A few months ago, I posted a blog about social networking websites, such as Facebook, Kaixin (开心), and Xiaonei (校内). I mentioned back then that nobody knew clearly their business model, i.e., how they make money on those sites. The problem facing Web 1.0 was that they knew they could make money on advertising, but they didn't know how to get people to come. Ironically, the problem facing Web 2.0, especially social networking websites, is that they have made people come to the site, but they don't how to make profits on it, because no one looks at and clicks on the ads.

Some developments recently at Kaixin caught my eye. I have noticed that they started embedding ads into applications. For example, users can decorate the background of an application with a Motorola theme, and they can feed their "slaves" (who are their friends) some branded milk. Although I am not sure if the idea can motivate people to buy those products, at least it's a great way to build awareness. It seems to me that users love the creative idea.

Kaixin has developed a lot of engaging applications by which people can interact with each other. I think that's the trick that makes the site fun and addictive. At the inception of its birth, it was way better positioned than Xiaonei. Now I am wondering if Kaixin would be the first social networking site in China that can break even.

Here is the link to Miru's website: www.mirukim.com/.

And the link to Naked City Spleen: http://www.mirukim.com/nakedcityspleen/.

Quote of the Day:

Life is a sexually transmitted disease with 100% mortality.

Thank Eggstone for sharing this. 

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

All right, the two things have nothing to do with each other. I just wanted to introduce a great song and a brilliant talk.

1. Piano Man

I kept listening to Billy Joel's Piano Man, but didn't get a chance to take a look at the lyrics until just now. I was sort of surprised that the lyrics is quite meaningful, besides the fact that the melody is touching.

It's nine o'clock on a Saturday
The regular crowd shuffles in
There's an old man sitting next to me
Makin' love to his tonic and gin

He says, "Son, can you play me a memory
I'm not really sure how it goes
But it's sad and it's sweet and I knew it complete
When I wore a younger man's clothes."

La la la, di da da
La la, di di da da dum

Chorus:
Sing us a song, you're the piano man
Sing us a song tonight
Well, we're all in the mood for a melody
And you've got us all feelin' all right

Now John at the bar is a friend of mine
He gets me my drinks for free
And he's quick with a joke and he'll light up your smoke
But there's some place that he'd rather be
He says, "Bill, I believe this is killing me."
As his smile ran away from his face
"Well I'm sure that I could be a movie star
If I could get out of this place"

Oh, la la la, di da da
La la, di da da da dum

Now Paul is a realistic novelist
Who never had time for a wife
And he's talkin' with Davy, who's still in the Navy
And probably he will be for life

And the waitress is practicing politics
As the businessman slowly gets stoned
Yes, they're sharing a drink they call loneliness
But it's better than drinkin' alone

Chorus
sing us a song you're the piano man
sing us a song tonight
well we're all in the mood for a melody
and you got us all feeling alright

It's a pretty good crowd for a Saturday
And the manager gives me a smile
'Cause he knows that it's me they've been comin' to see
To forget about their life for a while
And the piano, it sounds like a carnival
And the microphone smells like a beer
And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar
And say, "Man, what are you doin' here?"

Oh, la la la, di da da
La la, di da da da dum

Chorus:
sing us a song you're the piano man
sing us a song tonight
well we're all in the mood for a melody
and you got us all feeling alright

2. Jill Tarter: Why the search for alien intelligence matters

Jill Tarter is one of the recipients of the 2009 TED Prize. She is leading SETI, which stands for Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Here is a talk she gave at TED. It is mind-blowing. I rarely see a talk as amazing as this.

"Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalized and the State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to Communism."

Karl Marx Das Kapital 1867

“资本家希望工人阶级大量借贷消费越来越贵的商品、房屋和新技术享用，这将促使他们背负越来越大的债务，直到这些债务大到所有银行破产，政府将私有银行进行国有化，从而最终走向共产主义之路。”

卡尔 马克思《资本论》1867年

南方都市报深圳新闻部有个入行不久的记者，昨日去采写了一个市领导与外来工包饺子的稿子，写得比较正统、党报、主流，在最后一段中，记者写到：“从来没有和这么高级别的领导一起吃过饭”，外来工们见到这么大领导的到来，每个人都十分激动。

稿子顺利上版以后，在二校的时候，校对员看见后十分反感，将这句话用黑线框了起来，批注了一句话“这样舔屁沟”，表达对记者谄媚的愤怒。没想到排版员没有看出来这句话的意思，直接把这句话改称了“这样舔屁沟我很激动会上”。

链接：

http://msn.idoican.com.cn/detail/articles/20090122404SA304/

昨天是话剧排练的第一次。一天之内学到很多。

明白了什么是“台上的是疯子”；明白了什么是“过分夸大一个女人和另一个女人之间的差别是一切不如意的根源”。

非常感谢两个导演能给我这次玩票的机会。剧本很精彩，两个导演都很有才。希望到时候能演出效果，别糟蹋了剧本。

剧组的其他演员都很有演艺天赋，每一个都是有故事的人。我很幸运地听到和感受到了他们的故事和心情。

晚上我开心地醉了。

Tomorrow is my poor friend M's birthday. Being born on Valentine's Day is definitely one of the most unfortunate things in the world. As being born on any other holidays, with a birthday on V-day, you lose the opportunity of receiving gifts one more time each year. Even worse, you either get gifts or receive nothing at all. And even if you get gifts, they probably come from only one person. Also, your friends usually have plans with their significant others. And the worst thing is that you can't even hang out with your single friends of the opposite sex without being awkward, and those of the same sex without being suspected as gay.

This is absolutely hilarious!!!

Yesterday's event was a hit. Nature Network even blogged about us: http://network.nature.com/hubs/nyc/blog/2009/02/12/academia-meets-industry-at-cu-event.

Our website is out of date for a long time. But we are currently testing a new one.

Academia Meets Industry at CU Event

Caryn Shechtman

Now I am no mathematician, but I do know this:

Biotech Firms and Recruiters + Scientists + Free Drinks and Finger Foods = Good Fun and Networking at the CU Biotechnology Association Winter Meet and Greet

And good fun it was, but the networking was even better. This aptly named event was put on by the Columbia University Biotechnology Association with the goal of connecting NYC scientists with potential future employers. The event was intimate but bustling, filled with aspiring scientists looking for an alternate career path. The repertoire of sponsors attending included intellectual property law firms, scientific staffing agencies, and New York based science associations.

One particularly apropos sponsor was Opus Scientific, a specialized staffing service for those looking for a job in the NYC scientific marketplace. This Long Island based company aims to place both recent graduates and experienced scientists in a variety of sci-focused fields, ranging from R&D to business development. Opus was kind enough to provide each attendee with a detailed guide on how to effectively transition from academia to the biotech world. From personal experience, I often find that the rules of transition are a learn-as-you-go endeavor, so this guide full of career profiles, etiquette tips, and informative websites was much appreciated.

Another sponsor attending the event was Cohen Pontani Lieberman & Pavane LLP (CPLP), an intellectual property law firm in Manhattan. I spoke with a partner at the firm (and Columbia alum), Alan Morrison, about the move into a career in intellectual property law. His advice: Think very carefully about why an IP law career would be desirable over any other biotech-related profession, speak with as many attorneys as possible about their career stories and — if still interested — get some experience at a law firm before making any big decisions (i.e. to attend law school or other post-graduate training). This approach should make for a happier and smoother transition from the lab to a new profession.

Lastly, but certainly not least, of the attending sponsors was Naturejobs. Several members of the Naturejobs team were there to answer questions about various scientific careers available to the job-seeker, from the tools needed for an effective job search to what a career at Nature is like day-to-day.

The event seemed to be a hit amongst the attendees that I spoke to, small enough to talk to the majority of the attending sponsors but big enough for there to be representatives from several industries. In these glum economic times, an event like this makes the job search seem a bit brighter for scientists.

最先在朋友那里看到的。实在是太太太太太牛B了！！！！！！有哪位mm想试试么？

原文link：http://hi.baidu.com/hugebear/blog/item/3854e36e67c4e7dd81cb4aed.html

男主人公他向一个心仪的女生告白，
谁知道她给了一个摩斯密码给他，说解出来了才答应和他约会。
可是他用尽了所有方法都解不开这个密码。
郁闷之下，他只能求教于网友了。

****-/*----/----*/****-/****-/*----/---**/*----/****-/*----/-****/***--/****-/*----/----*/**---/-****/**---/**---/***--/--***/****-/

她唯一给他的提示就是这个是5层加密的密码..
也就是说要破解5层密码才是答案..
他在百度贴吧求助于众网友。
我把整个谜题都解密过程全程记录如下。

6楼   PorscheL ：
首先要把摩斯密码给解开来.
应该是.
4194418141634192622374.
然后呢?
然后我再想想..
数字的话应该下一步是代入?
或者是哪个啥

12楼：他——男主人公：
经过昨天一晚的奋斗。
我还是破解不了。
不过今天我死磨她，叫她给提示的后，她说途中有一个步骤是"替代密码"而密码表则是我们人类每天都可能用到的东西.
我会再套多点讯息的..
希望大大帮忙解答阿..
毕竟我也希望不要她亲口说出来这个密码的答案..

28楼：巨蟹座的传说
4194418141634192622374
毫无规律……
daiddahadafcdaibfbbcgd
仍然不对……
d4/a1/i9/d4/d4/……
……不对
对了，先来考虑考虑替换密码。
楼主顺便看看能不能套出每一层密码的提示。这个很重要

38楼：幻之皮卡丘
数字有偶数个，且注意到41组合出现数次。
于是分组：41 94 41 81 41 63 41 92 62 23 74
注意个位数总是1~4
于是颠倒：14 49 14 18 14 36 14 29 26 32 47
翻成英文字母，前26大写后26小写：NwNRNjNcZfu
然后卡住了……按大小写分别穷举换位也没看出结果

83楼：片翌天使
38楼给我的提示。还是让我想到了手机。
你们看解码出来分组后的数字分别是，
41 94 41 81 41 63 41 92 62 23 74
并且每个组合个位数都不超过4。
特别是除了十位数是7和9这两个数字后面有4以外其他的都没有4。
看图。
手机的键盘上7和9的字母也是4个的，其他的都不超过4个字母。
那么，按照上面的组合解码可得。
G Z G T G O G X N C S
解码后我们发现每一组数字都能解释出来。
目前我只能解码到这里的。
虽然很不通顺，但我相信这里应该是个突破点。
LZ还是快点去套多点提示给我们吧

93楼：巨蟹座的传说
4194418141634192622374
rqorrqiqrqyerqowywweur？

104楼：熊猫的熊
等大家弄出来得哪年了啊。。。
去跟她说，我进不了密码的世界，但我依然想进入你的世界！

115楼：ybaba
4194418141634192622374
大家注意一下这组数字 最大的是数字的范围是1－9
手机上一共有10个数字按键 其中0和1不对应任何字母
所以不存在0 而为什么会有1呢？
大家在仔细看一下，如果将数字从左到右编序号，12345直到22
有没有发现奇数编号对应的数字没有1
所以奇数编号的数字应该是对应有字母的手机按键
而所有偶数编号对应的数字都是1234
为什么只有1234？大家再看看手机，所有有字母的按键 最多只有4个字母，所以偶数编号的字母对应的是按键上的第几个字母。
按照这个方法我们来看下这串数字 xx94xxxxxxx74
这是仅有的两个偶数编号的4 相对应9和7
你们再看看手机 只有按键9和7才对应4个字母 其它的都只对应3个

207楼：片翌天使
我重新整合了这个解密步骤。
如下。
38楼给我的提示。还是让我想到了手机。
你们看解码出来分组后的数字分别是，
41 94 41 81 41 63 41 92 62 23 74
并且每个组合个位数都不超过4。
特别是除了十位数是7和9这两个数字后面有4以外其他的都没有4。
看图。
手机的键盘上7和9的字母也是4个的，其他的都不超过4个字母。
那么，按照上面的组合解码可得。
G Z G T G O G X N C S
解码后我们发现每一组数字都能解释出来。
目前我只能解码到这里的。
虽然很不通顺，但我相信这里应该是个突破点。
93楼的键盘代入也给了我很大的提示。
包括楼主的“她说途中有一个步骤是"替代密码"而密码表则是我们人类每天都可能用到的东西”
那么很可能就是电脑键盘。
因为QWE的格式是被世人所认可的，也就有可能成为密码的码表。
码表 QWE=ABC依次类推。
那么解码G Z G T G O G X N C S
就是G=O Z=T G=O T=E G=O O=I G=O X=U N=Y C=V S=L
翻译过来就是 O T O E O I O U Y V L
其实到这里就已经大概知道答案是什么了。
按照逻辑来整理，只要你重组这些字母的时候你就看到了。
虽然重组有很多种例如，LV IOU ET OOO
可是这些没有语言性质。因为楼主说过最终答案是英语。
所以唯一一个符合逻辑的答案应该是I LOVE YOU TOO.
可是我还不确定。
因为这里我才解了第3层就已经看出答案了。
所以我决定用O T O E O I O U Y V L
进行再次解码。
我用了很多种解码方法。
凯撒，乘法等等。。
最后我发现了只有栅栏才能读得通。
分成两排
O T O E O I
O U Y V L
重组后，OOTUOYEVOLI。
然后倒序，ILOVEYOUTOO.
I LOVE YOU TOO.就自然而然的出来了。
最后我才肯定密码就是I LOVE YOU TOO.
最后的最后，我敢肯定楼主有一个非触摸屏的手机，并且键盘一定是标准格式的。
而且应该有一台笔记本或者你经常接触电脑。
另外楼主和楼主的女人关系应该是认识很久的那种，而不是一见钟情。
而且楼主告白的时候应该有用到I LOVE YOU 或者我爱你之类的字眼。
对不对阿？
呼.
好累啊..
祝楼主幸福咯.
因为她是爱你的！！

220楼：HighnessC （主人公——他）
谢过天使了，我有被你感动到。最后的最后你的推理也完全正确。我真的，太感谢你了！
（看来他已经找她验证过了！回来借着感谢都机会得瑟呢！哈哈）

总结：
她应该是一个聪明又含蓄到极点的MM吧！真的很可爱！
数十个网友帮他解这道谜题，花费16个小时。
总算最后都答案是大家都乐意看到都最好的结果！
所有的辛苦和努力都没有白费。
原来只需要一些脑细胞，一句被世人说烂了的话，也能被演绎的如此鬼斧神工！
真是浪漫到了极点！
祝他们能白头偕老！
附贴吧原始链接：
http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=529691897

俺一瞅群众对这个话题呼声还挺高。我jiao着我不出来晒晒实在有点不太地道。

Again, take them for what they are worth.

I just had a rather pleasant brunch with my friend. We talked about again from the market to girls. Here are some interesting points we had during the conversation and I'd like share them with everyone. I'll skip our views on girls. ;o)

We talked about the compensation system and mechanisms of Wall Street. My friend made a comparison between the Street and Macy's. Macy's takes losses in about 300 of 360 days every year. It makes a profit only after Thanksgiving from the "Black Friday" to before Christmas. Then, it starts losing money again. It rewards its employees based on the whole year's performance. The cycle to Macy's is short, but to the financial industry, the cycle is quite long, which is about 10 years. Because the performance of the Street is judged by years not by decades, and the tenure of CEOs is usually much less than 10 years, the Street can reward its employees massively when it hits "Black," and let other people clean the mess when it screws up.

Fundamentally, this is all because the interests between CEOs and investors are not aligned. And quite often, CEOs have to take risks even if they know the moves they are making will be toxic in the future. If Lehman is making a 30% return, Citi certainly doesn't look good if it's only making 5%. Also, CEOs may chew up on their successors intentionally or unintentionally. For example, GE's financial unit that was created under the reign of widely worshiped Jack Welch is now dragging GE down and the blame will probably goes to the incumbent CEO Jeff Immelt.

We also touched on the performance of several funds. The main thesis was, as delivered in the great book A Random Walk Down Wall Street, that no one can achieve above-average returns or beat the market consistently. Harvard's endowment lost 22% as of Dec. 4, 2008, and Yale's endowment was down roughly 25% as of Dec. 12, 2008. Both funds had enjoyed a roughly 15% annual return for about a decade. But a 100% gain in one year and a 50% loss the next year will essentially set one back to the same ground. What's interesting about the Harvard case is that Jane Mendillo became the new president and CEO of Harvard's endowment on July 1, 2008, just before the economy went sour, and some of her predecessors had made 17 million or more in a year.

One might ask why some funds can achieve above-average returns consecutively for several years. First of all, the definition of an average means that some one will be above the average for sure (and of course, some one will be below the average). Second, the process is like flipping a coin. The chance of flipping straight 10 heads is about one in one thousand, which means if there are enough people playing the game, some one will flip 10 heads in a straight and this one will be applauded as a genius by media coverage.

I asked my friend's opinion on Warren Buffett, who was doing extremely well in the past several decades. My friend suggested me the book Fooled by Randomness: There are, say, 1 billion people playing the game, and chances are that you will find one who has never lost a single game in his life. At this point, it's hard to say whether that one is extremely brilliant or extremely lucky. Besides, if some one is as powerful as Warren Buffett, he can actually skew the odds toward himself, for instance, buying preferred shares that other people can't. (Personally, I think Buffett is extremely brilliant.)

I also asked why some hedge funds can achieve enormous returns, since according to the efficient market theory, no one should achieve huge returns consistently using tech trading. My friend said if one has enough money, he can in fact create market inefficiency and exploit it. But for this strategy to work, the market has to be extremely liquid--if they sell stocks, they expect people to buy. But on today's market, it seems hard to profit on such a strategy. He also mentioned that some hedge funds haven't been around long enough to see if they can beat the market consistently.

The purpose of an economy is creating value. Finance shuffles money, but doesn't create much value.

This is all for some stimulating thoughts. Take them for what they are worth.

晚上去了一个Wokai和NYU共同组织的film screening，看了Young & Restless in China。个人觉得纪录片很中立地将中国年轻一代很真实地展现给了世界。今天还很幸运地见到了影片的制片人Sue Williams(http://www.ambrica.com/index.html)，并听到了她对纪录片的初衷、想法和看法。网上有个对她的interview：http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/youngchina/music/。

整个纪录片曾在PBS的Frontline节目中播出。现在可以在网上观看：http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/youngchina/。

Preview如下：

以下收集册中所有的quarters都是Philly造的。Denver造的正在努力中。

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帖俩视频，同一个舞蹈。明年春晚有人排这个么？

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Quarters特别感谢AS；视频特别感谢SL！

Quote of the day:

- When do fish bite?

- When they open their mouths.

When you pitch an idea to people, one of the most important things you need to do is to make them open their mouths--say "Wow." That's the time you get them on the hook.

I went to a pitchfest, where entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to potential partners and investors. I said "Wow" to a couple of ideas.

1) "Green Box"

e.c.o., Inc. (http://www.ecoincorporated.com/) is marketing a new pizza box, called the "Green Box," on which the company holds a utility patent. The "Green Box" is made from 100% recycled material. The top breaks down into convenient serving plates, eliminating the need for environmentally unfriendly disposable serving plates. The remainder of the box converts easily into a handy storage container for leftovers, eliminating the need for cumbersome and environmentally unfriendly plastic wrap, aluminum foil or plastic bags to store the left-over pizza in the refrigerator. Made from a standard pizza box blank, the box requires no additional material or major redesign to manufacture.

With 4.8 billion pizza’s being consumed in the U.S. each year and 70% of those requiring a box, 3.36 billion boxes, the potential market for the box is huge.

2) myheartbeatsfor

"myheartbeatsfor" is a web application which solves a simple problem: how to visually showcase and explore large groups of people in an engaging way. myheartbeatsfor lets you create powerful petitions, campaigns or networking pages with just a few clicks! Whether you are supporting a cause, creating an event, networking with attendees at conferences or creating a corporate directory: myheartbeatsfor is a unique tool to visually link your message to your cause.

A demo page: http://dev2.new.myheartbeatsfor.com/columbiags/

On a related note, myheartbeatsfor somehow reminds me of Photosynth. Take a look at the following talk presented by Blaise Aguera y Arcas first.

Then, some demos:

The 44th President Inauguration on CNN: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2009/44.president/inauguration/themoment/

Photosynth official website: http://photosynth.net/default.aspx

Each synth (the 3-D scene) is created using hundreds of photos taken by random people (most of them on Flickr). One interesting idea behind Photosynth is that using collective memory, we may be able to reconstitute history, a task of which can never be achieved by an individual.

3) Transclick

Transclick (http://home.transclick.com/) provides real-time translation software/services for various handsets. It allows one to communicate via email, SMS, and instant message in 18 different languages.

I think real-time translation is definitely a next big thing. But I don't know how many years it will take to fully accomplish it.

4) FanDome.com

FanDome.com (http://www.fandome.com/) is pretty much like Facebook, MySpace, or LinkedIn, but more geared toward sports fans. I guess it might be easier for FanDome than Facebook to generate revenues from advertising, since the audience is more targeted.

5) Using piezoelectric materials to generate power

It wasn't a clear presentation. And I don't understand exactly how it works, since I am not an engineer. But the basic idea is using piezoelectric materials (e.g. a Metrocard) to constantly generate electrical power, therefore eliminating the need of using batteries. This idea (http://www.whynot.net/ideas/2585) is close to what I saw in the pitchfest.