Be an environmentalist

WWF it is an organization the goal of which is to build a future where people live in harmony with nature. I have joined WWF and become a WWF passport holder. It is now my obligation to constantly take actions to make people aware of the damages people are making to the nature.

Below is the second email that I sent to help keep a natural treasure located in Bulgaria, when someone is giong to make it a holiday complex ILLEGALLY. This email is said to be deliverable to Bulgarian Prime Minister, Sergey Stanshev, and Bulgaria Prosecutor general, Boris Velchev.

Protect Bulgaria's natural treasures

Bulgaria has some of Europe's most valuable natural areas, but these treasures are being steadily destroyed.

Holiday homes, hotels, villas and ski resorts are being built illegally in many of Bulgaria's national and nature parks despite contrary to national laws and regulations.

For example a holiday complex is being illegally constructed on the Black Sea coast in Strandzha Nature Park, not far from the village of Varvara. But despite a court decision to stop construction, work still continues and units of the complex have already been sold to foreign investors.

Elsewhere the official protected status of Kamchiiski pyasytsi - the largest sand beach in Bulgaria - has been effectively removed to pave the way for development of a sea resort.

These are areas of European importance and the Bulgarian government is obliged to ensure their protection not only for its people, but for the wider international community.

As a Chinese with exceptionally fast-paced development which caused imbalance of the environment, I am sad to know such imbalance takes place across the globe, especially those activities that are against laws.

I therefore urge you to implement existing laws and regulations and take the necessary steps to ensure real protection for the country's natural riches.

Yours sincerely,
Benny

The first email was sent to help Peruvian mahogany and animal habitats that used to be biologically rich.

Let's do something together for the mother earth.

Just say "Hi"

Hi everyone there. It's been a week that I haven't get my blog updated. One week can be a good gap to update a blog -- neither shorter nor longer works. There is a mess in my mind and nowadays I wasn't able to refresh myself but catching up workload left thanks to the Spring Festival. Maybe it's time to pay for it.

But one thing now: there will be some changes to this blog. Because of some inconvenience constantly caused by the blog server, the blog in China Business News (第一财经) will be the place where I post some ideas on the society, human being, life, religion, me, and so on (sounds a social scholar?), basically no business at all. At this blog will be business-only blog about marketing, IT, financial or any other thing alike.

The reason to have two blogs is I really have something to say but it will be better to have different things in different places.

If you are interested, please refer to the blog in CBN. Thank you so much for your support, although I am not an Internet celebrity =).

春节回归报到

春节回了老家江西南昌过年，紧凑地安排了几天后昨天回到了上海，特来报到。除了过年，这次对老家南昌也有了些不同的看法——秋水广场、生米大桥、红谷滩还有亮化工程，都给带我一种蓬勃发展的感觉。而且，呆惯了繁华热闹的上海，感觉南昌的交通真实特别的顺畅，呵呵。

各位，你们的春节是如何度过的？

猪年好！

不论你狗年过得如何，做了什么，有多么高兴或者失落，都祝愿我的家人、朋友、同事、伙伴、博友们猪年大吉。

Videos of iPhone and Google

Say no more today. Just to enjoy the two videos below about Google as a nice company to work for and iPhone as another innovate iconic weapon of Apple that aims to shake up the mobile phone industry. They explained clearly why the two companies has received rave comments.

Steve Jobs at Macworld 2007, presenting iPhone

NBC on Google, commenting on its working environment

Another thought on music

About 3 days ago I first read the article written by Apple's chief executive Steve Jobs. It is named Thoughts on Music (A Chinese translated version is here) with which Steve Jobs expressed why he believes those ideas of, thinking Apple's iTunes + iPod model is monopolistic and dominating the market inappropriately, is actually inappropriate.

Many know that some European countries, such as Noway, have been lashing out at the model of iTunes online store + iPod, buffing that it caused unfair competitiveness. To fight back, Steve Jobs explained that the tie between iTunes and iPod is not something that Apple imposed. Instead, it is what the the world's top record labels ask Apple to do.

According to Steve, the reason is that:

Since Apple does not own or control any music itself, it must license the rights to distribute music from others, primarily the "big four" music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI. These four companies control the distribution of over 70% of the world’s music. When Apple approached these companies to license their music to distribute legally over the Internet, they were extremely cautious and required Apple to protect their music from being illegally copied. The solution was to create a DRM system, which envelopes each song purchased from the iTunes store in special and secret software so that it cannot be played on unauthorized devices.

To prevent illegal copies, DRM systems must allow only authorized devices to play the protected music. If a copy of a DRM protected song is posted on the Internet, it should not be able to play on a downloader's computer or portable music device.

Steve Jobs argued that Sony and Microsoft are doing the same thing, making musics brought from their online stores, i.e. Sony's content Store and Microsoft Zune Store, to be playable only on their own devices.

He also listed out some solutions to change the status quo:

1. Apple to license its FairPlay DRM technology to current and future competitors with the goal of achieving interoperability
2. To abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats.

He believes that abolishing the barrier completely is "clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat".

I reckon that Sony and Microsoft used to think about that too. But probably Apple's Steve Jobs is the only one who mused about how to convince the record labels to break down the normative DRM rules, even if they thought that guy is flat-out silly. I guess Steve will continue working diligently on this further with inherent passion.

It might be a great timing for Microsoft and Sony to join Apple to take on record labels?