Author Archives: Me

the negative sum game

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Hmm, so I recently realized that I’ve been fairly silly in asking my neighbors how to stop cats from pissing and pooping in my front and backyard.

Yes, it’s 21st century, and I live 5 minutes from downtown, but people cannot be made to train their dogs and cats to use a litter box. Reasoning with the pet owners has yielded nothing.
So, here is the problem. If I ask my neighbors how to prevent cats from coming to my yard to shit and poop, what in the whole wide world would make them tell me the most effective method for chasing cats away?
Because there is a non-trivially positive but finite amount of poo these cats and dogs can produce on a regular basis. Since the dogs and cats don’t come every day, it would make sense that they are doing it else where when the poo didn’t land on my lawn. So a reduction of poo and piss on my lawn is an increase on theirs.
So….., I actually asked,…, and the answer was a bunch of really good suggestions about how to clean the poop up after the fact…
How dumb was that…
Thus, I seem to be stuck in a negative-sum-game, where somebody has to lose and asking other people how they are winning is hopelessly useless.
But I will tell you the answer: Cactus! Plant lots of cactus, sure it’ll hurt you when you trip and fall on it or when you garden around them, but just think of all the poo and piss that you won’t be seeing. But the down side is that there is a chance that they’ll do their business right on top of it, in which case you’ll have a stinky and prickly situation at hand.
sigh… I guess I’m misleading you too, huh. sigh… gotta play that darn game.

The Social-Industrial Complex

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Social networking is _the_ hot thing in today’s economy. Well, the portion of the economy that I am part of any ways. I cannot imagine a product to work on that would get VC money and not have some component of social networking to it.

Being a fairly anti-social person since my migration to the United States around Jr. high time, I constantly find myself not being able to integrate into this very social society. And certainly, when it comes to work, I cannot think of a project that is not social in nature. The money, it seems, is flowing away from anything non-social.

So this brings to mind an expression the Military-Industrial complex that eisenhower used to describe the pervasive and dominating relationships of military, government and the industry in the 1960’s.

One wonders, if the current movement towards a Social-industrial complex, a move that is also pervasive and dominating: not only on the net, but off the net, our music players, our cars, houses clothing, will probably one by one become social.

Could it be that by some cosmic rightitude, the Yin-Yang meta-physical origin of all things, that a the social industry is growing to counter balance, some day, fully, the military industry?

Will there be a merge of social military industry some day and the two separate forces will merge and wars will be fought on social networks?

sigh, that’s probably too much to hope for.

And then maybe we can even consider this Religious-Industrial complex and all those other complexes out there…

I don’t have a $%#ing compromised immune system

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Future employers, please don’t read titles on my blog and decide not to hire me. I know you cant say to me “I don’t want you because you are HIV positive”, but to be certain

I am NOT HIV POSITIVE!!!!!

Please do not discriminate against me for something that I’m not. You will be missing out on a really great guy who might help you to build you a successful team!

After I posted that entry a couple of months ago, I got laid off from my former employer for completely unclear reason. (Officially the company could not afford us, and laid off a lot of people), but we all knew that the company was doing really well. I really hope all those co-workers didn’t get laid off because the company felt that they needed to make up a reason to let me go.

I mean, I can completely understand all of you. I would probably try to get rid of someone underhandedly if I found out he had bed bugs, much less AIDS, but I want all my friends, family, and potential coworkers to know:

I DON”T HAVE AIDS!!!

Scared of Math

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I just read in the news today that Partha Niyogi died today of brain cancer. This seems like one bad news after another. Earlier in the year, Sam Roweis, another bright young Machine Learning scientist jumped to his death from his residence in NYU.

The horrifying similarity is that Niyogi is known for his (and his student’s) work applying geometry and manifold to machine learning. Sam Roweis also published some work on visualisation and learning on manifolds.

There has got to be something kind of weird alien trying to prevent Humans from taking the next important step in learning and evolution?

Or maybe American or foreign military some how knows about some powerful related with geometries on manifolds and they sent spies to kill these people who know how to work this stuff?

In any case, let me declare that I know nothing of this area of math or computer science. Don’t come and kill me!! The last thing I remember learning any where close to that is something called a “curl” and though I use it regularly to get data from the web, I don’t believe that I should be executed for that kind of knowledge…

ugh. I’m scared…

Social Network

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Wow, cool, I wish I was rich and had a gf and did something good for the social life of young people..

In total earnestness, Zuckerberg look prettier, smarter, and meaner in real life than he is portrayed in this film.I am having a really hard time imagining him having trouble getting laid at Harvard.

err. I didn’t want to see this movie, since I don’t have a date, or the money, but after seeing a raving review in the WSJ, I decided to see it after all. This movie moves at the pace that we’re familiar with in the computer world. It’s stream of conciousness is compatible with mine.

But obligatorily, I have to complain about the portrayal of Asian girls as power hungry sex fiends who are jealous to an extreme and at the slightest glimmer of money will turn completely around to be a little cute bunny. I mean, if that were really the case, how come there’s never any horny Asian girl on my shoulders and being jealous of me looking at white girls? blah!!!

Hmmm, The movie is too kind to the winners, Sean Parker look like he got stabbed in the back by Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg look like the biggest loser at Harvard, so him winning is… is what we cheer for.

But then again, the loss of some big WASPs to Jewish kid… is getting too familiar. Last night’s movie about Quiz Show discusses this pattern: “First a jewish person win, then a WASP wins and wins bigger than the jew” So…. I guess, the clubbing scenes are nice, some nice views of SF… Zuckerberg saying something about “the energy in the silicone valley”…

Hmmm, time for me to get a beer and write some shitty thing about girl, and start a website…

anybody know how to get some facebook stocks?

I have a compromised immune system

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I am beginning my weekend of TV watching with Quiz Show, which is showing on hulu.com for free right now. What’s this got to do with my immune system? Absolutely nothing. Just using a bait title to get u to read my blog. muhawhawhahhahahaaa. Anyways, I use Google Analytics and I know nobody is reading my blogs except for me.Sigh…

However, I do have a severely compromised ethics system. When I saw Charles Van Doren deny the offer from the Jewish TV producers, I felt… I felt…

I felt that I want to take the offer. I am really short on cash recently and if I am made an offer to receive $100k (in 2010 USD adjusting for inflation) a week for reciting a few facts that I am made to remember, honestly, I think I would do it. I mean, as I watch the show, and how Charles interacts with his dad and mom, I remember my dad and my mom and the values that they try to instil in me. And I felt… like I want to be in Charle’s shoe. I felt like…

I want to be smart, handsome, white and blonde, and I want to have strong principals and say: “Well, I will have to say no” to two business men because I felt that accepting the offer would compromise my principles and values–be it academic principles, cultural principles, or personal values…

I so want that!!! Even if it only lasted for a moment (because after, he accepted and started taking answers from them)

I think the expression best express my feelings was said by a comedian:

“You know, I’m otherwise a normal heterosexual male, but in that one instance, for that one guy, I am gay. I want to put ****** into #%!#$!#! and *!# all oveR #!s %@#% #$ !#@$ ! #@%#! $ !#$ #!@ $#!@ $ !#@$ !”

Sigh, and from that point forward, watching the movie is just such torture…. it’s like after that one homosexual climatic romantic moment, you find that other guy cheating behind your back, again and again, and again, and again, and it just just such a fucking heart break. And you know in your heart that he doesn’t want to… well, you wish he doesn’t want to cheat on you.

Sigh…..

okay, snap back to reality. Gota do laundry….

Rule by Secrecy

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Hmmm, this blog entry is not about the book of the same title. I won’t mention Skulls and Bones, and the Masons, and Common Cause, and Illuminati, Fight Club, weather club, The AA, Triads and Mafias. What is the problem?????

So, I’ve given this some thought.
Suppose I work at an Internet Startup (aka a DOT COM), and suppose there is a group of black hat hackers at work who constantly mess with my work (“mess with”==”cause damage to the company and make it look like my fault”)
Suppose now that they’re not the bosses (who themselves have pit bulls that can keep those black-hats at bay most of the time) and I complain to the bosses, but the bosses deny their existence. Even though their own Shins are getting whacked day in and day out, the bosses put a grin on their face, and tell me: “Nope, black-hat hackers don’t exist and you are just a bad employee.”
Now, theoretically, under Darwinian world view, these unstated secret groups of clout are natural evolutionary entities that come into existence and compete, semi-stochastically. Their(the hackers’) continued happiness is the result of their fitness. As a whole, human society benefits from their existence. What’s more, the bosses are probably grinning with a bloody shin bashed to the bone, exposed to air because they believe that these guys are good for the company(or to themselves somehow).
Now, as a non-hacker, I suffer constantly. And from my perspective, the bosses have the power, by virtue of their being the boss which entitles them unconditional rights to hire and fire for any reason at any time(at-will, non-competitive clauses). So either they are in cahoots and hired the hackers intentionally, in which case I wonder why it appears to me that they’re blooding in such a painful place, or they do not have control. Personally I would prefer the prior, even though that would make the bosses my original antagonizer, and that my shines is the only one that’s bleeding.
In general, why, beyond the fact that I am not a member of some secret power, is governance under secrecy a bad thing?
Well, decisions are not made democratically–how can it be democratic decision if the decisioning maker are unaware of the problems ?? (Okay, CS people spare me the “news” about ZK algorithms, because then I’d have to ask “is the system bug free? and does it always terminate in acceptable amount of time?”)
Unmonitored decision making process is not trustworthy. I don’t trust it! You shouldn’t trust it! The secret power shouldn’t trust it because how does it know that it’s actually not the secret and that it is actually being played by a bigger/different power that is being deliberately kept secret from them?
I believe that only a clearly stated and strictly enforced policy of open government, free government and honest government can have a chance of being a lasting righteous government. I believe paranoia and unwarranted diligence in self discipline are key characters that can help us attain it.
The secret societies will still exist.
Clouts, political parties will still exist.
Nazi’s and 911 and Communism and Capitalism and imperialism (ahh, the ISM’s) will all still happen.
so… what changed? What good did this mental reverse big-bang do for me?
I’m not too sure. But, I guess, I lost sight of the driver of this universe. I lost faith in that good is always prevailing…
sigh… I feel lost.

Mail Order Wife

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I saw a movie on hulu today about Mail order Brides



For starters, the lady that they chose to play the Chinese whore Eugenia Yuan’s(http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1067699/, actually an ABC, picture, tom.com) quite beautiful, reminds me of HK movie stars and speaks awesome Mandarin Chinese–unlike many real HK movie stars who couldn’t be bothered to learn it for hundreds of millions of dollars…

It’s sad though, Zhang ziyi (the lead in Memoirs of a Geisha) once said that Chinese female stars can only play whores in America, and indeed, this talented female Chinese movie star stars as a conniving sex fiend. Her face tells me of her uncompromising strong personality and knowledge of her Chinese heritage beyond her genetics, but her character, .. ahh, her character ring so bad and so real! I don’t know if it’s typical for mail order brides from Burma to speak very good Mandarin, but I was very drawn by her Chinese–strident, confident, intoned correctly, surely a native Chinese speaker. Apparently she’s a language buff who also speaks Spanish and Russian… Could have played a Russian mail order bride…

Her name 原丽淇 sounds like her character’s name as she first appear, yuan2li4chi2, so lichi==leeecheee.


Personally, I’ve been swindled out of a lot of hard earned cash by Chinese girls. Sometimes it’s a wad of cash, sometimes it’s small bits of meal and gifts. well, it’s not really that much money, but the circumstances are especially disgusting (I feel disgusted, not that the mutual situation is disgusting, ugh, just pause your imagination for a second here…), the circumstances had been at my loss in the same way that the characters of this movie had been at loss financially, except I didn’t get to make a movie or take revenge, or the girl as hot, but that’s beyond the point.

And I have definitely personally experienced Chinese girls turn from innocent helpless servants barely surfacing from millenniums of cultural oppression and physical cruelty to suddenly become tigresses in heat for money, power, and other men, and then suddenly cools to absolute zero when confronted with the man’s true feelings. It’s not too far from what the movie shows. (Her marriage to Adrian is a modern metaphor of Chinese women’s past. Her lack of language and social skills represents her Chinese female heritage; her repeated attempts to get married–fighting for her right to be in America where she has rights; her marrying Andie is her success in gaining her freedom and respect; her attempts to put pigs in Addie’s apartment despite his insistence of moderation is metaphor for her struggle for power in the relationship, and finally, she use her reproductive right and theoretical biological clock, albeit understandable, is quite an unwieldily unruly beast hungering for absolute dominance!!)

sigh….. I hate this movies. I so don’t want to hate the movie like he doesn’t want to love her, accidentally falling into a shallow pit of slutty slushy muddy mix of bodily fluids, so bad but borderline not that bad but so so bad!!!

The story telling is so endearing, the narrative is so gripping, the actors are so talented. All are wasted on such ugly side of the Chinese and the American. I hate her for such a great performance, with the same passion Andie loved her, with perverse curiosity, tasteless initiation, so pointless, stretched out beyond normal necessity and human patience (the character’s normal human patience, not the viewer’s normal human patience), and concludes with WTF? who? what baseball? what did I miss?

Why did it end on a high note celebrating a baseball player?

I don’t want to criticize America because Baseball has to be one of the gayest games there are on TV, guys scratching balls. Important signals being signaled right in front of the crotch for another guy to pay attention.

Homosexual realties aside, the mention of baseball, the toasting and drinking of beer, by a group of cooperating men, brings back a sense of normalcy… I felt comforted by the fact that the women and all that she represented was gone. In the circle of men there was a sense of closure, feelings of trust, camaraderie, accomplishment, clarity, safety and merriment.

Does this symbolize the success of America in defending the American ways and the forced return of ugly Chinese people and their culture to their homeland of Burma? The Americans united to rid the country of foreign devils’ evil and unrighteous influences.

The portrayal is so polar that after the film completed, I did not miss her boobs, and that handsome face, those sexy legs after the film’s portrayal of her. Too real… I mean Wilhelmina(Ugly Betty) is still likable, Kathryn (Cruel Intentions), Angelina Fox ( Wanted), Mystique (Xmen), Michelle Cat Women (Batman), Sharon Stone(Basic Instinct), …. err, plenty of examples of female villainy… But I felt like I was thoroughly rid of her imagery in my mind, just as Andie and Adrian were rid of their desire for her.

Sad! I hate the movie even more now that I blog about it…

Fedora 13 Broken Menu Bar

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I found the instruction on this page helpful in trying to get many applications working (eclipse, gimp, etc) in fedora 13. I performed a

rpm -e gnome-globalmenu-common-0.7.8-1.fc13.x86_64 gnome-applet-globalmenu-0.7.8-1.fc13.x86_64
and the menu now shows up. In the duration of 2 hours of trying to find this answer, I’ve competely wiped my home directory with all traces of all my settings,… ugh! but I have the “File” menu now.
Here are some things I searched for.
“File Menu Missing in Fedora 13”
“Missing Menu Bar in Gimp”
“Linux Eclipse How to Hide Menu Bar”
“Gnome Linux Hide Menu Bar”
“Gnome Menu Font configuration”
Ohh, here’s another oddity: To select sloppy focus in Fedora 13, you have to install control-center-extra package.
ugh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!