Harry Chen Thinks Aloud

In 2006, the estimated revenues on the Las Vegas Strip were about $6.5 billion. However, that’s less than the casino revenue in Macao in 2006.

Macao has overtaken the Las Vegas Strip to become the world’s biggest gambling center, according to industry analysts and government figures released Tuesday.

Fueled by a massive casino investment boom and millions of Chinese gamblers flooding into the former Portuguese colony that was returned to China in 1999, Macao said its casino revenue soared 22 percent in 2006, to $6.95 billion.

This gambling boom is not only fuel by the local gambling houses but also by Las Vegas tycoons.

Hoping to cash in on the city’s gold rush, some of the world’s biggest casino operators, including Las Vegas tycoons like Sheldon Adelson, Steve Wynn and Kirk Kerkorian, have invested more than $20 billion to dress the city up with new luxury hotels, mega casinos and VIP suites to cater to the enormous gambling appetite of Chinese, many of whom have only recently been granted the opportunity to travel to Macao.

The economic boom in Macao proves two things.

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Two pieces of interesting news about Wii this week:

1. Play Wii Sports for 30-minutes everyday can help you to lose weigh (see also NBC report).
2. Ben Heckendorn took apart his Wii and created a Wii laptop.

I’m not too surprised to see people losing weight after long hours of playing Wii Sports. Though Wii is not currently marketed as an exercise or a workout machine, but I definitely think it has the potential to be marketed as such. Imagine a new Wii console that comes with bikes or real sandbags!

Wii laptop is amazing not because it played any better than the one that is connected to my big screen TV in the living room. It’s amazing because it demonstrated the ingenuity of its creator Ben Heckendorn. By inspecting the design of the Wii laptop, you can tell Ben has spent a great deal of effort to complete this project. He definitely deserve a round of applause — “Well done, Ben!”

Nintendo Wii has been on the market for about 2 months. However, it’s still quite difficult for users to find Wii-motes available in the stores. A rumor showed up in an Internet forum site describing the possible release of a third-party Wii-mote.

Ok as I said before Im an employee of the Wal-Mart electronics department, just recently we got a shipment of Wii accessories from madcatz and on the back of one of the product boxes it shows off their version of the Wii remote. I took some pics with my camera phone to show you guys.

This will be an interesting business development if the rumor was true.

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Shortage of wives and poor retirement systems are key social issues in China. Because the country is governed with a one-child policy and a Chinese tradition that prefers boys over girls, by 2020 China will have 30 million more men of marriageable age than women. Since most families have only one child, without an improved social security system, young people are facing the prospect of supporting two parents and four grandparents well into their old age.

Are there solutions to the problems? Here is what I think. To solve these problem will require major social changes in multiple generations. However, there are few things that the government can do to help. First, the government should reform its poor social security system, and give extra support to people that are with multiple aging parents and grandparents. Second, via education, the government should bring open-minded thinking to young people. People should abandon the old Chinese tradition that gives preference to boys.

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A Wii user reported the discovery of a flaw in Wii’s web browser that could allow hackers to run arbitrary programs on a Wii machine. This problem caused by a JavaScript flaw in Opera implementation. A more technique description is as the follows.

A flaw exists within Opera’s Javascript SVG implementation. When processing a createSVGTransformFromMatrix request Opera does not properly validate the type of object passed to the function. Passing an incorrect object to this function can result in it using a pointer that is user controlled when it attempts to make the virtual function call.

Exploitation of this vulnerability would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code on the affected host. The attacker would first need to construct a website containing the malicious JavaScript and trick the vulnerable user into visiting the site. This would trigger the vulnerability and allow the code to execute with the privileges of the local user.

This exploit could possibly be used to run code on the Wii!

Personally, I have crashed the Opera browse in my Wii at least once when I was trying to load a Flash/JavaScript game. Though I think there is no real financial incentives for hackers to attack people’s Wii machines — maybe to steal people’s Wii points, but just to be on the safe side, you as a Wii user should be very careful about the sites that you visit.

Spotted on: Wii Opera Vulnerability, Scene Newz Forums

There is no reason why your desktop clock must be a digital or analog clock.

Try Pattern Clock.

It shows the current time as a set of four patterns representing the four digits in the time. Each pattern contains 0-9 “lit” dots representing the individual digit.

The time now is 11:43

Everyone should care about saving for a secure financial future. This is true for both men and women. However, in the US women face more financial challenges than men. Why?

Women live, on average, seven years longer than men. But they often don’t have enough money to live on during those extra years. Women face different financial challenges than men do. They still only make about 76 cents for every dollar men do, and they are also more likely to take time off during their careers to raise children. Furthermore, women also invest less aggressively than men do.

If you are a woman and want to save for a secure financial future, what can you do? Take a look at the saving tips for women by Marshall Loeb at MarketWatch.com.

Highlights:

• Take control of your own financial planning. Don’t leave it to your husband.
• If your husband save 10% of his gross income each year, you should save 12%.
• Open an IRA account under your own name.

The value of the U.S. dollar continues to soften against the euro and the British pound. According to an IHT report,

Last year, the euro appreciated more than 11 percent against the dollar. The British pound rose nearly 14 percent against the dollar in 2006.

Obviously, this is a good news for the European travelers in the U.S. and the European currency investors. However, it was a bad news for people like me whose salary is paid in the U.S. dollar.

Will the value of the U.S. dollar continue to slide in 2007?

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