There is a theory, called Six degrees of separation, that anyone on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries. Based on this theory, there is a party game, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, which requires a group of players to connect any film actor to Kevin Bacon in as few links as possible. I have noticed that a more general Six Degrees of ..., has recently become very popular at the Internet Movie Database. I once even participated in this game. Finally, check out the Oracle.

[image] I recently discovered The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project, which is based on the idea of creating a machine-readable social networks. Thus, using FOAF RDF, one can describe oneself, things one does, creates, people one knows, etc. I like this idea, so I have decided to create my own FOAF file and make it publicly available.

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Tonight I went to see the long-awaited Revenge of the Sith and I am really pleased with this final episode of the story. Now I finally know how Supreme Chancellor Palpatine became the Emperor, why he looks as he looks, how Anakin became Darth Vader, how the crumbling Republic became the first Galactic Empire, and many other plots. Of course the visual effects were really stunning, absolutely first-class. For me, this is a great movie. Thank you George for creating the Star Wars Galaxy, a great entertainment.

... it's a wild hurricane, all right, hold tight...

Today I bought Deep Purple's Machine Head on SACD. This is the original quadraphonic mix from 1972. It sounds great on my 6.1 home entertainment system, even if this is "only" a quad mix. I especially enjoy Lazy, but remember to... listen to it LOUD! ;) A superb album...

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The Free Software Foundation has moved to a new office and they released the third revision of the GPL version 2. Their new postal address is:

Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor
Boston, MA 02110-1301
USA

Part IV

H.L. Tam's Hong Kong Life Photo Gallery, Thierry's Hong Kong Atmosphere Photo Gallery, Michel Girardet's Hong-Kong 2004 Photo Gallery, David Dong's Yangtze Cruise 2003 Photo Gallery, Jonathan Wong's That's Hong Kong Photo Gallery, Codino A.C. Divino's Hong Kong Photo Gallery, River Ko's Hong Kong Photo Gallery, Norman Tam's Wong Tai Sin Temple Photo Gallery, Chuyh's Hong Kong Photo Gallery, Peter Kwok's Hong Kong Photo Gallery, William's Shanghai & Hangzhou Photo Gallery, Chuyh's Yang Shuo Photo Gallery.

Translating Natural Language to Code

Natural language is so semantically rich and flexible that if it could be computationalized as a programming language, maybe everyone could write programs, says Hugo Liu, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Read more...

Part III

David Dong's Best of China 2003, Henry Ho's China's Impression Photo Gallery, Jennifer Zhou's China on the Move Photo Gallery, Bernard Tse' Cityscape of Hong Kong Photo Gallery, andesheng's China Photo Gallery, Tim Chong's Hong Kong Photo Gallery, China Art's Photo Galleries, Jonathan Chen's Yunnan Photo Gallery, Martin Sidgreaves's Guangzhou Photo Gallery, Chen Qinghui's Fujian Photo Gallery, Frank Loehner's Photo Galleries, Chor Ki Cheng's Photo Galleries.