Fei Shen's Thoughts

Do you know your rights to the software you bought on CD? Be it Microsoft office, adobe acrobat, quicken, or anything. Can you lend the CD to your friends and let him install it on his computer? Can you install it on your wife's computer, your parents', or kids' computers? Can you sell it? Copyright law in US generally allows consumers to lease, lend, or resale legal copies of copyrighted materials they own. This seems to be common sense because it won't surprise anybody that a copyrighted book can be resold on ebay without any legal hassles . Such allowance is known as the first sale doctrine, codified in section 107 of title 17, the copyright act.  However, when comes to software, it is a whole different story.  If you think you own your software purchased at bestbuy , you are wrong. Almost all the software makers have this term in the EULA (end user license agreement) "The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the soft...

Obama in his recent visit to China mentioned US has much to learn from China in the areas of education, medicine and etc. In one recent issue, Time magazine also ran an article about  several things to learn from China: ambition, education, senior care and efficiency.   Certainly it is nice for US to give Kudos to China, but Chinese shouldn't get too complacent at the outburst of the  pupil attitude of US. Historically US has never been shy giving praises to other countries that she may admire with a caution. Personally I won't put too much into it, but it is still nice to be recognized, even for China - getting a pad on the back for doing a good job saving the world is always encouraging.   This recent China kudoing trend is a sharp contrast to the pattern of early 90s when almost everything in the US media about China was negative. Did China really turnaround 180 degree from then to now? Well, I think the perceived change has a lot to do with overreactions in both periods...

John Nasbitt , the author of the NYT best seller M egatrends ,  is going to release his new book China Megatrends in January 2010. http://www.amazon.com/Chinas-Megatrends-Pillars-New-Society/dp/0061859443/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books& qid =1258687714& sr =8-2 According to Nasbitt himself, this book was a sbumission to an assignment by President Jiang Zeming 13 year ago when he was visiting China with his wife. He has traveled throughout China and with help of his Chinese students conducted field researches on social topics to conjure up this book since. I however have one reservation about this upcoming book. According to  Mr  Nasbitt's  bio on his  publisher's website, he has substantial connections with China, ranging from visiting scholars at multiple universities to a research institute named after him in a Chinese university. I am a little skeptical about his i ndependence and objectivity on China's future.  http://www.harpercollins.com/author/microsit...

Sina reports that the new owner, Yang,  of Birmingham  FC of the Premiership wants to import a couple of Chinese players and the focus is on the winger. Yang's appointed assistant, the fabled Chinese Soccer player Fan Zhiyi , told the media that China should really send young players aged between 15 and 17 to top leagues. He says Chinese kids at that age still can compete with kids in the top leagues, but Chinese adult players would not be competitive in top leagues.  He wonders why? Fan probably knows the answer better than anybody since he played in China until he was 28 and played several years in UK afterwards. Kids at 15-17 years are middle school-er in soccer terms.  Adult players are graduates of universities . If soccer player's development were to compared to general education development, Fan is pointing out up until middle school China is successful in developing young player compared to top leagues.  I think this statement is accurate to a large extent, if not...

I have been thinking about blogging for awhile. To start is always the most difficult thing to do. Hopefully, I will find time to write here often.