telexism.com

Watching his movies is really a pleasure; it gave me a total different idea about movies. I used to like a movie because of its story; movies like The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, etc. However, recently I am trying to watch other less mainstream movies such as Blue Velvet. This leads me to WKW. Chungking Express or In the Mood for Love can be watched just for the sake of watching, every shot is beautiful.

Paul suggested a way to cure the Internet problem by having a separate computer for Internet and a dedicated computer for work which (almost )doesn’t have Internet access. The solution does not seem apply to me because I need constant Internet for my work.

Hot Commodities: How Anyone Can Invest Profitably in the World’s Best Market by Jim Rogers

Basically, the book wants to convince you that “A new bull market is under way, and it is in commodities”. The author explained about the importance of commodities, described briefly how to commodity market worked, and convinced you that a bull market is under way. All his points are reasonable to believe in. Market analysis and arguments in the book are sometimes shallow. However, it is a good read overall.

I have one myself.

Peter Kropotkin :

Russian has shown us the way in which Socialism cannot be realized…The idea of workers’ councils for the control of the political and economic life of the country is, in itself, of extraordinary importance…but so long as the country is dominated by the dictatorship of a party, the workers’ and peasants’ councils naturally lose their significance. They are degraded to the same passive role which the representatives of the Estates used to play in the time of the absolute Monarchy.

Rudolf Rocker :

the dictatorship of the proletariat paved the way not for a socialist society but for the most primitive type of bureaucratic state capitalism and a reversion to political absolutism which was long ago abolished in most countries by bourgeois revolutions.

via “American Power: and the new mandarins” by Noam Chomsky

On that day, Vietnam was united; the Vietnam War finally ended with over 1.4 million military personnel were killed in the war (only 6 percent were members of the United States armed forces), while estimates of civilian fatalities range up to 2 million.

Political rights do not originate in parliaments; they are rather forced upon them from without. And even their enactment into law has for a long time been no guarantee of their security. They do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become a ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace. Where this is not the case, there is no help in any parliamentary opposition or any Platonic appeals to the constitution. One compels respect from others when one knows how to defend one’s dignity as a human being. This is not only true in private life; it has always been the same in political life as well.

Rudolf Rocker

However, it takes a long time for a populace to embraces an idea and internalize it. The establishment is not interested in educating its people about their rights; especially when these rights are against the establishment’s interests. In history, changes only came after some catastrophes happened, partly because the populace did not realized their rights. For example, the Vietnamese during French colonization had to fight with both feudalism and colonialism; yet many Vietnamese at the time still believed that feudalism is a legitimate form of government. As in our modern ages, Internet offers a better way to spread ideas and educate people of their rights. Internet is also a best way to mobilize grass roots movements as seen in Ron Paul presidential campaign.

I used to had a white one, and sold it to wait for the second generation. There are few things the product needs to improve to become a useful portable device:

• Bigger screen, probably 9” which the second generation will have. It is just too hard to read any website with a screen smaller than that.
• Touch-screen: for a truly portable device I don’t want to carry an extra mouse.
• Better keyboard: the keyboard is really small, but that is not the point. I really like the current form. Bigger will mean less portable. However, the current keyboard is not well-built, you have to press hard and direct. The keyboard needs to be much more sensitive.
• Bigger hard disk, but not necessary much bigger. At least users need couple of GB to store some musics and couple of movies. 8 or 10G is good enough.

For software, they did a good job. The machine is really fast at booting up, general performance is satisfactory. The UI is really easy to use, but they did not make the improvement consistent across all the main software. With all these improvements, a increment about 150$ is reasonable.

Animal Farm by George Orwell.

A beautiful written book, George Orwell is considered one of the best political authors. He wrote about politics without losing the beauty of literature. Before reading, I thought this book was written like a children book similarly to the Little Prince, but it is not. I wonder who is the George Orwell of the current age?