The upgrade from MS Space to Live Space is a big step. We can see great ambition behind that. However, as far as now, it's not welcomed by most Chinese blogger because of the HUGE banner ads and new look. Personally I feel the new template is great, but the catch is, if you are unlucky and something is broken in your setting. (I guess mostly a missing css file.) The look is really really terrible. I read a lot of complain posts and some of them are considering switching BSP.

And this week, Blogspot is back in CLAN (China Local Area Network). People guess it's really unblocked by GFW (Great Fire Wall). Maybe it is a good choice to try out blogspot.

I have set up an account in May this year. But don't intend to switch because it's not accessible from China and my reader are mostly my MSN contacts. But I'm changing my mind. Maybe I can update both of them?

It's easy because both of them supports email publish. But I intend to publish online on blogspot and let it auto forward an email to Live Space. I'm doing this on this blog entry!

Update:

Please check THIS post on blogspot.

Tag: blogspot live space

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Posted by Simon Li to Simon's Space at 8/11/2006 03:30:00 AM

I'm working on a project that saves meta data in xml format. In J2ME, the package size matters. So we try to reduce the meta data size by converting xml data into binary format. However our current solution is not good enough because it only compresses the xml file by about 40% and the converted binary data size is still around 250K. My boss wants me to improve the algorithm to get a smaller binary file.

I suddenly realized what we need is the final result: a small jar for download. So I compared the compression ration. To my surprise, althogh we saved 50% size with the "xml to binary convertion". But after packed them in the jar, there is no big difference.
And I tried a different approach by translating the origianl xml with shorter node name and attribute name. For instance, <property name="abc"/> became <p n="abc"/>. And I get some interesting result for a sample xml file:

             size(byte)     size in jar(byte)
Origianl.xml    17183       3222
Origianl.bin    11011       4883
Shorname.xml    10239       2946
Shorname.bin    10920       4971

Here we have:
Before packaging, the original xml is the biggest in size, and the translated xml is the smallest. The translated xml is even smaller than its binary version.
After packaging, the translated xml still remain the smallest but its binary format is the biggest in size.

Lesson learned: pure text get a higher compression ratio than binary data. And twice compressing may not better than once.

Tag: xml

It's a world of diversity. Our application may run on sever, pc, phone, or psp. So when we need to give a solution, it has better be "one hat for all".

But that's not a rule.

Some "one hat for all" solutions are actually built up from "vendor specific" solutions. For instance, a national wireless network management system has to manage equipments from different verdors. One possible solution is to adapt data from different vendors to a common format. From the operator, it's a total solution on all vendors, but beneath the hood, it's vendor specific data adapting.

Some end users prefer vendor specific solution. We have a not so good example in Java GUI technology: SWT vs Swing (OK, I mean your grandpa's Swing). Let me explain in simple words: Swing uses a general approach on every platform, while SWT uses native widget from Windows/GTK/Motif etc. Some developers like SWT because it's faster with less layers. Some developers like SWT because its look and feel rocks! "oh, how could that be a java application!".

Just my 2 cents.

With JScript and VBScript, we can write powerful tools. I prefer JScript better because I doubt VBScript is only supported by MS. But I found sample code for JScript is more difficult to find. So here I will contribute one.
 
It's quite simple if you know the following little secrets:
1. You can use WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) to operate the file system (and more).
2. In WMI, The path shouldn't contain the driver info. It should start and end with "\\".

I failed a hundred time before learned the 2nd point. Maybe in scripting language, experience and instinct is more important than hardworking.
 
 
 
// Sample code to get all data files under a folder. It works on Simon's XP.
var strFolderName = \\Documents and Settings\\Default User\\Start Menu\\";
strFolderName = strFolderName.replace(/\\/g, "\\\\");
var cmd = "Select * from CIM_DataFile where Path = '" + strFolderName + "'";
 
var wmipath = "winmgmts://./root/cimv2";
var objWMIService = GetObject(wmipath);
var colFiles = objWMIService.ExecQuery(cmd);
 
var fl=new Enumerator(colFiles);
for(;!fl.atEnd();fl.moveNext()) {
    var objFile=fl.item();
    WScript.echo("File: "+objFile.Name);
    break;  // in this sample, we break at the 1st result.
}
WScript.echo("done");

Tag: javascript vbscript

Today is the 2nd day of JavaChina 2005.

Today the most impressive words to me are "JSF" and "JCP". I enrolled the J2EE technical sessions this afternoon.

There was no breaking news in the keynote speeches this morning. Dr. James Gosling was a little bit tired. Anyway, it's a relief to know that a great architect doesn't have to be a good evangelist.

Mr. Edward Orange from IBM must have changed his topic last night. His speech is totally a fight back to SUN. He tried to state that IBM has contributed most to the Java technology. And IBM really think community (but not JCP) matters.

I noticed that all guests from SUN had left when IBM was speaking.

I will bring you more on technic in the near future.

Tag: java

2005 JavaChina Developer Conference opened today in Beijing. It's the first time Java Developer Conference hosted in China. I'm very exciting to join this 2 days conference.

For the first day, the most impressive words to me are "participate" and "Netbeans". Seems that Sun is launching a campaign to reclaim its leadership in Java technology.

IBM was not show up in this conference, however, an expert from Microsoft will host a technical session tomorrow. That's really interesting.

Scott McNealy gave a keynote speech today. To my surprise, he is not an aggressive man; you can even say he is a quiet guy comparing with Steve Ballmer. This is very different from his image I've gotten from the media. But he still hasn't missed the chance to "attack" Microsoft. He said (not exactly the original word) "To run software on every desktop is not Sun's goal, but someone else's." And he tried to define the campaign between Java and .Net as "developer community vs. Microsoft". I can feel MS is really a headache for him.

He also made a mistake when trying to speak a joke. He said "maybe you can find his (Steve Ballmer's) email address on Google or Alibaba". Apparently, he mixed Alibaba up with Baidu. This made me believe the western investigators still don't have a clear understanding on Chinese company.

I will give you more on this conference tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Updated 2005-09-14:
Sorry to have made so many mistakes in this blog.
1. IBM did participate in this conference.
2. Alibaba does have searching business after it purchased Yahoo China.
3. So many typos and semantic mistakes.

Tag: java

Online games are very hot in China, many Children have got addicted. Sometimes people just keep online day and night, busy killing and fighting, for virtual glory they can't gain in reality.

I feel very sad about this situation, I worry the young generation might be ruined. People know that the addiction is closely related to the bonus system. The longer time you stay online, the more experience and bonus you may have.

It's ironic that the biggest online game company in China said that they are not to be blamed because they request young people to buy "limited card" that won't allow people login after midnight.

Finally, the government is taking action. A new standard will be enforced this year. For any online game, the experience growth rate should decrease by half if the player has online for more than 3 hours a day. And the experience should stop growing if player has online for more than 5 hours a day.

Tag: game

One virus broke out this afternoon in my office. Through some system hole in Windows, one file name winpnp.exe is injected into system32 directory. It also generates a file named o to ftp winpnp.exe from the pc that infect you.

I noticed the warning message from my antivirus software and checked immediately the system32 directory. I intuitively unplugged my network because I feel it's beyond my knowledge. Fortunately, it hasn't done big damage to my computer comparing with some other colleagues.

The virus will do the following:
1. Add 2 files (winpnp.exe and o) in system32 directory.
2. Add some info in registry. HKEY_USER\.DEFAULT\Config, and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
3. (I guess) it will also create a local user account (name and password are both 1)

To remove the virus, we took the following steps:
1. Unplug the network.
2. Kill the winpnp.exe process. (If failed, rename winpnp.exe in system32 directory to _winpnp.exe, restart and try again)
3. Run regedit, and remove all entries include winpnp.exe.
4. Delete winpnp.exe and o in system32 directory.
5. Get the latest patch from Microsoft. (DON'T TRY TO USE THE INTERNET! GET A COPY FROM A TRUSTED SOURCE.)
IE6.0sp1-KB896727-Windows-2000-XP-x86-ENU.exe
Windows2000-KB896423-x86-ENU.EXE
Windows2000-KB899588-x86-ENU.EXE
6. Install the patches and restart.

Tag: microsoft virus