Aggressive PR drive will make a difference

It takes a leap of faith to see the future of Adobe with plunging revenue in consecutive 5 quarters but stock price increases almost two-fold in the same time. Adobe boldly adopted a cloud on-line subscription to replace traditional fixed packaged price. It takes a lot of guts and determination to do this switch-over. What it impresses me is the PR drive from Adobe to pitch this pricing strategy to its customers with, e.g., a lot of light-hearted YouTube videos. If government in Taiwan could launch a massive PR drive for the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (服貿) several months ago, probably acceptance rate might be much higher than it is now.
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21599370-adobes-bold-embrace-computing-cloud-should-inspire-others-super-subs

Interview of Drew Faust

Tonight's Charlie Rose Show interviewed Harvard Uni. President Drew Faust. I have seen her interviews several times and was impressed by her articulation and her vision of higher education, especially her dedication of leveled playing field in access to college education. I start to feel that probably a general-discipline university should not elect a president with highly acclaimed prestige in a narrow and esoteric field, rather, a president with liberal arts background (Faust herself is a historian) may have a broader mind and have a better vision for leading a university.

競爭的殘酷

不清楚服貿的實質內容但相信服貿是一個強化和強迫競爭的催化工具。在美國這麼多年，經歷了無數次10%到35%的公司解雇，強烈地感覺到在無憂無慮的環境下生存，第一，這是奢想。第二，這只會讓自己前進的速度變慢。游泳時，旁邊泳者速度和自己差不多時，潛意識速度會加快些。開會時，別人侃侃而談時，潛意識就會注意到如何吸取對方的長處。真的無法和對方並駕齊驅時，也應該在自己還有利用籌碼和利用價值時，為自已爭取最大的利益，為下一步的競爭做最有利的準備(雖然人類的安逸本性永遠會抗拒這種想法) 競爭很殘酷，有人獲利，有人受害。新興國家的崛起，使得美國的低技術(高中畢業)的中產階級已蕩然無存。全球化和自動化已不可阻擋，資本和技術正吞食和改變全世界每一個國家的社會結構。抗拒競爭，永遠不可能有完全勝利者。如何強化一個國家的競爭優勢，是最艱困和最重要的當務之急。不可能有一蹴而成的 silver bullet 來提升競爭優勢，但討論競爭和思考如何制定政策才會使競爭對社會結構的衝擊降到最低，總比花全部時間來抗拒競爭要付出的代價低一點

Vanishing customer representatives

In the future, all the customer representatives will be laid off. Today, we missed a Fedex package delivery. When I called Fedex, I only talked to computer (all voice communications). I asked computer to redirect our package to the nearest Fedex office and, when the redirected package is ready, computer will be instructed to call my specified phone number . It is just like talking to a human being. The "Second Machine Age" has already engulfed our life and the job market crunch will be worse rather than better in the future.

New guard or old guard

New guard is always more prestigious than old guard? Obviously, I am an old guard. I wrote many codes but have no idea how to write web app codes even API is readily available for anyone. All you need when writing apps is just "innovation" and do not need to do any meticulously algorithmic implementation as do by old guards. Silicon Valley is full of new guards du jour. Yet if new guards only want to have innovation and pat solutions to the complex problems with no intention to tackle game-changing challenges such as energy exploitation, souped-up IT infrastructure or drug research, do we need so many new guards?
Silicon Valley's Youth Problem

No IT info is airtight

Credit card information stored in any company, big or small, is still very precarious as evident in the cyber-theft from Target late last year. It was done by just a small-time Ukrainian with less-sophisticated malware. The malware was detected 2 days before cyber-thief could transfer 11-GB information out of Target servers. However, due to turf fight, Target did not do anything. Now, you can spend from $6 (for gift card) to $200 (American Express Platinum) for the stolen credit card information inwww.rescator.so (though a login is required) issued in your local area. (So, you can "enjoy" a binge shopping probably within 6 hours before banks raise red flags.)

How Target credit cards were stonlen

Contents drive up hardware revenues

The success of GoPro camera always made me flabbergasted. Even Foxconn(富士康) invested $200M in this company. The soaring revenue of this company is the perfect example of "using content to drive up the sale of hardware" which happens to be the predicament of most of the Taiwan's companies. This video camera can be attached to your body and records all the actions of your surfing, your biking, your flying or any adventures. The video contents can be very gripping and can go viral in YouTube. That is, these popular video contents uploaded by customers are the free advertisements of GoPro cameras. Again, contents drive up the sales of hardware which is the most difficult part for many Taiwan's hardware companies.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-03-13/gopro-nears-ipo-as-hybrid-media-company-videocam-maker

16km telescope

CBS "60 Minutes" had a coverage of ALMA Observatory, a giant array of fifty 12-m antennas which can be reconfigured into an equivalent 16km telescope (Yes, 16km telescope!). This 19-nation joint project costs $1.2B and is located on a plateau at 5km altitude in Chile. It is equipped with a supercomputer at 5km altitude to process stupendous amount of data. It is expected to "see" what happened just after the "Big Bang". Hopefully, this expensive and esoteric science will justify its impact on human beings 50 years from now.  
ALMA

trait of fox or hedgehog

Fox or hedgehog? This is the personality dichotomy found everywhere around you; in workplace, in family, in presidential elections and even in fast food comparisons. I tend to feel I am leaning toward hedgehog but fox, at least semantically, seems to have upper hand since fox represents cunning, versatile and not as button-down as hedgehog. Probably there is no clear winner for either fox or hedgehog and people may need to acclimatize to each event by slightly gravitating toward either fox- or hedgehog-leaning trait.   
Fox or hedgehog

College athletes at elementary school reading levels

It is astonishing that NCAA college football and basketball teams have collectively generated $55B for their schools since year 2000. Since these athletes spent full time to practice, how do they graduate? Recent BusinessWeek has a story about athletes in UNC (1st public university in USA, 2005 and 2009 NCAA basketball champion and No. 30 in college ranking). 10% of the athletes (mostly UNC football and basketball players) are at 3rd grade level of reading comprehension and 60% are between 4th and 8th grade levels. How do they graduate? Believe it or not, even the prestigious school like UNC knows how to cheat! 

drone, job killing machine?

Recent IEEE Spectrum has an article of drone with focus on the company "3D Robotics" It still costs $750 for its drone as in the following video clip. Three months ago, Amazon's Jeff Bezos had a viral video clip in CBS "60 Minutes" for its delivery drones. Probably five years from now after FAA clears the regulatory hurdle for drones, then, most of the UPS/Fedex employees will lose their jobs and even the pizza delivery boys will lose their jobs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QfJAXEjF4c

No managers' gibberish in war room

最新一期時代雜誌封面故事報導去年十一月間，一群高能力高熱忱的矽谷工程師如何日以繼夜地 (每天只睡三到四小時 ，開會時不准坐下，政府不准他們當自願者，但只給他們原來薪水零頭式的補償) 拯救幾乎崩潰的 ObamaCare 網站。讓我眼睛睜大的部分内容是張貼在臨時戰情會議室的三則規定: (1) 此會議室僅作為解决問題用途。如果你想推卸責任，還有很多地方你可以去 (2) 經理階级不可以在此室講一些和解决問題無關的廢話 (3) 這裏的話題僅限於往後 24-48 小時對我們有影響的事件 。怪不得這群工程師能在六個星期内修復這個龐然怪物的政府網站，也拯救了Obama 的政治生命