五月的线条

——“文以言人”书法比赛

iRack introduction video. Watch it closely. It's very meaningful. It has more to convey.

Hint: iRack, iRan, aren't they sound familiar?

Well it's a few hours late here in Beijing time, but it's the right time in your own time zone - February 24th. It marks the Steve Jobs' 52nd birthday.

So, just cut to the chase. To the great Steve, here is my most sincere wish: Happy 52th Birthday! You know 52 years ago you came to this human world and demonstrated why it was no longer the same. You have changed the world around us so much, since the Mac in 1984 and the iPod in 2001. In addition, I am sure you will continue to do so with your iPhone.

The world has been a better place. Without you and your Apple ][, the PC industry would not have taken off as is, at least not so elegantly. Without you and your Macintosh (perhaps plus Xerox Parc), we would still stuck in the command line user interface, no window, no mouse, and with clunky in-consistent keyboard shortcuts (aka "amazing UI" as in NeXTSTEP 3 Demo). Bill and Microsoft would have nowhere to copy Windows from, Ballmer would have no one to shout "Developers Developers..". Though the big brother is still watching almost everyone, and the revolution has not succeeded, there are more and more Switchers just as the 12 Disciples following Jesus and Washington and Jefferson, who "switched" and led others switching to the American belief. The Macintosh is a dream and a belief. A dream where computers are easy to use, great to look at and elegantly to feel. A dream where there were not no hassle dealing with Viruses, Malwares, BSoDs, DLLs and Registries. A belief where no IT person and Encyclopedia-like thick User Manuals (plus, after sale support calls to India) are needed. We Evangelists swear to slowly take people back from confuses and panics and unneccessary pains. We live in this Windows world and we ought to be good citizens, but time will prove why this Troy will forever alter the Windows world, because "Once you switched to Mac, you never look back."

Without you and your iPod+iTunes, Rock and Roll would not have reborn and we will not be listening to music this easy and as like. Without your struggle and continued efforts with the Big Five, no one would be able to own the music. Windows Media DRM plus the greedy Record Labels would have forever locked people out from the world of justice and right and jail everyone in this new digital music world. Tortured UI would have ruled every single Music Player out there, with tiny screens and awkward nipple-like buttons. "128MB with 30 songs in your pocket" would have been our wildest dream. Moreover, no one wants more because merely those 30 songs would have taken well over an hour to "sync" to the players without Firewire (Intel would never invent USB2.0 were there not have been Firewire). But it could and were even worse because the success rate of a sync were well below 50% (remember that Yepp?), and after which or halfway thru the battery died out and you had to buy some new AAAs and let out some more Leads the environment to even begin listening to these 30 songs.

Without you and your Pixar (Now assets of Disney), CG and computer animation would not be seen in movies and less laugh could have been observed in the cinema. Toy Story? Finding Nemo? The Incredibles? Cars? Why would “serious people” even want it!

Without you and your Apple (Now Apple Inc.), beige boxes would still be the symbol of a computer with cords and wires dangling around like . Industrial design and elegance would never be relevance to a machine. Passion, Stevenote, RDM, Wow factor, "Boom", "blow away", "amazing", "mere mortal", and rock concert would be far away from the computer industry. No one around the world would camp out the night before in a cold winter day, fly to or across America, or stay up until 2 o'clock late in the morning (in other countries of other continents) just for a better seat for the next day's keynote of a CEO or simply to watch it. No multi-hundred people would line up stretching out a few blocks just to wait for the opening of a Computer Store; no one would cut, shave, or paint his hair to mimic a company logo. No one would create a community with countless rumor sites having various "sources" claiming a new tech products were on the horizon, and thousands of people follow up immediately to piping up their dreams. No one would…

We are seen as the crazy ones from time to time, but we like the umbrella. Since the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. It is 2007 and the first 30 years were just the beginning. For Apple, and for us all.

Happy Birthday, Steve. From Beijing.

*reposted on March 11th, corrected lots of grammar mistakes.

PS. 也看了男才女貌 结尾很温馨很幸福 让人终于能轻松的结束一部电影
阿乐还是一如既往得帅到流口水~ 高圆圆很innocent, 而新发现铃木仁也很靓仔哦~

To begin, it is useful to remember that all iPods play music that is free of any DRM and encoded in “open” licensable formats such as MP3 and AAC. iPod users can and do acquire their music from many sources, including CDs they own. Music on CDs can be easily imported into the freely-downloadable iTunes jukebox software which runs on both Macs and Windows PCs, and is automatically encoded into the open AAC or MP3 formats without any DRM. This music can be played on iPods or any other music players that play these open formats.

The rub comes from the music Apple sells on its online iTunes Store. Since Apple does not own or control any music itself, it must license the rights to distribute music from others, primarily the “big four” music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI. These four companies control the distribution of over 70% of the world’s music. When Apple approached these companies to license their music to distribute legally over the Internet, they were extremely cautious and required Apple to protect their music from being illegally copied. The solution was to create a DRM system, which envelopes each song purchased from the iTunes store in special and secret software so that it cannot be played on unauthorized devices.

Apple was able to negotiate landmark usage rights at the time, which include allowing users to play their DRM protected music on up to 5 computers and on an unlimited number of iPods. Obtaining such rights from the music companies was unprecedented at the time, and even today is unmatched by most other digital music services. However, a key provision of our agreements with the music companies is that if our DRM system is compromised and their music becomes playable on unauthorized devices, we have only a small number of weeks to fix the problem or they can withdraw their entire music catalog from our iTunes store.

To prevent illegal copies, DRM systems must allow only authorized devices to play the protected music. If a copy of a DRM protected song is posted on the Internet, it should not be able to play on a downloader’s computer or portable music device. To achieve this, a DRM system employs secrets. There is no theory of protecting content other than keeping secrets. In other words, even if one uses the most sophisticated cryptographic locks to protect the actual music, one must still “hide” the keys which unlock the music on the user’s computer or portable music player. No one has ever implemented a DRM system that does not depend on such secrets for its operation.

The problem, of course, is that there are many smart people in the world, some with a lot of time on their hands, who love to discover such secrets and publish a way for everyone to get free (and stolen) music. They are often successful in doing just that, so any company trying to protect content using a DRM must frequently update it with new and harder to discover secrets. It is a cat-and-mouse game. Apple’s DRM system is called FairPlay. While we have had a few breaches in FairPlay, we have been able to successfully repair them through updating the iTunes store software, the iTunes jukebox software and software in the iPods themselves. So far we have met our commitments to the music companies to protect their music, and we have given users the most liberal usage rights available in the industry for legally downloaded music.

With this background, let’s now explore three different alternatives for the future.

The first alternative is to continue on the current course, with each manufacturer competing freely with their own “top to bottom” proprietary systems for selling, playing and protecting music. It is a very competitive market, with major global companies making large investments to develop new music players and online music stores. Apple, Microsoft and Sony all compete with proprietary systems. Music purchased from Microsoft’s Zune store will only play on Zune players; music purchased from Sony’s Connect store will only play on Sony’s players; and music purchased from Apple’s iTunes store will only play on iPods. This is the current state of affairs in the industry, and customers are being well served with a continuing stream of innovative products and a wide variety of choices.

Some have argued that once a consumer purchases a body of music from one of the proprietary music stores, they are forever locked into only using music players from that one company. Or, if they buy a specific player, they are locked into buying music only from that company’s music store. Is this true? Let’s look at the data for iPods and the iTunes store – they are the industry’s most popular products and we have accurate data for them. Through the end of 2006, customers purchased a total of 90 million iPods and 2 billion songs from the iTunes store. On average, that’s 22 songs purchased from the iTunes store for each iPod ever sold.

Today’s most popular iPod holds 1000 songs, and research tells us that the average iPod is nearly full.  This means that only 22 out of 1000 songs, or under 3% of the music on the average iPod, is purchased from the iTunes store and protected with a DRM. The remaining 97% of the music is unprotected and playable on any player that can play the open formats.  It’s hard to believe that just 3% of the music on the average iPod is enough to lock users into buying only iPods in the future.  And since 97% of the music on the average iPod was not purchased from the iTunes store, iPod users are clearly not locked into the iTunes store to acquire their music.

The second alternative is for Apple to license its FairPlay DRM technology to current and future competitors with the goal of achieving interoperability between different company’s players and music stores. On the surface, this seems like a good idea since it might offer customers increased choice now and in the future. And Apple might benefit by charging a small licensing fee for its FairPlay DRM. However, when we look a bit deeper, problems begin to emerge. The most serious problem is that licensing a DRM involves disclosing some of its secrets to many people in many companies, and history tells us that inevitably these secrets will leak. The Internet has made such leaks far more damaging, since a single leak can be spread worldwide in less than a minute. Such leaks can rapidly result in software programs available as free downloads on the Internet which will disable the DRM protection so that formerly protected songs can be played on unauthorized players.

An equally serious problem is how to quickly repair the damage caused by such a leak. A successful repair will likely involve enhancing the music store software, the music jukebox software, and the software in the players with new secrets, then transferring this updated software into the tens (or hundreds) of millions of Macs, Windows PCs and players already in use. This must all be done quickly and in a very coordinated way. Such an undertaking is very difficult when just one company controls all of the pieces. It is near impossible if multiple companies control separate pieces of the puzzle, and all of them must quickly act in concert to repair the damage from a leak.

Apple has concluded that if it licenses FairPlay to others, it can no longer guarantee to protect the music it licenses from the big four music companies. Perhaps this same conclusion contributed to Microsoft’s recent decision to switch their emphasis from an “open” model of licensing their DRM to others to a “closed” model of offering a proprietary music store, proprietary jukebox software and proprietary players.

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.

In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free  and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system.

So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none. If anything, the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music. If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies.

Much of the concern over DRM systems has arisen in European countries.  Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free.  For Europeans, two and a half of the big four music companies are located right in their backyard.  The largest, Universal, is 100% owned by Vivendi, a French company.  EMI is a British company, and Sony BMG is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, a German company.  Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace.  Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.

Nr. 4 20.11

Heute beginnt eine neue Woche. Es tut mir Glück, dass Shine mir verzieht hat und auf mir wieder Acht gibt.

Ich habe mich gestern entschieden, dass ich nicht meine Haare mehr schwenzen möchte. Mit das Geld will ich jetzt Kopfhörer, die hinter Ohr aufhängt, kaufen, weil wenn ich laufe, regelmäßige Kopfhörer gewöhntlich Fall tut.

Nr. 3 16.11 Alles Schlecht

Heute ist Sguys Geburtstag. Ich sendete ihn um 0.03 SMS, aber er antwortete mich nicht. Tatsächlich fühle ich mich sehr schlecht, weil meiner Freund, Shine, auf mir böse ist. Er sagt mir nicht mehr. Ich weiß nicht, warum er so großer Zorn hat. Ich versuche ihn zu ignorieren, aber jetzt kann ich nicht. Ich bin deprimiert. Nur ein Tag hat so viele geändert. Es ist total unglaublich. 

14. Nov.

Gestern habe ich viele Dinge erfolgreich gemacht. Ich fühle mich sehr glücklich. Zuerst hörte ich zwei Podcasts: 43Folders und Windows Weeklz. Danach schrieb ich den 2000 Charaktere Aufsatz, den chinesisch Hausaufgabe. Er war so lang dass ich mich sehr müde fuhl, wann ich den vertig schrieb. Zuletzt machte ich etwas Mathematik Hausaufgabe und wiederholte deutsche Wörter. Ich schlief um 11.30 ein.

Ach! Ich habe vergessen, dass ich auch Aerobics tanzte. Das ist richtig ein schneller Tanz.