Hong ⁽³²⁸⁾

Microsoft will most likely remain a giant bureaucracy until a leadership shakeup. However, Microsoft does have many good products many of which are the best in their categories. There have been some good signs for Microsoft recently. Windows Phone seems to be getting tractions. Windows…

WebBrowser control is a very handy tool to display a web page in a Silverlight app. This allows some functions of apps be moved to easily maintained web pages. It is easy to use, but has an odd property IsScriptEnabled. According to MSDN it "Enables…

Tap-hold to show a context menu for the user to make a selection, this is the function of ContextMenu. It is very tempting to use it on smartphones because of the limited space preventing using constantly present menus. There is a caveat in using ContextMenu - it…

Kim is claimed to have died on 2011-12-19 due to fatigue. Since lies are a part of the foundation of regimes such as Kim's, the real time and cause of his death may not be known for a long time. Even his birth is still…

After I boosted my primary computer's performance by replacing its HD with and an SSD, Three of the four components of Microsoft Expression Studio(Design, Web, Blend) stopped working very soon. They ask for activation, but they close immediately after the activation button is clicked, and it…

It is informative to examine the friends of the Chinese regime. The following are a few of them that the regime often takes extraordinary steps to support and protect: Like people tend to gather together, so do regimes. They share the same fate. 

There are at least hundreds of articles on Windows Phone tombstoning. A search of "Windows Phone tombstoning" generates 277K results as of 2011-12-08. For this case, it is the best to read the document of the source - MSDN. It is a short page with…

Since its introduction to America in the mid-19th century, English Sparrows have gradually become a nuisance due to its large population and aggressive behaviors. English Sparrows have been observed threatening and attacking 70 species of birds that have come into their nesting territory. One study…

A reader's comment on an article on chinaelections.org is intriguing. Here is the translation: Taiwan issue. Being soft does not help, but taking a hard line is feared to trigger US actions. South China Sea issue. Talk does not solve the problem, but fight is feared to bring…

The reforms underway in Burma is making it a rising star among the few countries under totalitarian regimes. Rising star can fall. Many people will watch Burma with hope, prayer and admiration for the next few years. For countries under longtime dictatorship, having a realistic…

The property price-to-income ratio is between 20 to 40 in many cities of China. The bubble is a fact. Can China defy gravity by sustaining the relatively high property price. In theory, it can because the average income will eventually sextuple to reach the level of…

This is probably device dependent. On an Android 4.2 device, the following shell command can be used to change its manual IP and mask: ifconfig eth0 ip new_IP netmask new_mask Start DHCP: dhcpcd -p eth0

This article by Robert Fulford was brought to the discussion of Cornell Alumni Group at Linkedin, but was removed later somehow. This fact is well known among people who have some knowledge about Mao. The article points out a very important fact - "Mao may…

ListPicker of Slverlight Toolkit for WP7 is almost a must-have for developing many WP7 apps. Unfortunately, it is yet to mature. It has numerous issues (Items cannot be cleared by using Clear() or Remove(), it must have one item once it is populated; ItemCountThreshold cannot be…

Windows Phone 7 Live Tile is a neat and very useful feature. To make Live Tiles live, an app needs to update its Live Tile or Tiles per its needs. For example, an email app can use its Live Tile to show the number of new…

Mobile phones cannot replace conventional digital cameras. The optical zoom feature is a sufficient reason for owning a digital camera. Canon SX5 series is an excellent choice for high-quality photos and super zoom. SX540 HS is the latest edition. Sony DSC-HX50V is a proven excellent camera.

The best article on business that I have read for a long time: Peggy Noonan On Steve Jobs And Why Big Companies Die.

Umbraco may be the best .Net based CMS for people with a string developer background. Umbraco is open source with free download, but is also backed by a company There are a few other good choices. People with strong background in Visual Studio may feel most comfortable with installing Umbraco through NuGet.

WebClient and HttpWebRequest are two Microsoft .Net classes that appear to make web communication effortless. This is undoubtedly true if the communication is a common type such as getting a web page or posting data to a web service. However, when it comes to uncommon…

Though the dual-channel computer memory mode has its merits in comparison with the single-channel mode, I am wondering it has been largely misused for marketing purpose because it requires pairs of memory modules. I have seen people literally believing memory in dual channel mode is…