CS3216: Security system design, Chiang Kai, IBM

IBM: Guest Lecture, Chiang Kai

Date: 29 Mar 2010

(To be honest, I was falling asleep during the talk given by Chiang Kai (CK) on security. I guess that's the thing about security, you take it for granted that it works while you sleep..)

I think one of the interesting points is that we widely underestimate how much of our personal information is online and easily accessible by any crawler. CK brought up an interesting fact that using information available on social networks, a MIT student project predicted with 78% accuracy whether a profile belonged to a gay person using data from 4,000 profiles.

The original article "How privacy vanishes online” can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/technology/17privacy.html

Could potential employers use this information to reject your application or be biased against you during the interview? Even if you choose to maintain your privacy through regulating the information that is publicly accessible, you are unable to stop your friends or colleagues from sharing information about your activities. Another scary fact was that social security numbers could be guessed at by analyzing the data available on your profile pages. (Social security numbers are identifying numbers like your I/C number in the U.S.).

CK also brought up the example of Kevin Mitinick, who did not use hacking to break into computer systems, but instead relied on manipulating human trust and behaviours to gain passwords and sensitive information. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/technology/17privacy.html

Ironically, after being arrested for hacking, he now runs a computer security consulting firm.

A crook to catch a crook.. =)

I think the important point is that the system can be designed to be secure, but if the users are not aware of the security risks of giving away passwords..

Okie, after googling, I found a presentation which gives a short but sufficient introduction to Secure Software: http://www.st.cs.uni-saarland.de/edu/secdesign/intro.pdf

Secure software should ensure:

1. Confidentiality: Only authorized people or processes are allowed access
2. Integrity: Data integrity
3. Availability: The system and data is available under adverse conditions
4. Authenticity: Users are who they claim to be

Interestingly, the lecture gives a intro on Lifecycle Risk Assessment (second time I came across lifecycle analysis, the other is in calculating ecological impact). The analysis might result in the developer weighing the probablity, severity of potential damage and repair costs required before fixing all the security risks.

It is often a trade-off between security and usability (in terms of speed, efficiency.. ).

Some interesting videos when you search for "How to think like a Blackhat"..

Google's Matt Cutts

http://searchengineland.com/think-like-a-blackhat-by-matt-cutts-16129

This Stackoverflow discussion is quite interesting. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/772596/black-hat-knowledge-for-white-hat-programmers

Conversations with a BlackHat

http://ha.ckers.org/blog/20100314/conversations-with-a-blackhat/

=p

"Expert Sharing on China" Talk today - Quotes and lessons

Singaporeans in Africa
Recently, Mr Lee Yi Shan and a few of the panelists went to Africa for a business trip. They came across a fascinating Singaporean and shared it with the audience. They met a Singaporean woman who set up an electronics business in Lagos. She was working in an electronics shop in Sim Lim as a sales assistant, when she started noticing that a significant percentage of the shop's revenues (five figures) were from Africans who often paid full in cash. Intrigued, one day, she just bought a plane ticket and flew to Lagos alone. As she did not know that it was customary to bribe the immigration official, she was made to wait in the airport for the whole day. That was the start of her African story. Eventually, through much hard work, she managed to grow a very successful business. Lagos is reminiscent of Singapore in the 1950s, and the panelists shared that there are many opportunities.

Quotes from Mr Zhong, boss of Yanlord
有 字的书，无字的书，干中悟 (Book knowledge, and knowledge outside of books, learning through doing) 培养沟通能力、判断能力 (to develop communications skills and decision-making)

越发展的国家，商机越深埋 （The more advanced the country, the more hidden are the opportunities)

越满足市场需要，越成功 (Market-product fit ensures success)

非诚信取得的成功不长久。(Success gained through dishonest means does not last long.)

具体化 -> 制度化 -> 高效化 -> 人才化 （Execution -> Standardisation -> Optimisation -> Talent development)

以前，我们谈合约时，如果带了律师和会计师，对方会觉得我方很不友善。现在，当我们带律师和会计 师时，对方会觉得我们的公司很规范。
（Previously, during contractual negotiations, when we brought our lawyers and accountants, the other party would feel that we are being unfriendly. Now, when we bring our lawyers and accountants, they would feel that we are a properly managed company that commands trust.)

Systems of Systems Integration - Applications for Engineering in cleantech: A talk that ESP students and engineering students should have attended

(Any mistakes made in this post are mine. I would appreciate any feedback on erroneous information.)

Today, I attended a very good talk by a engineer/scientist/corporate leader/analyst named Dr Michael Quah after he gave a talk about "Systems of Systems Integration - Applications for Engineering in Cleantech". (You have to love engineers =) )

The motivation for writing this is to share:

1. Why we need Cleantech research
2. An introduction to Cleantech: Constraints, Potential and Economics
3. The geo-socio-economic reality of Singapore's situation
• How does being part of ASEAN affect Singapore
  
• What kind of cleantech research really makes sense for Singapore
4. "Negawatt" - The large potential in being energy efficient
5. Relooking existing processes to make them more environmentally friendly - carbon sequestration
6. Future research areas with large potential for Singapore
   
7. Systems of systems integration approach - Weighing research vs economic value as engineers
   

(The structure will follow loosely the motivations above. It is quite long, so if you are in a hurry, just skip to the conclusion.)

First, some background about the speaker.
Background (Dr Michael Quah)

Michael has extensive research, engineering, corporate and defense experience. He was primarily based in the US, but just recently moved to Singapore to help Singapore's cleantech research. Sharing his experience from DuPont, he first gave an introduction to the role of research in DuPont.

Insights from DuPont - How research is driven

Research in DuPont is divided in Basic (fundamental) -> Applications -> Real, which forms a feedback loop.

Basic or fundamental research is important, as potential new discoveries are a source of patents and competitive advantage. However, the direction that basic research takes is still guided by the demands of the market. This does not undermine the academic rigor, as there was a healthy proportion of 2,000 PhDs in a working staff that's 6,000 strong.

This does not undermine the academic rigor. For example, when he was at DuPont, the DuPont Headquarters in Wilmington had a healthy proportion of 2,000 PhDs among the 6,000 staff.

DuPont has a very interesting policy regarding their library of patents. If a patent expires and the management of DuPont decides that it's not worthwhile to renew the patent, the original inventor is free to take the patent and develop it. An example of a patent that got away is GoreTex, which made its inventor billions =). Obviously, DuPont cannot guard against these losses, but that's part and parcel of being a large company.

DuPont also allows their researchers senior researchers to work 1 day in academia.
(Not just Google, 3M =) )

The US Research ecosystem

MQ also shared about how it's not just the universities (MIT etc) that play a major role, but companies arrayed along the Routes 128 and I-495 in MA. The companies play an important role in drawing out the intellectual capital from the universities for developing products and services.

(Is this tight industry integration lacking in Singapore?)

Why do cleantech research?
The world is currently facing a shift to renewable sources of energy. This is due to the inevitability that fossil fuels will eventually be depleted. However, Dr MQ feels that usage of fossil fuels will still persist for 30 - 50 years, due to our addiction to high energy density fuels and their ease of transportation. Furthermore, this addiction to fossil fuels has affected the current state of world politics in an undesirable way.
(I guess the costs of replacing the current infrastructure is too still exorbitant or no one wants to pay for overhauling the creaking infrastructure.)

Energy supply - Renewable energy vs Fossil fuel based

Dr. MQ also highlighted the differences and potential implications.

The renewable energy diet consists of technologies like solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, nuclear etc.

For the US, for it's "liquid" diet, it is 60% dependent on foreign sources. For it's "electronic" diet, it's foreign dependency drops to 10%. Unfortunately, reliance on fossil fuels introduces dependencies on certain oil-producing countries. Obviously, this carries some national security implications for all net oil importing countries.
(Time to talk to some friends in the MFA..)

The real peak oil debate

Dr. MQ also showed why the current debate about peak oil production is redundant from the engineer's point of view.

If you integrate the peak oil curve (sum up all the production both past and projected), you will get the sum of the sun's energy which has been stored in the form of fossil fuels via geological pressures and temperature cycles (update) over the last 3.4 x 10^9 billion years.

We are going to use this accumulated energy in n x 10^3 years.

By debating about peak oil production, we are actually just arguing about the value of n, and not how much oil there is there.

What is Sustainable Development?

Dr. MQ also shared his definition of sustainable development that he feels is most appropriate.

"Sustainable development is meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the future generation."
(Hmm.. so the current generation should think of ways to leave the world for us.. =) )

What is the potential of ASEAN?

ASEAN is a large economy that is the combined size of Canada and Mexico, with a population larger than Europe.

Some of the key issues for ASEAN are protection of land and marine environments, biodiversity. Transportation of fuel will be a problem. Another is access to water resources. Grid security and infrastructure will also be important.

Why some cleantech research does not make sense for Singapore

According to Dr MQ's calculations, if we covered the whole of Singapore with solar panels, it would only meet 22% of Singapore's current energy demand. This is taking into account current levels of conversion efficiency. However, the solar panel industry does play a role in creating jobs for the workforce that were previously working in the sillicon wafer industry.
Similarly, for biofuels, if we take a crop such as soybean, it would take 183 Singapores to grow enough soybeans to fuel Singapore's energy demand. This does not even take into account the water needed for the cultivation. However, other biofuels might be worth considering, such as the cultivation of micro-algae using sea farms. If inexpensive cultivation tanks and processes can be made, algae could be grown offshore without the limitation of land.
Update:
Biofuels proponents often push for a certain crop species and suggest that land can be found in neighbouring countries for cultivation. Singapore would be able to grow biofuels in other countries and import the crops. However, it is more important to maintain bio-diversity through crop diversity and crop cycle rotation than sticking to mono-cultures.
(I wonder whether the effect of the transportation costs of the crops negates any environmental savings.)

Hydrogen is also not very economical, when you factor in the total energy required for the electrolysis of water for hydrogen production.

"Negawatt"
A key point of Dr MQ's speech was on how there is a lot of low hanging fruit in energy conservation and energy efficiency. For example, he did a simple calculation involving the hypothetical trapping and usage of waste heat from US industries. If 20% of waste heat was captured, that would be an amount equal to the total amount of energy currently generated from all the renewable sources in the US.
For the chemical engineers, Dr MQ also introduced the concept of capturing waste heat in combined heat power generators with a double closed loop Rankine cycle. This results in a huge jump in efficiency.
(Please google "cogeneration" and "trigeneration" for more details.)
(It's easier to save most of the time than to generate additional supply.)

How to improve existing processes - Carbon sequestration?
Dr MQ also mentioned that coal plants need not necessarily be a bad option. Coal resources are cheap and plentiful. Hence, coal might still be an economically preferred choice for many countries. (I do know that US and China still have large coal reserves.) With carbon sequestration techniques that capture 45 - 65% of the carbon emissions, coal plants would have comparable environmental impact to a natural gas fired plant. Of course, this means a large potential area for research.

Future research areas
Dr MQ identified several research areas that were very interesting. (I did not have time to take down the details, I'm just guessing for some of these categories using my own knowledge)

1. Water - Access, management, marine environments
   
2. Energy security
   
3. Waste conversion to energy
4. Logistics - logistics of distribution
5. Command, control & infrastructure of grids - smart grid technologies, cybersecurity, sensors, optimization, reliability, performance, safety
   
6. Materials - new membranes, engine lubricants, catalysts
   
7. Transportation - electric vehicles, public transportation systems for cities
8. Carbon footprinting
   

Systems of Systems Overview
This diagram captures Dr MQ's view of the research value chain and economic value chain of cleantech.

While basic research is important, it is worthwhile to take note that most of the value to industry is in the higher levels. As engineers, we want to focus on these areas.

What I liked
Besides Dr MQ's sense of humour, he was able to break down difficult concepts into several levels that were executionable. He started with a broad overview, then gave a clear rationale for each of the decisions and the various consequences of the choices that he weighed. Each conclusion was supported by empirical evidence. His passion for renewable energy was also very inspiring. He gave not just the context, but also the rationale and the inspiration.

Quotes:

• Olivia Lum did not become rich from inventing a membrane. She became rich by selling entire systems that worked.
• Carbon needs a price.

Conclusion
A lot of low hanging fruit in energy efficiency
We are still going to be using fossil fuels for the next 30 - 50 years, so there is a lot of potential in improving existing processes.
The slide captures many of the points about the technology research landscape and the economic value associated with each step.

Can we be the first city to be really green? I do know that we are horribly energy inefficient with all our air-conditioners running with no one in the room.

Given that our economy is export driven, and we depend on imported energy, we have to reduce the costs of production to stay competitive and for national security.

---
(Edits made after Dr MQ's comments.)

Mostly, I write this blog to capture my thought process and learning, and not always necessarily for a target audience in mind.

However, I really hope that my year 1 juniors read this, and start thinking about why you chose this programme. If you really understand what is the potential of what you are being taught, and how you can use it to change the world, you will find that it's one of the most fascinating courses ever offered. I only realized this recently, and I find a lot of holes in my understanding which irritates me. I can only try to patch my holes with the limited time I have left before I graduate.

CS3216: 6 stories from 6 entrepreneurs

It was a good session last night. Prof Ben managed to persuade 6 entrepreneurs to come and give stories that are authentic.

Chin Leng (singaporebrides.com)

Chin Leng shared about how he struggled for almost 2 years. He originally got the idea for the portal when he was getting married, and he found it a very stressful experience to go to 50 - 60 wedding agencies just to compare prices and packages. Therefore, he had the idea of putting all the information online, while charging listing fees for advertisements. This was in 2000, the era of the 56.6kbps internet.

Those 2 years were so bad that he was literally down to the last few hundred dollars in his bank account, and he still had bills to pay. He also had to reassure his wife that everything was okie. To save money, he drank water from public taps and bought mineral water that was not chilled, just to save 15c. He also walked from place to place for meetings to save bus fare.

He even had to make free websites from his clients, as they were all small businesses with traditional bosses that did not understand the internet. The dot.com crash in 2000 - 2001 was also a huge negative factor for Chin Leng, whose idea of selling online listings sounded like a scam.However, the websites turned out to be a great marketing tool. Once a shop had a website, other competitors would suddenly start asking Chin Leng to make websites for them too. He also helped them fix their computers and clear their computer of viruses. He also helped them register their domain names and apply for web hosting.

He also shared stories of how he got rejected. Sometimes, the bosses would just turn around and "show him their backside, without giving him a chance to talk"(his words). Some employees would also push him physically out of the shop and close the door in his face.

Chin Leng also shared that he was a lousy student, so all those rejections compounded his feeling of depression during those years.

He also shared how 2 of his former clients became copycats, and how SPH tried to muscle in on his market.

However, he really believed in the idea, and slowly made progress. Today, SingaporeBrides has about 50% of the market. The next competitor has around 5%.

Very humble guy, and able to laugh at himself.

my take
I asked him a few questions, as I think I will be facing the same problems. I asked him how he managed to talk to the traditional bosses, in order to change their mindsets. He said that you must use proper analogy. To explain domain names and web hosting, he told them that it was like registering with ACRA and opening a shopfront, but in the online domain. Once the bosses got it, he would get the business.

I really like what he shared. This had one of the largest impacts on me, especially the part where he was really going broke. (Wow.. it started 10 years ago!)

I wonder what role his wife played throughout those years. Really solid marriage.

I think Chin Leng probably ate the most pain through his journey.

Hoong An (hungrygowhere.com)

Hoong An had a very good presentation entitled: "Why you should not be an entrepreneur"

He was also one of the few who emphasized the importance of the media and building up a network of contacts in the media. His lesson is that you must suit your story to the angle that the journalist wants to write about.

Hoong An also shared how he imagines himself to be a cockroach, unkillable.

He also emphasized that sometimes, you just need to be in the right place at the right time. Sometimes, he was rejected from events that he tried to attend. However, many of his biggest deals was over casual conversation during events.

These are the headers from the 7 slides:

1. You give up too easily

2. You have no business plan

Note: He does not mean a formal business plan, but a document sketching the steps

3. You plan too much.

Just Run The Business.

4. You hang around people just like you.

A soccer team with 11 strikers/goalkeepers will not win.

He would rather work with someone who disagrees with him, but can get the job done, rather than someone who he can get along with, but cannot get the job done.

5. You cannot make decisions.

A wrong decision is better than no decision.

6. You lack working experience and capital.

Sure die. (more or less.. )

7. You have no faith.

Likewise, he shared about how the 1st year's revenue for hungrygowhere was $4,000, when they had 4 founders. That's $1,000 per person per year.

Funnily, he met Chin Leng when he was just starting hungrygowhere. Chin Leng obviously ignored all the rules. Hoong An's reaction was:"Wah, like that also can ah..." Chin Leng was very inspiring to Hoong An when hungrygowhere was going through its first year.

my take
Obviously, Hoong An understands the media angle very well. I need to start learning how to talk to more people and to grab their interest quickly.

Tong Yee (School of Thought, under the Thought Collective)

Very thought provoking social enterprise. I think Tong Yee's sharing had the most impact on the audience, as he went straight to why the education system needs change.

Tong Yee's sharing was very interesting to me. Obviously, it's a very rare social enterprise that's doing very well. His tutors are being paid easily over 1ok/mth (please see below for more details).

His tuition agency achieved 55% A for GP. That beats any junior college.

Tong Yee also shared how he was a lousy student, but found his calling when he became a teacher. He discovered that he was a good at teaching.

Tong Yee also shared about how he was very shocked by his students. The most shocking incident was when a student actually told his teachers in school that they need tuition at School of Thought. When Tong Yee heard that, he was like "What?". However, the teachers willingly signed up for 1 year of tuition at School of Thought, and their feedback was that they finally understood why the student made that comment.

Tong Yee also shared about the transformation in his students. 2 of his students were awarded the PSC scholarship not because of their grades, but because of the maturity that they showed during the interview. When PSC tried to find out why these 2 students were so special, they realised that these 2 students were from SoT. Therefore, SoT is now exploring collaborations with PSC.

The Thought Collective also publishes a general affairs magazine that is solely dependent on subscription. This gives them freedom from corporate advertisers who want to target the 14 - 18 yr old market. However, they have actually thought of alternative advertisers that would also add to the general interest quotient of the magazine, such as government agencies (scholarships), NGOs and embassies (education fairs?). Currently, they have 32,000 subscribers.

Regarding the structure of the Thought Collective, Tong Yee shared that the Thought Collective consists of ThinkTank Publishing, a cafe called Food for Thought and ThinkTank. They grew laterally, not vertically, which means that each company is actually an independent company. This structure had unexpected benefits, as the staff could actually tailor their working hours and job scope to work at 4 different companies at the same time. Effectively, they could design their dream job.

Unfortunately, Tong Yee revealed that his model is highly unscaleable, as it's dependent on talent. Teachers who share that special something are hard to find. Similarly, each business is highly dependent on the founder.

Tong Yee also shared that they made a lot of mistakes. Going into the cafe was not very smooth at the beginning, as they had no experience. It took them a long time before they could break even and make a little profit. Similarly, they also failed with offering national heritage trails, as they ended up competing on price, and not differentiating themselves with their advantage which was quality of content. Their main competitors in the competitive market were 3 travel agencies.

my take

Tong Yee also shared that he's very good at reading people. I wonder how much can this skill be trained/practised.. Hmm. I'm obviously lousy at it.

Tong Yee also shared that in the long run, dollars and cents might cloud your initial vision, so it's necessary to revise your course regularly.

I came across the website of School of Thought about a year ago and was quite intrigued. Really great to meet the founder in person. I found Tong Yee very passionate about social causes. I think it's very true that any social enterprise should have as its end goal the eradication of itself, which means that it solved the problem.

I'm quite interested to find out what's their teaching pedagogy and whether it can be applied to other forms of coaching. Does it include the concepts in "Flow"?

Why did the students have such transformations? If his school's intake consists of students who did not do well in their A levels, then he has saved a lot of lives by giving them back their self-belief. Singapore's education system rarely has second chances due to its efficient sorting and classification. How much hidden potential have we lost? It's not even brain drain. It's really time to change the education system, cause it's no longer a manufacturing economy.

Ash (Interactive SG, turbanizer.com)
Ash was the only foreigner (Canadian). He brought out some different perspectives. For him, he emphasized on investing a lot in company culture and fit.
He also made a very good point that sales solves everything.

(once you hear that he founded turbanizer.com, you can't help but like Ash.. haha.. )

He also seems to understand the consumer market very well. For example, he started sg.shirtpal.com, and in its first month, it was making revenues of 30,000 Canadian dollars. Not bad for a team that only started developing the website 2 months ago.

Ash also said that he only took money recently, since it's other people's money. However, he only takes "smart money", which means that the investor must not only be able to provide money, but also open necessary doors. In shirtpal, the investor also managed to settle the shirt production factory in Thailand.

Ash - "SALES!"

Ash also advised strongly against middleman kind of businesses. It's too easy to get squeezed out by partners if you don't offer unique value.

I heard a comment that although Ash is friendly, people got the feeling that they were being sized up quickly when talking to him. I'm not sure about that and why people had that impression, but he is a good talker and very charming. I think the salesmanship abilities of Ash probably explains the SGD$7 million revenues..

(How to size people without being detected? haha.. Dunno leh. Sia lah, I suck at this man..)

Leslie (Redsports.sg)
Leslie made a very interesting point about being debt-free, before starting his business. That was very important to him, as he had 3 kids, and wanted to be able to maintain his spending.

Leslie also shared that his working experience in various MNCs allowed him to practise and hone his skillsets. For example, he picked up video production, sports-related marketing, photography, editorial writing on the job. In fact, he was working as a full-time freelance photographer before starting RedSports.

my take
Leslie is interesting, because he has a lot of liabilities and responsibilities when he started. I'm not very sure how he made the decision to do it when he had 3 kids.

Maybe I should have did the final project for him, since I seem to be the only active sports person in the class.. (although I still don't know how to code for nuts). I just get the feeling that whenever he talks, the audience just can't seem to connect. Sorry for the general stereotype..

Oh well, after this month of school, then I can replan my time.

General - Funding
All of them either used their own savings and just survived very leanly until they made it.

My question to all of them: What is your compensation plan for your top employees?

I had the chance to pose a question. These are their responses.

Chin Leng: I have an employee who has been with me for very long. I recognize her contributions and I pay her 3 months bonus. Including the 13th month bonus, that's 4 months of bonus. In addition to that, I also pay more than the average for her. I also allow her the flexibility to work from home.

I also don't pay my wife =)

Hoong An: Every employee that joins us has to take a pay cut. That is to ensure that people are really buying into the vision, and not just joining just for the job.

The reason why this is a strict company policy is because previously, we lost 2 programmers who were working with us just for a few hundred dollars more.

Tong Yee: We cap our maximum salary at 14 - 15k. To us, that is too much money for a person. We also tithe 10% of our profits (revenues? Was unclear about this).
Ash: We pay easily close to the top 15% of the market rate. We also expose our employees to our biggest corporate clients like Nike, Skype, PayPal, so that they really learn a lot. We try to compress 2 - 3 years of experience into their first year. We also focus highly on culture. We organise regular gym sessions and fortnightly company outings. Our sales people also make 6 figure salaries due to the generous commission rates.
Kwek Loong: We pay more, because startup grows exponentially, not like well-established companies. It's only natural to pay more than the market rate, because they are really doing more work.
Leslie: We work with freelancers and volunteers who believe in RedSports' vision of Sports for Singapore. I give them a lot of exposure and training.

All mentioned that good employees needed space to grow, and good employees learn very fast. It is sometimes not a waste to allow people to leave, as the alumni make good referrals. However, compensation is very important and should be proportional to results/contributions.

-- Notes --
Paiseh for missing out any points! I only took down the points that had impact on me and caused me to think through some of my own thoughts.

There is lack of analysis because this post is too long, and people who went for the session probably don't want to read this. This is more of a reminder to myself =)

I found all of them very down-to-earth and friendly =)
(Kwek Loong arrived late cause he had a business meeting. Hence, he did not have time to share much.)

Why?

(stuff I've heard, thoughts that popped up, always in progress)

Cause you know, someday, at 2am, you will have horrible nightmares about making payroll.
Cause if the batt on your mobile phone dies, you really in deep shit.

Cause you think that the Matrix is f*%%#*@ cool.

Cause you see a pretty girl, and you find that physical attractiveness has very little long term impact.

Cause you start slicing time by the day, the hour, the half hour, the minute, the second.
Cause you see that there are different kinds of beauty. Beauty that is timeless and beauty that is ephemeral.

Cause you learn that rejections, although personal, are things you can cope with.

Cause you realise that your friends all know your weaknesses, and they are still your friends.

Cause you sit up straight, learn to be 15 mins early and f*&$@!$ listen to laojiao advice.

Cause you walk rather than wait for the feeder bus sometimes to give yourself time to think while you walk.

Cause the small things that bug you still bug you, but you laugh them off. (Don't sweat the small stuff.)

Cause you find that you get a deeper high playing a competitive sport. (WATERPOLO)
Cause the ten million things you do, all lead to one thing.

Cause you learn to understand people and the decisions they make.

Cause you appreciate a bunch of friends who have been with you for more than 10 years.
Cause your friends do things that touch you.
Cause you do an almost daily ritual of examining yourself.
Cause you realise it's easier to be true.
Cause you talk less but mean more.
Cause yolk on your face is quite tasty.
Cause you are happy.

Cause you learn that your parents work damn hard.

Cause you use headfakes =)

Cause you learn why people are unhappy with their lives.
Cause you diam and just do.
Cause you learn that wealth != health and happiness != wealth.
Cause you find yourself laughing at yourself and all the silly things you do.
Cause you realise that the classics are damn classic, and the lessons in them are eternal.
Cause you realise that perfection is worth striving for, although mostly unattainable by mortals.
Cause you find the goodness in people and it balances the evil, lack of thoughtfulness in people.
Cause you experienced loss.
Cause you learn to be humble and not be an arrogant pr@%4 that you were all your life.
Cause you learn that although you think your troubles are damn important, actually, there are other more important troubles in the world.

Cause you find peace.

Cause you start to see colours that you never saw before, music you've never heard and discover connections that were invisible.

Cause you learn that there is only 1 immutable law in human relationships, karma.

Cause you know you will have regrets if you don't.

Cause you finally get it.

Random - Choose to work with people who hate the same things that you do?

Thought? - Instead of working with people that like the same things you do, why not work with people who hate the same things you do? It seems easier to narrow down the things you hate. People often are willing to state what they hate. They also know what they hate, often with a greater intensity than what they love.

(Sample conversation:

"What do you like?"

"I like being in a creative, dynamic environment. I like challenges.. I like xx xx xx."

It's a never-ending list, and you don't really get what the person is at the end.

"What do you hate?"

"I hate people who make excuses. I hate people who backstab. I hate people who talk a lot, but don't back it up. I hate inconsiderate people. I hate people who need to be told what to do, when it's pretty obvious what needs to be done."

Much much better...

)

It's easy to flip the things that they hate into things that they love to get a better idea of who they are.

Hmm..

The phenomenon of why trained (xx) can't do (xx)

I've been noticing this worrying phenomenon that is rather prevalent among students. Unfortunately, it has also happened to me.

I realised that I know nuts about engineering, even though I am supposedly doing engineering. It is becoming very scary, when one of my favourite profs starts asking the LT:"Okie everyone, tell me intuitively how does an inductor work. Anyone?" There's a long awkward silence.. Some brave soul eventually ventures a formula, but no one can really explain it in a way that shows understanding.. (intuitive understanding is quite important, if you have read "Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman!". It's important to build a mental model for your own understanding.)

After talking to another prof of mine that I respect a lot, I suddenly realised fundamental differences between the way he took his education and me. He often asked why about the things that he was taught, and his healthy skepticism for teachers showed. He also dedicated a lot more time than I did studying in his undergraduate years, in his words, " studying day and night, only breaking for sleep and meals." His fundamentals in mathematics, engineering, computational analysis, physics and chemistry are so solid that I am in awe. He is probably one of the few profs that I have ever met that has read through every book that's sitting on his bookshelf. I once wandered into his office and asked him a question that was not within the module that he was teaching. Nonchalantly, he told me to flip to the x-th chapter of the textbook on the second shelf in the middle column. That was pretty amazing (and I found the answer that I needed). (Btw, he's from an European country, not Singapore.)

Can we change the education system? I think we can. We can start by inculcating a habit in kids to always ask "Why" 3 to 5 times about the things that they are being taught in school. Googling is so easy that kids should be able to find what they need and assimilate that knowledge. Another method would be to ask kids to just keep trying to understand something they don't immediately grasp. They can try watching a video, drawing diagrams, reading another explanation.. just don't give up.

Implemented successfully, I think that would collectively result in a 10 - 20 IQ jump across the whole population, which is more than enough to spike a few Nokias in Singapore. =)

Trying to de-school myself, with the limited amount of time I have. Funnily, this is the first time in my life I think I'm actually enjoying the feeling of learning. I'm going "err..." or "Brain-freeze.." a lot more often, but it's quite interesting.

Grinding soya bean milk

This is a nice picture of a soya bean grinder taken by some guy off the net:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/greyskullscastle/4314410855/

Soya bean milk is created when you keep pushing the grinder constantly. If you have a long lever, you can apply less force to make the grinder move. Sometimes, you realize that after you grind a batch, there is one spoilt and naughty bean, and you have to redo the grinding.

I thought of this analogy when listening to Prof Ben's sharing yesterday.

To succeed in life, you need to grind, constantly. Eventually, the momentum created by your efforts will carry you further.

If you have intelligence, wealth and power or other advantages that come to you when you are born, it means you have a longer lever than others. It does not mean that you don't need to push the damn bloody heavy thing though.. (And it helps if you have friends to push with you!)

And you need a little luck, so that every batch of soya bean milk turns out good. If you put in your heart and soul, I think most of it should turn out okie =)

Drink soya bean milk everyday =) It's a healthy drink!

[Seeing things at 24 that I wish I could have told myself 10 years ago.]

CS3216: Scaling infrastructure for web app deployment

This was one of the most practical and useful lectures I've ever attended. Wow. I immediately downloaded the notes and saved it for reference. Thanks Zit Seng! Really appreciate the effort that you took.

Honestly, I felt like I was attending an engineering lecture on grid optimization. Load balancing/forecasting/filters.. The concepts sound very similar to my FYP.

Zit Seng also pointed out the need for accurate metrics for pinpointing the problem domain area, whether it is in the network, due to the servers or the application running on the client instead. To make his job easier, maybe he could create a web page with a list of software tools. Hence, when people complain, they can give him at least a basic set of data that he can follow up on.

I think a good web developer needs to be aware of the demands of the application on the network and servers. Zit Seng's example of the url with and without the backslash that is a subdirectory without a trailing slash was interesting. I never knew that "http://www.xyz.com/aboutus" needs 2 requests, while 'http://www.xyz.com/aboutus/" requires only 1. I guess I'm more wary of heavy AJAX usage on any page.. (Wave? =) ) (updated as per ZS's feedback=) )

I also think Zit Seng brought out another point about communicating in another person's language. I guess the picture he portrayed of developers being separated as above the OS and below or at the same level of the OS is quite accurate. To be good, one must be able to switch between both groups.

I do admit that the CORS system is more impressive after the lecture =) I wonder why Zit Seng is not working in a startup company or another organisation. Seems like a waste of talent..

Actually, another interesting point that Zit Seng brought up was the revenue model of SoC. Seems rather interesting.. Renting out their rackspace to earn revenue from the other faculties? =) Every faculty needs more computing power than they have, but not everyone needs electron microscopes, C&C machines.. etc. SoC has monopoly power.

I guess for the majority of us, we can happily deploy on Amazon, caring less about these infrastructure problems, thanks to nice people like Zit Seng. =)

CS3216: Googler commenting on our apps

Many of the comments made by Pamela were about usability. If you're interested in making life easy for your users, I recommend reading "Don't Make me Think" by Steve Krug. I found that it's very succinct, and in a short 1 hour read, your application or website will be very much more user-friendly. If you have any other good books/links, please share them =) (That reminds me, it's time to start a new wave on usability.. ).
Making life easy for your users means that they will love you and hopefully pay you more.. it also becomes easy for them to pay you.. =p

Pamela made some other good comments about the apps. I was quite surprised that she said nothing negative about WavePlan. It's simple but generally quite useful. I guess that's my takeaway. It might be a simple app, but if it does the job really well, that's great. Far better than a complicated app that has lots of features, but horrible to use. Pamela did say that she did not get the colour scheme and she was unable to verify that which dates were selected by her. That means our interface was not intuitive enough. Time to think a little more for the design..

Pamela had no ready answers for why Wave was so slow. I'm quite interested to find out about the 16-yr-old developer who wrote a Javascript dedicated wave client that's 10x faster. (What the hell am I doing with my life?=) )

I'm still don't get what kind of apps are good for Wave, so I'll try to go through all the principles that they recommended.
http://prezi.com/egrptwqumq8j/making-wave-y-extensions/
http://prezi.com/sxuwendhwqsy/google-wave-apis/
(Btw, those 2 prezis are quite good uses of Prezi, not the horrible abuses I've seen.)

Principle 1. Make it wave-y.
If it's for real time, it's not working, cause it's just too slow. I think the slow factor is really irritating. I'm not sure if the people using netbooks will find it even slower.

I wonder whether a combination of desktop sharing software and Skype is still more usable than Wave. I know wave has a Ribbit conference call function, but given the overall speed of wave.. it just seems like a frustrating experience for users.

Principle 2. Make it easy to use.
Wave is quite easy to use.. but still quite difficult for people to switch from Gmail. Quite ironic that Gmail is so good that people find it not worthwhile to switch to Wave.

Principle 3. Make it easy to install
(No comments)

Principle 4. Make it look good
Hmm.. Some teams surfaced the complaint that Chrome messed around with the sizing, whereas Firefox was okie. (Pamela's reply was sweet:"At least it's not IE.. " Touche).

Principle 5. Make it useful - or fun!
I think the useful part is probably more important, since people are on wave for testing out how it helps their workflow and communications, not really for gaming.

Idea: Integrating Prezi with wave? Hmm...

Conclusion:

At the moment, the performance problems and the lack of a critical mass of people on wave are affecting the application of the principles.

I was also wondering about why the connection was so bad. Is it because of the network in Australia or NUS?

Thanks Pamela for staying up so late (and for answering my stupid question) =)

Anger: Getting angry at an educator's attitude

Recently, I received a call from a tuition agency for an assignment.

What really pissed me off was the comments that the previous tuition teacher made about the assignment.

I asked the person from the tuition agency whether anyone else had applied for the assignment. She told me about the conversation she had with another teacher.

Tutor Anonymous: "Normal tech ah? No hope lah.. Don't want to teach."

WTF?

I admit I'm not a good teacher nor qualified enough, but seriously.. that pisses me off.

You can state quite honestly that the student might have a lack of discipline in studying, lack of interest, little time management or prioritisation and the assignment is difficult.. etc but no hope?

To tutor Anonymous, if any teacher made that comment about your kid, what would you feel?

The student might just be better at business, making stuff, dance, design.. just not that interested in the standard curriculum offered by Singapore's education system.

Howard Gardner - Theory of Multiple Intelligences
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences