Hong (180)

Ten thorny issues facing the Chinese regime

A reader's comment on an article on chinaelections.org is intriguing. Here is the translation: Taiwan issue. Being soft does not help, but taking a hard line is feared to trigger US actions. South China Sea issue. Talk does not solve the problem, but fight is feared to bring…

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Burma, a rising star?

The reforms underway in Burma is making it a rising star among the few countries under totalitarian regimes. Rising star can fall. Many people will watch Burma with hope, prayer and admiration for the next few years. For countries under longtime dictatorship, having a realistic…

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Can the Chinese housing bubble defy gravity

The property price-to-income ratio is between 20 to 40 in many cities of China. The bubble is a fact. Can China defy gravity by sustaining the relatively high property price. In theory, it can because the average income will eventually sextuple to reach the level of…

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Change Android Ethernet settings

This is probably device dependent. On an Android 4.2 device, the following shell command can be used to change its manual IP and mask: ifconfig eth0 ip new_IP netmask new_mask Start DHCP: dhcpcd -p eth0

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Windows Phone Live Tiles updating 

Windows Phone 7 Live Tile is a neat and very useful feature. To make Live Tiles live, an app needs to update its Live Tile or Tiles per its needs. For example, an email app can use its Live Tile to show the number of new…

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Digital Camera

Mobile phones cannot replace conventional digital cameras. The optical zoom feature is a sufficient reason for owning a digital camera. Canon SX5 series is an excellent choice for high-quality photos and super zoom. SX540 HS is the latest edition. Sony DSC-HX50V is a proven excellent camera.

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Migration from Orchard CMS to Umbraco

Umbraco may be the best .Net based CMS for people with a string developer background. Umbraco is open source with free download, but is also backed by a company There are a few other good choices. People with strong background in Visual Studio may feel most comfortable with installing Umbraco through NuGet.

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The myth of dual channel memory

Though the dual-channel computer memory mode has its merits in comparison with the single-channel mode, I am wondering it has been largely misused for marketing purpose because it requires pairs of memory modules. I have seen people literally believing memory in dual channel mode is…

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College application

College application in a free large country can be challenging because of the large selection. The goal is straightforward: apply to the best college that one can be admitted. However, both "best" and "can be admitted" are hard to determine. What is the best college…

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Android app update release flow

 Steps: Google Play usually publishes an update in an hour, occasionally a few hours (e.g., 4 hours on 2021-12-08), or a day. Sometimes, Google Play sends an email notification of an update going live and makes the app available for downloading 1 or 2 hours…

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Search an array in an array

Searching an array in an array is common. It would be nice to have a function like String.IndexOf(string) for arrays. This can be easily achieved by the following extension method of array: public static class Extensions { /// <summary> /// Reports the index of the first…

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The impression of Occupy *

I had never personally met any people of Occupy * (e.g. Wall Street, Boston, Oakland) until today when I decided to listen to them personally to have a better understandng of these people who have been making headlines. I listened to speeches of four Occupy Boston…

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Halloween - American ingenuity and diversity show

Few people know the exact origin and purpose of Halloween, but many people thoroughly enjoy it anyway. The Halloween at Salem, Massachusetts is among the most popular due to its famous witch hunt history. To me, the costumes and activities at Salem Halloween are the…

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