Emotional Craft

Windows Shit

2009-08-08T03:05:00.002-04:00

The biggest disappointment for being a Mac user is having to deal with Windows shit at the most unexpected moment. Like right now I am staying up late just to download the spyware removal program so someone’s Windows can get cleaned up for “antivirus pro”. I won’t say that Mac is virus free, but the Mac OS is so well designed and organized that any malicious program can be easily spotted and removed. For the past ten years, I never had to re-installed the OS system once, and since I began using OS X, the system never has to shut down. No defrag joke like what windowser are constantly doing and no DLLs nightmares to screw up the system. Okay, enough is enough, and I will stop preaching for good. Choice is yours. I would rather have peace in mind and concentrate on productivity and lifestyle than fight the chaos and mis-organization of thousand files on Windows. The only regret I have is that I should have converted her.

A comment that hasn't had a chance to post

2009-07-08T23:19:00.004-04:00

While I was typing this to comment on the movie the Transformer II, the website crashed, so I guess it might be ok to post here.

I am going to pass this one. I am not the big fan of Transformer movie, although I have heard many said this movie is really awesome. The best sci-fi movie for the past 25 years is the Matrix and it was shot almost 10 years ago. Even today, no single movie can even come close. I've watched the Matrix for numerous times and I enjoyed it every time when I watched it. I have seen the Transformer I. I like the animation and special effects, but the story line is so lame. I am sure it is a good movie when you watch it with your friends or family (I am not sure if I will enjoy it like I have enjoyed others).

Making a Good Use of an Extra MacMini

2009-07-03T12:00:00.004-04:00

I have a PPC MacMini that is no longer being used because it is awfully slower than the one I am using now. But there are things good about this Mac; superdrive and a 80GB harddrive. Don't laugh! I know a 80 GB harddrive isn't something I should brag about but there is still plenty of space for holding some useful data.

A unused Mac can be easily converted to a slave Mac, and all you need is a Firewire cable, no extra display, keyboard and mouse are needed. Let's say you like to connect the old one to an existing Mac, the master Mac.

On the Master Mac:

1. Add a new network device to Network Preference Pane and set its IP address and Router address to 192.168.2.1.

2. Add the IP address of the DNS server.

3. Go to Sharing Preference Pane and turn on the "Internet Sharing". Make sure you check the check box on Firewire.

Now on the slave Mac (you will need a display, keyboard and a mouse for the following steps), I prefer giving it a fixed IP address but DHCP should work too. I also suggest OS X should be no older than 10.4.

1. Add a new network device to the Network Preference pane and assign its IP and Router address to 192.168.2.3 and 192.168.2.1

2. Fill in DNS IP address, if you like this it has an outside Internet connection.

3. Go to Sharing Preference Pane and turn on File Sharing, Remote Apple Events, DVD or CD Sharing, Screen Sharing (Apple Remote Desktop), and Remote Login (only if you like to access it through Terminal).

4. Remember to enable the sleep feature on the Energy Saver Pane, so this Mac won't stay up all night.

5. Turn on Bluetooth if it has built-in bluetooth. And make sure two Macs have been paired up. Then go to Bluetooth Preference Pane and check "Allow Bluetooth devices to wake this computer." This is a nice feature because you can wake up the slave Mac using Bluetooth, otherwise you will need to attach a USB device, which kind of defeats the purpose.

6. Remove all accessories then connect two with a Firewire cable. Voila! You have a slave Mac under your control.

You can use it as an external harddrive, or iPhoto or iTunes server, security webcam, chatroom zombie, second life autobot, etc. When you need to see the desktop on the slave mac, click on the "share screen" on 10.5 Finder or use Apple remote desktop. If the slave mac is a notebook, then you don't need Remote Desktop service running on it. Just install "teleport", a freeware, on both computers, then you can operate the slave using just one set of keyboard and mouse.

Even Insurer Needs a Bailout?

2009-06-28T01:59:00.008-04:00

Our insurance company has quietly raised our premium by 25% this year without a letter explaining the rationales behind it. A phone call to our agent also failed to clarify it because we were given the typical reason like “your house is old,” and “there have been more break-ins recently.”

House does not get old in just one year! How does that additional one-year justify the 25% increment? The house has been in a safe neighborhood and in one of the safest cities of the nation, so how is it possible that there are more break-ins than the police reports and records that we find? Does State Farm really think that we homeowners will not even notice the increase? And when was the last time that the coverage actually covered 95% of the property value? Given the fact that dwelling depreciates over time.

An estimated quotation obtained from other insurers has also shown State Farm’s cost is at least couple hundred dollars more expensive. Just don’t tell us this excuse like State Farm has had the financial crisis so they deserve a bailout from the homeowners.

Cancel-Your-Cable-TV Campaign

2009-04-10T23:59:00.002-04:00

Are you tired of paying one Benjamin every month and still having to watch those commercials? If you are, then come join me and cancel your cable TV service at home. Unless you have a way to keep those commercial-free channels, chances are you would either have to ditch them all or live with it. That being said “You get what you pay for.” But when it comes to cable TV services, it is simply not the case. And if you think that consumers always lose in this battle, reports show that more people are dumping cable TV for online video now.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/280026/its_time_to_dump_your_cable_bill_get.html

http://www.podcastingnews.com/2008/10/09/new-trend-hits-mainstream-people-dropping-cable-for-internet-video/

http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2009/03/cancel_cable_tv.html

Just when we begin to enjoy the online video services from Hulu, Youtube, Netflix and others. Cable service providers are fighting back. According to the New York Times article, the two major provides, Time Warner and Comcast, are planning to put a cap on Internet download capacity. If thing goes as planned, the unlimited internet plan is going to cost every household max. $150/mo, high enough to pay for a premium digital TV plus Internet service. It has also been estimated that the profits will be significantly higher. Immediately after the message was released, outcry and fury among many users have been all over the Internet. What if those two major players are unstoppable? Here are the possible outcomes:

They will be sued for monopoly unfair practices or anti-trust violation.
Subscription will be dropped and more people begin to share their bandwidth with friends/neighbors to split the cost.
People will begin to look for the alternative. For example, Verizon FiOS now offers unlimited plan for only $45/mo with download speed at 10 Mbps. What I hate about DSL? You have to subscribe voice service too.
Cable services providers go bankruptcy due to massive protest and boycott.

Hopefully we won’t see it coming to this end. Coaxial cable, in fact, has a potential to provide far better service than DSL, if they take a step further to combine TV content into their Internet services and upgrade existing bandwidth, the number of TV subscribers could actually go up.

Medical Bill Reduction Campaign

2009-03-21T11:12:00.003-04:00

When economy is under, consumers’ expense on non-critical services are declining. According to the reports, number of cell phone contract is dropping. More and more users begin to look for cheap alternative — prepay phones or pay-as-you-go phones. Even if the talk time is unlimited, most of the calling plans turn out more expensive than you think. How many of you are actually using up most of your talk time each month? Rollover minute is good? The fact is it is only good for a year, which means you could lose the talk time you saved up a year ago, and it is the problem I am facing now.

What if the services are critical, like healthcare? The healthcare in the US is not affordable at all. The costly medical bills have forced insurers to increase the premium every year. Why does health care in the US cost so much? To find the answer, I have done some search for everyone and post the links here.

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=why+health+care+in+us+cost+so+much&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

http://www.kosmix.com/topic/why_health_care_expense_us_cost_much?

http://www.kosmix.com/topic/Why_Health_Care_Expense_Us_expensive?

Here are the quotes I retrieved from the search results:

“Health care spending in the US reached $2.4 trillion.”

“Heavy healthcare costs have some US corporations fearing for their future.”

“The US has by far the most expensive health care system in the world.”

Instead of learning the tips for paying cheap healthcare after retirement, as most people are trying to do now, the healthcare system in the US indeed needs a reform and it has to be done as soon as possible before it collapses. Can we say that the situation is also like Wall Street that greed drives the price up?

NYTimes Report

MS Word 2008 Slowness

2009-03-20T23:23:00.003-04:00

I am getting more and more impatient with the slowness of Microsoft Word 2008. In fact I am sick of their whole line of office products now. The joke about Microsoft’s inability goes like this: MS office 2004 in simulation mode (i.e. an emulation program that simulates the PowerPC instruction sets on Intel architecture) easily outruns the latest and more powerful office 2008. On my duo-core 1.8 GHz Intel iMac, it takes 25 seconds of my precious time to get this memory hog to load.

Guess what is included in the MS Office suite? The MSN Messenger. Let’s check out its rating on versiontracker.com

VersionTracker

Three out of five stars! That’s pretty lame. It also lacks many features compared to the Window version. I think Skype in general beats the pants off of Messenger in many ways so I am still sticking with Skype for now.

When the site owner becomes the king

2009-01-29T09:13:00.004-05:00

When site owners become the kings of their small kingdoms, it could be a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing is that everything is under their watch and control, so the order can be assured. The bad thing is when the site owners take management into their own hands and rule their place like no one. This power comes from how UNIX traditionally works. Under this system, the superuser, more or less the king, has the absolute power, which means every piece of information, every message, each IP address, and individual activities, even the conversation in the chat room are visible to the king, presumably if everything has been logged. Just because the kings have the power, does it mean they have the rights to do anything they want? Unfortunately, this is the case. A good king would set the rule and let moderators take care of the rest, treat users with respect, listen to them and believe they are sharing the value of the site. Most importantly, users respect and trust the owner with their hearts. A bad king would judge things based on “his” own standard, post unfair and provocative responses, and only believes in popular domain names, the number of visitors, and the ranking on the Google search. There have been many dissidents came out in the past to defend their different opinion. All of them now have long gone. I do not know if it is the same reason why most of the users just come and go with a record of very few postings. It seems no one treat it as home. For a site of magnitude and history like that it is odd to find there are no more than two native speakers active on the board or any ESL user whose profession is in literature or English. I have seen the dispute going on numerous times in the past and I believe there was no conflict of interest until I received this message.

http://www.foikosa.com/

Your signature introduced a link of a potential competing website. In order for us to protect the best interest of xxxxxxx.com.xx, we have the link removed from your signature section.

I was really flattered that my $10 spending and one night’s little experiment would be considered a competing website to a site that has been existing for more than 5 years and with thousands of viewers.

There is a nontrivial question I like to ask: what would be the best interest of those general users who volunteer to help answer the questions? If that site is profit-driven, has any of moderators been made partner or allowed to promote their profession? This type of partnership and collaboration is important for a small site like ECT. Allowing users to advertise their thoughts or their own websites has been very common on other websites so people can help each other regardless they are competing in the same field or not. The most obvious answer to this type of management is quite simple: that site is an investment and is ready to put a price tag on so little effort has been made to attract “loyal” users.

The above is another thing worth a laugh so to share with everyone here.

What is wrong with putting computers into sleep?

2008-10-26T00:42:00.002-04:00

According to a New York Times article, computer industry is working on fast-booting computers. My question is..

Do people forget the sleep mode? It only takes less than a second to wake a sleeping computer, which is 15 times faster than to boot up those so-called "fast-booting" computers.

For all Mac users here, how often do you reboot/shutdown your Mac? Once every week, every month, or your answer is like mine...

"I can't seem to remember when was the last time I did that."

Taiwanese Society is Going Down

2008-10-25T11:57:00.003-04:00

If politicians do not need to held responsibility for what they have done and have said, then the politics is simply a lie, more or less a game. When a society fails to judge or condemns wrongdoings, the society is going down. Unfortunately, this is the case in Taiwan. It all began with the scandals of our ex-president had involved with. Although he is the person who should be responsible for all these misconducts, does the society not have a responsibility at all? Especially what he has committed were organized crimes including money laundering, insider trading, bribery, and embezzlement. This organized money laundering and stealing would not work without government officers and bankers on board: persons that can be named here include the Head of Investigation Bureau and Board of government-owned banks, meaning the whole country was once run by a group of corrupted officers, from the high up in the president palace down to its accountant. So far, almost all Chen’s family members were parts of it, in addition to many racketeers, friends, classmates, and even security guards.

But when all these favors, whether given by friends or classmates, were to make a small group of people rich, we would have to ask what the motivation is behind them, especially some of them simply did it without expecting for return. Perhaps, they did not know what they did were wrong, or they decided not to think of it that way. Even now numerous Chen’s supporters including some politicians still back him. The problem really resulted from the low moral standard this society has: some people do not think that moral behavior of politicians is an important criterion, so when ethnic conscious meets ethical standard, the former always wins. When ethnic awareness is on top of everything, the society is continuously moving downward.

The Most Unbearable Show Ever

2008-10-24T08:49:00.004-04:00

When OJ Simpson was on trial, the US national channels that covered the story became the most watched court of the law TV show in the US TV history. It was not the show about how to bring justice to the criminal. Rather, it is there to serve one purpose and that is to satisfy the simple curiosity of human nature.

Here in Taiwan, it is expected that money laundering scandal and discretion fund fraud that our ex-president has involved with would become Taiwan’s counterpart. Although Mr. Chen has not been formally prosecuted on any of the account, all evidences that pointed to him have made him the center of the blame. Even without a formal prosecution, the show already began. News media followed him as he was looking for support. He has portrayed himself as a political scapegoat, alleged the investigation is an unfavorable justice, and raised his voice trying to promoted conflicts between two ethnic groups. Millions of people have watched his shameless speech on TV with mixed feelings. Yes, he was once the beloved pride of democracy and the son of a humble peasant who lived with low income. But, is it true that the balance of Justice had been tilted toward the ruling party like he has claimed? The truth is that he could have had enough time to make this country’s Investigation Bureau to serve only for the country not for the ruling party. Instead, he has manipulated the system and lured it to protect his own interest. Even he had done so, let us not forget the fact that it was during his presidency that Chen’s family was investigated and put on trial.

Apparently the apology he gave earlier in the summer about not knowing his wife’s involvement in money laundering was simply a lie. (After the Head of Investigation Bureau in custody confessed to the Judge that the information had been released to Mr. Chen one year ago.) Mr. Chen has been painting himself into a corner, but he won’t give up without a dogfight. Persistence is only admirable as long as it has been used on the good side, and it is his shameless acts that make this whole show so unbearable.

Modify Mio C520 GPS from you Mac

2008-07-26T01:03:00.006-04:00

After returning Magellan to the store, I bought a Mio C520 GPS through the on-line store because its price was irresistible. The cheaper price does come with some downsides, and they are ambiguous TTS and outdated map and POI. Compared to Magellan, which clearly shows three gas stations near my house, Mio C520 displays none of them due to retarded grouping of POI. Despite all these drawbacks I still think it is the keeper. One reason is that it can turn into a PDA when unlocked, making it possible to run 3^rd party GPS software and maps. Unfortunately, Mac does not recognize it as an external drive, so a little bit of work is necessary.

It has been known that Parallels Desktop with Windows XP should connect to C520 without problems. After some googling and research, here are a few changes I have made to my C520.

1. A newer C230 map dated July 2007. The 12 Million POI sounds great but it could list way too many stores near your current position including those home offices.

2. MioMap V3.3 (Jan 2008 version). Honestly I couldn’t tell the difference from the previous version. The C520 requires the updated data.zip file to work.

1. 3. MioMap 3.3 Data.zip tweaks.

Kombitz provides detail instructions on how to modify data.zip. I followed the instructions and have successfully made changes on the C520, which now has easy route option, a GPS power button, a Track Info export button, and fast fly-over. You will need to modify files in 480_272 folder.

1. 4. Customized POI icons.

1. 5. A different navigation ding. I am still searching for a better alternative. The default one is simply too loud.

Here are the don'ts.

Don’t even bother with Windows 2000. I have used it with Parallels Desktop and scratched my head in the past few days trying to figure out why it does not talk to C520.

Don’t waste time on WinZip. You could lose all your modification after minutes of work simply because it does not work as it should.

Don’t even think about using compression tools on Mac. BetterZip and Stuffit Deluxe are no luck.

All you need is WinRAR. Simply choose ZIP as archive format and best compression method to make your data.zip file.

Magellan Maestro 4250: A Review

2008-07-04T10:56:00.010-04:00

A holiday trip driving to several places the first time without preparation won’t get me far because I could soon be lost behind the wheel. The sky-high gas price will not only get on my nerves, but my wife could also make me feel like I am the one ruining the holiday. In the past, I had to look up the places on the Web like Google map and wrote down the directions on a scratch paper. It always worked if I was driving with someone, but it could be hard when traveling alone; especially the unlucky happens like the paper falls on the floor mat in the middle of highway.

A GPS will make all the preparation and driving easy. However, if you are in the market searching one for the upcoming holiday trip, you could end up spending lots of time and still cannot decide. The reason is that almost every brand comes with its unique features that you like, unfortunately they all leave too much to be desired.

I have been comparing middle to high-end models like Magellan Maestro 4250, Garmin nüvi 680, and Mio DigiWalker C520. I found most of the professional reviews are useless; they all read like sales pitch. The best place for review, in my opinion, would be Amazon.com, full of details and hand-on experience. Not until I get myself one, did I realize how bad the product can be. I bought a Magellan Maestro 4250 and as soon as I used it I already found out there are many should be improved. Here are a few.

1. This device crashes and freezes a lot, and the power button seems to have its own mind.

2. Text-to-speech for the menu items is nice but it slows down everything. The worst is that the buffer memorizing the key press could let you accidently select the wrong item. When mute is on, you will realize how responsive it is.

3. Trip planner is working fine, but you are not allowed to edit each record you created except deleting it. For each place on the trip planner, you are allowed to add phone numbers, which is nice since the device has Bluetooth hand-free capability, but there is no way to retrieve those phone numbers, not even from the address book, or previous destinations. What is the point by putting all the info if you cannot retrieve them?

Above are the problems I spotted right after several minutes of using it, I wonder if the programmers actually did their jobs. Has the product ever been beta-tested? Since most GPS devices are Windows CE based, features are just matters of programming. {Immediate release…because I will be on the road in 5 min}

The following is the unforgiving one that I found out during the trip.

4. Faulty routing algorithm. A picture is better than a thousand words. See for yourself.

A Smart Playlist to Keep Track of Audiobooks

2008-06-19T00:37:00.002-04:00

If you rely on iPod to memorize the last played audiobook by pressing the pause button, you will be disappointed. Because whenever iPod is connected to computer, it gets reset and goes back to the main menu. This can be solved simply by creating a smart playlist on iTunes.

Create a smart playlist and name it “Listen in progress” with the following rules

1. Playlist is [your audio book].

2. Play count is 0, or other number depending on how many times you have played them before.

3. Make sure “Match all of the following rules” is checked.

Make it available to you iPod, then it's done. Simply go to the smart playlist and choose the song from the top, it will be the last played soundtrack.

A Quick Way to List Folder Sizes

2008-06-15T11:36:00.008-04:00

Ever wonder where your disk space is gone? To look for those mysterious files can be time consuming. There are a few possible places those space-hogging files might exist, but a tool is still needed to quickly show you the way. Here, the Darwin command “du” is handy. It is built in every OS X and can be executed from Terminal.app program in the Utilities folder.

Usage:

du –c -h -d 1 [path]

where the number after “-d ” defines the depth of directory. Here are a few paths you should look for:

/var/vm

/var/tmp

/var/log

~/library/cache

/library/cache

/library/logs

~/library/logs

Average users are becoming bandwidth hogs

2008-06-15T02:32:00.007-04:00

As more and more users turn to Internet for their source of video entertainment in the living room, three major Internet service providers (ISP) are thinking to impose a cap on the data volume for every subscriber, according to the New York Times article “Charging by the Byte to Curb Internet Traffic.” This is definitely a setback for many of high-speed Internet users, especially those who are on-line everyday. One of the conflicts can be seen earlier this year when one ISP was sued for singling out the Bittorrent users, the results: ISPs are threatening with a data volume control.

I personally think bandwidth control is inevitable if the data volume continues to grow at its current speed, but it must be imposed in a subtle way that the user experience is assured without the fear of uncertainty. For example, a cap on the Internet speed itself should be fair enough. This is normally what subscribers have agreed on and paid for. In contrast, charge by the data volume is the worst business model of running Internet service, given the fact that most data are not provided by ISPs, and all they do are transmitting and relaying the bits. Comparing digital data to electricity and water is not fair either. The fundamental reason of this growing problem comes from how bandwidth was calculated; the current bandwidth limit for each subscriber had been miscalculated, and therefore this number has been inflated simply for sale purpose. Yes, it is understandable that the current bandwidth cap is ideal and not guaranteed at the peak time, but the ISPs simply need to come up with a more accurate number based on the assumption that eventually every user will be running the Internet at the full speed. This is equal to cutting down the bandwidth of those most active users.

Overall, a better formulation of Internet bandwidth and an improved Internet management are all ISPs should do. If I have to choose between plans that are billed by the data quantity, to remain the lifestyle of surfing the Net without the fear of running over the quota, I will have no choice but to switch to an ISP of no such policy even its Internet speed is at the lower limit of tachometer.

Internet Sightseeing

2008-06-11T23:23:00.004-04:00

With the oil price reaching $140 a barrel and soon to be $200/barrel in the near future, the chance to travel around the globe is getting slim. But if you just want to see around the world, you still can do it without having to physically be there. Thanks to the fast Internet speed and powerful graphic processors, you can have a virtual tour in front of monitor at your finger tips. As long as you know what URL to go, anywhere on the earth is possible.

Google Sightseeing Click on the link "View in Google Earth" and buckle up!!

Satellite Sightseeing Go see many places around the globe from very high up.

Street View Sightings Explore the major cities through Google Street View. The good, the bad and the ugly, you name it.

Haunted House Don't blame me if you happen to find one close to your property.

UFO Maps Looking for geographical sites in the US where paranormal sightings have been reported?

Moon surfer A website that allows you to surf on the moon surface. Its official name is the Naval Research Lab Lunar Image Site. You might not be interested in seeing rock surfaces full of meteorite craters, but here are something for you to get busy with.

Objects on the moon

I can't seem to remember the URL for the website that features 360˚ high res street views of Fisherman's Wharf. I bookmarked it somewhere and I will post here once I find it.

Comments on Books "A History of God" and "God, the Failed Hypothesis"

2008-06-10T08:59:00.006-04:00

A few days ago, I had a chance to grab the eBook version of these two books after participating in on-line discussion forum about historical role of God.

Here are some of the comments I have on the content of the books. Please note that this is a work-in-progress commentary and I will keep adding if I have time.

"God, the Failed Hypothesis"

By Victor J. Stenger Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Physics and Astronomy

Chapter 4 Cosmic Evidence:

“However, the scientifically savvy believer might concede this point for the sake of argument and then retort, ‘Okay, then where did the laws of physics come from?’ The common belief is that they had to come from somewhere outside the universe. But that is not a demonstrable fact. There is no reason why the laws of physics cannot have come from within the universe itself.”

The question is not the origin of the law of physics. The real question is the scope of these physical laws that govern. Why there is only one set of universal constants exists in the universe while the universe is expanding by itself? Isn’t that it was originally predicted that the universe should have collapsed by itself at some point instead of continuous expanding at accelerated speed? Where does the energy come from to cause escalating expansion?

“So where did the laws of physics dome from? They came from nothing! Most are statements composed by humans that follow from the symmetries of the void out of which the universe spontaneously arose. Rather than being handed down from above,…”

Of course they come from nothing, how can we prove that existence of physical laws by the physical equations themselves? Equations were created by humans, but the laws have been existing since the beginning.

“And this is why, for example, a violation of energy conservation at the beginning of the big bang would be evidence for some external creator. Even though they invented it, physicists could not simply change the ‘law.’ It would imply a miracle or, more explicitly, some external agency that acted to break the time symmetry that leads to conservation of energy. But, as we have seen, no such miracle is required by the data.”

The big bang may have been regarded as external agency, but the concept of creation out of nothing and the only one big bang, the similar incident that resulted in the universe, has been written in Genesis.

“The theist claims that God is the answer. But, then, why is there God rather than nothing? Assuming we can define ‘nothing,’ why should nothing be a more natural state of affairs than something? ….that something is more natural than nothing!”

This is the question worth debating. Obviously the author agrees that there must be something rather than nothing that resulted in the universe through the big bang. This thing/or nothing, which cannot be explained using the contemporary laws of physics, does not prove or rule out the existence of God. But as I have previously said it that this concept itself has been be described in the bible.

“Since ‘nothing’ is as simple as it gests, we cannot expect it to be very stable. It would likely undergo a spontaneous phase transition to something more complicated, like a universe containing matter. The transition of nothing-to-something is a natural one, not requiring any agent.”

Are we being suggested void is unstable, so it will spontaneously transform into matter? If that is the explanation for the birth of the universe, then I can say that is either imagination or it must have been the trick called magic. I just can’t see how voidness in the outer space ever turns into something. This theory does not make sense, and quoting a Nobel laureate does little to validate it.

The rest of the book is presented like something came out of philosophers. Philosophers are generally great debaters, but what this book should have been written would be presenting convincing cases that scientifically sound.

Many scientific study that show that prayers do not improve the survival rate of cancer patients.[citation will be added] Does that prove God’s nonexistence? Probably not, it only shows that prayers were not listened in those cases. Similar story can be seen elsewhere as some Christian claimed they could jump into lion cage without being attacked because what they did would prove to the world that God listened to their prayers. We all know what happened to them.

It is obvious that the evidences that prove and disprove God’s existence is very still subjective and no scientific method is available for this.

----------------------------------

"A History of God"

By Karen Armstrong

“In the beginning, human beings created a God who was the First Cause of all things and Ruler of heaven and earth.”

This statement is interesting. How did the author know that the idea of God was created by human beings but not told by other form of life/or simply inherited. Or to be more specific like the article published by Scientific American that inside the human brain there exists an area responding to religions or creating religions. To me this is another evidence that human beings have been genetically encoded an idea that there exists God – more like the signature of the creator. The idea of God or religions is inherited not learned.

.. to be continued ..

New Use of My iPod

2008-06-07T08:43:00.004-04:00

I have been using my four-year old iPod as a carry-on mobile drive for three years that basically serves just one purpose; synchronizing data between Macs from my work place to home and vice versa. Some of you may ask me why I bought it in the first place. Tell you the truth, within the first year of my ownership I did use it for playing music; I played AAC music on it in order to free up the Mac for other tasks, and you can image how much workload that could be added on an old Mac with a 667 MHz CPU when iTunes was running on it, so that was the motive for getting this gadget. I also bought an iTrip, the radio transmitter, to play songs on my car. Soon I threw it into the storage of the car and never bothered to use it again after I was tired of its sound quality. Not only that, I stopped playing the music on iPod because I either had to turn up volume on a plane/bus to a level loud enough to make myself deaf, or I would have to find a quiet place, say library. The bottom line is that I don’t go to library, I seldom do, I would rather stay in my study room. If I really want to enjoy the music, I usually play them on the stereo in the living room. When you ask Hi-Fi fans if they would listen to music directly on their iPod, the answer is usually “no.” Of course, there is a solution to integrate iPod to your car and stereo, but that is not the topic I would like to talk about.

For the past three years, I have been listening to car radio when I drive. The bright side of living in one of the major cities is that you can always find a decent radio station. Whether you like Jazz, classical, pop music, or just talk show, those choices are at your fingers. Recently, I don’t know if it is because of the raising gas price, I have observed that the commercials in those radio programs have been increasingly lengthy. A couple of times, I couldn’t even find one single program at the same single moment that wasn’t playing the commercials.

Yesterday I luckily found an audiobook , For One More Day, that can be played on the iPod, so I decided to broadcast it in the car. I took out the iTrip and began my read-while-drive today. After a try, I have to say that listening to audiobooks is a great way to enjoy your favorite books. It would let you finish a book sooner and free up your eyes and hands for other things else while doing it. If you have been playing audiobooks on iTunes, you might already know this, but if you just started to use it, remember to turn off the crossfade playback effect (I did not know that until almost halfway into the CD.) I also realized that there is a need for a new feature on iTunes called bookmarking. For iPod, being used only as a mobile drive does not justify the money well, at least from now it will be giving a new use: a new use of playing the old way.

Paper Wasp: the Amazing Architect

2008-06-03T23:41:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I found a small round shape object hanging under the ledge of window outside of the house. A closer look revealed a small paper wasp colony. Since I also saw a bee working on it, I immediately sprayed some pesticides out of panic. Today when the bee is gone, I go out to retrieve it. It is a umbrella shape nest connected to the window ledge with a petiole. It is pretty easy to remove the nest, but I accidently break loose the part that connects both nest and petiole. The petiole firmly attaches to the ledge and takes me a bit effort to remove it. After I retrieve the wasp nest and its petiole, I bring them in the house for examination. It is a small nest with open combs, but apparently one has been sealed. I find in those open combs occupy various sizes of paper wasp broods. They are fat and juicy worms with a small head facing the outside world and I believe they feed on whatever wasp queen give them. Because of the small size of the nest, I figure the paper wasp queen was still young and these are the first generation of its offspring. I feel sorry for these broods, because I know without their queen or worker bees around they are going to die pretty quick. One sealed comb might contain a pupa ready to become an adult. What interests me the most is the how this paper nest was connected to the windows. Apparently, the petiole is a very high strength composite material. It consists of nano- and microstructures with a flexural strength of 1.5 GPa, which is considered similar to GFRP and aluminum according to the study. What even more amazing is how petiole is attached to the surface. The picture I took shows that some white outdoor paint has been pealed away from the windows apparently by a very effective adhesive. I don’t know if the saliva of paper wasp is being used for this adhesive, but it is certainly a better version of superglue I have seen.

Photos are coming soon.

More info can be found on wiki link.

Prevent ACInterfaceGetPower Errors From Showing Up

2008-06-03T00:18:00.005-04:00

I am using a Powerbook G4 as media server with a LCD TV in the living room. Because its 1^st generation wireless hardware (AirPort) sometimes slows down the stream video, I run Internet through its Ethernet port and have been very happy with its performance. This media server constantly needs to access to the iMac in the other room for data, so I let iMac on the Ethernet as well.

Right after upgrade iMac to Leopard, I notice the system.log is completely filled with ACInterfaceGetPower error messages when AirPort is off and the AirPort icon is on the menu bar. To stop the error messages once and for all, simply remove the icon from the menu bar. But if I like the Airport icon stays on the menu bar, I have to temporarily turn on the AirPort and turn it back off. Quite annoying, isn’t it? The real nightmare is that every time when the system is rebooted, the error messages come back again.

I don’t think system logs that are filled with error messages would cause any harm to the system, but it is certainly unpleasant to see a bunch of errors keep showing up every few seconds. Unless Apple releases a fix, I would rather let AirPort icon out of my sight for now.

A Move to VoIP

2008-05-31T17:38:00.006-04:00

Recently, our ISP quietly upgraded its Internet bandwidth without increasing the current monthly charge, making our Internet speed at 6.8/0.36 Mbps (downstream/upstream), which is a significant upgrade from previous 5/0.2 Mbps. This is no doubt a welcome move.

Almost at the same time, a letter from our phone company informed us that the new bill is going to be $32/mo in the coming July. Guess what we get for the money: local call only, no long distance carrier, no call waiting, no caller ID, the most basic calling plan. But we still have to pay for the call if the physical location of the calling number is 20 miles away. Being infuriated by the move of the phone company, we are in the market for an alternative telephone service, known as Voice Over IP. And when I make the switch, I will make it clear to the phone company that their service sucks.

I just do not understand the current business model of those phone companies. Yes, I believe they are making most of the money from wireless devision, but if they do not come up with a competitive plan, they are going to lose customers on telecommunication business. Since not all the Internet phones drop call, and I believe this is matter of Internet protocol and error handling done through programming. An example is Cisco IP communicator, known as Soft phone, which seldom drops call, although it is still very expensive compared to those consumer grade products.

Phone companies do provide digital solutions, that is, the DSL and digital voice service (their own version of Voice Over IP). But if I want to adopt this solution, I will have to keep the analog phone line that is at least $32/mo, plus the digital charges (anywhere from $19 ~ $30). Why force the customers to buy the bundle? Why not let customers choose either service and just charge equipment and service fees? Take cable TV as an example; isn’t it that we have long been forced to buy those channels that we are not interested at all?

A Message that Cannot Be Sent

2008-05-29T22:47:00.004-04:00

I am switching to VoIP because our phone company is going to raise the monthly charge beginning in July. I think I should leave a message to my service provider through its on-line feedback system, so I logged on to my account and started typing. For some unknown reason the server kept showing an error message every time when I clicked the submit button. After giving a third try, I gave up and decided to post it here for everyone to read.

"I don't expect this comment get answered, but I think AT&T is losing customers. My current calling plan is local call only with all other features being disabled. Starting in July, this calling plan is going to cost me more than $30 dollars. As a unhappy customer, I am going to switch to VoIP next week. I think the following suggestion might be coming a bit too late, but for the same price (or $10 more) if AT&T can convert PSTN service to digital service (VoIP) for the existing customers, then I will be very interested in staying with AT&T. Honestly, I am willing to pay the phone adaptor for such service, even thought it does not include Internet feature. I just don't see the traditional phone line has a bright future, if customers are still being forced to use its analog bandwidth."

See full story for detail.

Synchronize Macs via FireWire without Losing Internet Connection

2008-05-01T23:37:00.019-04:00

Synchronizing Macs through Internet is a breeze, but if one of them happens to be on WiFi then the outcome often is a long wait. The alternative is through Gigabits Ethernet, but you either need a Gigabits router, expensive and rare, or you need to yank the Ethernet cable to serve as crossover cable, meaning you have no Internet connection to the outside world.

Consider the following scenario, you have one Mac connected to Ethernet, and a Powerbook on WiFi because you need the mobility. If you like to transfer large files between two, you can do it without rebooting into target disk mode; all you have to do is assigning each FireWire a unique IP address. IP over FireWire let you move files at the rate of 400 MB/s, which is four times faster than what you normally get from a 100Base-T router. Here is the step-by-step of how to set it up.

1. Turn on File Sharing on both Macs, assuming they are connected to router under subnet 192.168.0.1. You can leave “Internet Sharing” off.

2. Add service “FireWire” to Network panel of the System Preferences. When FireWire is not plugged in, notice the indicator is red.

3. Manually add IP address to FireWire interface. Assign 192.168.3.1 to IP address and router. Leave DNS blank.

4. On Powerbook, repeat step 1 ~ 3 but make the IP address to be 192.168.3.2. You can leave Router blank or put in 192.168.3.1.

When you are done, connect both Macs with a FireWire cable. The Built-in FireWire icon should appear “Connected.”

In order to force connection to go through FireWire route, select “Connect to Sever” from the dropdown menu under “Go” on Finder menu bar. Manually add “192.168.3.2” and proceed.

Now you can do file transfer between two without interrupting their own Internet connection. This is rather convenient, for example, you can continue downloading files through WiFi, at the same time plug-in a FireWire cable to transfer files.

It had been working for me without any problem until after one system was upgraded to Leopard. Occasionally, I ran into computer not found problem. Here is the trouble shooting.

On the terminal window of Terminal.app, run “ifconfig” and check "fw0" interface to see if it is attached to “192.168.3.1”.

If the IP of fw0 interface is not assigned correctly like the snapshot below,

Go to Network panel on the System Preferences, select different location then set it back. You can do the switch from the Apple menu at the upper-left corner of the screen. Why Leopard sometimes gives a glitch is beyond me, but Apple needs to put in some series efforts to get everything work as usual.

Where do you do your reading?

2008-04-26T21:15:00.004-04:00

Where do you do your reading? At the table or in front of a computer? I prefer the later. If you hope your neck to function without pains for another decade, reading on the computer is the most ergonomic way, presumably the monitor is at its ergonomic position too. Hitting books at the table or on the couch most likely will give you neck constrain. The worst is that you won’t notice it until it is too late. If you don’t think all the reading you have been doing from elementary all the way to college is cumulatively enough to cause some damages to your neck, at least give it a good care by exercising how to lower the risk.

Reading on the computer isn’t easy, because you need to identify the digital format of books, if they are available and are compatible with your computer. This year, Amazon started to promote its toy reader, Kindle, a $400 dollar handheld device. The fake Steve Jobs think this idea won’t fly because people do not read any more. I don’t think this toy will be a hit either, it is not that people don’t read but that it is a pricy, monochrome, ugly, feature-limited device, even thought one of the advantages is the relatively lower prices of its digital contents. For example, a hardcopy of Mitch Albom’s For One More Day is listed for $14.93 at Amazon, but the Kindle version only costs $9.60 dollar. If you do not like the idea of being limited to one device, then the electronic edition of the same book on eBooks.com will cost you $16.90 bucks, which is even more than what is listed at Barnes & Noble. For the sake of doing a favor to the environment, shouldn’t they at least give people some incentives?

If you like to read the latest eBooks on computers, then you will be disappointed for the choices and prices on the Internet. But if you like to read the eBook version of free books, you will be amazed for what you can get from many websites. Here are just a few.

http://www.feedbooks.com/

http://www.litpitch.com/

http://manybooks.net/

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

One more thing: Time Out will come in handy here; this free software will help you get rid of bad habits when using a computer for hours. So give your neck a break and start reading books on the computer.