Loud Thoughts

Who does not want to play with a trebuchet? A massive and powerful machine that fell castles and fortresses mysteriously. It takes many people to operate. When assembled, it lobs big boulders or fireballs over long distances. The movement, observed casually, seem magical. How can it work? No one knows.

Except for this kid obsessed with trebuchets. He built numerous trebuchets and figured out pretty much every detail. Then he entered this world-class technical university and met my kid. Years later, kid got a Christmas gift in the mail.

CalTech kids are pretty much all obsessed with one thing or another. One of them held the world-record for solving Rubik’s cube, blind-folded. Yes, he can do it blind-folded in a minute while I can only work out two layers in an hour. He lubricated his cube so that it will turn precisely a quarter turn with a slight flip of his finger. You don’t get to be world-record setting without paying attention to details.

Michael Woods crowd-sourced to fund his long-time hobby. Pledges from his Kick Starter project funded a laser wood cutter to mass produce miniature trebuchets (“trebuchettes”). Kid received her very own siege weapon as a gift. “Because he promised to build me one when we first met.”

Of course, I got to test its range and accuracy. More importantly, I now know how this medieval weapon works. You can try it too!

Recently, prominent internet players coordinated a protest against the government. And they won.

Wikipeidia shut down itself for 24 hours. Google put up a censorship protest sign. Several other sites took similar action. All because the US congress was considering two bills (PIPA and SOPA) sponsored by the media industry that claimed the internet industry is killing them. They said over $500 million a year is lost due to online piracy. This has to stop!

Really? Else what? Would society lose their artists and entertainment? Would there be no programs on TV, no music on the radio, no movies in the theater, no shows on Broadway? Conversely, what if the laws pass? Would artists make more money? Would I have better music, movies, or shows?

Let’s trace money and incentives. Simply: who pays? who gets paid? who really cares?

Artists or creators do not get much of the money. Most goes to those middlemen that distribute the art. This used to be a fair deal. Creating music costs comparably little. Most of the risks in this business lie in distributing and promoting creative content. Therefore the distributors and promoters should be rewarded.

But Internet changed the dynamics. Internet distribution costs nearly zero. People purchase based on reviews and referrals, and less on promotion. An unknown artist remains unknown until he or she has acquired fame and fans. Since consumers do not take promotion seriously, the best, and probably the only, way is to distribute the works freely. For established artists, they can charge much less for the music if they cut out the middlemen.

The production costs for TV programs and movies are still prohibitively high for them to be given away free. If everyone pirates and does not pay, these industries die. Consumers understand this point and are willing to pay reasonable prices. The media industry, however, resisted this option.

Hulu, major TV network’s portal, or cable operator’s portal offer a subset of the TV programs or movies. Some programs, particularly the popular ones, are simply not offered. Others appear 48 hours later and stay for only a short period of time. For this impatient and technically savvy generation of viewers, going directly to piracy is more reliable, more available, less restriction, free of charge, and of the same quality.

I use Comcast’s “catch-up” feature quite frequently. If I missed a TV show, I will go to “catch-up” and watch the same program on-demand. I don’t mind watching the commercials, but am annoyed that they don’t show up consistently — sometime 2 days later, sometime not ever. I have already paid the cable bill. I could have DVRed the program anyway. I don’t feel guilty doing a bit of searching and downloading.

Online and on-demand viewing is the new model. Soon, only sports programs will be watched live. People are willing to pay. But media companies forced them to pirate. More laws on anti-piracy are clearly not the solution.

Embrace the new world and create a new business model. If they don’t get the “Google generation,” they will just die.

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?