elementary knowledge on programming, it is clearly to see the language adapted on the user interface can hardly affect the usage of the program itself. Such difference can render only when there are differences on raw code. A reasonable interpretation in this way is that TwitOnMSN has been forbidden in a MSN Messenger of Simplified Chinese.

I don’t know how to comment on this event, but the fact is that many bloggers has changed their domain names to the international ones with registrars without China, like Godaddy and Name.com.

I am sorry to write this in English, but I don’t want my blog be forbidden in China due to its content in Chinese that are officially unwelcomed!

Linux: My New Working System

对于大多数会计专业的学生而言，Linux应该是一个陌生的名词。事实上，这是一个基于UNIX构架的个人版系统。它的计算性能非常优秀。著名的Matlab,Mathematica等工具在Linux环境下都有着远胜于Windows平台的表现。而科研写作工具Latex的配置也比windows下高效和便捷的多。只是由于我们的研究很少使用这类“高级”工具，而且中文论文也必须使用Word文档来投稿，这个好东西自然就入不了大多数人的法眼了。

其实我知道Linux差不多已经有十多年了，第一次使用发行版是在迅达的家中。当时我们对Linux都有着一种神奇的向往，而他当时也有个人电脑可以用来尝鲜。记得当时市场上有卖Redhat的套装，78元，一个大盒子，10张光盘。只是当时作为高中生的我们，78元的价格还是略显太贵，最后他选择了Fedoral，版本号记不得了。当时第一次看到这个系统的感觉就是新奇，但是我却死活想不出来这个系统可以用来干吗。更多的，在当时56K 的时代，网络下载软件还是一种奢侈行为的年代，使用Linux是属于典型“折腾”行为。毕竟我们没有使用它来替代Windows的足够好的理由。

在我有了个人电脑的时候，Linux的世界已经发生了翻天覆地的变化。Redhat似乎已经不再做桌面系统，而是直接将其交给了社区来管理，fedoral倒是依然健在，不过似乎也是社区发行版，网上有了足够多的Linux社区，讨论版和个人博客。市场上似乎也很少看到盒装发行版。更多的Linux则是直接从网络上下载。Linux下的软件也丰富了很多。更方便的是，使用Linux几乎不会遇到版权方面的问题，毕竟这个平台下的大多数软件都是开源的。（当然，使用Matlab的话，我目前还只能继续盗版，毕竟正版价格对我来说还是个天文数字。期间我第一次接触了Ubuntu，当时是7.04，直到今天我还记得其中有一段曼德拉的关于世界和平的讲话。

这次使用Ubuntu 9.10，则是我第一次真正的把系统用于工作环境。因为在此系统下使用和安装Lyx（一个Latex的前端，免除了写大量代码的麻烦）都很方便，系统会根据其依赖（Dependence )自动安装所需要的package，这点比Windows 要方便了很多。当然，出于偷懒，我只是使用了系统自带的channel来安装了软件，却没有去从外部源安装。事实上，使用lyx写作省去了我大量的排版工作，只是，我现在还不知道怎么去使用中文，我尝试了xetex，却似乎有错误。xecjk无法正确加载。好在我目前写的几乎都是英文。

至于即时通讯，Pidgin作了个很好的典范，ibus提供的输入法尽管没有网络更新，但是却也很好用。一点儿也不逊于Windows下的Google 拼音。总而言之，这是个非常适合研究人员来用的平台。

PS :我现在使用的是BLOGTK 来写作的，但是这个编辑器不支持直接离线插入图片，搞得有点像当年学Cdida时候的HTML编辑器。有什么好的编辑器推荐下阿。

Blog Crashed: Unexpected Accident

My blog got crashed for the whole day yesterday when I tried to update the wordpress into the new version of 2.8.6, which was released that day. The detailed reason that can explain why this happen is still unknown yet. Though my blog is now working again, I suppose it necessary to write it down with pieces of words.

The problem that I come across is that when i am updating the new files from the local disk to the server, and the old files are overwritten, the connection was rejected by the server with the message saying ‘I can’t accept more than 2 connections”.Then the result seems to be more serious than expected, perhaps it is the difference on the versions of the system, that the system got crashed, you can only see the file list with the title of ‘index /’ without the original blog sites. I don’t know if it is the problem on the server, or that of my campus network, whose instability cause overloading attempts to login that lead to the rejection from the server. Anyway, the system is okay now and I have uploaded the files again.

In fact, we should not, and we have no excuse to complain much about this. Comparing to the other free hosting providers, 000webhost has offered much larger disk space, limitation on traffic, and good stability on servers. Though we are bearing the limitation on the amount of files that can be stored on FTP server for 6000, which is adequate for the personal blogs like mine, as well as the limitation on connections for only two, which is reasonable. However, you will always being warned of exceeding connections, but you can hardly understand why it happen. What you can do is to wait for three minutes, which is called inactivity, according to the guidelines officially. Well, thank goodness that there is no http header restriction, which is quite a terrible problem and it took my friend Bill days to get that done.

PS: The weather these days is getting really chilly, is it the cold that get the server frozen? hah, just a trick.

Short Address Forbidden: Internet or Intranet?

great-wall This post is quite occasional, I don’t even plan to discuss the GFW again since it can repeat my previous article on this related topic. It is Bill again, that told me some errors occur on my short link posted to the Twitter when updating my newly posted articles. Though due to some faults he temporarily closed his personal blog, he kept the professional perspicacity as a software engineering. Thanks for his help on helping me fix numerous faults since the start of this blog.

It is due to some political reasons, though I can hardly identify what they are indeed, that the world-famous Twitter was forbidden. But we were still able to use a gadget to login based on the Gmail. While today,I eventually find the gadget is forbidden as well. And the technology for this filtering is great improved. Any links with the word ‘twitter’ is definitely forbidden. And great piles of products that can be applied on Twitter are also enjoying the same treatment, including the short links, twitterfeed, are totally forbidden.

To solve this problem, some posted an article that describes the process of building up a private platform with Python based on Google App Engine. Here is a solution and introduction written by William Long (in Chinese). But which is a great trick that, the official site of Python was later forbidden as well. The reason why I call it as a trick is that Python is only a programming language, i really cannot explain the potential harm from a language to the security of the country. If anyone can provide a reasonable answer, do tell me!

I really don’t know if we are using the internet or just intranet. Since the beginning of this year, many great service has been forbidden, including Blogger.com, WordPress.com, Youtube.com, etc. And now, the Twitter and its byproducts are forbidden as well. Wish one day our Email and instant messaging can be forbidden as well, then there would be no child get addiction to the internet!

Windows 7 is Approaching: What Can We Do?

win7logoWindows 7, a next-generation operating system developed by Microsoft, has released its RTM versions some months ago and it is now also available to the MSDN and Technet subscribers as well as the volume licensing customers. Following the tradition for the computer fans that the latest versions of ISO can be easily obtained from a P2P source, either ed2k or BT torrent, I get my copy of ISO image some days ago. Thanks to the high transfer speed here on campus, I spend about 2 hours for downloading that.

As a end user of Windows 7 like us, especially for us, we have three different routines to get a valid key for our copy:

  • Purchase a package directly from Amazon.com, Microsoft.com, or some resellers as BestBuy, etc. But for most users in China, I suppose this won’t be a popular way since the high pricing of that package comparing to the local salary levels. More practically, most valid copies of operating systems are distributed through the channel of OEM, a specially plan for newly sold computers.
  • Register an account as the student membership of IEEE or ACM. A MSDN AA account will be awarded when you are submitting a valid application for such organizations. You are entitled to a copy of Windows 7 Professional (Key Only) with the price of 19 dollars annually. Comparing to the reselling price, this is much cheaper. But do remember that you can never try to use this authority for commercial purposes. But unfortunately that due to the numerous of applications that are not holding the valid student identity, this service has been temporarily down.
  • Volume License on Campus. It is another efficient way to use the Windows 7, you can connect to a KMS server for activating the system. But it is still unavailable in China.

Once you get the key, you can legally activate the copy of Windows 7 on your computer and use it without any limitation on function. And of course, you can either use some illegal methods for activating, or say cracking. But I won’t discuss it here. For more details, please try Google.

I am planning about to take a tutorial on this new system, then I installed it on my laptop. Everything works properly now, the issue on my Norton product has been successfully solved when updating it to the Norton Internet Security 2010  which perfectly supports Windows 7. But a new problem still occur, that is, there is no compatible client for logging into the campus network. I can hardly understanding why the manufacturer never try to develop and updating their clients keeping the pace with the development of software. And they only develop their clients on Windows. Never expect to logging into their systems with the system other than Windows, such as Mac and Linux.

Junjun's Home