I highly recommend this article from Marc Andreessen, especially for computer science folks.
To be fair, I think he is a bit too optimistic (as an entrepreneur he should be), but he still made plenty good points.
This is not exactly a new article, but I just realized that a lot of people haven’t read it yet, thus the sharing.
This is such a good book that I wish I had read it earlier (but fortunately found it is not too late). The gist of the book is about the right mind set for starting up companies (it was published right before the dotcom bubble burst) but I believe the main points are equally applicable to other professions: (1) do what you want to do for the rest of your life and (2) be ambitious, aim for the very best, and do not settle for mediocrity.
Read the book to figure out what the riddle is about.
I am not interested in biography, but I approached this book due to the Needham question: why China was taken over by the west in science and technology around 1500 AD after the amazing advances in earlier times? I was hoping that this book will provide answers, even though I never realistically expected that since this is a question about history, and thus can never be verified scientifically.
Well, I was right about that, as obviously nobody has ever managed to answer the Needham question. But that does not really bother me for several reasons.
First, I, like many others who have been through both Chinese and American style educations, know the main reasons more or less, even though none of us can rigorously prove anything. But answering a historical question is not really the point. The point is to find remedies and solutions. That, fortunately, I, just like many others, already know how to do practically, as evident from our achievements in modern scientific and technological activities.
Second, as pointed out in the book, the Needham question might be moot anyway, as China seems to have regained its rigor and creativity. But I cannot fully agree with this point; I agree that China has been improving, but it still has work to do to catch up with the American level creativity. Even from the young Chinese students I am collaborating today I can still see a lot of old problems that probably have been accumulated through hundreds if not thousands years of bad cultural impacts. But this is obviously fixable at least in an individual level; the million dollar question is whether it is also possible in a large national or even ethnic wise scale.
The funny thing is that the Needham question was not formally addressed until at the epilogue of the book. So the book is really testing my patience. Fortunately, the main part of the book, essentially the biography of Joseph Needham, turns out to be a fascinating read.
I recommend this book to anyone, especially (ethnic) Chinese working in the field of science and technology.
If you are having trouble integrating google reader into your viigo (e.g. getting the error message “Unable to fetch Google Resource due to Authorization error” or that viigo stops following up updates on your google reader channels), a simple solution is to export from your google reader the OPML file and import it into viigo. Specifically:
. Go to your google reader account, click on settings (reader settings), go to import/export, and export your subscriptions into an OPML file.
. Go to your viigo account, remove all existing channels of your google reader, and import the OPML file you just saved.
This should just do it.
I also think it is a good idea to save (and update) an OPML file for your google reader subscriptions, not just as a backup but also allows you the flexibility to switch easily to other readers.
A good friend of mine, Ciao, is relocating to another part of the world.
Ciao is a very nice dude, and we have had a lot of fun hanging out together. Perhaps the funniest ever experience is our first encounter, when Ciao went to interview with a company that I previously worked for.
I guess most companies have a certain interviewing style that reflects the company culture. And for that particular company, the custom seems to be grilling the interviewees with trick questions, mostly in low-level math and computer science. I could see the value of such a style in testing the interviewee’s character and intellect, but I simply couldn’t bring myself to do that to someone who has recently obtained his Ph.D. with a SIGGRAPH paper. So instead I talked with Ciao a bunch of high-level research questions. We had a great time.
The troubles came after I filled out the interview evaluation. The hiring manager informed me that my interview style is “not very proper” and sent me to a course teaching people how to do proper interviews. (I confess I never attended the course.) Furthermore, the interview with Ciao turned out to be not only the first but also the last one that I ever conducted for that company.
Fortunately, my “not very proper” interview with Ciao did not cost his job offer, and later he joined the company. Together we had some additional fun for a couple of more years. It soon became pretty apparent that we are both not very good fit for that company (my “not very proper” interview with him is probably a good early sign), so eventually we both left. But I would like to thank that company for enabling me to learn a few very important lessons that I wouldn’t have otherwise, and most importantly, the chance for getting to know Ciao.
I like the way they move….
The key idea behind these tumbling robots is nicely described here.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPEL4JOk7Vs&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]
Many people, including myself, observe that Bing produces better search results than Google. But this does not mean that people will switch. Techcrunch has a recent article on this subject. There are various potential reasons behind this unwillingness to switch, such as brand loyalty or the improvement of Bing over Google is not enough.
I wonder if the fact that search is free also plays a role here. In his book Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely has shown that giving something for free could distort peoples incentives and judgments, making them abandon their usual (more rational) thinking for non-free products. So under the hypothetical situation that people will have to pay to use search engines (either a flat rate or a usage charge or a combination), will this make them more likely to switch to a better product?
Of course, as long as Google stay pat and not charging for the use of its search engine, this may never be an issue. But we never know; Google already started to charge for some of its previously free products.
During my sleep last night, I realized that twitter can be used to play the game of story relay.
It is very simple to play the game. For example, say I start a story via the following tweet:
liyiwei My name is John Smith. I am an ordinary guy living an ordinary life. #relaystory
Noticed the keyword part #relaystory. We need this to be able to find all the relevant tweets via twitter search. You could use any other keywords, as long as (1) it has not been used before on twitter and (2) it is unique for a given story.
Now, say another user wants to relay the story:
gfxblit @liyiwei However, today turned out to be an extraordinary day for me. #relaygame
Notice that in addition to the #relaystory keyword, we also need to know which tweet your part of the story is relayed from. This is achieved via the @liyiwei part (i.e. the usual twitter reply). I know this identifies only the username, not a particular tweet, but I believe the username plus the time stamp ought to be enough to put back the story.
So now, if you want to see the whole story, you could do a twitter search with the keyword #relaystory, or simply go here.
Well, I guess that is enough information for the purpose of play. If you would like to know more detailed information, see below.
Why this?
I am a researcher, so I admit that I did this as a sort of scientific experiment. Story relay game has a long history, but twitter offers several unique properties in terms of game play: (1) large enough user base to make the relay pragmatic, (2) short message size to avoid (or at least reduce incentive for) a few users to dominate the story telling, (3) the simple and open API of twitter to facilitate experimentation.
All these web2.0 and social networks provide huge potential opportunities for crowd sourcing, but I am curious on the potential of uncoordinated crowd behavior to come up with a coherent contribution. Wikipedia is one successful example, but for me it is too serious and not chaotic/creative enough. Twitter fits the fun/chaos/creativity part well, but most tweets are individual uncoordinated contributions, and I wonder if it is possible at all to come up with a coordinated effort.
There is a high chance that nobody will play this game at all, but on the other hand I have very little to lose anyway.
Structure and content quality
If the game ever gets played and it gets sufficiently large, the story might exhibit interesting structure. It might not be linear at all, as multiple authors could concurrently relay different stories from the same tweet. This provides several interesting opportunities. For one, the story would provide branch points where the reader could choose which path to take. For another, the authors essentially vote on the quality of previous tweets by deciding whether or not to follow it. This serves as a self-organizing behavior to keep the story interesting.
Obviously a proper web-based reader would be required to help read the story if the structure gets sufficiently complex; the coding should not be too difficult but I plan to do it only when the need arises.
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As a corollary regarding content quality, spammers might eventually show up, but their tweets will unlikely to be followed, unless they turn out to be sufficiently interesting. This provides an interesting way to think about advertisements: how to insert your ad into a story so that people would consider it worth relaying?
Master of Orion 2 is my all time most favorite game, and I found myself still playing it, even though the game was kind of old – released on 1996.
The game never stops short of entertaining me. And just a few days ago when I played it again, the game ended in a very funny situation. I was playing the impossible level in a small galaxy with maximum possible number (8) of players (my most favorite configuration as it maximizes competition). I have eliminated all but the last opponent and trapped it in a small planet with all weapons knocked out. I did not want to take the last planet that soon, as I would like to conquer the Antaran home planet as my favorite way to end the game.
Then, an Antaran raider fleet showed up on the screen, heading towards the star system that contains the planet for the last opponent. I was thinking the fleet must be targeting another planet that belongs to my player, as it was newly conquered and more or less defenseless. Unfortunately, the fleet is actually heading for the last colony of my last opponent, wiped it out clean and easy (the planet is totally defenseless thanks to my effort a few turns ago), and thus ended the game automatically.
I tried to reload and replay the game several times to no avail. I would hope there would be an option for me to engage in combat with the Antaran fleet first, but the option did not show up. Thus I lost the chance to clean out the Antaran home world.
I have put up the game file here if you would like to repeat the experiment. The game is for Master of Orion II, version 1.2.
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