The Blog

The case against the "love junkie"

2006-09-05T11:45:00.000+08:00

You know, I'm always amused by the love junkies. (A "junkie" is someone who is addicted to something, so a "love junkie" is someone who is addicted to love.) A love junkie thinks love is the most important thing in life, and he/she focuses his/her life on love. He/she loves, loves, loves to death and totally immerses his/her life in love. He/she doesn't want to get married because he/she thinks after marriage love will disappear, and the one thing he/she can't bear is the disappearing of love. As such, he/she keeps engaged in romantic love, "hopping" from one partner to the next one after another. Such is the definition of a love junkie.

Which is funny indeed. I don't understand what these love junkies are thinking, but as someone who is very realistic and pragmatic, let me tell you this: nobody cares whether you have experienced the best love in the world or not. Nor does anybody care how many partners you have had in love. People only see the "results" you have, and they'll spend about three seconds examining your case and move on. If they don't see any tangible results in you, they'll say something like: "Gee, this guy has wasted all his/her time in love without doing anything useful." Then they'll move on and never think about you again. Since nobody cares how much love you have had or how deeply you have loved, if you keep on loving in your life without doing anything useful that can show some results (say marriage or children), people will regard you as a "failure". Not only that, as time passes by you'll eventually forget all the love you've had, too. When that happens, if you don't have any tangible results people can see, not only will they treat you as a failure, you'll treat yourself as a failure, too. When you are old and all your love is gone, you'll be just like the old female cat in the musical "Cats" sitting in moonlight singing the song "Memory" in a melancholy mood reminiscing about your past grandiose love stories. But guess what?

Nobody cares. Not anymore. Even you don't care yourself anymore. So in the end you end up with nothing. That's the ending of a love junkie and why you should avoid it if possible.

Frank

無名小站's English name SUCKS!

2006-09-04T17:10:00.001+08:00

Just saw an article touting a hybrid blogging-social networking-photo book website in Taiwan called "無名小站". See "http://news.chinatimes.com/Chinatimes/Moment/newfocus-index/0,3687,9509040381+0+0+164121+0,00.html" for the article.

無名小站 is crazy because its English name is "wretch" (the website is "wretch.cc"). Do you know what "wretch" means in English? The following definition is from Answers.com:

wretch (rĕch) pronunciation
n.

1. A miserable, unfortunate, or unhappy person.
2. A person regarded as base, mean, or despicable: “a stony adversary, an inhuman wretch” (Shakespeare).

So by adopting the name "wretch", does 無名小站 imply that anyone who posts on it is a wretch? I bet this is a gross mistake, and the person who came up with this name had bad English and he didn't even check the meaning of "wretch" carefully before anointing it as the website's name. Now, sporting this name, 無名小站 will be laughed to high heaven whenever its name is mentioned in the English world and people will burst into laughter every time they mention it.

Case closed.

Frank

Justice is the whore of the man in power (司法是當權者的妓女)

2006-09-01T09:42:00.001+08:00

Some activists are calling for civilians to send letters to the district attorneys' office to demand that they harden themselves in investigating the president's corruption scandal. See "http://udn.com/NEWS/NATIONAL/NATS1/3497033.shtml".

To which I say: what a joke. These activists don't understand that "justice" is forever the whore of the man in power, and no matter how hard they push, justice will forever stay a whore and serve its "master". The people in justice will never harden themselves and fight the man in power, because he is their employer and if they were to fight against him, he will fire them and hire a new bunch of justice people who obey him and let him continue to fuck justice. That's why these activists are so naive and callow because they think by sending letters to the district attorneys' office they can change the composition of justice. Impossible. Justice is a whore and will forever be a whore. She is willing to be fucked by the man in power at any time and however frequently. Not only that, at times the man in power invites his friends to fuck justice with him so that they can engage in a sort of an "orgy" (group sex) and benefit from fucking justice together. That's the real face of justice and why you should never attempt to improve it.

After all, a whore one day is a whore forever, right?

Frank

王菲 didn't realize the world is cruel and realistic, and that's why she ran into trouble

2006-08-30T13:10:00.000+08:00

I have one more comment on 王菲, and that is that she didn't realize the world is cruel and realistic, and that's why she ran into trouble. She is a big star, and she must have thought: "I am a big star. Everybody loves me. I have been lucky so far in my life, and I'll continue to be lucky. Even if I smoke while I'm pregnant, it's fine. It won't impact the baby, and I don't have to worry at all. I will give birth to the most beautiful and lovely baby in the world, and she will make me even more popular." Or something like that. That's why she exhibited such a "carefree" attitude and insisted on smoking during pregnancy.

Wrong. Big time. If you do something, there is always a consequence, no matter how lucky or how popular you are. Guaranteed. In 王菲's case, she did something grossly wrong, i.e., smoking during pregnancy, and that's why she is paying the price right now.

The world is cruel and realistic. Remember this and you'll do better in life.

Frank

I thought "Paris Hilton" was the name of the Hilton Hotel in Paris

2006-08-24T10:11:00.000+08:00

You know, when I first saw the name "Paris Hilton", I thought it was the name of the Hilton Hotel in Paris and not the name of a girl. It was one day in 2003, and I saw a tabloid in a supermarket with the cover story titled "Paris Hilton Sex Scandal". I was very confused and I thought to myself: "Paris Hilton sex scandal? What sex scandal can the Hilton Hotel in Paris have? There's gotta be something wrong here." To dispel my confusion, I walked closer to read the story, and that's when I found out that "Paris Hilton" was the name of the daughter of Hilton Hotel's owner and not the name of the Hilton Hotel in Paris.

It turned out that at that time, Paris Hilton's estranged ex-boyfriend had just posted their love-making video on the Internet (the video was shot when she was 18) and charged $50 USD per copy for people to download it. The Hilton family sued her ex-boyfriend, and her ex-boyfriend countersued. That's why there was a sex scandal and why all the tabloids in the US went gaga over the incident and covered it with such fanfare.

Frank

If you have $$$, good women will come to you "automagically"

2006-08-23T16:56:00.001+08:00

If you were to ask me if there is one thing in the world that impresses women like no other, I would say it is $$$. Sorry to put it so bluntly, but $$$ impress women like nothing else in the world. Really. And this applies to all women from age 18 to age 80. No exceptions. Women, by nature, desire to live a life that is materially abundant and as monetarily satisfying as possible. Women equate the willingness of their men to spend money for them to their men's love for them. Again, this applies to all women regardless of age, and there are no exceptions. While it is true that money cannot buy love, the reality is that without money you get no love. It's that simple. This is especially true for the beautiful women, because beautiful women always find a man who is rich to date and marry. Women who are not beautiful also desire to find a rich man, but they are at a competitive disadvantage compared to the beautiful women in "grabbing" the rich men. This is because rich men are always in demand from women, no matter how old the rich man is or whether he is divorced or has children. Doesn't matter. As long as he has money, he can always get a beautiful woman. No exceptions.

If you say: "Money isn't important in dating" or "many girls prefer true love to money", it means you are not experienced in dating. While it is true some girls prefer the so-called "true love" to money, such girls are definitely the minority and their number is rapidly declining. This is because "true love" is a very abstract thing, and who knows whether you will still call it true love or not 5, 10, 20 years from now? Better jettison any desire for true love in exchange for something that is more practical, something you can see and touch and know it can translate into all the comfortable material life in the world.

$$$.

That's why instead of bending yourself to a woman and begging for love, a strategy that is 10,000 times better is to focus on making money because once you have money, the good women will come to you "automagically" and you don't even need to ask.

Frank

PS: Automagically = Automatically + Magically.

Paris Hilton is sexy and wild, and her father is the owner of the Hilton Hotel

2006-08-23T15:46:00.001+08:00

Paris Hilton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Hilton) is America's most famous party girl. She is sexy and beautiful, and she is very, very wild. She is the oldest child of Rick Hilton, owner of the Hilton Hotel chain. As such, she is the heiress of the Hilton Hotel empire once Rick Hilton retires or dies. Her net worth is estimated to be $30 million USD (meaning that her father has given her $30 million USD), and because she is so rich, she lives a "freewheeling" lifestyle with no tomorrow. She dates the most handsome men, single or married, in the world, and she drinks heavily and uses drugs. Her ex-boyfriend posted their love-making video on the Internet and charged $50 USD per download. She takes her father's private jet to travel coast-to-coast (i.e. between America's west coast and east coast) to attend the best parties in the country. She is an actor (both TV and movies), model, and singer. In fact, she has just released her first album titled "Paris" yesterday (http://www.parishiltonrecord.com/). And guess what? She has teamed up with YouTube.com, the world's most popular video-sharing website, to promote her music video. Visit YouTube.com and you can see her video on the right side.

BTW, Paris is a high-school dropout, meaning that she quit without finishing high school. Who needs a high school degree (or any degree) anyway when your father is the owner of the Hilton Hotel? :-)

Frank

All teachers depend on the system to make a living, not their originality

2006-08-22T10:05:00.000+08:00

Someone who graduated from the graduate school of Materials Science at Tsinghua University decided not to accept an offer in the Industrial Science Park in Hsinchu, Taiwan and instead chose a trainee teaching job in a high school in Southern Taiwan. See "http://mag.udn.com/mag/campus/storypage.jsp?f_ART_ID=43822" for the story.

Every time I see a news like this, I always lament about the bad choice the person has made. In the particular case of this person, he really has made a big mistake and the mistake of his lifetime by forsaking a job at the forefront of technology in the Hsinchu Science Park and taking the low-pay trainee teaching job in the high school.

Let's examine the motivation for this person to make the choice he has made. While I don't know him and don't know the specific details behind his motivation, my educated guess is that he thought an engineer job in the Hsinchu Science Park is too exhausting and too unstable because the high-tech industry is a very dynamic place, and he was afraid that if he took the engineer job and there was a shakeup in the high-tech industry, he could lose his job and could have difficulty finding another job. That's why he opted for a more stable teaching job with lower pay because he deemed such a job to possess more career security and thus more likely to last for a longer period of time.

To which I say: stupid. What this guy did was essentially trading off an opportunity to seat himself at the leading edge of technology and do something innovative and useful for a job that teaches high school students math and physics, a job that requires him to stand behind a podium eight hours a day and raise his voice to explain the nuts-and-bolts of elementary math and physics to students. He forsook a chance to harness the knowledge he had learned in graduate school, the specialized knowledge he had acquired assiduously in materials science, to make an impact in the high-tech industry and to prove himself. Instead, at the doormat of the palace of high-tech he got scared and backtracked into a city in Southern Taiwan and found a teaching job in a second-rate high school. That's what he did because he thought the teaching job was more stable and could give him a salary that varied less and was more smooth-looking on the surface. That's why he sacrificed a career in high-tech for a teaching job.

That's really stupid. What the guy didn't realize is that he has just chosen a career path that relies on the "system" to make him a living. A teacher is bound by the education system in making a living because teaching is fundamentally not a job that requires innovation and creativity. What a high school teacher does is follow the textbooks and explain the principles of basic knowledge to students day after day and year after year. A teacher does not have to innovate and find better ways to do things like engineers do. Engineers, by nature of their job, are on a constant quest for better ways to do things so that the products they design can have more functionality and cost less. An engineer is required to always "burn his brain's oil" in finding better ways to design a product, and he needs to constantly innovate and brainstorm so as to fulfill the requests placed upon him by his company and his supervisor. An engineer has to use his creativity to solve problems and find solutions. Because an engineer's job requires him to innovate and "think out of the box" so as to succeed in his job, he relies less on the "system" to make money. If he does not like his company or feels that his company is dealing him an underhand or mistreating him, he can always leave and find another job in another company. An engineer has this kind of freedom because he possesses specialized knowledge that is sought after by other companies in high tech. If one company doesn't treat him well, he can always leave and find another better company. This is what a lot of engineers do in their careers by "jumping around" in the high-tech industry.

On the other hand, teachers do not possess this kind of freedom in changing jobs. The educational firmament is a very "static" field in that it doesn't change much and exhibits more or less constant employment year after year. Teachers are not required to constantly innovate and refresh their knowledge like engineers do. In order to change jobs, a teacher has to apply to another school, which is bound by regulations issued by the ministry of education on how many teachers it can employ and when it can open another position. Because it is difficult for teachers to change jobs, teachers have a more or less "inertial" mentality, and they treat their jobs like a million dollars because they know if they lose their jobs, it would be very difficult for them to find another job in another school. The totality of the inertial mentality of teachers makes them rely on the system to make money in that nobody dares to be too innovative or too outstanding and nobody dares to not obey the rules in the system, because they know the educational field values equality and doesn't like "heroes". Because teachers aren't required to exhibit creativity in their jobs, the only way they can climb up and advance in their careers is through seniority. An important requirement for a teacher to advance in his career is how well he has obeyed the rules and executed the orders issued by his supervisors. Since obedience plays such an important role in a teacher's career advancement, everybody obeys the rules gingerly and nobody dares to break them. So in the end, every teacher turns himself into a passive follower and forsakes his creativity and originality for what he perceives as a career that is static and stable and can last long. That's why all teachers depend on the system to make a living and not their originality.

Frank

The future of video is bound by the lack of content, not by the lack of storage

2006-08-21T17:58:00.000+08:00

By now, it is becoming clear that the future of video is bound by the lack of content, not by the lack of storage. What this means is that in the future, owing to the availability of massive storage, no matter how much video content you have, future technologies can always store it effectively. Under this circumstance, the proliferation of video is bound by not having enough content out there and not by not having enough space to store the content.

The reason I made the above assertion was triggered by Sony's recent announcement that it has begun shipping 50 GB double-sided Blu-ray discs to consumers. See "http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2162583/sony-ships-50gb-blu-ray-disc" for details. Blu-ray is the next-generation DVD technology that can store 25 GB of data on one side of a disc and 50 GB on two sides. It got its name by using the blue laser to etch patterns on the surface of a disc to record data instead of the red laser used by today's DVD technology. Since the blue laser has a higher frequency and smaller wavelength than the red laser, it creates a finer "pitch" on the surface of the disc, resulting in higher storage density and more capacity. Although the initial price of Sony's 50 GB Blu-ray disc is prohibitive ($48 USD per disc), mass production and widespread consumer adoption will drive down the price quickly, and Blu-ray discs are expected to completely phase out and replace existing DVD discs in three to five years.

Which brings me to my point: with the amount of storage available on optical media increasing at a rapid pace, there will be no lack of storage available for video content in the future. The 50 GB Blu-ray disc can store 10x the amount of data (4.7 GB) of a DVD disc today, and future technologies after Blu-ray is expected to exhibit a similar ratio of increase in capacity over the previous generation. For example, Sony already has a 200 GB Blu-ray "super disc" working in its labs. Such a disc can store the entire data on a state-of-the-art hard disk today and is only a few millimeters thick. The 200 GB super disc will be introduced in three years and is expected to completely replace anything before in five to seven years. By then, we will have the capability to store 40x the amount of data of a DVD disc today on one such super disc. Since each DVD disc can store up to two hours of standard TV video, each 200 GB super disc will be able to store up to 80 hours of video.

WOW!

My question is: with such massive storage capacity on the horizon, do you have enough video content to fill it up? Say you have recorded some home video of your kids. Do you have 80 hours of video to fill up one 200 GB super disc? And that's just one disc. Such a super disc will be "dirt cheap" seven years from now, and one box will contain 25 discs like it does today. Since each disc can store 80 hours of video, 25 discs can store 2,000 hours of video. Do you have 2,000 hours of home video to fill up one box of these super discs? I bet few people do. And what about the technologies we will have 10, 20, 30 years from now? We will be able to store terabytes (TBs; 1 TB = 1,000 GB) of data on one disc, and it's almost unimaginable anyone will have enough video content to fill up one box of these discs. That's why I said that in the future, no matter how much video content you have, you can always find enough space to store it, and the future of video is bound by the lack of content and not by the lack of storage.

Frank

"Good" people have a thin face, and that's why they don't climb up

2006-08-21T17:57:00.001+08:00

"Good" people are the people who have morality, who possess virtues, who abide by the law, and who respect others. Conventional wisdom tells us that good people are what we should strive to become. It says that good people are our role models and we should admire them and learn from them. It encourages us to eulogize the good people and publicize their deeds so that more people will become good people.

However, if you look around, you'll find that the people at the top of the socioeconomic strata are all not good people. The people at the top of the socioeconomic strata not only break the law, but they pretend to respect others while disdaining others intensely in private. They have anything but morality and virtues, and they treat these two qualities as "road bumps" on their way to success. In short, if you look around, you'll find that the people at the top of the socioeconomic strata are anything but good people. How did this happen? Why is this the case?

To which I say: it's by no means strange, amigo. The reason what you observe and what conventional wisdom tells you are different is because conventional wisdom is wrong. Dead wrong. Conventional wisdom tells us that we should strive to become good people, and if we do, we will be rewarded by the society. Nothing can be farther from the truth. The truth is that good people almost never climb up to the top of the social pyramid. Good people almost always stay at the bottom levels of the social pyramid because they have a thin face. That's why they are good people and why they don't success in life. Good people's thin face makes them easily get shy or embarrassed, and they typically have a "soft" heart that is either too sympathetic or too indecisive. Good people's thin face makes them abide by the law because they don't have the "guts" to break the law. Good people's thin face gives them morality and virtues because if they don't behave so, they would feel guilty and feel that they are committing a hidden sin or hurting their "hidden morality" (Yin1 De2). Because good people have a thin face, they are not aggressive in life or proactive in chasing what they want. They may want something to death, but they don't dare to express their desire overly unless someone goes prick them and ask them what they want. Only at this time would they dare to express their true thoughts. They are not leaders in a group because they are not empowered and don't possess the "follow me" attitude that is essential for a leader. Good people are usually followers in a group, and they often follow the leader of the group and admire him, wishing secretly in their hearts that someday they would become just like him but backtracking when the opportunity comes and starting acting like a follower again. That's what good people are. They are like the "sheep" that are ever so silent, not because they don't have a voice but because they are shy to express that voice. Because good people have a thin face, they are always ruthlessly "cornered" and "slaughtered" by the bad people, the leaders who pretend to have a nice heart but possess the darkest heart in the world. That's why good people often stay at the lower levels of the society and don't climb up.

Because their thin face hamstrings them and prevents them from doing so.

Frank

I don't want respect, I just want to make money

2006-08-18T10:24:00.000+08:00

Jim Cramer is my hero. He is a former Wall Street superstar and an author and a TV and radio talk show host. You can find more information about him at "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cramer".

I used to subscribe to RealMoney.com, an investment website co-founded by Cramer. When I was reading an article written by him a while ago, I ran into a sentence he wrote: "I don't want respect, I just want to make money", and I was screaming to myself: "Jesus Fucking Christ, Cramer! You are my hero! Forever!"

(BTW, I first learned of the phrase "Jesus Fucking Christ" from Cramer as well. You won't believe how much people on Wall Street curse. :-)

I have always admired Cramer and treated him as my role model, and when I read this motto of his, my love for him went into overdrive. Yes, in order to make money we have to let go of wanting respect from other people. Respect is "face", and how much is your face worth? I mean, making money is always difficult, no matter what you do or what profession you are in. In such a circumstance, you should be willing to forgo almost anything in the name of making money, let alone your face. Face is worth nothing, let me tell you. If you look around, you'll see that the people who have made big money all have a "thick" face. No matter how much you criticize them or call their names or say bad things about them, they ignore and charge ahead in their drive to make money. This is the right attitude. You shouldn't let anyone or anything stop you from making money, and if that requires you to lose the respect other people have for you, so be it. Once you have money, those people who called your names and looked down on you will exhibit a completely different attitude and will come to you and admire you and tell you that they want to learn from you. That's the way it is and that's why Cramer said that he didn't want respect and instead just wanted to make money.

Because money is respect, stupid.

Frank

There are good women everywhere, but can you afford them?

2006-08-17T15:16:00.001+08:00

Every day when I go to lunch, I always see a few good women in the streets, women who are young, good-looking, slim, tall, sweet, etc. These women are the so-called "good women" by conventional wisdom. Good women are highly sought after by men in dating and relationship. Of course, "good" is highly subjective, but there seems to be a widely applied "metric" in men's minds as to what women are the most popular and desirable. These women are what I refer to as "good women" in this article.

Given that good women can be easily seen in the streets on any given day, there is definitely no shortage of such women available. However, there being such women is one thing, and how to make them love you is quite another. Why? Because good women are always expensive and they always require a lot of time and effort to get. This being the case, if you are a man and you want to get a good woman, you have to sit down and seriously think whether you can afford her or not.

Why are good women expensive? Simple. It can be explained by economics. Because good women are highly desirable by men, they naturally command a higher "price" in love. Men are willing to pay more to get the love of a good woman compared to the love of a not-so-good woman. From a good woman's point of view, she knows that she is worth more in love and if a man doesn't want to pay to get her love, she can always find another man who is willing to pay and give her love to that man. This is why a good woman possesses "pricing power" in love, i.e., the ability to raise her "price" in love so as to demand more from a man who wants to get her love. This is just simple economics, and it's just natural.

In my life so far, I have never seen a good woman who is not expensive. (Women who are not good can also be expensive depending on how they perceive their value in love to be, but that's another matter.) That's why if you are a man and if you want to make a good woman love you, you'd be better off stop worrying how to find such a woman and start worrying how you can afford her once you find her.

Frank

Video will spur the next revolution on the Internet

2006-08-17T10:02:00.001+08:00

By now, it is clear that video will spur the next revolution on the Internet. The Web as we know it began its life in 1994 with the launch of the Netscape browser. In the past decade, we have had several breakthroughs on the Internet. We had the Web portals like Yahoo!, Excite, and MSN. We had Java and XML, two popular computer languages used to program the Web. We had eCommerce and B2B (business-to-business) websites. We had online auction and auction sites such as eBay. And of course, we had search engines such as Lycos, AltaVista, Inktomi, and Google, with Google being the singular "force" that has revolutionized how we access information on the Web. These are the breakthroughs we have had on the Internet in the past decade.

Today, the Internet has been built up to the point where its speed is adequate for transmitting data such as documents, emails, and digital photos. The Internet we have today has a speed that can transmit these data reasonably fast and in a decent amount of time. However, the Internet we have today still struggles to transmit video due to the daunting technical challenges of transmitting video on the Internet. As such, it is becoming clear that video will drive the evolution of the Internet and spur the next revolution on it.

Video has two properties that make it particularly difficult to transmit online while being watched in real-time and preserve the quality of the transmission. These two properties are the high-bandwidth requirement and continuous nature of video. Video requires a high bandwidth to be transmitted over the Internet because in the real world, video is very data intensive. For example, the NTSC TV system used in the US and Taiwan has a frame rate of 29.97 frames per second, which means every second 29.97 frames of images are shown in succession with slight differences in object positions so as to "fool" the human visual system into thinking the video is playing. If each frame has a resolution of 640x480 pixels (the resolution of the VGA graphics standard), this amounts to a bandwidth of 9 Mbits/sec. The Internet we have today can transmit data at 9 Mbits/sec (which equals to 1.125 Mbytes/sec), but it cannot sustain this level of transmission for a prolonged period of time. The Internet can "burst" to this level of bandwidth transiently, but the bandwidth quickly falls off and settles to a lower level. Because the existing Internet has difficulty sustaining video transmission at a high bandwidth, video that is transmitted over the Internet and is watched in real time exhibits a jerky and rough display when it is played. This is the first property of video that poses a challenge for today's Internet to transmit it efficiently.

The second property of video that makes it difficult for today's Internet to transmit it efficiently is the continuous nature of video. Unlike many other data types, video exhibits an inherently continuous nature, and only when a video is played continuously without interruptions is the viewing experience satisfying and pleasant to the viewer. Due to the continuous nature of video, a video that is transmitted over the Internet and meant to be watched in real time poses daunting challenges for the underlying network in terms of the "service guarantee" that ensures the video is transmitted in a continuous and nonstop manner. The existing Internet has a "packet-based" architecture, which means that data transmitted over the Internet is first split into small packets with a fixed size and then transmitted over the Internet one by one to the destination. Because the existing Internet breaks data into packets before transmitting it, the continuous nature of video is disrupted. The packets from a transmission can arrive at the destination out of order, and the receiving computer is responsible for reassembling the packets in the right order to recreate the video. Because the existing Internet cannot guarantee the packets of a video transmission will arrive at the destination in order, extra steps must be taken to ensure that the video is transmitted in the right order and no packets are lost. Existing networking technologies can achieve this goal using a technology called "Asynchronous Transfer Mode", or ATM, but ATM technology is expensive and is typically only used in "backbone" networks. As such, most users today don't have ATM technology, and they are forced to watch video transmitted over the Internet that exhibits an unsatisfactory viewing experience. This is the status of Internet video today and why it needs improvement.

To conclude, today's Internet has difficulty transmitting video in an efficient manner that satisfies video's high-bandwidth requirement and continuous nature. The inadequacy of today's Internet in transmitting video has spawned a large effort aimed at improving video transmission over the Internet. With such a large effort underway, it can be expected that a revolution will be made that will realize efficient video transmission over the Internet and finally give viewers a satisfactory video watching experience.

Frank

The Sin City embodies the nirvana of capitalism

2006-08-15T18:00:00.000+08:00

Speaking of Las Vegas, I *love* the Sin City (the nickname of Vegas). The Sin City embodies the nirvana of capitalism, and if you have money, you can have *anything* in the Sin City. You can live as luxurious a lifestyle as you can imagine and live like a king in the Sin City if you have the money. Not only that, you can have women, sex, drugs, booze, and any other "dirty" stuff capitalism can give you, anything and everything at all in the Sin City. To me, someone who possesses a flamboyant personality and who believes that the more money, the better, every time I visit the Sin City I feel that I have arrived home and I don't want to leave! Not wanting to leave is a good thing because in recent years many houses and condos have been built in the suburbs of the Sin City just for people like me. The building frenzy started in the late 90s, at the height of the Internet stock bubble, and reached its crescendo about two years ago, with the prices of houses and condos in the Sin City having *quadrupled* in five years. Nowadays if you want to buy a house in the Sin City, chances are you can't because real estate prices there are so high, but if you have bought a few years ago, congratulations because you have made great $$$. Apparently many people love the Sin City as well, and that's why so many people have moved there and enjoy a sinful and "deliciously decadent" lifestyle.

God, make me sinful but please let me buy a house in the Sin City. :-)

Frank

Web 2.0 empowers David to take on Goliath on the Internet

2006-08-15T17:27:00.000+08:00

Web 2.0 refers to the process in which the Web is gradually transformed from a collection of web pages to a useful computing platform. What "computing platform" means is that the websites can provide "active" services that let users perform tasks such as writing documents, sharing photos, playing videos, and chatting with other users. In the Web 2.0 model, each website can create its own service from scratch or "mix and match" services from other websites to create its own service. There are a large number of Web 2.0 websites on the Internet today. A good example is PhotoBucket.com. This website lets you mix photos and videos and link them to other websites so that you can access the photos and videos from other websites. In this model, PhotoBucket.com is the service "provider" that hosts photos and videos while other websites that link to it are the service "consumers" that access the hosted photos and videos. By using PhotoBucket.com's service, a user on another website can access his/her photos and videos and "mix" these photos and videos into the service of that website. So in this sense, PhotoBucket.com provides a service that can be "plugged into" the service of another website to enrich the service at that website and provide a more colorful user experience.

The ability to "mix and match" services to create new services constitutes the core of Web 2.0. In order to create a unique new service, a website doesn't have to create the service from scratch. Instead, it can utilize the services of other websites and mix them in a unique way to create its own service. The "mix and match" nature of Web 2.0 empowers small websites to compete with giant ones in a battle that is reminiscent of the David vs. Goliath duel in biblical times. Before Web 2.0, small websites used to be at a severe disadvantage because they lacked the resources of giant websites and couldn't compete with the giant websites in terms of features and functionality. No more. In the Web 2.0 model, with the ability to mix and match services to create new services, any website, big or small, can harness any service on the Web to create its own service. In the Web 2.0 environment, small websites are not necessarily at a disadvantage in terms of competitiveness because they possess just as much power to combine services from other websites to create their own service as giant websites. An analogy is that Web 2.0 unleashes the "genie" of creativity from the box and sets all websites free to innovate by letting them harness the services from other websites to create their own unique service. As such, Web 2.0 "levels" the playing field and puts small websites on an equal competitive footing with giant websites. This is the power of Web 2.0 and why it empowers David to take on Goliath on the Internet.

Frank

Religion is a good business

2006-08-14T18:06:00.000+08:00

To continue a topic that was touched in passing by my last email, I really think that religion is a good business. Why? Because every business is measured by the ratio of "profit" over "cost", and when measured this way, religion has some of the highest ratio among all businesses. That's why religion is such a good business.

Let's dig deeper and examine both the cost and profit of religion respectively. What cost does religion have? Very little. In order to sell religion, all it takes for a person to do is receive a period of theological training. After he finishes the training, he can call himself a "priest" (or pastor or monk or imam or rabbi) and start selling religion for a living. A more diabolical and yet more direct way to sell religion for a living is to suddenly become crazy and start exhibiting a lunatic mindset and behavior. A person can suddenly fall on the floor and start vomiting white liquid from his mouth and shouting: "I hear God! I hear God!". After he climbs up, he dances in random and unpredictable ways, waving his hands and pointing them in arbitrary directions while rolling his eyeballs up and down and sideways and murmuring mysterious phrases nobody can understand. Then, he grabs a piece of paper and starts scribbling barely legible words and sentences on it. After he finishes, he suddenly wakes up from his lunacy and regains his consciousness. He then turns to the spectators and tells them that he has just been "possessed" by God, and God told him something that he has written on the paper. He then gives the paper to his believers and tells them to follow the instructions on it and receives money from them for "communicating" with God for them. This is what many self-proclaimed "messengers" of God do for a living.

What cost does it entail for a person to suddenly become crazy and enter a self-proclaimed state of delirium and start selling God in exchange for money? Nothing. Anyone can do it, as long as he has the "guts" to exhibit a schizophrenic trait before the audience and there are people who are willing to give him money in exchange for the act. Thus reasoned, religion has a very low cost indeed, and that's the first excellence of religion as a business.

Second, let's look at the profit of religion. Traditionally, the "revenue stream" in religion comes from the donations believers give to the religious organization. Every religion in existence today asks, solicits, or downright demands some form of donation from the believers. Nowadays most donations come in the form of money, but they can also come in other forms such as houses, cars, furniture, clothing, etc. In addition, modern religious practitioners often resort to more "modern" and more "direct" ways of making money. While I was in the US, I saw a pastor in a church go on TV to sell CDs of religious songs. While I assumed the proceeds of the sale would all go to the church, I couldn't help but imagine that he would keep some of the proceeds for himself. Such is the way modern religions make money. All considered, religion has a surprisingly large number of revenue streams, and that makes religion a very profitable business.

Finally, an important reason that makes religion such an attractive business and something that few other businesses have is the "agnostic" nature of religion. That is, what religion sells is only a belief, a concept, a way of thinking that is about this thing called "God" whose existence you can neither prove nor disprove. This "can't-prove-and-yet-can't-disprove" nature of religion is the most beautiful thing about it, because this way, it can forever remain in the middle, in the "limbo" between provability and disprovability, and thus it is permanent and can never be destroyed. Think about it: if you can't prove the existence of God in the first place, how can you prove that God doesn't exist, either? Since you can't prove that God doesn't exist, he is forever and gives religion a "foreverness" that none of the other businesses have. The permanent nature of religion is a big attraction to the people who depend on it to make a living, as they only need to learn one body of knowledge and can apply it again and again until they die. They don't have to refresh their knowledge or learn new skills because, heck, God is forever and unchanging, so why should I change my knowledge and learn new skills? I can just keep preaching the same sermon and use the same speech in the service again and again until I die. Think about it: I don't have to learn new skills and the money will just keep coming in! How good is it? No other business is like this, and lucky I that I chose religion as my career because it's such a good business! Thank God for having given me such a good career so I can make good and dependable money from it! There is a God after all!

See, that's why religion is such a good business. :-)

Frank

The world = Money * Sex

2006-08-14T15:51:00.000+08:00

As I get older, I really think that the world is a two-dimensional space spanned by the two axes of money and sex, i.e., the world = money * sex. In my view, money and sex are the fundamental ingredients and the "driving force" of the activities we do every day. Take career, for example. While self-realization, self-fulfilment, the desire for self-esteem and a chance to prove oneself are all important reasons why one pursuits a career, the fundamental reason of one's pursuing a career is -- you guessed right -- to make money. Yes, the purpose of career is to make money, and if you were to ask people what constitutes their most important consideration in career, most of them would tell you that it's money. Take religion as another example. Do you really think that the priests, pastors, fathers, sisters, nuns, monks, imams, rabbis, etc., all the people who practice religion for a living really care about you? Do you think they practice religion to care about you and spread the word of God (or Buddha or Mohammad), or they practice religion because it's a relatively easy way to make a living without specialized knowledge and a career path that can last long? Do you really think that if they don't get their salaries and aren't paid by their church, temple, mosque, etc., they will continue to have the willingness to practice religion and not switch to another field?

You are an idiot if you think so. Now let's talk about sex. I really think sex is the other fundamental driving force underpinning all of our activities. Take love, for example. Sex is the ultimate goal of love, as love without sex can never last long (you are an idiot if you think otherwise) and sex is the ultimate "consummation" of love. Humans, through their millions of years of evolution, have deeply embedded the desire for sex in their pursuit of love. The human brain subconsciously recognizes that when a person is seeking love, he/she is seeking sex as well and prepares him/her for sex when the time is due. The person seeking love may not know consciously what motivates him/her to do so is sex, but his/her brain subconsciously prepares him/her for the ritual of sex and instructs him/her to alter his/her behavior to engage in a "mating dance" when the time comes. The result of the human brain's subconscious search for sex in love propels the lovers to have intimate physical contact and when the time comes, bare and unite themselves in bed and start having intercourse. This is the climax of love and love's ultimate goal. I'm not suggesting that every love has sex as its motivation, but the mutual attraction between men and women pretty much "seals" sex as the driving force behind love, no matter if you like it or not. Also, I'm not saying that sexless love isn't possible -- I'm just saying that such a love can never last long. What I'm saying is that sex is the fundamental driving force of love in the majority of cases, as can be witnessed from empirical observations. Such is the statement I'm making in this article.

In this article I have mentioned only a few examples of money and sex being the fundamental driving force of the world, but if you pay attention and "drill things down" to their most basic form, you can find lots other examples of this phenomenon. Which is why I'm proclaiming that money and sex constitute the world and they exist in almost everything we do.

Frank

Bellagio Hotel's water dance show and Sarah Brightman's "Time to say goodbye"

2006-08-13T08:47:00.000+08:00

Last time I visited Vegas in May 2002, we lived in the MGM Grand Hotel, which is the world's largest hotel with 6,000 rooms. While in Vegas, we visited the Bellagio Hotel, which was Vegas' best hotel at that time (and I believe it is still Vegas' best hotel right now) and watched its world-famous water dance show. There was this large pond in front of Bellagio Hotel, and at the bottom of the pond lied an array of water-ejecting devices. The devices can be synchronized by computer so as to coordinate the pattern of their water shooting. We stood by the pond and listened to Sarah Brightman's beautiful song "Time to say goodbye" while watching the devices shooting water to the tune of the song. It was a beautiful and very memorable experience. I've seen every show performed in front of the hotels in Vegas (such as the volcano-erupting show at the Mirage and the pirate ship show at the Treasure Island), and Bellagio's water dance show is the best. In contrast to the shows at other hotels, which are fixed and cannot be changed without costly set remodeling, Bellagio's water dance show is extremely flexible. In order to change the show and perform a new act, all the hotel needs to do is to change the computer program that controls the actions of the water-ejecting devices. Once the computer program is changed, the devices will shoot water according to a new song, and voila!, a new show is born. The genius of Bellagio's water dance show is the hotel's prescience of having this idea of making a show that can be changed in an instant and thus possesses infinite variations. This prevents the audience from getting bored of the show, and they will keep coming back to the show again and again to watch an entirely new show. This is the genius of Bellagio Hotel's water dance show and why it is so famous.

Frank

PS: Bellagio Hotel is the hotel featured in George Glooney and Brad Pitt's movie "Ocean's 11". It was featured in the movie because it was the newest and most luxurious hotel in Vegas at that time. The movie depicts a heist performed by a bunch of thieves trying to break into the Bellagio's underground vault and steal the large sums of cash stowed there. Highly recommended.

"Stardust" (星塵) reminds me of the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas

2006-08-13T00:43:00.000+08:00

Every time I hear the world "stardust", it reminds me of the Stardust Hotel (http://www.stardustlv.com/) in Las Vegas. Stardust Hotel is one of the most venerable hotels in Vegas. It was build a long time ago, and although it can't compete with newer hotels such as the MGM Grand, the Bellagio, or the Aladdin in terms of luxury or amenities, it is still a respected hotel and is one of Vegas' most famous hotels. Stardust Hotel is featured in the 1995 movie "Showgirls" that depicts the lives of Las Vegas showgirls. The movie traces the ascent of a hooker named "Nomi Malone", who was ambitious and eager to make a living in Vegas as a showgirl. Malone worked her way up in Vegas using her body as the biggest weapon to please her clients and her boss and eventually ended up as the "goddess" in a topless show at the Stardust Hotel. That's how famous the Stardust Hotel is.

Personally, I've been to Vegas four times, but I've never lived at the Stardust Hotel. I lived at the MGM Grand in 2002 and Circus Circus in 1996, but I forgot the names of the two lesser-known motels we lived at in 1995 and 1997, which were located on Paradise Boulevard and not on Las Vegas Boulevard, also known as the "Strip" and which is the main street in Vegas. Will I live at Stardust Hotel the next time I visit Vegas?

Nah. It's too old and isn't that fashionable anyway. I prefer one of Vegas' newer hotels such as the Bellagio, currently Vegas' best hotel or the Venetian, an up-and-comer that is quickly earning a reputation as one of Vegas' most luxurious hotels. (The Venetian got its name from the Italian city of Venice, and "Venetian" practically means "a person who lives in Venice". In order to substantiate its claim of enabling customers to experience the Venice lifestyle, the Venetian built a canal in front of the hotel to reminisce customers of Venice. Customers can ride on a boat in the canal and also dine in nearby cafes alongside the canal. Highly recommended.)

Frank

When all the stardust (星塵) settles, you still have to face reality

2006-08-12T20:49:00.000+08:00

In my life so far, I have learned that reality is the "gravitational force" that nobody can avoid. No matter how smart you are, how aggressive you are, how highly educated you are, or how lucky you are, you can never avoid reality indefinitely and will have to face it sooner or later. You may be able to shun reality temporarily and live in a "castle" erected by yourself, and you may build a "moat" around this castle that doesn't have a bridge over it so that you can convince yourself this way, reality won't suddenly appear out of nowhere in the middle of the night and walk squarely over the bridge and come knocking on your door. Once reality is out of your way, you figure, you can just let go of all of your practical concerns and "plunge" yourself into a "dreamy" lifestyle in which you can just keep your eyes wide shut and start conjuring up all kinds of beautiful dreams, hopes, and expectations to your heart's content. Once reality is out of your way, you figure, you live in a world that is "carefree" and you have nothing to worry about. You don't have to worry about tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, or the day after that, etc., and you can keep being "idealistic" and wishing that the world was really like it is in your dream and that the dream you have erected for yourself was really what the world is outside your dream.

Unfortunately, the "balloon" of the beautiful dreams you weaved for yourself eventually bursts, and after you have indulged yourself in the most reckless lifestyle in the world and daydreamed to your heart's content, you still have to wake up and face reality after all the stardust settles. Reality eventually sets in and starts nibbling at you. It may start doing so slightly as small nuisances. It may knock on your mental door and remind you of something that you haven't done, or it may whisper a few words in your ear about a concern you have that has kept bothering you. If you heed reality's call and let go of your resistance and self-esteem and bow down and do what it tells you to, it will go away quickly as soon as you have obeyed its edict and finished what it has told you to do. However, if you were to not obey its instructions and deny its orders, reality would morph itself from a mosquito that is humming around you and needling your skin into the most ferocious beast in the world and start lunging at you and devouring you. The speed with which reality can undergo this transformation is startlingly fast, and by the time you realize the sins you have committed by ignoring reality's call and repeatedly putting it in the back of your mind and wishing that it would go away silently this way, it's too late. By this time, reality has multiplied its strength, feeding itself off of the mistakes you have made by not paying attention to it earlier, and it has built itself into a "fireball" whose perimeter is ever expanding and looking dangerously close to devouring you alive. When this happens, there is nothing you can do as you are past the "point of no return" where you could have had a chance to negotiate with reality and gently whittle down its force. Fool you that you didn't take the chance and resolve the matter genially so as to strike peace with reality. Now, look at you, bare-handed, stunned, stupefied, and having to fight reality's rouge wave without even a life boat to buoy you from the water and give you a glimmer of a chance to survive. What can you do?

Nothing but die.

That's the consequence you face for not heeding reality's call in the first place, because no matter what you do, when all is said and done and when all the stardust settles, you still have to face reality.

Frank

Pepsi > Coke

2006-08-12T01:47:00.000+08:00

Just found out to my great surprise that Pepsi has a larger market cap than Coke as of today. See "http://finance.google.com/finance?q=ko+pep&hl=en". I have always thought that Coke is the "king" of soft drinks and Pepsi is the "little brother". Apparently this is not the case and Pepsi is actually the "older brother" while Coke is the "younger brother".

I prefer Coke anyway. I need to drink Coke (the original flavor) every day so as to make me "high" and "anesthetize" me, no matter how temporarily, to the grayness and depressing nature of the world. Caffeine has its use, after all.

Where is my Coke fix today so I can be high again? :-)

Frank

The more Wall Street tells you not to buy Google, the more you should buy

2006-08-11T17:14:00.000+08:00

Why? Because Wall Street doesn't want you to make money. Wall Street doesn't want you to be able to make money on your own. Wall Street wants you to entrust your money to them, to the fund managers and traders sothat they can manage your money for you. Think about it: if you could make money on your own, why would you need Wall Street to help you make money anymore and if this is the case, how could Wall Street make money by sucking the commissions/transaction fees from you?

Don't be a fool: if you think that Wall Street wants you to make money and to become rich, that all the stock analysts/commentators/managers/consultants are there to help you make money, you are an idiot. Why?

Because nobody wants you to make money except yourself. It's that simple.

Frank

Google is not just a great company, it's a miracle

2006-08-11T14:36:00.000+08:00

Google is generally regarded as the greatest company in the history of mankind. The company earned this acclaim through its amazing innovation, great products, creative culture, and free gourmet food (Google provides free breakfast, lunch, and dinner for all its employees). These days almost anyone knows that Google is a great company, but Google's greatness actually transcends that of a great company and into the realm of a miracle. If you have in-depth knowledge about Google, you know what I mean and chances are you agree with me. If you don't have in-depth knowledge about Google, I will enumerate the reasons why Google is such a great company below, and after learning the reasons, chances are you will agree with me that Google is indeed a miracle.

In its history, Google has achieved several stunning feats few companies have ever achieved before: it introduced a revolutionary technology at a time when it had no competitors, its founders received funding from one of the world's most famous "angel" investors, the founders were able to convince two of Silicon Valley's most prominent venture capital firms that don't split deals to split the deal and co-invest in Google, and finally Google achieved profitability with amazing speed after starting its operations. Each of these feats is extremely difficult to achieve on its own, and when you consider that Google has somehow managed to achieve all of these, you can call it nothing but a miracle.

Google had a revolutionary technology when it introduced its search engine in Fall 1999. Google's technology was able to sort the billions of web pages that formed the Web according to their "relevance", a mathematical value that was calculated by solving a large number of equations. The number of equations solved was so large that it was in the billions. Google was able to find a way to formulate the relevance of web pages in precise mathematical terms and solve the resulting billions of equations efficiently. With Google's search engine, users could quickly find the web pages that contained exactly the information they were looking for, which no other search engine could do at the time. This is the first feat Google has achieved in its history.

When Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin first came up with Google's technology when they were graduate students at Stanford University, they resorted to their advisers to see if they could help introduce investors in the technology to commercialize it. Their advisers introduced Andy Bechtolsheim to them. Bechtolsheim is a world-renowned "angel" investor and former co-founder of Sun Microsystems. Bechtolsheim wrote a check of $100,000 USD to Page and Brin in the fall of 1998, and he became the first investor in Google. Bechtolsheim's investment in Google was worth around $500 million USD in early 2005 after Google went public in August 2004 and its stock skyrocketed, which is an increase of 5000 times in less than 7 years. Were it not through their advisers, Page and Brin couldn't have had the opportunity to befriend Bechtolsheim, as ordinary entrepreneurs all but have no access to such a world-renowned investor, let alone entrepreneurs who were still graduate students when they sought funding. This is the second feat Google has achieved in its history.

As Google's technology matured in early 1999 and it was burning through the cash invested by the early angel investors, its founders decided to take funding from a venture capital firm and they approached Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital, two of Silicon Valley's most prominent venture capital firms. Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital are such prominent VC firms that they normally don't split deals. What that means is that if an entrepreneur approaches either of these firms and asks for funding, if the firm decides to invest in the company it would want to be the sole VC firm that does so. It wouldn't want to share the deal with any other VC firm. This is what Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital normally do. Nonetheless, Google's technology was so revolutionary that after seeing a demo, both these firms agreed to invest in Google and split the deal. They invested $25 million USD in Google in June 1999 (which is, by the way, all the VC money Google has ever taken). This is the third feat Google has achieved in its history.

The fourth and final feat Google has achieved in its history is that it formally launched in September 1999 and by April 2001, a mere 19 months later, it had already broken even and started to make a profit. Google set a record of speed to profitability at that time as never before had there been an Internet company that had started to make money barely more than a year and a half after it was launched. Google's astonishing speed to profitability attested to the excellence of its sales team (which was anchored by Omid Kordestani, Google's senior vice president of sales and an Iranian immigrant, who was paid more than $200 million USD in 2005 from his stock options and who was the HIGHEST PAID COMPUTER EXECUTIVE IN THE WORLD) and its revolutionary technology. This is the final feat Google has achieved in its history.

When you combine all the feats Google has achieved above, you can only sit in amazement and wonder how Google could have achieved all of this short of being a miracle. That's why Google is not just a great company, it's a miracle.

Frank

Google's CEO wrote the "lex" tool in computer science

2006-08-11T14:35:00.000+08:00

Sorry to bother you again, but do you know that Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, wrote the classic "lex" tool used in computer science when he was a Ph.D. student at Berkeley? If you are a computer science major, you must have used or heard about lex (along with another tool called "yacc", which is a complement to lex), right? Otherwise, your professor should have flunked you. :-) Anyway, I just wanted to mention that Schmidt wrote lex when he was a Ph.D. student, and he along with Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are all "technocrats" in that they all have deep technical background in computer science. (Page and Brin were Ph.D. students in computer science at Stanford University when they quit to found Google.)

The citation for Schmidt's original lex paper is as follows:

M. E. Lesk & E. Schmidt, "Lex -- A Lexical Analyzer Generator" in UNIX Programmer's Manual 2, AT&T Bell Laboratories (1975)

Google's leaders' technical background is why the company has kept innovating its technology at a relentless pace. It is widely acknowledged that Google has built the world's largest distributed computer system consisting of some 500,000 servers. This system poses a huge entry barrier to Google's competitors because none of Google's competitors can build a system as large and as powerful as Google's and yet with as little cost as Google. This is why it is generally acknowledged that Google holds anywhere from a three-year to a five-year lead over its competitors in terms of compute infrastructure.

Frank

Washington Post article on Google AdSense

2006-08-10T13:41:00.000+08:00

The Washington Post, the newspaper serving America's capital, Washington DC, has just published an article on a new model of making money online using Google AdSense, Google's contextual advertising system, which provides ads on websites that correlate to the content of the site. You can find the article at "http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/27/AR2006072701622.html".

Google AdSense is the "force" that is revolutionizing the Web right now (and has been doing so since it was introduced in 2003) by enabling individual websites to display ads that are highly targeted to the content of the site. Every time a user clicks on such an ad, Google shares the revenue the advertiser pays it with the website. This revenue sharing model is what inspires millions of websites on the Internet to display ads using Google AdSense. Google AdSense has enabled Internet entrepreneurs to not take venture capital when they found their business and instead rely on ad revenue to sustain the operations of their business. This is why Google AdSense is so popular with Internet entrepreneurs and why it's called the "modern alchemy" that can transform a plain website into a cash-earning machine.

Frank

With Writely, Google began its quest for ubiquitous access

2006-08-09T09:59:00.000+08:00

Writely (writely.com) is Google's online word processor. "Online" means that Writely runs completely within your Web browser and you don't need any other software to run it except your browser. Because of this, Writely can be accessed wherever there is an Internet connection. Writely enables you to store the documents you write online so that you can access them anywhere. Writely is free and offers a subset of the features of MS Word. While Writely doesn't yet offer the bells and whistles of MS Word, its feature set is reasonable for general writing and constitutes a decent word processor.

With Writely, Google began its quest for ubiquitous access. Google aims to use Writely and another product called "Google Spreadsheets", which is an online spreadsheet, to drastically change the model in which we access software and documents. The traditional access model of software, one that has been in use since the dawning of the PC, is the so-called local usage model. That is, the software is installed on the local PC, and we access it by invoking it from the local hard disk. In the pre-Internet era of personal computing, the local usage model was the only choice as users didn't have any way to invoke the software from a network because of the lack of a robust networking infrastructure. The local usage model of software has been in use for the past 20 years and is generally regarded to work well and meet users' expectations.

However, with the dawning of the Internet and the arrival of broadband networking, the shortcomings of the local usage model gradually became apparent. Chief among these shortcomings is that once you install the software on a PC, you can only access it on that machine. The same applies to the documents you store on the PC. Therefore, you lose "ubiquitous access" with the local usage model as you can't access the software and documents wherever you go. For example, if you write a document in office and store it on your office PC, you can't access the document at home because the document isn't physically stored on your home PC. Nowadays some companies offer workers a way to connect to the office compute system from home and access the documents stored on office computers, but what if you wanted to access the documents through Wi-Fi while waiting for a flight at the airport? Or what if you wanted to access the documents anywhere in the world? The drawback of the local usage model is that once you install the software and store the documents on a local computer, it is difficult to free the spatial constraint and enable the software and documents to be accessible anywhere. While existing technologies can achieve part of the goal and enable a sort of "quasi-ubiquitous" access, to achieve true ubiquitous access in which every document you write can be accessed everywhere, a drastically new model of software usage is needed that breaks down the space barrier and enables true ubiquitous access.

Enter Google and Writely, and we have a nascent implementation of such an ubiquitous access model. What Writely offers is a word processor that runs completely within your Web browser and enables you to store the documents you write online and share them with anyone you specify. Once the documents are stored online, you can access them anywhere there is an Internet connection. Sharing is a major strength of the ubiquitous access model because once you finish writing a document, all you need to do to share it with someone is to click a button and the document is published and made available for viewing. Another strength of the ubiquitous access model is that the service provider backs up the documents so that they are safe from hard disk crashes and other hazards associated with the local usage model. Google intends to make the services it provides in the ubiquitous access model free of charge and support the services by online advertising. The free nature of ubiquitous access is the "killer" feature that will attract millions of users to the services and use them. This is Google's plan and how it intends to provide ubiquitous access in the future.

Of course, ubiquitous access also has its disadvantages, and as it stands right now, these disadvantages are inadequate network bandwidth and relatively rudimentary software implementations compared to the local usage model. However, networks are becoming faster and faster, and the software implemented in the ubiquitous access model is rapidly becoming more sophisticated and more powerful. It can be foreseen that in the future, once Google fully rolls out its ubiquitous access services, the local usage model will be gradually replaced by the ubiquitous access model. Once the transition completes, we will live in a world where every document is accessible everywhere there is an Internet connection, and the constraint posed by space will no longer constitute a barrier to our information access and dissemination.

What a perfect world.

Frank

PS: As you might guess, the original document of this article was written using Writely and stored online. I have enabled the document for sharing and it can be viewed at "http://www.writely.com/View.aspx?docid=ddqp8pjx_18hn42nt". Such is the power of ubiquitous access.

Give your woman both candy and spanking to make her love you

2006-08-09T07:18:00.000+08:00

If you are a man and you were to ask me the question: "How to make a woman love me?", my answer would be: "Give her candy and pamper her most of the time, but remember to give her a spanking occasionally to remind her who is the boss."

Pampering a woman is absolutely necessary to make her love you. Women like to be pampered so as to make them feel like a baby. Every woman likes to be pampered, no matter how old she is. Women like to be pampered because they are very dependent, and they like to be spoiled like a child by the men they love. They like to hear your sweet words, receive your flowers and regular phone calls, get surprise gifts from you, and receive strong sex from you when they feel like it. That's why in order to make a woman love you, you have to do everything mentioned above and more (be creative). The totality of things you do to pamper a woman is called the "candy". This is why in order to make a woman love you, it is absolutely necessary to give her candy so she knows that you love her.

However, if you were to give a woman candy 100% of the time and never say a harsh word to her or give her any penalty when she does something wrong, she will start to dislike you. She will start to think how come even if I become as mischievous as this you still won't discipline me to let me know that I have done something wrong. Then, she is going to become even more mischievous and start trashing you. Women exhibit this kind of behavior because they typically possess little self-control, and if you were to just sit there and do nothing when your woman starts to get mischievous and trespass the due bounds, she will start to "climb on top of your head and piss on it". When this happens, you immediately lose your "hero" status within her, and she won't like you anymore. As a first rule in relationship, you should never lose your "hero" status within a woman if you want her to love you. That's why you shouldn't give a woman candy all the time. Instead, you have to give her a "spanking" from time to time to remind her who is the boss and that if she does something inappropriate, she will be disciplined by you. Think your woman will be mad at you and start disliking you after you discipline her? Wrong. Big time. She will think that you care about her, and that's why you disciplined her, and she'll love you even more afterwards. That's why in order to make your woman love you, it's absolutely necessary to give her a spanking from time to time.

In short, if you want your woman to love you, be sure to give her both candy and spanking. Ignore either one of these, and your love will go away in no time.

Frank

Treat the world as having cancer and thus incurable

2006-08-08T20:50:00.000+08:00

Yet another way to paraphrase the point my last email was trying to make is that you should treat the world as having cancer and thus incurable. This way, you won't try to make the world a better place, and you won't be frustrated as a result.

If you ask me, I say the world has terminal cancer, and the chance it can be cured is zero. That's why I never try to make the world a better place, and that's why I'm so happy. :-)

Frank

Focus on relentless self-advancement, not on making the world a better place

2006-08-08T18:26:00.000+08:00

A conclusion that can be derived from my last email is that focusing on self-advancement, i.e., how to improve your own fortune, is more rewarding than focusing on trying to make the world a better place. In focusing on self-advancement, you take control of your own destiny. You take your fate into your own hands and do your best to improve it. With self-advancement, you spend your effort on the place where it exhibits the highest ROI (return on investment). Once you improve your fortune and give yourself a better life, you own the world and you can do anything you want. You get money, fame, love, and everything else by focusing on self-advancement. Such is the power of self-advancement.

On the other hand, trying to make the world a better place has decidedly low ROI and is a sucker's pursuit. People who are naive and innocent often dream of making the world a better place. However, the cruel reality is that naive and innocent people often lack "empowerment", and they are constantly bothered by the messy nature of the world. They feel that they can't survive in such a messy world, and they can't help but want to improve the world because they lack the self-control to stay away from the mess and instead focus on their own business. This is why naive and Innocent people, also known as the "good people", often possess the desire to change the world and make it better.

The world, being the mess it is, is impossible to be changed by any person alone, so trying to change the world is a dangerous pursuit. Besides, there are people in the world who want to keep things the way they are so that they can profit from it. Most of these people are in the elite class of society, and they constitute the "Big Money" and "Big Power" who want to keep the status quo because they have a vested interest in doing so. They want to keep things as is or even make them worse so that they can profit from it. Think about it: if everything goes according to rules and everyone abides by the law, how can there be any opportunity left for Big Money and Big Power to "screw up" things and profit? In order to profit, Big Money and Big Power have to screw things up and make everything a mess so that they can have more opportunities among this mess to profit from. This is why the society's most elite class has a strong interest in keeping the world a mess so that they can keep profiting from it.

And this is why trying to make the world a better place is a gratuitous pursuit under the vast majority of circumstances. Unless you deem yourself so powerful that you can "outmatch" Big Money and Big Power in the game they invented for themselves and win, you shouldn't ponder making the world a better place with any seriousness. Instead, you should focus on self-advancement so that at least you will have the money and can give the people you love a good life.

Which is the most important goal in life, after all.

Frank

Don't waste time in demanding "justice"

2006-08-08T01:31:00.000+08:00

Taiwan's President Chen seems to be embroiled in one more scandal with each passing day. Every day seems to unveil yet another corruption incident about him that invokes the outrage of people and spurs outcries for "justice". People are increasingly complaining that how come Taiwan's justice system can't effectively prosecute as highly positioned and powerful a person as the President and pondering what we can do to rectify this situation so as to bring those accountable for corruption under justice and impose due penalty on them.

To which I say: "Please, stop wasting your time. You can never have justice in Taiwan or anywhere else in the world. 'Justice' is a man-made creation that only exists in your dreams. In the real world, if you want to find justice, you might as well go look for Elvis on Mars because the outcome of looking for Elvis on Mars and demanding 'justice' is the same -- you'll fail."

People who demand "justice" don't understand the bloody nature of justice in that it is fundamentally a "business" and no more. Yes, justice is a business in that it can be bought and sold just like any other business. People who have power and money manipulate justice all the time, and no amount of effort can change this reality. So unless you deem yourself to be an equal match of Big Money and Big Power, you should never take on the foolhardy pursuit of demanding justice in the society. Big Money and Big Power will crush you in no time if you can't measure up to them, and they will exercise absolutely no mercy in sabotaging you so as to see you go down the toilet. Furthermore, justice is a small circle and a closed system, and all the judges, prosecutors, policemen, etc., i.e., everyone who is involved in the justice "food chain" are employed by the government. You have to know that they also need to make a living just as much as you do, OK? If they really set forth to enforce justice and uphold it rigorously, they are bound to alienate Big Money and Big Power. And guess what? Big Money and Big Power will get them fired from their posts so that they can no longer uphold justice anymore. Because justice is a small field and everyone in it is employed by the government, if a justice enforcer screws up his/her relationship with the government through his/her estrangement from Big Money and Big Power, he/she will have a hard time finding another job in the field. This is why people in the justice field are all very careful not to piss off Big Money and Big Power for fear that Big Money and Big Power will get them fired. This is why nobody in the justice food chain really dares to play "hero" and takes justice into his/her own hands and goes out to enforce it like there is no tomorrow. It didn't happen, is not happening, and will never happen in the future.

That's why you shouldn't waste time in demanding justice.

Frank

Google's search algorithm is the most valuable "corporate secret" on earth

2006-08-07T07:45:00.000+08:00

On news that India is calling for a ban on Coke and Pepsi citing studies that show these two drinks contain unacceptable levels of pesticides (http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=3&art_id=qw115460028815S213&set_id=), I wanted to comment that Coke's original formula was generally considered the most valuable corporate secret on earth until Google's search engine came along. Coke's original formula was invented in the late 19th century by an Atlanta chemist, and since then it has become the most sought-after formula for soft drinks. Fact is, no other soft drink today tastes like the original Coke and possesses its zesty taste and the feeling of pleasure when the drink goes down your throat. This is why Coke's original formula is so valuable and is considered one of the most valuable corporate secrets today.

However, with the ascension of Google and its coming of age, Coke's original formula is no longer considered the most valuable corporate secret on earth. Instead, Google's search algorithm is. (An algorithm is just a systematic way for a computer to perform tasks.) Google's search algorithm is the most valuable corporate secret on earth because hundreds of millions of users use Google to search for information they want every day, and Google's search algorithm directly impacts the quality of information they retrieve using the search engine. Even a slight change in Google's search algorithm has a tremendous effect on users' search experience, and the search results users receive are highly dependent on the nuances in Google's search algorithm. Google's search algorithm being relied on by so many people to serve their information needs on a daily basis, it is no wonder that the algorithm is generally considered the most valuable corporate search on earth and is the biggest "treasure trove" Google possesses in its war against other search engines in the quest to serve the world's information needs.

Frank

PS: As of today, Google is a more valuable company than Coke, wielding a market value of $112.84 billion USD vs. Coke's $102.32 billion USD. See "http://finance.google.com/finance?q=goog+ko" for Google's and Coke's market values.

Motley Fool's campaign to dissuade investors from buying Google's stock

2006-08-06T18:41:00.000+08:00

Personally, I find it laughable that the Motley Fool (fool.com), a popular investment website in the US dedicated to helping novice investors (i.e. the "fools"), is waging a campaign to dissuade investors from buying Google's stock. See "http://www.fool.com/news/commentary/2006/commentary06080504.htm?source=eptyholnk303100&logvisit=y&npu=y" for an example of a large number of articles the Motley Fool has published in the last few months that aim to discourage investors and scare them away from buying Google's stock.

The reason I find the Motley Fool's strategy funny is that it has a "vested interest" in dissuading investors from buying Google's stock. Anyone who has in-depth knowledge on Google knows that it is the greatest technology company on earth. Google not only has single-handedly revolutionized information access on the Web, it has a large repertoire of products under development that will revolutionize the world of telecommunications and TV just as much as it revolutionized Web search. The reason the Motley Fool is waging such an aggressive campaign to admonish investors not to buy Google's stock is because the staple of Motley Fool's business is publish investment newsletters and solicit investors to subscribe to these newsletters. The newsletters published by the Motley Fool carry a high subscription fee, typically in the hundreds of dollars a year. In the newsletters Motley Fool recommends, or "pushes", stocks that it deems good to its subscribers. Motley Fool divides the newsletters into several categories by applying the principle of market segmentation and publishes newsletters that carry names such as "Inside Value", "Hidden Gems", and "Baby Breakers", which recommend value stocks (stocks that are cheap), small caps (stocks with small capitalizations), and growth stocks in their initial stages, respectively. If you are a person in the know and possess good knowledge of the stock market, you know that the stocks Motley Fool recommends are mostly "suckers" that underperform and few people want. The reason the Motley Fool is pushing these stocks is precisely because few people want these stocks, the companies made a secret deal with Motley Fool in which Motley Fool agreed to push these stocks in exchange for commissions or other benefits. This is why the Motley Fool is pushing these "sucker" stocks to investors. This being the case, if there is a stock outside of Motley Fool's recommendations that is so good that it surpasses any stock recommended by Motley Fool and everybody buys it, Motley Fool would have no business left because no one would read its investment newsletters anymore. This is why the Motley Fool is waging such a "smear campaign" against Google's stock because if everybody buys Google's stock and makes money, nobody would need Motley Fool anymore and it would gobankrupt . This is the true reason why the Motley Fool is attacking Google so viciously so as to dissuade investors from buying its stock.

Frank

Never tell a woman about reality

2006-08-06T14:05:00.000+08:00

Now that I have experienced a few relationships myself and watched my friends experience their relationships, I am deeply convinced that if you want a woman to love you, you should *never* tell her about reality. Women like to dream, and they don't like to hear about reality. If you were to mention too much reality to a woman, she is sure to get offended and start having a negative impression on you. She will tell you that you are too "negative" and how come you always see the ugly side of things. She will tell you that things are not as bad as they seem, and you should always look at the bright side of things and ignore the dark side. When this happens, if you have the "guts" to keep mentioning reality to her that exhibits a seemingly pessimistic nature, she'll get pissed off and start complaining. She will say that she feels frustrated when she is with you because you keep harping about reality that exhibits a "gray" color instead of showing her the bright colors she thinks life is all about. She will say how come you keep mentioning these depressing-sounding practical details of things and not "seeing the mountain in the distance" and setting your sight on it so that you can ignore the treacherous path leading up to the mountain. And so on and so forth.

If you are a man and if your woman starts complaining to you that you are being too realistic, according to my experience there is only one thing you can do: shut up. Youshould shut up and stop talking to her about reality or trying to convey realistic things to her. This is especially true in love. Women typically possess very "idealistic" dreams about love, and as a man you should never, ever "poke" their dreams and make them burst. For example, when a woman is telling you about the beautiful dreams she has about life after marriage, you should never wake her up from her dreams by telling her: "Well, while marriage can be interesting in the initial stage, it is an extremely practical endeavor afterwards. Chances are you'll get bored with your spouse after a period of time, and after that any romance evaporates. After children arrive, it's a 'battlefield' and you'll spend 90% of your time on children and sacrifice the quality of life between you and your spouse. Such is the true nature of marriage and you are advised to know this before you get married."

Believe me, if you were to "dare" to tell a woman this, she'll slap you and leave you immediately and never answer your phone calls again. Why?

Because you poked her dreams and made her wake up to reality kicking and screaming. That's why she won't love you anymore.

Never tell a woman about reality, believe me. Ignore my advice at your own risk.

Frank

If you want to die, don't bring your family with you

2006-08-06T06:07:00.000+08:00

Like this (http://appledaily.com.tw/AppleNews/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Article&NewsType=twapple&Loc=TP&showdate=20060806&Sec_ID=5&Art_ID=2800321) guy has done. How idiotic. If he wanted to die, he should die himself and not bring his wife and three teenage children with him. What a sucker. Loser. Asshole.

Fucking idiot.

Let me ask you this question: do you think the reason he brought his family to die with him was either

a: He was worried that after he died no one would take care of his family and they would starve, and so for their good he took them along with him so he could take care of them in hell.

b: He thought his family were his "asset", especially his children. He thought his children "belonged" to him and he could decide whether they should live or die. Since he wanted to die but was afraid that he would be lonely in hell, he decided to take his family as his "company" so that he wouldn't be lonely down there. That's why he took his family away with him.

There is a big difference between a: and b:, as in a: at least his motivation was somewhat benevolent (he was worried no one would take care of his family after he died) in wanting his family to die with him, although the method was too extreme, but in b: the motivation was totally for selfish reasons. Not only was he extremely selfish in wanting to take the lives of his family away simply because he was afraid he would be lonely in hell, he took the extremely cruel and self-centered stance that his children were his assets and he could decide whether they should live or not. Thus b: is completely for selfish reasons and manifests the darkest side of human nature.

If you ask me, I say his motivation was b: when he took his family with him when he died.

What a loser. He deserved to die and will be condemned by the God of Perpetual Darkness to remain in hell for infinity.

Frank

The confluence of Web 2.0 and online advertising strikes gold for Internet entrepreneurs

2006-08-05T11:59:00.000+08:00

Internet entrepreneurs are the luckiest batch of entrepreneurs these days. This is because they have two forces working in their favor that greatly expand the opportunities presented to them and also reduce their dependence on venture capital. These two forces are Web 2.0 and online advertising. Regarding Web 2.0, there are a large number of websites right now which claim they are Web 2.0 websites. The goal of Web 2.0 is to transform the Web from a collection of web pages to a useful computing platform. One of the essential "hallmarks" of Web 2.0 is the so-called "mashup" phenomenon. Mashup refers to the practice of utilizing the elements of services from various websites and mixing them up in a unique way to create one's own service. One good example of a mashup website is HousingMaps.com. This is a website that provides information about apartments and houses for rent and sale across the US. It mashes the services of Google Maps and Craigslist.com to create maps for the houses laced with descriptions about the houses that are extracted from Craigslist.com. HousingMaps.com is a perfect example of a Web 2.0 website, and there are a large number of such websites on the Web. Because Web 2.0 websites mostly do not create their services from scratch but merely "mix and match" services provided by other websites in unique ways to create their own services, the number of ways to create Web 2.0 websites grows exponentially with the number of existing websites. The only thing one needs to do to create a fresh Web 2.0 website is to invoke the componentized service "modules" exported by other websites and mix them together to create his own service. This is why the Web 2.0 phenomenon currently raging on the Internet opens a "Pandora's box" of opportunities to Internet entrepreneurs in terms of the exponentially larger number of ways to create unique services that are differentiated from other services and possess unique value.

As for the second force currently going in Internet entrepreneurs' favor, online advertising, many Internet entrepreneurs, when they are starting up their websites, opt not to take venture capital and instead choose to support their business from online advertising. Most of these entrepreneurs choose to use Google's AdSense, Google's contextual advertising network, to display ads on their websites. When a visitor to the website clicks on an ad, the advertiser who put up the ad pays Google for displaying the ad, and Google shares this revenue with the entrepreneur's website on which the ad is displayed. This is the "flow" of Google AdSense and how it works. Because the entrepreneur gets paid for displaying ads, he does not have to take venture capital, or does not have to take as much venture capital, to support his website. This reduces the entrepreneur's dependence on venture capital and enables him to keep more of the company for himself and his employees. This is why the majority of websites started up by Internet entrepreneurs these days display ads on their websites so as to support their business.

When combined, the confluence of Web 2.0 and online advertising greatly expands the "opportunity horizon" of Internet entrepreneurs and also allows them to take less venture capital and keep more of their company for themselves. This is why with these two phenomena, Internet entrepreneurs have struck gold and why there is such a strong interest in Internet startups right now.

Frank

At 29, Kevin Rose Digged his way to success

2006-08-05T07:21:00.000+08:00

BusinessWeek, America's leading business magazine, just published a story on Kevin Rose, the 29-year-old founder of online news site Digg.com. See "http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_33/b3997001.htm" for the story.

Digg is a so-called "Web 2.0" website that is leading the "grass-roots" news revolution on the Internet. Digg's business model is that it enables users to submit news stories to the site and vote on the stories and decide which ones are the most important. Because all news on Digg is flagged by importance according to how many users have voted on them, all users on Digg are news editors in a sense. When you visit Digg, you can find all sorts of news whose importance has been decided by other users, and it is convenient for you to look around and see what news other users have deemed important and see whether you like it or not. This is Digg's business model and what it does.

If you ask me, I say while there is no clear indication as yet regarding the validity of Digg's business model and whether it will work or not, I believe it is a worthy idea and has a high chance of success. This is because Web 2.0 is in vogue and is the buzzword on everyone's lips these days. Digg, as a user-powered content website, epitomizes the Web 2.0 model and furthermore also embodies the genes of a social-networking website by letting users comment on and cross-reference their favorite news stories and discuss them. As such, Digg's business model is a "hybrid" one that possesses the ingredients from some of the hottest business ideas on the Internet right now. This is why it has been popular with venture capitalists and why I think it has potential and is on its way to blockbuster success and stardom.

Frank

Don't have excessive sympathy for the world

2006-08-05T02:04:00.000+08:00

In my life so far, I have learned not to have excessive sympathy for the world. What? You say. Shouldn't we have as much sympathy for the world as possible? Why do you say we shouldn't have too much sympathy for the world? It's against conventional wisdom and goes contrary to what we've been taught. What are you ranting about, Frank? Are you a fool or what? You idiot!

The reason I say we shouldn't have excessive sympathy for the world is that the world is a mess, and no matter how much sympathy you have for it, you can't change it. You may scold me for exhibiting such a seemingly pessimistic attitude here or even dislike me for it, but look around and think for yourself, and I'm sure you'll agree with me. The world is a mess, and there are lots of people and things that don't possess "reason" and aren't worth our sympathy. For example, there are people who are total failures, people who don't want to stand up on their own feet and seek success and instead are content to let themselves sink into a pathetic lifestyle or even indulge in drugs or something. In my opinion, these people aren't worth our sympathy, and if they keep sinking beyond salvation, well, let them go. At least this can reduce worldwide food consumption or something. Again, you can rebuke me for expressing such a radical and extreme opinion here, but as someone who is very "empowered" and possesses a strong will and "execution power", I dislike and look down on people who possess a weak mind and are willing to let themselves sink into the "hole". Personally, I don't have sympathy for such people because it's a waste of my time and effort to expend sympathy on such losers. I'd rather use my energy to improve myself and enhance my chance of success in life. That's my attitude and why I said not to have excessive sympathy for the world.

In summary, before you have sympathy on something, think whether you can make a difference about it first. If not, stop wasting your time and focus your effort on your own undertaking and not the subject you wanted to have sympathy on.

Frank

Are all women born depressed?

2006-08-04T22:08:00.000+08:00

Are all women born depressed? This is a very good question. I know this question is anything but "politically correct", and the mere mentioning of this question pissess off a boatload of you women out there. However, if you sit down and think logically, you may be surprised at the conclusion you arrive at, which is what I want to explain below.

So as not to suspend your curiosity, my answer to this question is: "Yes". That is, I think all women are born depressed, more or less. The way I arrived at this conclusion is based on the myriad of characteristics exhibited by women that reminesce of people are shown to be clinically depressed. These characteristics include women's emotionalism, tendency to slip into unhappiness with no reason, inclination to worry excessively, and shopping sprees, to name a few. If you find someone in the street who possesses all these characteristics and you take him to a doctor and ask the doctor: "Doc, what's wrong with this guy?", the doctor will tell you that he is depressed. Period. This is because every symptom mentioned above is prototypical of people who are diagnosed to be clinically depressed and advised to take anti-depressant medication. Since there is such a startling match between the symptoms exhibited by people who are depressed and the characteristics typically existing in women, we can logically deduce that women are highly likely to be depressed intrinsically and are born depressed. That is, the origin of women's depression exists in their genes, and every woman is born with a gauntlet of symptoms that display her innate depression. If you are a feminist who believes in absolute equality between men and women, you are sure to debunk me for exhibiting male chauvinism by asserting that all women are born depressed. I have no response to this accusation and do not intend to exhibit a semblence of wanting to defend myself against this accusation. However, if you are a woman and you are offended by the statements I have made in this article, I would like to ask you to sit down and go over your behavior to see if you exhibit some or all of the characteristics mentioned above. If your honest answer to my question is: "No", then I respect your answer and admit I have made an improper assertion in this article. However, if after thinking over your behavior your answer to my question is: "Yes", then perhaps there is some truth that women are born depressed and they are more likely to be unhappy compared to men.

Frank

PS: Clinical studies have shown that women are three times more likely to become depressed than men. So I'm not just making up an empty assertion here without having gathered some hard scientific data to back it up.

No matter how old a woman is, she always needs her man to babysit her

2006-08-04T16:44:00.000+08:00

From my experience dealing with women so far, I'm deeply convinced that no matter how old a woman is, how experienced she is, what kind of career she has, whether she is married or not, etc., she *always* needs her man to "babysit" her. Here, "babysit" refers to the practice of treating a woman like a baby and pampering her and teaching her things she doesn't know or pretends not to know so as to make her happy and love you more. I'm convinced that babysitting is a natural process in relationship and in the "dance" between men and women because women typically are very dependent, and they want their men to handle things for them. This pretty much applies to all kinds of women. There are women who appear to be strong and career-aggressive on the outside but are actually 100% "little women" inside. These so-called "strong women" crave to be loved and babysitted just as much as any other woman does. So if you are a man, don't be so foolish as to think that if a woman looks strong and aggressive on the outside, she doesn't need babysitting. That ain't so.

Of course, babysitting women is always a pleasure to a man, as he can showcase his "chauvinism" and play "hero" to the woman. Believe me, every man likes to play hero to a woman because it makes him feel proud of himself. Better if she is the littlest of all little women and there are a ton of things she can't do herself or pretends not to know how to do so you can help her out and get a big "Wow!" from her. Of course, if you are lucky you might also get a big kiss from her or even something more, but that depends on how much she loves you and how much you can "cajole" her into doing things you want her to do. But my point is that babysitting women is always a joy to men, and most men like to do it very much.

Personally, I think babysitting women is fun, but only to a certain extent. I like women who have a "brain", but God seems to have created more women who don't have a brain than women who do. I like babysitting women who have a brain, and I don't mind babysitting women who have only 70%, 50%, or even 30% of a brain, but babysitting women who have *no* brain is a bore. I have never babysitted a woman who has no brain, but I imagine it would be a boring and gratuitous task. Although you can teach her lots of things this way (heck, you pretty much need to teach her *everything*), you don't feel rewarded babysitting such a brainless woman. That's why personally, I would babysit every kind of woman but a completely brainless woman. :-)

Frank

AOL cutting 5,000 jobs

2006-08-04T01:54:00.000+08:00

So Time Warner's AOL business unit is cutting 5,000 jobs as part of a move to cut operating expenses on the heels of the company's decision to make AOL's content free of charge. See "http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/newsanalysis/technet/10301559.html?cm_ven=YAHOO&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA".

AOL used to be America's largest ISP (Internet Service Provider), but its business was undone by its huge dial-up operation that offered old-style modem-based Internet connection that topped at 5.6 kbps and not broadband Internet connection. AOL's inability to provide broadband Internet connection repelled customers away to DSL and cable modem providers, and eventually the company's paid ISP business suffered so heavily that it simply couldn't compete anymore. That's why Time Warner, the world's largest media company, decided to "bite the bullet" and made AOL's content completely free and tried to make money from online advertising.

In light of AOL's switch from the paid ISP business model to the online advertising business model, you simply can't help but admire Google for its foresight and vision to have adopted the online advertising business model since Day 1 of the company's existence. Google decided at the beginning to make its services completely free and monetize the search traffic by providing online advertising. In Google's calculations, monetization by online advertising offers significant more revenue and profit potential than charging customers for service. This is why Google has based its entire business model on online advertising. Now Google is extending this business model and taking it to the next level by leveraging online advertising to provide a suite of free office applications that will compete head-on with MS Office. Once Google's grand plan of subsidizing office applications by online advertising is completed, you can expect to see a suite of office applications that operate completely within your web browser that are free and compete directly with MS Office. Google's free office suite will hurt Microsoft tremendously because MS Office is Microsoft's "cash cow" that is responsible for some 30% of Microsoft's revenue and earnings. Think what would happen if suddenly a significant portion of that revenue is siphoned away to a competing free service and it produces a huge negative impact on Microsoft's bottom line.

Say "apocalypse" for Microsoft.

Sayonara, Microsoft. Your days are numbered.

Frank

Every time the pastor said: "Let's pray for Israel" I always felt like throwing up

2006-08-03T17:30:00.000+08:00

As you know, I'm not Christian and I don't think I'll ever believe in the religion. Why? Simple. Because Jesus was a Jew and I hate the Jews intensely. How can I believe in a religion whose leader was a Jew? I would never, ever do that. That's why I would never believe in Christianity.

Besides, I went to the church a few times when I was in the US (to seek friendship and not to praise God), and at the end of the service the pastor always said: "Let's pray for Israel because it is the nation of God!" Every time he said this, I always felt a strong urge to throw up and puke out the breakfast I had eaten that morning. I was compelled to run and leave the church immediately at that instant, but I calmed my urge to do so because I knew the service was about to end and I could walk out normally. That's why I didn't just pull my legs and immediately run away from the church.

Pray for Israel? Fuck Israel. I would *never* pray for Israel no matter what.

Or what about this: I'd let you fuck me before I would pray for Israel. Since I wouldn't let anyone fuck me, I would never pray for Israel. :-)

Frank

Mel Gibson said "fuck" to the Jews

2006-08-03T17:08:00.000+08:00

You may have learned about Hollywood superstar Mel Gibson's drunken driving arrest last weekend and the defaming words he said about the Jews when he was arrested. Turns out Gibson also hated the Jews and harbored negative feelings about them in his heart. See "http://www.hollywood.com/news/detail/id/3538293" for the news.

Let me tell you this: hating the Jews is normal and is what any normal person would do. Fact is, the Jews are the "big evil" of the world and they have done way too many bad things to profit themselves and hurt everybody else. That's why so many people in the world hate the Jews. As I said before, if there is really a God out there, the Jews should be condemned to hell first. Only by doing so can the sins that have been committed by the Jews be cleansed and the world have peace.

Fuck the Jews.

Frank

Howard Stern asked two virgins to have sex before a microphone

2006-08-03T10:59:00.000+08:00

Today's big news is that Google is entering radio advertising by teaming up with XM Satellite Radio, a leading provider of satellite radio in the US. See "http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/060802/20060802005316.html?.v=1" for the press release.

(BTW, satellite radio is the rage of the day these days. With satellite radio, you no longer receive radio from terrestrial radio stations like we do today but from a satellite. Satellite radio has broad coverage and crystal-clear sound quality rivaling that of CDs. It is the new new thing in the US right now.)

Of course, what I wanted to talk about is neither Google nor XM Satellite Radio, because XM has a competitor called Sirius Satellite Radio, and America's most famous radio "shock jock", Howard Stern, is working there. Stern is America's most famous radio talk show host, and he is well known for his blasphemous comments and his bland display of lurid sexual content in his shows. He once invited two virgins in their teens, one boy and one girl, to have sex for the first time before a microphone so that the sounds from their love-making could be broadcast in real-time to his millions of listeners nationwide. In another show titled "Sex in dangerous places", he asked a married couple to have sex in a church and broadcast the process to his listeners. The couple tucked themselves in a little-used room in the church and prepared to have sex when they were discovered and arrested by police for "displaying indecency in a public place". Such is the style of Stern's show and its content. Of course, Stern uses the "f-word" (i.e. fu_k) copiously in his shows, and he didn't wince from criticizing President Bush and calling his name and enumerating his sins in front of his millions of listeners. Stern's flamboyant style and sensationalism earned him notoriety but also made him the most famous radio talk show host in the US with the highest ratings. Such is the way Stern broadcasts his shows.

I love Howard Stern. Boy, I wish I had listened to the show in which the virgins had sex. :-)

You can find more information about Howard Stern by googling for him.

Frank

I saw a Lamborghini in front of the nude club

2006-08-03T01:00:00.001+08:00

Speaking of Lamborghini, I've only seen one such car so far in my life. Fact is, the Lamborghini is too precious and too rare to be seen frequently. And the chance I had to see it was pretty good, for I had the opportunity to have an up close and personal look at the car and touch it and marvel at its stunning beauty in close distance.

It was in 1996 when I was 25. I was still a Ph.D. student in San Diego at the University of California, San Diego, and I went to a nude club in San Diego to watch the white girls dance nude on stage. The club was called "Cheetah's", and after I parked my car and approached the entrance of the club, I saw this incredibly beautiful and aerodynamically appealing car parked right in front of the entrance. It was a busy day and Cheetah's had good business (it had some of the hottest girls in San Diego), but around the car congregated a large crowd, as if they were there not to visit Cheetah's but to look at the car. I couldn't describe the feeling I had when I first saw the car, because it was different from any other car I had ever seen in my life. The engine was placed in the middle of the chassis and the chassis was very low, almost touching the ground. Because the engine was placed in the middle, there was almost no distance between the tip of the car to the driver's seat, giving the driver an incredibly wide view of the road. Must be exhilarating to sit in this car and accelerate it, I thought. Besides, the doors didn't open to the sides. Instead, they opened in a semicircular curve up towards the sky, and when the doors were fully open, they looked like the wings of the car. I couldn't get my eyes away from the car, and I almost forgot if I was still breathing because I was stunned by the car's astonishing beauty. This car is no longer a car but a piece of art, I thought. I wanted to find the name of the car and I moved my projected eyesight on the car around in order to find its name. After trying for a while I still couldn't, and I started to get anxious. What's the name of this car?, I asked myself. Gotta find it out for otherwise I'm not going into the Cheetah. After some more fruitless trials, I finally walked to the rear of the car and there I saw its name etched on a little plate hung above the license plate written in an artistic way.

Lamborghini.

That's how I knew it was a Lamborghini, the king of cars. And ever since I saw it, no other cars on earth could move me and have my heart.

And you know what? The Lamborghini was more beautiful than any nude dancing girl I saw on stage that night. I felt as if I wasn't looking at the girls when I watched them dance because I was still thinking about the Lamborghini.

Lamborghini: every man's dream.

You can find more information about Lamborghini by googling for it.

Frank

Children make you stop thinking about "romance" after marriage

2006-08-02T17:42:00.000+08:00

And that's why your marriage can last long and not fall apart.

Many people think that after having children in a marriage, the couple will become even more romantic and they will love each other even more because children are the "crystallization" of their love. How idiotic. Reality is, children make the couple stop thinking about "romance" in marriage and concentrate on the mundane daily tasks of taking care of the children. After having children, you'll be *so* busy that you won't even have time to have a decent conversation with your spouse without being interrupted by a child who is suddenly bursting into tears and needs your immediate attention. Under this circumstance, the last thing you think about is romance, and you and your spouse will gradually take it for granted that life without romance is "normal" and you shouldn't ask too much about romance in a marriage life with children. This is not necessarily bad, though, because romance gradually fades away after marriage anyway NO MATTER HOW "GOOD" A PERSON YOU FOUND. Under this circumstance, if you can't accept the fact that marriage is the tomb of romance and keep wanting to get romance back, there is only one outcome, and that is you and your spouse will argue more and more and will eventually split. The magic of children is that they keep you and your spouse *so* busy that you won't have the time to worry about this little trifle called "romance". That's why you won't get disappointed with marriage life and why your marriage can last long.

Frank

Acer has Ferrari, Asus has Lamborghini

2006-08-02T13:53:00.000+08:00

In yet another manifestation of Taiwanese computer vendors' "me too" mentality, Asus, one of the world's largest motherboard manufacturers and a notebook vendor, has licensed the Lamborghini ("the king of cars") logo and introduced one lineup of notebook computers that sport the logo. See "http://www.asus.com/news_show.aspx?id=2070".

Asus' strategy copycatted Acer's seminal move last year to license the Ferrari logo and put it on some of its computers (http://global.acer.com/products/notebook/fr3000.htm). Ever since the Ferrari alliance, Acer has been the envy of Taiwanese computer vendors, who are typically good at cost control but lack the luster and prestige of true high-class international brands. Acer's move was a smart "embedded marketing" strategy that affiliated its computers with the Ferrari brand, widely regarded as one of the world's most prestigious car brands. Acer's association with Ferrari bestowed a much-needed "class" on its computers and made them look more "high-class". This is why Acer executed such a well thought-out strategy to elevate the "class" of its computers. On the heels of Acer's success, Asus is now following suit and allying with Lamborghini to achieve the same effect for its own computers. Not a bad idea.

Nonetheless, "Lamborghini" is harder to spell than "Ferrari", and I wonder if this puts Asus at a disadvantage in terms of the depth of impression the brand makes in consumers' minds compared to Acer. Also, honestly I think the two logos look more or less the same (they are both Italian), and personally I can't distinguish one from the other looking from a distance. Does that mix the brands together and dilute the uniqueness and value of each brand?

Doesn't matter. At least Asus got Lamborghini so that it can squawk "me too!" to Acer in its quest to make its computers look more high-class. That's the whole purpose of Asus' undertaking in splattering the Lamborghini logo all over its computers. :-)

Frank

Israel is wrong, but standing up for Lebanese has no ROI

2006-08-02T12:06:00.000+08:00

Regarding the Middle East conflict and the genocide Israel is committing to the Lebanese people, everyone knows Israel is wrong and it should stop the war immediately. Problem is, standing up for the Lebanese has no ROI (return on investment), because Lebanon is a weak nation with little international heft. Lebanon was occupied by Israel for many years and after Israel withdrew from it in 2000, the nation dived into a civil war. The war had only recently ended and the respite had only recently allowed ordinary Lebanese civilians to live the semblance of a normal life. Because Lebanon was tormented by war for so many years and owing to the fact that it is an Islamic nation whose people possess intense hatred for Westerners, the Western nations felt no need to stand up for the Lebanese. Their thinking is: "Yeah, the Lebanese are being slaughtered by the Israelis, but even if we stand up for them and tell the Israelis to back off, they may not like us anyway. So why bother spending so much effort and alienating the Jewish people around the world to stand up for the Lebanese? It has no ROI and doesn't make sense."

This is why despite the heinous crimes Israel is committing to the Lebanese people, no major Western nation has stood up and condemned Israel for doing so.

Because it has no ROI.

Frank

Israel is sacrificing Lebanese civilians to deter Hezbollah

2006-08-02T07:27:00.000+08:00

One thing these fucking Jewish people are doing is sacrificing the lives of innocent ordinary Lebanese civilians in their war to deter Hezbollah from launching rockets into Israel. The strategy Israel is using is to kill Lebanese civilians on purpose so as to create hatred in their hearts toward Hezbollah for provoking the war in the first place. (Hezbollah abducted two Israeli soldiers a few weeks ago and started the current Middle East crisis.) Israel figured that once it kills enough Lebanese civilians, the hatred accumulated will be so intense that the Lebanese people will turn against Hezbollah themselves and start infighting them. That's Israel's math and why it is intentionally killing Lebanese civilians in a campaign to pit the Lebanese people again Hezbollah.

Israel's strategy is just like that used in the military in which if there is one soldier who made a mistake, all soldiers in the same company would get punished. The military uses this strategy to "amortize" the blame on all soldiers in the group so as to drive the group members to keep a watchful eye on one another not to make mistakes for fear that if any of them does, all the group members will get punished. The military has used this strategy to great effect, and that's why Israel is copycatting this strategy to amortize Hezbollah's fault on all Lebanese people in order to make them voluntarily deter Hezbollah for Israel.

Fuck Israel.

Frank

Israel is always the victim (千錯萬錯都是真主黨錯？)

2006-08-01T18:02:00.000+08:00

Just found a good article on Israel's "victim mentality", in which the Israeli people serve as persecutors of other nations in the Middle East while always thinking they are the victims. See the article at "http://udn.com/NEWS/WORLD/WORS1/3450188.shtml".

Let me tell you this: these fucking Jewish people should get their heads checked by a mental doctor because everyone of them has a highly distorted perception of reality that can't be farther from the truth.

Fuck Israel. Fuck the Jewish people.

Frank

iTunes vs. Google vs. YouTube: three different Internet video business models

2006-08-01T00:04:00.000+08:00

Internet video is the hottest thing under the sun. Every major player on the Internet either has joined the Internet video war or is thinking about joining it. Besides the major players, every day seems to bring yet another new player in the space eager to join in the fray and cash in on the biggest Internet gold rush since Google's search engine came along in the late 90s. As such, I think it is constructive to do a comparison of the three major Internet video business models out there and elucidate on their respective strengths and weaknesses. The three business models are Apple's iTunes Movie Store, Google Video, and YouTube, each of which is described below.

Apple is rumored to be introducing the iTunes Movie Store, an extension of its highly successful and market-dominating iTunes Music Store, in August. What the iTunes Movie Store will offer is a movie rental business model in which you pay Apple a fixed price per movie (which is rumored to be $9.99 USD) and you can download the movie from the store and watch it on your PC. The rented movie expires after a set period of time and can no longer be watched. This is why it is called a rental business model and not a purchase business model. Apple's model only supports the "download" service model and not the "streaming" service model, i.e., you can only watch the movie after it is completely downloaded to your PC and not watch it while it is being downloaded. Apple is rumored to have been in negotiations with major Hollywood studios on pricing so as to offer a fixed price per movie, be it an old movie or a new one. The fixed pricing model is a major advantage of Apple's business model as it removes a major confusion and barrier to the service's adoption. The fixed pricing model plus Apple's existing blockbuster success with the iTunes Music Store makes Apple a formidable contender in the Internet video war, and everyone is watching what Apple will offer when it unveils the service in August.

In contrast to Apple's business model, Google's business model offers both a streaming service and a download service. Although Google offers both kinds of services, it is clearly from the Google Video website (video.google.com) that it heavily favors the streaming model and is placing the majority of its development effort on this model. The advantage of the streaming model is that it enables a user to watch the video while it is being downloaded, which is a big plus because movie files are huge, and if a user is only allowed to watch the video after it is completely downloaded, few users would have the patience to wait out the long download time and watch the video after it is finally downloaded. This is why the streaming model provides a major advantage over the download model. However, the streaming model places a heavy burden on the service provider's compute infrastructure and network bandwidth because each movie stream consumes a wide bandwidth and when the number of users simultaneously watching videos gets large, the compute environment and network bandwidth of the service provider get strained, and in order to provide users a smooth video watching experience, the service provider has to invest heavily in compute infrastructure and network bandwidth so as to provide a satisfactory level of service. This is why supporting the streaming model is technically more challenging than supporting the download model.

In addition to providing the streaming model, a major distinguishing feature of Google Video is that it accepts videos of any length and size, in which a user can upload a three-minute home video onto the site or can just as well upload a two-hour feature length movie onto it. Most of the video-sharing services, including YouTube, only accept videos that are within a set length and size limit (YouTube currently accepts only videos that are less than 10 minutes and 100 MB in size). The ability to accept arbitrary-sized videos is a major differentiation of Google Video and attests to the strength of Google's compute environment and network bandwidth.

As for YouTube, it also offers the streaming model of service but differentiates from Google's service by focusing on short videos that are less than 10 minutes and 100 MB in size. The corporate slogan of YouTube is "broadcast yourself", and the company aims to enable users to showcase videos made by themselves. By specializing in short videos, YouTube distinguishes itself from most other video-sharing services, including Google Video, and finds a niche for itself in which it can manifest its strength fully while not competing head-on with giants such as Google Video that possess far superior network bandwidth. Because of YouTube's dedication to short videos, it fosters a "quick clip" culture that mainly appeals to young computer users who are accustomed to watching a video for a short duration and then quickly jumping to the next video and starting watching it. Although YouTube's self-delineated business model appears to be a disadvantage, it is actually an advantage because at the current stage, it is mostly young computer users who are interested in watching videos on the Internet because the quality of videos transmitted over the Internet today is often not satisfactory and the service is often in fits and starts, resulting in videos that exhibit a rough viewing experience and thus turning off the majority of viewers who are interested in watching feature-length movies on the Internet. This is why by appealing to young viewers who are more tolerant of the perfunctory service level of today's Internet video transmission, YouTube can avoid the challenge of having to invent a better solution to watching videos over the Internet and thus can capitalize the most on its existing business model without investing an outsized amount of money to improve its technological infrastructure. This is the cleverness of YouTube's business model and judging from the overwhelming success it has had so far, it has apparently made the right decision.

Frank

Education is an excellent business model

2006-07-29T11:26:00.000+08:00

To me, someone who thinks that everything can be explained by economics and thus possesses a business model, I really think education is an excellent business model, one of the best ever invented. Why is education an excellent business model? Because it possesses the three essential elements that constitute every good business model, namely stable earnings power, ability to raise prices, and a "must-have" perception in the minds of its consumers.

Regarding the first element, education possesses stable earnings power because education is, by nature, a long-term undertaking. Once a student starts receiving education, he is likely to continue to do so for many years to come. Every modern society in the world provides a system of mandatory education in which students are obliged by law to receive a minimum number of years of education. Most students opt to receive considerably more years of education beyond those provided by mandatory education to enhance their competitiveness in the society. Owing to the long-term nature of education, an educational institution possesses stable earnings power because once a student starts receiving education, he is not likely to want to see it interrupted barring extraordinary circumstances. Therefore, educational institutions can extract a long-term revenue stream from the students and be assured that their earnings can last for a long time to come.

Not only that, educational institutions, especially private educational institutions, possess a strong power to raise prices, a.k.a. tuitions, to increase their earnings. Due to the continuous nature of education, students don't want to have interruptions in the path of their education, and thus even if an educational institution were to increase tuitions, students are still likely to "bite the bullet" and continue to receive education rather than quit or cancel it. This gives educational institutions an "upper hand" in raising tuitions as they don't fear that as they increase the cost of education students will suddenly quit. Therefore educational institutions possess a strong "bargaining power" to raise prices, which is another essential element in an excellent business model.

The final element that makes education an excellent business model is its "indispensable" or "must-have" nature in the minds of its consumers, i.e., students and their parents. It is widely acknowledged that in the modern society, where intellectual power supersedes labor power as the premier way to make money and earn a stable living, education serves as the main "differentiator" that distinguishes people from one another. That is, the people who receive high education typically possess higher intellectual power, and they can harness this power to make a living in a more easy and effortless way that yields a higher "return" in terms of what they get vs. what they give compared to the labor-intensive way of making money that is typically exhibited by people who possess low educational levels. Precisely because education elevates one's intellectual level and enhances his competitiveness in the society, which in turn makes him more likely to make a better living and achieve a higher socioeconomic status, students and their parents consider education an indispensable quality in life and desire to have themselves and their children receive as much education as possible. This "must-have" perception of education gives it a special "aura" and endows strong earnings power on it. This is the third reason why education is such an excellent business model.

An analogy of education in commerce is that you go to a store to buy something and the clerk tells you they are raising its price, but you still want it so badly because you consider it so indispensable in your life that you are willing to pay a stupendously high price for it. Not only that, you keep coming back to the store again and again at regular intervals and pay an increasingly higher price for it year after year for many years. Does the store have a good business model in selling you the merchandise? Absolutely. And you know what? Education is just like the merchandise, and that's why education is such an excellent business model.

Frank

Re: Five years after Danny Lewin died in 9/11, Akamai Technologies flourished

2006-07-28T10:59:00.000+08:00

BTW, in case you don't know it yet, "akamai" is Wall Street slang for "money". You can use "akamai" as in "I love akamai" or "I want to have as much akamai as possible". See the brilliance of the Akamai team for coming up with this name in the first place? It seems to me they were trying to impact the psyche of Wall Street bankers by establishing in the bankers' subconsciousness an association of the company with "money". Clever, isn't it?

Frank

Five years after Danny Lewin died in 9/11, Akamai Technologies flourished

2006-07-28T06:38:00.000+08:00

One noticeable business news today is that the stock of Akamai Technologies, a company dedicated to improving content delivery on the Internet by intelligently routing Internet traffic to minimize congestion, soared 22% on strong earnings report. See "http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8J4GF280.htm?sub=apn_tech_down&chan=tc" for details.

Akamai is a company founded by a team at MIT that included professor Tom Leighton, a well-known figure in computer science, and graduate student Danny Lewin. Lewin was an Israeli student who graduated from the Technion, also known as the Israeli Institute of Technology, which is Israel's top engineering university. (BTW, Technion is located in Haifa, the city in northern Israel that is the target of Hezbolla's rocket attacks in the current middle east crisis.) Lewin invented the fundamental algorithm used in routing Internet traffic that formed the foundation of Akamai's technologies, and as a co-founder of Akamai, he possessed a net worth north of $1 billion USD in 2000 at the age of 30.

Lewin died tragically on Sep. 11, 2001, aboard one of the flights hijacked by terrorists and crashed into the World Trade Center. He was en route from Boston to San Francisco for business and boarded haplessly the ill-fated flight. Lewin's death was a big news at that time, as he was so young (31) and so rich, but perished so soon. People mourned Lewin's fate and his story is still remembered to this day.

You can find a biography of Lewin on the Wikipedia at "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_M._Lewin".

Frank

YouTube's CEO is only 29 years-old

2006-07-27T21:27:00.000+08:00

No kidding -- Chad Hurley, the CEO of YouTube, the wildly popular video-sharing website in Silicon Valley that is experiencing "viral growth" right now, is only 29 years-old. Hurley is now a "celebrity" in Silicon Valley, as YouTube is Silicon Valley's *most* valuable startup, rumored to go public soon. YouTube is beating out giants such as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN in the incredibly important Internet video war, so much so that people have taken to calling it the "Google of video". See this (
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/15130004.htm) article in the San Jose Mercury News, the newspaper of Silicon Valley, for details.

Frank

A very presumptuous girl on Yahoo! Personals

2006-07-27T17:54:00.000+08:00

OK, I've made good progress at work today, and with 30 minutes left until I can take off, I've taken to browsing some profiles on Yahoo! Personals for fun (I don't have an account on Yahoo! and can't contact these girls). In doing so, I found this (http://tw.match.yahoo.com/profile?id=personals-1065275762-973800&op=diary&cm=l) girl whom I deem to be *very* presumptuous. Look at her diary on 2006/07/25, in which she listed the types of men she didn't like and asked not to contact her. After reading the post, I was full of confusion and I wanted to ask her a question: "Lady, how do you think a man will contact you and become *that* interested in you simply by looking at your picture and reading your diary? You are asking only men who are truly interested in you to contact you, but how will a man become that interested in you without contacting you in the first place? Don't you think there is a chicken-and-egg problem here?"

Of course, she is just not a very mature girl sporting this kind of thinking. She thinks that there are men out there who are *so* interested in her that once they see her picture and read her diary they will focus on her and treat her as a primary target for further friendship. She doesn't understand the reality is that love is a big "comparison shopping" process in which everyone is constantly eyeing everyone else in the initial stage of relationship without committing to anyone completely. I mean, commitment is definitely possible and is what we should do as the relationship matures, but in the initial stage of friendship *no* one makes any commitment to anyone, and everyone is constantly comparing his/her partner to everyone else. That's the reality of love and the facet she doesn't understand. That's why she is exhibiting this kind of seemingly presumptuous or "cocky" attitude in dating. Of course, she is still young, and time will work its magic and it will take her some time to realize that the reality of love isn't what she thinks at all.

Until then, no contact. :-)

Frank

Children are the only achievement we have when we are old

2006-07-27T17:26:00.000+08:00

At 35, I'm starting to feel the importance of children. When I was young, I didn't feel the need for children at all. Children? What children? Life is fun and full of energy, and enjoying life is the most important! Who has the time for these little devils who take so much time and energy to take care of? Forget these little playthings of ours and start enjoying life at full throttle!

But as I age, I begin to increasingly feel the need for children. At 35, I feel that children are *indispensable* and are the most important thing in life. Why so? Because without children, you feel that you are living your life in vain. Without children, you feel that you are living your life without leaving a trace behind. As you age, this feeling of emptiness deepens and you start to feel scared thinking why am I living my life and what's the purpose of it. I mean, you may have loved and may have had the best love anyone can possibly experience on earth, or you may be rich and have a good career everybody envies, but if you don't have children, nobody is going to care how good you are or what you are doing or have done. Without children, even though you may have everything else on earth, you still feel you are living your life on water and once the boat of your life sails through it, no mark is left behind at all and once you are gone, nobody is going to remember you. So in a sense, children are the "score" of our life which we can show to other people when we are old to let them know how well we have done in our life. Without children, your love or career or wealth or whatever else doesn't matter at all, and you will feel you have lived your life in vain and will just see it quietly pass away like a leaf floating in air without causing anyone's notice.

That's how important children are. If I'm already feeling this way at 35, guess how I will feel at 65 if I didn't have children at that time.

Total emptiness.

Frank

Too many girls on Yahoo! are "eating past love for food"

2006-07-27T12:00:00.000+08:00

After surveying extensively girls' profiles on Yahoo! Personals, I found a common problem for many a girl there. The problem is that too many girls can't forget their past boyfriends and keep harping on the beautiful relationships they had in the past and/or the memorable things they did together. Although these girls have all split from their former boyfriends and some may even have new boyfriends, it seems to me every girl has a "favorite" boyfriend in her heart whom she can never forget and keeps coming back to. That's what I found about many girls on Yahoo!.

To which I say: stupid. I want to ask these girls a question: "What's the *purpose* of your repeated reminiscences about your past boyfriend? Are you hoping you can get back together with him or what? If so, go do it and see if he has a girlfriend now and if not, fill the void and get back together with him. Otherwise, shut up and start finding a new boyfriend and forget all the boyfriends you had in the past because THEY ARE NOT YOURS ANYWAY!"

I mean, girls have a tender heart, and it's no surprise that most of them have a favorite boyfriend whom they can never forget. But it's a thing of the past anyway, and he is not yours anyway. So why waste time idling there reminiscing about the past beautiful relationships that have vanished like a wisp of vapor and not marshal the strength to stand up and go looking for the real "Mr. Right" that you can own? After all, you can't eat past love for food, right? If there is the case, why keep putting your mouth to it and craving to swallow it again?

Beats me.

Past love is poison, not food. Eat it at your own risk.

Frank

HeatSeek: the "iTunes for XXX videos"

2006-07-27T11:28:00.000+08:00

Guess human ingenuity knows no boundaries, as there is another company called "HeatSeek" (heatseek.com) that is designing software for XXX videos that serves as a "safe" environment for men to browser and enjoy the videos. The genius of HeatSeek is that the software is designed in a way to keep everything "self-contained" so that your girlfriend won't find out that you are surfing the Web and looking at the nude pictures of other women. Better yet, you can close the software quickly if someone goes into the room so that when you hear the footsteps of your girlfriend approaching, you can close the software before she enters the room and has a chance to glance at your screen and becomes mad at you and starts yelling at you. The self-contained nature of HeatSeek is why it is so popular and why some people are calling it the "iTunes for XXX videos". :-)

Frank

PornoTube: the YouTube for XXX videos

2006-07-27T06:27:00.000+08:00

Sorry to send out this email because I know it's bound to piss off some of you out there, but this website called "PornoTube.com" is creating a firestorm of buzz on the Internet by copycatting the YouTube business model and letting users upload and watch XXX videos for free. I mentioned this website because on learning about its existence, I was shocked by the ingenuity of this idea and felt ashamed why I hadn't thought about it in the first place. :-) Now it looks like the founders of PornoTube.com will make a ton of money by providing free services on the website and also another paid tier of content that offers more "exciting" XXX content.

PS: The site is slow because I'm sure it's getting tons of visits from users all over the world right now. So please be patient and wait for the video to show up on your screen.

Frank

The world is shallow? I'll be even shallower.

2006-07-26T17:15:00.000+08:00

(Sorry to bother you again, but today my computer program has been running for most of the day, which means I didn't get to do much in terms of work. A creative person as I am, I have had to find an "outlet" for my churning brain power such that my idle brain capacity doesn't implode on itself and crush my cerebral cortex. This is why I have been particularly prolific today. :-)

In the 35 years of my life, I have found the world to be a shallow place. What "shallow" means is that most people do not possess profound brain power or thinking capability, and their mindset and the way they think are surprisingly shallow and lacking in depth. The world is shallow, and people judge each other by shallow measures, things such as money, fame, education, spouse, children, etc. This is neither good nor bad because realistically, this is what the world is, and we can do nothing except to accept it in its entirety. No big deal.

The world being shallow, my next question is: "How do we deal with this shallowness and accomplish our goals?" I ask this question because personally, I'm a very "driven" person who likes to measure my achievements using concrete measures. Shallow measures, that is. I like to measure myself by how much money I have, how high an education level I have, what kind of wife and children I have, and where I live, etc. And this is despite the fact that I consider myself a very intellectually profound person, probably more profound than most men and women of my age. Doesn't matter. According to my experience, the world is a very "material" place, and few people care about how "intellectual" or "spiritual" you are. In this kind of environment, my personal approach to dealing with a shallow world is to become even shallower. I dare to say that I possess the necessary will and determination to bend myself extra-hard so as to deal with the world and solve the problems I encounter. In particular, I deem myself to possess a very persistent personality such that when I set my mind on a goal, I turn myself into a "droid" (or a "robot") and start pouncing on it again and again and again until I achieve the goal. I aspire to use whatever method available to accomplish my goal, be it clean or dirty, hard or easy, pretty or ugly. Doesn't matter. In my book, accomplishing the goal is the No. 1 priority, because the goal represents the "beef" that is the most valuable and will give my effort the highest ROI. Besides, the result is what people will use to judge you, and whoever has the best result can LOL (laugh out loud) at the people who don't. This is my mentality and how I deal with a shallow world.

Frank

Re: [Frank's] Israel (以色列) video is now open

2006-07-26T13:33:00.000+08:00

I wanted to add that the historical events Dan Brown mentioned in his novel "The Da Vinci Code" and which I cited in my video are facts, not fiction. Dan Brown did extensive research while writing "The Da Vinci Code", and the events I mentioned in my video are from his book. Actually, Dan Brown is only a follower of the people who have made such claims before, as there have been tons of history scholars before him who have made the same claims. It's just that Dan Brown injected these facts into his book and seamlessly synthesized them into a compelling novel that has mesmerized millions of readers worldwide and thus made the facts widely known. Otherwise, Dan Brown did not contribute to the unearthing or discovery of these facts at all, as he simply assimilated them into his book.

For an important source of Dan Brown's historical citations mentioned in his novel, you can check out the book "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" by Michael Baigent & Co. at "http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0440136482/002-3889337-0270444?v=glance&n=283155". This is the first book (published in 1985) that claimed that Jesus was married and had a daughter and his wife was Mary Magdalene.

Frank

Extremism is fun

2006-07-26T06:36:00.000+08:00

After clarifying my intention when I sent out the "Gekko" email, I have to say that if you ask me, I say extremism is fun. At least to a certain extent. Guess I was born like this with such a personality. That's why I wanted to warn you not to be shocked if you read equally radical and outrageous opinions in my future posts. Guess that's just me then.

Actually, I'm much "badder" than this, and if you think you've seen all my "crazy" emails, you ain't seen nothing yet.

You have been warned. :-)

Frank

I wrote the "Gekko" post because I'm intellectually wild,

2006-07-26T06:27:00.000+08:00

not because I'll necessarily employ and resort to any means to make money.

I wanted to thank a friend of mine for reminding me to clarify that I didn't intend to mean that I will resort to any means to make money when I wrote the "Gekko" post. I mean, I possess a very "rebellious" and "radical" personality, and I characterize myself as an "intellectually wild" person. That's why I often exhibit seemingly radical opinions and comments in my posts, because I think they are fun and it doesn't mean that I will actuate and go pursue them in real life. That's what I wanted to clarify in this post. The bottom line is that the "Gekko" post merely reflected my aggressive personality and my desire for success along with my determination to keep pursuing my goals. That's all I wanted to communicate in that post. :-)

Frank

Gordon Gekko is my hero

2006-07-25T12:24:00.000+08:00

It turns out Gordon Gekko, the fictional protagonist in Michael Douglas' famed movie "Wall Street", which won him the Oscar Best Actor Award in 1988, even has his own entry in the Wikipedia, mankind's largest "knowledge base" and the best exemplar of large-scale "knowledge engineering". See Gekko's entry at "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Gekko" for details.

Gordon Gekko is my hero because he is very relentless and focused on his pursuit of success. He is aggressive and talented and doesn't mind "going the extra mile" and using whatever method to make money, legal or illegal, so long as it dances on the border of legality and he isn't caught. What a great man. I bet he is a Leo (I'm a Leo), because Leo men typically are very aggressive and focused and they are willing to bend themselves extra-hard in the pursuit of success.

Granted, I'm not as successful as Gekko right now, but that doesn't prevent me from taking a page from his book and learning from it. After all, he and I share the same "basic instinct" and the same boiling blood for life's most important pursuit.

Chasing money.

Frank

PS: Of course, "Basic Instinct" is the title of another of Michael Douglas' movies in which he starred with Sharon Stone as a San Francisco cop who was dangerously and hopelessly seduced by Stone into a lethal murder mystery. What a great and very sexy movie. Sharon Stone back in 1992 at the age of 34 was indeed the "object of desire" of every man, but now, at the age of 48 and having just starred again in the disastrous sequel "Basic Instinct 2", she is, well, no comment. :-)

New York Times article on Google vs. Yahoo! shows Google's "80/20" principle

2006-07-25T05:28:00.000+08:00

The New York Times, which to me is the best newspaper in the world, has just published an article on Google vs. Yahoo! that to me, shows Google's "80/20" principle and how it is applying this principle effectively to put its engineering resources where they can make the most impact by focusing on innovative technologies rather than mere plain features. See ""http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/24/technology/24yahoo.html?_r=3&oref=login&oref=slogin&oref=slogin" for the article.

Anyone who has studied engineering knows that the effort required to build a system is not linearly proportional to the amount of functionality implemented in the system. Instead, it is exponentially proportional to the amount of functionality implemented in the system. That is, while you can spend a small amount of effort to implement the majority of functionality initially, you need to spend an exponentially greater amount of effort to implement the remaining portion of the functionality as you proceed increasingly nearer to the completion of the implementation. In engineering this phenomenon is called the "80/20" principle, i.e., you can spend 20% of your effort to implement 80% of the functionality, but in order to implement the remaining 20% of the functionality you need to spend 80% of your effort.

To me, the New York Times article clearly shows that Google is applying the "80/20" principle successfully to optimize the ROI (return on investment) of its talent force by directing them to spend most of their time on implementing innovative new features rather than asking them to add mere basic mundane features to the system. Granted, basic mundane features have their advantages and they also possess an important role in the speed and ease with which a user can successfully utilize a system to accomplish his/her tasks, but these features require a tremendous amount of time to implement and the ROI isn't even that high in terms of the impression or as the article mentioned the "Wow!" factor they have in a user's mind. That's why Google has made a conscious decision not to focus on basic mundane features or spend too much of its time implementing them and instead has chosen to focus most of its engineering efforts on designing innovative technologies that can have the most impact on the company's businesses and therefore possess the highest ROI.

After reading the article, I was like "Wow!" and I was extremely impressed by Google's culture and its guts of resisting the allure of being bogged down in the "one more last feature" quagmire that has plagued so many high-tech companies and made them sink into implementing a never-ending series of small incremental features that possess little ROI and prevented them from focusing on big innovative ideas that can really improve a company's business and make it flourish.

And I immediately knew one thing: Google is going to success gangbusters. Period.

Frank

Compromise: the No. 1 thing in a long-term relationship

2006-07-24T15:59:00.000+08:00

As a corollary of my last email, I really think that compromise is the No. 1 thing in a long-term relationship, which means that compromise is the most important thing in a long-term relationship. The reasons for this are already clearly stated in my previous email, and I don't want to repeat them except to say that anyone who thinks that a long-term relationship requires no or little compromise is dreaming. Truth is, in a long-term relationship you compromise on a daily basis, and without compromise the relationship is likely to fall apart and collapse in a short time.

Which is why a long-term relationship is *always* a struggle. Period.

Frank

Any long-term relationship is an endurance

2006-07-24T15:50:00.000+08:00

At 35, I'm deeply convinced that any long-term relationship between a man and a woman is an endurance. What does "endurance" mean? It means you and your partner have to endure each other, or tolerate each other, so as to keep your relationship going. You have to tolerate each other because according to my observations, you can never change anyone and you can never be changed by anyone, either. In such a circumstance, if you want to live together and experience a decently happy life and exhibit the semblance of a happy relationship, you have to tolerate each other and bear with each other's differences. Of course, "tolerating" is always easier said than done, especially when you live together on a daily basis and it is inevitable that you will produce "friction" in your daily life and hurt is accumulated in both your and your partner's hearts. Truth is, there are simply too many details in daily life that given enough time, hurt is *guaranteed* to engender in your hearts. When this happens, what do you do? You can either start a big fight with each other, try to convince each other to follow your own way, or reconcile and endure each other. Truth be told, most people do all of the three. They tend to start fighting with each other in the beginning, turning to convincing each other to follow their own way when they find out that fighting can only exacerbate a problem and not solve it, and finally giving up all hope and realizing that this is a world where nobody can change nobody and starting a "cold treatment" to each other by simply ignoring each other's differences and enduring each other. That's how endurance comes about, as the last stage in you and your partner's long journey to "fuse" your personalities and finally realize that it is in vain to change anyone. That's how you start tolerating each other, happily or unhappily, in the name of keeping your relationship and making it going.

Frank

[Frank's] video on YouTube about Israel (以色列)

2006-07-23T08:52:00.000+08:00

My Dear Friend:

I just posted a video on YouTube about Israel because I was pissed off by Israel's ground invasion into Lebanon. You can find the video at "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6pCeW2KYeQ". Enjoy.

Frank

Since the President breaks the law, why can't I?

2006-07-22T21:56:00.000+08:00

A similar question to the one I raised in my last email is "since the President breaks the law, why can't I?" I mean, the President (in the case of President Chen) breaks the law on a daily basis and profits like a bandit from it. If this is the case, why can't I break the law and profit from it as well? Why should I be a "good citizen" and obey the law while the President and his cohort break it constantly and reap tremendous financial rewards from it?

Of course, it's not that we cannot break the law. It's just that if we break it, we are likely to get caught, while for the President and people with "special connections" to manipulate justice, they can get away with it. That's why they can afford to break the law while we can't. Besides this difference, I don't see any intrinsic reason why we can't break the law while they can. I mean, the law is just a piece of paper made up by the rich and the powerful to handicap ordinary citizens while benefiting themselves, right? It's just a set of "game rules" invented by the rich and the powerful, and if this is the case, why should we ordinary citizens obey such rules while they can break them and yet not get caught?

It doesn't make sense. We should just learn from the rich and the powerful and start breaking the law as well. Of course, by that I don't mean to tell you to kill someone or rob a bank. This is because if you do, you are likely to get caught and executed. But you can break the law starting from small places. Lie on your tax returns. Embezzle something from your organization and put it in your own pocket. Take in some money you shouldn't and do a favor for someone in return. Etc. This is what I mean by "breaking the law". After all, breaking the law requires practice just like anything else, and it is advised that you start from small places and practice so that someday you can break the law big time and profit like a bandit from it.

Should morality and virtues stand in the way of your breaking the law? Nah. Does the President have morality and virtues, and does he let them stand in the way of his breaking the law? If not, why should I let morality and virtues stand in the way of my breaking the law?

It doesn't make sense, does it?

Frank

Since the President is corrupt, why can't I?

2006-07-22T21:30:00.000+08:00

A corollary of the question "why should I be patriotic since even the
President isn't patriotic?" that I posed at the end of my last email is that since the President is corrupt, why can't I be corrupt as well? I mean, the President is the leader of the country, and if he is corrupt and has guzzled tons of money he shouldn't have, why can't I do the same thing as well? Why should I be clean and work hard and pay taxes to the country when the President is crazy taking in bribes and is working only for his self-interest and not the country's? Why should I be "good" and not learn from the President and be corrupt as well?

It doesn't make sense. We ordinary citizens shouldn't be the "victims" and let only the President and people in high places be corrupt and enjoy the fruits of their corruption. We should just learn from them and start being corrupt as well. That's why I wouldn't even hesitate a second to be corrupt if I had a chance to do so. :-)

Frank

Patriotism has zero ROI

2006-07-22T21:15:00.000+08:00

Patriotism has got to be the most useless thing in the world. I say patriotism is useless because it has zero ROI (return on investment). What does patriotism mean? It means to love your country and fellow countrymen. That's what patriotism means. Why does patriotism has zero ROI? Simple. Because even if you love your fellow countrymen, they may not love you back, and you have a zero ROI. Think about it: what do you get in return by loving your countrymen? Who are they to you? Are they important people to you who deserve your love? No. They are for the most part nobody to you. If this is the case, why do they deserve your love and why should you waste your time and energy loving people who are nobody to you and who most likely won't love you back even if you love them?

To me, "love" is a very focused term. By that I mean I only love a select few people in my life, i.e. my family and my loved ones and a few of my friends. I don't love my countrymen because I get nothing in return and it's a waste of my time. Besides, my countrymen include "scumbags" such as President Chen. Do you want me to love the country and in the name of this love also love him as well? What are you talking about? Are you nuts and out of your mind?

Don't be fooled by patriotism. It's just a term invented by leaders so as to inspire you to do things for them in the name of loving the country. Patriotism means that you should sacrifice yourself for the country and benefit the people of the country. Of course, the ultimate beneficiaries of your patriotism are the leaders of the country. That's why they want you to be patriotic and sacrifice yourself to do things for the country so that you can benefit them ultimately.

Let me ask you a question: do you think President Chen is patriotic? If your answer is "no", then why should I be patriotic since even the President isn't patriotic? If your answer is "yes", there is only one possibility.

You are an idiot.

Frank

Dell is DEAD

2006-07-21T21:15:00.000+08:00

Guess I was a little prescient after all when I penned the following piece about Dell and prognosticated that it may be in trouble. Guess I was right because Dell has just warned that its second-quarter financial results will miss analysts' expectations. Dell's surprising bad news caused its stock to drop more than 12% in the pre-market (http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=dell), as there are only 30 minutes to market open in New York as I write this. I bet today will be a "bloodshed" for Dell, and Dell will be the "object of hate" of every institutional investor on Wall Street and will suffer profound loss in its stock price by the time the stock market closes at 4:00 PM.

Let's pray for Dell, because the death bell has already rung for it.

Frank

The "flat" nature of the Web facilitates differentiated services

2006-07-21T18:07:00.000+08:00

I consider the Web to be a "flat" space. This is the case because on the Web, anyone can access any website without restrictions, provided your ISP doesn't block the website and you are not behind a firewall or something. So for the purpose of discussion below, I think we can assume the general case that the Web is a flat space and anyone can access any website without restrictions. I argue that the flat nature of the Web facilitates and nurtures differentiated services. Why so? Because on the Web, since there is no barrier to accessing any website, if you can offer a better service, people will use it. People will use your service if it's better than your competitors' services because they can access your website from anywhere in the world with no geographical constraints. If your website offers a better service, it doesn't matter where in the world it is based, because people can simply get on the Internet and launch their browser and access your website in a matter of seconds. The "instant access" nature of the Web flattens its structure and removes the one conventional limitation that hamstrings commerce in the real world, i.e., geographical difficulty in accessing the service. Take for example grocery stores. You would normally go to the grocery store nearest your home to buy foods and vegetables. Why? Because it is closest to your home and thus is the most convenient. You normally wouldn't go to a grocery store 50 miles away to buy stuff, because it's too far and the geographical distance poses a challenge for you to go there. This is just one example of how geographical difficulty in accessing a service constitutes a determining factor in your decision in which service to use.

The Web removes this kind of geographical limitations in accessing a service. On the Web, any website is of "equal" distance to you -- it's always only a few seconds away, provided your Internet connection is working properly and the traffic on the Net isn't terribly busy at that time. Under such a circumstance, where you are based and where the website is based are totally irrelevant factors in determining which service you will use. You could decide to access the service of a website just around the corner of your home, or you could just as easily opt to access the service of a website half a globe away -- it doesn't matter. The two services will pop up in your browser equally quickly, and you could hardly discern which service is the one located just around the corner of your home and which one is the service located half a globe away, provided your broadband Internet connection is working properly.

In such an environment, differentiated services flourish. As long as you can offer a service that is slightly better than your competitors', people will use it because once they get on the Internet, there is no barrier to accessing that service at all. People become "ultra-selective" on the Web, and they always visit the website that offers the best service, even if it's only slightly better than the next best service. One good example is search engines. Everyone knows that Google is the best search engine and everyone uses Google. Why don't people like to use Yahoo!'s and MSN's search engines? Because all three search engines are free and you can access each one at equal speed. If this is the case, why not use the best search engine and enjoy the best service?

This is just an example of how the Web facilitates differentiated services. Such examples abound on the Web: Amazon.com offers the best retail service, and everyone uses Amazon.com and not Buy.com, BarnesAndNoble.com, CircuitCity.com, or some other retailer; Yahoo! Finance (finance.yahoo.com) offers the best financial information, and everyone uses Yahoo! Finance and not another financial website, etc. The good thing about the Web facilitating differentiated services is that it fosters competition and empowers the user to choose the absolute best service without imposing any geographical constraints on it. On the other hand, the bad thing is that competition on the Web is extremely brutal and intense, much more so than in the real world, because now all services not only have to compete only with other services in the vicinity of their locales, but with all other similar services around the globe. That's how the flat nature of the Web pressures service providers to innovate so as to retain their businesses.

Remember Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous quote: "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door"? The "better mousetrap" represents the archetype of a differentiated service. Ralph Waldo Emerson said the quote more than 100 years ago, and if more than 100 years ago people were already willing to beat a path to your door for a differentiated service, think what they would be willing to do today to use your service on the Web if it is better and there is no access barrier to it?

I smell opportunity.

Frank

In the morning, my Google God will make me infinitely happy

2006-07-20T23:46:00.000+08:00

I'm gonna go to bed now, and when I wake up in the morning, I will be transformed into a totally different person and will become infinitely happy and will begin a new chapter in my life because my Google God will have reported earnings for its latest quarter, and the results will have blown away all expectations, as usual, and show the world how almighty my Google God is. My Google God has repeatedly blown away through analysts' expectations in the past, and every time this happened, its stock has always rallied something like 10% or more in one day. That's how powerful my Google God is. The world is better with my Google God, because with its magical touch, my Google God can solve every problem the poor mankind are facing today on this little planet called "earth", be it from famine to green house effect to war to greed to hatred to jealousy to disease and everything else by distributing an infinite amount of wealth to every investor in it and thus making everyone happy. Of course, once these stupid mankind are happy, they forget everything and go home counting the cash bills my Google God has just dispensed in their hands. That's how my Google God helps mankind solve every real or imaginable problem they have. That's what a God should do and why so many of us revere and pray and kneel down before the altar in the church of my Google God and worship it.

May your kingdom come soon tomorrow morning and sprinkle Forever Happiness on every soul who believes in you, my Google God. We'll never leave you and will forever treat you as our God.

Amen.

Frank

"巴士阿叔" video on YouTube

2006-07-20T15:57:00.000+08:00

For those of you who knew about the "巴士阿叔" incident that occurred in Hong Kong in late April, in which a middle-aged man talking in a loud voice on his cell phone on a bus was disturbed in his conversation by a young man sitting behind him who patted him on his shoulder and asked him to lower his voice and was pissed off by the young man's act and turned and started a heated argument with him, the video has been uploaded onto YouTube and can now be watched at "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSHziqJWYcM".

Enjoy.

Frank

It's Yahoo!'s Overture advertising division that is failing spectacularly

2006-07-19T23:28:00.000+08:00

In case you don't know it yet, it is Yahoo!'s Overture advertising division that is failing spectacularly and causing Yahoo!'s big trouble right now. Overture was a pioneer in Web advertising, and it invented the "search advertising" business model that Google copycatted and has applied so successfully. Overture was the original Web advertising company, and when Google was designing its AdWords online advertising system it basically just copied Overture's business model. Overture was acquired by Yahoo! in July 2003 for a whopping $1.6 billion USD, which was an astronomical sum of money considering that the US stock market was still mired in the worst slump since the Great Depression in 1929 and most Internet companies had either gone bust or were acquired on the cheap by other companies. Not Overture. Yahoo! treated Overture as a "treasure" and it shelled out a stupendous amount of money to buy it. See Yahoo!'s press release at "http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/pr/release1102.html" for details.

However, in the three long years since Overture was acquired by Yahoo! and became its online advertising division, it has done precious little to improve its system to compete more effectively with Google's and make Yahoo!'s online advertising offering more attractive. Fact is, Yahoo!'s online advertising system is a lot *less* powerful than Google's and it also offers less functionalities. It's a myth and people outside of Yahoo! are all curious as to why Overture has failed so spectacularly in improving its system and making it more competitive.

Doesn't matter. It's too late anyway, as Yahoo!'s CEO has just announced at last night's earnings conference call that Yahoo! will now once again postpone the release of its revamped advertising system from Q4 this year to Q1 next year.

What Overture has done is too little, too late. And considering that the division has more than 1,000 employees, I say most of them should be laid off as a punishment for their disappointing performance.

Frank

Yahoo! down nearly 20% in early going

2006-07-19T22:57:00.000+08:00

Now the US stock market has been open for only about an hour, and Yahoo! is already down nearly 20% so far from its abysmal earnings news last night. See "http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=YHOO" for details.

Honestly, I've seen too many such bad news and stocks that blow up like this since I started investing in the US stock market in 1995. Now I'm pretty used to it, but the bad thing is that after seeing so many big fluctuations in the stock market, I regard life as a stock market as well. I mean, life is just as cruel and random as the stock market, and if you don't do well, don't blame other people for throwing stones at you and trying to poach a piece of your flesh and fry and eat it. I mean, life is very cruel, and if you can't defend yourself, don't blame other people for wanting to kill you. That's just the way it is. Which is why you should remain strong at all times and not fall into a "trap" or get yourself in trouble so as to weaken yourself.

Believe me, once you become weak, among ten people nine will want to see you suffer and only one will want to help you out. That's just the way it is.

Welcome to the real world.

Frank

Re: Sony's net profit margin was only 1.47%; Dell's stock just made a 52-week low

2006-07-19T17:04:00.000+08:00

Speaking of Dell, I have a cousin, whose husband used to work for the Dell research center in Taipei. He was pretty senior and was in charge of 40+ people in his department. He joined Dell in Dec. 2004 and received 10,000 shares of Dell stock options, which was pretty good, especially for an employee in Taiwan. However, he has recently jumped ship and left Dell, because he felt that all his stock options were under water, as he got them at the price of $35 USD a share, which was the price of Dell's stock in Dec. 2004, and now Dell is at $21 a share. He felt that Dell's stock has no hope whatsoever of climbing back to $35 a share (which I agree), so the financial incentive of retaining him was already gone. Besides, he and his team teleconferenced with the Austin site of Dell in Texas almost on a daily basis, and when he left office it was always around midnight or even later. He felt that with the workload he was taking and the financial rewards that remained, it wasn't worth it to stay at Dell anymore. That's why he jumped ship and joined another company.

Frank

The street survey people should offer rewards to entice people

2006-07-19T13:37:00.000+08:00

I just came back from lunch, and on my way back to office a street survey person in his office shirt stopped me with all smile on his face and said to me: "Sir, can I have five minutes of your time to complete this survey?" I kept walking and said to him: "Sorry, I'm in a hurry back to office for a meeting" and accelerated my pace of walking trying to dump him behind. Guess what? This guy was very tenacious and he didn't give up. Instead, he followed me and kept walking on my side and said to me again: "Sir, five minutes is all it takes to complete this survey. Can you help?" I smiled again on my face and said: "Sorry" and kept walking and left him behind and dumped him.

Every time I see a street survey person trying to stop people like this and do his job this way, I always feel sorry for him. Why? Because he doesn't understand human nature. These street survey people are trying to stop people and ask them to do a favor for them at the time the people they are stopping are busy walking in the street going to lunch. If they are going to stop people like this and ask them for a favor, at least they should offer them a reward for doing so, right? Otherwise, why should people help these street survey people and complete their surveys for them since they don't even get any "benefit" in return? It's not that I don't have the willingness to help or that I don't have five minutes to spend. It's just that I don't feel an "incentive" for me to stop and spend five minutes of my time under the scorching sun to complete the survey. If I were them, I would definitely offer some small rewards to entice people so that they are willing to stop and complete the survey for me knowing that they will get something in return for their help. That's what I would do because I understand human nature and because I'm not as naive or should I say stupid as these people.

Personally, I've never stopped once completing surveys for these people, and I don't think I ever will until one day they start offering rewards that are attractive enough for me to stop and waste five minutes of my time to complete the survey for them for something I don't give a damn about. Until that day comes, no stopping and completing surveys for these street survey fools who don't even understand the most basic part of human nature. :-)

Frank

Sony's net profit margin was only 1.47%; Dell's stock just made a 52-week low

2006-07-19T11:54:00.000+08:00

And that's why these two companies are the "twin brothers" of misery. See Sony's and Dell's finances at "http://finance.google.com/finance?q=SNE" and "http://finance.google.com/finance?q=DELL" respectively.

When I first saw that Sony's net profit margin was only 1.47%, I shook my head in disbelief and massaged my eyeballs trying to discern if I had seen wrong from my fatigue or something. Nah. I didn't see wrong. Sony's net profit margin was really only 1.47%, which means that if it sold $100 worth of goods, it made only $1.47 in profits. Paltry. And the company had over 150,000 employees worldwide! Unbelievable.

As for Dell, its situation is not much better, as its stock just made a 52-week low. The bottom line is this: the PC business is all but "untouchable", meaning that its profit margin is super-slim and the competition is cutthroat. And Dell is already the PC maker that is doing the best. I guarantee you if you were to check out other PC makers such as HP, Asus, Lenovo, Gateway, etc., you'll find they are doing even worse. Which is why you shouldn't touch the PC business even with a ten-foot pole.

Frank

Re: Yahoo!'s bad earnings news dragged down Google after-hours

2006-07-19T06:42:00.000+08:00

Actually, Yahoo!'s bad news is Google's good news, and Google's stock was down after-hours only by "speculative association" with Yahoo!'s stock. See, Yahoo! and Google are in the same category -- they are both search engines and are both trying to make the bulk of their money from online advertising. Yahoo! also has a slew of other online properties, such as Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Travel, etc., but these websites add little to its revenue and earnings. That's why Yahoo! is essentially only a search engine and it, just like Google, is trying to derive most of its revenue and profits from online advertising. However, Yahoo! has always enjoyed the hapless reputation of being the "No. 2" search engine and a "little brother" of Google's. There is truth to this reputation, as Yahoo!'s search engine is not only slower and indexes less pages, it has a *much* inferior advertising system compared to Google's in terms of the precision with which it can target ads and the functionalities it offers. That's why Yahoo! has not been very successful at marketing its search engine and altering people's perception that it was a perennial "little brother" on Google's side.

Of course, after today's earnings announcement, the little brother will now become even littler. Which is good news for Google, as Google will continue to crush Yahoo! based on its strong technology and innovation and will render Yahoo! an all but irrelevant player in the search marketplace.

For Yahoo!, it's not time to yahoo, but time to cry instead.

Frank

Yahoo!'s bad earnings news dragged down Google after-hours

2006-07-19T06:27:00.000+08:00

See "http://finance.yahoo.com/q/cq?s=YHOO,GOOG&d=e".

See that Yahoo! was down big after-hours? This is because it just announced earnings tonight and it was ho-hum. Worse yet, Yahoo! delayed the release of an important advertising system designed to compete with Google's AdWords, the Web's predominant advertising system and Google's "cash cow". Yahoo!'s delay in introducing the advertising system is a bad, bad, bad news for the company, and that's why the short sellers on Wall Street swarmed out and piled on Yahoo! like a school of piranha fish piling on a hapless horse in a feeding frenzy that fell into the river. I guarantee you that Yahoo! is now "dead" and its stock will continue to decline in the days and weeks following the earnings release.

In short, today is only the beginning of Yahoo!'s travails. Pity the Yahoo! people who work so hard in their combat with Google trying to stop its juggernaut and wrest the "No. 1 search engine" title from it.

And now this.

Frank

Google to announce earnings on Thusday. What should I do?

2006-07-18T21:20:00.000+08:00

Google (http://finance.google.com/finance?q=goog) will announce its quarterly earnings on Thursday, July 20, after market close. Every three months at this time, I always get fired up and also feel a little nervous as to the impact Google's earnings will have on its stock price. If Google's earnings are excellent, its stock price may skyrocket. Conversely, if Google's earnings are merely "good" or even "in-line", its stock price may plummet in a tailspin. However, whether Google's earnings are "good" are judged by Wall Street, and people outside of Wall Street can hardly second-guess the subjective opinions Wall Street institutional investors will have on Google's earnings. This poses a dilemma for me, an individual (i.e. non-institutional) investor who has good knowledge in the US stock market but who has no access to Wall Street insider news. Should I sell Google's stock if the earnings are good? This is the specific question I'm pondering in my mind. I'm pondering this question because even if Google's earnings are good and the stock spikes on news of the earnings release, it may drop back on subsequent days after the announcement. As an experienced investor in the US stock market, I have seen too many stocks including Google's exhibit this kind of phenomenon after earnings release. So if I don't sell the stock on the back of its spike after the earnings announcement, I may miss the one good chance to dump it and buy it back at a lower price.

On the other hand, there is always a chance that Google's earnings are really so good that its stock will spike and will sustain the momentum and keep going up. Google's stock has exhibited this kind of behavior in the past, too, so this is always a possibility.

And so I'm caught in the "tug of war" between the two camps of thinking in my mind. One camp of thinking is telling me to dump the stock on the morning after the earnings release to take advantage of the spike in price, whereas the other camp is trying to convince me to hold onto it because it may keep going up.

So should I sell, or shouldn't I sell? Should I sell, or shouldn't I sell?

Gee, this is almost as difficult as love and the "I love her, I love her not; I love her, I love her not" kind of torture, isn't it? :-)

Frank

Carl Page, older brother of Google co-founder Larry Page,

2006-07-18T17:01:00.000+08:00

was an early employee in a company called "eGroups.com" that was sold to Yahoo! in 2000 for $432 million USD. Carl made millions of dollars when eGroups.com was sold to Yahoo!. See the Wikipedia entry on eGroups.com at "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EGroups" for details.

Carl and Larry's father, Carl Page Sr., was a computer science professor at Michigan State University. Their mother also taught computer programming. That's why both Carl and Larry were acquainted with computers at a young age (Larry received his first computer at 6) and why both of them developed a strong interest in computers early in life.

Frank

YouTube now serves 100 million videos a day

2006-07-17T07:07:00.000+08:00

Reuters, the global news agency, just had this (http://yahoo.reuters.com/news/articlehybrid.aspx?storyID=urn:newsml:reuters.com:20060716:MTFH71928_2006-07-16_18-02-02_N16399348&type=comktNews&rpc=44) story about how YouTube, the hugely popular video-sharing website that lets users upload home-made videos and share them with other users, is now serving 100 million videos a day for users to watch. According to the article:

"In June, 2.5 billion videos were watched on YouTube, which is based in San Mateo, California and has just over 30 employees. More than 65,000 videos are now uploaded daily to YouTube, up from around 50,000 in May, the company said."

The amazing thing is that YouTube was just founded in early 2005, and in one and a half year's time, it has already achieved the leadership position in the hugely important video-sharing website category, trouncing the video-sharing services of Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. And the company has just over 30 employees! No wonder YouTube is generally considered one of the most promising and valuable startups in Silicon Valley (some even call it *the* most valuable startup in Silicon Valley).

Let me tell you this: YouTube is the unstoppable Juggernaut that is charging and leading the way to revolutionize TV as we know it today. When it goes public (and I expect it to happen by the end of next year), it'll make a *huge* splash. Gotta buy its stock so I can make some good money then. :-)

Frank

Google's "trilogy" to revolutionize the world

2006-07-17T00:27:00.000+08:00

Reflecting on Google's ambitions to become a phone company as depicted in the article in Investor's Business Daily, it became clear to me that Google might be executing a "trilogy" of moves to revolutionize the world and make our lives better. The trilogy is as follows:

1. Web search engine: Google has built its Web search engine and revolutionized how we search for information on the Internet. If you think Web search is a "solved" problem and Google's Web search engine is more or less "done", you are dead wrong. There are tons of stuff Google is doing to improve its Web search engine, one of which is video search. For example, if you type in the search term "chicken soup", the right thing for the search engine to do is return you a video showing how to make chicken soup instead of a text description how to do so. This is just one example, and Google is currently implementing a multitude of innovative enhancements to its Web search engine to further improve the search experience.

2. Free phone service: As described in the article in Investor's Business Daily, it is very likely Google is secretly pursuing an ambitious plan to offer free phone services sometime in the future. Google's move will revolutionize how we communicate with each other, empowering us to call one another without paying a penny and thus greatly facilitating interpersonal communication. Actually, "revolution" may be an understatement to the free phone service Google is planning, and I think it could be the single most important technological breakthrough mankind have ever had.

3. TV search engine: Once digital TV dawns in 2008, affordable PC technology will empower everyone of us to become a TV show producer by making our own videos and publishing and distributing them on the Internet for others to watch. This creates a large number of videos, and the TV watcher is faced with a conundrum of how to find the TV shows he is interested in and download them from the Internet to his digital TV so he can watch them. Google is currently developing a TV search engine that will categorize the millions of TV shows that will be available on the Internet for watching. The "crown jewel" of the TV search engine is an embedded advertising system that lets a user specify exactly what kind of commercials he wants to watch during the show and customizes the commercials to his exact interest. This kind of "targeted" TV advertising is analogous to the highly targeted ads Google shows to the right of the search results when you use its Web search engine. Targeting TV ads this way improves the value of each advertising time slot by ten fold, and Google will work with TV stations and advertising providers so that the advertising provider can specify which time slots he wants to embed his ads in so that users can choose to watch them or not. Google's TV search engine will pave the way for the efficient retrieval of TV content and will lead to an explosion in the number of TV programs we can watch on TV. A gigantic revolution whose magnitude is on par with that of free phone services.

In short, Google is currently implementing a "trilogy" of plans to revolutionize the world and make our lives better, each of which is gigantic in magnitude and together will achieve a synergistic effect and form a whole that is much larger than the sum of its individual components.

Watch out.

Frank

Will Google become a phone company?

2006-07-16T23:37:00.000+08:00

Recently the Investor's Business Daily, the No. 2 financial newspaper in the US after the Wall Street Journal, published an intriguing article questioning whether Google will become a phone company and start offering free phone services someday. The article can be found at "http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=16&issue=20060707".

While the issue of whether Google will become a phone company is a $64,000 question, I agree with the article that the macro-trend is for phone calls to become free and companies providing phone services will have to monetize the service somewhere else. Could Google be creating a phone service that is free and is supported by advertising revenue in the same way its search engine is free and is supported by advertising (notice the small rectangular ads appearing to the right of the search results when you use Google)? If so, it could revolutionize the telecommunications world by providing a phone service that is completely free and letting anyone call anyone else in the world without having to pay a penny. Think about it: how big an ambition is this and how much will it change people's lives for the better?

These are the "grand plans" Google has up its sleeve, I believe, and let's wait and see what Google will do to free us from the shackles of paid phone services and usher us in a new era of free phone services.

Frank

Any knowledge that cannot help you make money is junk

2006-07-16T17:02:00.000+08:00

To continue the topic discussed in my last email below, I really think that any knowledge that cannot help you make money is junk. Personally, I consider myself a highly "motivated" and "empowered" person. I demand "ROI" (return on investment) from the tasks I pursue, and I regard knowledge as all but a "tool" for me to make a good living and enjoying a comfortable life. I don't consider the purpose of knowledge to be simply to make me "intellectual" and enable me to crow about it. I mean, I consider myself a highly intellectual person, but I don't think knowledge per se is anything special that is worth bragging about unless it can be put to work to make money. To me, that's the purpose of knowledge and why we study hard to accumulate knowledge so as to command an "edge" in making money and giving ourselves a better life.

To this end, I have highly specialized my knowledge on two main categories: my knowledge in the semiconductor industry, which is my field of concentration and where I make a living, and my knowledge in the US stock market. I believe that by specializing my energy and effort on these two fields, I can receive the most ROI from my knowledge in terms of the financial rewards it gives me. That's what I have been doing and what I intend to do for the future.

Frank

U.C. San Diego's Department of Sociology has a "Why major in sociology" link

2006-07-16T16:41:00.000+08:00

Just found out that the Department of Sociology at University of California, San Diego (my alma mater -- I received my Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at UCSD in 1998) has a "Why major in sociology" link on its homepage. Visit "http://sociology.ucsd.edu/" and look to the upper-left corner of the page and you can find the link.

This is bad, bad, bad. When a department has to put up a link like this on its homepage to convince prospective students to major in the field, you know the field is going down. Truth be told, UCSD's sociology department is pretty good and is among the top-ranked in the country, but the field of sociology in general has been going down fast in recent years, especially since the Internet revolution began 10 years ago. You can call me "cocky" or "arrogant" or anything, but let me ask this question: who on earth wants to major in a field as "useless" and "impractical" as sociology? Sociology can teach you *nothing* that is practical, and if you have a degree in sociology, after graduation most likely you will completely change fields and do something else for a living. If you check out the "Why major in sociology" link above, you'll find that it puts "intellectual" as the first reason to major in the field and "practical" second. Well, I admire the guy (most likely the departmental secretary) who wrote the page, because at least she didn't lie! She's right -- sociology is not practical at all, and that's why the sociology people can only boast that if you major in sociology you can be "intellectually satisfied" and use the field as a "stepping stone" to pursue another field of knowledge.

To which I say: bullshit. Who bloody on earth wants to spend four years to get a degree in sociology that is all but "trash" and can get you nowhere in the job market after graduation? After all, you study hard in order to find a good job and make a comfortable living, don't you? You don't spend four precious years of yours simply to get "intellectual" while finding yourself being "stranded" in the unenviable position of not being able to find a job, right? Worse yet, if you major in sociology, you'll end up watching your friends who major in computer science, electrical engineering, or some other field in which it's easy to find a job receive a good number of offers after graduation while finding yourself unable to find a job in sociology per se and be forced to change fields and do something completely unrelated for a living. That's the comeuppance of people who major in sociology and the "punishment" they receive for not being "practical".

Junk sociology. Study computer science instead. Believe, you'll be much better off economically this way.

Frank

Re: Does the Pope masturbate (教宗自慰嗎)?

2006-07-15T00:40:00.000+08:00

Acting blasphemously and perhaps somewhat mischievously, if you were to ask me the question: "Does the Pope masturbate?", my answer would be a resounding: "Yes!". Scientific studies have shown that regular sex improves the metabolism and physical vitality of both men and women, and it is advised that people over a threshold of age (typically late 30s) have sex at a regular interval so as to maintain their well-being. Think about it: the Pope is nearly 80 years-old, and I bet he was ordained as a priest in his 30s, although I haven't bothered to spend the time to google for his background to verify this assertion. So in the nearly half a century of time since he became a priest, he hasn't had sex with any woman. (But who knows -- Popes in medieval times often slipped out of Vatican through underground tunnels to sleep with their mistresses. See Dan Brown's excellent novel "The Da Vinci Code" for details.) His health would have gone downhill and I suspect he would downright have "exploded" and tortured himself to death had he not had any means to "vent" his sexual energy. Since he can't have sex with any woman, in which other way can he at least attain a perfunctory feeling of sex and console and convince himself that he is a normal human being after all and not an "imperfect" soul who has sacrificed so excessively in the name of serving God that he even forewent the most pleasant "carnal" joy one can find on earth and did not even complain a bit about it?

Masturbation. Or "DIY".

That's why if you ask me, I say the chance is 100% that the Pope has at least masturbated a certain amount in his life.

Frank

As one ages, love entails an increasingly high risk

2006-07-14T18:09:00.000+08:00

To continue my ramblings on love, now that I'm almost 35 (I'll be 35 in August), I really think that as one ages, love entails an increasingly high risk. When one was young, one felt that he/she could find plenty of love. This is especially true for good-looking people. When one can find plenty of love, he/she usually won't cherish it. Or won't cherish it that much. He/she would think that since he/she has so many opportunities for love, why not just go ahead and take chances and try it. After all, when you were young you felt you owned the world, and even if you failed once in love, you could always restart and find another love. Love entailed little risk for one when he/she was young, and he/she most likely would be brave in trying and experiencing different love with different people.

However, as one ages, the situation changes dramatically. When a person reaches a certain age (somewhere in the early 30s), he/she finds that he/she is no longer as physically energetic as he/she used to be. When he/she reaches 35, it's downright "middle-age" for him/her, and his/her thinking and mentality are drastically different from what they used to be only a few years before. He/she finds that he/she no longer has as many chances for love because his/her soul is older and is no longer as "jubilant" or "anticipatory" towards love. Another reason, and a more realistic one at that, is that older people are generally not as popular as younger ones. If a man is rich and a woman is beautiful, age has little impact on his/her popularity, but given enough time, his/her popularity is bound to drop as time progresses at a steady relentless pace and no one can maintain his/her physical appearance and vitality no matter how hard he/she tries. Once aging reaches a certain threshold, one finds that suddenly the people who would love him/her and the people he/she would love narrow in number dramatically. Under this circumstance, love has accompanied with it an increasingly higher risk. If your age is over a threshold and you turn out to love wrong, chances are you won't have the mental strength to recover and you would live with the hurt for a long long time to come. That's why as people age, they become increasingly cautious in love and won't dive into love without thinking it over and making sure that the person they are falling in love with is one on which they can entrust their entire future. Of course, getting to know someone and gradually trusting him/her is always a slow process. That's why as one ages, love becomes an increasingly onerous affair and why people who are over a threshold of age take longer to love compared to younger ones.

Frank

Re: Intel to lay off 1,000 managers

2006-07-14T05:58:00.000+08:00

And as someone who possesses a sharp eye and astute mind, I wanted to ask the question: "Why 1,000 managers? Why not 985 or 1,223 or 2,069?" I wanted to ask this question because the number 1,000 looks rather "random" to me and could signify that Intel is merely intent to stage a "symbolic" layoff show and not really interested in laying off all the unproductive managers who have stymied the company and prevented it from competing more effectively with its competitors. If Intel truly wanted to cut off all the extra "fat" in the company, it would have laid off an arbitrary number of managers that included all the people who were not productive and who couldn't help the company to make money and wouldn't have chosen the symbolic number 1,000 to cut. That's why if you ask me, I say Intel was only making a "show" to Wall Street and trying to convince it that it was serious about cost-cutting but deep within was still trying to protect the bureaucracy and red tape of the company by which so many managers are trying to make a living.

Frank

Intel to lay off 1,000 managers

2006-07-14T05:41:00.000+08:00

And so today I woke up early and I turned on my computer to check how my Google stock has fared last night (answer: abysmally, but not the worst during the current profit-taking maelstrom sweeping through the stock market right now), and a snarling headline caught my eye: "Intel to lay off 1,000 managers". See the article from the San Jose Mercury News, the newspaper of Silicon Valley, for details (http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/15031209.htm).

I'm so super-surprised by the news because it emphasized "managers". So Intel is intent to cut off 1,000 managers and not engineers. (Truth be told, Intel did say more cuts could be on the way that could include engineers as well.) Of course, middle-level managers in their 40s are always the worst-affected in a layoff. This is because they are too old to do useful technical work (and can only survive by using their "mouth"), and yet are too young to retire. This batch can neither contribute to the company like the engineers do, and they don't hold the political power of vice presidents and above. That's why middle-level managers in their 40s are almost always the first to go when a layoff comes. And since they are already in their 40s and are all but "molded" for career purposes, they can't just change their career path and pick up the technical skills they have forgone years ago. That's why they can only continue the course they have taken and search for their next job in which they can keep using their "mouth" to make a living. Very dangerous.

My bet is that lots of middle-level managers at Intel are now keeping their fingers crossed and praying that the star of bad luck won't fall on them and they won't be the people chosen to let go. Keep praying.

Frank

DVDs as your forever avatar

2006-07-13T12:01:00.000+08:00

DVDs have got to be one of mankind's greatest inventions. DVDs can record an extremely faithful image of you on the surface of the disc. Since DVDs are made of aluminum, they are virtually imperishable provided you don't scratch the surface of the disc. If a DVD is properly used, the images recorded on it can be kept forever. If this is the case, can we then extend the meaning of "life" and postulate that the images recorded on a DVD constitute the totality of you, the person? The collective images burned onto the DVD and permanently etched onto its surface record you in a "sealed" state, as if time was frozen at that instant and everything you at that moment was faithfully taken a snapshot of and kept on the DVD. Every time the DVD is played, you become alive again, despite the fact that you were a being who lived in the past a while ago and is no longer around. Doesn't matter. Your life was recorded on the DVD, and the DVD serves as your permanent "incarnation" for all who live after you to see. In this sense, DVDs can be construed as constituting a forever "avatar" of yours that is as if cryogenically frozen and awaiting to be unleashed at a future time. So you can indeed live forever, not in the real world but in a "virtual" environment that fulfills our desire to have as long a life as we want that is as fresh as we want it to be.

In the DVD.

Frank

Social networking > Online dating

2006-07-12T10:36:00.000+08:00

Another phenomenon I have observed is that social networking has replaced online dating as the premier form for people to interact online. Social networking websites, exemplified by MySpace.com but also including other smaller "second-tier" players such as Friendster, have replaced online dating websites such as Yahoo! Personals and Match.com as the preferred websites for people to hook up online. My take on this transformation and the swinging pendulum of preference from online dating to social networking is that online dating is too "heavy". It implies you are looking for someone to fall in love with. Although many people also use online dating to seek pure friendships, the word "dating" imparts a heavy milieu on these websites and some people are turned away by the implied meaning of seeking love if they use them. Furthermore, people have high expectations when they are seeking love. Once they have used an online dating website for a period of time without finding their love, they tend to become disappointed and cease using it anymore. That's why online dating, while popular a few years ago, has dropped in popularity recently and is no longer considered a hip thing that is "in vogue" anymore.

On the other hand, in social networking people don't have the high expectations of finding love. The term "social networking" simply implies you are here to find friends and you are open to any kind of friends, be they romantic friends or just ordinary friends. So the scope of people you can befriend on a social networking website is by definition much larger than the scope of people you can know on an online dating website. Besides, because people don't have the high expectations of finding love on a social networking website, they won't cease using it after a period of time as long as they can find friendships they are happy with on such a website. So social networking websites do not possess the "disappointment" factor that hinders the acceptance of online dating websites by users after a period of time, and that's why they are more popular than online dating websites.

I have had a profile on MySpace.com since a few months ago, although I haven't revamped it since. Gotta tidy it up and spend more time on the website to see what kind of friends I can find. :-)

Frank

MySpace.com is now America's most popular site

2006-07-12T10:04:00.000+08:00

The social networking site MySpace.com has officially surpassed Yahoo! Mail and Google.com to become America's most popular site. See "http://www.searchenginejournal.com/?p=3620" for details.

MySpace.com is like a wildfire sweeping through America's teenage population, with a total of over 70 million registered users worldwide. When you combine so many cheerful, go-go, happy-happy teenage users with tons of music and videos and inject a heavy dose of hip popular content, you can take these users anywhere and make them do anything. That's exactly what MySpace.com is doing. Kudos to Rupert Murdoch and Fox Interactive Media for having purchased MySpace.com from its former owner Intermix for $580 million USD in July 2005. The site is worth (at least) $3 billion USD now. So Rupert Murdoch made a 5x return in one year. Amazing, isn't it?

Frank

Atheros (founded by a female Taiwanese professor) typifies the volatility of chip stocks

2006-07-11T17:21:00.000+08:00

Atheros Communications (http://finance.google.com/finance?q=ATHR) is a highflying chip stock. The company specializes in Wi-Fi chips and was founded by professor Teresa Meng of Stanford University. Prof. Meng graduated from the EE dept. of National Taiwan University in 1983. She is a well-known figure in the Chinese circle in Silicon Valley, having founded Atheros and served as its CTO (Chief Technology Officer). Prof. Meng is reportedly worth $80 million USD from her stock in Atheros. You can find Prof. Meng's profile at "http://dualist.stanford.edu/~thm/".

Atheros typifies the large volatility exhibited by chip stocks. Check out its 52-week high from the link to Google Finance above, and you'll find it's now down some 40% from its peak, which is normal. Every other highflying chip stock, from Broadcom to Intel to Marvell to LSI to Xilinx to Altera, all exhibit this kind of volatility. Point is, semiconductor companies are a "cyclical" business, meaning that their revenue and profits fluctuate with time. This being the case, it's no wonder their stock prices fluctuate with time as well. This is why semiconductor stocks are strictly a "trade" and not suitable for long-term "buy-and-hold" strategies.

FYI.

Frank

Does the Pope masturbate (教宗自慰嗎)?

2006-07-11T13:46:00.000+08:00

(I know this email is bound to piss off a boatload of you out there, but I possess too "rebellious" and too "wild" a personality to *not* send out this email. Please bear with me if you are offended by this email. :-)

You know, I often wonder if the Pope masturbates and imagine what it would be like if he does so. I imagine our old Pope, the venerable Benedict XVI, lying on his bed with his hand gently massaging and rubbing his "willy" (as the British call it). As he increases the force on his hand, he feels more comfortable and his moaning sound increases. He keeps up the pace of the rubbing, and his face gradually reddens and his head starts bobbing up and down against the surface of the bed and he starts shouting: "Oh my God! Oh my God! This is exactly what I became a priest for! I found God by rubbing my willy myself and not by kneeling down on the altar before Jesus Christ! Who needs Jesus anyway? I can find God RIGHT HERE!!!" As the crescendo nears, his willy bulges and you could almost hear the sound of the fluid flowing within and wanting to jet out. After laboring for some minutes, finally the moment he has been waiting for arrives, and his willy "explodes" like a volcano, ejecting lots of white lava, and his "milk" is splattered all over his hand. Finally, our old Pope can rest at ease, and he slumps back into bed and pants, trying to slow down his heartbeat while enjoying the slippery feeling on his hand. At last, he lets out a satisfied sigh of contentment and stretches his hand over to close the Playboy magazine he had kept open close to his head on the pillow.

Sorry for making it sound so blatant here, but can the Pope still "do it"? I mean, the Pope is an old man, and he supposedly hasn't used his willy on any woman since he was ordained as a priest, right? So after decades of disuse, can his willy still "function"? These are the questions I have always felt curious about. Gotta google for these questions to see if I can find any answers for them. :-)

Frank

Justice is a business

2006-07-11T10:38:00.000+08:00

Regarding yesterday's news that the son-in-law of Taiwan President Chen, Mr. Chao, has been released from prison while awaiting trial for his insider trading charges (http://appledaily.com.tw/AppleNews/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Article&NewsType=twapple&Loc=TP&showdate=20060711&Sec_ID=5&Art_ID=2740343), I wanted to comment that justice is a business, which means justice is buyable. Actually, justice has always been buyable since Day 1 in human history, and anyone who thinks otherwise is either too innocent, too naive, or is downright an idiot. Justice is buyable and is always bought every day, and it's just a question of whether you have the "channel" and the money to buy it. If you do, justice is yours and you own the judges and policemen and everyone else in the justice "food chain". If you don't, sorry, then chances are justice won't be on your side. It's that simple.

People who are uninitiated or who lack knowledge often think justice is "neutral" or "impartial" and the judges and everyone else in the justice food chain work hard to uphold people's rights. Wrong. Judges are the *most* subjective people in the world, and they think they are the *kings*. They ask you to believe in justice, which means you should believe in them and no matter what they do and how they adjudicate a case, you should *never* question their integrity or dare to ask if they have taken any bribe in making the decision or not. It's as if you bought something from a company, and the company asked you never to question the quality of its goods or take the merchandise you bought back to it for exchange no matter how lousy the quality is. That's what "justice" is.

If you don't believe justice is a dirty business, you are an idiot. Also, if you have the money and the means, be sure to manipulate justice and make it work for you. After all, that's what you become rich for, right? If you have lots of money and yet do not tinker justice to work in your favor, what would you need the money for? Use your money to buy justice so that you can make even more money and yet without being punished for the bad things you did! That's what you buy justice for.

I know one thing: if I had the money and the means to manipulate justice, I wouldn't hesitate a second to do so. I want to make all the judges and policemen and everyone else in the justice "business" work for me. Makes me feel good, you know. :-)

Frank

The discontinuous ROI model in sport turns me off

2006-07-10T15:07:00.000+08:00

(Sorry about writing yet another post to reflect on sport, but my creativity is on fire today and I can't seem to control it, so please bear with me. :-)

To me, someone with a very "solid" personality and who likes to adopt "incremental" approaches in doing things, the discontinuous ROI (return on investment) model in sport scares me and turns me off. The ROI model in sport exhibits a discontinuous curve because everybody wants a gold medal, and anything but the gold medal is valueless. So if you spend a certain amount of effort and win the gold medal, you have a high ROI. However, if you spend the same amount of effort and win anything but the gold medal, you have a practically zero ROI. Well, maybe not zero, but very low indeed. So the ROI curve in sport exhibits a big discontinuity (or "jump") at the junction of whether you win the gold medal or not, and this discontinuity makes sport a big gamble for the athletes and the people who rely on it to make a living. Personally, due to my personality and my career as a computer professional, I dislike this kind of "all or nothing" model of return. What I like is a "smooth" ROI curve, in which the amount of effort you spend is proportional to the amount of reward you get. The more effort you spend, the more reward you accumulate gradually with time. This is the kind of model I like because it exhibits controllability and predictability, unlike sport, whose outcome is often determined by chance (such as France and Italy's PK match at the end) and is not predictable at all. The "all or nothing" nature of sport is the reason why athletes have such a short career span and why it is extremely difficult to make it famous in sport.

Sport: a bad investment model.

Frank