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Touching, heart wrenching, thought-provoking, exceptionally educational. That is what The Land of Sorrow impresses me. It is like a time machine bringing its readers back to the traumatic Great Cultural Revolution. It is a novel, but it is also a history book. The major events…

This is a translation of a G+ post An African lion cub looks depressed. His mom asks him what is wrong. The cub said: "I have just eaten a person, probably a Chinese". The lioness reprimands the cub "Ate a person withtout checking his passport?!…

A copper mine itself may not necessarily be a bad idea if it is transparent and well managed, but every project under the current totalitarian regime is operated in a black box in which many dirty deals can be made, numbers can be forged. The…

I have had muscle spasms during training and a marathon. All of them were most likely caused by severe loss or imbalance of electrolytes. Appropriately replenishing body with electrolytes is naturally the most effective way of preventing muscle spasm. The most important thing do do after…

My friend Frederick Flather, a lawyer, novelist, historian, and independent thinker, passed away on Monday April 16 2012, at the age of 80. I have lost a friend with whom I have enjoyed many enlightening conversations. Freddie reminds me of the official motto of New…

Upgrading Microsoft Windows usually takes a day but it does not mean one has to do a day's work to accomplish it. Installing the OS usually takes one to two hours. Installing updates which could be well over 100 takes two hours or so. Configuring firewall and installing all the…

A year experience of using Godaddy's Virtual Dedicated Server involving frequent extremely long email relay delays (up to a whole day), and frequent poor performance (almost daily) shows the VDS is not business grade. At one pointer, a problem of the parent server shut down our VDS. It…

I tend to be an early adopter of new technologies including consumer product front. I bought my first digital camera - Kodak DC20 - in early 1997 when most people had never heard of digital camera. I was probably the only person in our company…

Reviews on DPReview.com and a review with comparison with Canon PowerShot sX280 HS and Panasonic Lumix ZS30 at CameraLabs.com. A short video shows how the Wi-Fi feature works. One cannot peep pixels of these P&S compact cameras. They would scare you. For pocket size travel cameras,…

For those who appreciate the usefulness of shutter cable, controlling a digital camera via a smartphone is an exciting relatively new feature of digital cameras. This is done via WiFi. The common problem with this feature is the hassle of establishing connection between the camera…

The Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development estimates conservatively that US$2.74 trillion flowed out of China illicitly from 2000 to 2009. Some people believe this number is too conservative, and believe the actual number may be an order of magnitude higher. A very high…

AAC is a part of MPEG-2 AND MPEG-4 specifications. Open source codec implementation can be found in FFmpeg, FAAC and opencore-amr. JAAD is a Java version of AAC decoder (decoding only). aacdecoder-android is a library for Android to play AAC streams or files (decoding only). Java AAC…

Rereading Niemöller’s famous saying “First they came…” makes me reflect on the current mindset of my fellow Chinese citizens. First they executed millions of landlords, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a landlord. Then they purged 550,000 rightists, and I didn’t speak out…

Gary Locke has proved to be the most effective ambassador to China by the fact that he is loved by millions of Chinese, and hated by the corrupted regime.

MultiselectList is handy if all you need is a simple list allowing multiple selections. What if you also want each item is clickable, or each item is a custom control. This may be able to be implemented by customizing MultiselectLit and MultiselectItem. However, the easiest…

It is not surprising that foreign territories protected by international laws within a country under a totalitarian government are the desirable destinies for people seeking protection of their lives. This is very much true for China. The day will come when Chinese people will be…

Microsoft has been promoting Azure for about 4 years. I believe its adoption is far from desirable. For me there are two reasons that make me hesitate to adopt Azure:

S corporations are corporations that elect to pass corporate income, losses, deductions and credit through to their shareholders for federal tax purposes. It is supposed to make tax filing easier. It does indeed. One should bear in mind the biggest catch of S-Corp - paying…

Unlike democratic societies that are inherently stable, China under the CCP's totalitarian regime is inherently unstable. To maintain its power, the CCP has to spend a tremendous amount of resource on stability maintenance. It is impossible to calculate the total cost of the stability accurately…

It is well known that China does not have freedom of speech. China ranks 174th out 179 countries in terms of free press. It is also well known that Chinese people do not have the freedom of association, of procession or of demonstration. If anyone…