Tuesday 13 November 2007

Reverse Gotcha Calls

A Gotcha Call is the name adopted by radio station FOX for a prank call. Usually a prank call is initiated by the prankster, however if an annoying person calls you up an opportunity exists to play a little prank on them. I term this a reverse gotcha call.

It is not difficult to guess which type of callers are most likely to fall prey to a reverse gotcha call -- the telemarketing people, of course. Lately a lot of calls are marketing for mobile phone plans. Here are some ideas to extract entertainment value out of an otherwise disruptive call:
  • After the initial greeting, immediately start a stopwatch and stop talking to the phone even if the salesman asks a question. See how long they keep talking before realising no one cares and hangs up.
  • A variation of the first one. See how long you can keep them engaged before they realise you are just wasting their time. Only do this if you are very free.
  • If they offer a new phone with the plan, insist they give you an Apple iPhone or you don't want it. Applicable to countries where the iPhone is not available, which at the moment is everywhere except the U.S. (I did this once already but the caller didn't seem to know what an iPhone is.)
  • Insist they give you better or more freebies, like a free trip or petrol voucher. Tell them the last marketing call you got offered those items. Then start demanding more and more unrealistic things like a Barbie doll house, a brand new BMW, an Airbus A380, and finally (if you get this far) a pollution-spewing nuclear power plant in Springfield.
  • If the caller is from India, which is quite likely these days, put on Indian Thriller or some other Indian music. Then hold the phone up to the speakers or just crank up the volume. Look for a reaction on the other end.
A last option, conceived out of frustration at the salesperson hanging up as soon as they found out they won't get a sale, is to return in kind: replace your phone onto its cradle (or charging dock) as soon as you have identified the caller as a telemarketer. See how quickly you can do this without hanging up on the wrong person such as your parents or boyfriend/girlfriend.

Tuesday 30 October 2007

Free countires...?

There was a time when I considered countries like the U.S. and the U.K. as "free" countries. Countries such as China used to scare me because the government was so powerful that the slightest hint of dissent will result in your imprisonment. Back then I was lucky enough to believe in a black and white world, where the Western countries were the good guys whereas dictatorships such as the Chinese government were inherently evil.

As I learned more about the world, I discovered things are never truly black and white, only in various shades of grey. Nonetheless, it was not difficult to convince myself that the Western countries come in much light greys than my own Motherland.

I can no longer say that.

I have read news reports stating London has over a million surveillance cameras in operation. I have heard complaints that the British government is becoming Big Brother. My impression of the country is that ever since 9/11 and especially the London bombing, it had enacted laws that substantially empowered law enforcement. I can't say whether the police is abusing their newly acquired power, but it nonetheless scares me, the way the Chinese government scares me.

The situation in the U.S. is a little different but just as worrying. I have read many articles about students getting suspended for doing the most trivial thing -- doodling a gun for example -- as well as people getting arrested for the most ridiculous reasons, such as standing around on the street. My impression of America now is that the slightest nonconformity will set off alarms that can get you into trouble. Since I generally hate conformity and might even unconsciously strive to be different, this makes me feel uncomfortable if not down right afraid.

I think "free" countries are a lot less free now, and most of the erosion of freedom occurred after the 9/11 terrorist attack, usually under the guise of security measures against further terrorist attacks. If you think about it, these security measures would have come in force regardless of the Coalition's achievements in Iraq, the so called "War on Terror". If this war really is about getting back our freedom, then we have lost miserably, even before the first soldier set foot in Afghanistan or Iraq.

We were defeated the minute we began to trade freedom for security.

Sunday 21 October 2007

Meaning In Life

I used to think no matter what I do there is no meaning to it.

I could make a lot of money and buy a lot of stuff but sooner or later I will die and can't enjoy them anymore.

I could help other people by directly giving them assistance or through money donations. However these people will eventually pass away, no matter how much help I provide.

I could invent something, either a physical object or an abstract theorem that people can use or invoke for generations to come. In the end though I suspect the human race might die out so maybe my invention or discovery will be forgotten.

That was the old thinking, and it was wrong. I assumed an action I undertake must have repercussions in the infinite future for it to have meaning. This is far too restrictive.

If an action can make me happy now or at any time during my life, it should be meaningful enough for me to carry out the action. This is not a remarkable discovery; a typical person might even think I am crazy to be so narrow-minded in the first place.

Whatever others might think, this realisation have turned my life around. Things I previously deemed pointless are now worthy of my time and attention. Helping people does not seem like such a lost cause. Getting a "normal" job like everyone does is becoming a sensible rather than meaningless idea, although I won't completely rule out the possibility of doing something highly unusual.

Life looks a bit brighter now. Just a bit. Like by one tiny light bulb. That's a lot if you used to be in complete darkness.

Saturday 13 October 2007

Learning vs. Teaching


No wonder I don't learn much from lectures. :P

Friday 5 October 2007

Another Telemarketing Story

Every time a salesman calls I tell myself the best thing to do is to keep the conversation short, that I should cut them off and tell them I'm not interested. However, as more marketing firms outsource their staff to India, I can't resist giving them a chance to pitch their sales so I can challenge them back. This time is no different.

The call started with the presumably junior staff pitching their mobile phone plan to me. She asked me how much I spend on mobile phone each month. My answer was $10-15. She then elaborated on the plan, which costs $22 per month and includes a free Motorola V3x RAZR. Words came out of her one syllable at a time and at regular intervals, which made her speech as natural as Ananova.

She also didn't listen. Right after she finished reading the plan, she transferred me to her supervisor, who immediately began to sign me up by asking for my name. I told her I didn't commit to any purchase. She replied the deal was beneficial because I am currently spending $30 on my phone. Huh? I corrected her and assured her I have never spent more than $20 a month in the past four years, which is a fact. I also informed her politely the free phone is of no value to me -- I had to restrain myself from telling her the RAZR is sooooo 2005. Realising she had ran out of reasons for converting me, the supervisor hung up.

Now for the analysis/rant.

Persuading me to buy anything I don't really need is certainly one hell of a task, but I doubt I am alone. I think my generation is more wary of salesmen and their pitches because we have experienced their naggings since we were kids. We are also better educated so it is harder to mislead us. We know that if a deal sounds too good to be true it probably is.

Based on the above it is a bad strategy to outsource call centres to India because the staff there has poor English skills and little motivation. If I pick up the phone to a telemarketer who cannot communicate effectively and doesn't care enough to initiate a sincere, two-way conversation with me, what would I think about the company that hired the person? Do I really want to transact with that company?

Tuesday 18 September 2007

User Friendliness Acid Test

Every time we get it idiot-proofed, Ma Nature produces cleverer idiots.
- Robin Kinkead
Last weekend I attended Manifest, an event for otaku. My sister and I went to see the cosplaying competition, where participants dressed as their favourite anime/computer game characters. The organisers were thoughtful enough to include a picture of the character being cosplayed, and not surprisingly this was done in MS Powerpoint 2007.

In the middle of the competition, the assistant controlling the slides advanced one too many slides and skipped one group of entrants. The mistake was quickly discovered and the assistant attempted to go back one slide. Instead he advanced another slide. Further attempts to go back only resulted in the presentation moving forward, until someone decided to exit the fullscreen mode. The right slide was then located, but somehow no one could figure out how to return to fullscreen, even though there were 5 staff surrounding the computer, one of whom supposed to be in charge of all the technical stuff.

I found the situation very strange, because from what I could gather online, the new Office 2007 is supposed to be very intuitive and user-friendly. Its new toolbar replacement, known as the Ribbon, should practically eliminate the learning curve for new and old users.

The problem was eventually resolved when a member of the audience stepped forward and demonstrated his "expertise" in entering fullscreen mode in Powerpoint. I was left pondering whether it is the software not being user-friendly enough, or the users not competent enough.

Thursday 30 August 2007

Open Standards

I've been playing with calendar software/services. It started with a nifty application called Rainlendar, which allowed me to enter my friend's birthdays as well as any pending tasks. Some time later Google launched its calendar service and I moved my schedules onto their server. Although Microsoft's MSN (or Live or whatever you want to call it) and Yahoo also have calendars built into their email services, I never use them. Google allows me to share my calendars in iCal format which can be read by many programs and online services. Microsoft only lets you export to Outlook, which I hate so much it's not installed on my computer. I don't think you can share Yahoo's calendar.

As more and more services like PageFlakes and NetVibes come online, my insistence on using open standards paid off. I can now incorporate my calendars into these "personal portals" which would have been impossible had I stuck with MS or Yahoo.

The lesson here is that sticking to open standards is good because your data is not confined to the original service provider. If a competitor comes up with a better way of working with the data, you can take your data and defect to the superior service. In short, it gives you the consumer more choices.

Which explains why I still don't see myself buying an Apple product, despite their superior functionality and aesthetic design. The iPod forces you to upload songs with iTunes and you can't buy songs from anyone else except iTunes Music Store (unless it's from eMusic, which has no DRM). The iPhone forces you to use their nominated mobile provider, AT&T, and you must unlock the phone with your iTunes account. Sure there are ways around these restrictions, but the fact that Apple consistently create their products around closed systems shows their unwillingness to work with competing products. I have no intention to deal with companies that restrict my choices.

So there you go: open good, closed bad. Alternatively, Google good (usually), Apple bad.

Saturday 25 August 2007

Reality TV

I find it ironic that people in Britain should complain about racist comments being thrown around in Big Brother. The reality is that there are many racist people in our society and BB (Big Brother), being a reality show, inherited the vice.

I am confused as to whether the complainers are denying the existence of racism in their country, or are they angry at BB revealing too much reality? The former claim is obviously false, as demonstrated by the participants in BB, whereas the latter is self-defeating: people watch BB because they like seeing reality on TV, but that "reality" better conform to their moral standard. Trouble is, the scenario where everyone does conform to the moral standard is not the reality. It appears those viewers are unsure of what they want to see: the whimsical actions that is reality, or the unlikely chain of events carefully crafted by storytellers.

Saturday 18 August 2007

One Hand iPhone

I'm not going to discuss why I will not buy an iPhone even when it becomes available in Australia. Maybe I will talk about that -- and other Apple products -- in another post. What I want to talk about now is a strange idea.

Through heavy marketing, Apple has got everyone to associate touch screen phone with iPhone. It is not the first touch screen phone, but it may be the most usable (I don't know, just guessing). Clearly a touch screen allows for more creative ways to interact with the device, such as zooming into a picture with two fingers. However, I wonder if it can pass my "one hand" test.

One day on my way to uni, I reflected on how I use my current phone, the Nokia 5300. I would often whip out my phone with my left hand -- it is always in my left pocket -- and start working the navigation keys or keypad with my thumb. The only exception is when I am typing in a message or note to myself, in which case I use both thumbs.

Having discovered this habit, I wondered how well one can operate the iPhone with a left thumb only. I won't say it is impossible, but from what I saw in the commercials, it may not be the easiest thing. In the ads they always hold it with one hand and operate the screen with the other. The iPhone is also wider than the 5300 so my thumb may not reach the screen.

Not being able to "one hand" a phone would be inconvenient. Speaking of convenience, I would also like to find out the possibility of skipping a music track without taking the phone out of my pocket. I tend to do that a lot.

Tuesday 7 August 2007

Counting Days

Yesterday I had my investment tute. There was a question that required us to work out the number of coupons paid by a bond. The coupons are paid every March 15 and September 15, and the bond goes from July 2007 to March 2019. So the first coupon pays on 15 September 2007 and then the 15th of every March and September until March 15, the last coupon. Clearly there should be 24 coupon dates.

The guy next to me challenged the tutor's answer, claiming that "there is only one coupon date in 2007 and one in 2019, so there should be less than 24 coupon dates." He reckoned there should only be 22 coupons.

To confirm his answer, the tutor wrote "Sep 2007" and "Mar 2019" on the board, paused and thought for a minute, then proceeded to write down the years "08", "09"...up to "18" between the two dates. He then counted the middle years twice to make sure there were 11 years in between, 22 coupon dates excluding the first and last dates, so there are 24 dates in total. He was right after all.

Clearly neither of them could count, or count quickly enough to save their lives. There are 13 years between 2007 and 2019 inclusive, so the student's calculation should be 13x2-2 = 24, since Sep 2007 and March 2019 must be excluded from the total. While the tutor had the correct count, he should know that 2018-2008 = 10, but that doesn't include the year 2008, so he must add one to his answer to get 11 years. That would have been much faster than writing every year out then count them. One wonders what he would do if it was a 50 year bond.

I was amazed -- as well as horrified -- that this was a tutorial for a third year finance subject.

Friday 27 July 2007

Away Means Away!

MSN Messenger (you will likely be using Windows Live Messenger, but I don't have XP and can't upgrade to it) lets you set your online status to inform friends whether you are at the computer or not. And I seem to be the only person who believe the status really reflects the person's online status.

I only set my status to "away" or "busy" if I cannot or do not want to reply to an incoming message. If other people set their statuses to something other than "online", I assume they are not available for chatting and refrain from messaging them.

Some people obviously disagree with my interpretation of the statuses, or they just choose to ignore them. I have had people IM'ing me even though I was "away" -- and I really was away. Sometimes the person who initiated the conversation was himself marked "away". I assume they were trying to avoid talking to certain people, though the "appear offline" setting would be much more effective. Alternatively, they can do what I do -- kill the damned memory-hogging program. Anyway, I digressed.

Maybe when my friends message the "away" me, they are just chancing on me not really being away and therefore will reply. They might be right, in that I might really be at the computer. However, that doesn't change the fact that I don't want to be disturbed. To discourage this behaviour, I have adopted the policy of not answering messages if I am "away" or "busy", even if I am at the computer and can answer it. Of course there will be exceptions but if I do break the rule I obviously don't mind the disruption.

The bottom line is this: if I am "away", you won't be getting an answer any time soon, one way or another.

Time is scarce; therefore I am picky

My time is filling up. Apart from eating, sleeping and other "housekeeping" activities, there are uni classes, homework, revision and work. Upon completing these tasks I can move onto more leisurely activities. The problem is, by that stage I am usually left with insufficient time to do all the fun things I planned to do.

Let's use TV as an example. There are many TV shows I like watching. Altogether they roughly add up to 10 hours per week. I simply do not have 10 hours a week for TV, unless I give up all my web surfing, newspaper/book reading and even some optional studying. Therefore I began to reduce the number of shows I would watch, which means being picky about my TV consumption. As my workload increases, so does my pickiness.

So I stop watching every TV show or movie that comes my way, unless they are worthy of my time. I go through the newspaper much quicker than before because I skip the uninteresting columns, the biggest offender being reports about a little boy recovering from cancer in the Royal Children's Hospital: I care about the boy but I do not need to know all the details. The same applies to all web sites.

It turns out that consuming less isn't such a big loss, because I have retained those that mattered most to me. The ones I have dropped can be considered bloat of varying degrees. The result is that I have become more efficient at spending my leisure time.

Who would have thought quality leisure time requires careful planning (opposite of leisure), and that being picky is a good virtue?

Tuesday 17 July 2007

Wii-view

My sister's boyfriend had recently acquired a Nintendo Wii, so I finally had a chance to try out the motion-sensing controller and sampling some of the games.

I'm quite impressed with the controllers. They are more accurate than I would have thought possible, and even knows the way you are holding the controller when you are not waving it around. The games are okay: the five WiiSports games that came with the console made well use of the new controller -- you control the movements as if you are playing the actual sport.

On the other hand, I can't help but feel that Nintendo games are not my cup of tea, at least the games that I have played so far. My first complaint is that all the games are way too cute. The characters in WiiSports don't even have arms and sometimes legs! Another game that I have played, Cooking Mama, suffers from the same problem. Check out their website and you will see what I mean.

The second problem is that the gameplay is so linear. Cooking Mama is about repeating the same cooking steps over and over again, albeit a different combination for each dish. The games in WiiSports are a little simple so there is not much strategy required. All that is needed is mastering the waving of the controller so you execute the precise movement at the right time. In other words, something a robot can do very well.

A third game that I have seen but not played is WarioWare: Smooth Moves. Until that game came along I thought Mario Brothers Party and its mini-games are the worst. Apparently my 3 minute attention span is too long to find 5 second mini-games interesting.

Maybe I am just mad that the Wii gave me sore arms for two days. After all, I did tell myself that I would prefer the Wii over the PS3 and Xbox 360. That statement probably still holds (I haven't played the other two), but my money is definitely going towards a new computer than any of the consoles.

Thursday 12 July 2007

Monday 9 July 2007

Force/mass Confusion

I have just read a news article about the fitness requirements of a Formula-one driver. Due to high accelerations during the races, drivers experience high G-force, which creates stress to their bodies. Below is the article's description of the stress to a driver's neck.
"Head plus helmet weighs 6kg. With added G-forces when cornering, the neck has to support up to 30 kg."
-The Age, 17-03-2007

The article is telling me the cornering G-forces are about 24 kg. Anyone spot the problem? Forces have no mass!! Kilogram -- or more generally, gram -- is a measure of mass, which tells you the amount of "stuff" of an object. A force is not a substance (unless you go into quantum mechanics), so they cannot have any mass. The above sentence implied that G-forces have added additional mass to the head plus helmet system, which is not correct. Rather, the G-forces add to the total downward force exerted on the neck, which originally consisted of just the weight of the head and helmet*.

Since the neck has to support more downward force not more mass it is inappropriate to use a measure of mass, kg. Instead, the sentence should go "...the neck has to support up to 300N.", where "N" refers to Newtons, a measure of force. Note that we arrive at 300N because on Earth, 1kg~10N. However, had the reporter actually written that, no one would understand what he/she meant, so it is better to rephrase it as "...the neck has to support up to an equivalent of 30kg."

* Weight is the gravitational force the Earth (or another large body) exerts on an object and is not equivalent to mass. Strictly speaking, then, it is incorrect to say the head+helmet weighs 6kg, because kg measures mass not force. However, such usage has become mainstream and I shall let it go.

Saturday 7 July 2007

Guilty Conscience

One day in uni I saw a girl trying to promote some cause or club activity. She was approaching a guy walking by. The guy acted as if he was caught shoplifting, as he hastily made up an excuse, saying he was late for class, and promptly sped towards the student union building, which never held any classes. Now I am not trying to stereotype, but does that guy have to be an Asian, probably a Chinese?

I thought it was strange that the guy looked like he was guilty of something, when he was the one getting approached. Why was it necessary to lie to the girl? If he did not want to be disturbed, then just say so. Soon I had it figured out: he felt guilty because he turned the girl down. He made up an excuse so he could blame his "crime" on it. You see, the lie wasn't for the girl, it was for himself. "I wanted to stick around and listen, but I have classes so it's okay to kill the conversation" is probably what he was thinking.

It might seem I have over-analysed the situation, but I'm quite confident this is the guy's mindset. Why? Although I am no psychologist, I am a Chinese.

Sunday 1 July 2007

A Bitter Lesson

I have been ordering coffee without sugar for almost two month now. To tell the truth, coffee sans sugar can be quite hard on the taste buds. Sometimes they are rather bitter, other times they are simply tasteless. Initially I was reluctant to admit that, and preferred to think of it as part of the "transitional period", firmly believing my palate will eventually adjust to the new taste. It did, eventually, though that doesn't mean sugarless coffee starts to taste sweet. That just doesn't happen.

Instead, I began to accept the bitter taste (there is no acceptance for tasteless coffee though; they are simply bad). I realised coffee is supposed to be bitter and not sweet. Sure it is possible to sweeten it by adding sugar, but then you won't be drinking coffee but some mixture of coffee and sugar. As far as sampling good coffee goes, the sugar just gets in the way.

This concept can be extended to other things. Music video, for example, adds moving pictures to a piece of music. Nearly all the time the video portion adds nothing substantial to the music. They don't tell a story, or even show anything related to the theme of the song. In short, they are random images that gets in the way. The video acts just like a sweetener, distracting you from the main focus -- the music.

Alas, everyone needs to taste something sweet once in a while in order to remain sane. My goal is therefore balancing the need to sample the true qualities of coffee or music or story, and the desire to just enjoy them without engaging the part of my brain that judges their qualities.

Friday 15 June 2007

Redundant Exercises in Exams

Having just walked out of my first exam this semester, I decided to write my semi-annual exam bash/rant. The exam I just had is on microeconomics, which involves quite a bit of maths. For me, who also take courses in engineering, the maths are quite easy. In fact it is so easy I question the need to waste time on them in an exam.

Take a simple example, solving a pair of simultaneous equations. We all know how to do it since year 9 or 10 and it is (usually) simple. However that doesn't mean it can be done very quickly, especially in a time critical situation such as an exam. This particular exam should be testing my knowledge on economic theory and how to apply mathematical tools (e.g., solving simultaneous equations) to get the information we sought. If I apply the correct theories I should get to a point where I can say, "OK, we have two unknowns and two equations, so we can solve for them." The test should end here because it had verified I understand the economic theories and know how to get at the answers.

But the test doesn't end there because I need to write down the actual numbers for full mark. Can anyone tell me why I need to justify to the examiner I can solve a pair of simultaneous equations in this context? To me this is just a pointless exercise that has nothing to do with economics.

I would, however, like to point out that things would be different if the question does not ask for a number, but rather an expression of the quantity we are after. Then it would be useful and interesting to fully solve for the expression because from that expression we can tell how the value will change in relation to the known parameters.

It is unfortunate that all too often exams contain numerical rather than analytical questions. Coupled with odd parameters (a=0.423 instead of a=2), you wouldn't know you made a mistake since your answer, whether right or not, is just a number. On the other hand, a mistake can be spotted more easily in an expression if you know how the variables should interact with each other.

If I want to solve mathematical problems numerically, I won't be studying economics.

Saturday 9 June 2007

Intolerant Culture

The inspiration for this post started when I was considering why video games are not responsible for violent acts in real life. Clearly it is impossible to prove that video games will not make anyone more violent. Even I don't believe in that assertion. However it is my belief that video games are not the major influence of someone committing acts of violence, rather it is something more subtle that we have so far ignored.

The first thing that came to mind is the current so-called war on terror. War, whether the legitimacy of its cause, is an act of violence. Worse, it is an act of violence in real life, as opposed to what one would see in a movie or a video game. If games really induces people to become more violent, then the same should happen with seeing footages of the Iraqi conflict. If anything the latter also legitimises and actively promotes the use of force, since the war is endorsed by the U.S. Government. It is odd that people will believe simulated violence can cause violent behaviour but real violence has no effect.

As I thought harder, it occurred to me that violence is often driven by the need to retaliate. To get even. To get justice. The sue-happy culture of the United States (and probably spreading to other Western countries) is sending one message to the people: if anyone, including your closest ones, does anything that makes you worse off, sue them! Thus everyday we see on Judge Judy mothers suing their sons or ex-best friends suing each other, for mere hundreds of dollars or less. It seems to me people are getting less and less tolerant of others which explains why the smallest conflicts result in full-blown retaliatory law suits. The problem is, some people (most, hopefully) get their revenge via law suits but others prefers to use force. I believe that if people can learn to be more tolerant of others they will not desire to seek revenge, thus eliminating the source of violent acts altogether. Alas, such a scenario probably belongs to Utopia more than the real world, as it is hard to convince most people that life really isn't fair and they should just live with it.

In conclusion, video games and movie probably contributes to violence, but they are not the root of the problem. We need to look deeper into this matter and find out what provokes one to want to cause harm to another person. Only then are we able to cure the problem once and for all.

Wednesday 6 June 2007

Security is a Tradeoff

Everyone is talking about security these days. Politicians want to protect their countries from terrorist attacks, while companies are worried about frauds of all kinds. These concerns led them to introduce various security measures such as more stringent checks in airports, identifying a person by their biometrics, and looking at the buying patterns of a credit card. Although there is no doubt each additional measure increases security, they also put extra burden on the process and that can add up to a large cost.

For example, it is very convenient to shop with a credit card. Just swipe the card and sign the bill and you're done. However, if your credit card details is leaked to a malicious third party, he or she can easily purchase goods from online stores under your credit. Hence this is not a very secure payment system.

Now let's consider the opposite end of the scale. Suppose every time you want to pay with your credit card the store needs to verify your identity by checking two official documents that identifies you (say your HKID card or drivers licence), as well as performing three separate biometric scans. Clearly it is now a lot harder for someone pretending to be you using your credit card, but at this point I suspect you wouldn't want to use your credit card either due to all the hassles.

The above is of course an exaggeration of what might actually happen in practice, but it illustrates an important principle, that although security measures reduces the risk of losses, it imposes its own costs. Thus it is not wise to blindly put in place any and all security measures you can think of into a system, because the cost of performing these extra steps becomes higher than what you lose by being less secure. The art of security, therefore, is to find the point where cost is minimised rather than engineering the most secure (and likely most tedious) system.

This is not to say one cannot improve security without causing extra trouble to the customers. For example, one of the biggest reason people don't (in the companies' view) adequately secure their PINs and passwords is because they want to share them with several others whom they can trust. We all do that at some point in time, and sometimes it makes sense to do that. Usually a more secure system means it's harder for people other than the account owner to gain access. But this contradicts with our needs to sometimes let people we trust to access our accounts!

In theory, if the system knows the owner gives (or would have given) another person consent to access than it should be safe to allow access for that person, but this is almost impossible to implement without increasing risk. If I want to access my mum's back account, should the bank let me? Let's say my mum give me permission today and I got in, but I try to get in again the next day. Does the bank let me in now? Can it safely assume the situation will not change in just one day? No! It needs permission from my mum again. But if my mum is always around to give permission she can just access the bank account herself!

If the bank has perfect information it will just let me in, but it doesn't. The best it can do is look at my track record and assume that I'm benign because I always have a good relationship with my mum. Again this is a tradeoff -- set the criteria too loose and anyone can access the account, too strict and we're back to where we started -- and the trick is to find the point that minimises hassles and risk of fraud. Realistically I can't imagine anyone building this kind of system just because it's so complicated and so hard to find that "middle point". That's unfortunate, because it means legitimate people like me have to "hack" into my mum's accounts just to change a credit card number.

Thursday 31 May 2007

Too many passwords

Depending on how active you are online you may have anywhere between 1 to 50 logins (username and password pairs). It's just that every web site you go to requires a separate login. Sometimes you can reuse the details but not always. Your favourite username might be taken, or the password rules are incompatible with each other. Thus it's practically impossible to use the exact same login for every site you run into. This is usually not a problem for sites you use on a daily basis such as emails, but for sites we seldom use the it's always a challenge to recall the username and password. "Which email address did I use for the username?" "When I changed my password last year did I remember to update for this site?...no, and apparently I didn't update for the password change two years ago either." The problem becomes more complicated as some sites change ownership or two sites merge. I once lost my netscape.com email because when AOL bought Netscape it got changed to netscape.net, and with that I was unable to recover the password for the old SETI@home project. In short, things can become quite messy, and this is the reason I do not create accounts on web sites unless I absolutely have to.

As if things are not bad enough, we also have some "hidden" accounts created for us automatically when we subscribe to real services such as phone and utilities. Most of the time we are not even aware of the existence of these accounts until we need to say change our credit card details or enter a competition. But if we didn't create the accounts ourselves, how the hell do we know our username and password? If you are lucky, you may be able to dig up the letter they sent you when you first subscribed and the login details would in that letter. More likely there was no letter or it was lost or they never told you the login details. Thus you can't login and have to call support to get the details. If you can confirm your identity to the support guy he might tell you how to login. If you are calling on behalf of someone else, good luck.

Here's a real life story and basically what motivated me to write this post. My mum's credit card was discontinued because they thought the spending pattern seemed suspicious (in fact nothing of the sort was going on). Rather than reinstating the card, they had to issue a new one to my mum. This means we have to update the credit card details for our phone services. Now, trying to log onto the phone website, I found the password on the phone bill would not work. A few trials later I was redirected to a password recovery page, where it would email me the password. Great, except at the bottom I have to enter the "4-digit service code". What?! What the hell is that? You can imagine how silly this is. If I don't know the password why would I know a 4-digit service code? So in order to retrieve one shared secret (the password), I have to have another shared secret (the service code)? Come to think of it, isn't the service code just another password?

It's not hard to see the problem here. We have too many passwords, so only the frequently used ones are remembered. I don't know how long it'll take phone or utility companies to realise their customers don't need to access their accounts every day. Or every week. Or every month. Or ever (just call support...). If they want the customers to actually be able to login, maybe they should make the logins easier. Maybe the username is the customer number and the password the driver license number or something they actually know. You might think this choice of password is insecure, but if I know your driver license number I can just call up support and ask them to tell me the password. And no, these companies will never understand passwords should not be revealed to anyone including the support staff.

Tuesday 15 May 2007

Thunderbird

I have at least 7 email accounts and it's difficult and annoying to keep track of them all. The most obvious thing is I have to login 7 times to check everything, since I do not turn on "remember passwords". Anyway a while back I discovered Thunderbird (TB) can be made to handle many popular webmail accounts such Hotmail and Yahoo Mail, with the help of the Webmail extension. I have been using it for a few weeks and have to say it saved me a lot of time and trouble. I can now check 5 of the email accounts without logging in at all, and TB will regularly check for new mail so I won't miss anything. Granted this method is not perfect -- from time to time I still need to log on to manually delete the read messages as the Webmail extension will only grab them from the server but not remove them. However logging in once every week isn't so bad.

If you have been using any of these popular webmail services you will know they are all becoming more application-like, that is instead of having to refresh the whole page every time only a portion of the screen is updated, and you can use keyboard shortcuts and drag-and-drop to manage messages. They are essentially programs running inside your browser. While I quite enjoy using these new interfaces none of them can compare to an actual program running natively on my computer, in terms of response and functionality. Perhaps one day the internet will become so fast, and our computers so powerful that applications inside a browser is just as snappy as native programs, and none of these would matter. For now, I am sticking with TB.

Monday 14 May 2007

Just Want To Help...

There was an old scene from E.R. that I still remember: some of the main characters were interviewing medical students wanting to work at the hospital. When asked why they wanted to become a doctor, every one of them invariably answered, "I want to help people." Needless to say, the interviewers were not impressed with their uncreative responses.

Aside from the funny aspect, the scene stuck because to me "I want to help" is the fundamental reason I work hard. It may even be the reason that I still exist, as I have more or less ceased subscribing to consumerism. Instead, I continue to explore ways to help other people. I can't say there is any point to doing that either, but I doubt anyone really knows the true purpose of our being unless one ventures into the realm of religion. Frankly I don't oppose worshipping a God, but I prefer to spend that time helping someone in need, if that's possible. If the price for that is going straight to Hell then so be it.

Even thinking like a typical, sane person there are many things I can do to help the community. In fact, entering the workforce and providing service to the public already helps other people. The advantage of this path is I get paid for my work. However helping just any people is not good enough for me. Often times I have an overwhelming desire to focus helping those in more urgent and basic needs. This means the underprivileged in our society, people in third-world countries, etc.

To this end, there are basically two approaches. One is to leverage my knowledge and skills as (hopefully) a professional to provide the relevant services. The other approach is to provide less skilled work, probably some physical, mundane jobs. Both approaches have their places but I prefer the second one because it shows everyone can help the less fortunate if they choose to.

I still do not know which path I shall go down. The best way to find out is to experience it first hand, so at the end of this year, I am flying to Costa Rica as a volunteer. My job there is undecided -- it doesn't matter because I think I will enjoy it regardless. It will also be interesting to see how far I can cope with the living conditions in a developing country. I hope my accommodation will closely match that of the local inhabitants, as it would be insincere to be helping the poor when most of the resources are used to ensure my comfort.

Shitty Days

Last Thursday and Friday were two of the worst days of my life. Unpleasant things happen all the time but seldom did so many bad events descend on me in just 48 hours. I thought I was going to give a description of the happenings in those two days but I think I'll spare you the extra reading and myself the extra typing because this is not the main theme of this entry. Just take it from me that it is really really bad.

The point is when all of that had passed and I was walking to the train station from uni, I was contemplating how to write this post, when I suddenly realised I had been going through events in the past 48 hours, analysing them and recollecting all the little details, yet none of that triggered any frustration or sad feelings that one would expect to feel on such a shitty day. It was as if the victim was another guy and I was merely an observer. And having realised that I still didn't feel bad so I knew I didn't "forget" to feel sad. In other words I was quite numb to these undesirable events. There were only indifference, apathy and boredom. It is possible that the sadness is still inside me waiting to be released, but so far I am not sensing any. Maybe all that economics training does have an effect on me: what you can't change does not matter any more, so don't base your decisions on them.

Friday 11 May 2007

One Down, Two More To Go

Blair to leave office on June 27

I hope I'm making my political stance very clear.

Sunday 6 May 2007

The Box Closes

Pandora has finally closed the hole in its check for U.S. users. Previously the "check" consisted of asking for the user's zip code, but now the service actually finds out the geographical location using the user's IP. Just as I suspected, the ban was put in place due to the recent increase of royalties paid by webcasters. For this reason I don't blame Pandora for turning its back on me. Unfortunately for them, I'm not particularly upset by the ban. AOL radio continues to stream XM satellite radio to my speaker, and the Hong Kong version of Yahoo! Music has recently opened up a streaming radio station. In short, the loss of Pandora is practically inconsequential to me because there are still many other services up and running. And of course there is the P2P option, which I will not hesitate returning to if the music industry pisses me off too much by driving every player out of the game.

Wednesday 2 May 2007

Preempting A Bad Outcome

Obviously the war on Iraq is not going well. Even Bush and Howard have to admit that. However they are anything but ready to back down. Instead they want to send additional troops to the war-torn country, even though it is not clear whether that will help the situation. It would be unwise to lie to the public, such as telling them "the additional troops will ensure our victory in six months". If such a promise is not delivered in time, the public backlash will be quite unmanageable. So now we often hear the administrations preempting a bad outcome, essentially telling us "don't get your hopes up on this one". I find this strategy flawed. First lowering expectations does not make a bad outcome easier to accept, especially when "bad outcome" means more dead soldiers. The only difference is the level of disappointment, and at this point we are all too numb to be further disappointed. Secondly, telling people a plan is likely to fail begs the question of why implement the plan in the first place? I'll really like to hear the White House's logic on this.

Bad Regulations

I have discovered a class of regulations that does the opposite of what it is supposed to. Basically the lawmakers, with good intentions, creates a rule that cannot be enforced against those who are determined to break it. On the other hand, the rule inconveniences people who break the rule but not with malicious motives. Here is an example: banning photography in underground train stations. It is almost impossible to catch someone if they are trying hard to conceal their actions because every mobile phone is now a camera and provided the photographer is not posing like one, the only way to catch them is to look over everyone phone users' shoulder to confirm they are not breaking the law. On the other hand, there are many benign reasons to shoot away in a station, one of which being teenagers just like taking random pictures and posting them onto MySpace. These people are not doing anything wrong so they do not have to hide their actions, but it is them, not the potential terrorist attack planners, that get caught.

This problem isn't limited to laws -- DRM is a good example. Digital Rights Management is supposed to stop piracy but it never bothers the real pirates. Instead it is customers with legitimate copies that get inconvenienced.

The takeaway message of this post is that for any regulatory scheme to work as intended, you must be able to enforce it against those determined to break them. Failing to do that, the "bad guys" will remain free while the "good guys" will suffer rather than benefit from said regulation.

Tuesday 1 May 2007

Cappuccino, No Sugar

Last week I decided to walk a few blocks from the uni to try out Starbuck's coffee. Until then I had always bought my coffee at the uni. It turned out their smallest cup is "tall" which is bigger than a medium and certainly more expensive. "No problem," I thought, "a bigger cup costs more." Because the uni cafes always added the sugar for me, I just took my cappuccino and left. I don't really mind sugarless coffee but the liquid in the Starbuck's cup tasted like hot coffee-flavoured water. It got better after I went through half the cup and it cooled down a bit, but overall it was not that great and the premium I paid for the Starbuck's brand was not really worth it. I was tempted to make a direct comparison to the uni coffee but in the spirit of fairness I had to compare apple to apple so this week I have been buying coffee at the uni without sugar. I will not go to Starbuck's again.

On the other hand, I don't think I'm in a hurry to return to sweetened coffee either. Latte has more milk so even without sugar it's easier to drink but cappuccino can be quite bitter at first. Nonetheless I found myself drawn to the supposedly unpleasant taste. Although my tongue tells me I shouldn't like the stuff I am able to pick up more of the "real" coffee flavour, previously masked by the sweet taste of sugar. The excitement generated by this discovery overpowered the tongue's reluctance for more bitter coffee, and is fuelled on by the thirst to find out even more. So far I have found out the same cup of coffee has very different tastes at various temperatures. The effect was not so pronounced before since it was sweet no matter how cold it got. I can't wait to try out other kinds of coffee and buy them at different shops. From now on, coffee will cease to be just another sweetened drink; it becomes a hobby, a field of study where I can have fun while learning.

Friday 27 April 2007

A False Claim

I was reading a news article last night about the familiar violent-games-creates-violent-people debate. It was written in 2005 (don't ask why I still have the paper), so it wasn't influenced by the recent Virginia Tech shooting, instead it featured Grand Theft Auto (GTA) quite a bit since that was when the "Hot Coffee patch" incident occurred. One of the lines caught my eye. It quoted Hilary Clinton as claiming the game promoted "[having] sex with prostitutes and then murder them". Having played GTA myself I admit this is indeed something you can do in the game, but that's due to the non-linear nature of the game. There are no missions requiring the player to murder prostitutes and if you try to do that outside a mission the cops will come after you for killing pedestrians. I'm not sure how that promotes casual killing. Sure, there is no denying GTA requires the player to kill a lot of virtual characters and that might still have bad influences, but people should get their facts right when making such powerful statements.

Within the same article, author and retired colonel Dave Grossman aruged these games are "murder simulators" that teach "young people how to use guns while lessening the impact and shock value of real violence". I hope Mr. Grossman does not live in the U.S., because he would have a hard time explaining to me why the NRA, which advocates the ownership of guns, does not promote violent crimes in an even more direct way. I have said it already and I will say again. Having the intent to murder is different from having the ability to do so. Games may provide the intent (even that is debatable), but certainty not the ability. If people want to blame games or movies for violence, they should first blame the organisations that provide the means to carry out these violent acts.

Sunday 22 April 2007

Guns, Guns, Guns...

I just discovered another murder-suicide incident, this time at NASA. Should we even be surprised that these shootings just keep happening?

From what I read on a blog, it appears that most Americans don't believe these types of shooting are directly caused by the lack of gun control laws in the country, even though the rest of the world disagrees. Below I share with you two pro-gun comments on the blog, which asked the question whether NRA was responsible for these shootings.

One person tried to compare the situation to high powered vehicles causing traffic accidents. This analogy is flawed. Cars, even ones with abnormally powerful engines, are built for transportation. No one drives around with the intention to cause fatalities. The same cannot be said of guns, because they are designed to kill or at least seriously injure another person. NASCAR may promote speeding that may cause fatal accidents, but an organisation that promotes possessing guns must necessarily endorse using them (or there is no point carrying a gun around), and the direct effect of using a gun is taking someone's life. This is not a side effect, as is the case with speeding.

Another claimed "Guns don't kill; people do". This is not an accurate statement. A person intent to kill, and there is a chance that this person actually kills someone. The "probability of success" depends on the methodology, and clearly using a gun increases that probability substantially. In short, guns themselves don't kill, but they sure make the killer's job a lot easier. Can anyone dispute that had the killer been armed with a baseball bat or even a katana, the death toll would be much lower?

Clearly the merely act of restricting gun possession will not totally eliminate such killing-sprees. The black market will ensure these who are desperate, and rich, enough will get their weapons. However, it will prevent every other angry kid from causally taking the family gun from an unlocked drawer and carrying out a massacre in the classroom.

What's ironic, as one reader submitted to the newspaper, is that Americans need the right to bear arms in order to protect themselves from other citizens who have the right to bear arms. (I can't get a direct quote since I threw away the paper!)

Censorship

I suppose I will focus on TV censoring off obscene languages and gestures. I don't oppose censorship in general but the way it is done on TV just makes everything worse off. Let me explain. First of all, the shows that usually get censored are the so-called "reality shows". Now I don't know if the participates were told to swear their heads off or the producers just let nature runs its course, but clearly no one tried to prevent swearing in the first place. Perhaps it is thought that "natural swearing" makes the show more realistic, or that coarse language, albeit censored, is a selling point like nudity.

Then there are shows like Jerry Springer, where the main selling point is two people fighting their way out of the problem, and plenty of insults mixed in with the action. There are two reasons I can think of for censoring out the swearing -- to prevent children from learning them and to cater for those who find swearing offensive. So somehow it is not acceptable to expose children to obscene words but okay to show them scenes of physical assault, and that people who'd rather not hear rude words don't find real-life fighting offensive. People usually swear when they're angry, and angry people are likely to perform other undesirable behaviour such as physically assault other people, throwing objects and making threats, all of which are worse than swearing but are probably not censored.

Having established that censoring don't really shield anyone from offensive scenes, I now show censoring is also bad for those of us who don't mind hearing verbal abuse. It's not like I enjoy listening to people swear, but if they said it, they said it. Bleeping out part of the sentence just makes it difficult to understand what they are trying to say. On shows such as Jerry Springer, where other every word is a swear word, a constant bleeping block out other non-obscene words so you have absolutely no idea what they said. To a lesser extent, I find a few bleeps in the middle of a sentence is all it takes to render it meaningless. My theory is that the mind needs to capture some minimum number of words to make them meaningful. The bleeping cuts this short so it takes extra thinking to understand the sentence. Whatever the reason, the result is still that the censorship renders the exchange of words meaningless to the audience, which in turn makes the show less enjoyable.

Frankly I think the TV stations censor their shows in order to meet certain rating restrictions, so they can show Jerry Springer in the afternoon rather than 1am. I doubt they really care about influencing kids negatively or offending elderly people. I'm damn sure they don't care about making their show impossible to understand because 50% of the conversations were bleeped out.

Wednesday 18 April 2007

US School Shooting, Yet Again...

The whole world today is talking about the Virgina Tech massacre. This news item is grossly overrated, because it is not the first of its kind, nor will it be the last. As long as the Americans hang on to their right to bear arms, these tragedies will continue to happen. I'm not necessarily saying the Second Amendment is wrong or bad, but merely laying out the options: give up free access to guns or endure the consequences. Yesterday's events are the logical outcome of taking the second option. After the Columbine incident almost 8 years ago, the Amish school shooting last year, and everything else in between, is anyone still surprised that yet another shooting spree has taken place? If people really care they should start thinking about the underlying problem and do something about it, instead of just mindlessly learning the facts from news outlets and feeling shocked, confused, angry and sad all at once.

I do not have the evidence (too late, too sleepy), but the NRA is probably the main reason there still aren't any gun control laws in the US. Thanks to them, 33 lives were needlessly lost. Turns out America's greatest threat is right at home. Thank God it is not my home.

Monday 16 April 2007

Like Not Love

There are people that we like, and there are some that we love. What's the difference? Isn't love just the superlative form of like? Furthermore, we often like one person more than another, meaning there are varying degrees of like. So when does like becomes love? Does the affection for someone build up gradually so that it crosses the region of like and enters the love territory, or is there a sudden jump from like to love? From my observations the latter appears to be the case, though one wonders if it's possible to be "on the verge of love but not quite there".

So lately I have been getting these weird feelings. Not necessarily contradictory, but weird. I have identified some people that I like, whom I don't mind talking to or seeing everyday, would in fact be looking forward to doing that, but whom I know I will never love. Oh and of course these people are all female. This sounds like I'm a big pervert, but I'm not, because I do not want to be intimate with any of these girls, which is why I do not love them. I am obsessed and yet I am not. This is the most strange and confusing feeling I have ever experienced.

Friday 13 April 2007

Kiwi

There are a lot of crap on YouTube, but here is one worth watching. I had to re-watch the first half to understand everything, but when I did...I'll let you find out.

The Best Social Networking Site

I must apologise for playing a word game in the title, but my choice of social networking "site" would be a good old party. I am not a terribly sociable person and at times even find facing people a little daunting. Still, given a choice of online communication, phone and face-to-face meeting, I will pick the latter. It is hard to explain this is so; my guess is that the physical proximity forces both parties to give their full attention to the conversation and that makes the interaction more substantial. Which explains why I get pissed if my friend would interrupt the conversation to answer a phone call.

It is not that I do not believe in online technologies. Instant messaging can be very effective if friends are separated by great distances, and emails are good if instant feedback is not required. For some strange reason, I never seem to understand the purpose of a social networking service such as MySpace. I have a Friendster account for years now (don't ask why I got it), but I have done little with it except going through my friends' photos. I have tried sending messages to a friend, but couldn't see the point in using Friendster as a middleman, when I can just email my friend directly. Come to think of it, my friend probably found out about my message when Friendster sent her an email. Clearly this is getting nowhere.

My sister has a Facebook account, but it seems that she only uses it to check out her friends' photos, and I assume her friends use the service in a similar fashion. When they want to communicate, they do it on MSN. While there is nothing wrong with using Facebook as a photo album, the same job can be done equally well with Flickr or Picasa. Again, I'm missing the point on social networking.

The newest kid on the block is Twitter, where users tell the world what they are doing right this moment. For the life of me, I don't understand why I want to know gcorrin aka greg is currently "reheating [his] spaghetti". Conversely, I cannot find a reason to post an update every few hours, an exercise that is needlessly annoying and time consuming.

In short, these online services have some very interesting ideas and innovations, but for me they fall short of delivering a good socialising experience. Ideally I want to see and touch my friends, not a static picture or blocky video. When I laugh at a joke I want to hear my friends laugh too. Most online services facilitates keeping in touch constantly, but I argue it is the quality rather than frequency of each meeting that matters.

Friday 6 April 2007

Mind Games

Let's say you are stranded on an island by yourself. There is plenty of food around so you're not in danger of starving to death, but there is absolutely no way to communicate with the outside world. How long do you think you can last before boredom or loneliness drives you crazy?

If my livelihood is not in immediate danger, I dare say I can last quite a while before cracking. I have already established I am an introvert, so lack of human contact isn't the main problem. When I was by myself this pasting summer I often stayed home for days on end, only leaving to stock up on food. But then I had the Internet and TV to fully occupy my time. The island will have nothing of this sort. However I think I can live without them, because I will just start thinking. A lot.

You see, when I am lying on the bed or taking the train without my mp3 player, my mind starts thinking about things. The topic can vary from the next blog entry to an unresolved homework problem to pretending I am the powerful hero saving the world from catastrophic events (OK, you can stop laughing now). And it had just occurred to me that I never seem to run out of ideas. They might not represent a breakthrough in physical theory or turn into a profitable product, but they keep me entertained.

Then it strike me that "entertainment" for me always involve thinking. I enjoy playing a game because it makes me think. Watching TV or reading a story might appear to require less (some say no) thinking, but when you read a story, your mind is constantly building a mental picture of the scenario, essentially converting words into a movie of sorts in your mind. TV or movies remove the need for such conversion, but you still need to interpret the scenes and dialogues presented to you, to build up the storyline. Essentially these media give you interesting ideas, a push in the right direction, but the mind still needs to string them up and fill in the gaps to arrive at the final product which we call a story. Of course it doesn't need to be a story. The theory works equally well with textbooks in place of TV and knowledge instead of stories, though some people would find that sleep-inducing.

Therefore isn't it possible for the mind to come up with interesting ideas, without the help of external media, and then process them the same way as it does TV images or text? Doesn't that satisfy the definition of "entertainment"? In other words, entertainment is basically the mind thinking about interesting things. Outside stimulants help inject such ideas but they are not necessary, for the mind already possess the ability to create interesting thoughts. After all, someone has to come up with the story.

I do not wish to neglect the value of films or books, since I am an avid consumer of both media. I just think it wouldn't hurt to put them aside once in a while, and entertain ourselves with our own imagination. Try it, you might be pleasantly surprised.

Friday 30 March 2007

My Partial Music Taste

Just to clear up: "partial" here means "bias", as in not impartial.

I am not a good musician, but I did received a few years of musical training, so I can tell if someone is singing out of tune. I also took a few English and Chinese lessons while in school, so I can distinguish profound, well thought out lyrics from crappy unimaginative ones. That is to say, given a modern popular song, I can more or less rate it based on its composition and performance. As of late I have chosen to ignore these metrics and instead relied solely on my feelings. In practice this means a song is rated based on 1) voice of singer, 2) performance, 3) music, 4) lyrics, in that order.

To judge a song by the singer's voice is of course a little biased, because a person's voice is more or less fixed at birth and training doesn't change it (training only allows better control of the singer's voice). Thus I am saying that if I like someone's voice, I don't care if the lyric is crap, or the singing is a bit off. It is almost as bad as saying I like the song if the singer looks good. So let my explain why.

I have been listening to music for some time now. I have learned that everyone has their favourite types of music, that there are no universal rating system that fits everyone. Thus we shouldn't impose a set of rules that compares two songs scientifically. This comparison should be done by individual listeners, each with their own verdict.

Music, no matter how grand or skilfully performed, boils down to a bunch of sound frequencies. Saying "I like this song" just means that particular combination of sounds appeals to my ear. It makes no difference whether that sound is the result of practising day and night or just pure talent. I should not have to like a song because it was well performed or well written. It should be because I enjoy listening to it over and over again. Modern pop songs usually uses the same instruments: piano, guitar, drums, and sometimes a little violin or flute. What is always different, however, is the singer's voice. To me, the "right" voice gives me enough utility (or pleasure, if it is not too suggestive for you) to offset the amount I lose from occasional flaws in the performance.

When I started taking piano lessons many years ago, assessing a piece of music meant looking at the execution. Are there any wrong notes? Is it out of tune? Is the rhythm correct? It's like taking an aural test. Nowadays, the questions I ask are: does the music sound pleasant? Does it make me emotional? Does part of the lyrics touch me? Much more relaxing this way, and isn't that the reason we listen to music?

Thursday 29 March 2007

My Timid Classmates

It is almost incomprehensible that I, of all people, would accuse anyone of being shy or timid. If anything, I should be guilty of the crime, being one who seldom speaks up, and even then only in a small voice. However this is the situation in a particular engineering subject. It turns out that our lecturer enjoys asking questions frequently, which I think is a good idea as the interaction keeps us awake and lets her find out our progress. Unfortunately, our class doesn't like to answer questions, regardless of the difficulty. As a result there were a lot of awkward pauses during the lecture, which did no one any good. Lately I just couldn't stand it anymore, so I began to respond to the questions.

The only reason I can think of for people to keep their mouths shut is they do not know what to say, or are afraid their answers are wrong. Or maybe some people treat lectures as watching TV, and one should be as passive as possible while watching TV except for laughing at funny comments. The same thoughts may have crossed my mind before I speak up, but I try hard to ignore them. I am a student learning a new topic, and I certain don't admit to be the smartest student at that. Who cares if I give a wrong answer? I find myself happier knowing I have contributed and get it wrong, than if I had stayed quiet and congratulate myself silently for getting the right answer.

OK, back to my classmates and my rant of the day. I don't think they are any dumber than I am. One doesn't survive three years of Melbourne Uni with sheer luck. Thus my conclusion is that they are just very lazy, something along the lines of, "let someone else answer it. I'm not even gonna waste my breath..." Oh, it is also no coincidence that over half the class are Asians, and those who do speak up are usually not one of them. Except me, of course.

Sunday 25 March 2007

Time-Shifting TV

I think for the last few weeks, I had been time-shifting all TV shows. In other words, I "taped" them onto my computer and watched them later. The obvious reason is so that I can get on with more important things such as doing my homework, but another perhaps equally important reason is I might have built up a zero tolerance on TV ads. It is a well known fact that a programme that lasts an hour on TV is only about 40 minutes on a DVD, ad-free. Therefore this is not so much a protest against TV ads than an attempt to save precious time for other more important things, such as doing my homework. (I know I am repeating myself) Actually, I had been skipping ads since the days of the VHS tapes. I would stop the player and fast forward (it's quicker this way) about 3 minutes, a delicate process since it was very easy to overshoot the mark. Nowadays, VLC player allows me to fast forward by one minute or 10 seconds with shortcut keys and does so with no delays. This creates even greater incentive for me skip ads and now I cannot tolerate breaks between programmes. To demonstrate how far I have gone, even if I am free to watch a show "live", I will still record and watch it later, preferring to spend that time on other tasks such as, need I repeat, doing my homework.

To digress a little, I want to point out this approach to consume TV (on a computer) is not really new to me. The day I landed in Melbourne for my uni degree I knew I would do all my video watching on a computer. This is why my house had no TV -- my sister and I both watched TV on our computers. (We now have one for mum though) In fact, incorporating television into my computer means I can do without a tape recorder and a DVD player. When DVD recorders with built-in hard drives came out I frowned at the idea. For the same price I could have 10 times the storage and much more flexibility in manipulating the content. There is no doubt that even in the future, "dumb" appliances such as stand-alone disc players will never make it into my home. Either the content go through the computer or I will not consume it.

Saturday 24 March 2007

Progress Report

In my last post I talked of remove the so-called "bloat" in my life. I am happy to report that I have made some further progress in that area. I have dropped Without A Trace from my list of must-watch TV shows. It's not that the show is not good, but compared to the other five or six programmes still on my list, this one is giving me diminishing returns (of utilities, for those economists out there).

Another thing that happened only last night is that I will conditionally open PowerPoint files received in my Gmail. It works like this: I will first check out the contents of the PowerPoint using the "view in HTML" feature available in Gmail. This only shows the text in the presentation, but is usually enough for me to decide whether the download is worthwhile. The reason for this arrangement is twofold. Firstly, I have discovered it is much quicker to let Gmail make a web page out of the PowerPoint and open that web page in my browser, than to download the entire PowerPoint file and wait for MS PowerPoint to load up. As most of you should know, most PowerPoint files in our mailbox are big because the author decided to decorate each slide with a different background image, which doesn't add much impact to the message anyway. It is also much quicker to read the text on a web page than wait for the paragraphs to finish animating. The second reason is some of my friends keep sending me the same thing over and over. They don't seem to mind watching the show for the fifth time and have even less problem forwarding it to their entire mail list. Unfortunately I don't have the time or patience to read repeats, so a filtering mechanism is needed.

Speaking of PowerPoints, isn't 90% of any such files pure bloat, in the form of backgrounds, frivolous animations and even sound effects, and background music? This is unfortunate because sometimes the text is well written and does deserve a read. All the other crap does nothing but distracts the reader from thinking about the words. It's better to send a plain text email in this case, since everyone can start reading with no waiting time. Another type of PowerPoint presentations contains only pictures; it is basically a slide show with music. I don't know why anyone thinks PowerPoint is a good program to show off pictures, because all it ever does is stretch the image to make it look ugly. Isn't it much better to just attach the pictures to the email, perhaps zipping it if there are lots of them, and let me open them with IrfanView together with whatever background music I fancy? That way if I like a certain picture I can add it to my collection, something not doable in PowerPoint. In conclusion, the supposedly fancy features in PowerPoint are the things you shouldn't be using, even in a real presentation. The best lecture slides are the ones with a plain background, mostly text in bullet points and the occasional picture. Animations just make you dizzy.

Monday 12 March 2007

Un-bloat My Life

Many months ago I blogged about clearing my Windows desktop. This has largely been done. Items that survived the cut are what I use on a daily basis. I have also stopped launching programs that served no functional purposes.

In another previous post, I indicated an interest in applying the same principle to my life. This ambitious project has commenced and some progress has been made. One example is eating, which I mentioned in the last post. Although eating is an essential part of anyone's life, usually only a small part of that actually contributes to satisfying one's hunger -- the rest is about satisfying the taste buds or a psychological reaction to the value of the food being consumed. To me the latter parts are not that important so I paid less attention to them. I call these unimportant things "bloat", and there is no better time to remove bloat when I barely have enough time to keep up with uni work. And by keep up I mean 100% on top of taught materials.

It is very important to distinguish removing bloat and removing distractions. The latter could potentially include everything not directly related to my studies. This is not what I'm trying to get rid of. I still have a life outside of uni work, thank you. Rather I seek to track down activities that I don't really want or need to do, things that I do because I can (most likely to avoid doing any real work), and put a stop to them. For this reason I am not going to stop watching TV but will only watch programs that genuinely interest me. For example, I finally convinced myself 24 is so unrealistic it's not worth investing an hour per week just to find out the ending. I have a feeling Iron Chef will soon follow for being too repetitive but unable to improve my culinary skills. I can think of a few more examples but that will just impose more bloat on everyone, so I shall move on to conclusions.

For a computer, the less programs you have running the faster it will process tasks. I cannot tell you how much faster Windows Vista runs when it loses all the cosmetic bloat. The same goes for life. Sure I can do this and that and a million other things, but if they do not benefit me that much maybe it's time to switch activities rather than clinging onto the status quo.

Tuesday 6 March 2007

The Boring Old Life

After a mere 22 odd years of living in cities, I am thoroughly tire of it. To me, an average day would involve working, eating, followed by some entertainment. This daily routine is so repetitive and uninteresting that I can no longer get any excitement out of it. While I will continue to work, eat and play in order to survive, I don't think I really care if I'm doing job A or job B, eating Pizza or KFC, watching TV or surfing the net for news, and so on. There is the feeling that none of these things can add to my experience in a substantial way, regardless of the choices. Thus I am becoming less particular about my choices.

One of the most obvious changes is my diet -- I simply don't care too much what I eat, as long as it's not too unhealthy. Next is my career ambition. As of late, a new possibility, namely working the financial sector, had opened up and I can no longer be sure I will be an engineer after graduating from uni. The ambiguity arises because I can no longer say one field interests me more than the other, which is to say I am interested in neither one.

This mentality opens up a can of worms. If I have no desires, should I still work so hard? If there's nothing more to get out of this life, is there a reason to still be breathing? I hesitate to declare I am tired of living, as that would be dangerous, and in any case I am not there yet. There is still hope, and reasons to live -- I just have to find it.

One thing I would really like to do is to escape the city, or what known to most of us as civilisation. I need to get away to some place where the inhabitants are not concerned daily with money, career and paying bills. And if that means parting with security, technology and luxuries then so be it. I'm not saying I'll like this for sure, but I'm willing to give it a try.

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If you think this post is confusing, it's because I am not sure where I'm headed. A lot of thought is going through my mind right now. I can see many possibilities. The problem is not whether or how I can achieve any of these, but which one I want to pursue. The above is a snapshot of my mindset now, but it is perhaps just the tip of an iceberg.

Friends

This must sound crazy to a lot of people, but I am not really interested in making lots and lots of friends. It does not mean I want to have no friends, just not a lot of them that I would get calls from friends on a daily (or even weekly) basis, or have people that I would see every day. Curiously enough, often when I am by myself I feel liberating rather than lonely. This contrasts strongly with studies that shows the average Korean kid would be anxious if he or she does not get a phone call every 10 minutes throughout the day.

It is not that I dislike people or their presence, but maintaining a friendly relationship requires investing time doing activities and communicating with the friend. More often than not I would rather spend that time carrying out my own agenda. In other words, I treat time as if it is money, choosing very carefully where I will spend it. Perhaps my attitude would be different if I have unlimited time.

While on the subject of friends, while I may give the impression I am a shy or quiet person, this is simply not the case. While it may be true that I am not good at generating conversations, it is also true that I believe in saying as much as necessary and nothing more. If there is nothing more I want to tell or learn from you, I cease talking. There is no reason to invent a topic that interests neither you nor me. Some people apparently cannot stand the silence and in order to fill the void, they start blurting out random jokes or comments that only cause a laugh because of its vulgarity. Truth be told at times I too feel uncomfortable at these quiet situations but I prefer to be perceived as shy than foolish. If, however, the other party and I share some common interest or knowledge you can be sure I will talk non-stop for a very long time.

Tuesday 27 February 2007

OMG!! A New Phone!!1!111!


Yesterday I surrendered my 5-year-old phone and loaded the SIM card into a fairly modern phone. It's a Nokia 5300. It has a huge colour screen. It can play music and video files. It can take pictures. It made me seem like a big hypocrite.

Obviously I will not be writing this post if I don't already have an explanation. So here we go...

First of all I didn't buy this phone off the shelf. My sister's phone contract had ended meaning she could sign a new one and in the process earn a free phone (i.e., cost of phone is included in the plan). Normally she would dump her old phone and use this new one, but she already purchased a new one in HK. Thus the logical thing to do is to give me the new phone.

Now of course I can refuse to use the new phone. I almost did, had the phone not support Chinese. Alternatively I could pick a phone that doesn't have all these features. That was undoable for a number of reasons. After Chinese support, I looked for the form factor, or it's "pocketability". Some of my jeans pockets are pretty tight so thinness and small size is much sought after. Turns out all the Nokia phones that came for free were either too long or too thick. There were no winner in the "pocket test". Thus I fell back to features and the choice was obvious.

I believe I have not explain why I did not refuse using a new phone. All my previous posts must have impressed on my readers that I am an anti-technology person. This is simply not the case. I merely dislike embracing new technology for the sake of technology. If I can't do more of the things I want to do then the upgrade is worth next to nothing to me. However if the upgrade comes for free, then the benefit of upgrading (next to nothing) outweighs the cost (nothing). In laymans' term, it's just a case of me being a tight-ass at spending money. ;-)

For me, the major benefit of the new phone is the ability to manage my phonebook on a computer. Previously half the numbers were stored in the phone and half in the SIM card. Moving to a new phone meant losing half the numbers (I refused to manually add them back). Now everything is neatly stored on the phone...it's okay to call me a neat freak. On the other hand, I vow never to use a sliding phone in my life. It's too prone to accidental opening, especially when slipping it into my tight jeans pockets.

Hopefully, with the built-in camera I will take more photos and post them here. I already had a few ideas floating in my mind.

Sunday 25 February 2007

Border Security

After 31st March, travellers flying in and out of Australia can only carry limited amount of liquid/aerosol products onboard their flight. I had to research these regulations because mum will be leaving after March and she wonders about bringing alcohol back to HK, which tends to come in bottles of 750ml. According to the website, you can bring several containers of liquid, each not exceeding 100ml, and all must fit in a one litre transparent plastic bag. This is supposed to limit the amount of liquid one can bring onboard to about 500ml, which is not enough to make a bomb. The website claims current technology cannot efficiently distinguish liquids from one another, hence the restriction on the amount. OK, so how much liquid is needed to make explosive? 10 litre? So put 20 terrorists into the same plane. 20 x 500ml = 10L. Simple. Practically anything one can bring onto a plane can potentially become part of a bomb. The only way to prevent this is to knock every passenger out before they board, then wake them up after landing. I reckon is will be the way of the future. Airlines will save massive amounts of money because they don't need to provide meals or any cabin equipment, while passengers will no longer suffer from cramped space, crying babies or that annoying kid kicking the seat from behind. It's clearly a win-win situation.

During my research, I also found that the "national counter terrorism threat alert" for Australia is currently set to MEDIUM. What?! Who's threatening us? The only justification for this threat level is because our (adjectives withheld. Use your imagination...) Prime Minister sent troops to Iraq, thus there must be some risk of facing retaliation. It almost feels like the government is deliberately creating threats out of nothing so they can flex their military muscle, which is probably as big as those on my skinny arms. Speaking of the military, I always read in the news our country is buying fighter jets (like F-16s) from the US, but never heard of them being used. Seriously, does Australia even need them? We have the coast guards to interdict seabound illegal immigrants, and...that's about it. If some nation invades Australia (China? Indonesia?), can our air force, with our old F-16s and F-111s, stop them? I don't really know the answer because I don't know the size and capability of the RAAF; I'm merely ranting.

Saturday 17 February 2007

Give Me My Credit!

While on the subject of TV, I cannot object more to the way TV stations deface the credit screen. Usually it is done by squashing the original picture to free up half the screen to show previews for upcoming programmes. This makes it impossible to read any of the credit text, and the voice over covers up the ending music. While viewers usually don't bother reading the credit roll, it is sometimes a good source of information, such as finding out the actor for a particular character and the year it was produced. Occasionally, the credit roll is creatively transformed into an entertaining segment. For example, in one episode of The Simpsons, Homer "fired" every name that appeared on the credit. In the cinema version of Toy Story II, pretended bloopers were shown alongside the credit. One might argue that distorting the credit roll audibly or visually lowers the value of the show to viewers.

Just because the credit screen is not part of the story and is generally boring does not mean it can be mutilated to make way for promotion. In their pursuit of maximizing advertisement air time, TV stations will soon find themselves stepping over the line. When entertainment value for TV shows is all but eroded, the audience will surely turn to the Internet and DVDs for their viewing needs, legal or otherwise.

24

Frankly the story behind the new 24 is pretty weak. If I really want to (I don't, but I can't resist it), I can probably find at least one flaw every 3 minutes. But the biggest problem lies in its depiction of the main characters, namely the good guys are all unbelievably stupid while the baddies are incredibly smart. For example, the president in the story makes George W. Bush look like Einstein. Maybe this is the only way to keep the villains from getting caught before the 24 hour is up. One can be sure that the same terrorists in the real world will not last even an hour.

By now, readers should be curious as to why I would want to watch such an unrealistic show. There isn't a very logical reason, but I keep telling myself I am only here to see Jack Bauer do his job and is willing to ignore all the far-fetch and impossible situations waiting for Jack to resolve. Who knows, maybe I am intrigued by what Jack does best: torturing a suspect for information.

Wednesday 31 January 2007

A Matter of Reputation

So Windows Vista had finally launched. There are news that indicates consumers are more interested about discounted gadgets (to promote Windows Vista) than the operating system itself. But that's okay, I am not writing tonight to bash Microsoft...well not directly. This evening I saw on TV this Apple ad making fun of Vista; I laughed my head off. While I searched for this ad online I also came across what appears to be a Vista ad. I'm not sure if this one aired on TV due to its length; in Melbourne we have a much shorter and to-the-point version. Comparing the two commercials is like pitching an iPod against a Zune. The Apple ad is short and humorous, and it sends a simple but strong message to the audience. This is just like the iPod -- its interface is clean and simple yet leaves a lasting impression. In contrast, the Vista ad tries to inform you of all its features while confusing you with the spinning people. It bores the life out of the viewer, who ends up not remembering, or caring about, any features. It is not unlike the Zune, which is overall a good media player that does everything it promise and does them well, but I would struggle to find a feature in the exceptional category.

It is therefore no surprise that nowadays nearly every new Apple product creates a hype, while the Microsoft equivalent turns considerably fewer heads and only out of necessity. Steve Jobs understands that marketing to the average consumer is more about the image than the product itself. It's not about making the best and coolest products but convincing the consumers your products are the best and coolest, although it certainly helps if you actually produce the best and coolest gadgets. To the modern teenager, appearance matters more than extra functions, and commercials are no different. An operating system should be marketed as delivering a unique experience or even lifestyle rather than the winner of a features race. Apple clearly gets this but I'm not sure about MS.

I also want to state that I'm not a fan of either company. I don't intent to upgrade to Vista until I absolutely have to (then again there is always Linux), and I have no plans to buy an iPod or Zune -- I just found my small-time-Korean-company-brand mp3 player with a whooping 128MB of flash storage. When in doubt, look under the bed.

Tuesday 30 January 2007

Meeting The Saleperson

I have a funny habit of paying more attention to marketing pitches than I should. The pitch can be about anything: obtaining my vote for the student union, getting me to donate to a charity, even converting me to a Mormon. It doesn't matter what -- I just can't resist stopping and listening to what they have to say. Part of the reason maybe me feeling impolite to ignore even a stranger, but it can equally be my subconscious curiosity at work.

Since most passers-by ignore salespeople, they get quite excited when someone actually stops and listen to their pitch. I'm not a marketing person, but logic tells me that the longer a subject stays and listen to your pitch, the more likely you will succeed. That is, unless I am the subject.

The problem (for the salespeople at least) is that I don't consider myself an impulsive "buyer". I will in fact go further to declare that I don't like being told what to do, so any attempt at persuading me is likely to fail or even backfire. Perhaps the only time someone can convince me is if I already had the desire to buy or carry out that very same thing they are pitching. Despite having made up my mind before they started talking, I will listen to them and will not interrupt unless I'm in a hurry. That's right, I let them talk all they want, knowing they will never reach their goal. To make matters worse, if they ask me a question, I will respond in a positive way rather than sounding bored or irritated (again, to be polite). This of course encourages the salespeople and gives them more hope. Then comes the moment of truth, where, having expressed so much interest during the conversation, I am fully expected to commit and seal the deal. As it turns out, I will tell them bluntly that I am not interested and walk away without making any promises.

This may sound like a perverse practical joke, and someone actually wrote to the newspaper suggesting everyone give salespeople the "treatment". However this has never been my intent, even though I prefer they stay off the streets and my front door. It's just that once I started listening I do get interested in the information they gave but not the sale. Maybe secretly I hoped one of these guys can really convince me to move away from my status quo, so I gave them plenty of talking time to make their attempt. This has yet to happen.

Friday 26 January 2007

Disturbing Windows Vista Facts

I have already established why I will not actively adopt the new OS and so wouldn't normally give any further reasons. However, what I have just found out can only be described as disturbing and thus deserves some mention. All of the following is based on Peter Guttman's A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection. Guttman listed many problems created by Microsoft's efforts to protect "premium content", which are implemented in their upcoming OS. In particular, two of the problems seem to affect me the most, given I won't be playing back HD videos in the forseeable future.

The first is that Vista will apparently check the hardware up to 30 times a second to make sure no one suddenly tempers with it. Although one may argue that the polling will not cause noticeable performance degradation, the knowledge that a process is continually doing extraneous things in the background doesn't sit well with me. Although I routinely run a lot of background applications to heavily customise my Windows interface, at no point do I allow non-productive applications idling in memory. If a program is not doing something useful to me, it must go immediately, and that includes virus scanners and firewalls. The polling imposed by Vista clearly violates this principle.

The second problem is that Vista requires hardware vendors to implement the so-called "tilt bits" which detects "suspicious" fluctuation in say the voltage level of a connection pin. This is to prevent someone from intercepting the data by tapping into the wires between a component and the motherboard. The name "tilt bits" clearly comes from the tilt function in pinball machines. Unfortunately, most of the time such electrical fluctuations are perfectly innocent. My speaker "clicks" whenever the fridge turns on and I won't be surprised if that also affects the computer power supply. Now I have no idea how sensitive these tilt bits are. It may be that normal household related fluctuations are tolerated so I may never experience an unexpected shutdown due to this "feature". Still, I am not very happy that the new OS may, however remotely, render my upgraded system less stable.

So if before I was unwilling to upgrade to Vista because I don't like the activation "feature", now I am just plain scared, and I'm not even trying to play any video on it! As Guttman have noted, if MS could just direct their efforts at locking down the system from hackers rather than the users, Vista would've been much more secure. If they marketed these technologies as ones that protect me from viruses, I can at least find one reason to upgrade. Right now I have negative reasons.

Oh and one more thing. All those restrictions they place in every HD video disc and related devices will not prevent piracy at all. You see, the system works by encrypting everything on the disk and different players (models) will have different keys to decrypt it so that if one particular device is compromise they can in theory lock these affected players out of future contents (whether they will really do that is another question). Each manufacturer will need to apply for their own key so it's not like anyone can get their hands on a valid key.

What I think will happen is this. Some Chinese pirates will probably get a working key by either bribing a (Chinese?) company or pretending to be a legitimate vendor. Once they get the key they can just use it to decrypt every movie that comes their way and then crank out a million copies of the movie without any protection. No one will be able to figure out who did this because the discs only contains unprotected video. Even if they find out the offending vendor and revoke its key, the pirates will just bribe someone else. I don't believe there will be any shortage of vendors willing to leak their keys, because the MPAA just can't control every vendor and every worker in the industry, and we all know that everyone is susceptible to bribery.

Basically the whole scheme will not work. And all Microsoft managed to do here is scared me away from their already overpriced and featureless OS.