Want to become a US citizen? Tired of waiting in the tedious visa application process? No problem. For the low low price of half a million dollars (and you can get it back in a couple of years, plus interest), you can become one today!

This is the “Immigrant Investor Visa” called EB5 that grants anyone who would create 10 new jobs in the US, with about $500,000 of investment, permanent residency. According to The Economist and Seattle Business Magazine:

95 would-be immigrants, mostly Chinese, have invested nearly $48 million in a company set up to buy bonds funding the replacement for the aging State Route 520 floating bridge across Lake Washington. If the deal receives final approval, the 95 would be eligible to apply for green cards to live and work in America. The innovative deal is believed to be one of the first times the federal government’s Immigrant Investor Program, also known as EB-5, has been used to fund a public infrastructure project using municipal bonds anywhere in the United States.

I have long lamented the idiocy of US immigration policies. They are based on an ideal of fairness and justice, instead of pragmatic thinking about what’s good for the country. There are over 10 million illegal immigrants in the country, the majority of them are from Mexico and in the low-wage service industry. Yet USCIS refuses to grant even visiting visas to senior executives, engineers, or wealthy tourists.

I once attended a conference in Europe where over half of the attendants were from Silicon Valley. I asked the organizer why she didn’t just hold the conference in San Francisco. The answer was startling: “There is no way to guarantee that critical attendants can get visas into the US.” It turned out that the US requires an in-person interview to obtain a visa and the queue can be several hours long. The official reason for such policy? Part Homeland Security and part concern that they might “jump ship” and stay in the US. Those senior executives, among the elite of their society, just wouldn’t bother. They would take their money where they are welcome, instead of being suspected as a criminal.

Honestly, which country you have visited required you to interview in person to get a visa?

Other countries, most noticeably Canada, take a very simple approach: they welcome those who can make Canada better. Anyone can get a Canadian green card by buying a house that is more than $500,000. Many believe that was a key driver to Vancouver’s and Toronto’s real estate market.

Wall Street Journal estimated that a $500,000 income would put one nearly at the top 1% of the US population. Washington state now has 95 new residents who are at the top of the US income scale. Keep them coming. Each and every one of them will spend money, lots of it, in the state. And we like that. Right?

周瑜和諸葛亮的競爭,是三國中的個小插曲. 最後,周瑜長嘆,認輸了.

書中描述周瑜是個文武雙全的美男子. 他娶了美女小喬. 又是吳國軍方第一把. 也就是說,他是天之驕子,世界上該有的:名,利,外表,內涵,權勢,美妻,他都有了. 幹嘛還跟諸葛亮爭什麼爭呢? 因為”贏”的追求是個無底洞,永遠不會滿足的.

赤壁之戰,周瑜大勝. 但幾次他要殺諸葛亮都沒成. 徣完東風後,諸葛亮飄然而去. 周瑜知道這下不好搞了.

一氣周瑜是諸葛亮巧取南郡,稱周瑜鬥曹:”用計策，損兵馬，費錢糧＂他趁虛而入圖了個現成. 再氣周瑜是有名的”賠了夫人又折兵”. 用美人計不成,反賠了個孫權的妹妹孫尚香.最後,諸葛亮識破周瑜”假途滅虢”計,又大敗瑜於荊州.把周瑜氣到巴丘而亡. 成了三分天下.

周瑜如果誠心聯劉破曹,是有成功的機會的. 但他一心想先吃下劉備,壯大東吳後,再攻曹操. 這策略也不能說是錯了. 畢竟聯軍不如自己一國方便. 何況劉備羽翼未成,乘弱先吃也好. 不幸栽在諸葛亮手下,大計不成. “既生瑜,何生亮”,遺憾而亡.

當年北京一個個黃髮垂髫小女孩們,不但已嫁了一群,幾個還當媽了. 感嘆真的老了. 電郵恭賀這個,閒閒扯出了中國的剩女話題. 這詞指的是越來越多的過了適婚年齡的女性同胞. 諧音的聖女,暗指這些高齡女子,都不好”搞定”,男人望而卻步. 成了娛樂界的熱門談笑話題.

其實,中國不過是跟著個世界模式走罷了. 當然,中國的規模,會比別的”先進”國家大幾倍.

現代都市女性,高薪高學歷,學歷,資歷,工作能力不亞同齡男子. 女孩家心細周到,說寫溝通能力普遍較強.上台一般亮些. 近十年來,她們發現,除了要找個伴侶,她們並不需要個丈夫. 要同時做賢妻良母,還得不輸巾幗,不大容易. 許多決定一個人過日子,簡單些.

中國都市女性結婚的首要原因是”孩子得有個爸”. 西方國家連這都放棄了,她們不婚生子的比率越來越高. 男性的角色和種牛差不多.

剩女是個社會的抉擇. 女性逐漸遠離她們的傳統角色,男性沒有這轉變,所以要求對方不變. 現代社會在經濟上沒有任何要結婚的壓力或誘因. 雙方漸行漸遠,不但剩女多,光棍更多.

光棍和剩女的唯一差別是他們的生育力. 中國女性不願未婚生子. 她們得”找個歸宿”或犧牲母性. 可能既有家庭幸福,又有成功事業嗎? 剩女問題是要既主內又主外壓力下的副產品. 絕大部分的婦女,知道做不到,但不能抉擇,一拖幾年,悔恨光陰不再,就成了剩女了. 其實男性幾千年來早搞清楚了,這是極難事. 他們的解決方案是”討個好老婆顧家.” 只是這招對女流不管用.

In the 1930s (before the first computer was constructed), one Alonzo Church introduced Lambda Calculus to the field of mathematics. In short, this obscure field of math introduced a structured way to substitute symbols.

Imagine you can give a set of symbols a shorthand and can selectively replace part of the symbols with something else. For example, you can call a complicated construction of fabric and other materials “shirt.” Then you can substitute the color of the “shirt” with “blue.” Voila, you have a blue shirt.

λ-calculus also defined a way to reduce a long set of symbols into a much shorter one; such as the set of symbols “3 + 2″ can be “reduced” to “5.”

This sound too geeky to you? Sorry, but computers are dumber than you think. With symbol substitution and reduction, all computation can be performed mechanically — the mathematical theory behind computation. Without λ-calculus, there would be no mechanical computation, without that, there will be no computers, without that, there will be no iPad, cell phones, or MP3 players.

A separate thread of developments was also going on at the hardware side of the computer science. Cut to the chase, one Alan Turing (founder of computer science) invented the Turing Machine that can execute λ-calculus. Then one John von Neumann turned that into a real computer, from which ENIAC was built, in the 50s.

When it came to how to program that machine, the world quickly divided into two camps: one to program it as closely as how the machine was built, and the other based on λ-calculus. The first camp invented Fortran and COBOL. Both were terrible. Then they kept on tweaking and changing until the world had C/C++, Java, Python, PHP, etc. The λ-calculus camp came up with a language called Lisp. Lisp has pretty much stayed the same since the 50s and has had very few variations. (Scheme is my favorite.)

Lisp had its glory in the 80s as the premiere choice for artificial intelligence. It has pretty much retreated into academia as a teaching tool. In my opinion, all programmers should begin their training with Lisp that gives the solid foundation of λ-calculus. They will become much better software engineers with this foundation. Many shared this belief and therefore many schools insisted on a heavy dosage of Scheme for all computer science freshmen.

John McCarthy, inventor of Lisp, died at 84 on Oct 24, 2011. From The New York Times, “Dr. McCarthy, who taught briefly at Stanford in the early 1950s, returned there in 1962 and in 1964 became the founding director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, or SAIL. Its optimistic, space-age goal, with financial backing from the Pentagon, was to create a working artificial intelligence system within a decade. Dr. McCarthy had begun inviting the Homebrew Computer Club, a Silicon Valley hobbyist group, to meet at the Stanford lab. Among its growing membership were Steven P. Jobs and Stephen Wozniak, who would go on to found Apple. Mr. Wozniak designed his first personal computer prototype, the Apple 1, to share with his Homebrew friends.”

Life is relatively simple if you distill it down to just three basic questions.

• What do you expect of yourself? Do you want to be a billionaire, happy hippie, Olympian, world-renowned artist, movie star, family person, corporate tycoon, or what? By the time you reach 30 years old, you should already know yourself enough.
• What are you willing to sacrifice to reach that goal? Look at anyone that has been there. All of them sacrificed beyond normal: complete devotion to work for decades, zero social life, years of tremendous stress, risking all personal fortune in a gambit, moved to far away places, etc.
• What do you have that is unique, or differentiating enough from your competitors? Yes, that’s everyone in the same race you are trying to win. If you are not trying to win, or deny that you are in any race, read no more. Since your answer to first question was the end of the this quest.

All competitions are now on a global scale. It is no longer interesting to be more productive among your peers. You must be more productive than all those who will take your job in the world. I learned that after the Civil War of the US, the southern states were poor and suffered low wages for decades. Then the northern states moved their factories south to take advantage of the low labor costs. Today, workers in Beijing, ShangHai, and Bangalore see their jobs moved to ChengDu and Hyderabad; maybe tomorrow to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. It feels daunting to face such fierce competition. We all expect things to get cheaper and better every year. Would that come without competition?

You have 6 to 10 years after college to exit from “basic training” in which you first learn how things are done normally, then the politics of the organization. Who has power, how many parties are competing, how are wars waged, how to choose sides or mentors, how not to be a casualty of those wars? Don’t do politics first. That will kill you. Now you have acquired the basics. Answer those three questions.

Find a mentor or coach. Keep in mind that your competitors have also emerged from the same “basic training.” The game only begins now.

Really? It came out?

January of 2005, yes, more than six years ago, I saw Solaris 10 released to the world. I was so proud to be associated with that release. I loved Solaris 10. Every machines that call itself a server should run this OS. I was also very proud of its Trusted Extension. I can talk about it all day and bore everyone to death on the fine points of multi-level security.

We vowed never to commit to a release number again, so we called the next version of Solaris “Nevada.” (Austin Yeats, I believe, should get the credit for that code name.) Soon, Nevada became the source for OpenSolaris. I loved OpenSolaris. I believed that it will change the world and tried to be one of the helpers. I made many friends in that cult and was sad to see its demise.

Many of the Solaris heavy hitters left Oracle. I read the press release and felt sadly removed; that was such a big part of my life then that it almost defined me. I have fully converted into the Microsoft land. Everyday, I outlook email and Excel spreadsheets, like many of the corporate drones. I am at peace with this, since I no longer think the choice of desktop OS, or applications, defines individuality.

It is simply nostalgia to see Fowler on stage. I miss ERI and MPK, but they are no more.

This is not class warfare. It’s math. — Obama, Sep 19, 2011

These few days, a group of people are occupying Seattle by camping in the busy Westlake Park. They claim that they represent the 99%. The general idea is that 1% of the population control all the societal resources. The rest — the 99% — must take it back.

Let’s see. We have divided the society into two halves: us and them. We are the 99% and they are the 1% (therefore we are the majority and must be right). They are evil (and they always are) and we are unfairly disadvantaged (and we always are). We have been wronged (and we always have been) by them. We had it! And this is the time to take action. Whatever action, as long as it takes from them and gives to us.

This sure sounds like class warfare to me.

Class warfare are always — sad, sad, sad — internal: brethren against brethren. Class warfare redistribute resources or wealth. They destroy value in the process. They don’t produce new values or increase the net assets within the society. At the end of the class warfare, the society ends up poorer. Most of the time, the poor remain poor, or even poorer. Only the rich change from one group to another.

It turns out “Occupy Seattle” is part of a bigger movement called “Occupy Wall Street.” It is “workers against corporate and wall street.” The Guardian said, “Millions of Americans lost their jobs, their homes and their life savings because of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior of Wall Street.” Really?! Because of? If I waive a magic wand and the entire Wall Street disappears, would the problem go away?

This movement is pitting “99% of the population” against an abstract concept, not a specific group of people or a social or legal structure. Do they propose to exile Bill Gates and confiscate his money? Or they want a new constitution that do away with the congress? Maybe new tax laws that turns the rich into poverty? I have learned, long time ago, that the word “fair” has no meaning. It is always not fair against us, whatever the definition of us happens to be.

These people will smash some windows and feel good about it. For the society to change, occupying Seattle or Wall Street is not going to cut it.

Yep, day dreaming…

Gatemage is someone who can create a portal that consumes no energy. Any object that enter the mouth will appear instantaneously at the exit, no matter how long the distance. A gatemage can create or close such gates at will and at any location. He or she can also move the mouth and the exit (gates are uni-directional) of an existing gate wherever they wish. Now, this is a very cool skill, or “ability” as they say in X-Men. Let’s see…

• Obviously, commute to work will be super easy. Create a gate from the door to door. Step out of the house and step into the office. Very easy.
• Travel, to anywhere in the world, will be a snap. Pack the bags, reserve the hotel, enter gate, and you are there. Wait, no need to reserve the hotel, since you can come back home to sleep. Come to think of it, there is no need to pack the bags either. How about a day trip to Mt. Everett? No problem.
• FedEx will be out of the business. I can deliver packages instantaneous and guaranteed. Neither the client or myself need to even leave home. The package can be swallowed by the gate mouth and then appears at the exit, the doorstep of the destination, just like that. I wonder how much I can charge for this service.
• That took care of money. I don’t need to work. I can be the best delivery service in the world and charge very high prices.
• If I make a gate to capture a falling object and make the exit above the mouth. The falling object will exit on top of the mouth and create a suspension in the air. Although the object actually enters the mouth and comes out of the exit repetitively; it appears to be suspended in the air to an observer. If I apply this to myself, I can essentially defy gravity. Wow. How cool would that be?
• Wait. Then I essentially created an infinitive energy source. Let a heavy object fall into the mouth and exit from above. As it falls, I harvest the energy.
• What can I do if I have infinitive supply of free energy? Hmm… The possibilities seem endless. That’s a different blog. But is there a problem by having too much energy? Things usually explode.
• Wait! Is it possible to have infinitive energy source? No! But SciFi must adhere to the laws of physics. OK, that makes Lost Gate a fantasy instead.

New York Times reported something that’s hardly a news: China now dominates world’s solar cell production. Geez, can someone name anything that China does not?

The sensation of the report is on the high-technology nature of the product. This is no clothing, toy, car parts, MP3 players, or cell phones that the US either do not care about or, by action, had no interest of trying to win. This is green technology. Something the Obama government emphasized and pour money into subsidizing. This industry is the innovation, the future, the jobs, the game the US wanted to win.

Why does Solyndra bankrupt and its Chinese counter-parts thrive? One reason quoted is that Chinese government gives the industry subsidy grants for companies to buy from China companies. I don’t know if Obama’s job bill included any such subsidy.

It also seemed to me that the US companies focused too much on the innovation part of the business and missed the rest of the business execution: budgeting, schedule, cost control, distribution, selling, etc. They focused a lot on the creation of great technologies, instead of trying to make money from such creation. They make something that is very cool, but ended up losing money in the process. Once in a long while, we have an Apple that makes cool and profitable products. Don’t forget that Steve Job’s NeXT was a commercial disaster and ended up only as a footnote in the computer history book.

Good old Chinese pragmatism. Can we put that in Obama’s job bill?