Month: May 2003

Wanna Baseball Bat?

Yesterday, Dave Winer commented on Dave Sifry's Technorati API only to get a lecture from Tim Bray on REST and SOAP.  Today, Dave wrote a rather long rant which basically boils down to "Sit down Professor, I was complaining about the pain in my butt, not the Meaning of Life."

"When I wrote it, I was aware that some people would immediately jump to the conclusion that it was an anti-REST rant, and then ram a baseball bat up my butt to punish me. So I carefully wrote it so that if someone actually bothered to read it, they would realize that I was presenting the results of an engineering project."

Nicely put.  If someone rams a baseball bat up your butt, you have at least one good news: you have a good chance of keeping the bat.  I mean, who would want it back?  ROFL.

Banana Drinking Cup

At this year's Korean college festivals, students ran out of cups so they made one out of a banana and it became an instant hit.  Their drink of choice: Soju.

Soju
Soju was first introduced to Korea by the Mongolian invaders in the 13th century (since they were nice enough to bring the booze, I forgive their invasion).  Its cheap and got a kick like a mule.  Tastewise, lets just say its memorable and habit forming like a distilled form of hard suffering.  Soju is the People's Drink in Korea.  Proper way to drink it is to gulp in down, cringe like somebody just hit you hard in the stomach, and say "KKkkkkkkkk!"  Do that in front of Koreans and they'll treat you like a brother.

Technical Details: Soju is a distilled hard liquor made from grain or potatoes. It is clear and has a high alcoholic content. Traditionally, soju is made from glutinous rice or regular rice. Rice is washed, cleaned and steamed. Then, it is cooled with cold water. "Nuruk" or mashed and fermented glutinous rice, is added to the steamed rice, stirred well, and kept about one week. When it is fermented, it is put into a cauldron over a fire. When it is boiled, the distilled alcohol forms on the surface of the vessel filled with cold water, which is soju.

Misgivings about Social Software

I guess I qualitfy as a social software developer since some of the software I write and dream about helps people communicate with and inform each other.  As an engineer, I am drawn to social software.  Social software's potential for changing people's lives is exciting.  Its relative unexplored nature, like the wild wild west, is also exciting.  I believe social software will achieve its technical goals, allowing people to form new social structures online.

Still, I have misgivings about whether the social software's broader goal to improve human societies will be met.  Even worse, I fear the opposite.  Social software could fragment human societies into clusters with sharply contrasting views of reality.  My fear stems from my observation of Korean society.

Korea is emerging as one of the most advanced Internet nation in the world.  Young Koreans, in particular, live and breath Internet, each belonging to large number of online communities.  One would expect them to be well informed and objective, yet they are not.  Their views are warped and often radical.  While all the world's information is at their fingertip, they consume information subjectively and produce misinformation biased by their views.  Adding highly effective social software to this is frightening to me.

When I was last in Korea, a close friend of mine told me he was thinking about sending his six-year old daughter to schools in the US.  I was shocked.  How could he think this way?  He said he initially thought the idea ridiculous, but he changed his mind after talking with people he knew, people who are just as well-to-do as his family.  Apparently, they are all thinking the same thing and this warped his common sense.

In a sense, social clusters form gravity wells which has its own local physical laws and is difficult to escape from.  Social softwares make it easier to create and grow such clusters.  There is nothing intrinsically good or bad about social software.  Like a gun, its just a tool.  Only problem is that this gun can put holes in our societies, holes like Al-Queda.  Does this mean I am against social software?  No.  I don't think development of social software can be stopped. 

What I do want my fellow social software developers to do is to think about negative impacts of social software and try to come up with mechanisms that could minimize that threat.

Cure for Sore Fingers

For almost a year, I had sore fingers from using the mouse.  After a day of clicking and wheeling, tips of my index finger (used to press left mouse button) and middle finger (used to press right mouse button and roll mouse wheel) got swollen and I felt pain when I used them.  I usually had to rest my fingers on a cold pack to get the swelling down.

The solution I came up with last night was to put one of those rubbery band-aids over the mouse buttons.  Wow, what a difference they made.  It was like discovering Nike Air after running barefeet my whole life.  Next week, I am going to try one of those shock-absorbing pads for foot.  I wish I can put them on the keyboard too, but labels cause problems.

Gee, I think there might be a market for these sort of things.  Maybe security industry's terror marketing tactic can be used.  If a doctor announced that minute shocks to finger tips through prolonged use of mouse and keyboard can damage fingers irreversibly, millions will rush out to get these finger shock-absorbers.  Woohoo!

DV8 Technical Questions

Why can't I fast forward most movies?  How about slow-motion then?  Why can't I play a movie with scenes in different order?  Why can't I bookmark movie frames?  Why can't I dub or caption movies with my own dialogue or in some other language and share with others or publish it?  Why can't I write an XML file that creates a new movie out of one or more movies (regardless of location) at playtime?  Why can't I do the same with music like playing Madonna's Beautiful Stranger in some funky way using a file created by my favorite DJ?  What if I want Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct to have different hair color so I can see more clearly when she cross her legs?  Why oh why?

If directors can have their own cuts, why can't I have My Cuts or My Buddies' Cut?  DVD and choices it offers is cool, but its not enough.  If I paid $14.99 for Harry Potter movie, I should be able to see it in other ways than studios intended.  Decentralization is nice, but lets pull the plug on monopoly of presentation too.  Let me dice and chop the bits anyway I want.

Haruki Murakami

I just finished Haruki Murakami's Dance Dance Dance and am now reading Hard-Boiled Wonderland.  His books are void of meaning, but he has an enjoyable way of describing things or feelings.  Here is how he describes plunging into darkness:

"I was a leftover wrapped in black plastic and shoved into the cooler.  For an instant, my body went limp." – Hard Boiled Wonderland

His novels typically feature a thirty-something man having a mid-life crisis in midst of a surreal adventure.  In many of his books, women leave the guy without a word.  Usually its the wife.  Also thirteen year old Japanese girl often appears and tags along for a while with only a teasing trace of lolita.  Similarity of cast gets tiring after a while, but his power of description is unique enough to keep reading.

White Envelopes: Seeds of Corruption

Of six elementary school years in Korea, I remember white envelopes.  White envelopes given to teachers by mothers.  Sometimes they were delivered in person, other times kids were told by their mother to give to teacher.  I remember doing that once or twice.

I think every kid eventually figured out, as they got older, what those white envelopes were for: greasing the palms of our teachers for good grades, special care, and protection.  Some of the teachers were noticeably embarassed about receiving those envelopes, others were greedy enough to ask for more by inviting mothers to discuss 'problems' their son or daughter was having at school.

My wife, seven years younger than me, remembers the same.  According to messages posted by an online community of Korean women, of which my wife is a member of, white envelopes are still going around in Korea.  All grown up and mothers to Korean kids, they now recall giving white envelopes.  They all say they did it for their kids' education.

Its more than peer pressure.  Isolation, verbal and physical abuses by teachers and fellow students have been experienced by those who refused to give those white envelopes.  If I do bad things for the sake of my kids, I am not likely to admire those who refuses to do the same.  How dare they shame me.

In Korea, mothers and teachers have been and are continuing to plant the seeds of corruption, wrapped in white envelopes, into their young.  Kids are not stupid and they will remember.  As adults, they will find it easier to accept corruption than to accept their mothers and teachers being corrupt.

I am not saying Korean mothers and teachers are bad, I am saying that they do not know what they are doing and what effects their seemingly benign actions are having on their children.  Knowing and saying what is right does not make doing right.  Lastly, an advice to Korean mothers: get the fathers involved because they know how to start trouble, trouble worth having.