Ginger bread house

Just after the New Year, we put back the Christmas tree, socks, candles, and was getting rid of the ginger bread house that my wife, my son, and a few of his friends made together. Kids really liked it. The thing has been on display in our house throughout the whole holiday break.

Now, after so many days, this bread house has become rubberish, and some part was just plain hard, like stone. After telling our son again and again to patiently wait until after the holidays, the thing has become unedible. So we made a deal with him, that he would get some other treat, and we would dump the bread house.

At destruction time, I took it to the sink, broke it by hand, and dropped the pieces to the disposal. Son was standing right by me witnessing the whole process. A minute later, he walked away, slowly, saying "ginger break house was pretty, I want it back", to a corner of the house, hid himself behind a couch, and started dropping tears.

At the age of 5, this might have been his first time to see something he has built, liked, adored, considered beautiful, and been proud of for so long, destroyed in front of his face. Later in his life, he will then learn to target the bigger goal, to be practical, to ignore the small worthless beauties around him in his every day life. He will not blink an eye to throw away things that has once been meaningful and significant to him, because the time has past and he has moved on. He will grow up, and leave behind the innocence and sincerity we all once had. And after all, it is just a ginger bread...

How I wish my son would stay at 5 forever. Oh, but for the bigger good, that would not be a good idea.

Sony BMG Plans to Drop DRM

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2008/tc2008013_398775.htm

"Sony BMG would become the last of the top four music labels to drop DRM, following Warner Music Group (WMG), which in late December said it would sell DRM-free songs through Amazon.com's (AMZN) digital music store. EMI and Vivendi's Universal Music Group announced their plans for DRM-free downloads earlier in 2007."

A personal note. Technologies make products cheaper and more accessible to consumers. DRM, born to combat technologies, although also labeled as one of them, does the opposite. It is created so that major label companies and cinema studios’ traditionally secured profits remain guaranteed the inevitable revolution in multimedia content distribution due to new technologies. As consumers decide what goes what stays, it is only matter of time these impeders learn to play the new game or get phased out of it.

对正义和公平的思考

Some thoughts after reading the below link.
http://news.wenxuecity.com/BBSView.php?SubID=news&MsgID=458043

正以. 事有对错. 60-70年前的事有对错. 今日的神社参拜也有对错. 同样,无端的对运动员游人学生的哄骂,诅咒甚至殴打(2005年的北京上海), 也是有对错的. 别人不可不正以. 难道我们就可以不正以么?

公平. 多数国人对待白人,亚洲人和黑人公平么? 近200年来,欺负中国的仅日本么? 虐杀中国百姓的仅日本么? 掠夺中国的仅日本么? 蚕食中国的仅日本么? 为什么仅对日本如此愤愤不平? 这里边究竟全是日本的问题,还是我们自己也有问题?

日本欺负我们比别人欺负我们更不能接受. 真正是因为,我们自认为自古以来中国就比日本强. 让日本超过了,当然心里不高兴. 白人,自从我们对百人有较多的接触以来,我们就不如他们. 心理上从来就没有优越感,所以也就没有落差. 这是日本人的错么? 还是我们自己的小人心态?

不要忘记历史. 说得对. 但不要忘记不是为了永远记恨. 不要忘记是为了不要重做错事.

Whats missing here?

My son goes to this Marshal Arts school, Ben's Shaolin Kongfu, in Sunnyvale. It is not a bad school. The masters are mostly in their early 20s, been practicing kongfu from very young age. All nice people, kind, friendly, humble, and that....

One of my son's best friends is a Ukranian 5 year old cute little boy, George. Here is a story that his mom just told me today. It happened yesterday. And she thought it was a little disturbing. I agree, to say the least.

The classroom is typically little dirty there. Just think what a bunch of single guys in their 20s can keep up. It is probably not surprising. Then one of the moms, a Japanese lady, volunteered to get a garbage bag and started collecting water bottles and other objects randomly laying on the floor. In the same room at the time were 2 teachers, who were busy snacking, other 10-ish moms all with their kids, who were busy idling, and this Ukranian mom. The Ukranian mom helped, but this was the only help that Japanese mom got, not that she requested though.

OK, now, isn't it rather those masters' responsibilities to keep the room clean? But they did not even help. Well, this is even less of a problem. But the kids there, who still have a long way to become shaped to be good, kind and responsible people, get absolutely no good influence from the teachers or their parents.

I dont know how the Japanese mom thought, since I never talked to her. But this Ukranian mom certainly did not appreciate this. Imaging someone visited your home and helped you vacuum the floor and you just sit there on the couch snacking. Worse than that. Your kids are there too, say also snacking.

Marshal Art is a Chinese thing. I see it a great thing to get some non Chinese to bring their kids to learn it. We all like to be appreciated. Those who did not help clean happen to be all Chinese. The who helped clean happened to be all NOT Chinese. Even worse. It is widely believed that the Chinese here in Silicon Valley are in average much better educated, comparing the ones in other places in the world, including China. I can't see what other picture could be more disturbing to a Chinese than this one. It cant be said that Chinese are not good people, because it is simply stupid and not true. But just what is missing here?

一个乌克兰母亲今天告诉我，昨天她带儿子去一个武术学校学武术。开课前，一个日本母亲向老师要了一个垃圾袋，开始义务清理起垃圾。那间屋子里真的是很脏。 她填满了一个垃圾袋的水瓶子，盒子，袋子等。在场的有10几位家长，2个武术老师，10几个8-9岁的孩子，只有这个乌克兰的妈妈在帮助这个日本妈妈在清 理别人的垃圾。老师（中国人）和其他家长（中国人）没有帮助，更难以接受的是他们也没有让那些孩子们帮助。这是发生在San Jose的故事。这里的中国人多是国内的“人尖子”来的。乌克兰母亲说，这在西方是 - 她作了一个双眼大睁最大张的样子. 这不就是网友们说的冷漠么? 大人们的冷漠本身且不计. 大人们如此对孩子们的身教更令人担心. 近日读到多个关于国际上评比各国人的总体形象的,日本人多是在前1-2名. 中国人多是在后1-2名. 这不会是完全公平的,但肯定不是完全不公平的.

ILP race today

Today in Mountain View Shoreline Park, there was an ILP race event. ILP is Indian Literacy Project. I am glad I was one of the 650 participants, most of all, because it is for such a holy cause. The use of word holy might be controversial. But I am an athiest. To me there can be nothing more holy than providing all kids education and therefore their chances to achieve their best. We are NOT born equal, absolutely NOT. We don't need to be either. I do not think we all ought to be born privildged or specially gifted. But we also do not want to see some kids born deprived of education opportunities, because of family economic conditions, lack of facilities (some kids in China have to walk 3 hours in the moutain everyday to get to their classrooms) or teachers, and ignorant parents (who pull their children out of school not realizing how they are ruining their future by doing it).

One time, a very dear person of mine said to me, although we all come from different background, culturally or religiously, or non-religiously, we all are here searching for truth. It was said to my heart. The reality is, maybe not all of us. There are still many of us living by what they were told whats right, wrong or should be should not be. The drive and desire for truth have brought our human race all this long way to where we are now. It is precious if we could all use our own eyes to see, brains to think, and hearts to love. It is nothinig but intelligence. The children's early education provides the only door to the path of such intelligence building. No one of us deverve chances to build our own intelligence more than others. We are the lucky ones who had such opportunities back in our time. It is our duty with with the newer generations. So I am proud I did my humble tiny part.

One of my coworkers is a volunteer at ILP. She dragged around ~10 of us to joined the event. It was a good thing she did. There was 5 km walk, 5 km run, and 10 km run. I joined 5k run. The run itself was brutal. I survived, I think.

Today is also Mother's Day.

so why kids well being is always after the convenience of officials in China?

It was such a shame, a fire in Kelamayi, Xinjiang (Uyghur ) province in China, happened in 12/8/1994, took away 288 best of the elementary and junior high school students' lives. Whats more shameful, was that haunting voice in the chaos and panic, "kids, please let the city official escape first". Thrity five teachers died, most in postures covering their students under their arms. All city officials were safe! What a stunning and heart wrenching record. Here is a link to that saga 12 years ago (in Chinese) http://www.rhineblue.com/?p=48

It is revealled lately, http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/4cddcfb50100087p, that 2 years ago, precisely 9/15/2005, in Danfeng county, Shaanxi province (China of course), there was show at some festival, when it was raining that day. Some 100 elementary school kid were set sitting right in front of the honor seats, for the county officials and local celebraties. The kids were instructed not to umbrella, so that the audience at the honor seats won't get their sights blocked. The show went on for over 2 hours in the rain, which is how long the kids sitting there wet, soaked, uncovered, and shivering. Apparantly no one cared.

A culture that bullies its kids, treats the weak like nothing.

确实令人拍案叫绝。
第1是老师。马屁拍得不惜代价，哪怕是国家的未来。一副奴才相。 事实是，如此为人师表，岂是不耽误国家的未来？？？ 国家且不提，这些孩子自己的未来如何？ 如此“老师”，连孩子的健康都不关心，何以关心他们的成长？ 做这样的老师，亏心不？当孩子们叫你老师的时候，脸红不？ 如果您的职业是屠夫便也罢了。 但您想没有想过您是个什莫东西？ 想一想好不？
我不知道那些领导同志们只不知道为什么孩子们没有遮雨。如果不知道，情有可原。但，我同样不知道那些领导同志们看没看到孩子们没有遮雨。如果看到，天理不容！如果没有看到，混蛋逻辑！当然，并不是每一个领导同志都是有头脑的。我尽量担待。但没有头脑，也没有良心不成？
哦，贾平凹。曾经满羡慕你的文笔。但只有文笔，没有头脑，更没有良心，你恐怕还不及一个酸臭文人。你最多也只是个文，但终究不是个人。 可惜了。

when does a 32 bit overflow?

A very interesting self experienced, sw engineering related case, I like to share with you….

What I had was a super long avi file, from a trip I took many years ago. It is on my hard drive, and I was trying to back up onto DVD discs, and free some space on my pc. The file was 44.5 GB in size. Not a 20 hour mpeg*, but a 5 hour avi, since any mpeg encoding would be a lossy process. And I like to keep the original quality. Anyways. All I thought I had to do was to cut 44.5 gig into 10 to fit into 10 DVD discs, at 4.45 a piece on a 4.7 gig disc. No brainer. Just time to burn. Finally all done. Smart of me to have checked before deleting the source files on my hard drive. All 10 discs are corrupted.

I don’t think anyone will be interested in my debugging path. So cut it short, after rebooting the machine, downloading and trying other burner programs, comparing the size of the successful discs, and more, I pulled out the calculator. So when does a 32 bit overflow? 4.295 gig. Maybe I should have known it by heart, but shame on me.

So here is what it tells me. The burner driver must be using a 32 bit unsigned to keep the size of each file on disc, which is why it corrupts my 4.45 gig file, but not my 4.276 gig file (how lucky was I with this one… a less than 20 MB margin made it a good burn without me realizing it). But it must be using a 64 bit to keep track of the total size of all files on disc, which is why it did not have problem with my other disc, with 5 files on it, totaling to 4.64 GB, but each one is smaller than 2^16.

After all, all I had to do was to cut up the file into 20 pieces, instead of a single 4.45 gig file on a 4.7 disc, have 2 files at 2.225 gig each on a disc.

The moral of the story? A 32 bit might not be large enough for DVD discs. With technology going forward, blu-ray or then bigger media coming along… Does it remind you the y2k problem?

Technology and quality of life

I am an engineer, a passionate one, at least self-considered so. Well really my passion is on how to get things done, rather why get things done. I believe in getting things done right, technically right. Like designing a new product or a new feature on the product, there are normally many ways of doing the same thing. But there is always one better way. If to do it, why dont we spend a little more time and thought to find the better way of doing it.

But someimes, I just dont believe I am a good engineer, as I dont believe technologies necessarily make people live happy. Rather, I believe it is quite irrelevant to one's happiness of his/her own life. My son, Kiki, a 1 and half year old, spent some 3 and half months in Beijing with my wife this year, living with my parents. He made some friends there. His favorite was a 3 year old boy, Le Le. Le Le and his parents came from countryside, to Beijing for a better paid job and a better living. For those who dont know China much, there are tons and tons of poorer people from countryside coming to major cities like Beijing. They take up the lowest paid jobs there, and work very very hard. By hard I mean 12-15 hours, or more. Their lives away from home, family, and friends are not easy. And even though they get paid much better than they could have got back home, they get paid very little given the living standard in the cities. On my last day of visit in Beijing, I went with my wife to bring some very simple gifts for Le Le to his home. They live in the basement of a 14 story condo tower. Le Le and his parents, 3 of them, get to have one room, in where they have a king size bed plus a beat up TV, a desk looking like as old as Le Le's parents, and some toys. In the hall, they have a gas stove so they can cook there. I dont know where they go for washroom or shower, hopefully there is one in the basement. I did not crutinize their room carefully, but dont believe they have much more than these. It does not seem like Le Le has Play Station or DVD player, or maybe even a stereo.

Are you going to cry reading all these? Why? Their lives are hard. But who is to say they are not happy? Le Le is a very loving boy. He treats Kiki like a he is a big brother of his (Kiki's). When they play outside together, he is always taking care of him. Guess why he is my son's favorite? Le Le's mom also offers a lot to Kiki. For what she gives to Le Le, she gives a share to Kiki if he is there. One time, the little 1 and half year old got the ice cream from Le Le's mom melted all over him. Now remember, every penny to them is a much bigger one than to others. They have all the reasons there is to offer less. But they dont. They love and they offer. How can I not believe they are happy, and less than myself? They surely dont have a lot of technologies in there house, but I dont believe it matters to them a lot. Now because of Le Le's parents hard work, he gets to later on go to school in Beijing, and have better education, and opportunities. Their hard work open up more chances for themselves and for Le Le.

Technologies make lives easier. It is nice to have. I am proud of myself when I make things happen, get a new feature working or find a bug and fix a problem. But how insignificant this is when seeing what I am doing have no effect on Le Le and his family's lives... Sometimes I feel more proud of Le Le mom, when she offers ice scream to Kiki, than myself when I get the software working.