1. Open the Terminal.
2. Type “sudo chmod -R 771 /usr/X11/var/cache/fontconfig”

I don’t actually know why the privilege need to be changed in order to play MKV instantly, but it works like a charm.

:helptags ~/.vim/doc

From today I’ll probably start to post a few hints that I found during the learning of using Vim. The purpose is to share some useful tips, and also keep my own references.

First tip I would like to share to day is to commenting a block of text using Vim.

1. Highlight the block of text to be commented using the blockwise visual mode (ctrl-v), you don’t really have to highlight the entire code block, just the first character of the first line will do.



2. Press the capital letter ‘I‘, and write whatever the comment symbol for the situation (e.g. ‘//’ for C, and ‘%’ for LaTex)



3. Press the ESC key. The comment symbol will be automatically inserted at the front of each line

To uncomment, you can use the similar idea by first block visual select all comment symbol you are using, and then press ‘d‘ to delete the selected. There is no need to press ESC this time.

Apple’s “Back to the Mac” special event has just finished, having watched the partial event video, here are some random thoughts about this event.

About the Lion

I think one of most important things I’m looking for is the sneaky peak of the next OSX release, the “Lion”. We do have a lot of expectations about this release having to see the code name — the King of the jungle. Another thing that is worth looking at is that having the last major architectural improvement from 32bit to 64bit, apple could now concentrate on providing us with new features. The following is some of the new features introduced in this event:

• App Store
• Mission Control
• LaunchPad
• Full Screen App

Well, the concept of app store is good. Having one central location for finding and installing all software is really nice. The open source community (e.g. Ubuntu) has been doing this for years. However, since this is the Apple who is doing it. I do have the concern that I need to ‘jailbreak’ a Macbook in order to install softwares. Do note that Steve Jobs said “it’s not the only way for installing apps”, ‘jailbreak’ a Macbook probably won’t that necessary in the near future, but it is a possibility. The app home page and mission control are the very nice small things that Apple is really good at. Making small things really enjoyable to use. The overall feeling is that Lion does not have that much of improvement Maybe I’m asking too much.

About FaceTime

Video chat, Apple introduced this produce like it has never been done before, and they are the inventor of Video chatting. I think this just gets over blowed. I mean, what are the key difference between FaceTime and Skype, and many other softwares that supports video chatting (e.g. gmail, msn, qq etc.)

About TouchScreen

Yes, I completely agrees, touch screen is a useless for note book computers. I mean who wants to have there fingers touching around their computer screen? It makes the screen dirty overtime, and it’s just not comfortable.

Some Little Things

I noticed that in order to watch the event video right after the event. The first browser that is able to do it is Safari. If you’re using other browsers, you just have to wait a bit longer. Here are some screenshots when I was trying to watch the video earlier:

Using Safari on Macbook Pro:

Using other browser (Google Chrome) on Macbook Pro:

1. Connect the macbook pro with an external monitor.
2. Open firefox and move it to the external monitor.
3. Close firefox entirely.
4. Disconnect the external monitor.
5. Open firefox.

Now firefox window will not show no matter what.

How to make it show again?

Option 1

Connect the external monitor back.

Option 2

1. “opt + click” to open firefox in safe mode.
2. Tick the “Reset toolbars and controls” check box and click “continue in safe mode”
3. Close firefox and open it normally.

Of course your toolbars and controls are reset to the default, at least you can now open firefox without an external monitor.

文章为国内抄袭山寨的互联网产业进行了开脱。观点：“技术商业模式都很方便拷贝，但是用户成熟度没有跟上” 还引用了“中国的互联网现状究竟相当于美国的哪一年？”一文加以说明。

首先，用户不知到自己需要什么，这类情况显而易见，IT业和传统产业相差甚远，作为创新不断的IT产业，应该是不断创新的科技告诉用户他们可以干什么，而并不是由用户来告诉开发者他们需要什么。在3G网络成熟的时候，用户可以想象手机上网能大到那样的速度么？在facebook成功之前，用户有想到sns是什么么？在twitter成功之前，用户知道什么是微博么？技术的发展创新的速度已经远远超越于人们的想象。所以所谓的用户对互联网创新的制约小而又小，不是没有，但却不能成为借口。难道说中国的网民都是傻x，只配用山寨。

其次，所谓抄袭也分抄的好与不好。完全照搬还要说自己是创新，这个和“当了xx，还xxx”有什么区别？如今的抄袭已经不是抄什么技术特点和商业模式，连域名，界面，甚至颜色都一起搬来这个好像也没有从用户的角度考虑多少吧？拿过来改一改，改的好了，就变成了借鉴。而直接照搬，还要标榜创新，那么大可不必。

文章中说“这就像小芳同学先拿到考卷，看到题目是1+1，就答了2；小明拿到考卷晚了，看到的也是1+1这道题，小明同样写了2。小明是后给出答案的，无论是自己想出来的，还是瞄了一眼小芳的，我们都说小明是抄袭的。这对小明同学不公平。” 但是问题其实是小芳写的是”1个美国人＋1个美国人＝2个美国人“，而小明写的是”1个中国人＋1个中国人 ＝ 2个美国人“ 这不是抄袭山寨又是什么？

最后文章也承认了中国市场比国外晚半拍。那么既然晚了，那就晚了，也就是没有创新了，又何来得不缺乏创新？

网络打手／推手

在我看来，网络打手或者推手其实是一种新型的marketing的战略。随着互联网的发展，大家上网的时间远远超过了看电视看报纸的时间，在网络上做marketing 应该是成本最低，但效果最好的一种市场手段了。（我不是学市场的，只是有这种感觉而已）。早在几年前就出现了用网络进行的炒做，最成功的当指立二拆四当年制造的中国版别针换别墅了。在当时看来，大家高呼上当受骗，而如今站看来我绝觉得这是一场多么成功的市场策划（不知用这个词对不对）。之所以用市场策划这个词是因为其实这次策划要抄的并不是艾晴晴，而正是立二本人。好像所有经典影片一样，最后的结果是那么的出乎意料。

如今这样的网络炒做团体应该已经不下少数。从网易那篇文章看来，比较成功的打手一般一夜之间就可以形成强大的舆论压力。比如 “姐妹们小心了，揭露新东方老师的真面目”。和某汽车品牌的“爬坡门”。

为什么国外这样的团体很少？

身在国外这么多年，奇怪的是。国外网络要比我国发达的多，却很少听到网络推手，或者说网络推手所造成的舆论影响力远远不及国内。为什么是这样呢？

BBS的流行

首先，这和我国的互联网环境有很大关系，大家摄取消息的频道多为各种论坛。我们倾向于相信论坛上的各种新闻，而对官方的报道半信半疑。原因为何相信我不说大家也都了解。消息的可靠程度应该是“论坛 < 博客 < 媒体 < 官方“ 而我国这个顺序正好是反过来的。而在论坛上发帖又是最容易的。在国外，论坛多为技术支持，解答疑问等，而我国论坛多为灌水，消遣，和发布小道消息。官方没有的，而其他渠道有的消息往往最可信。当郭德刚说道“咱们说点电视台不让播的”，台下人便一下兴奋起来。

引用的缺失

往往在我们写一篇文章的时候，都会引用一些其他材料来说服读者我引用的消息的可靠性。或者至少如果不可信，那这则消息是谁说的，能从哪里找到。国人也有引用的习惯，但是他只说是谁说的，但却不告诉你如何能找到。这个习惯其实从我们小学的时候就开始了，比如我们写作文的时候经常把自己总结的一句话当成是引用。比如“名人”说过，但我们从来不说这句话从哪里可以找到。很多论坛上的帖子也是这样，要么说我朋友如何如何，我听说如何如何，在哪里看到如何如何，但从来看不到原始消息链接。我曾经看到一个朋友（在此由于对隐私的保护，我就不给链接了:p）在他的博客里抄了一段说唱歌词，歌词本身写的很好，但听过的人却没有多少，很多人在他的博客膜拜，赞扬他多么多么有才，这文章写的都能当歌词了。他笑而不语，没有做任何评价，默默的占有了他人的果实。这种现象在我国几乎是司空见惯了，著名博客人王小峰的文章就经常被其他其他博客甚至于门户级网站新x和腾x网站直接转载也不著明出处。我们早已习惯把他人成果强加与自己，而编造一些虚无的东西来证明自己的观点。却没有人在意或追究。

总结

国外也有很多小道消息没有源，但是大家同时又会把这些小道消息标记为 “rumor”。Rumor这个词本来是不可靠的意思，而到了我国，这些消息却变的比官方更权威更可信。其实从这些我们可以看到很多深层的东西，为什么官方，和大的新闻媒体反而没有公信度？相信很多人心中早就有了答案。

I have removed firefox away from my dock, and start trying out the new Safari 5. Will it actually replace firefox? I see the light, but it will not happen in a long time. I have only used it for 10 minutes, so this is a very early review. Welcome to leave your thoughts in the comment.

Start with what I noticed immediately, tab management:

Now, we can finally configure (not using the command line) Safari 5 to open new pages in tabs instead of windows. Seriously, this should be enabled a lot earlier. What’s the point of having tabs while still using many windows? Remember how we use to do it in command lines? You don’t have to any more.

The Reader:

The reader function is pretty cool. I don’t really mind to read articles within the web pages, but the nice feature about reader function is how it prints the web article. You can use “Shift+Command+R” to start or stop the reader for particular website article.

The Search Engine:

Another feature is more built-in search options (Bing search). This doesn’t excite me much. How about let user decide what search engine they want? How about Google Scholar? How is this helpful to have 3 options but they all offer the same functionality? Think about it, it does not make sense. So give me other options for other search engines, or let me decide.

Safari Developer Program:

Among all these new features, this is very good news. Yes! Extensions! This is why leaving firefox is heart breaking. Let’s see how this works out. Really looking forward to it!

It seems that we have figured out a solution to this problem by manually download and install this official update. The question is, why this cannot be found by the system’s autoupdate, but have to be explicitly downloaded and installed.

UPDATE (01 June 2010): This update doesn’t work. More people have encountered the same issue, and currently there is no known solution

UPDATE (25 June 2010): This problem has been fixed by 10.6.4 update