Overseas Chinese Web Guide

Category: Tech

  • MacBook Pro Black Screen

    Earlier this week, I tried to summon my MacBook Pro from its slumber. While the MacBook Pro turned on, the screen remained black. No problem. I know that if the MacBook Pro case is closed and I accidently touch the external keyboard or mouse, the computer will sometimes awaken with a black screen. So, I shut down the computer, restarted, and still saw the black screen. Now, I was worried.

    I reset the PRAM and tried a bunch of other tips offered online, all to no avail. Eventually, I concluded that my MacBook Pro suffered from a defective NVIDIA graphics processor. Although I had purchased my MacBook Pro two years ago, Apple recently announced that it will provide free repairs for this problem for three years from the date of purchase. Actually, before the NVIDIA graphic processor failed completely, the screen did start to behave strangely. Nothing permanent though. I had only noticed in Safari that when the browser was loading certain background images, the colors would be off until Safari had completely loaded the image.

    Anyways, I took a trip down to the local Genius Bar. The Genius saw the black screen and tried to hook up the MacBook Pro to an external monitor. That failed as well. He then took my MacBook Pro to a back room to run additional tests. After 15 minutes, he returned to tell me that my graphics processor was dead and that I would have to leave the computer with Apple for 3-4 days to change out the logic board.

    Well, since I could not work without a computer, I picked up a new MacBook Pro, transferred over my files, and left my old MacBook Pro behind. See you in a week.

  • Google Docs: Trying to reach google.com…

    google-docs

    When Google Docs, works, the experience is truly magic. When it doesn’t, it is absolutely maddening. I’m stuck in one of those moments right now where I can’t edit or save my document.

  • Restaurant Chinese

    Some colleges offer conversational Chinese. Others teach business Chinese. However, for Chinese Americans, the real deal is Restaurant Chinese. If you want to order off the Chinese menu, but can’t quite figure out a few of the characters, what do you do? At one point in time, I could only order dishes whose names I had memorized. I couldn’t experiment or try something new because I couldn’t read the entire menu. Now, I have a solution.

    ji

    Last weekend, I used the DianHua Dictionary iPhone application to order 红烧划水 and 京都里肌. For the first dish, I didn’t recognize the third character. For the second dish, I didn’t recognize the fourth character. If I used a typical Chinese-English dictionary, I would have to count the strokes of the radical, look up the radical, then count the remaining strokes and look up the word. A slow and sometimes unreliable process. However, in DianHua, I copy the character with my finger and the application tells me the pronunciation and meaning of the character. Yum!

  • PowerBook / MacBook: Half Keyboard Doesn’t Work

    Strange things can happen when the kids play with the computer. So, the kids managed to restart the computer. However, they couldn’t get past the login prompt. And, neither could I.

    When I tried to login, half the keyboard didn’t work. Only the right-side of the keyboard would work when I tried to enter the password. I restarted the computer again and it made no difference. I thought about resetting the PRAM, but that requires depressing keys on the left-side of the keyboard. While cleaning out the keyboard with a pressurized duster, I discovered that the num lock key was lit. 🙂 That explains why only the right-side of the keyboard worked.

  • New York Times iPhone Application

    Something appears to be missing. I can read the article. I see the reload button. I see an e-mail button. I see two buttons for changing the font size. And, I see the save button. But, where is the back button? Once I read an article, I get stuck in a dead end.

    New York Times iPhone Application

  • Security by Stupidity

    I hate security questions—those idiotic series of questions that pretend to make your web experience more secure. I’m not sure how these so-called security questions can be any more secure than the last four digits of your social security number or your mother’s maiden name. At least, most of us has commissioned those two pieces of information to memory.

    The real problem with security questions is that they solicit immemorable personal trivia:

    1. What is the last name of your favorite teacher?
    2. What is the last name of your favorite athlete?
    3. What is the name of your favorite charity?

    So, instead of committing 1 password to memory, you now need to commit multiple passwords to memory because security questions are really passwords. If you can’t answer the security question, you can’t access your account—even if you know your password. And, with some web sites requiring users to set-up 3 or 5 security questions, that’s a lot to remember. If you have more than one online account, good luck: 8 accounts that require 3 security questions yields 24 pieces of trivia that you have to commit to memory. For people who cannot even remember their passwords without writing them down, how can they even keep track of all their security questions. The net effect is that all these security questions don’t make your online experience more secure. Instead, by requiring people to jot down more trivia (or else face the risk of being locked out of their account), web sites are making their users’ lives less secure unless their users secure the answers to their security questions.

  • The Internet is Broken

    I love the American Experience series. However, when I was watching the episode on Test Tube Babies, I came across this annoying segment:

    american-experience

    Part of the documentary is blacked out on the Internet, presumably because WGBH only has the rights to broadcast the NBC historical news clips over certain forms of transmission. 21st century technology crippled by 20th century laws. How sad!

  • Facebook Scrabble Fail

    In The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman asks whether our political systems have adjusted to the flattening of the world. If Facebook is a microcosm of our world, the answer is a resounding no.

    Scrabble

    Take Scrabble, for instance. On Facebook, Electronic Arts and GameHouse offer two versions of Scrabble: Scrabble and Scrabble Worldwide. Like the World Series, Scrabble Worldwide only includes part of the world. While the World Series only includes baseball teams inside the United States and Canada, Scrabble Worldwide only includes players from outside the United States and Canada. Of course, none of this makes any sense unless you delve in the the historical reasons for splitting up the markets.

    So, to build this electronic Berlin Wall to segregate North America from the rest of the world, Electronic Arts attempts to locate players based on their IP address. However, sometimes, EA thinks that California is outside of the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. It’s a shame that EA has to waste time and money devising these anti-circumvention efforts (that don’t work well) to support some last century’s marketing decisions.

  • Apple iPhone Biometric Security

    AppleInsider reports that Apple is developing biometric-based security features for the iPhone and Mac. While the concept sounds promising, I cannot help but think of how their current facial recognition efforts in iPhoto consistently triggers false positives.

  • VMWare Fusion, Windows Vista and the Black Screen of Death

    fusion-vista

    I’ve been using VMWare Fusion and Windows Vista for quite some time now. Usually, I’ll quit Fusion after I have completed my task to free up all the memory it has tied up. However, this past weekend, I had to use Vista for quite a few hours. When I opened my MacBook Pro this morning, I saw the charming black screen above with the frozen green indicator on the progress bar.

    So, I clicked the Suspend button and Fusion saved the state of the virtual machine. Unfortunately, Resume lead me back to the frozen black screen.

    I think my only option is to Restart Guest. I end up at a Windows Error Recovery page and was too slow to select an option, so the computer started Windows Normally by default. After an inordinate time fixed on a black screen, the familiar Windows Vista login screen appears.

    After the usual start-up procedure, Vista proceeds to reinstall certain components and gives me this error message: “Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown.”

    Problem caused by USB driver

    You received this message because your universal serial bus (USB) driver has caused a blue screen error. This type of error means the computer has shut down abruptly to protect itself from potential data corruption or loss.

    Ah, the blue screen, which was really a blacks screen. Next time, I think I’ll have to suspend or quit VMWare Fusion whenever I’m done. If I’m plugging or unplugging USB devices on the Mac side, I really don’t want to be worried that this will kill Vista if it happens to be shutting down in the background at the time.