I got the Lin-fever in the last few days, yes, Jeremy Lin. I searched a lot about him and watch and re-watched his games. There are still a lot more to be seen from him, whether he can keep up and continue his amazing rise. But based on what I see, here is my opinion and prediction of Lin.

The strongest quality of Lin is his confidence and focus on the game. Maybe being a devoted Christian helped, maybe it is just his personality and genes. After all, his dad has a PhD in engineering, which takes a lot of focus and hard work to get. This is not just from the game winning shot he made against the Raptors, but also evident from how he competed against stereotypes all his basketball life. No Division I scholarship out of high school, not drafted, waived twice, but keep on playing. If he wanted a mellow and ok life, he could get it from his Harvard economic degree. No need to play at the bottom of the NBA. He overcame all these because his confidence in himself and certain passion of the game. There is a Youtube Video of his high school coach saw him as the leader on the floor. That was after he joined Golden State. I don't think even him saw Lin becoming a starter for a NBA team in two years. But the fact in high school Lin was already the leader of the team, shows that this is not a fluke, not something he pretend to be. He really like to take charge, which is hard to find in today's NBA. The only other player had the confidence was Michael Jordan. I still remember how MJ was disappointed by the young players at Wizards. MJ said something like those 20 year old's showed less desire to win than this 40 year old. Sure, no one can be the same as MJ, but the lack of energy is evident in many NBA teams. There are many great players, just not a lot of people really want to win and want to lead the team to win. Koby wants to win, but just for himself. I watched a few games of LaBron James, he is good, probably equal to MJ in skills, but I did not see the spark that can ignite a whole team. This is where Lin is good at.

He is a smart player. He learns and understands what's going on. He does not let his emotion take over his brain. That's something rare. And this also helps with his confidence. With his intelligence and confidence, he make the team feel they can always find a way out no matter how back a game started.

I have to say, physical skill wise Lin is not close to the top players in NBA. He is ok and good. If he continue to play like this, he will be great. But he has his shortcomings and if cannot over come them, his skill probably put him around the middle range of players. May have a few good seasons but hard to see him lead the team into the final based on his skills. But he could overcome this by maximize his strong traits above, and lucky enough to stay in a good team.

What I see is that Lin is in a good team that fits him. From the few Nicks games I watched, I can see Amare and Melo are very strong players. They both want to win, but they lack what Lin had. Certainly, Lin plays a different position, but Lin can help the coach best use Amare and Melo. I think Amare and Melo are still going to be bigger stars, no matter how hot Lin is now, at the end of the day, he is not a flashy player. He is not going do things just to look good, but to win.

If Lin can be trusted by both the coach and players on the floor, he would be key to Nicks winning games. I don't know where Lin is going, but like someone on the NBA Tuesday show said, let's just enjoy what Lin's doing one game at a time. So far, he has been great.

Peter Diepenbrock, Jeremy's high school coach:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOdINo9PmOs

SOPA and PIPA

SOPA and PIPA has created a pretty big reaction from the tech world.

I can see the media industry's frustration with people watching pirated movies and listening to pirated music. However, what make their position less admirable is the pile of money they sit on and the tactic they used. They basically took on the position that as long as they can best protect their wallet, they don't really care about anyone else. And they are slow to adapt new technologies.

The story just repeats itself, first when cassette tapes came out, music industry had a big problem, then VCR caused movie and TV industries to scream. Now they are at the internet. It bothers me that they never try to look at creating better product for their customer first, but always try to stop new technologies.

This reminded me of a movie I saw on how Chinese lost the advantage of movable type print to Korean after it was invented. Chinese official and business wanted to keep using the old way, even when the new method is much more efficient.

The biggest problem of the law is to give a government agency the power to block foreign sites. I think that is like the way how Chinese government would do it. Suprisingly some of the big mouth liberals supports SOPA, Al Franken, for example. I am glad Nanncy Palosie opposes it. It is actually evenly splited between on both sides, so this is not a partisan issue, rather this is about which representative gets support from the media industry.

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Wukan protest

The small fishing village in Guangdong has been protesting some government officials' illegal land sale and failure to compensate the villagers. It started as many other similar protests, where people organized on their own to get their rights. What's surprising is that people in Wukan is close to victory. Government has relented and released three organizers that were arrested. This is the most significant developement.

The protest and some of the government reactions were kind of expected. The government started blaming "outside" forces of trying to inflame the situation. At the same time they admitted that the requests from the villagers are reasonable.

I think there are two very positive things that came of this and definitely shows some progress of China's progress of self governing.

The first is the fact that protecters show great self control. There were some violence, but majority of the villager used peaceful protest to put pressure on the government. And they did not give up after government try to force them down. They expelled the government officials and setup road block. It is clearly the right way to fight for rights. It has the small similarity to what Dr. King's civil rights movement, although lacks a larger goal and leader.

The second is the government's relealization that simply using force is not going to resolve reasonable demands. They cannot just arrest a few people and try to scare the rest into submission.

Unfortunately, this story is unlikely to be reported by the Chinese media, which is really doing a disservice to the Chinese government, because this can help teach people not go to extremes and go violent. This shows people how to get justice in a more peaceful way. It also shows to local officials what they should not do, which is link a local event to "outside" force and try to fool people.

BTW, the city's Chinese is 乌坎.

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Steve Jobs won again

WE can declare Adobe Flash as dead now. Steve won again and must be smiling (maybe laughing) up there. I must say, Steve's claim Flash is slow and resource demanding has some merit. Although I still wants the option of using flash, but I also experienced crashes.Even on PC, Flash could cause problems.

My amazement of this is how Steve is always forward thinking and not compromise a product simply because Flash is popular today.And he is right again, although I don't like three results. Hope HTML 5 content will take over quickly so my cell phone can have less programs.

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Steve the great

I am almost done with Steve Jobs biography. The part about how people work under him had to bare his temper and reality distortion field, and at the same time have to be ready to voice opinions and stand up to his irrational decisions from time to time feels is like how people worked for great dictators. In fact Steve is a dictator, because he commanded his company with iron fists. He defensed his territory (Apple) using every method he can find. The purple who worked well under him, like Tim Cook, Ive, all acted as loyal ministers.

The life of Steve Jobs not only showed a great technologist of our time, but also give hints on how the past dictator able to lead. Genghis Khan used force to conquer the world, Steve used innovation and business tactic. But both must had charm that drew people to them and drive people to do things they didn't know they could do themselves.

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Both of them are very successful, but most of the people would say they can't be more different from each other. Jobs is the kind of person that believed as long as Apple can make the best products on the earth, it will make money. Gate of the type that believes as long as Microsoft can make money, it can make good products. Ultimately, both are right. There are people hate each of them, and there are people worship each of them, but I don't see someone can worship both of them at the same time.

There are many reasons why they are successful, it could be their personality, intelligence, interest, etc. But I think their persistence in their own ways made both of them successful.

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Steve Jobs died

My first encounter with Apple computer was in the late 80's. I was in the middle school and learned Basic programming on an old Apple II.

My second encounter with Apple was in college learning C on an Mac. Apples hardware always impressed me. I loved the clickieness of the Mac keyboard.

I eventually became a PC person because I loved to play with computers and change things on them. But I always has to say Apple's design under steve was top notch.

It was almost unbelievable to see the iPod took over the mp3 player market, after so many company failed at attracting customers with all kinds of mp3 player designs. Similarly, do many PC companies tried tablet PCs, nobody could find the right combination of design, usability, content as iPad could.

I still don't own many Apple products, but many products I use were influenced by Apple.

Steve Jobs was the soul of Apple. It is hard to imagine Apple without Steve.

RIP Steve.