I am in a funny mood this morning, funny as in weird.  Went to sleep at 5am, woke up at 9am.  My internal clock is broken again.  Lately, I haven't been able to focus during the day, so I ended up working at night.

Got an e-mail from an old pal, a young millionare retired for longer than ten years with homes around the world.  He is now in Reno, Nevada.  I don't think I'll ever retire.  My wife read told me that, according to her Korean fortune-telling book, I'll be working all my life.  I just said "Thanks for telling me that, honeybunny.  It's nice to know."  I am an ant-wannabe.

Her fortune-reading made sense.  I am one of those people who ask questions all the time.  Forever curious, forever searching.  My curiosity drives doctors nuts.  I would walk in to a clinic, play with equipment, ask doctors medical questions an intern might ask, and ask administrator business questions a MBA might ask.

Whenever I see a business, I am curious as to how it works.  Sometimes my curiousity gets dangerous.  Asking a pimp or a drug dealer how his business works is not healthy.  Questioning panhandling business is easy though.  All you need is a cup of coffee during idle hours.

With panhandling, its location, timing, and attitude.  Money can be good if you get all three going.  Hours are good too because it's difficult to panhandle at night.  Schedule differs depending on the region.  Panhandlers in Hawaii does business differently than those in downtown San Francisco.  Most of them are good folks, very resilient and relaxed, like a good shopowner.

I guess I am in a funny mood, eh?

Following is a copy of my followup comment to Mark.  It has a strain of thought that matters to blogging.

"First of all, I like Mark. Much of what he does and how he does it is agreeable to me. He has a streak of commonsense that cuts through many complex problems. This is why I got upset. I wouldn’t blink an eye if some stranger I don’t care about behaved badly.

Second, we all have our dark thoughts at times, particularly when someone cuts you off on a freeway. But making these dark thoughts public carelessly is irresponsible. If weblogs give voice to the people, that voice comes with some responsibilities. Dark thoughts should stay in the dark and not be flaunted openedly. Otherwise, we’ll soon have rednecks talking openly in a bar about 101 ways to kill chinks, spicks, and niggers.

Mark aired his dark thoughts and no one complained. Read the comments and you’ll see snickers in agreement with Mark. This is what pushed my button. We are responsible for what we say and what we say affects those who hear us.

Lastly, I want to say this to Mark. Think of this incident like a little swirve while driving. Straighten out the wheel and look forward to where you are going. Cheer up, Mark."

Sorry about my negative comments on Social Software and Emergent Democracy and four-letter words.  When blood boils in my vein, I tend to go over the line.   Also, feel free to blast me if I mess up and say the wrong things.  If I can give it, I can take it.  Not only can I take it, I'll thank you for it.

I just read Mark's comment about his ex-neighbor, so called crazy old Howard.  I left a scolding comment, but still can't shake the bad taste his post left me.  Same shit is happening everywhere: disrespect for elders.

Elders are no different than you and I.  They are experiencing that age for the first time just like the way I am experiencing the age of 41 for the first time.  In Korea, they used to revere the elders.  I am not talking about kow-towing and stuff.  I am talking about giving up you seat and helping them out.  They are no longer doing that in Korea.  When I go to Korea and happens to take the subway, I never get to sit for more than five minutes because there is always an elder who needs a seat.

One time I had to stand for two hours to get to Inchon.  Another time, I ran into a grandmother, must have been in her 90s, who was trying to find her way to her grandsons with 50 pounds of Kimchi and stuff.  Needless to say, I had to get off the train and carry it to her grandsons, adding an extra hour to my travel across Seoul.  What are the young Koreans doing meanwhile?  Pretending to sleep.  I never felt so violent in my life.

Now here comes Mark whose remote part of him wishes the crazy ol' Howard drowned because he dared to rain water down on his apartment in his drunken stupor.  What the fuck?

During twenty-eight years of my life in America, I have been heckled and humiliated occasionally, mostly by elderly white Americans in Archie Bunker-style.  Even one of my neighbors called me Chink to my face.  Still, I understood where they are coming from and let things be.  It's not that they are evil, they are just trying to cope with changing times.  I saw myself in them.  When you are relaxed and comfortable, you are more forgiving.  When you don't understand what is going on and terrified of the future, you start talking non-sense.  So, I just smiled and never wished a bad thing for them.

I hope Mark learns to look out from crazy ol' Howard's eyes and understand a little of what is going on there.  I wish people will understand that it is not the elders' mind that is at stake, but our own.  By losing respect for elders, we lose a large chunk of ourselves.  Giving respect is placing value where we wish value should be.

*sigh*  Maybe it is too fucking late after all.  Forget about Social Software and piss on Emergent Democracy.  What use are they against deterioration of Self?  Argh.  I am going to stop before I get asked to speak at the next Republican Convention.

Wired reports Caltech engineers are working on Fast TCP technology that boosts download speed by more than 6,000 times through server-side network stack changes.  Here is a list of related Caltech papers I found on the Web:

FAST TCP: From Theory to Experiments (500K PDF) – We describe a variant of TCP, called FAST, that can sustain high throughput and utilization at multi-Gbps over large distance. We present the motivation, review the background theory, summarize key features of FAST TCP, and report preliminary experimental results.

Optimization Flow Control, I: Basic Algorithm and Convergence (270K PDF) – We propose an optimization approach to flow control where the objective is to maximize the aggregate source utility over their transmission rates. We view network links and sources as processors of a distributed com-putation system to solve the dual problem using gradient projection algorithm. In this system sources select transmission rates that maximize their own benefits, utility minus bandwidth cost, and network links adjust bandwidth prices to coordinate the sources' decisions. We allow feedback delays to be different, substantial and time-varying, and links and sources to update at different times and with different frequencies. We provide asynchronous distributed algorithms and prove their convergence in a static environment. We present measurements obtained from a preliminary prototype to illustrate the convergence of the algorithm in a slowly time-varying environment.

A Duality Model of TCP and Queue Management Algorithms (250K PDF) – We propose a duality model of end-to-end congestion control and apply it to understand the equilibrium properties of TCP and active queue management schemes. The basic idea is to regard source rates as primal variables and congestion measures as dual variables, and congestion control as a distributed primal-dual algorithm over the Internet to maximize aggregate utility subject to capacity constraints. The primal iteration is carried out by TCP algorithms such as Reno or Vegas, and the dual iteration is carried out by queue management algorithms such as DropTail, RED or REM. We present these algorithms and their generalizations, derive their utility functions, and study their interaction.

You can find other interesting papers they wrote here.  Enjoy.

I am glad there is at least one graphics designer who knows how to take and make good use out of criticisms.  Responding to my comments about CSS Zen Garden, Don Ulrich writes:

"Graphic laden CSS, while dramatic for visual example can lack a clear message. As we use CSS and convey its usefulness through design we must consider that transparency has its own qualities." – AdventCode

Aye.  One can take a criticism like a fireball aimed to hurt you or a candle to illuminate what you couldn't see before.

One thing is for sure.  I am not a conference person.  I generally don't go to conferences unless I am a speaker.  While I like visiting exhibits to see what people think they are doing, I prefer reading online to sitting in a room full of people and listening to canned speeches and staring at pretty slides.  I also don't like debates where arguments are mostly rehash of what has already been talked to death on mailing lists.  I do enjoy meeting old pals and new people in person but, most of the time, there is just no time to talk with them extensively at conferences.

Before Internet, I went to conferences get information and software not generally available.  But now, material given out at conferences are usually made available online.  There are even live transcripts of sessions.  At large conferences, I can't possibly sit in on all the tracks.  Online, I can scan through it all.  Furthermore, most conferences are non-conclusive.  What was the result of last Digital Identity conference other than a short flood of digital identify discussions and news online?  What about the last Supernova conference (sorry, Kevin)?  JavaOne?  XML conferences?

I obviously have a huge blindspot when it comes to conferences because people are still going to conferences, even those that costs thousands of dollars in registration, hotel, and airfare.  Reality can't be argued with.  Still, I need someone to tell me "For THIS and THAT, I am willing to pay $2000 and three days of my time because I can't get it elsewhere."  I can then smack my forehead and say "Ah Ha!"

Is it the magic of F2F or solid handshakes?  Is it the parties afterward and the Marilyn Monroe impersonator?  Is it the joy of hobnobbing on company's expense?   What ever it is, it must be something that current crop of social software, blogging, IM, ICQ, IRC, discussion forums, and mailing lists fails to address.

Well?