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读《伟大的博弈(The Great Game)》书摘之一

今天读到了1869年9月美国黄金操纵(多头逼空)案。对其摘录一二:

古尔德,正如我们在前面所看到的,是一个公共关系的大师,此时他开始散布流言,让人们相信整个华盛顿都参与到了这桩交易 中。第二年,黄金交易室仲裁委员会(这个委员会负责仲裁黄金交易室里的各种争端)的主席在作证时说道:“进行黄金市场操纵的投机商与华盛顿官方的每个人都 建立了很好的关系,上至格兰特总统,下至国会山的守门人,这是一件妇孺皆知的事。”从这里我们也可以看出,在当时的美国,腐败是多么彻底,“美国政府也是 黄金囤积阴谋的参与者”这样的流言能够轻易地被大众接受。

百老汇大街上‘到处都挤满了人,他们衣冠不整,有的衣服上没有了领子,有的帽子不知道到哪里去了,他们疯狂地冲到大街上,仿佛精神病院失去了控制。人们大喊、尖叫,搓着双手无能为力,而黄金价格稳步上升。

在这一时刻,11点40分,菲斯科的一个经纪人艾伯特·斯派尔斯喊道,他愿以160美元的价格购买500万美元的黄金,但是没有人接单。他一遍又一遍地喊着他的出价,突然,詹姆斯·布朗(James Brown),一个德高望重的经纪人坚定地喊了一句:“我卖!”
那一瞬间,就像脸上被狠狠地扇了一巴掌一样,市场立刻恢复了理智,恐慌瞬间停止了——几秒钟内黄金价格降到了140美元。具有讽刺意味的是,就在此刻,巴特菲尔德被授权出售国库价值400万美元的黄金来组织这场恐慌,但一切都已经结束了。
布朗做出这一举动,在当时的市场情况下是冒着非常可怕的风险的。很显然,是愤怒促使他这样做的,在第二作证中,他说:“我们从133美元开始参与,从那时起就一直被迫出高价,该死的价格涨到了144美元,我们不得不问自己,难道这种情况会一直持续下去吗?难道我们就这样无所作为被这群无耻之徒掠夺么?”

喜欢这句话:“历史是最好的老师。如果一遍你学不会,他就会一遍又一遍重复给你看”。

Fail To Receive Emails With Google Apps?

For one of my domains (say bar.com) hosted on Bluehost, its emails (e.g. foo@bar.com) are manged by Google Apps, and its content are managed by Drupal.  I tried to use Drupal’s Trigger and Action to notify me on new posts.  These notification emails could not be sent to foo@bar.com with an error log entry, but they could be sent to my Gmail address without a problem.

Here is why:

screenshot of "Change MX Entry", on cPanel

screenshot of "Change MX Entry", on cPanel

When changing the bar.com MX entries in order to let Google Apps take over, I mistakenly checked the “Always accept mail locally even if the primary mx does not point to this server”.  The emails are sent from and to the same domain.  Aha!  That’s what the “locally” means.  And since foo@bar.com accounts did not exist on the local server, the notification emails failed to be sent.  Obviously, the solution is to uncheck the option.

找到一个够大的细分市场——吃“田老师红烧肉“有感

只吃过两次“田老师红烧肉”,都是在中关村地区。发现一个现象,里面基本所有顾客都是年轻男性。其实稍微一想,很自然。年轻男性和年轻女性对于红烧肉显然是截然不同的反应。

仅“田老师红烧肉”这个名字就表明了自己认准的细分市场——年轻男性,并坚决地放弃了女性顾客。虽然根据我个人经验,其盖饭难吃而且肉不多,但是其名重点突出、直白有力。我两次都是在饥肠辘辘但又赶时间的情况下看到这个名字就走不动道了。用一个直白的名字锁定一个细分市场是它的第一个成功之处。

另一个成功之处则是它的选址。中关村地区的上班族年轻男性占绝对多数。这就至少在基数上保证了它瞄准的细分市场在这个区域内足够大,从而保证不会“叫好不叫座”。

”不要指望高中低三档通吃“,”great products polarize people”,”niche yourself”等等说的都是细分市场的必要。而显然起码的市场规模也很必要,除非你的客户虽然怪癖独一无二但也富有独步天下而且没你的产品活不成,并且能生产这个产品的世上仅你一家你可以漫天要价。推荐Guy Kawasaki的一个著名演讲,虽然道理很明显,但是他的讲述让人印象深刻。

Twitter, Flickr, Bing, Live – All Blocked In China

Starting from yesterday night (June 2nd, Beijing time), Twitter became unavailable.  Didn’t think much about it, because, you know, Twitter has been infamous about that.  This morning, looking at the calendar, I suddenly realized what the reason might be – the Tiananmen Square anniversary on June 4th.  Checking popular sites for people to get / share information, I found Twitter, Flickr, Bing, Live had all been unaccessible, at least for me, from Beijing.  Surprisingly, Wikipedia, even the Chinese version, is still on, but if you tried to reach some sensitive page, you would be blocked from the whole site for about 1 min.

It’s funny that even early morning yesterday, people were still cheering on Twitter that Bing can return sensitive search results, including even images and videos.  The new baby of Microsoft is obviously not prepared for the nasty Internet environment in China.

Google Gears Wanted On iPhone / iPod Touch

Google has most important data of mine.  Emails, calendar, to-do list, documents, RSS subscriptions, photos……  You name it.  I want those data at my fingertips, anywhere, anytime, even when without Internet connections.  On my laptop, Google Gears makes it possible except for the to-do list (Remember The Milk is a good alternative supporting Google Gears).

The good news is that I have a iPod Touch, so I don’t need to carry my laptop as often.  I use the iPod Touch built-in Mail, Calendar app to sync with Gmail, Google Calendar respectively, and use some 3rd-party app like RSS Runner to sync with Google Reader, but their interfaces are not as familiar nor as integrated as the Google Mobile App.  Unfortunately, the Wifi coverage is still low and obviously the buzzing 3G won’t do any good to an iPod.  To make matters worse, Google Gears does not support iPhone / iPod Touch!  It is said “Gears is available for Windows, Windows Mobile (IE Mobile, Opera Mobile), Mac (Firefox, Safari), Linux and Android.”  Yearh right, everywhere except iPhone / iPod Touch.

I’m just about to search for an iPhone application that can sync with Google Tasks, and hopping that Google Gears will be available for iPhone / iPod Touch soon.

New Posts Start Here

This is a separator.  Posts and comments prior to this were imported (with the tag ‘imported’) from my old Live Space using this tool.

Now, it’s time to find time writing some new posts ;-)

简历引起的YY

老婆要找工作,我得帮忙改简历。不比得我这种差学生的简历,她的简历我主要花时间在删减上。因为一直都信奉一个规则:无论你多牛,简历都没道理超过两页(单面)。人越牛,入得法眼的成就越少,值得写进简历的就更少了。于是不由得YY一下,偶像级的牛人简历应该是什么样(当然那些人的简历不自己写,都由全世界的崇拜者在Wikipedia上写):

  • 我要是Einstein,我就只写这么一句:"They gave me a Nobel Prize for my least important findings, because they had failed to understand the other more important ones of mine."
  • 我要是Buffett,我就只写这么一句: "The price of whatever I had bought went up; the price of whatever I had sold went down.  I didn’t predict nor control.  People just bought whatever I had bought, and sold whatever I had sold."

我去干活了。要接着YY的欢迎。

亲身体验中国著作权/版权问题

最近的一次Google搜索,让我发现,我之前的一篇blog“Windows Vista下管理员帐户开启UAC后本地登录失败的问题”,居然被好几家网站盗用。我随便看了两个,发现既没有注明转载,也没有给出链接。所以是盗用,不是引用。切身体会了王健硕的一篇blog中提到的问题——“在中国,用户贡献内容在没有版权保护的情况下,变成了别人贡献内容,甚至是竞争对手贡献内容模式。”

中国这些小网站估计就雇些初中生,给个关键词列表,让他们顺着列表搜文章,然后copy/paste就好了。我以后写blog还是多用英文好了,至少逼着丫们多花点钱请个大学生:-)

Windows Vista下管理员帐户开启UAC后本地登录失败的问题

被Windows Vista上这个问题困扰了两天:不知道做了什么操作,导致登录进我的帐户之后无法启动Explorer(桌面、task manager等都无法启动),一直困在一个黑(灰)色空屏幕,上面只有一个鼠标指针。重启进入Safe Mode关掉UAC之后就正常了。但发现另一个帐户即使打开UAC也能正常登登录,说明不是什么驱动程序和UAC冲突的问题。关掉UAC确实有安全隐患,而且总让我觉得不爽,于是决定弄清楚。

根据我登录失败的时间去看Event Log (eventvwr),发现一条Warning很可疑,"The Windows logon process has failed to spawn a user application. Application name: . Command line parameters: C:\Windows\system32\userinit.exe."。Google一下就找到原因和解决方法(Kudos to the author.  The linked resources in the post are worth reading as well)。原来是不知怎么的把内建的’NT AUTHORITY\INTERACTIVE’组从本地’Users’组里删掉了,所以用另一个普通用户帐户本地登录成功,而用管理员帐户(不是内建的Administrator)本地登录反而失败。把需要本地登录的管理员帐户加回在’Users’组里就好了。内在的机制讲解参见这里

被科普了

上周看柯南新一期剧场版“战栗的乐谱”。用人声远距离拨电话的那段让我眼前一亮,想着要自己验证一下。

今天发现有人已经做了这个实验(后面的不少跟贴也很有意思)。我想起来上周配置“Windows Fax and Scan“的时候会让选拨号方式——Tone或者Pulse

被科普了,所以也科普一下你 :-)