EC观察

格子铺的谎言

KF.KAFEI — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 23:05:42 +0800

我看到我老婆在做格子铺，一开始信息慢慢的加入进去，指望月入千金。但实际上事与愿违，格子铺每月租金就千元，还有销售额8%的提出。通过数据函数在月入千金并且盈利的话，利润率必须在100%以上，才有可能。老婆一开始也不担心，因为她主要做饰品方面，淘宝进货店铺卖，利润率也可以保证在200%以上，但是我们都忽略了销售额。即使利润再高，卖不出去也没办法。

我自己觉得很奇怪，当初租格子的时候老板娘说都快租完了，而且每天人流量也不差，怎么一件都不好卖呢？通过仔细观察，我发现很多时候不是你的东西没有卖出去，而是卖的不是你呢。老板娘会观察哪个格子商品卖的好，她就会买入同样的商品放在临近的格子了。结算的时候基本就结算到她的账上了。经过自己的多种渠道了解老板娘基本保持在每天200元以上的销售额，而且格子铺中很多的格子都是老板娘自己的。

所以真正指望格子铺赚钱的，除非你买的特别奇怪以至于老板娘没有办法复制你的产品，不过这个也有风险，因为你在签订协议的时候并没有销售额的要求，她完全可以不给你卖，你说了东西在那，怎么不会卖。记住了格子铺这种东西，店员多说说你的东西就会卖的很好。有段时间，我们发现自己的格子里什么都卖不掉，和老板娘说了以后，第二天销售额立即上升。不过隔天又恢复了，说明只有店员帮你多介绍介绍就好卖很多。所以你加入格子铺，唯一的作用就是为老板娘们分担店铺的成本。

说白了格子铺就是店家自己准备卖一些东西，但是店铺成本高，为了节约成本，故意做成格子铺的形式，让你加盟，为其分担租金，指望你能变成富翁，简直是百日做梦。

本文有一手资料作为证明。

iMessages不能输入或者选取电子邮件解决

KF.KAFEI — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 08:21:58 +0800

我发现我不能在iMessages里面选择电子邮件，点击收件人右侧的加号，通讯录里面只会出现电话号码，没有电子邮件。出现这样的问题基本上是因为你把MMS功能给关闭了，也就是彩信功能。进入设置–短信–把彩信功能打开就OK了。

Steve Jobs

KF.KAFEI — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 09:01:44 +0800

Steve Jobs

1955-2011

Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.

If you would like to share your thoughts, memories, and condolences, please email rememberingsteve@apple.com

Create a RAM Disk in Mac OS X 10.5 or later

KF.KAFEI — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 08:20:00 +0800

Create a RAM Disk in Mac OS X 10.5, 10.6 or later
diskutil erasevolume HFS+ "ramdisk" `hdiutil attach -nomount ram://1165430`

下文是转载：

我常常在注意我電腦的資源使用情況，尤其是CPU和RAM的使用狀況，因為這兩項資源跟系統流暢度有非常密切的關係。最近觀察我Macbook(2.0Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM)平常的情況，雖然平常大概會同時開13個以上的應用程式，但CPU的兩個核心平均負載大概都在20~30%以下，而RAM更是有700MB的剩餘空間。

總而言之，我的電腦太快了，RAM太多了。

嫌CPU一直閒著沒事做的話，有很多類似Seti@home之類的耗電程式可以隨時讓CPU 100%運轉。嫌RAM太多的話，可以把一部分的RAM挪出來當作一般磁碟使用，這種磁碟則稱為Ramdisk。

在Mac OS X下要做Ramdisk方法很多種，在此大概做個簡單介紹。

方法 1: 直接在Terminal下指令。（超硬派作法，geeks only）

Mac的terminal下可以做到很多神奇的事，甚至像是建立ramdisk這種程式都有提供。我想會用這方法的人是少之又少，我就不解說了。詳細指令可參考Create a RAM Disk in Mac OS X這篇文章。

方法 2: Espérance DV

這是個有點古老的Ramdisk軟體，但功能還頗完整。可以自動儲存和恢復Ramdisk的內容，也能設定把Safari Cache/Icons和xcode編譯的暫存區放到Ramdisk中。但我在Leopard中，自動儲存和恢復的功能一直沒辦法正常運作，另外它內部設定的Safari資料夾也是舊的。總之這軟體在Leopard中已經殘廢一半，而且沒有持續更新傾向..。

方法 3: Ram Disk Utility PRO

這是難得一見由台灣人開發的Mac軟體。功能強大，可以自由設定要同步進Ramdisk的目錄，空間快不夠還會有警告。雖然這軟體蠻完整的，但有幾個小地方我不太喜歡，導致我用過一次以後就不想開了XD

每同步一個目錄就要建一個Ramdisk，而且Ramdisk圖示還不能隱藏，所以只要同步目錄一多就會看到一大堆Ramdisk volume…。
它是獨立執行的應用程式，一login就要一直開著，在dock和alt-tab中都會佔掉一個位子。
它是要註冊的shareware….

說來說去，上面三個方法都各有缺點。我理想中的解決方案是這樣的：

像Espérance DV一樣是Preferences Pane裡面的元件，設定完就能關掉。
同步的目錄可以自由設定，且用symbolic link連結至Ramdisk內就好。
Ramdisk圖示要能在桌面和Finder中隱藏。
登入時自動建立Ramdisk，同步已設定的目錄。
open source software

剛好我最近空閒時間蠻多的，於是就決定自己動手比較快。可以順便一邊學Objective C和Cocoa，還能一邊解決這個小困擾，怎麼算都划得來。

因為建立Ramdisk已經有Espérance DV能做了，所以本來我只打算寫ramdisk內的目錄同步部份，就把這程式叫做RamdiskSync。沒想到後來寫一寫欲罷不能，就把它變成一個獨立的Ramdisk建立和設定工具了XD

关于那个“1”

KF.KAFEI — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 10:52:27 +0800

苹果正式发出秋季新品发布会邀请函，发布会日期定在美国太平洋时间10月4日上午10:00，北京时间10月5日凌晨1:00。在邀请函的封面写着“Lets talk iPhone”。这四个图片前三个大家都能明白是什么意思，唯有那个“1”不知道是什么意思，我自己胡乱猜测一下。

首先肯定和通话有关，考虑到苹果目前有FaceTime和iMessages，那么加入通话功能不足为奇。那会是什么样子的呢？我想不会是VoIP，虽然苹果技术上没有问题，但是这样肯定会引起运营商的不满，那么最有可能的就是类似与talkBox或者微信的功能了。因为目前苹果有了FaceTime和iMessages那么就缺少这一样功能了，虽然这个也会造成运营商的不满，但是没有直接把VoIP的集成其他的不满大，所以这个是最大的可能，一种新的通话方式，而且主题是 “Let’s talk iPhone”, 很明显谈论的不是关于iPhone, 所以这句话的重点在于talk，是什么样的talk。

如果有“1”就应该有“2”，那么下面这个猜想和一直传说的有关，就是支持同时支持两种网络。不过我认为这个可能性不大，苹果为了创造最大的收益应该不会这么做。

或者就是Jobs的那句“One More Thing”，这下就更大了，一般one more thing都可能指很特别的事情。这个真的没有办法猜测了。

“1”也代表了只有一款新的iPhone，至于是什么样子的不得而知，不过可以肯定的是新款iPhone支持的功能， iPhone4 应该都会支持，除非需要A5才能完成的如Photo Booth。因为iOS5已经明确支持了iPhone 3GS了，那么新的功能，iPhone 4肯定支持。说不定iPhone 3GS也会支持一部分呢。 iPhone 4可能会有8G版本，不过这个不是很确定，也许吧。

最后就是我真正希望的了，“1”代表着全新变革，如同iPhone刚诞生的时候，因为如我以前所说现在iPhone在怎么变，也只能在系统上做文章了，硬件绝对不会是最先进的了，因为android的硬件远远高于iPhone了，而且iPhone当初使用的新的技术，全触屏，电容屏，无键盘设计现在主流的手机都实现了, 那么iPhone只有彻底变革，带来革命性的产品才有可能取得成。

这些就是个人的一点猜测，我想“1”代表即时语音通讯功能，同时会和twitter有这良好的整合。

The Zen of Python

KF.KAFEI — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 04:37:35 +0800

The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters

Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren’t special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one– and preferably only one –obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you’re Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it’s a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea — let’s do more of those!

NOTE 20110828

KF.KAFEI — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 16:22:53 +0800

随着生活的延续，越来越迷茫，回头看看自己的博客也是越来越迷茫，似乎走不出迷茫的怪圈。生活在继续，我却发现我的心已死。清晨起来的第一句话就是“好累啊”，这样觉得很怪异。生活不应该是这样子的，生活应该是什么样子的呢？我知道的是这样的生活不是我想要的，却不知道什么是我想要的。一个人或者两个人追求心的宁静，似乎这是我想要的生活，但是这样的生活又和现实不吻合，于是更加迷茫了。我想要的很多，我想要的也很少。我知道我要的就在身边，伸手却够不到。我知道我想要的就在眼前，却看不清，如梦如烟。我想睡却睡不着，我想醒却醒不了。想过放弃这些，平淡的过着日子，虽然我现在就是这样子的，可是这般梦却困扰我不停，每日想到这些梦，就问我活着的意义，我的未来，我是谁，谁是我。为什么我回活在这里，为什么？

Manage all partitions with Disk Utility in OS X

KF.KAFEI — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 08:48:52 +0800

OS X comes with a variety of tools and utilities for managing your system (available in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder), including those for observing OS activity, network and disk activity, and also those for managing some aspects of the hardware in your system. One of the most commonly used utilities is Disk Utility, which allows you to create disk images, burn DVDs and CDs, as well as manage the partitions and formatting of your hard drives. Disk Utility comes both in the form of the Disk Utility application, but also as the “diskutil” terminal command.

Disk Utility showing hidden drive partitions.

The Disk Utility application is built to be relatively straightforward and allow you to see each device and add, resize, or remove user-accessible disk partitions as is needed for a particular drive. The diskutil command, on the other hand, is far more robust and can display and manage much more detail about a hard-drive device. For instance, if you enter the command “diskutil list” in the Terminal, the system will show you an output of each drive device along with all partitions that are on the device, which can be convenient for sizing up and checking out any hidden partitions. If you open Disk Utility, however, it will only show the user-accessible partitions and not all of those that are shown with the diskutil command.

Despite these differences, there are some ways to enhance the Disk Utility application’s capabilities so you can manage more partitions without needing to use the Terminal. In a recent post on OS X Lion’s hidden recovery partition, I demonstrated that Disk Utility can show these hidden partitions, and some people have wondered exactly how to do this.

This setting is a hidden feature in Disk Utility that can be enabled by first enabling the program’s “Debug” menu, which is an option that is more suited for development purposes and not for general use. Nevertheless, to enable the menu, just enter the following command in the Terminal, which will edit the Disk Utility preferences file accordingly:

defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1

Choose this option in the Debug menu when you have enabled it and relaunched the program.

Now relaunch Disk Utility and you should be able to see the hidden partitions by choosing “Show Every Partition” from the now-present “Debug” menu. Do keep in mind that editing hidden partitions may not be a good idea in most situations. The GUID partition scheme that OS X uses always will have a hidden 200MB “EFI” partition as the first partition on the drive (s1), which is used to manage the drive and its partitions in systems with EFI firmware (which is what all Intel Macs use). Beyond this, the OS X 10.7 Recovery partition is also required for managing the new version of FileVault, so if you edit this partition on a FileVault-enabled volume then you may break the encryption keys stored on it and not be able to boot your system or read any data from it.

This option should work Disk Utility for prior versions of OS X as well, so if you are running Snow Leopard or Leopard then you should also be able to manage your partitions with this tip in those operating systems.

Managing the OS X 10.7 Lion restore drive

KF.KAFEI — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 08:47:15 +0800

If you create a recovery disk using Lion Recovery Disk Assistant, Please make sure FileVault is off.

Unlike previous versions of the Mac OS, when you install OS X 10.7 Lion your system will be set up with a restore partition. This is a hidden 650MB partition that, like the previous installation DVDs for OS X, can be used to boot the system and provide tools to resintall OS X, format hard drives, and perform other maintenance and troubleshooting tasks on the system.

You can boot to the recovery drive in a couple of ways, including pressing the Option key at startup and selecting it from the boot menu or by holding Command-R at start-up; however, if you have FileVault 2 enabled in Lion, then you will only be able to access the recovery drive by using Command-R.

While it’s a convenient option to have, people may wonder about options for managing this recovery volume, both for systems that do not have one and for those that may show multiple ones.

Create a portable OS X Lion recovery volume

If you are planning on creating a boot or recovery disk for OS X Lion, I recommend you create one from the downloaded installer so you will have all the files you need to install Lion again; however, another option is to create a smaller recovery drive for Lion using this recovery partition. The convenience here is that it can be done from any Mac on which a recovery partition has been created (some systems such as those using RAID drives as boot volumes may not have a recovery partition), and is small enough that it can fit on a CD-ROM, if needed.

To create a recovery drive, you have two options. The first is to create a clone of the Recovery HD volume itself to another drive, and the second is to restore the disk image in the recovery partition to another drive. Cloning the Recovery HD volume is more convenient in that it is not only quicker to do but it also uses less space (though both options will conveniently fit on a 2GB flash drive).

For both options you will need to reveal the hidden Recovery HD to manage in Disk Utility, and in order to do this you will need to enable the Debug Menu in Disk Utility by entering the following command in the Terminal, and then selecting “Show every partition” from the resulting menu.

defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1

At this point you can select the hidden Recovery HD volume and restore it to a drive of choice by selecting it and using the Restore tab in Disk Utility, or create an optical disc from its contents by selecting it and to create a disk image from it in the File > New menu, followed by burning it to your desired optical media.

The second option is to forgo making a clone of the Recovery HD partition itself and instead create a boot disk using the boot image that is stored within the recovery partition. This will create a boot drive that will not have machine-specific information, but will also be slightly larger in size. To do this, follow these steps:

Mount the recovery partitionSelect the revealed Recovery HD partition in Disk Utility and click the Mount button in Disk Utility’s toolbar.
Display hidden disk imageThe recovery drive contains a number of features, but the boot image that is used to load the recovery OS and utilities is hidden. To display it, run the following command in the Terminal (copy and paste, if necessary), and provide your admin password when prompted:sudo chflags nohidden /Volumes/Recovery\ HD/com.apple.recovery.boot/BaseSystem.dmg
Drag the recovery image to Disk Utility
First drag either the image or the recovery drive itself to the source field, then drag the formatted volume to the destination field (click for larger view).

In the Finder, open the Recovery HD drive and then open the com.apple.recovery.boot folder, and you should now see a file called “BaseSystem.dmg.” Drag this to the list of disks in Disk Utility so it is available to the program.
Burn or restore image to the desired driveAt this point you can either burn the image to an optical disc, or you can restore it to a flash drive or hard drive that is available to you. To burn the image to a DVD, select it in the drive list and click “Burn,” and then follow the on-screen instructions to burn the DVD.If you want to restore the image to another type of drive, you will need to have a drive of at least 2GB in size and then attach it to the system and format it when it appears in Disk Utility so you have a fresh volume. Then select the “BaseSystem.dmg” disk image in the sidebar and click the Restore tab in Disk Utility. At this point you should see the “BaseSystem.dmg” file in the Disk Utility Source field, but if not then drag it to the Source field. Next drag the newly formatted volume on your disk to the Destination field and click Restore.
When the restore is complete, run the following command to make the BaseSystem.dmg file hidden again (it is the same as above, only with “hidden” instead of “nohidden”:

sudo chflags hidden /Volumes/Recovery\ HD/com.apple.recovery.boot/BaseSystem.dmg

Removing extra restore partition from drives

Dual recovery drives will show up if you have two Lion installations, even if you have deleted and formatted one of them.

While the Recovery HD partition is convenient, you may run into some confusion if you have attempted to install Lion to more than one drive on your system. The reason for this is that each installation will create its own Recovery HD partition if one is not present. Therefore, if you install to more than one drive, then if you start up to the boot menu by holding the Option key you will see two or more Recovery HD options available to you.

The way around this is to remove the recovery partitions for your secondary drives, and only keep it for your boot drive. Warning: do not remove the “Recovery HD” volume from your boot drive, especially if you have enabled FileVault in Lion.

To remove unneeded Recovery volumes, first enable Disk Utility’s Debug menu and then select the option to see all volumes. Then select the Recovery HD volume you want to delete and erase it using the Erase tab. At this point the volume should appear on your desktop as an empty 650MB drive.

Next select the drive device itself in the Disk Utility sidebar and click the Partition tab, where you should see two partitions shown. Select the smaller 650MB partition and click the minus button to delete it, followed by expanding the remaining partition to use the entire disk size, and then click Apply to save the changes.

To ensure the remaining volume uses the maximum space available to it on the drive, instead of resizing it in Disk Utility as stated above, you can use the “diskutil” terminal command to maximize its size on disk. To do this, first select it in Disk Utility and then press Command-I to get info on it (or click the Info button in the toolbar). Then make note of the Disk Identifier label (something like disk1s2, or disk3s2). Then run the following command:

sudo diskutil resizeVolume /dev/IDENTIFIER R

The disk identifier for your selected volume can be found here (click for larger view).

In this command, replace the word “IDENTIFIER” with the one you looked up for your volume, and then press enter. Provide your password, and the command will maximize the drive’s size on disk.

A few words on cloning

The last aspect of handling Lion’s recovery partition is with cloning your OS installation. Cloning a hard drive is a convenient method of backing it up; however, many cloning utilities will only clone one volume at a time, unless you do block-level cloning of the device itself, which will include all partitions. If you have your system set up to do cloning with a tool like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!, then the recovery partition will not be cloned. The clone will still boot and function normally, but it will not have the option to boot to a recovery volume.

One option you can do to get around this is first create a block-level clone of your system to the external backup drive so all partitions are included, and then continue updating the cloned system volume to ensure it stays current.

The recovery partition is built so you can reinstall OS X and perform various maintenance tasks; however, If you ultimately experience a full disk crash and either need a new disk or have fully partitioned and formatted your current one, then merely copying a system clone back to the drive will not be enough to fully restore the system. Therefore, you will need to first run the OS X 10.7 installer (either from a self-created boot disc or restore drive as done above) to create the Recovery HD partition, followed by cloning your OS installation back to the disk.

Because of the requirement to run the OS X installer again when recovering your OS installation, you may find it easier to maintain a Time Machine backup for this purpose, instead of relying on a system clone to do this task. A clone is useful for getting yourself immediately up and running if needed, but so far may not be adequate by itself for fully restoring a Lion installation.

水货和山寨

KF.KAFEI — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 08:19:08 +0800

水货和山寨或许是中国的特色, 这个也是具有中国特色的市场经济的一部分.

如果没有水货, 很多消费者就不得不面对成本的增加以及有钱都不一定买得到的困境. 比如苹果的产品水货价格低于行货价格15%, 如果索尼的PSP根本就没有在中国上市过. 所以水货对于品牌的推广是有积极作用的, 就好比盗版, 为什么前几年微软针对中国盗版市场没有做出打击呢? 因为微软的目的很简单, 你们先用着, 等你们熟悉了离不开微软的时候再收费. 这也就是为什么WPS非要做得很office一样的原因, 因为用户习惯了, 不愿意在改变了. 如今盗版为微软赢得了市场, 试想如果一开始就严厉打击盗版, 说不定中国的用户都是linux高手了.

水货也是, 对于产品由于各种原因无法在中国大陆上市的公司来说其实是个好事, 因为这样可以规避中国法律的监管, 同时也可以获得中国的市场, 甚至连售后服务都可以省掉, 对于他们来说是相当有益的, 同时也可以知道一个未知市场的潜能. 问题在于像苹果这样的在国内有合作伙伴的公司, 他们必须做出打击的表率, 但又不能真正打击, 一打击可能会损失掉那部分犹豫的用户群, 而必须打击是因为如果放任的话会让合作伙伴不满意, 所以这些公司一般不主动, 放任水货的发展. 还有一个问题就是像索尼如果要进入中国市场, 就不得不面对水货商的挑战, 在价格方面就不能以独占形式获得较高的定价权, 因为如果价格过高, 用户会考虑水货而不是行货.

山寨也算一个特色, 比如这几天新闻报道的山寨Apple Store, 山寨宜家. 我想说的是, 对于正牌厂商来说完全是好事, 因为山寨的出现说明了这个地方有相当的需求, 所以他们不应该打击山寨而是与其合作, 比如Apple Store完全把之前的山寨店给拿过来, 然后重新培养一批合格的员工. 这样比先前考察调研节省下很多经费. 比如宜家完全可以在十一家附近开一个, 因为十一家存在说明了这边有市场需求, 或者直接和十一家合作. 这样剩下开拓新市场的经费

对于水货和山寨, 厂商不应该只想到打击, 而是应该合理地利用, 以获得市场的最大话. 当然对于损坏品牌的要坚决打击, 比如山寨iPhone.