Climate Change is Nature’s Way

What is the major cause of global warming if so? Howard Bloom’s article sets the logic.

This is a great article. Climate change due to human cause is just a story but not a science. I hope those radical minds who took office with the given power to understand more science before deciding to hijack us to a costly direction with wrong and very wrong reason. The COP15 meeting in Copenhagen should be just dismissed.

Tranquil Morning

The Photo Album, Tranquil Morning --- Golden Faces of Centennial Park, has been released at my website EggheadLabs.com.

It was taken while I had a morning walk around Centennial Park, Ellicott City, Maryland.

Besides the above link to a full-size movie, here is the quick preview (Click on PLAY to start the movie).

Due to varying whether in the last week of October, I purposely planned all the sunny days for hiking on Shenandoah National Park, and left this raining day for local activities, such as having a walk in this Park. It turned out a perfect scene for fall foliage unexpectedly. I started wondering whether my original reasoning of such plan had even been required.

For this photography session, I had made tremendous planning, including a serious update of Manfrotto tripod with 488RC2 ball head, as well as a shutter remote.  The morning came unexpectedly rainy and of course quiet just because of the rain. My hands were so busy with shutter button, lens zoom, tripod adjusts, even holding an umbrella (there were still a few rain drops on my lens, which can be seen in some of the photos).

This is a combined trip with quite a lot of hiking activities. Besides photographic equipment, I started paying more serious attention to the pro hiking gears from REI (yes, had got a membership just for that).

Worldview: Realism vs. Idealism

The philosophy that has dominated science for centuries assumes that only matter --- consisting of atoms or, ultimately, elementary particles --- is real; all else are secondary phenomena of matter.

The notion, however, that all things are made of atoms is an unproven assumption; it is not based on any direct evidence for all things.

Is there an alternative to the philosophy of material realism? Since Rene Descartes divided reality into two separate realms --- mind and matter --- many people have tried to rationalize the causal potency of conscious minds within Cartesian dualism.

So the question is, Is there a monistic alternative to material realism, where mind and matter are integrally part of one reality, but a reality that is not based on matter?

There is such an alternative. The alternative is monistic idealism. The philosophy is monistic as opposed to dualistic, and it is idealism because ideas and the consciousness of them are considered to be the basic elements of reality; matter is considered to be secondary.

In the idealist philosophy, consciousness is fundamental; thus our spiritual experiences are acknowledged and validated as meaningful. However, modern science's embracing of material realism changed all that; instead of being united with nature, consciousness became separate from nature, leading to a psychology separate from physics.

We are conditioned to believe that we are machines - that all our actions are determined by the stimuli we receive and by our prior conditioning.

This is why it has become so important for each of us to examine closely our worldview.

[from "The Self-Aware Universe", by Goswami]

Fall Foliage in Beaver’s Bend

The Photo Album, Fall Foliage in Beaver’s Bend, has been released at my website Eggheadlabs.com.

It took me nearly two years to get this album into Flash work since the photos were taken in Beaver’s Bend in 2006.

Quest for Finding Ourselves What We Don't Know

We human tend to be excited on how significant as we have gained a little more knowledge about the world and achieved steps of advancing the society, which otherwise is neglectable comparing to the path the universe has evolved so far.

It is to me far more greater that we could have realized how vastly unknown the universe would be, with so many problems are yet unsolved or even yet to be discovered.

Taking an attempt of further examination inward, it is profound by admitting that we human being are so ignorance.

A Sentimental Lotus (莲的心事)

The photo album, A Sentimental Lotus (莲的心事), has been released at my website EggheadLabs.com.

The Longwood Gardens, Pennsylvania, has such natural photographic scenes and variety of flowers. It is the lotus, however, amazed me the most and struck my memory of the famous poem by Xi Muring (席慕容 - 莲的心事).

Job Security or Insecurity?

It is bad that job insecurity could cause one’s loss of steady income for living; It is even worse that a secure job could destroy one’s otherwise a creative career in lifetime!

Thanks to the Armageddon

If asteroids had ever hit the Earth before and caused dinosaurs deracinated, we would have the reason to be scared should those deadly objects hit the Earth again. But we human beings should first thank asteroids for having wiped out all dinosaurs, or otherwise there would have been no chance for human development under the dinosaurs dominance.

The next hit by asteroids, or some other forms of extraterrestrial objects or even Gamma-burst radiation, could then become our Armageddon being deracinated. The future beings whoever will be developed after it would really thank this round of Armageddon by having destroyed us, the dominant and insane human beings. I suppose that such future beings do consider themselves being better evolved, more intelligent, nicer, … … and happier.

There will be the time, however, when the future beings are puzzled by examining our human being fossils together with those of dinosaurs which will be found in a museum remnant of human civilization, I will be surely snickering under the surface of the Earth or above the heaven!

The Universe

The universe does not seem to exist without a perceiver of that universe.

Mist over the West Lake

The Photo Album, Mist over the West Lake, has been just released at my website EggheadLabs.com.

I had enjoyed a couple of trips to Hangzhou, China, during the spring time in 2008. As planned, I did bring my DSLR with me but end up I only took a few shots with average scenes, while competing the shooting opportunities with the crowd tourists who were in front of your camera all the time.

It was in one particular rainy day I’d finally found what I was looking for in QuYuanFengHe (曲院风荷). The reason was simple, the tourist groups were absent due to the rain, which created a great opportunity for me to capture the misty scenes which would have been blocked by the crowd in any normal day. Unfortunately, I suddenly realized that I did not bring my DSLR with me, while only having my Cybershot in my pocket.

Hey, nothing to be complained. I then wasted no time and shot as many as possible. Certain shots did perfectly match the obsessive complex that I have been carried inside of me for decades towards my hometown.

Transfer Apps from iPhone to a New PC

If you’ve ever tried to synch up your iPhone to iTune on a new PC, you could end up lose all apps that you installed in your iPhone.

Before you decide to synch your iPhone with a new PC, make sure to perform the following steps to ensure all apps can be safely transferred to and preserved on your new PC.

0. Connect iPhone to the new PC. DO NOT SYNCH at this moment.

1. In the iTune of the new PC, authorize this PC to take apps. Note that you only have up to 5 PCs for apps transferring.

2. Right click your iPhone under the DEVICES at the left explore list and then select “Transfer Purchase”.

3. Then iTuen starts transferring all the apps from your iPhone to the new PC.

Shrink Hard Drive Partition

How to shrink a large sized partition is a bit tricky.

Here is the use case. When you bought a new PC with just a single partition as Drive C: with the Vista OS installed, you may want to shrink it down and leave extra space to another partition (say D: for your personal files).

If you try to directly shrink the C partition, it is often found that you could not shrink it as much as you wanted. This is because that some files are located nearly at the end of the partition that needs to be shrunk.

You can use PerfectDisk 8.0 to defrag those files and move them to be more compact in chunks near the beginning location of the partition. Even so, the 30-day free trail version of PerfectDisk isn’t that perfect as some system files are so persistent to be moved around.

Here is the tricks:

1. run PerfectDisk to defrag and clean up more free space first. Chances are that not much available space can be freed up.

2. try moving system files with PerfectDisk. It requires rebooting the system and perform such moving operation at the very beginning of next bootup. The consequence may improve a little free space, but still not enough to be shrunk as you needed.

3. At this moment, go ahead to use Vista Storage Management to shrink this partition to gain whatever available space for new partition.

4. Then repeat steps 1-2, amazingly you can further defrag and clean up more free space right after shrinking operation at step 3.

5. Repeat step 3 to shrink this partition further to whatever the Storage Management would allow you to gain.

After a few tries, you will be able to get enough size for the new partition as you desire so. Then you can format the new partition (say Drive D:) and start using it.

Got my new Intel Core i7 PC

Newly ordered a Dell Studio XPS with Intel Core 7i inside. This baby has 4 cores, which are showing 8 threads in the Task Manager.

I’ll benchmark it later until I get an Mac Leopard running on it.

Here are the names I gave to my recently owned computers:

• Egghead (a generic one I built by myself)
• Poet (Dell XPS 9150 Dual Core)
• Pundit (Dell M1330 laptop Core 2 Due)
• Swami (Dell Studio XPS Core i7 quad)

I just wonder what the next PC’s name will be.

Gone Too Soon

What we are memorizing after Michael is his legacy which will never be gone.

[on my exit row seat right before the flight took off at SAN heading to DFW]

The Capitalist Manifesto

"Sell a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man how to fish, you ruin a wonderful business opportunity. "      - Karl Marx

"What we are experiencing is not a crisis of capitalism. It is a crisis of finance, of democracy, of globalization and ultimately of
ethics."      - Fraeed Zakaria (2009)

At this crisis of economy, government is not the solution to the problem. Government is the problem!

It Is Europeans Who Are Mostly In Debt

If you think it is Americans who are to blame as having borrowed too much more than they could afford, then think twice!

Take a look at the top external debt (in US dollars) per capita data by countries, these data apparently show that many European countries are in ridiculously deeper debt.

Among these 18 countries, Monaco and Ireland are more than 10 times of their GDP could produce. Only three non-European countries are on the list, those are Qatar, Australia and the USA.

People in rich country do have more purchasing  power to leverage their debt. For such fair comparison, I took their high GDP per capita to normalize their high debt. So here is the list of Debt per capita as percentage of GDP per capita (the debt-to-GDP ratio).

Again, after the normalization, these Europeans are still on the top of the list. Taking Monaco as example, people in Monaco share the average debt as high as over 18 times as their GDP contribution. As I expected, two poor countries, Zimbabwe and Liberia, are also borrowing money around as twice what they could produce.

With such per-capita GDP normalization, it is equally fair to judge the debt of each country, no matter they are poor or rich. So I plot a scatter chart of all countries in the whole world to examine their normalized per-capita debt in relate to their GDP contribution. If every country borrows money at the same level as the same ratio to their GDP contribution, the fit line should be flat.

However, the figure turns out to be upper bend to many rich countries. It is obvious that many rich countries, especially those in Europe, are responsible for their deeper debt as over borrowing money externally.

In a huge contrast, Asian countries, such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore, China as well as India only show their small fraction of debt (under 30%) in comparison to their GDP.

Poor Countries, High Birth Rate

Poor countries tend to have high birth rate. I use the available data for over 225 countries around the world to plot the following scatter chart.

The correlation coefficient of –0.54 shows such an inverse relation statistically.

Why human laugh? What is laugh for?

Infants laugh, with no consciousness of showing their expression. It is then more spontaneous.

Adults laugh, though taking certain consciousness of showing their expression, sometimes so intensive often as it is getting out of control to the level of choking. It is then also quite spontaneous.

Job vs. Career

If you are looking for a job that you need, you’d rather try to create a career that needs you!

I Envy Their Smiles

Right before the door of an elevator was opening, a wave of loud laugh inside the elevator chamber approached to my ears. Then I saw two hotel janitors were walking out, carrying cleaning cart with room supplies, still with huge smiles on their faces, though they lowered their volume having realized a dressed-up solemn guest awaiting right outside of the elevator.

My first impression was in regard of the discipline of hotel staffs as I chose this inexpensive lodging place. A moment later just as I was stepping in the elevator I noticed their unrestrained smile still on their faces through the half-closed door, my second thought then came cross my mind as what the priceless smiles... ...

Traveling down to San Diego for a customer meeting, as always I prepared presentation late night and was still bearing the pressure of how to advocate my solution in the meeting. Comparing with the simple life of the two janitors, I may have a lot that they have ever dreamed of, however, what I missed is such kind of unrestrained smiles on my own face. I couldn't help envying their simple life and dropping whatever on my shoulder willingly in this plain early morning!

为政

子曰：

道之以政，齐之以刑，民免而无耻。
道之以德，齐之以礼，有耻且格。

知之，好之，乐之

知之不如好之；好之不如乐之。

Bow Down to Yourself

Practicing Yoga, we know we would surrender ourselves and let everything go. To make peace to others, one should be able to make peace to himself first without forcing himself to gain nor worrying about himself being lost. So bow down to your internal downward dog pose.

When Brand-Name Quality Meets Low Price

I did some searches on Sony LCD TV and was surprised that most it's LCD TV products appeared consistently cheaper than Samsung's. I would applaud for Samsung's recent branding achievement with its new thin LED screen which allures a colorful hummingbird in their TV commercial. However when Sony price goes under Samsung's, my decision on buying a TV becomes a no-brainer.

So I had just ordered a SONY KDL40V4100, at an absurd tag $775 (in total)!

First Golf

I did my first golf, 9-hole at Sherrill Park Golf Course, scored 64 (+28). Should reconsider choosing it to be a future hobby :-)

卖国英雄, 爱国贼

从历史的角度以及人类价值观的演进来看，卖国必有其美好的情理，爱国也有其丑陋的缘由。

2008 Layoff in Texas

We still should be feeling thankful as living in Texas. According to the Fortune Magazine, more than half of all the new jobs created in the U.S. in 2008 were in Texas! The sorry state California did just opposite with the highest income tax and the largest population loss.

Installing MAC OS X on a PC (dual boot)

Install Mac OS X to Dell M1330 (dual boot)

1. Preparation

- burn iATKOS v5i (OS X 10.5.5) ISO DVD
- Boot with Vista DVD
- Go to repair, then command console, issue DISKPART
- Delete all partitions in hard disk (WARNING: ALL DATA LOST)
- create two partitions on disk0 (149GB)
    1) for Vista: 100GB with default type
    2) for OS X: the rest (49GB) with ID=af (late, OS X installation will recognize this partition)

2. Install Windows Vista

3. Install iATKOS v5i
Refer to Installing Mac OS X on a PC (single boot).

4. After the two OS's are installed, reboot PC and Darwin Bootloader will appear. Type F8, then select the OS to boot.

Installing MAC OS X on a PC (single boot)

Install Mac OS X to Dell M1330 (clean install)

1. Preparation

- iATKOS v5i (OS X 10.5.5) ISO DVD
- Delete all partitions in hard disk

2. Install iATKOS v5i

- insert the DVD
- boot computer from DVD
- Darwin bootloader starts, hit F8 when counting, and type -v then hit enter to continue
- OS X loading from DVD. Once loaded, hit ..> button at the bottom right
- Once top manu bar appears, Utilities --> Disk Utility
- select the disk (on left side), select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and name it as "Leopard". A new partition under the disk is created
- still select the disk, click partition, resize the Leopard partition to 50GB and apply
- exit Disk Utility
- continue, will find the Leopard (50.12GB) disk appears. Select it. Continue
- Now, DO NOT just INSTALL. Click customize,
Besides the default checked options, just check these following additional options from Customize Install

Bootloader: PC EFI V9
Decrypters: AppleDecrypt
SMBIOS drivers: SMBIOS-EFI Air
ACPI: x86
Drivers: VGA drive: X3100,
Intel AHCI SATA
then done with customize
- install (skip DVD disk check). it will take about 20 minutes.
- Once complete, remove DVD. restart to boot on hard disk (it may ask for turn off PC, so do it)

3. Start Leopard

- Once booting with with hard disk (the first Leopard boot up), it takes very long time (watching the HDD LED is still flashing, though the screen may turn to black). Be patient for at least 30-40min
- Leopard is finally up and running, for the first configuration

4. Keyboard and Mouse recognization

- the m1330 keyboard and mouse pad should be recognized (with ACPI; x86). If not, plug in a USB keyboard and UBS mouse. they should be recognized.
- follow the step until "How Do You Connect?" window, answer not connect to the internet
- Fill in bogus info for registration fields
- Create account by using user (eqian) and my internet password

5. Problems remained:
- Power on booting very slow (could be 30min)

Windows vs. Mac - A Fair Perspective

I am working on getting a Leopard running in a PC. Here is what I had learned: It is easy for Apple to claim a MAC OS works perfectly for a one kind of MAC; However it is not that easy for Microsoft to claim the Windows works perfectly for all kinds of PCs.

Two full weekends have been spent for just bringing the very basic OS X functions working on my Dell. No sound, no networking, some keys on the keyboard do not even work :-)

But why I insisted on doing it? After a few difficult tries, it caused me very obsessed. I could just simply go out to grab a MAC Mini for only 600 bucks. Yes, call me crazy.

It’s just an experiment, to me. No one in world so far can claim everything on PC working under Mac OS X. The reason is so obvious. It’s very simple and easy for Apple to makes sure OS X working just for a Mac, the one kind. Microsoft, however, has to make sure Windows to be able to support millions of different PCs (even home-made ones) with so vast array of different devices (keyboards, mice, video cards, sound cards, NICs, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, …).

So such dirty adaptation work have to fall into all OS X hackers’ shoulders. It reminds me the early days when I was installing a Linux on a PC back in early 90's time.

The Leopard is Running on my Dell Laptop

Finally, the Leopard is running on my Dell laptop!

That’s so called a Hackintosh.

Success vs. Happiness

Success is to get what you wanted;
Happiness is to want what you've got.

Raise yourself up, then view the world under

"不以物喜，不以己悲。居庙堂之高则忧其民，处江湖之远则忧其君。是进亦忧，退亦忧，然则何时而乐耶？其必曰，先天下人之忧而忧，后天下人之乐而乐乎！"

To Fellow Eggheads … …

To recall what we have talked about during the party gathering last night.

Wish all of us the best, whether

working for your own or for company,
leading or supporting,
investing or gambling,
wanting more PCs or loving MAC,
watching the wealth channel or willing to cover Hawaii group trip,
enjoying or being enjoyed,
making baby or emptying nest, 
Republican or Democrat,
in Dallas or in California… …

Nortel is on sales

As we speculated earlier, the application delivery product (former Alteon) piece were sold to Redware on 4/1.

Now today, Nokia Siemens made official to bid the large piece of NT including LTE:

http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7bFC797B96-4E88-4E9B-8CE0-0C285C8E8064%7d&siteid=yhoof2

The rest part in Enterprise business are under Avaya and Siemens Enterprise Communications' eyes.

So the question remains that what is the core left after these series of divesture?

iPhone Gold Rush

Will mobile phone application development make many programmers rich? Then think twice.

Thought of doing it... however the iPhone SDK requires me to buy a Mac, plus other hurdles as lack of good app ideas, Apple will rip off another 30% of revenue sharing, converting to Objective-C from my C# dialect. :-)

Actually the biggest hurdle is that my wolfish employer sucks up all my spare time!!!

That's why I need an entrepreneur boot camp this Saturday with you eggheads.

Scotia Waterous – A Brief Assessment

Scotiabank overall
- 69000 employees

Structure

• 4 major groups: Domestic Banking, International Banking, Scotia Capital and e-Banking
• Scotia Capital:
• Scotia Mcleod (Canadian i-Banking),
• Scotia Mocatta (metals trading),
• Scotia Waterous (the well-regarded M&A division that operates exclusively within the oil & gas industry)

Relative hierarchy

Scotiabank ==> Scotia Capita ==>Scotia Waterous

Remark:

Scotia Waterous is a very focused team with most directors come from petroleum industry as engineering experts.

They are well regarded mostly because of their focus and specialty.

They are doing business but with their strong technical domain knowledge. However, you as a pure financial/business background might find little difficult to fit in to this close circle, unless you would like to grasp their knowledge and daily language.

Citi Group – A Brief Assessment

Recent job cut

• April 2007 Citigroup eliminated 17,000 jobs, or about 5% of its workforce
• Jan 2008, it announced another 5% cut.
• Nov 2008, the subprime crisis hit Citigroup with full force, despite its receipt of $25 billion in federal TARP bailout money, and on November 17, 2008 Citigroup announced plans for about 52,000 new job cuts.

Market Performance

• $300B market value in 2006 down 15 times to $21B in 2008

Federal Assistance

• $25B federal TARP bailout money
• $20 direct investment to the company by Federal
• $306B in loans and securities from Federal

Structure - four major divisions:

Global Consumer Group, Global Wealth Management,Citi Institutional Clients Group (newly created in 2007), and Global Cards

• Global Consumer Group: Citi Cards, CitiFinancial and Citibank
• Global Wealth Management: Citi Private Bank, Citi Smith Barney, Citi Investment Research
• Citi Institutional Clients Group: Citi Markets and Banking, Citi Alternative Investments
• Global Cards: all Citi credit cards

Relative hierarchy

Citigroup
         ==> Institutional Clients Group
                   ==> Global Banking
                            ==> Investment Banking

https://icg.citi.com/global_banking/invest_banking.jsp

http://www.oncampus.citi.com/careers/north_america/institutional_clients_group/investment_banking.aspx

or you could be end up with this hierarchy

Citigroup
         ==> Institutional Clients Group
                   ==> Global Markets
                            ==> Global Commodities
                                     ==> Oil & Oil Products

https://icg.citi.com/global_markets/product_solutions/commodities/index.jsp

https://icg.citi.com/global_markets/product_solutions/commodities/oil_products.jsp

Are Private Colleges Worth Your Money?

Are private college worth the money?

The answer is a big NO, according to the future earning power of the graduates (what else matters more than the ROI of your education investment?). Note that UT Austin ranked #3 and A&M ranked #2 in the ranking of "The Best Colleges for Making Money".

This is a very interesting ranking, which reconciles what I have been thinking and learned in these years on college selection.

It’s good to see two Texan schools made at the top of the list. This once more reflects on the similar matter what we have tried to justify ourselves for staying in Dallas with the relatively more effective savings, as a living place section thought process.

Another point that I would like to share with you is that selecting a career-focused major is far more important than taking the glory of a school name. Don’t get me wrong, I should qualify further that no one would reject any prestigious glory if it is financially justified. By saying that, I won’t want to pay just for any glory. Thus the key point here is: “glory on other’s name” vs. “gain belongs to your own”.

Taking my daughter’s case just as an example, I think she is maximizing her ability to gain much more from what her school in average could offer to students. I would like to share with you a status update I just learned recently about her job exploring strategy. She has gained so far among only a dozen of students in her school who had got a full hit-rate set of interviews from all investment banking firms they applied to so far. Given the current economic situation, gaining interviews with I-banks such as UBS, Credit Suisse, JP Morgan, Citi Groups, Scotia Waterous, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Greenhill, etc. apparently is not a easy task for students this year. Due to the financial crisis impacting much more in the Northeastern area, many Ivy school students had to turn to the South in order to get higher chance for an interview. Needless to say, we are very proud of her.

Just taking this direction as a talking point (not extremely), I start considering more and more that a school is just a playground, it is crucial and really depends on how individual students perform after having entered. So being admitted by a better school is just a formality. In that case, the teacher-to-student ratio, for instance, is just a formality, which will very unlikely affect most of self-motivated students. On the other hand, a student who can stand out of a vast student sea in a school with very low T-to-S ratio would convincingly prove that she or he could perform very well in their career in the future. What matters is the real life in a real world. And obviously, for the same argument, she or he could definitely perform very well if she or he would have been admitted in an ivy school.