Planet BLUG

LiuZheng's OSS Blog: 2008 Beijing Olympic Game introduce China to the world

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:52:40 +0000

中午后去超市购物；超市的人可真多啊，大家都在采购备战晚上的奥运哈哈。我也买的毫不手软啊，西瓜、王老吉、可乐、牛肉、蔬菜等等！回家后，先炖上一锅牛腩萝卜汤，昨天立秋，今天贴贴秋膘有不迟。

准时5点就开始收获在电视机前。等待开幕式的开始。开幕式终于开始，虽然视觉上的冲击性不强，不过还是完美的展示了中华文化的精髓。通过四大发明的展示，以东方人含蓄和细腻的手法，把吾国浩浩汤汤2000多年的历史优美的展示与全球世人面前。地球村的创意我觉得非常好，最后刘欢站在最上方高歌一曲，挺好。兴致最好的时候牛腩汤经过几个小时的熬制，也香气扑鼻了，呵呵来上一碗，继续看

总之真个文艺演出，文化气息十足，可圈可点之处也很多；唯一担心的是怕老外们理解不了。现在终于看到中国代表队在姚明的带领下，正缓缓入场；中国体育健儿的队伍可真大啊！！！

中国加油!!!

哈哈忍不住了，我也在blog上喊一嗓子吧，明天奥运的战幕就缓缓拉开了，希望他们拿更多金牌为国争光。

现在中国队走到了中场，期待圣火点燃的那一刻吧。顺便说一句，有人说中国队的服装配色有点借鉴了‘西红柿炒鸡蛋’的色彩，呵呵有点象，的确有点象，而且那时我的拿手菜:) 今年北京的天气，好的是，天公作美，真的憋住，愣是没有下雨；不好的是，桑拿的程度太高了。场内入场的所有运动员，从电视上可以看出都已经是大汗淋漓了，都在等待圣火。烟火，有事一波烟火，整个鸟巢像是个火锅一样，再次沸腾一次。

中国画，由所有运动员参与绘制的一副巨画放到了场地中央，这幅画可谓整场的一个核心线索，这可能是老谋子的idea吧，和拍电影的道理一样，需要有一个线索贯穿始终，像是ice age2里的那颗坚果。不知道以后会把它放在那，细看这画很不错，写意，非常写意，还有点点现代气息。

刘淇开始讲话了。不禁回想起，我在看圣火采集实况转播时候的激动心情，他在希腊的采集圣火的神殿哪里也发言了。LP说他在这发言可谓捡了一个不小的便宜，前人种树后人乘凉啊!!

胡锦涛主席宣布“大会开始！！” 呵呵，有一波强烈烟火，太cool了！！奥运会旗入场了，八人举着会旗缓缓入场，8人都是奥运的元老人物。现在看到那些在场地周边，做分割线的MM们好像不用再跳跳跳的欢迎了，这些MM已经在入场式的时候跳了快2个小时了，体力不行还真去不了啊，辛苦辛苦了！哈哈！！护旗手开始升会旗，不得不说中国的护旗手世界上最cool，赞一个！！在赞一次天工吧，到现在为止，一滴雨都没下，真给面子啊！

张怡宁右手抓五环旗开始宣誓，她表现的很腼腆：）黄利庭代表裁判员宣誓，慷慨激扬，强！！

我看时间一定要拖到12点整了，不行我先把这个post发布一下啊，一定要讨到八月八的这个好彩头。发布ed

DONE继续，很大很强的一个烟火在鸟巢上空喷出，绚烂啊！！许海峰手持火炬入场，开幕式的最大悬念缓缓揭开了。啊！点燃了高敏的火炬～～～转给李小双，继续跑，传给第四个占旭刚，跑～～这第五个张军该是最后一个了吧，都快是最后一分钟了，我和LP都猜，最后一个是谁呢？刘翔？？第六位了陈中，跑～第七个了，孙晋芳，第八个该是最后一个吧？继续跑～过0点了。火炬在晚上看，真好看，最后一个李宁了，被吊起来到空中，很高，很高，继续升高～～OH my god ，升到最高处，绕嘴上圈，在空中跑，创意啊！！！赞！！！画卷在他下面缓缓打开，画卷始终在他身后，缓缓打开，太强了，弓虽！！！牛啊～～～李宁依然在空中认真的跑着，要绕场一周了，看来，不知主火炬到底在哪里啊？？到了，主火炬终于出现了，点ing。。点了一个导火索，导火索螺旋上升，圣火熊熊绽放在北京夜空～～全城烟火一起点燃，烟火到达等顶峰。一个五环的烟火呀！！我坐在家里可以听到隆隆的烟火声，家里的视野不好，无奈啥也看不到！

刚才急奔向楼顶，想看一眼最后的绚烂，可惜到了楼顶的门口发现，门已被锁，而且上了封条了。外面的烟火声还是有，心里一个字痒啊～～～不过无奈总是难免的，我的奥运开幕式实况转播也要结束了。

looking east: How to make money with FOSS?

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 06:29:31 +0000

“What you say sounds great, but honestly, how can we make money with FOSS?” This is a question I have been frequently asked since I have come to China. It’s the kind of question which made think a lot about FOSS and it’s business model. It’s a question which seems crucial for China, and since I have been asked so many times, I have been trying to improve my answer by asking other people. However, none of these solutions seemed really satisfying, and whatever I said was met with strong resistance and further questions.

When reading the book Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution, I found the following answer to the question by Robert Young:

“That question assumes that it is easy, or at least easier, to make money selling proprietary binary-only software.

This is a mistake. Most software ventures, whether based on free or proprietary software, fail. Given that until very recently all software ventures were of the proprietary binary-only kind, it is therefore safe to say that the IP (Intellectual Property) model of software development and marketing is a very difficult way to make a living. […]

No one expects it to be easy to make money in free software. While making money with free software is a challenge, the challenge is not necessarily greater than with proprietary software. In fact you make money in free software exactly the same way you do it in proprietary software: by building a great product, marketing it with skill and imagination, looking after your customers, and thereby building a brand that stands for quality and customer service.” (chapter 9)

The fact that it’s very difficult to make money with proprietary software is probably even more true for China. In a country in which nobody is actually willing to pay for software, the question should not be: “How can we make money with FOSS?”, but rather: “How can we make money with software?”. But let’s first continue looking at the original question. As Robert Young puts it, in some cases using FOSS can even be a competitive advantage:

“Marketing with skill and imagination, particularly in highly competitive markets, requires that you offer solutions to your customers that others cannot or will not match. To that end Open Source is not a liability but a competitive advantage. The Open Source development model produces software that is stable, flexible, and highly customizable. So the vendor of open-source software starts with a quality product. The trick is to devise an effective way to make money delivering the benefits of open-source software to you clients.” (chapter 9)

This is exactly what I tried to say when I tried to answer the question. I told them that FOSS allowed them to start off with a high-quality source base rather than reimplementing everything from scratch, that open source made it easier (and affordable) to build highly customised products, I mentioned that in the West many businesses have been created because of the relative low cost of building software on top of FOSS. However, all these explanations were countered with more questions and strange looks.

Today, I believe that Robert Young does successfully answer the question of how to make money with FOSS. I also think that my answers were not totally wrong, though I simply missed one important fact: That making money with FOSS doesn’t have to be harder than making money with proprietary software. And thanks to Robert Young, I believe that the real question should be “How can we make money with software?”, and more specifically, “How can we make money with software in China?”.

Beijing Analog to Digital: How many goats are you worth?

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 02:36:42 +0000

Back before I ended up in China, I spent about two years of my life backpacking around Asia. Along the way, I met-up with an Argentinean, who’d spent time in Africa. He told me that while there, he ended up discussing with an African villager the cost of a wife in cows.

Yan Li's Words: Generating Gantt from Bugzilla Tasks by Using TaskJuggler

noreply@blogger.com (Yan Li) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:01:01 +0000

We've been using Bugzilla in various projects to track tasks' status and it turned out to be an excellent tool for collaboration and project management. Gantt is useful in various ways for project status checking and planning. Today I've spent some time to set up automatically generation of Gantt from Bugzilla tasks by using a combination of various tools.

TaskJuggler: excellent free software on task scheduling and report generation, with beautiful GUI and powerful command-line interface.

Bugzilla:TaskJugglerIntegration: export Bugzilla tasks to TaskJuggler project file.

The script bztotj.py from Bugzilla:TaskJugglerIntegration is easy to understand, and by changing the SQL in it you can export tasks from Bugzilla by arbitrary filters.

TaskJuggler's task is written in plain text so it's good for change management. It also features a nice GUI editor. You may need some time to learn to write project files but once you get it you can write versatile project files and, by writing scripts to manipulate them, implement complex project scheduling schema.

If you want to generate Gantt from TaskJuggler tasks without human interference, you can use this tool: http://blog.gustavobarbieri.com.br/2007/04/19/generating-gantt-graphs-from-taskjuggler-projects-without-using-its-ui/

Beijing Analog to Digital: Beijing Purchasing Big Iron for the Games

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 07:07:12 +0000

Here’s one for the nerds: Olympics technology: Planners' heads are in the clouds Culture modifies perception, and, as a six-sigma trained nerd, I see the above as a good sign. Six-sigma? Wikipedia covers it. Anyway, I read this and immediately thought of the six-sigma DMAIC process -- Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control. Buying the supercomputer should definitely help them with the ‘Measure’ and ‘Analyze’ part of the equation.

Chris Drumgoole: Day Before Olympic Opening - Air Not So Goo

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 03:06:02 +0000

Air not so clean with 1 day to go, eh?

Asteroid L: Sun-Chained-in-Ink

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:43:58 +0000

DC's Trinity #10 has a villain called "Sun-Chained-in-Ink". Pronounced "All reasonable names were taken". Come on, DC, really?

looking east: FOSS in China: Hypotheses

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 11:13:14 +0000

I have spent a bit over three months in China, trying to find out how FOSS is organised and how it’s different in China from what we see the West. When I met Basile two weeks ago in Beijing, we have come up with the following hypotheses:

Language is an impediment. Most FOSS activities take place in English.
There is no culture of innovation in China.
The discussion culture in FOSS projects is too confrontational.
FOSS is still too young in China to be successful.
There is only little support for FOSS in the Chinese software industry. Piracy has a negative effect on the creation of a proper software industry in general. Customers are not willing to pay for software.
Students don’t learn about FOSS at universities and hence don’t know about it.
Individuals can’t make money with FOSS in China.
Chinese government policies are not favourable towards FOSS.

These hypotheses are an extension to the ones presented in an earlier entry I have posted in February. They are specifically applied to China (because that’s the country I am currently studying) rather than Asia in general, though I do think that most of them could be applied to other countries like Thailand too.

Despite the fact that these hypotheses are rather negative in their formulation and might have some other shortcomings, I believe that they provide a good basis for further discussions. Also, hypotheses are there to be proved or disproved, they don’t need to be valid in the first place.

Why am I posting this?

Because I would like to get some feedback. I would love to know if there is something completely wrong with them, if I have totally missed the point, if I have forgotten something important, or anything else you have thought of while reading them. Please let me know :).

looking east: About Modifiability

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:56:56 +0000

Technical objects define in their configuration a certain partition of the physical and social world, they attribute roles to certain types of actors - humans and non-humans - and exclude others, they authorise certain modes of relations between these different actors […] in such a way that they participate as a whole to the construction of a culture in the anthropological sense of the term, and, at the same time, they become enforced mediators in all relations that we are maintaining with the “real”.

Madelaine Akrich, Comment décrire les objets techniques?

Later in her paper, Madelaine Akrich introduces the term “script” to refer to the behaviour of a technical object. The “script” is the program which the original developers write in order to define how the object can be used by its users.

For the purpose of studying FOSS in Asia, the technical object would be a piece of FOS software, its behaviour is defined by the source code, and the users are people who are using this software from within the borders of what is defined as Asia.

However, the scope of my master thesis as described above is not complete. FOS software has a specific characteristic which is related to it’s licensing terms. I don’t want to enter into FOSS licensing in detail, but I would like to emphasise one interesting aspect of open source software: modifiability. This means, we can take a piece of existing FOS software and tailor it to our needs. Going back to Madelaine Akrich’s definition of the “script”, this means that the “script” can be modified by its users. We are thus moving away from the traditional developer-user model to a more distributed open source community development model. In FOSS, users are not stuck with a pre-defined script, rather they are encouraged to change the script according to their needs. This in turn, forces users to think about the software in terms of its utility to an individual.

To be honest, the source code or “script” cannot be changed by any random user. Instead, this freedom is restricted to people who are familiar with computer programming. However, FOSS has made it easy for users to give feedback, propose new features, and report bugs. You don’t need to be a programmer to do this, though you still need to be able to use a computer and run the program.

Implementing modifiability into objects is not new, although the open source movement and its derivatives have been strongly promoted lately. In his book Two Bits, Kelty investigates the impact of modifiability on culture, he writes:

But what is the cultural significance of modifiability? What does it mean to plan in modifiability to culture, to music, to education and science? At a clerical level, such a question is obvious whenever a scholar cannot recover a document written in WordPerfect 2.0 or on a disk for which there are no longer disk drives, or when a library archive considers saving both the media and the machines that read that media. Modifiability is an imperative for building infrastructures that can last longer. However, it is not only a solution to a clerical problem: it creates new possibilities and new problems for long-settled practices like publication, or the goals and structure of intellectual-property systems, or the definition of the finality, lifetime, monumentality, and especially, the identity of a work. Long-settled, seemingly unassailable practices — like the authority of published books or the power of governments to control information—are suddenly confounded and denaturalized by the techniques of modifiability. (page 12)

Modifiability is at the core of FOSS. It’s one of the main reasons why FOSS communities have emerged. It’s at the base of almost all discussions on mailinglists, forums, IRC channels and FOSS events. The users and developers can decide the future of the software by participating in these discussions. The fact that a FOSS culture has emerged around open source software, proves Madelaine Akrich’s point that technical objetcts are important elements in the construction of cultures. And, of course, despite it’s modifiability, FOS software has a “script” which clearly defines how it’s supposed to be used

on safari: Tajikistan

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 11:38:44 +0000

I have left Beijing a bit over two weeks ago because I couldn’t get a visa for the Olympics. I am currently staying in Dushanbe, Tajikistan’s pleasant capital city with plenty of green trees and blue sky. Green trees and blue skies might sound like pleonasm to you, but believe me after having stayed in Beijing for a while, I can tell the difference.

Last week I went on a field trip with Fabian to Dijik and Lyanga and I have discovered some of the most fantastic sceneries I have ever seen. Unfortunately internet here really sucks, so I only could upload very few pics.

Check out the full flickr foto set here.

The Downtown Diner: Another localized release - Communications Suite 6

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 05:41:36 +0000

The English and localized versions of the Sun Java Communications Suite 6 have just been released! The single most important feature is Sun Convergence, which is the next generation unified communications client. If you want to see some screenshots of Convergence check out Jim Parkinson's blog.

For Comms 6 we did a 'sim ship', which means the localized versions shipped simultaneously with the English version. It's really difficult for both the development team and the localization team so hats off to everyone who pulled this off! There are seven localized versions of Comms 6: Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Spanish, German and French.

Why don't you take it for a spin?

Here's a cool graphic that Srinu generated using wordle.net, which lists all the members of the G11n team for this release. Congratulations everyone!!!

LiuZheng's OSS Blog: Systems Monitoring Shootout

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:26:57 +0000

Please download it here A paper from Open Management Consortium

This is a paper from “2008 Ottawa Linux Symposium”. It will give you a nice insight about some great NSM projects. It is talking about OpenNMS, Zabix, Zenoss, GroundWorks and Hyperic, those might b the hottest projects around NMS field. If you are looking for a open source network and system monitoring solution, or you are testing one of them; you should check it out. I got this paper from Open Management Consortium.

Sometimes, people might spend too much time on testing different projects; I know this is a kind of fun. But eventually they only got lots of comments about manny project. They still did not realize the value of open source. The best way to adpat open source is that you just pick one nice project and keeping to use it for months at least. I have a net admin frind who I had since helped to setup Cacti for all of his network devices. He don’t know so many NSM projects, but he really engoy Cacti. With Cacti, he can do a easier and better job then before. So, are you going to still watching open source world? Let’s get start your real open source journey.

The Downtown Diner: Another localized Release - Identity Mgr. 8.0

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 07:47:20 +0000

Sun Java System Identity Manager 8.0 is now available in eight languages: French, Spanish, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Korean. It can be downloaded here.

This localized release was brought to you by the incredibly dedicated and passionate IDM L10n team, including Anita Daley, Basha Chand, Vasek Novak, Shinichi Hanaki, Pavel Heimlich, Pierrot Berreur, Paty Rodriguez, Pedro Zeman, Sandy Cheng, May Zhang, Charles Liu, Jaro Sulc, Nicky Stastna, Misato Kabasawa and Ivy Zhang.

Congratulations everyone on a job well done!

Beijing Analog to Digital: I want my p2p TV

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 06:34:23 +0000

Chinese audiences want to watch Lost and Prison Break and the latest Hollywood releases. And they want to watch them because those shows and movies are good, gripping entertainment. Unfortunately, those shows aren’t broadcast here -- even with subtitles. Why not? Two reasons: The powers that be don’t want foreigners dictating the message, and local producers want to keep their captive audiences.

LiuZheng's OSS Blog: This post is too later

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 07:45:41 +0000

很久没有更新这个blog了，本来想保持每周一帖的频率，不过最近总被一些事情所耽误了。今天终于有空闲坐下来写点什么了。

昨晚无意间发现了这个叫做UnWakeAble的Theme，稍微看了一下马上就更换到这个主题了。这个主题有几个地方非常吸引我：它有自己的配置选项；能配置成2或者3栏的形式；提供3种内置的风格可以切换，这个太空船的黑色风格太吸引我了。我想在没有时间写正经post的时候，用有限的时间调整一下界面风格也不错呵呵，虽然之前曾经发誓，要把主要blog时间都放在提交高质量项目介绍和评论上，不过通过这个blog做适当的娱乐还是未尝不可的呵呵:) 可能是对Wordpress了解的很多了，用的也越来越多了，现在觉得它也可以作为一个公司内部的知识库来使用，知识库有可以说是一种特殊的CMS内容管理系统，它能方便用户查询和浏览相关的知识条目。昨天看了一下wordpress的roadmap，它以后可以提供更多的api，甚至于下离线的编辑内容的功能，我想这些都可以是外部系统和它集成的很好的接口。我说的外部系统可以是：IT管理的服务台系统，现在很多厂商的服务台都有现成的KB模块，不过把知识条目放到wordpress这样一个外部的系统中还是很有优势的。关于把wordpress用作CMS内容管理系统的一些考虑您可以看看这个post

今天去西四的广济寺，途中经过了潘家园市场、虹桥市场、天坛北门、天桥、西单等。途中的景色令我可以说是非常吃惊，奥运真的把北京改变了很多。潘家园门口兜售和田玉的巴郎子（新疆人对少数民族的一种称呼，其实是维吾尔语‘小青年’的意思）没有了，随处摆的地摊也没了，随处乱扔的白色快餐饭盒没了，在路边拉黑活的黑车也没有了。虹桥市场门口的路上以前总能看到的那些专门向老外乞讨的人也没有了。天坛北门的街道两旁真是很干净啊，垃圾、墙上的办证都没了。天桥哪里更是变化巨大，以前道路两边破烂的小卖部都没了。西单更是夸张啊：过街天桥附近打扫的人真多啊，而且以前扫大街的人都是自动化了；没人在骑着老式的保时捷垃圾车，取而代之的是等自动扫街的电瓶清洁车。北京变了，北京准备好了。呵呵我也喊两句口号吧！甚至于我在考虑，开幕式那天晚上，我去哪里看焰火。我里永定门的距离不算远，听说那是放烟火的中轴线上的最南点，暂时把这作为我的plan A了。

我也很想知道，你奥运期间如何度过呢？

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll. Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Asteroid L: Mass unblocking in the Great Firewall of China

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 14:13:00 +0000

Seems a batch of sites got unblocked. Wiki.edia (marvel as I blog in regular expressions) is accessible (again), Wikibooks, Reuters, CNN, and a lot more.

Still blocked: blogspot, livejournal, wordpress (no surprise here -- lots of political blogs), BBC, certainly more; most importantly, Sinfest and CRFH :-( (why the f* is CRFH blocked? Zombies? Satan?)

Also, the web feels slightly faster in general!

Beijing Analog to Digital: Advice for learning Chinese

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 06:41:08 +0000

A buddy of mine recently relocated to Singapore and sent me an email asking for advice on learning Chinese. Here was my response: ---------- Well, I’m happy to share whatever I can here. I just hope it’s useful. Chinese dialects are about as distinct as individual European languages. So, while there is a shared writing system (and grammar) the pronunciations of the words can be completely different. Mandarin is the official language of mainland China. All state broadcasts, publ…

Utility Computing dot China: Criminal Negligence? Corporations serve your identity up on a silver platter.

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:41:40 +0000

I am steaming. And as such I am blogging this because I know that through the links of planet aggregators throughout Linux land - this will be syndicated.

I won’t name names yet, I was advised by my lawyer not to. However after filling in an online application form for international “Expatriate Insurance” with a VERY well known and large international insurer - I was greeted back with correspondence emails that contained the answers in straight clear text about all the questions I had answered and provided to them via their SSL web form!

Now it would be bad enough if it was just my medical stuff, but it went much deeper. In plain to see ASCII code was the following information IN FULL. With no omissions, attempts at cover or concealment. Please read my latest email to them.

*************************

G’Day XXXXX,

Thank you for the reply.

Please advise me of what is/will be taking place with regards to this. As an expatriate it is very difficult and problematic to have to now change credit cards and multitude of prepayment services around the globe.

More seriously, I now have to ensure that none of my online accounts and identities with places like domain name registrars (multi million dollar business operations were placed at risk), ebay, pay pal, web banking and more - have not been compromised, especially since in one nice little package COMPANY-XXXX has managed to proffer (sic - my):

- Full Name and Initials
- Address
- Phone Number
- DOB
- CC #
- CCV # !!!!!
- CC Name
- CC Expiry
- CC Type
- Passport #

What else could an identify thief possibly require?

Regards,
Richard Ford.

**************************************

Here is a nice little list of “Prior Art” so to speak. You’d think that people would learn. I shan’t even go into the decrepit email system used by them…. Minus reverse DNS entries, lacking SPF - and lacking the Business Analyst or modeller to pick up on the UML strand or Action Language that stated:

“Dump contents of database and append to every email correspondence with applicant in full”

I wonder if their process modeller did this after he had finished the work on the SSL front end for the gathering of the data in the first place?

Or maybe he did it right after their indepth discussion of “Privacy Policy” and the explanation of what SSL is and how they “Really work hard to protect your private data”

Speechless.

I guess soon enough I can let the email headers and the full server logs do the talking.

Beijing Analog to Digital: That which doesn't kill us

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 08:25:32 +0000

Julie Wainwright is the former CEO of Pets.com, a high-flying dot-com company that crashed and burned in 2001. Pets.com was a joke for years afterward. (I even laughed about their official mascot, the Pets.com sock puppet.) Julie wrote a great article, Five Life-Changing Mistakes and How I Moved On, about the experience, how it hurt her, and how it changed her.

Beijing Analog to Digital: Surf's Up!

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:56:58 +0000

Ya know, when you’ve been sitting your butt in a chair staring at a screen for too long and dealing with more responsibility than you want, it’s not hard to think of going to a beach where no one wants or needs anything from you to just plain relax.

Chris Drumgoole: New Office

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 07:19:01 +0000

Our department moved back to the main campus of Siemens China today (after more than 4 years at an off-site building). I quite like being here, even though we’re only in our current building temporarily (~6 months) while our permanent building is being renovated. You could say we’re closer to the “action” (which makes sense as we’re a corporate department - most of the people we deal with are at this main compound).

Below is a photo of my new office - this older building on the compound doesn’t follow the open-plan that many offices these day follow - instead, the space is divided into separate offices, where my boss has his own, and I share with a colleague. I actually quite like this…

(I’m on the left)

Sadly, as a corporate department trying to save money, we won’t be able to enjoy the brand new tower, so we’ll be in the low rises next to the tower for the foreseeable future. Below is a picture of the view out my window. You can see (behind) the tower in the distance and the other low rises of the Siemens compound.

And here’s a picture of the (front of the) tower I took last year when I visited it under construction.

Beijing Analog to Digital: Nuclear Spaceships

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:27:27 +0000

Fun article: Project Orion: space battleships that could have been And the comments at the bottom are great. Especially -- check out the photos people posting have attached to their comments. An example comment: “Now I’m thinking about those proposed 4th gen designs with Uranium impregnated liquid Sodium reactors. That would be awesome on a plane, just fly up using the reactor, dump all the reactor primary, and then dump the reactor, and then the shielding and fly back on conventional. R…

The Downtown Diner: The Value of Integration Testing

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 07:40:16 +0000

This bunk bed - so cute!

This ceiling fan - so practical!

The room - 8'x10' - not very big!

My husband is a QE engineer and I'm a program manager. And yet it was only when the workers were there installing our ceiling fan that it suddenly clicked for us - this is not a good combination...

Beijing Analog to Digital: Is the Olympics Coming?

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:47:14 +0000

I ... don’t ... watch ... sports. So, a week before the Olympic Games start in Beijing, I have no tickets. I don’t even know the schedule. In fact, the only arrangements I’ve made are to buy extra food, water, coffee and pre-paid utilities to minimize my inconvenience.

Asteroid L: Google mojo

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 22:40:52 +0000

So, while studying up on SEO, I decide to go take a look at the state of my own sites.

It seems Asteroid L ranks at #9 in a search for "sevensome hardcore sex".

Wow. Just wow.

What's the correct expression again? Oh yes. "Ur doin it rong."

(Yeah, I do know why, as does (probably) anyone who reads my blog. But it's funneh anyway that I'd rank so high. Guess there aren't enough sevensome pr0n sites out there.)

Beijing Analog to Digital: Accounting

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 15:24:38 +0000

“Doesn’t your company have an accountant to handle that?” Actually, the company has three accountants. One is a part-time accountant here in Beijing who takes care of keeping the government tax (and other) offices happy. The second is the outside auditing firm we hire at year end to audit his work so that the Chinese government is satisfied that we have fulfilled our obligations. And the third is the outside auditing firm we hire at year end in Hong Kong to audit the Hong Kong mother…

A better world: Switched to Mandriva…

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 09:05:11 +0000

I finally did it! Been talking about ditching Ubuntu for ages and never found the time (you know… backup, new install, restore, get familiar, etc.). It turns out that last Thursday while extending my /home partition with a LiveCD, for some reasons something went wrong and I ended it with my bigger partition having the same remaining free space as before being extended (I had a 20GiB unused space on the disk initially). Thinking I had been lucky not to lose anything, I backed up and installed Mandriva One. It’s a bit like going back to my first love Mandrake (second actually, started Linux with Red Hat when it was free many years ago)! Of course I preferred the name back then, but for obvious reasons they couldn’t keep it.

So Mandriva has actually a specific ISO file for Asia which can be downloaded from a Chinese mirror maintained by our good friend Funda. It includes all the necessary files to support Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, Malay and a few more languages I think. Installation was almost ok, couldn’t do it in 3D mode but hey, I can live with that (the install button just wouldn’t click).

The first 6 hours using Mandriva where a bit challenging in the sense that I had to get familiar with urpmi and how to do things. They do have a great Linux Control Center (mcc) where you can find all the things to be configured in one single location. Their network manager is also very powerful and has all the options one should expect from such a tool. Had a little rendering problem with my Chinese fonts (using English desktop with Chinese enabled) which was due to a conflict with the Japanese fonts. Well in short after two days of discussion with Patrick who visit us regularly, Funda and Freeflying on #mandrivacn I got everything fixed, missing applications from the repositories backported and a service that really impressed me: Kudos to Mandriva and its community.

Now an other reason for supporting Mandriva is that they’ve been trying to build a community here, have hired people to improve Chinese support and are even building the operating system that will run on the Gdium (the Loongson based general purpose Chinese CPU). So definitely an interesting distribution worth following and encouraging.

I again extend a big thank you to Funda, Freeflying and Patrick for their help, and recommend everyone to give it a try.

Beijing Analog to Digital: WarGames 25 Years Later

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 13:57:34 +0000

Okay, so, I’m a big nerd. Computer nerd, to be exact. Was an awkward kid. Way extroverted, loved attention, and had two educators as parents who rewarded my brother and me for doing the smart thing. Biggest put-down in the house was, ‘Why would you ever do something so stupid?’

Beijing Analog to Digital: Chinese Trademark Registration

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:02:31 +0000

NthCode doesn’t make products anyone would want to copy -- at least, not yet. But I do worry that someone might see a business card, flyer, or read something on the Internet, and get the cute idea to register a trademark for our name or logo in the hopes of exacting money from us later.

Pollution-china.com - Blog: Anti-pollution measures, 5 days after

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:18:35 +0000

The new anti-pollution measures for Olympics started last Sunday. As you might already know, the main measures are:

Reduction of traffic: cars with odd plates are allowed on odd days, cars with even plates on even days, old and very polluting cars have been taken away from roads,
Reduction of industrial emissions: heavy polluting industries have to stop during Olympics, others should reduce their emissions by at least 30%,
Freeze of construction sites to reduce dust and trucks...

As pollution is generated by human activity, if human activity is reduced dramatically, air pollution should rapidly fade off. However, since 3 days the pollution in Beijing is quite visible: a white smog is covering the city.

Smog come from three main factors: car emissions (nitrogen oxides ), volatile organic compounds and sun. Those three factors react with oxygen to produce ozone and particles . Ozone is a risk for athletes as it can aggravate or reveal asthma and reduce lung capacity by up to 20%. It is maybe not a health hazard, but athletes might find it harder to break records.

One of the reasons for such bad air quality is the really light wind and the absence of rain. There has been no occasion for pollutants that were already in the air to be flushed away. Such weather conditions should last for at least 3 more days and we could keep the same kind of pollution a bit longer.

All we have to hope is a heavy rain with strong winds to clear the skies in time for Olympics!

Chris Drumgoole: Leg Injury Comes Back To Haunt

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 08:08:12 +0000

A couple of days ago, I woke up to find my left leg incredibly swelled and red, with mild pain. It seems the pocket of liquid (that I have lived with for almost 2 years) was getting fuller as well!

It seems to be related to the car collision I was involved with back in 2006. A little background, after “healing” from that incident, a pocket of liquid remained in front of my Tibia (shinbone) below the knee. After about 9 months of no change (no pain, no increase or decrease of fluid, just annoyance of being there), I went to see a doctor and then a leg and angle specialist. The specialist told me I probably didn’t need to worry about it and that we could drain the fluid now - there would be a chance that the liquid would come back after a while. If it did, I shouldn’t worry. Well, it did a few days/weeks later - again, no pain, etc.

Fast-forward to a few days ago when I woke up to this mess:

I went to the emergency room at Beijing United Family Hospital to get this looked at. (The pic above is of what it looked like yesterday (Tuesday) in the emergency room after the Doctor drew a hashed line around the redness (infection) and solid line around the pocket of fluid (that was much bigger than usual).

Diagnosis as of yesterday: pretty advanced infection.

I was put on a every 8-hour penicillin IV to work on the infection (as of this point, I already had 4 doses.)

I went to the doctor again today (this time to see the chief of surgery). The redness did retreat a bit from yesterday (after 3 dosses of IV penicillin). The doctor recommended 6 more doses (spread over the next 3 days, one in morning 7am, one in afternoon, 3pm) and oral penicillin in the evenings before bed.

I asked the surgeon about draining the fluid as I feld it was stretching the skin, causing most of the pain. He said that wouldn’t be a good idea as by poking a hole through the infected layer with a needle into the fluid sack would cause the fluid to become infected, which would make the situation much worse and more complicated. So we agreed to wait until the infection was taken care of by the penicillin before we discuss next options.

Lucky me.

The Downtown Diner: What will the weather be like in Beijing during the Olympics?

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 04:12:55 +0000

In a word - hot.

For more details check out this site.

If you're coming for the Olympics - like my mom and baby sister Amanda who will arrive on August 6 - have a safe trip. We can't wait to see you here!

Beijing Analog to Digital: Coaching

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:35:44 +0000

In the last three years of building NthCode, I’ve learned about such fun stuff as the monthly and yearly accounting cycles, dealing with cash-flow problems when customers are late in paying, and keeping my team headed in the right direction no matter the adversity.

Yan Li's Words: My Home Storage Reached 2 TB

noreply@blogger.com (Yan Li) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:31:01 +0000

Today I bought and installed a 750GB hard drive to my backup server. This made my total storage at home reached 2.11 TB. The usable storage is more than 500 GB (others are used for backup).

A better world: Starting to get SFD schwag samples

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 03:46:37 +0000

Thanks to our successful Software Freedom Day event last year I am now a Software Freedom International board member. SFI is the non-profit organization behind Software Freedom Day, the group of people helping each of the now 400+ teams worldwide making the event happening at the same date (3rd Saturday of September - 20th this year) every year since 2004!

And every year SFI, thanks to the help of its sponsors, sends schwags to each team for free. This year I was the lucky one picked to manage the making of those schwags. As you can see we are starting to receive samples, comparing them to last year schwag, making sure the balloons inflate well, that colors are right and printing is on par with our expectations. A big thank you to Pockey and Jennifer for their help on managing this, and Jason for helping out with artwork modifications.

In about a week time I hope we’ll be able to start shipping and I’ll ask for the generosity of my preferred community, the Beijing LUG, to give a helping hand to count and pack the almost 300 boxes we’ll be sending all over the world!

The Downtown Diner: On the road again

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:36:09 +0000

Sun and Cosoft are co-sponsoring an Software Parks OpenSource Tech Day in fifteen cities around China throughout July and August. I spoke at the events last week in Changsha and Wuhan (where the average temperature in July is around 95 Fahrenheit or 35 Celsius - don't ask me why we plan these roadshows for the summer...) about Sun's open source technologies. I introduced OpenSolaris, Glassfish, Netbeans, OpenJDK, Java DocWeb, OpenOffice and Sun's open source localizations. It was my first time to speak at this kind of event so it was a great learning experience for me. I even spoke a little bit in Chinese. I think speeches are most meaningful when the speaker adds some of their unique perspective, so I talked about the time my mom had a secret recipe for a cake and she never shared it with us until she started a blog and decided to publish the recipe. She didn't know it at the time but she was part of a revolution that's all about sharing, and I'm so proud that my mom and my company are leading the charge.

Other speakers at the event were Vincent Liu from Sun, Chen Xu from Intel and He Wei Jia from RedFlag Linux.

We had about 100 participants in each city, here are some pictures:

Alfred Peng's Weblog: Firefox 3.0.1 builds for Solaris/OpenSolaris are avaiable

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 05:19:06 +0000

The Firefox 3.0.1 builds are now available for download here. You can also join desktop dash discuss at opensolaris dot org to get the release notice.The printing should work for the builds.

The Downtown Diner: "We are ready!"

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 22:58:55 +0000

We hear this a lot lately in Beijing - we are ready! We're talking about the Olympics of course, and it's evident all over town.

These are some signs I saw at the airport the other day:

And a friendly team of volunteers is ready to assist visitors when they arrive at the airport:

Most importantly, the air appears to be ready for the Olympics. Just look at how blue the sky was yesterday. The city government recently stopped all manufacturing in the city and some traffic controls are already in place, more strict ones will start on Monday. It's paying off.

A better world: Meeting with Mozilla Europe

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 04:03:43 +0000

As mentioned previously I had the opportunity to meet and discuss with Tristan Nitot, Mozilla Europe President, while in Paris. We exchanged views and tactics about web standards promotion and Firefox adoption in different markets.

Tristan like some of us at the Beijing LUG is a man who does what he believes in, no matter what it takes, and started Mozilla Europe as a volunteer. He invested his time (and therefore money) where his heart was when AOL got rid of Netscape and fired everybody. Since we don’t hear much about what’s happening in China with Mozilla Online, I asked him what he thought helped Mozilla in Europe and if there was a “magic recipe” for success…

When starting the Mozilla Europe Association, Tristan and other members of the Firefox community tested the most visited 1000 sites in each European country, analyzed what was not working well under Firefox and emailed the fixes to each webmaster. Definitely a long and tedious process, but worth doing if you care about the web. The second step, Tristan said, and probably a very important one too, was market share. With currently 28% market share in Europe any webmaster with a bit of brain will care for standards.

Another significant detail I liked about Mozilla Europe, is that they share their office with Mandriva (a Linux distribution) and are definitely close to all things community and Linux - a bit too much sometimes admitted Tristan.

Now where does this put us, poor “Chinese mortals”? Mozilla China is in the same building as the Microsoft MSN team, Netease, Google and Sun, has very low market share and often manages to cancel (at the last minute) when invited (and confirmed) at open source conferences or community driven events. Mozilla is after market shares even in China and therefore I really wonder what is their current strategy.

To conclude it was really refreshing to be able to discuss about real problems and find out what worked in Europe. I sincerely wish Mozilla China can learn from this openness and apply some of it in our middle kingdom.

LiuZheng's OSS Blog: MDTM：淺談FTP協定如何保留下載檔案的日期 / 時間

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 05:04:57 +0000

應該有很多朋友知道，用 FTP 下載檔案的時候，可以設定「保留下載檔案的日期 / 時間」。例如如果妳用的 FTP client 是 FileZilla 這個跨平台的自由軟體（以 2.2.32 版為例）：

編輯 > 設定 > 檔案傳輸設定 > 保留下載檔案的日期 / 時間
Edit > Settings > File transfer settings > Preserve date/time of downloaded files

設定是很簡單，其他的 FTP client 軟體也都有這個設定，一般人知道怎麼設定（自己用的 FTP 軟體）也就夠了。

但是，原理是什麼呢？

我用 ftp preserve date/time of downloaded files 去 Google 撈過來撈過去……

原來，這是取決於伺服器端的，如果妳連上的 FTP server 有支援 MDTM 這個功能，那妳只要在 FTP client 端設定一下，就可以保留下載檔案的日期 / 時間囉。

嗯，既然是通訊協定，一定在某一份 RFC 裡面有定義才是，這次改用 rfc ftp mdtm 撈，就撈到 RFC 3659 ，其中就有 File Modification Time (MDTM) 的定義

要怎麼知道妳連上的 FTP 伺服器有支援這個功能呢？很簡單，只要下 FEAT 指令，看看有沒有這個 FEATure 。底下是我用 MS Windows XP 的 command prompt ，連上某個 ftp 站之後，下指令的結果：

ftp> quote FEAT
211-Features:
EPRT
EPSV
MDTM
PASV
REST STREAM
SIZE
TVFS
211 End
ftp> quote SYST
215 UNIX Type: L8
ftp> quote HELP
214-The following commands are recognized.
ABOR ACCT ALLO APPE CDUP CWD DELE EPRT EPSV FEAT HELP LIST MDTM MKD
MODE NLST NOOP OPTS PASS PASV PORT PWD QUIT REIN REST RETR RMD RNFR
RNTO SITE SIZE SMNT STAT STOR STOU STRU SYST TYPE USER XCUP XCWD XMKD
XPWD XRMD
214 Help OK.
ftp> quote MDTM welcome.msg
213 20080613045501
ftp>

嗯，所以我們可以這樣取得 welcome.msg 這個檔案的時間戳記 (timestamp) 。不過，微軟提供的 ftp.exe 比較陽春，並沒有內建保留下載檔案的日期 / 時間這樣的功能，所以妳可以考慮使用 FileZilla 。如果一定要在命令列模式實現這樣的功能，可以考慮下載 NcFTP 的 MS Windows 版本，或者寫個 script 來控制 ftp.exe 。

==
喔，如果是 FileZilla 3.X 的話，這個設定放在：
傳輸 > 保留傳輸檔案的時間戳記
Transfer > Preserve timestamps of transferred files

======
有沒有發現，我們一直都在談「下載檔案」，那，用 FTP 上傳檔案，能不能保留檔案的日期 / 時間呢？有一些軟體拿 MDTM 來做這個功能，其實是不符合 RFC 3659的。比較正式的規範，目前應該是要用 MFMT 來做：

目前有份 IETF draft 提到 MFMT (Modify Fact: Modification Time)， FileZilla FTP server 0.9.25 有支援這個功能，如果妳用的 FTP client 也有這個功能，就可以實現「保留上傳檔案的日期 / 時間」

FileZilla 團隊有整理了 File Transfer Protocol 相關的文件。

==
為了答謝一直看到這裡的朋友，低調的提一下 Filezilla Password Recover :p

（本文原載於 http://blog.roodo.com/ystuan/archives/6171547.html）

looking east: First Beijing Aesthetic Marathon calling for Runners

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:52:17 +0000

I have participated in the First Beijing City Aesthetic Marathon today, running for about 20 minutes through the hutongs and markets around Tianshuiyuan. The Beijing City Aesthetic Marathon is an art project initiated by HOIO (Samuel Herzog). It’s a sportive challenge and a way to discover Beijing at the same time. The 42.195 kilometres of the Marathon are run in sections by different persons. Every runner is asked to take HOIO into the part of Beijing they consider the most beautiful and exciting route through the city. Sections can be as short as one kilometre and as long as what can be done by a person in one hour (that’s the maximum battery lifetime of the camera). Each run is filmed by Samuel Herzog. You can see an overview of the previous runs here.

Samuel Herzog will be in Beijing until Saturday July 19th, if you are interested in taking him through your favorite part of Beijing, you can contact him at hoio[at]bluewin.ch.

The Downtown Diner: We passed!

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 03:14:59 +0000

Bernard, Sutum and I are now DDI certified trainers!

(L-R) Me, Bernard, Mike, Sutum, Lucia

One day soon we'll be facilitating management classes for our fellow Sun managers. Although I'm certified I'm still a little nervous about teaching a class but they say I'll become more and more comfortable as I get real classroom experience.

I'm very grateful to our coach, Master Trainer Mike Andrew, who not only took us through the certification process but also gave us wisdom like:
- Treat issues coldly and people warmly.
- Seek first to understand, then to be understood. (Okay, not his original content but it means a lot coming from him.)
- The most important skill for a trainer, and for a manager, is listening.

I'm also grateful to Lucia Yip, who works in Sun's training organization. She recognized something in Bernard, Sutum and me that made her think we'd be good trainers. It was something I hadn't even recognized myself but I think she's right, or at least I can say for sure that so far I love training.

Asteroid L: Won't Someone Think of the Children?

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:21:05 +0000

Eva shows me a video made by CCTV (for those not-China-savvy, that's the state network, not "Closed Circuit TV") about WoW and MMORPGs.

I see a room full of young people in army uniform (and some concerned-looking elders, presumably moms, in the back) watching a video of WoW in a big screen.

Me: What, they're teaching the army to fight dragons?
Eva: They're trying to convince them, and us, that MMORPGs are evil.
Me: No. You must be pulling my leg, my theory was less ridiculous.
Eva: They say if you play WoW you lose your humanity.
Me: No, hmm, that would be Vampire the Masquerade. (Sorry for the geeklings in the audience who don't have the background to get this one.)

Cue scene of human character massacred by creatures I can't identify (because I'm not a WoW player myself) -- orcs? Giants?

Me: Well yeah, it doesn't look too good for humans if you suck at playing it...

It's ridiculous and a bit infuriating, though. Any other place (well, almost), this would be an instant lawsuit. But of course, it would be a bad idea to sue the state-operated TV network in a state that's still partially totalitarian. It's times like this that I'm really tempted to go invest my money elsewhere... (well, when I have any!)

A better world: Back in town!

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:03:58 +0000

After 2 weeks in France I am finally back in Beijing and so happy to be here! The way back was rather hectic due to bad subway/train fare charging and no signage in the airport. In fact you can buy a subway ticket that let you take the train to the airport, however the fare is more expensive and you have no option to pay the difference on arrival: you arrive at the gate where your undervalued ticket doesn’t let you go out and there is no counter or staff around! Luckily someone was nice enough to use his monthly card to let me out (together with another lost soul) and send me to the wrong terminal. It’s probably too difficult for the French (Aéroport de Paris I should blame) to place signs telling travelers which airlines take off from which of the 3 terminals…

That being said the trip was rather ok with half of the time sunny days, no special trouble, my 99 years and six month old great-aunt perfectly healthy, my good friends happy to see me and a few unexpected encounters such as Mandriva’s nice office and team, Mozilla Europe President and the people behind the Gdium project!

On top of that I also went to an Open Source meeting organized every first Thursday of the month by the Paris LUG called “Parinux” (among many other events they organize). It was nice to see how other countries and LUG do but what I can tell you is that the Beijing LUG is definitely the group to join if you want to see more girls and meet Open Source programmers ;). I was told that in France developers tend not to attend those types of events and that LUGs or other communities are rather influential with the politicians. As an example AFUL together with a few other associations just won a battle about a non-refundable pre-installed Windows against DELL for 50,000.- € just for 1 case. Class action suit is not allowed in France so each case is reviewed one by one. Of course you can imagine that there are a few cases in the pipeline and that manufacturers and OEMs do worry a little ;).

That’s about it for today. I will probably write a bit more about each encounter as they do warrant a full report!

Pollution-china.com - Blog: Pollution speech at Greening the Beige

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 08:06:10 +0000

Greenig the Beige (GtB) is an innovative, eco-minded art collective dedicated to nurturing awareness on pertinent environmental issues. It is happening this week-end in Beijing.
The idea is to bring together people concerned about environmental issues, artists, volunteers in NGOs, experts and even me!

I will be giving a speech on Saturday July 12th at Yugongyishan at 8pm. Together with Vance Wagner (an expert on traffic policies) we will explain urban pollution, the impact on health and what we can do ourselves against it.
If you are interested, find out more on Greenig the Beige website !

looking east: Free Open Source Software

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:25:56 +0000

Despite the fact that nobody is willing to pay for software and that proprietary software is free as in free beer, there are some points to be considered:

FOSS is legal to use, copy, modify, and distribute. Especially in China, where new laws can be enforced within little time, this can be a considerable advantage. However, it doesn’t seem that anti-piracy laws will be enforced anytime soon.
FOSS can be modified to meet the exact needs of the users. This is impossible with proprietary software.
FOSS has always been free, and FOSS-based companies have always been forced to come up with different business models. Hence the Chinese situation is not that different from other countries.

The question is: If people don’t pay for software, will they pay for customisation of open source code? Are they willing to pay for services and support related to the software?

The Downtown Diner: Train the Trainer Training

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:50:20 +0000

This week I'm in Hong Kong for Train the Trainer training (try to say that three times fast). Sun recently launched a new set of management classes and one of the tenets is that Sun managers should teach them rather than a consultant. So I'm here with three other managers and we're learning from one of the greatest - Master Trainer Mike Andrew, the author of "How to Think Like a CEO and Act Like a Leader."

Tomorrow I have to do a demo of a session called "Leading High Performance Teams". I have to do a decent job otherwise I won't get certified and if I don't get certified I won't be able to teach the course so wish me luck!

Meanwhile I'll leave you with some pictures taken from Sun's Hong Kong office, which is on the 66th floor of Central Plaza. The views are stunning even on a rainy day. It's a good thing I don't work here because I wouldn't get any work done, I'd be looking at the view all day long.

looking east: Random Thoughts

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 08:06:51 +0000

I have been in China for almost three months now. I have attended quite a number of FOSS-related events, have spoken to many people, and observed everyday programming at Exoweb. I have taken notes, asked questions, actively participated, and helped organising events. I now have a large pile of important-looking business cards, some new contacts on GTalk, Twitter, Facebook, and a wiki full of words describing what I have experienced, but I am still struggling to describe open source in China.

So far it seems that FOSS in China is mainly about talks, about promotion, about words, not that much about code. When it comes to software, China and Thailand are special cases: Software is generally available for free or little money, independent of it being open source or not. Piracy is omnipresent, licenses don’t exist. It seems almost impossible to make money with software development in China. People just don’t want to pay for it.

Questions

How does this influence software development in China? Are there new business models emerging from this? Is there a need for China to have a software industry at all? How does it influence innovation and creativity? How do existing software development companies survive? What about web (2.0) development?

Utility Computing dot China: Richard’s Photographic Exhibition: Beijing Streets

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 07:26:23 +0000

G’Day Bluggers,

I am posting this to my blog, because I know that you will get it from the planet aggregator!

I am sure that you are all scratching your heads right about now and thinking, “that big oafish Australian male that yaps on about mundane technology or sport all the time, has an artistic streak..?”. Truth be told, it has been a passion of mine since my years were measured in single digits and this most recent and inaugural Richard exhibition comes courtesy mostly of a 65 year old German medium format folding camera purchased in Beijing second hand for 600 RMB, with film developed myself in my bathroom.

The location is a jazz bar called “Song Bar” which is located at “The Place” - which is just south of Sanlitun - it is the place (yes, the name is dumb) that has the whole outdoor roof made up of one giant plasma display with beer gardens underneath. And as unlikely as it may seem of me, I am extremely shy, nervous and anxious to see as many familiar faces as possible arrive!

So please mark 7:30PM this Thursday the 10 July for a chance to see my photographic portrayals and stories of Beijing life.

Cheers,
Richard Ford.

looking east: BeijingOpenParty July: Summer Daydreams (仲夏梦舞)

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:02:08 +0000

The next Beijing Open Party will take place on July 19th at the Thoughtworks offices in Beijing. If you want to give a talk, you can propose it on the Beijing Open Party google group. Alternatively you can also just show up at the party and propose your topic. The party’s original announcement can be found here.

Event: BeijingOpenParty July: Summer Daydreams (仲夏梦舞)
Date: July 19th
Time: 13.30 - 17.30
Address: Room 1105, 11th Floor GuoHua Plaza, No.3 Dongzhimen South Street, Dongcheng District, Beijing, China, 100007, see map.

looking east: Accessible Captchas in Django

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:40:24 +0000

While we were implementing the GNOME.Asia summit website (will be available on www.gnome.asia soon), we were confronted with the problem of captcha accessibility. Despite Recaptcha’s claim of being accessible by providing sound captchas, the sound quality turned out to be rather poor and I actually did not succeed in using it even after listening to it four times. Based on this solution implemented in Rails, I reimpleted a similar idea for question captchas in Django. The code is fairly simple, based on a model which contains questions and the corresponding answers, and an implementation of a Django newforms field which can be used in the form. Some example questions can be found here.

models.py

from django.db import models
from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _
 
class AccessibleCaptcha(models.Model):
    question = models.CharField( max_length=255)
    answer = models.CharField(max_length=255)
 
    question.verbose_name = _(u'Question')
    answer.verbose_name = _(u'Answer')
 
    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.question

fields.py

from random import randint
from django.newforms import *
from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _
from django.utils.safestring import mark_safe
from captcha.models import AccessibleCaptcha
 
class AccessibleCaptchaWidget(Widget):
 
    def __init__(self, options={}, *args, **kwargs):
        super(AccessibleCaptchaWidget, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
 
    def render(self, name, value, attrs=None):
        index = randint(0, AccessibleCaptcha.objects.count()-1)
        accessible_captcha = AccessibleCaptcha.objects.all()[index]
        question = accessible_captcha.question
        return mark_safe(u'''<strong>%(question)s</strong> 
<input name="%(name)s" value="%(index)d" type="hidden" />
<input name="%(name)s" id="id_%(name)s" type="text" />'''
                % {'name':'captcha', 'index':index, 'question':question})
 
    def value_from_datadict(self, data, name, prefix):
        return data.getlist(prefix)
 
class AccessibleCaptchaField(Field):
    def __init__(self, required=True, label=None, help_text=None,
            options={}, *args, **kwargs):
        super(AccessibleCaptchaField, self).__init__(required=required,
            widget=AccessibleCaptchaWidget(options=options),
            label=label, help_text=help_text, *args, **kwargs
            )
 
    def clean(self, value):
        errormsg = gettext(u'You did not enter the correct answer. Please try again.')
        if not isinstance(value, (list, tuple)):
            raise ValidationError(errormsg)
        #get the right answer from the database
        #value[0] contains the id of the hidden field, value[1] contains the user input
        index = int(value[0])
        answer = AccessibleCaptcha.objects.all()[index].answer
        if not value[1].lower() ==  answer.lower():
            raise ValidationError(errormsg)
        return True

Usage

captcha = AccessibleCaptchaField(label=_(u'Are you human?'))

Chris Drumgoole: In Seoul for a wedding

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 00:10:48 +0000

No, not my wedding.

A good friend from college is getting married to a Korean girl. I’ll take pics and upload to flickr. Got here yesterday (Friday) afternoon, leaving Monday early evening.

Seoul is nice, but crowded!

Yan Li's Words: OpenStreetMap is an Interesting Project

noreply@blogger.com (Yan Li) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 22:57:38 +0000

www.openstreetmap.org is an really interesting project, I've been contributing to it for some time, mainly covers Beijing urban and rural area.

LiuZheng's OSS Blog: Running Linux from any machine without installation

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:31:15 +0000

The modular approach gives you the ability to include any other software in Slax easily. If you’re missing your favourite text editor, networking tool or game, simply download a module with the software and copy it to Slax, no need to install, no need to configure.

If you are a beginner or you’re just too busy to make it yourself, follow a few steps to build your own customized operating system by using web-based interface here.

Slax How to

Key features of Slax 6

Slax distribution - Slax for CD

Slax distribution - Slax for USB

Verify if your downloaded was not corrupted

Running Slax from USB Flash keys

Using boot parameters (cheatcodes) in Slax

Understanding the persistent changes [ not finished ]

Using Slax modules

Slax是一个USB Linux，安装它的方式很简单，下载Slax的tar文件到usb key。usb key最好是1GB以上，整个Slax大概六七百MB；usb key现在很便宜，建议买一个大的。如果你是在windows下面下载并安装这个东西，建议最好把usb key先格式化一下，别格式化成NTFS格式，我的usb第一次安装没成功，后来格式化一边在copy tar文件，解压缩后，运行那个安装文件，就是一个bat文件，它会把这个linux的启动菜单装到，usb的引导区。那个bat文件会一闪就停住，关闭窗口。安装就这个结束了，整个过程10分钟左右。推出windows，在笔记本电脑启动的时间，按F12，在系统启动菜单上选择从usb启动。很快slax的启动画面就显示出来了，在这个菜单中，我选择了copy slax to ram；这样它会把整个系统都装入内存运行；我的笔记本电脑有4G内存，所以我想充分利用这个资源提速。进入系统后，系统是一个KDE桌面非常熟悉。如果你想按照其他的程序的话，你可以到slax的网站上下载其他的模块，copy到那个制定的目录中，通过桌面里的模块管理工具或者命令行都可以激活新的应用，下面你就能在程序菜单中找到了。在slax的桌面系统中你可以直接访问到windows的分区，系统在启动时自动把windows的文件系统识别并且加载了。

现在你拥有了随身携带的Linux系统了，把它放到包中随身携带吧：）

Alfred Peng's Weblog: Update: Firefox 3.0 contributed builds for Solaris 10

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 03:36:47 +0000

Thanks all for the feedback. The updated version of Firefox 3.0 contributed builds for Solaris 10 have been uploaded to the Mozilla ftp server: pkgadd tarball.

There are some changes to these builds to compare with the previous:
1. Add "--enable-official-branding" to the build option. Now it's Firefox, not Minefield.
2. Update the font to make Firefox 3.0 consistent with Firefox 2.0 on Solaris 10.
3. Enable jemalloc on Solaris ported by Ginn. It'll decrease the memory footprint for Firefox 3.0.
4. Add "--with-system-jpeg" which should fix the crash issue related to jpeg images.
5. Update the startup script to store the configure files in $HOME/.mozilla/firefox. Now the tarball builds can run on a read-only directory.

Please note that all the glib/atk/cairo/pango/dbus/dbus-glib libraries stay the same in the new builds:
glib 2.14.4
atk 1.20.0
cairo 1.4.12
pango 1.18.3
gtk 2.12.3
dbus 1.1.20
dbus-glib 0.74
The pkgadd users can keep the old ones and just reinstall the Firefox package.

BTW, Ginn's performance patches have been applied:[1] [2]. The performance improvement on SPARC is obvious to me. And the latest Flash Player release 9.0.125.0 has fixed the gmail crash issue.

Any problem, please feel free to raise it up.

Game in China: PythonMagick 0.7 build error

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:03:50 +0000

I encountered an error when i build the PythonMagick 0.7 in OpenSUSE 10.3.
The error message is like this;

/usr/include/boost/python/converter/registered.hpp:88: error: no matching function for call to 'registry_lookup(const volatile void (*)())

it seems registered.hpp has problem. I update the boost to new. Then the error has disappeared.

Here is the diff;

admin@linux-t5mw:/usr/include/boost/python/converter> diff registered.hpp registered.hpp.bak
12d11
< # include <boost/type_traits/is_void.hpp>
14,15d12
< # include <boost/python/type_id.hpp>
< # include <boost/type.hpp>
83,84c80,81
< inline registration const&
< registry_lookup2(T&(*)())
---
> registration const&
> registry_lookup(T&(*)())
91,106c88
< inline registration const&
< registry_lookup1(type<T>)
< {
< return registry_lookup2((T(*)())0);
< }
<
< inline registration const&
< registry_lookup1(type<const volatile void>)
< {
< detail::register_shared_ptr1((void*)0);
< return registry::lookup(type_id<void>());
< }
<
< template <class T>
< registration const& registered_base<T>::converters = detail::registry_lookup1(type<T>());
<
---
> registration const& registered_base<T>::converters = detail::registry_lookup((T(*)())0);

It is too hard to understand this code, isn't it?

The Downtown Diner: Three Things Your Nanny Wishes You Knew

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:12:51 +0000

I went to France in May of 1990 with nothing more than a backpack, $200 in cash and a dream of becoming an au pair and improving my French. I didn't know a soul in Paris but it was Spring and I was in the City of Light and que sera sera, right?

So I arrived in Paris and after 200 cold calls made from public phones on the Champs-Élysées I found my dream job. I was a nanny for Jean-Guillaume, an adorable 2-year-old in a suburb just outside of Paris. Jean-Guillaume and his family lived in a posh mansion which was built in the 1900s but had been recently restored. It was four stories of marble, polished hardwood, antiques, and the kind of art that you go to museums to see. They had bought the lot next door and installed a swimming pool, which meant you had to walk a few steps to get to the hot tub but on the way you passed exotic flora and fauna, ducks and geese, statues and stones. The dad drove a red Porsche and the mom drove a black convertible Saab, and just when I thought my jaw couldn't drop any further they casually mentioned that they kept the Ferrari and the Lamborghini in a garage across town. That's what you do when you own expensive sports cars - who knew?!

It was my first experience as a domestic servant and looking back, there are a lot of things I wish I had told my employers.

1. Be good to the help.
My family was good to me but they were not good to the maid, Marie France. She lived on their property but they didn't want her kids to play in certain sections of their garden and her kids inevitably wandered into the verboten territories, which always led to arguments and a lot of stress for everyone. Marie France was so angry at the family that she started trying to kill them. No joke. She put shards of broken glass in their food. I don't think she was mad at me because she cooked an early dinner for Jean-Guillaume and me and our food was glass-free but the rest of the family had dinner around 10pm and it was not uncommon for them to chomp down on a shard or two. The first few times she claimed a glass had broken in the kitchen and a piece must have somehow found its way into the food but after five or ten times no one was buying that story anymore. So why didn't the family fire her? I think it's because she was really cheap and they didn't have time or energy to look for a new maid. So instead they chose to chew carefully and hope for the best. Until Marie France stole away in the middle of the night with some of the above-mentioned famous artwork, and then they had no choice but to look for a new maid. And new art.

2. Be clear about what you expect from the help.
When I first started my nanny job Marie France was preparing some kick-butt meals for us - can you imagine getting great French cuisine every day for lunch? Awesome, and it was glass-free since I went out of my way to stay on good terms with her. However as the days went by the meals became less and less fresh. Pretty soon we were eating noodles with canned tuna on them.

When I finally asked about the diminishing quality of our lunches Marie-France said, "Didn't they tell you you're supposed to go to the market every day? You're supposed to be buying the fresh vegetables and fruits!" Well duh, that was no problem but I could have died from scurvy while waiting for someone to tell me about this part of my job.

3. Don't take your nanny shopping with you if you're planning to spend big bucks.
I earned the equivalent of $175/month plus room and board when I was a nanny. I was fine with that because for me it was better than paying $500/month in tuition for French classes and if the wages weren't acceptable to me I wouldn't have been there, right? But once Jean-Guillaume's mom took us shopping and I watched her spend my monthly salary on salt and pepper shakers. That just hurt. A month of me was worth less than condiment dispensers. If you're going to make big purchases just leave the nanny at home.

Epilogue (is it okay for a blog to have those?)
I know that in many parts of the world people don't have "help" but it's very common here in China and I am so grateful to have the help of our "ayi" Xiao Zou, who cooks, cleans and does the laundry for me so that when I come home in the evening I can focus on my kids and my husband and nothing else. It's bliss.

Utility Computing dot China: Olympics - Making it hard to do business

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 07:46:24 +0000

Who ever said the Olympics would open up China?

Well the Olympics are coming and life is already getting hard. Here are some of the current restrictions that are going on.

- No new broadband lines can be pulled and connected from now until September

- No new servers allowed into data centres from the 15th of July until September

- No imported products that contain a “CD” or “DVD” in the box because “they might contain a virus”

So since most of the software sold here is packaged overseas - you can’t run any projects now that require new software purchases for the next 10 weeks - unless of course you can get it electronically from the vendor. That is assuming that you could even deploy a new server into an IDC. Which given by the hassles we had last Sunday while our rack vendor tried to enter Beijing to deliver some new racks to our IDC….. you wouldn’t have a rack for the server or a server for the software.

Who knows - maybe the internet may go as well.

Talk about paranoia!

We may very well have to claim “Force Majeure” soon for some clients. God knows we are not going to take the commercial liability for the disruptions this will cause.

Again just like the internet changes a few months back.

WHERE IS THE ADVANCED WARNING AND PLANNING???

Can’t wait for these friggin games to be over and life to return to normal…. watch out for those CD’s guys… they might blow up or pass on SARS!

Chris Drumgoole: Beijing weather getting annoying

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 02:46:49 +0000

Last night, Melanie and I returned from Hong Kong. Had a great great time in Hong Kong! Our flight was supposed to depart from HKG at 7:30PM, for an arrival around 10:30-10:50PM.

When we got to the airport, we noticed the flight was delayed to 8:10PM - we later found out, according to the pilot, the plane was late getting out of Shanghai due to weather. This was fine as we could spend a bit more time in this great airport.

We eventually board the plane, but then the pilot gets on the intercom and tells us due to bad weather in Beijing, we’re not sure what time we can take off - we have to join some sort of “queue”. Yes, I confirmed with some friends in Beijing that it was raining pretty hard.

An aside: my flight from Beijing to Hong Kong landed during a category T3 storm on wednesday, so I don’t know what all the commotion is!

Long story short (ok, there isn’t much more left to the story!), we finally took off around 10:15PM (2.75 hours late) and landed 1:20AM. Then we had to endure the horrendously inefficient and horribly designed new-Terminal 3.

Weather Gods

It seems to me, and several of my other friends in Beijing, that it’s been raining a heck of a lot more this season than it has in the past years. And, like automobile drivers, pilots and air traffic controls don’t seem to know what to do when it rains. (In fairness, rain in Beijing is a bit of an abnormal phenomenon, so it does catch us all off guard a bit).

Could it be the powers that be are causing it to rain a bit more than usual to help in the cleanup effort of the city before the Olympics? Who knows. But it is something interesting to think about.

I have the best luck traveling

This is the 3rd time in as much as a month that my flight, TO Beijing, has been delayed due to Weather.

Shanghai Hongqiao to Beijing: Saturday, May 31- Original departure time: 9:55PM; actual ~11:15PM
Qingdao to Beijing: Friday, June 20 - Original departure time: 9:25PM; actual ~11:30PM
Hong Kong to Beijing: Monday, June 30 - Original departure time: 7:30PM; actual 10:15PM

My good friend, Dr. Bushwacker, was flying back from Shanghai Hongqiao last week, also an evening flight - his flight was delayed and delayed, until finally they canceled it and rescheduled him for the following day.