Al Hoang

I know a number of hacker-types in the blogosphere have already blogged on Paul Graham’s latest article ( here, here, here).

As usual, Paul Graham writes really lucidly on the hacker culture and how to attract them to a business. One of the things I found interesting was how it is pretty close to impossible to find out how good a hacker is until you work with him. On quite a few levels I agree with this statement however in some other ways there must be some methods of evaluating them or at least bringing up the probabilities of detection besides working with them for a long time (one could argue that would prove a person’s worth in ANY field not JUST hacking [the coding sense]).

The best analogy I could think of is the athlete, a master musician, or a master craftsman. A master in his craft when showing his or her craft makes it look easy because a lot of practice, dedication, and raw talent has gone into making those moments that you see executed in a beautiful fashion. When, I’m searching to learn something new I always keep a sharp eye for these type of people as a teacher or someone to work with. These people that make it look easy usually have spent so much time working on their craft it flows as naturally as water in a river. However, this is not something that is easy to spot. Some things are much easier to see (such as professional sports or music) than other things (mathematics, engineering, fluency in a foreign languages). How do you spot it?

Paul Graham’s suggestion of just working with them for awhile is probably the most definitive way to find out. However, barring that since that methodology is extremely time consuming and not possible in many many circumstances the next best thing is to develop an observant eye for picking out quality and skill. It’s not hopeless as Paul Graham seems to suggest but it isn’t a cakewalk either. How do I know it’s not as hopeless as Paul Graham makes it seem? How many people can appreciate great music but can’t play anything themselves?

Read Great Hackers

I just read this
which purports to answer 10 truths on trade. While the statements have
some kernel of truth (doesn’t everything these days?) it looks like
such utter bunk. I can imagine some right-wing advocate writing this
in trying to quell the ‘public’ regarding the ‘truth’ on offshoring, imports
and jobs.

Let me tell you this whole article, especially the bit on offshoring
and IT from this article smells like a pile of crap. I bet you if we
reversed the situation around and offshored any job that was CxO or
had the title Director in it this article would have a HUGELY different tone.
Perhaps, something like “Oh My Gawd! The Sky is Falling!” As long as we’re
at it how about outsource all journalist type jobs to 3rd world countries.
I bet you the hydra that is the modern press would be screaming out at the
top of their lungs for some sort of protectionist measures. Anyways,
I should stop venting. It’s not fixing the U.S. economy at all.

Read it yourself

Hahaha, in the tradition of Engrish (Poor Japanese attempts at using English)
there’s also “Konglish” which is the Korean version of the same. I shouldn’t
make fun of people’s aattempts to learn a foreign language but in some
ways it is amusing. Perhaps I enjoy too much schadenfreude.

Thanks dda!

Check it out
yourself. (Requires Windows Media Player to play properly).

Personally, I’ve seen worse on TV back in the U.S.

Check
it out for yourself. I didn’t think anyone could make an animated gif that
detailed. Guess I’m wrong.

For extra kickers, here’s another link
to some other flip book animations

Once again thanks to Octopus
Dropkick!. This guy’s site has a really wacky collection of stuff.

Whoah, well that’s a lot of slurs I’ve never heard of. But it might
actually be an interesting resource for looking up some that next
insult…

I’ll have to say the website’s slogan is really funny
“Make the world a better place”

Don’t forget that to use the its proper acronym RSDB.

Thanks again to Octopus Dropkick!

Where is that Racial Slur DB?

I’m not sure words can describe my utter amazement at such a … off-the-beaten-path … game idea.

Thanks to Octopus Dropkick! for
digging up a really weird game.

I follow some English blogs of other people’s life in Asia. One of them
is Brainysmurf who is an American
teaching English in the U.S. Recently he posted
on some of his thoughts about trying to find a job using Chinese skills
in China. Needless to say, his thoughts were rather disappointing for
the aspiring Chinese speaker

Whereas countries like South Korea and their relatively free press employ
foreigners who know Korean to copy edit their articles (The Marmot, I
understand, is one of them), one glance at the China Daily reveals that they
don’t even bother. As for myself, I gave up long ago trying to use my
language skills to find a job in a town like Tianjin (although I likely could
in Beijing). I imagine that if one did a survey of Chinese-speaking expats
living in the Middle Kingdom 99 percent of them are somehow connected to
teaching or developing the ESL industry - a worthy pursuit but the
society’s choice of how to incorporate laowais is clear.

Life is fine if you don’t mind being an English speaker but trying to
reasonably use your Chinese skills for a job… seems to be tougher.

Read the post yourself

I was reading this 2002 article (again) on The Talent Myth.
In it, the author surmises that a smart system is more effective than smart
people in a large system. I’m sure with the downfall of Enron there has
been a backswing in Corporate Management to not just search for star talent.
Searching for star talent is good but I think with strong skills comes
ambition. And unfortunately, ambition is a very double edged sword when
it comes to company loyalty. I’m still brewing on ideas on how one
deals with that at the upper management levels but not really sure on it.

Either way, I think the article makes a good point. I’ll summarize it as
“Genius doesn’t scale”.

Read it for yourself

Found this from Language Log.
Seems there was a Vietnamese awhile ago
going by the name of Tom Vu who came up with a pyramid scheme and made
a bit of money (then got into trouble with the authorities).

All I can say is ugh. Not a good role model or representative of the
Vietnamese population on ths planet. *sigh*

Read about Tom Vu

Very very cool. Reminds me of being in server rooms and data centers.
Also a very neat treat for people who have never seen the inside of
a server room like this. But this is what was at the heart of Alta Vista
back when AltaVista was a big thing in search engines.

Check it out

I had a rather odd experience the other day while waiting at the
train platform. I was standing behind two girls who I thought
were your typical Japanese high school students. However, when I
started overhearing the conversation I realized they were speaking
English. Perfect English of the North American variety. I found
this rather amusing since I completely mistook them for Japanese
on first glance. After listening a little more carefully I
heard some Chinese being thrown into the middle of the conversation
so I made the liberal guess they were Chinese-American of
some sort.

Here’s the kicker, since I just sat quiet threw all of this
they probably thought I was just some normal Japanese dude.
The fun of being a non-japanese asian in Japan.

Language Log talks
about how people mistake
polysemy (multiple meanings of phrases or words depending on context)
in languages that are not their own as a sort of deep philosophical message.

“In the same way, what is mere polysemy in English is not a philosophy seminar in Mohawk. It’s just polysemy.”

When I first started learning foreign languages, I fell into the same
trap myself about polysemy being some deep message in the foreign
language until I realized it really is just another way of expressing
some concept/thing/etc. But one problem that I’ve observed is that
someone that hasn’t reached a deep enough level in learning
a foreign language has a hard time seeing this. I’ve always been
grasping a way to try to explain this nice and crisply but never
really could. However, the post on Language Log captures these sentiments
exactly.

Go
read it yourself

I saw this movie over a year ago on a flight to Japan. In general, I
have trouble these days staying asleep on long flights so end up watching
almost every single movie offered on the flight. This one is highly
recommended!

The main character which is depicted in the poster was the kick-butt
Kendo master in The Last Samurai. In The Last Samurai you didn’t
get to hear him say much but in this film you get to see he’s a really
fine actor given a chance to take a leading role. The other
interesting thing about this movie is how it shows the Samurai
in a more human light.

MSNBC has an article about the US military working on a FPS game
where you play someone on the armed forces side that needs to
infiltrate and find information regarding something important.
To do so, you are not armed with guns and a rocket launcher
but instead you need to speak Arabic. Using some pretty nifty
speech recognition and AI technologies, depending on how you
well you speak it, you can make a bit of progress.

What is also interesting is that the 3-d engine is based on
the UT2004 engine it seems. I’m hoping that this might
someday become available to the individual since it sounds
like a decent way to use current game technology to meld
in with something that is possibly educational.

Go read it yourself