Month: March 2003

Korean Chaebols and Warren Buffett

"The job of CEOs is now to regain America?s trust ? and for the country?s sake it?s important that they do so. They will not succeed in this endeavor, however, by way of fatuous ads, meaningless policy statements, or structural changes of boards and committees. Instead, CEOs must embrace stewardship as a way of life and treat their owners as partners, not patsies. It?s time for CEOs to walk the walk."
[Warren Buffett (pdf) via Scott Loftesness]

Korean Chaebols control huge network of mostly public companies without an inkling of consideration for their shareholders.  They routinely bend and break laws to make sure their family retains control.  This is why some of them are being arrested in Korea, first being SK Group's chaebol family members.  Samsung, Hyundae, and LG are no different.  They are all family controlled and these families all have secret funds created from questionable accounting practices and fake transactions with shell companies.  Part of the secret fund goes to politicians and bureacrats.  Korean economy is built on not only sweats of Korean workers, but also on corruption.  It doesn't matter whether its a chaebol or a small startup.  Corruption rules in Korea.

Everyone in Korea knows this, so why are they buying Korean stock?  Greed, pure and simple.  I'll never buy a single share of Korean stock until the day when people are surprised by news of corruption instead of mere nods and shrugs of today.  Frankly, I don't think I'll see that day in my life time.  Korea had a caste system founded on Confucious' philosophy for 500 years (Chosun dynasty) and the caste system still lives on in people's mind.

Just yesterday, I read an article written by a well-educated (went to Berkeley like me ;-) elderly Korean-American.  He seemed to suggest that Korean laws should be changed to allow heads of Korean chaebol families to have many wives.  Why?  With many wives, there will be larger crop of sons to choose the next family leader out of.  His reasoning seems to be that Korea's future prosperity is directly tied to chaebols's prosperity so lets breed good chaebols who will be as good as Samsung's Lee Gun-hee.  Blue blood in shareholders' hands is what I hope to see in my lifetime.

Living on

My wife is coping with her sister's illness.  So am I.  My son is still cluess, but he has toned down his usual antics and trouble brewing instinctively.  A good boy.

Tonight is the private poker tournament I mentioned a month ago and I'll be glad to be away from all the worries for a few hours.  My strategy is to be the Rock until the sixth hour when no limit rule starts.  Then I'll try to gain control of the table by swinging really hard, hopefully confusing bad players and knocking out some top players.  After that its mostly a mix of grinding and crushing.  Poker is fun, but this will be more like work.  Wish me luck.

Darker Shadows

I really hate bad news.  My wife just got a call.  Her older sister living in New Zealand have stomach cancer.  Google tells me her chance of surviving stomach cancer is not good, particularly since the cancer was not discovered early.  A good evening evaporated.  I don't quite know how to comfort my wife.  When she feels sick, I feel sick.  When she feels bad, I feel bad.  Spiritual Simese Twin.

I am not used to bad news like this because both side of my family are unusually healthy, everyone living well past 80 without even a hint of illness until the end.  Her family is just the opposite, her father's side rarely lived past 60; her father at 65 is breaking new ground.  Its like a fog of bad karma descended with one phone call.  I have turned on every light in the house in a vain attempt to lift our spirit.  Shadows seem darker tonight.

Schemas as Promises and Expectations

This a slightly modified version of a message I posted to XML-DEV mailing list.

While reading through the registered namespace prefix thread, I had a thought: use of schemas (and DTDs) so far has concentrated primarily from the XML producer's perspective and not from the XML consumer's perspective.  Furthermore, we use a schema as a contract between XML producers and consumers, binding them tightly and thus making it difficult for either party to evolve and extend the contract independently.

Using schemas as a contract between two highly independent groups (producers and consumers) seems unwieldy because the two groups must walk in sync as the schema evolves.  What if the contract is divided into two parts, promise and expectation?  An XML producer's version of the schema promises precisely the content and structure of the produced XML documents.  An XML consumer's version of the schema specifies the content and structure of the XML documents the consumer expects.  Promises and expectations don't have to match exactly to function.

From the consumer's perspective, all it really cares about is that its getting everything it expects.  So the producer can add or remove elements if the consumer doesn't care about those elements.  Structures can be changed also if the change doesn't violate consumer's expectations.

Proximity Authentication using Bluetooth

Sony Ericsson Clicker is a shareware that lets you use a Sony Ericsson phone as a universal remote by running and controlling scripts on a bluetooth-enabled Mac using your phone.  Scripts can be fired when your phone enters or exits with Bluetooth range around a Mac.  This got me thinking about proximity authentication.  I am sure others have already thought of this, but I haven't enumerated the issues involved before.

How it works: As I enter a room with a computer, the computer (C) detects and authenticates me by forwarding a challenge sent from the authentication authority (AA).  My proximity ID (bluetooth-enabled phone with smartcard capabilities) sends back a signed challenge as response which C forwards to AA for verification.  Upon receiving result back from AA, the computer knows who I am and enables nearby dumb devices that I am allowed to use.  Meanwhile, the authentication server notes that I am in that room so access from other rooms can't be made.  When I exit, C disables the devices.

Theft: To prevent illegal access using lost or stolen proximity ID, one or more PINs can used and session can be time limited.  Entering the PIN in the morning as you enter a hospital should provide access to most staff-only doors for 8 hours.  Bank vaults can require a PIN to be entered upon entry and every 15 minutes.

Strongarm: To prevent illegal access at gunpoint, access control database can require presence of others to enable access.  Bank vault can require a guard to be present in the same room or in route to the room.  The guard can be required to reauthenticate before reopening the vault to let me out.  Pressure-plate can be used to make sure there is no unauthorized person accompanying me.

Crowd: If there are multiple authenticated persons in the room with a range of access permissions, context specific policies can applied.  Usually, highest access permission in the room should apply for the entire room.  For example, computer can enable missile launch control only if there is a commissioned offer in the room.

Proximity authentication is less intrustive than other authentication schemes in the physical world and is ideal for environments where there are difficulties with using hands to handle security token and keyboard.  Surgery room is one such place.  I am assuming that there are no interference problems between bluetooth and medical instruments.

RadioStation Recommended!!

After just a few minute of using RadioStation, I can say I LOVE IT.  Go try it folks.

One more GUI change suggestion.  I frequently edit my posts, but there was no visual hint telling me how to edit old posts.  Put up a toolbar button and add context menus.  Double-clicking a post to edit is not obvious to grandmothers and me.

A Test of FM RadioStation

So far, FM RadioStation is nice.  It sits on top of Radio, so launching RadioStation will launch Radio as well.  Memory footprint is about same (yikes, now I lose 50 meg instead of 25 meg).  There is no performance impact from RadioStation, unlike Radio which sucks up a lot of CPU cycles sporatically and frequently just when I am doing something (like rebuilding a million line project).  I wonder if Dave tuned Radio lately.  Would it be possible to completely port Frontier scripts to Python?  Python-based Radio would certainly invite a lot more people to play with Radio.

Hey, I really like blogging with RadioStation.  At the very least, I am no longer stuck inside a small textarea and don't have to worry about losing by clicking on a wrong link.  Yippy!  Ooops.  I thought I got mail, but its RadioStation boinging me because it found some news article for me to read.  Confusing and wrong.  People expect e-mail to require active participation, but not news.  News should just sit there (its presence at a known location is the user notification) and wait for people to notice it.  A small corner of a newspaper turned 60 degrees or so displayed on the left or right edge of the screen is the right level of user notification.  Since there are frequent need for this sort, there should be a auto-slideout vertical bar on the left (left as que for incoming) for this sort of thing.  Hey, I like this GUI idea.  I think I'll build one for myself and play with it: no more stupid popup bubbles, blinking titlebars, nor boings in midst of my classic music.

Can you notice the way using a different tool change writing style?

RSS Category Feed

Everyday, a handful of hot topics appear in blogspace, prompting bloggers to discuss the topic in parallel.  Yet, such topics are hard to categorize and posts related to the hot-topics propagate relatively slowly across blogspace.  One possible way to facilitate wider audience and speedier propagation of hot topic-related posts is to distribute Dynamic Categories via RSS.  Blog tools like Radio can then list the category along with Static Categories.  While I am not sure if this scheme will work, I do know that Static Categories supported by current crop of blog tools fails to meet my needs and often get stranded like my Favorites graveyard.

Latest Disturbing Interpretation of CDA

So much for popularity of checkboxes and radio buttons in web forms.

Aldisert disagreed that companies such as Amazon and eBay would be vulnerable if the lower-court decision is upheld. "Their questions weren't just 'What do you think?'" he said of the Matchmaker.com queries. "The closer thing to Metrosplash is if eBay were to ask, 'What do you think of this book?' and then to give choices saying, 'This book sucks. It's the worst book I've every read in my life.' Once you start framing answers for people, and not just asking questions, that's where I think you cross the line." [CNET News.com]