Category Archives: China

Amazing Mobile APP Le Assistant 360(乐助手360)

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Le Assistant 360 is a schedule management app for iPhone and Android. The producer is Lenova, a big Chinese computer manufacturer. The amazing point of this app is its accurate voice recognition. Believe me, you haven’t see any other app can do what this one do. For example,  you speak to the phone, I have a meeting at 10pm tomorrow and before that I should notice everyone in my office,  then you would see new schedule is added, Notice all colleague to attend the meeting at 10pm tomorrow. It totally understand what you said and the processing is very fast. Is there any special high tech of voice recognition in this app? No.

The fact is that behind the Le Assistant 360, there is a real human assistant for you. He or she get what you say and handle the voice info to schedule then send to your app. So if you speak to it using dialect, you also can get the right result. Bazinga!

It’s not April fool’s joke, it’s a real exist app, from a big company. My question is how to protect user’s privacy? And the labor in China is not cheap as before  and will more expensive in future, this app is free right now, when user group is bigger, can it make enough money for its cost?

Three Body

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Three Body is a science fiction trilogy by Chinese writer Liu Cixin. It’s a pity for non-Chinese science fiction fans, because they can’t read it. I said that not because narrow nationalism, just because the trilogy really worth it.

I have read many science fiction, most of them from English writer. My favorite  is The Star My Destination, Alfred gave us an amazing dark world. And in Three Body, Liu Cixin gave us a amazing universe full of darkness. Below is some spoiler, considering the translation is hopeless, so maybe this is the only way to let non-Chinese know it.

The universe in Three Body is a dark forest,  millions of civilization hid in it. Because of jungle law, every high class civilizations destroy other civilizations they found , so the most important information of a civilization is their position in the universe. Human being didn’t know it, so the our neighbor knew our position. The neighboring galaxy have three sun, they composed to a Three Body System, the civilization in this galaxy eager to get a new homeland and the earth is their paradise. But the story is not like some cheap science fictions, alien invade, human fight again, human win, the story is told by smarter way. Because the distance between Solaris and Three Body Galaxy is 6 light years and the technology of Three Body is not much higher than human, so the invader should take hundreds of years to arrive Solaris.

Three Body locked the technology of human being with disturbing basic physic experience. After tried many times in hundreds years, finally a man let Three Body give up invade. If Three Body don’t listen to him, he would broadcast the position of Three Body Galaxy, and that would attract other civilization to destroy Three Body.

And this is not the end of story, in the final one Dead End, human broadcast the position of Three Body Galaxy, a unnamed civilization destroy Three Body and only small amount flew away. This is not good thing for human, Solaris is too near to Three Body Galaxy, human can’t escape the same fortune.

A wider picture of universe is showed to us in the final book. The war between god-like civilizations finally will destroy the universe. The initial universe is ten-dimension, and the war make it downgrade it to lower dimension. Once it to zero-dimension, a new universe will born again. And in the end of the story, millions civilization and the universe face the final end, no one know what would happen.

My words can’t show the shining point of this masterpiece, and I know it will definitely has small influence in science fiction history except someone translate it to English.

Let The Bullets Fly

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Jiang Wen(姜文) is a good actor and great director. He reminds me of Clint Eastwood, who is also a good actor and great director. Wen Jiang only have 4 films as director, he is not productive but every film he made is masterpiece to me. I love the Devils on the Doorstep most, it tell some truth no one fear to say.

Let The Bullets Fly is newest work of Jiang Wen. I watched the Chuan idiom edition today, very love it. Chuan idiom is one of Chinese hundreds idiom, the people live in Sichuan Province and Chongqing use it in their daily life. The reason why the movie have a idiom edition because the script is adapted from a novel of a old Sichuan writer. That’s too much fun to watch the movie with the familiar idiom. However I love it not because the idiom, the reason is it’s a good movie.

This movie is mixture of Quentin Tarantino and Sergio Leone, full of bizarre funny idea and masculinity.  The last film The Sun Also Rises is criticized too vague, so this one is totally a commercial film. But as the one said in this film, he can made money without knee to others, Jiang Wen not knee to business, there’s no disgusting  ads and low-grade lines only passion for a good work, that’s not easy for present Chinese film. This is why I respect him.

Some sensitive people like me aware some political metaphor in this film, this feeling is similar to the one I felt in Devils on the Doorstep. Jiang Wen knows Chinese deeply, or maybe he just so brave and smart can tell the public what he knows. Someones know the truth but they keep it and exchange it with fortune. Someones speak it loudly and directly, they only scared the public and get suffering. Of course in Jiang Wen’s way, only small amount of  people know what he want to say, but that’s enough. Truth always rests with the minority.

Although this is a good movie, the non Chinese  native speakers may found a little difficult to understand it, it like more a Cult than a commercial film to them.

Pirate Culture in China

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Almost every Chinese use  pirate software and enjoy pirate digit product, from operating system to TV series,  many of them never buy any genuine product. Is this copyright hell is the heaven for users? I don’t think so.

Chinese government use pirate product is not the secret, no company dare sue the government unless they don’t want do business in China anymore. Actually, the pirate behaviors are encouraged by the government in some degree. In the article iPad is Fashion of  People’s Daily, can not install piracy  is the weak point of iPad. You should know the People’s Daily is the most senior media of Communist Party of China, it is the voice of the rulers of China. It explains why though piracy is illegal in China, you still can easily get piracy in China.

Programmers are the most harmed group by piracy, though many of them thought they take much advantage from it because the professional software usually are expensive. Piracy destroy the whole ecosystem of Chinese software industry. No one can make money from selling software. You made a text editor, it’s more powerful than Notepad++ and very close to UltraEdit. You price it for $10, that’s fair enough for such powerful tool, and you can get nothing because users in China can get UltraEdit for free without any punishment. There’s only one version of Windows in China, the Ultimate. It’s a joke, maybe not true but can reflect some reality.

Why Chinese use piracy? I found two main reasons, Price, Information Blockade and Useless Policy.

  • Price

Most Chinese are poor, the dollar based genuine is too expensive for them. However, some rich men also use this as their excuse. I attributed this to that they used steal fortune from others.

  • Information Blockade

Most piracy you can not get it in legal ways, the government forbid import them  for ideology and other reasons. So if you enjoy them, pirating is the only way.

  • Useless Policy

Only fool will spent money on free things. If you can get piracy easily without no punishment, buying genuine is really stupid action in most people’s eyes.

Although I use Linux, freeware and opensource software, I should admit it’s not easy without piracy in China.

West Chamber Plan

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Well, the story began from 800 years ago, China is in Yuan Dynasty at that time. A brilliant dramatist named Wang Shifu wrote a drama Romance of West Chamber, Which is about two youth how to get married through the barricade of their family. The classic scene of this drama is the boy over the wall to meet the girl secretly, it is also the reason why the developer named the project as West Chamber Plan.

The goal of this project is let users can access Internet freely despite GFW and it really easy to use. It solves two problem which led by GFW: connection reset by peer and domain hijacking. The theory is from the paper Insertion, Evasion, and Denial of Service: Eluding Network Intrusion Detection by T. Ptacek etc..

Actually I have no idea of the theory, just glad to see someone use his skills against evil for the masses. With hard work of innumerable people like this, we create the civilization we have today.

Bye, Google.

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I am glad to see that Google want quit China mainland, because google.cn is just shame but nothing. For the potential big market, Google forgot its Don’t be Evil. Although there is big possibility this decision is also led by money, at least it needn’t give in to the Chinese government.

I am a big fan of Google and at the same time I almost use all the product of Google, I cannot without Gmail and Reader for a day. Maybe after Google left China, the .com domain would be blocked and we cannot use Gmail and other product, it will be a disaster for Chinese university and scientist. For me, it force me to use Tor and other proxy tools, and maybe buy a VPN account. That’s quite not convenience, it make me realize we back to the Qing Dynasty, in that period, the rulers blocked China from the world.

We can’t access YouTube.

We can’t access Facebook.

We can’t access Twitter.

We can’t access blogspot.

Is google.com the next?

In Memory of Yang Jia

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Last year on this day, a man is executed in China.[wiki]

He is a murderer who killed 6 Shanghai police officers in police station. He is a hero who shined glory at last time of his short life.

Today is Thanks Giving Day in western world, I don’t know how many Chinese would remenber him, I know there should be some and I’am one of them.

I don’t belive violence could make a better world, but I hold strong belief that violence is a useful tool forces tyrants choose gentle reformers’ oppion. Yang Jia is the one makes tyrants know we Chinese also can fight back when we being humiliated, if there’s no justice we also can find our own justice.

Graffiti of Yang Jia in Beijing

Graffiti of Yang Jia in Beijing

Graffiti of Yang Jia in Beijing

Graffiti of Yang Jia in Beijing

New Berlin Wall in China

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There’s wall in China.

It seems like no Chinese know where the wall is, even  the existence of  the wall is some kind of secret in this country.  You can not see it, touch it, throw stone to it. And the wall does no effect to your daily life, how kind the wall is. Is it really true?

The wall is only for the curious ones. For the one who is asking for truth, knowledge and justice, the wall is brutal and merciless. When you want know some knowledge or info the BIG BROTHER forbid, it cast its evil magic let you face the high wall.

They want there is no curious people in China, they want no one ask why and how, they want every one sit down and enjoy their unfair fortune. However, nothing can tie down a freedom heart no matter how high the wall is. We have many ways to gladder the wall and dig some small tunnel in the wall. Can you see the Chinese users in the twitter and facebook, some of them are the hero who cross the wall.

Ah, I forgot to introduce the name of the wall. Please remember it, one day, it  is certain to write in the history book with other things which keep people  far away truth and wisdom for their creator’s evil purpose.

There’s wall in China, we call it Great Firewall.