His Story

概要：新的网络电话服务难以融入市场；Ekiga 使用体验中易用性部分不理想；VoIP 和 SIP 需要寻找新的突破点；WiFi 手机带来契机……

每逢有空的时候，总要跟家里隔洋跨海地通一次话，汇报一下最近的生活和工作情况。儿行千里母担忧，一会儿听不到儿子的声音，父母都会挂念。很早之前都是用电话卡的，五块十块一张，可以打个一百多分钟。后来懒得出去买卡了，就改用网络电话，装了 Skype。现在他们每次上网即使不挂 MSN，也会挂在 Skype 上，就是为了方便我随时打过去。

其实除了 Skype，还有很多其它 VoIP 软件可以打到普通电话上的，比如 Ekiga。可惜这个软件太专业，到现在我都没弄明白怎么打到普通电话上。另外因为缺少 Windows 版本，基本上不可能推广到爸妈那里去。

另外还有数种 VoIP 软件流行于世，只不过名字我懒得搜。最大的问题就是，这类软件的使用都是依赖于电脑的。每次想跟某人聊聊天，都要开一次机，麻烦至极。很多公司也推出了一些USB电话，有些是基于 QQ 的，有些是基于 Skype 的。遗憾的是，这些硬件的本质还是需要有一个提供 USB 借口的互联网设备。一般来说，这种设备除了我们普通的电脑，别无它选。

欣慰的是，最近一段时间，一种新的设备 Wi-fi 电话悄然而至。光是提供 Skype 接入的就有数种：

SMC WSKP100
ZyXEL P-2000W
NetGear SPH101
Belkin
Edge-Core

这些 Wi-fi 电话基本上都是内置 Skype，不依赖于电脑，只要有 Wi-Fi 热点就可以。当然，也有不与现有 VoIP 软件接轨的 Wi-Fi 手机，比如：

Unex WP1/WP2

UT斯达康 F1000/F3000

随着 Wi-Fi 热点越来越多，使用 Wi-Fi 手机的机会就越来越大。实际上，Wi-Fi 手机不一定要跟一个 VoIP 软件搭配在一起。一个嵌入式设备如果硬件构架足够开放，容量足够大，完全可以收入多个 VoIP 服务，然后提供统一的拨入拨出界面。这样的设备，市场的油水是无限的。

有电话来了，我先接一下。今天就聊到这儿……喂？你是哪位？

The most recent work I am doing is writing a paper for CAS 703. It is a survey paper, which requires reading a lot of other papers in the same area. Thanks to ACM Digital Library which makes accessing the references and adding BibTex information of a paper so easy. All papers are presented in either PDF format or PostScript format, making universal viewing and printing possible.

Search for References -> Inconvenience with Current HID -> Manupulating Graphical Object by Hands -> Touch Screen on Desktop -> Possible Scenario -> Pro/Con -> Future Usage

* Turn every input or output device into an input and output device

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) 是一个新的非盈利组织，希望可以通过开发100美金左右的低价笔记本电脑，来帮助我们对世界上的儿童提供更好的教育。本计划最早由OLPC现任主席Nicholas Negroponte在2005年1月于瑞士的Davos召开的世界经济论坛（World Economic Forum）提出。OLPC的目标是：为世界上每一个儿童提供一个可以发现（explore）、发掘（experiment）、发表自我（express）的机会。目前OLPC的$100笔记本电脑还没有投入生产，也不会销售，而以后这些电脑将会通过各政府部门直接在学校中发布。

OLPC网站打算提供多语言的信息，目前还没有相应的中文翻译。有意愿做翻译工作的朋友可以下载XLIFF文件或者POT文件进行翻译，然后发给OLPC有关人员。我目前翻译了POT文件的一部分，所以也可以在这个基础上继续，并把翻译后的POT文件发给我和所有其它一起做翻译工作的朋友。

Update:

OLPC已经启用了中文，地址是： http://laptop.org/index.zh.html

Yesterday, after a short talk with Sui, we’ve gained some idea about how existing search engines can increase their usability by an common method we’ve learned in university.

The motivating point is that Sui phoned me and asked for help in searching for the company of a wireless PCMCIA card, whose brand is not well know. The brand of the card is Alpha, which obviously not feasible to search it over since “alpha” is a common word widely used. Then he told me the model of the card is “AFWN411″ letter by letter, number by number. I searched it in Google and surpisingly, no result was returned.

I don’t believe that our beloved internet does not have any information of a network product, even it is not that well known. But Sui was very sure that the model code was correct. Then, I have tried several combinations, such as “A FWN411“, “AF WN411” and so on. Eventually, when I used the keyword “AFW N411“, the expected results returned, and I found that the company of this card is a company in China.

During the dinner with Sui, he praised me as an expert in searching the web. Well, I don’t really think so. Actually, everyone can be good at searching. It is just a matter of how much effort this person wants to put into it. What makes such easy task time consuming? I think it is the variability of the keywords one uses. Actually, search engines, such as Google, are already power enough in deriving “expresses“, “expression“, “expressing” from their origin word “express“, by principles in human languages. But is it enough?

In the study of computer science, we know that there is such a concept which is called “regular expression“, or even simpler which makes use of only “*” and “?” in order to quantify the string as required. Why doesn’t search engines have an option of using such quantifiers? It is not necessary for using all of them. In the example of search product model, if I could have a quantifier “?” and I search “A?F?W?N411″, the time consumed must be less for sure.

Then another issue raises now. How expensive for searching a keyword containing quantifiers? In our example, the question mark “?” is used to only present the possibility of a space. Searching time in this case is then 3 times longer than searching each of keywords without quantifiers. Imagine how many people will use such option during their searching? Not sure. But it is possible that the work load of search engine computers is increased, if more quantifiers are used, instead of just presenting spaces.

If this is true, maybe Google or Yahoo! can have a commercial version for each of their products, to support regular expression or simpler, to limit the computing work of computers. What is the price for each search? I don’t know. 5 cents is acceptable for me.

update:

这里不是报名处，请不要在此报名志愿者。本文只是小虎在组委会网站报名后写下的日志。为什么会有那么多人在我这里报名呢？想不通。

目前来说，2008北京奥委会还没有列出任何志愿者职位，只能提交个人信息到人才后备库去了。提交过程是一步一步的表格向导，简洁与专业并重，让我至少对奥委会的网站技术人员敬重十分。2008年离现在说近算近，说远也远，谁知道那个时候我会出现在哪里呢？不过能够为奥林匹克运动出一份力，还是非常令人骄傲的。

北京2008，加油！

It is very happy to come back and write stuff here, really. Yesterday, few hours after I noticed an observable slow down when visiting His Story, I was told that for some reason my blog had led its hosting server to a heavy processor load, up to 50%. HS was shut down at the moment.

HS is built using WordPress at its current version 2.0.1. By deactivating all the plugins I have installed, it turned out that they were not the reason causing the problem. Very soon, I found that the directories under wp-content/cache contained huge amount of temporary files, which seemed to be the cached pages of HS. It was slow when gftp was fetching the file names under these directories. Since they were automatically generated files which were not important, I removed all of them. Right after that, HS was responding again.

By searching through WordPress official forums, I found that its cache mechanism does not do the clean job automatically. Although it aims for speeding up the execution of PHP scripts, but due to the large amount of cached file, PHP’s file traversing function makes the website slow again. To disable, simply add following line in wp-config.php under the root directory where WordPress is located:

define('DISABLE_CACHE', true);

Hope this issue can be solved in next release of WordPress.

Reference:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/52452?replies=17#post-330443

刚发现一个很好玩的东西，可以让访问主页的人给主人在线语音留言。这是位于加利福尼亚州三藩市的Odeo公司于2004年底推出的服务。创始人之一的Evan Williams曾经创立了鼎鼎有名的Blogger公司，后来卖给了Google。Odeo的服务基本上是基于Ajax的，加上与Flash Player的结合，显示出其特有的风格。

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Just came across the main page of world’s largest search engine and to my surprise I found the link of Google China Blog. In Chinese, 黑板报 means news in blackboard, which is a common form of posting articles by students of each class in schools of China. Said under the logo, “Google 中国的博客网志，走近我们的产品、技术和文化“, which has the same meaning as said in Google Blog in the same position. It is just the Chinese version of Google Blog, and I am getting very excited about it. Nowadays in China, Google’s name is just as famous as Microsoft back to last century, when Windows had just arrived in every family just got their computers. Even though there is Baidu, the largest China based search engine, most people still prefer to search in Google, for its huge amount of results returned.

Reading its first blog, it reminds me MSDN Blogs, a collection of blogs by developers at Microsoft, showing off their ideas and different opinions from daily work. It seems that Google is doing everything Microsoft is doing, such as gmail and hotmail, gtalk and MSN Messenger, etc. What makes Google different from Microsoft, is that its product are looking so simple but still sufficient for average use. I am not saying Google’s product is better, since different user has different demands, but it just makes people feel different. Of course, Microsoft learns from Google too, but as a giant in software industry, it is no surprise. Looking back to their blogs, you know what I has just talked.

What I am expecting now, is the Chinese version of MSDN Blogs, or does it exist and I just don’t find it?

刚刚看了Mr. Icon的一篇Blog，讨论了Asianux 2.0与Microsoft Windows的相似性，并且展示一些屏幕截图。很理解他的意见。在中国，对绝大部分普通电脑用户来说，Windows就是OS，OS就是Windows。如果你不给这些人装一个类似Windows界面的OS的话，他们很可能会以为这个电脑没有装OS，然后就会去装个Windows。微软在中国的影响太大，而且绝大部分软件除非用WINE，基本上都是极其难移植到其他平台上的，因为这些软件通常都用Internet Explorer和Macromedia Flash的引擎做它们的界面，比如最流行的软件腾讯QQ和联众游戏。

很多非Windows的用户，或者更确切地说，非Windows支持者，在谈起此事时都会咬牙切齿。我不反对这么做软件，因为这样一来，软件制作成本可以通过利用现有资源而大大降低，而且花哨的界面更加符合国人对一个软件的审美观。如果真的希望这些软件商能够开发出夸平台的应用程序，那么非Windows支持者们就应该更加督促他们的阵营中能够有像上述中那种方便被其他程序调用的引擎，比如推出一个Macromedia Flash的替代品。

在提到非Windows的时候，人们往往会联系到自由软件。作为一个最终用户，我很喜欢自由软件，而且自从大学初期就开始用了。任何事物只要有一个对立，那么它就一定是一把双刃剑。虽然在理想的开源社区中，自由软件之间的联系愈加紧密，但纯粹的自由软件在某些情况下可能并不自由，反而会束缚重重。比如有一段非常好的代码。这段代码是基于GPL的，而且是唯一的许可证。作为软件商，或者通过软件来盈利的个人、团体，如果我把这段代码包括到了我的产品中去，那么我的产品就一定也要遵循GPL，拘束了我盈利的权力。这个时候我不得不寻找另外一种可能的方案。也许并没有这段代码那么优秀，但是有合适的许可证可以让我购买并使用，我就可以放心大胆地去开发我的产品了。实际上，有很多自由软件开发方已经认识到了这一点，比如MySQL。MySQL施行的是双重许可证策略，在提供GPL许可证的同时，也提供商业许可证，保证了依赖于MySQL的软件商的营销利益。

哲学里面说，世界是矛盾的，万物是阴阳的。所谓开源与闭源、自由软件与商业软件，只有相辅相成，相互应用，才能够对整个IT产业作出积极的推动。

In CAS 703 class, it is asking to use two very different computer languages to implement an algorithm in the first assignment. These two languages are WEB, created by Don Knuth for literate programming; and Eiffel created by Bertrand Meyer, an object-oriented language featuring the concept of design by contract.

Unlike learning common computer languages, such as C/C++ and Perl, learning these two languages makes me head-ache, since I am not smart in learning languages and my TOFLE score is unspeakable. The paper for WEB and the documentation for Eiffel are fantastic and wonderful, but what I am actually looking for for my first step, is a piece of sample code less than 20 lines for each of them, and I don’t want to see just ‘Hello, World!‘.

Pardon me, I am lazy.