Sony: Again?

Sony recalled all the laptop battery.

The war of toolbar

Yahoo has inked an agreement with HP to install Yahoo toolbar in HP's new personal computers. HP users will have Yahoo services automatically. If they don't like Yahoo email, Yahoo messenger, and Yahoo search, they can uninstall the toolbar afterward. How many of them will do so?

We all know that users are lazy. Most users use tools which are easy to get. If Yahoo search is the default search engine, they don't want to change it to others, as long as the Yahoo servers are alive. To promote their services, Yahoo and Google has started a war in user's desktop: Yahoo signed contract with computer makers HP and Acer, when Google had deals with Dell, Adobe, News Corp. If you occupied user's desktop, you are the king.

Not only Yahoo and Google know this rule. Microsoft has its MSN Toolbar. A lot of spyware are designed as a toolbar too. Toolbar has gotten a little bit out of control recently. Most toolbars have similar features: Internet searching, Ad Blocking, Shortcuts to different channels. If you trust the host, and you like using those services, toolbar can actually facilitate your Internet browsing. But many PC users have many toolbars installed. Some toolbars are installed by BadWare quietly, but the users are too lazy to uninstall them: Because they may be reinstalled, if the users don't know how to prevent BadWare.

Toolbars are not only providing shortcuts to searching service of their host, but also collecting users' browsing activities. Most websites are ad-driven, and the websites wants to know users' browsing habit so that they can put corresponding advertisements to users, and increase the chance that users actually read the advertisements and purchase the items: That is how the advertisement companies and websites earn money.In this deal, user's privacy is compromised. The websites get the browsing habits of user, and they sell this information to advertisement companies.

Some toolbars also collect user's personal information, even credit card number, social security number, bank account/password.

Be aware of your fragile security. Antivirus software and Firewall can not protect you from this kind of software, because they look like legitimate software.

If you like the service of toolbars, please select toolbar from reputable company. At least, you should aware of the dangeous of toolbar. You should aware of dangeous of any software you install into computer. Any software can be virus, can be trojan horse, and it can destroy all data in your computer or steal your information. So, please make sure you know what you are doing when you download and install software from Internet. Internet is a very dangeous territory, and there are many bad guys out there looking for xxxx(?). My suggestion about installing new software is:

1, Think again: do you really need this software? If you randomly come cross a software, don't install it. Unless you need a new software to do your job, or your best educated friend introduced a software to you, don't install anything new. If you get a prompted message saying "Please install xxxx software to browse this website" when you are surfing Internet, always click "no".

2, Is this software made by a trustful company? If you know the software developer who make this software, and you know she won't attack you, go ahead to install it. If it is made by a small company you've never heard of, you should Google the company to check its reputation. If it is made by a big company like Sony, you can trust it. It might be a badware too, but the chance is very low.

3, Is it downloaded from trustful source? Some users Google software's name and download it from any website. Some hackers create virus using the same name of a useful software and distribute them to Internet. Some websites save these virus thinking of them as useful software. So if a software is not downloaded from trustful source, your company can be compromised.

4, Do you have antivirus software and latest patches?

Gain System Privilege in Windows?

Gea-Suan Lin quoted Bruce Schneier's blog which introduced an article talking about how to get System Privilege:

On many machines this can be exploited even with the guest account.

And Gea-Suan Lin's blog name is "I love Microsoft". They all think Microsoft is so bad in security.

But that is not true. I tried a guest account in my computer, but failed to get system privilege. So I tried a user account and failed again. Finally I tried an administrator account, and successfully get the so-call system privilege. If an intruder has administrator account, he can do anything he want, he doesn't need to "steal" system account.

The method the article instroduced is to add a task into schedule:

at 15:15 /interactive "cmd.exe"

Then when the task "cmd.exe" is executed, a new DOS window with System privilege is created, and from this DOS window you can execute commands with System privilege.

The problem is: without administrator's (or higher) privilege,
(Please read the second comment below)
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

So, this is a false news. How many people have read it?
The blog of original article has 29 subscribers in bloglines.
Bruce Schneier’s blog has 3052 subscribers.
Gea-Suan Lin’s blog has 496 subscirbers.
According to my feedburner’s statistics, when 130 visitors visited my feed, 70 of them subscribed from bloglines. So I would say:
First blog has 60 visitors.
Second blog has 6000 visitors.
Third blog has 1000 visitors.
And these visitors are those readers who know to use blog tools to visit RSS feeds. Let’s assume 10% of the bloglines subscribers have their own blogs, and 10% of those blog owners write blogs about this news.
The first blog only attract one blog writer, Bruce Schneier.
60 blogs were written after reading Bruce Schneier’s blog, and each of them have 1000 visitors as Gea-Suan Lin’s. We call these blogs “third level blogs”.
5 blogs were written after reading third level blog, and each of them have 130 visitors as mine’s.

First level has 1 blog, 60 visitors
Second level has 1 blog, 6,000 visitors
Third level has 60 blogs, 60,000 visitors
Forth level has 300 blogs, 39,000 visitors
Totally there are 362 blogs writtern, and 105,060 visits.

That’s interesting. How many of these visitors know this is a false news, and how many of them think Microsoft is a crap?

Btw: Bruce Schneier’s blog is in English, and Gea-Suan Lin’s blog is in Traditional Chinese, and today I’ve seen one blog talking about this topic in Simplified Chinese.

Building Muscle

You hit the gym, and you work out. How to build muscle in a short time?

This is a "Body Science" topic. The basic principle is to drive blood to the muscle you want to build, so that blood brings nutrition and oxygen to the muscle mass, and that muscle mass will grow stronger and bigger.

So, the first thing we need to do is to decide which muscle you want to build, and what kind of action can train this muscle. It is not recommended to train several muscles in one set of work out.

In one set of work out, the 3/12 rule is always adopted. Work out 3 rounds, and in each round, repeat the action 9 to 12 times. Rest for 3 minutes during each round. The most important thing is: select the best suitable weight of dump bell or instrument so that you are exhausted after 12 actions. In this way, you use that muscle brutely in one round, and blood is driven into this muscle. After one round, you take a rest, and the muscle calm down before the next round. Muscle will get enough of nutrition from the blood and grow bigger and stronger.

It is important to select the suitable weight of instrument to train the muscle. When the muscle grow stronger, you have to add weight in the instrument. That's why the gym provides different weight of instruments. Always select the maximum weight for you so that you can ONLY work for 12 actions.

Magnetic Levitation Train Accident: 21 were killed

A Magnetic Levitation Train was in its test drive when it crashed into a stationary working maintenace vehicle in Germany A Magnetic Levitation Train crashed into a stationary maintenace vehicle in Germany when it was in its test drive. It was a driverless train, and the speed of it was around 200km/h. At least 21 passengers were killed.

Magnetic Levitation Train is a cutting edge technology. It uses powerful magnets to float the train above the tracks, allowing the train to glide along without friction. China has the only commercial line in the world. In August, there was smoke in the train, but no one was injured.

The reason of this accident is unknown, but experts think it should be communication problem, not technologytechnical problem. At least, it should be a management problem. The test drive of Magnetic Levitation Train was in its routine drive, so the maintenance vehicle shouldn't have stopped in the spot.
People still think of technology to prevent such a disaster. Report says that the survived passengers saw the stopped vehicle, but they coudn't do anything since this is a driverless train. New technology should be applied to stop the car in emergency.

StopBadWare.org

StopBadWare.org is setup by Harvard, Oxford, Google, Lenovo, Sun and other companies. It helps Internet users to avoid disaster when browsing the net:

You or someone you know has downloaded something from the internet that seemed harmless enough at the time. Next thing you know, the computer has slowed to a crawl. Pop-up advertising starts to appear out of nowhere. Private information gets sent to some company you've never heard of. And the worst part? Trying to uninstall the software sometimes makes the problem worse.

How do this website implement such a big task? When you use google to search information, if the search result contains a malicious website which has "BadWare", and you want to visit that website, Google will bring you to warning page first, let you know the dangeous of visiting this website. If you think it you are confidence to visit that website, sure you can still do whatever you want, but at least, you've been warned.

The definition of "BadWare" is ambiguous. Usually we think a software that can install itself quietly without user's permission is not welcome by users. At least it is unsolicited. If a software doesn't provide an elegant way to uninstall itself, that makes user hard to delete it, and its existence againsts user's will, then we can call it "bad". Talking about actions of them, some softwares do something in the user's back, such as sending out personal information without permission. These are infamous Spyware. Some softwares pop up advertisement windows so that the developer can get money from ad venders. These are Adware. There are some other BadWare such as virus, trojan horse and joke ware. Yes, sometimes joke ware is treated as bad. You get an email from a friend, but when you open the attachment, you are told that your documents are deleted. It is only a joke, but maybe you don't want to get caught by this kind of surprise.

If you read yesterday's blog, apparently Sony's rootkit is a badware: It install itself without permission; It doesn't provide uninstall function; It do things user doesn't like; And it send user's personal information to its website.

Today when I tried to search serial number of a software. (/shame, sometimes I do that)I clicked two links from the search result, and both of them bring me to a StopBadWare.org page:

Warning: The site you are about to visit may harm your computer!

I am quite confidence with my computer, because I know every software I installed, and I have up-to-date antivirus software, I disabled unwanted system service, I update my Windows system on time, and I have firewall running. So I clicked the link to visit those websites. But I don't see anything special. I got the serial number I wanted from both website, and none of them send me any BadWare.

Sony Rootkit Scandal

Sony distributed spyware with its Music CDs last year. I heard of rumous at that time, but I didn't pay attention to this scandalit. Today after I read the documents about it and found it is big because Sony is big, and usually people trust big companies.

Those Music CDs are equipped with XCP software. You can still play them using CD Player as usual, but if you put them into computer, the computer will install XCP software automatically from the disks. Consequently, all the activities of CD will be monitored by XCP software. If you tried to copy music, or do anything not permitted by Sony, this XCP software will stop the action. Yes, the intention of this software is to protect the copyright of CDs. "XCP" stands for Extended Copy Protection.

Looks fine, right? But the software is installed without user's permission. According to Wiki, The software is installed silently before EULA(End User License Agreement) is showed, which means, when you see the EULA, although you don't agree onwith it, the software is installed already. Actually EULA doesn't mention this software at all. And, there is no easy way to uninstall it. Manually uninstall it might lead to defuntionmalfunction of your CD Drive.

These areThis is not the main reason why we call it "spyware". To conceal itself, this software changes system files (Microsoft Windows and Mac OS) so that it is not shown up in the system. The intruded system will hide any process/file/registry key if the processfile/registry key name begins with "$sys$". This is how we call it "rootkit". It has the root privilege to hide itself from being detected. With this privilege, this software can do anything it likes! It is reported that personal information was sent to Sony website by this software.

Ten days after it was discovered by Mark, virus which takes advantage of this software was found in Internet: The virus has the name start with "$sys$", so if your computer installed XCP, you can't detect this virus by any means.

This is not the whole story. Sony had to give out uninstall software under presure, but the uninstall software was found with a bigger problem. It doesn't uninstall anything. It simply shows/reveals the hidden files. The worse is that it installs aditional software that can not be uninstalled. (More on Sony: Dangerous Decloaking Patch, EULAs and Phoning Home)

How to uninstall MS SQL Server?

When my wife tried to install Sql Server intoin her computer, she tried SQL Server 2000 Server first, because this is the first free software you can find from the official Microsoft website.

Too bad. 1 hour later, it turned out that this version could only be installed in Windows Server edition, including Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2003 Server. It failed to installbe installed in her Windows XP.

So, she tried SQL Server 2000 Developer edition and failed again.

Now, she got SQL Server 2005 Developer edition, which is confirmed to be able to install in XP. But she kept getting this error message:

SQL Server 2005 Beta 2 Setup has detected incompatible beta components from Visual Studio or SQL Server. To proceed, use Windows Add or Remove Programs to remove the following: previous SQL Server Yukon components, SQL Server Support Files, .NET Framwork 1.2 and 2.0. Then run SQL Server 2005 Beta 2 Setup again. For detailed instructions on uninstalling SQL Server builds, see the SQL Server 2005 Beta 2 readme file.

But from the Add/Remove Programs she couldn't see anything related to previous version of SQL Server.

Holy Google tells us that it is very difficult to uninstall previous SQL Server, especially the SQL Server Express, which is a Beta version.

What is a Beta version? That is a test version sending out to target users to test and feedback to company. A software product should be tested before release, and the testing precedure should include Alpha Test (internal test) and Beta Test (external test). How can Microsoft givinggive out Beta version without warning? A Beta version software might have potential bug which can disfuntion the software or disfunction the whole computer system, and some bugs can have security problem which leads to the failure of the network.

From one Microsoft software developer's blog, he admits that the uninstalationuninstallation is complicate. The most complicate thing is that the uninstalation of Sql Server is tangled with the uninstallation of Visual Studio and .NET Framework. .NET Framework is very big, and it is related to the whole system, so uninstalling it might bring some trouble to the system. In "How to uninstall VS", Microsoft says:

If your computer has any of the pre-release versions(of SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005, .NET Framework) on it, they must be removed in the correct order BEFORE you begin installing the release version. This process is not officially supported.

That means if you take the wrong order, and your tried to install release version before you uninstall previous one, you are in DEEP trouble! You can't get rid of previous version, and you can't get support from them!

When a software is becoming bigger and bigger, the complexity of the system is incresing exponnentially, the maintenance of the system becomes impossible. 20 years ago, when we were using DOS, we could delete anything we didn't like. Now, if you delete one file in system folder, the computer can't boot up any more, and you mightmay lost one month's work. When the system is hard to maintain, we don't delete anything. We simply add more files inside, although they might be redundant. When we don't know which files are useless, we don't take risks to delete them. We wait for the system until it collapses.

Pope Apologized

Several days ago, in a speech to the academics, Pope quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor, who said:"show me just what Mohammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." In short, he said:"Mohammad brought ... only evil and inhuman".

So, many Islamic organizations criticized Pope's speech. The text in 14th century 14th century text apparently is not suitableappropriate now. At that time, Christian world was in cruisade with Muslim world.

Today, Pope apologized in person for causing offense to offensing Muslims:"I am truly sorry for the reactions caused by a brief passage of my speech, These were quotations from a medieval text that do not express in any way my personal opinion."

Before his apology, some Islamist groups threatened to attack the Pope. An Italian numnun was shot and killed in the capital of Somalia, although no clear motivemotivation for the attack is given. Italian police has increased national security level. Iran schools are closed today in order to allow students to join rallies protesting (xj: this is the origin tex from the news) against the pope's remarks.

Pakistan's parliament condemed the pope and seeked an apology. The Foreign Ministry summoned the Vatican's ambassador to express regret over Benedict's remarks.

A spokeman of Muslim Brotherhood said this apology iswas a good step, while urging Pope to clarify his personal view of Islam. He also said, the problem is about the racist view from Vantican toward the Muslim world, and such religion statement "will be used in politics to justify the Western policies in the region that are biased against Muslims and Arabs".


It is ironic that Muslim's angry over Pope's statement has led to violence, which prove Pope's statement is not totally wrong. Last year, a cartoon about Prophet Muhammad was published in Danish, and it creates chaos when it was put in public through BBC. Several death threats and reward offers for killing those responsible for the cartoons have been made, the Danish Embassy in Beirut was set fire.

The relation between Christian world and Muslim world is so fragile that it can be easily broken by a quoting in an academic lecture. The Christian world has been changing since 1980s, and the last Pope has led Vantican to reform, but after the September 11, 2001, a lot of things changed, and the trust between Muslim and Western is weaken. More effort and strengh are needed to fix the the relation and create harmony of religions.

Books I borrowed

Today I borrowed 3 books from the library:

1, Surviving Your Disertation: A comprehensive Guide to Content and Process. This book tells how to select a research topic, how to prepare a proposal, hom this book, and I can talk like a graduate student :) This is the first book in the library by searching "writing".


2, Making Sense: A Student's Guide to Writing and Style. This book is specificly for writing. It was an old book published in 1985. It actually has one chapter talking how to use "word processor" in computer to write :) I leave this book at home, so whenever I feel too tired to go to school, I read it one or two chapters.

3, Design Patterns. This book was published in 1995, but now it is very popular. It is a classic book in Object-Oriented software design. Because it is written by 4 authors, it is called "Gang of Four Book", and the 4 authors are called Gang of Four. Maybe this name is not surprise for western people, but because I know the organizers of Chinese Culture Revolution(1966-1976) are also Gang of Four, it's funny for me.
I've read part of this book on line. It's not good to read electronic book in computer, because I am seduced to read other things on the computer, or on the Internet. I am easily diverted when reading electronic books. I was delighted to see this classic book in the library. I thought: Should I borrow it or not? I should focus on my thesis right now, that means I shouldn't read anything NOT related to my research. But this book is really interesting and it can help me in job interview, if any. So I decided to borrow it, but only read it after I get one interview. Because of the same reason, I put away one book about Java Servlet, the hottest topic in job market.

I will read th Surviving Your Dissertation every evening, and I plan to finish it in one month. In June I finished reading Asking the Right Questions in the same way, surprisingly.

I don't want to be distracted, so I don't want to borrow a lot of books, put them on my table to collect dust. That was what I did in the last 2 years. This time, I only borrow books I will definitely read, and I will read them all.
Now, including the books I borrowed last week, I have 6 books. The 3 books I havn't mentioned are:
1. The compuational complexity of Machine Learning. This is not a good book, and I will return it tomorrow.
2. Content Syndication with rss. I will use part of this book in my report.
3. Datamining Introduction and Advance Topic. This is a textbook, and I can learn datamining graduately from it. That is exactly what I want.

Report warns about Calgary housing bubble

A report by TD Economics says that Calgary could be experiencing a housing bubble, the rise in price is troubling and cannot be sustained.

The house price has been going up in recent years, but the report says the real state markets "has generally lack the degree of speculation(engagement in risky business) that dominate the past boom-burst cycles". And the market remains seller's market. Housing in Calgary still remains affordable, since it is less expensive than Toronto or Montreal.

Also, housing-related expense is also rising.

Gun Shot in Dawson College

Guidi was in the cafeteria when he saw a gunman came in the cafeteria and started shooting.


He hit the floor immediately. His female friend was shot, and her blood drenched his T shirt. Seconds after the gun shot, two police officer entered the cafeteria and ordered the gunman to drop his gun.


The gunman replied:"Get the fuck out of here!"

Space seed?

China launced a satellite carrying fruit and vegitable. Those seeds are expected to have mutation when they are in space, then after the satellite is returned, the seeds will be planted, and scientists try to cultivate high-yield and high-quality plants from them.

China claims that the space seeds have high possibility in mutation. Actually China has been sending seeds into space for many years. But there is no other countries doing that. Apparently other countries don't belive this bullshit. There are some vegetables in Chinese market claiming they are comming from Space Seed, but according to Chinese market, I don't believe that either.

I hope Chinese scientists can make statistics in this research: How many seeds have been sent to the space; How many of them mutate; How many of them have better quality(may they taste better, or more nutrition, or easier to grow). Of course, we want to know the mutation rate of normal seeds too, so that we can compare the quality of "Space muation" and "earth mutation".

---

The Chinese scientists claim that in the Space the seeds have more chance to mutate because there is no gravity, and there is "Space Radiation". No one can tell if the gravity can promote mutation or demote mutation. There is no proof saying that Space Radiation bring better mutation than normal radiation in earth either. I am afraid that the radiation from the aircraft bring the most impact in mutation :)

Mutation is random. We have no control in how to mutate. Maybe after the mutation, the fruit has bigger leaf, or small flower, but it won't affect the quality we care about: maybe taste better, or more nutrition, or easier to grow. So 99.9% of mutation is useless. Why would China invest so much of money in such an unproved investment? Why wouldn't anyone ask feedback from those claimed scientists? XJ said: "Ironically, there are some agriculture products in Chinese market claiming they are from space seeds. However, there is no evidence suggesting those claims are true. It's more like a self-serving lie." We really want to know how our tax-payer's money spent.

There is one way to prove or unprove the Space seed theory: Why isn't there any other country doing the same thing? Apparently they don't belive this theory. Did they do any experiment? If they did, what were the results? If they don't why? There must be some arguments about this already.

Webpage-level Google Search control?

I know that if I put "robots.txt", I can decide which pages to be visited by search engine and which pages not to be visited by search engine. If the page is not visited by search engine, people can't find that page through Google.

Now I want to know how to setup this kind of thing in one page? I don't have the access of the whole website, so I can't put a robots.txt. But I can control the webpages. For example, in this website benincampus.blogspot.com, I can change every page. How do I setup the page to let search engines know that they are NOT welcome to put these pages into their database?
Of couse, some search engines have not netequte(wrong spelling. I don't have dictionary now, sorry for that), so they might ignore my request. But thank god Google is not that kind of search engine.

I think the method should be something related to META of a page. If you know the answer, please reply me, thanks.


xj: Sorry I havn't read your comment yet. Today I have a long flight. I will get back to you as soon as I can.

Carry on Luggage and Checked Luggage

2 months ago UK police arrested some terrorists. Those terrorists had plan to hijack plane using electronic tools and liquid bomb. So if you carry electronic device such as cell phone or, lap-top or pda, you will be asked to turn it on to make sure it IS the device it is claimed to be; if you bring a bottle of water, you'd better throw it to gabage cantrash can before security ask before it is checked by security agent.
If you put them in checked luggage, you won't be able to touch them during the flight, it should be OK. But if you want to leave them in your carry-on luggage, you have trouble.
But you can't simply put everything in checked luggage, because it is well-known that the luggage guys don't treat your luggage nicely: They might throw your luggage from the plane to the ground, and you might lostlose your luggage because of the chaos.

In the airport At airport you can hear noticewarning:"Please don't leave your luggage unattended. Unattended luggage will be handled by our security."

When I was in Toronto airport, I bought a bottle of Sprite, but the saleslady said I couldn't take the Sprite. She had to pour the liquid into a Coke cup for me. I don't understand the difference between a cup of liquid and a bottle of liquid. It is funny that FLGers use Sprite bottle to bring gasoline too :)

Java's Momentum Is Running Low

In eWeek, one article says things talks about Java: Java's Momentum Is Running Low

Java was invented in early 90s, and in the mid-90s it became a hype because it can "programe once, run everywhere". Different operating systems have trouble communicating, and Java was claimed to be capablesuitable for this task. Java is pure Object Oriented language. Because it doesn't have backward compatible problem as C++, it is more readable, and more maintainable.

But it was not popular. Because although Java applet is funny, it was never a mainstream product in Internet. First of all, it's running slowit runs slow. Second, it's very difficult to make Java applet as beautiful as Flash.

In the late 90s, people realized that the best way to use Java was to run it in the server instead of client side. And its ubiquity makes it easy to transfer data between different platform of servers. So it became big company's tool.

In 2000, C# was invented. It combines the advantage of Java and C++.

About Wheel Lock

My car came with McGard Wheel Lock system. That is 1 key and 4 screws which can replace the screws in the vehicle wheels. The screws have special screw-nuts which can only be operated by corresponding key. So, after the screws are installed into 4 wheels, the key must be used to take out the wheel.

The "screw" mentioned above can be replaced by "lug nut", an automative jargon. :)

The key and the screws are special-made so that a thief can't randomly choose a key to operate my screws. If I lost my key, I have to mail a registration form with my serial number to the manufacturer to get a new one.

So, to protect the wheels from stolen, we must keep the key out of the reach of pass-by. It's meaningless to put the key and the lock together.
Can we put the key at home? Only when we need to rotate the tires or when we send the car to mechanics for maintenance, we bring the key with us. Is it safer this way?
Yes, that can be safe since we seperate the key and the lock. But what if you get a flat tire when driving to a national park? You park your car at the road side, take out the spare tire, only to find out that you can't replace the flat tire because you don't bring the key with you?

Anyway, we keep the key in the trunk with the lug wrench. Don't tell anybody.

New Japanese Prince

Thank God! Japanese Pricess Kiko gave birth to a boy!

In Japan, The Emperor Akihito, 72, has 2 sons, 46-year-old Prince Naruhito and 41-year-old Prince Akishimo, and 1 daughter who has relinquished her imperial status. Prince Naruhito has 1 daughter and Prince Akishimo has 2 daughters, which means that the royal family doesn't have male heir.

So, problem raised: Years later, who will be the Japanese Emperor (or Empress)? Female is not treated equally as male in Shinto, and the 1947 law which is was made after World War Two limits imperal heirs to male only.

That's why the Japanese was preparing to change the law for Empress. The wives of the two Princes were over 38, which is a dangeous age for delivery, and they didn't actually want to have another child. Some people even proposed to resume the concubine system for Royal Family, in spide of the reality that the system was abandoned by the Emperor Akihito's father.

The discuss discussion was put in ice when Prince Akishimo announce his wife was pregnant 9 months ago. The conservatives had hope to have a male in the royal family now.

Today, Princess Kiko finally gave birth to a boy, what a relief! But the problem still exists: We all hope this boy become healthy in the next 40 years, but who can make sure that he will have son to inherit the family?

Another serious problem: Prince Akishimo and Princess Kiko had 2 daughters, and they didn't want to have more children. But when Japanese people long for a male heir to success succeed the family, they gave up their will to please people. They are treated as birth machine! Can you belive that happened in 21st centry?

Remembering the Crocodile Hunter

The famous Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, was attacked by a stingray fish, and he was pierced right in the heart by the tail of stingray, and died shortly.
He is antheusiasmentheusastic in protecting wildlife and he is always so intrepid to walk to an unknow area to look for wild snake/crocodile/spider or any wild life, and he always holds a python when talking to the camera about the life style and living condition of wild lifes.

I watched his program "The Crocodile Hunter" in Animal Planet in 2000 when I was in Shenzhen. His British English is so funny to me, so I started to following him saying "Mate". Prime Minister of Australia said it was a big lost and "Australia has lost a wonderful and colorful son."

The left is a stingray fish, which is toxic enough to bring pain to people who got stinged, but not that toxic to kill people. This time the fish stinged Steve right in the chest and create his instant death, and the process was record in a camera because Steve was showing how to find wild life in the river.

Steve acted in one movie, The Crocodile Hunter. A spaceship had an accident, and the black box falled into Australia, and it was swallowed by a crocodile. So two CIA agents were sent to find the black box, when Steve was trying to protect all the wild life in that area. The movie is not an action movie nor a comedy. It is simply a documentary movie to show Steve's crocodile hunting action. Don't expect Tom Cruse or Helle Berry, but Steve's show with so many wild life is interesting enough.

Bad Eating Habbits

From the AskMen.com I got a list of bad eating habbits:

1. Skipping breakfast. Breakfast can help you to clean your fog from brain, and keep your morale in the morning. If you skip your breakfast, you might be hungry and eat more in the whole day, end up with more fat or calories.
2. Eating before bed. When you are sleeping, you stop digesting, and the food left in stomach turns into fat. BUT in another article it is said that eating before bed can help you have good sleep and keep your muscle.
3. Binging. Binge means eating excessive food. Of course it's not good.
4. Starving yourself. Starving yourself can lead to overweight, because in next meal the body will save more fat to prevent starving.
5. Eating while doing something else. You are distracted from TV or reading, so you don't notice when you eat too much.
6. Eating too fast. It takes about 20 minutes from the time you begin to eat for the satiety signal to transfer to brain, so if you eat too fast, you might eat too much before you notice.
7. Not drinking enought water. Eight to ten cups of water is necessary every day.
8. Not eating enough fruits and vegetables. No need to explain.
9. Grocery shopping when you're hungry. I don't believe this theory, but the article says that you can't trust you choice when you are hungry...

---

binge: excessive eating.
satiety: fullness, satisfaction. It takes 20 minutes from the time you begin to eat for the satiety signal to reach your brain.
depreciate: lower price. Joe got depreciated price from insurance company for the broken vehicle.
write off: erase, consider as dead. In the accident his car is a totally write-off.
poached egg: poach: cook in a simmering liquid. simmer: boil food for a long time.
sap: weaken. Fatique sapped his strength.
flora: plant life.
indigenous people: native people.

Some words I learnt today

hammered: drunk. I am hammered.
python: big snake
perfectionist
itch: 1, itchy feeling; 2, desire
take the liberty to:
The document is rock-solid