Category: opinion

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What is George W. Bush Trying to Do?

GeorgeW.Bush

The 43rd president of the United States.

Over the years there had been many criticism on George W. Bush and I definitely do not call myself an expert in US politics, but it is hard for me not to comment on some of the policies and decisions of George W. Bush.

His policies on Afghanistan, Iraq and North Korea are not without controversies, but it is hard for me to believe that all these controversies are true. It is not that I believe in George W. Bush or agrees with him, I just cannot imagine that someone in his position can do so many, alleged, bad things and behave the way he did. He has even been labeled “The War President” among its critics.

A movie, “Fahrenheit 9/11“, by Michael Moore, was released in 2004 that documents Micheal Moore’s version of what happened after the attack on New York City on September 11, 2001 (aka 9/11).

The evidence Moore presented are very convincing, but if all that were presented were true than the Bush family is definitely guilty of some sort of crime against the American citizens.

Not sure if it is because Bush is now on his half way mark of his second term and still coming up with policies that do not make sense, Moore is going to release a sequel called “Fahrenheit 9/11 ½” in 2007, and I suppose it is to elaborate on what had transpired since 2004.

The apparent theme of the reasoning behind Bush’s actions and decisions, and how he is able to get away with it, has to do with the large amount of money involved. I guess this further proof that money talks and people are willing to do almost anything for sake of money.

So will George W. Bush legacy be known as “The War President” or will he be know as the most powerful manipulator in the history of United States, it will take many more years before that is known.

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North Korea Strutting Its Stuff

NorthKorea

Today North Korea conducted a test of their ballistic missiles, firing a total of 7 missiles including one long range missile capable of reaching the United States.

North Korea went ahead with their missile test among strong oppositions from various nations; including Japan and United States who openly threaten sanctions.

After the test Japan and United States together drafted a plan for the <abbr title=”United Nations”>UN</abbr> Security Council to impose economical sanctions on North Korea. North Korea in turn responded by saying, “… any sanctions imposed by UN will be responded with equally severe actions.”.

What I do not understand is, “… equally severe actions.”, what do they mean by that? It is not that anyone of the nations against North Korea’s testing needs anything from them. Particularly not Japan nor United States. The only “equally severe” action I can think of is to expel nationals of these countries from North Korea.

Given the unstable conditions in North Korea, it is already not a good idea for any foreigners to be in North Korea.

It appears that North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il is just trying to hold the world hostage demanding ransom in the form of aids from foreign nations.

North Korea being one of the poorest nations, with one of the world’s largest army and majority of its citizens starving, could have reached its last straw. Forcing it to use drastic scare tactics to achieve its goals of strong arming aids and supports from foreign nations. Whether North Korea truly have the technologies to create nuclear weapons or missiles that can reach the United States are still questionable. With the United States recent intelligence track records (Iraq and Bin Laden), United States claims on North Korea may be taken with a grain of salt.

I definitely do not call myself a political expert, bullying others into getting ones way may work in other situations, but in politics it is a very dangerous game to play.

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The Sequels Year

If you have kept an eye on My Must See list, you will notice that next year (2007) is starting to become a major sequel year. With sequels from some of the most famous series expected to release.

  • Jason Bourne series

  • Indiana Jones series

  • Danny Ocean series

  • Spider-man series

  • John McClane series

  • James Bond series

So it will be a great year.

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Should Have Better Customer Service

In the typical marketing tactics of McDonald’s restaurant, they are having a World Cup 2006 promotion.

For those of you who may not know, World Cup 2006 is the international soccer match held every 4 years. This year it is being held in Germany.

The McDonald’s promotion involve them giving away World Cup 2006 team cards for every HKD17.00 their customers spend per visit. Each on of these cards represent one of the teams who are competing in the World Cup. If one of these teams win their game, every customer holding the winning team card are eligible to get a free food item with the purchase of their “Fantastic Value Meal” (aka. Rice Burgers), which cost HKD22.00. So you see that McDonald’s wins.

Most people who like soccer will want to collect the team card for their favorite team, causing them to keep purchasing HKD17.00 meals.

Not that I want to collect these cards or even like the Fantastic Value Meals, but I found it poor customer service today to find that the McDonald’s restaurant that I went to today did not have any of the cards left. They did not even have a sign at the counter or at the door letting people know before they purchase their meal.

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The Real Story of Billy

Last night Bill Gates announced that he will start to involve less in the day-to-day activity as the Chief Software Architect for Microsoft. This transition will take 2 years before he leaves Microsoft totally.

Last year we saw Bill Gates steps down as the CEO of Microsoft and became the Chief Software Architect of Microsoft and now this departure announcement. Is Billy telling us something?

Some people like John Dvorak, feels that this recent announcement last night is not a big deal and will not affect the company’s operations or its stocks. But I have another theory.

Everyone knows that Microsoft had had some poor press this past 3 – 4 years. With “Longhorn”…. oops… I mean “Windows Vista” being delayed and delayed, year after year. Microsoft finally said that they WILL release Windows Vista this year, but earlier this year we found that the actual commercial wide release will not happen until January 2007, so another delay.

On top of delays, most of the original features that were announced when the code name was still “Longhorn”, had been removed or delayed to later releases.

They showed of the new Windows Vista at the Microsoft Developers’ conference earlier this year, but every feature they showed off were just features from the Mac OS X, which had existed for the past 4 years. Someone on the net even went as far as modifying the Microsoft presentation, to substitute slides of Windows Vista screen shots with Mac OS X screen shots, to proof his point.

Microsoft started to compete with Google and Yahoo, by copying Google and released a product that is similar to Google IG and Google Maps. They even copied Google’s approach and launched their products with the “Beta” label. I guess this is just in case people say that their products are no good. Microsoft would then have an excuse, and say “that the products are still in beta”.

Now with more any more people migrating away from Internet Explorer to FireFox and other standards compliant browsers. Microsoft finally announce their support for some of the W3C standards, but they do it in such a way that there are still Microsoft extensions to the Standards, hence the resulting behaviours are not what the developers would expect. So developers out there still have to condition their code so that it works in Internet Explorer.

All in all, I think that Microsoft had made some bad decisions lately, especially after Billy step down as the CEO. I am not sure if it is a coincident or is directly related to Billy’s lesser involvements with the company. Therefore, I think last night’s announcement should not be good news for any Windows fanboy. As everyone know, any innovation, if any in Microsoft, came mainly from Billy himself. The only exception is XBox 360, which had a very good User Interface design and over all user experience.

One possible reason for Billy’s departure, is that he is already too rich and he wants to focus on other things; like finding a cure for Malaria. He wants to disassociate himself from Microsoft before it ruin his own reputation.

I am sure my last statement will generate some opinions.

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US Imposing On Others

To be accurate, I am speaking of the United States government imposing their foreign politics on other countries.

Where can I start. I don’t want to get too political and start debating US foreign policies. One thing I do want to comment on is the fact that everyone pounded on Google for creating a Google.cn site that is censored, and Yahoo.cn for providing information on Yahoo users whom the Chinese government wanted to locate.

Google is a business and a public company. Being so, must make money and answer to its share holders. Creating Google.cn is Google’s way of complying with China’s policies so that it can operate in China. Like any companies that wants to do business in the United States must comply with US policies.

I am not trying to say that “censorship” is a good thing. I live in Hong Kong and I enjoy the freedom of speech that still exist here.

Mainland China for that matter is not the same as most western countries. Their standards and sense of what’s right or wrong are different from most western countries. People need to realize that we cannot impose our own sense of what’s right or wrong onto other cultures or countries.

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US Imposing On Others

To be accurate, I am speaking of the United States government imposing their foreign politics on other countries.

Where can I start. I don’t want to get too political and start debating US foreign policies. One thing I do want to comment on is the fact that everyone pounded on Google for creating a Google.cn site that is censored, and Yahoo.cn for providing information on Yahoo users whom the Chinese government wanted to locate.

Google is a business and a public company. Being so, must make money and answer to its share holders. Creating Google.cn is Google’s way of complying with China’s policies so that it can operate in China. Like any companies that wants to do business in the United States must comply with US policies.

I am not trying to say that “censorship” is a good thing. I live in Hong Kong and I enjoy the freedom of speech that still exist here.

Mainland China for that matter is not the same as most western countries. Their standards and sense of what’s right or wrong are different from most western countries. People need to realize that we cannot impose our own sense of what’s right or wrong onto other cultures or countries.

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Pixar & Disney, Friends Again?

It looks like the sale of Pixar Animation Studios to Disney made Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios friends again.

In the original partnership agreement started in 1995 with the release of “Toy Story“, and was to end with the upcoming release of “Cars“. There were talks that Pixar was seeking a new partner for its future full length animations, after Disney openly announce their desire to discontinue the partnership, while still under the lead of former CEO, Michael Eisner. All this was before Steve Jobs sold Pixar Animation Studios to Disney (January 25, 2006), became the largest share holder, the former President of Pixar became the President of the combined Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, and the former Executive Vice President of Pixar became the Chief Creative Officer of the combined Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, which also give him the responsibility of “Principal Creative Adviser” at Walt Disney Imagineering.

Now Pixar had released a new trailer for its upcoming full length animation, “Ratatouille” (Rat-a-too-ee), to be released by Disney Pictures.

I hope that this is a sign that this successful partnership will continue for years to come. Since I believe the quality of humor from Pixar is far better than those from Dreamworks or Sony Pictures.

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Microsoft’s Propaganda

As many of you may have heard, MTV had partnered with Microsoft to create yet another online music store called “Urge”.

This online store is based on Microsoft’s proprietary DRM software built into the Windows Media Player.

In the FAQ for Urge, there is a question:

Does URGE work with the iPod?

and the reply to the question is:

Music you download or purchase from URGE is in Windows Media Audio (WMA) format and protected by the Windows Digital Rights Management (DRM) software which is not compatible with the iPod. Apple has currently only made the iPod compatible with another format called AAC.

What a bunch of typical Microsoft marketing gibberish.

First of all they do not explain that Windows Digital Rights Management (DRM) software is made by Microsoft and hence is a Microsoft technology that Microsoft decides not to develop for the Macintosh OS platform. Calling it “not compatible” is not telling the readers the full story. Particularly for layman. This is yet another typical Microsoft marketing tactics to mislead the reader.

The other incorrect statement is about Apple’s technology.

The Apple iPod MP3 players uses Apple’s DRM technology called “FairPlay”. Both Windows DRM and Apple’s DRM (aka “FairPlay”) are proprietary technology from respective manufactures.

As for “AAC (Advanced Audio Coding)” is the audio encoding format that music purchased from Apple’s iTunes Music Store (iTMS) is encoded in. The AAC format is part of the open (“standard body accepted”) format that is part of MPEG-2 Part 7 specification. The AAC format is also adapted by many other MP3 player manufactures (Sony for example) as the preferred format, and is an accepted international standard by the MPEG group.

Contrary to what Microsoft uses, its WMA (Windows Media Audio) format is a proprietary compressed audio file format developed by Microsoft.

The fact that the music purchased from the Apple’s iTMS is encoded in AAC format does not mean that it is incompatible with any other MP3 players other than iPod. The thing that makes these music not playable on other MP3 players except for the Apple iPod is the “FairPlay” DRM that Apple use to protect these purchased music.

So, please be an educated reader. Do not believe totally what you read; including this article. Look into what the author say and make your own decision when you have all the information.

As usual I have provided independent references here in my article to assist you in understanding what I have wrote.

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Are People Too Hard on Apple? (Part 3)

Apple

Continue from yesterday’s article…

Although if you did not read Part 1 you may want to start from there.

As for the premise that Bill Gates’s Microsoft taking over Apple Computer Inc., I have this to say. I agree that Microsoft have copied the Mac OS for years in their Windows OS. With the release of Windows 98, Windows OS is feature equivalent to the Mac OS in 1998.

Since then the Mac OS has again leaped forward with Mac OS X, which the forever delay and yet to release Microsoft Windows Vista is suppose to be copying. Some even say that the forthcoming Windows Vista is Microsoft’s most complete copy of the Mac OS to date. But by the time of the suppose release date (November 2006, as of this writing), Apple will have already released their 5th major revision to the Mac OS X.

Many must agree that Microsoft has long lost any innovations, if they ever had any. Some may argue this point by pointing out “Windows Media Center”, I will say they copied TiVo. Others may bring up XBox, I will say they copied Sony’s Playstation and Nintendo. I do agree that the latest version of the XBox, XBox 360 is elegant and well thought out, but according to my information it was outsourced to a Japanese design firm. Yet some will point to “Windows Pocket PC” or “Windows CE”, I will say that they copied Palm OS and Symbian OS.

For a glimpse of what to come from Apple you can take a look at the video of Multi Touch Interface that Apple is working on
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l29zW4_W5E]
Apple’s success has been credited by its focus on design and its “Apple Way” of doing things.

Case in point, the success of the “iPod”, “iTunes” and “iTunes Music Store” in allowing Apple to dominate the online music download and MP3 player markets, is the direct results of these trio of products from Apple. Without any one of them Apple would not have been as successful as it has been. Apple’s competitors can testify to that successful formula. None of them so far had been able to duplicate what Apple has accomplished in a short 4 years time. The only one that came close was Sony, but they were not successful even with their advantage of owning a large portion of the music rights of the music industry.

Another example is the “5th generation iPod” with video capabilities. From the start, Apple purposely did not label this newest version of the iPod series the “Video iPod” or “iPod Video” like many other uninitiated have. This is because when Apple eventually decides to get into “Portable Media Player” (PMP) market, it will be with a device that was designed, the Apple Way, from the ground up for video play back. Rather than retrofitting a MP3 player (iPod) for video pay back. The market, industry analysts and critics of Apple, have mistakenly took the “5G iPod” as Apple’s example of their entry into the “up coming” PMP market.

I believe that Apple will do what they have always done so well, not necessary being the first but always the innovated.

Apple is a company that does not do anything half way. When and if they decide to participate in a market or consumer area, they will do it all the way in the spirit of, the trial and trusted “Apple Way”.