en-us http://www.keithwatanabe.net/index.php Keith Watanabe's Website http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2004/5/5/b0d53330a71e097d388fd02afeb82f07.html Wed, 05 May 2004 12:08:49 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2004/5/5/b0d53330a71e097d388fd02afeb82f07.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2004/5/11/a94dbf94721d8ad7e24d9cbcfc341987.html Tue, 11 May 2004 21:19:07 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2004/5/11/a94dbf94721d8ad7e24d9cbcfc341987.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2004/5/15/eaeec5b428a589ca7f214de21c92e26b.html Sat, 15 May 2004 16:49:14 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2004/5/15/eaeec5b428a589ca7f214de21c92e26b.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2004/5/16/60fdac5e49fa1835319acc5d127ad0ee.html Sun, 16 May 2004 22:46:46 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2004/5/16/60fdac5e49fa1835319acc5d127ad0ee.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2004/6/10/9ff7f91eebf760b0533d77166018d13e.html Thu, 10 Jun 2004 01:18:02 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2004/6/10/9ff7f91eebf760b0533d77166018d13e.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/4/14/e3d5b672a9acb9b8ba27161ec42ed839.html Thu, 14 Apr 2005 00:50:03 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/4/14/e3d5b672a9acb9b8ba27161ec42ed839.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/6/14/b0b5116e2f619034afd1365046d3df35.html Tue, 14 Jun 2005 00:34:20 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/6/14/b0b5116e2f619034afd1365046d3df35.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/7/10/3920ea0bbb2d553fc672364e170d080e.html Sun, 10 Jul 2005 23:53:34 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/7/10/3920ea0bbb2d553fc672364e170d080e.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/9/3/5dcc7af839ddfc0e9fb10c6344a10301.html Sat, 03 Sep 2005 15:32:09 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/9/3/5dcc7af839ddfc0e9fb10c6344a10301.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/11/4/d7695ad126ecc753635f7053a885f308.html Fri, 04 Nov 2005 09:27:12 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/11/4/d7695ad126ecc753635f7053a885f308.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/11/21/d858f092bfb847aabd327bc6baef9ab2.html Mon, 21 Nov 2005 13:28:05 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/11/21/d858f092bfb847aabd327bc6baef9ab2.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2006/4/3/158dc519c951060e6f6870179e63acdb.html Mon, 03 Apr 2006 09:02:17 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2006/4/3/158dc519c951060e6f6870179e63acdb.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2006/10/17/69cc7d6e459144ce5266fddb53f7acd7.html Tue, 17 Oct 2006 22:48:33 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2006/10/17/69cc7d6e459144ce5266fddb53f7acd7.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/10/14/e0c7b55c04b416c7f7019509d1f0918b.html
Seriously.

That's your challenge future inventors. Interview a housewife and figure out ways of allowing her to watch more TV while being productive. If a housewife watches less TV and spends more time cooking or cleaning, you've already failed. Here's some things I'd like to see:

• A device that automatically picks up clothes off the floor, sorts them and puts them away for washing in the appropriate order and type (whites with whites, towels with towels, etc.)
• A device that removes expired food from your refrigerator and disposes of it properly (bonus points to those who come up with something that sorts it for people like me living in Japan)
• A better dishwasher. If you have old food clinging in bulk in your pans, the dishwater should automatically dispose of it.
• An automated lightbulb replacement tool. No more step ladders or attempts in figuring out what volts you need for a light. The tool just switches it when one burns out (or better yet, how about a light that just doesn't burn out???)
• Something that handles and sorts your mail. I think paper mail should just go away regardless, even official documents because we have computers! That said, if we can't do away with the post office, mail man, hand written letters from your grandma, and of course junk mail, then have something that just delivers it in a nice pile to our desk. Junk mail gets automatically shredded.
• Automated grocery delivery. WebVan was a great idea but poorly executed (obviously). I think the idea is still valid but they have to figure out how to make it worth it. I think the idea is that we should get rid of the postal office and have daily delivery of groceries. It sounds a bit socialists but imagine a system like the postman or newspaper boy who just delivers groceries to each house on a daily basis. Somethings were made to be automated. Grocery shopping is one of them.

Anyway just some ideas for now. Join my site to make comments or additions.]]> Sun, 14 Oct 2007 01:41:21 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/10/14/e0c7b55c04b416c7f7019509d1f0918b.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/11/5/f9b545291f60b43b35f73ac1f463494e.html
All things considered, the fact that the computer industry has little history compared with the medical one says a lot. It's disgusting watching companies put out products that have little visible benefits whereas an iPod can give one instant gratification. I mean, I was using this drug to help my leg which has some sort of excema. I spent over a thousand dollars for that along with this other drug to help my keloid problem on my chest. Did any of these conditions improve? No!

Compare that to a system I helped build for trading tickets online at Ticketmaster. Various artists can benefit from that as can online resellers. It took me less than a year to build my piece of the system.

One key thing that Grove pointed out was that the tech industry delivers and has schedules. To put it bluntly, we work hard and have real milestones. Researchers in labs just perform random experiments for their own intellectual fulfillment without caring that billions of people are suffering and dying depending upon their coffee breaks!

One piece of insight that I didn't know about but I conjectured that Grove mentioned was that the medical industry faces these patent issues and a huge force to get grants. There is a community that prevents people from getting through, which means that progress is slowed. I didn't realize something like this existed, but it makes sense. To me it seems that this organization is a perverse institution that has more interest in self-preservation than in producing medicine that people truly need.

I hope this serves as a wake up call to the world of medicine. But I think that the barriers of entry must be thrown down just as how development in the online world had been thrown down by the advent of the web. ]]> Mon, 05 Nov 2007 18:33:20 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/11/5/f9b545291f60b43b35f73ac1f463494e.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/12/28/4c829295a4febfe6ba73821a64759bd3.html
I can't say that I'm said for Netscape's death as they really weren't producing anything noteworthy in the past few years. Their portal site, browser and Digg clones have all been failures, so it isn't a surprise that AOL let them go.

That said, I put all the blame for Netscape's lack of success from AOL's continuing business failures. The Time/Warner merger was flawed from the start and destroyed WCW back when it was hot. Later AOL stopped supporting in earnest Netscape and even WinAmp, one of the best media players up until that time. It's as though anytime sometime arrives at some level of success, company politics kill projects in AOL. Even their sales flops with the controversial situation where the guy wasn't allowed to cancel his contract further demonstrates AOL's lack of commitment to quality and customer satisfaction.

Well, despite their empire from years ago, the growth of broadband has killed AOL's primary business of dial up. Hopefully, this makes them attractive as a buy for a company like Google, who will in turn just shut them off, showing the world that karma is, indeed, a muthafucking bitch. After such a buyout, Google should fire all those executives and make the remaining dial up free while refocusing AOL's core business into free cable/internet access, thus challenging the telecoms in their monopoly.]]> Fri, 28 Dec 2007 23:23:32 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/12/28/4c829295a4febfe6ba73821a64759bd3.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/12/29/91e4caff6725864a718b5f632ef6b5f0.html
I'll be 33 this year and things didn't exactly go as planned this year. I was planning to make $2 million and that obviously did not come to fruition. So do I make this year an exception in that perhaps I was off by a year (since I'm always off by one) or do I go a different route? Right now, I'm still debating. For myself, I have three things that I'm juggling:

1. Build my own application in the hopes of someone buying it out
2. Focusing the entire year on getting my Japanese level up
3. Improving on my writing

1) is something that is always too hard to put a bet on. I've built several applications already but no one uses them. I can't tell if it's simply because of bad UI, not enough time to support them or my lack of leadership skills in enticing more people to come and use them. Either way, I'm not sure if I should waste anymore time on this. Since I'm in a much better environment, I have no excuse NOT to train my Japanese. It looks like a sure bet to go this route. Besides, why even be in Japan when I can barely speak (well, "barely speak" meaning that I'm not handling the language as fluently as I'd like).

I want to handle my writing too. But I'm the type of person that needs focus. So I have to split my time between either the Japanese or the writing, but I'm coming to realize that it's not easy doing this. So right now, it looks like I might focus all my energy on my Japanese once work starts again. I've been promising myself for a long time that I want to pass the 2-kyuu exam. I've got enough friends to help me out so I think that will be my huge plan for the year.

Regardless, I think this is the year I'll get engaged, if not married. No, I don't have anyone right now. But I think I should make a real effort to get someone this year. Probably improving my Japanese will help in this, since my past killer has been my lack of language skills in elegantly presenting myself and talking about anything that doesn't involve fart, dick and gay jokes (just kidding but at least the fart and dating jokes were kinda bland). My Japanese needs to match my English level for me to feel comfortable here. I think if that occurs, people might realize that I'm not just a foul mouthed person, but someone with depth.

Between April through May, I plan to fix up the plumbing in my mom's home. I figure that's a $5k project. If I can get that fixed, repair the sidedoors, ceiling, back door, replace the tiling in the family room, replace the toilet near my room and replace all three sinks, the house will be in excellent condition for another 20 years.

By August, I will reassess my financial situation and see if the time is right to make my first real estate purchase. With the subprime loan crisis hitting, home sales slowing, and the government intervening by lowering the lending rates, it seems like a sure shot to at least take a serious glance at some real estate on the market. I still think that Las Vegas is the place to target. I've already spotted some cheap condos at least online. The next plan would be to physically check them out and see if their location is ideal as a long term investment vehicle. My guess is that real estate will continue to go down, but at the very least, I want to make sure homes are affordable.

Project and business-wise, this will be an exciting year for me. I saw my company's roadmap and it's ambitious. Also, I know of various internal projects that I'm just waiting to sink my teeth into. If I can balance that with my home life, it should be a very profitable year in terms of knowledge.

From a global perspective, this coming year is going to be a mixed bag. I think with the Pakistani leader recently assassinated, we'll see various forms of retribution along with heat from many countries, especially the US. I don't know if this will move the US into action (or as I say, give the US an excuse to start something), but it's too hard to say how far this will escalate.

Once we're into the 1st quarter, it'll be interesting to see how holiday sales have performed. It's been noted that consumer confidence is down, especially from rumblings of the looming recession. I always figure that Christmas is the best indicator of yearly consumer confidence, as people tend to put more on credit. If Christmas sales are down, the next recession might last 2-3 years (about the same as the last one). Right now, it seems the current target is against the credit market, so many finance companies will feel more blows coming their way. But seriously, if they didn't have all these fraudulent schemes to blackmail consumers into getting into more debt, then these companies might have stronger businesses, rather than periodic booms. Overall, I think the financial market will be hit hard throughout the year from people who are unable to pay. This will play a huge part into a lowering stock market (great time to buy!!!!), lowering interest rates, deflation and the USD moving even lower.

With the writers' strikes continuing, I think consumers will continue to move towards online forms of entertainment. It's inevitable. The tools for creating and distributing one's own media has become easy. Not to mention free or cheap (e.g. web cameras). The main thing Hollywood and these various recording mafias hold that the average people do not possess have traditional been the means of production. It's completely Marxist yet dead on the mark. They had labs to produce unbelievable CGI effects and could distribute and market them globally. Youtube and other online companies threaten that aspect. What Hollywood studios do not realize is that the threat of piracy is NOT their biggest enemy. Their biggest enemy is losing control over distribution. Perhaps the layman may not produce the best effects, but considering how abused these CGI houses are and producing awful pictures that emphasize form over content, why bother?

And take reality TV. It's a dead issue. Who wants to see hasbeen actors, models, and overdosed rockstars show what decrepit, decadent beings that they've wasted their money on becoming? Anyone can produce a far more interesting reality show without any budget or the necessity of paying a hasbeen an undeserved paycheck. The thing is that we don't need theatres, and video rentals anymore. And that's where the power of online media will free the average citizen while certifying the demise of the big media industry as we know it.

This year (while this may not be a prediction) what needs to occur is a serious movie produced by an independent film crew that becomes a huge success on the internet. That will demonstrate the real threat of what the internet is to the movie studios.

Politically, I think this year will be hot because of the election. The question will be difficult to answer because the candidates (at least from the Democrats' side) are quite strong in comparison. I don't feel there's a single Republican that can easily represent the voice of America this time around. So what it'll boil down to is either Obama or Clinton getting the duke. I think Obama will probably win this one. I don't think America is ready for a female president yet and personally, I don't feel Clinton would make a good over ambassador. Being Bill's wife I think actually stigmitizes her rather than elevates her position. People are looking for something fresh and someone that's going to help the country recover in the various embarrassments and pitfalls Bush and his goons got the country into for the past 8 years. The first four years will be amending the damage done to the country while the following four will be paving the future. I don't think Clinton has that kind of vision. Obama just feels to be slightly more clued into the people. And that's the real issue that needs to be addressed.

2008 the internet will get hotter in terms of competition. The services will massively improve as understanding of richweb applications improve. But it'll be the online advertisement sector that'll lead this charge. While big media will slowly get nailed in their inability to cope with online media, it's obvious that they still want to get a piece of the action. But I think that their percentage will be tiny and that it'll hurt their revenue overall, leading them to lose further ground while the Big Three (Google, Yahoo, Apple) suck in massive deals. In general, be in a web company for 2008. It's going to great!

NASA/JPL will continue to have a rough year. I think that NASA will avoid disaster, but their chief enemy will be budget cuts from the Bush administration. Science just doesn't seem like a priority for the Bush administration. So they'll have to be patient until 2009 when the switch occurs.

While space will suffer from bureaucratic entanglements, green technologies will see new heights. Oil prices will shrink, leading more scares by the general public into moving towards hybrids. As such Japanese manufacturers will see great gains as their entire lineups move towards hybrid technologies. Where does that leave American automobiles? Hopefully, these companies get a huge slap in the face and stop being lazy in denying the impossibility of achieving better fuel standards. Rather than emphasizing size, American automanufacturers should look at the current situation as a prime point to reinvest money into research and switch gears completely towards fuel economy and price. If the Japanese are putting out 55/60 mph for one gallon at $28000, US manufacturers should aim at 60-80 mph/gallon at $20000. While the law recently was passed to force manufacturers to commit to higher standards, the manufacturers themselves should take initative to achieve even better matrics for themselves.]]> Sat, 29 Dec 2007 03:02:09 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/12/29/91e4caff6725864a718b5f632ef6b5f0.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/2/66ca7b3e12a9d6378fae1170483e1e6d.html Since I'm working on these 2008 strategies, I decided to give some advice to Microsoft: kill MSN. Or rather stop putting anymore money into it. Stop trying to compete against Yahoo and Google. Vista was a huge flop and everyone knew it. DRM, locked down devices, closed, proprietary systems are just so 1980's-2000. You had your 20 year run, it was great, we had fun, people made money, now it's time to move on.

First Microsoft needs to get rid of Ballmer. There I said it. He's not a geek, never will be, and I don't think anyone in the industry really respects him (much less likes him).

Microsoft should not put more money into Facebook. It's just a bad buy. Yeah, there's some nice things in there like games, but it's just integration. You just can do a little bit more than say Myspace. Sure, they have open APIs, but I just don't see a point still. I think SNS are great but I don't think anyone will be the be-all-end-all solution that these major companies are looking for. They're limited in what they can do and the only thing that they have is the occasional returning user. Great. Move on. For that matter, Microsoft should not get into the SNS space. It just doesn't fit who they are.

I mentioned this before, but I'll mention it again for their sake: Microsoft needs to go more into scientific computing. It blends with Bill Gates' philanthropic beliefs/causes. Google has moved into Green technologies, but Microsoft doesn't need to. Instead, I think a better area would be to focus on areas like medicine, genetics, nanotechnology, space exploration and robotics. Probably robotics is Microsoft's best bet and I would start shifting more budget into areas like automation. Think about things like centralized control of home appliances through one's computer. We have notions of services like networks, telnet, ftp, who, etc. but these are primitive compared to the potential number of services out there. Why build something 5th rate like Zune when there's probably a lot more practicality in things like timed heating, programmable meals, house cleaning, taking out one's garbage, cleaning the dishes, etc.? My stupid microwave is in Japanese, but the functions are identical to one sold in the US. Why should I be put into a situation where my limitation is the localized language? Imagine if it were controlled through my computer! You pick up your microwave dinner at the store, the microwave reads the barcode which translates into instructions on your computer. All you have to do is tell the computer when you want to eat.

Or how about a better vacuum? Have you ever seen those crappy ones with wheels? They're small and supposedly can go under your sofa. But what abouts the corners or ceiling where tons of mold can grow? I don't need another mp3 player, I need a better friggin' vacuum! And of course, this is simply AI and robotics. The funniest part is that this thing is such a common problem why hasn't someone tried to tackle it in an elegant way? The stuff I see is novel. I don't want novel, I want elegant and efficient. I see this situation as being more useful than a stupid XBox. If my clothes were cleaned, my bed made, my garbage taken out, my food made, my floors cleaned, my walls washed, my toilet scrubbed, then I could focus on more important things in my life (or rather that my place would be more hospital and I'd have more friends come over). I honestly don't care who solves this problem, but I think Microsoft has certainly the funds and people to make this thing work.

]]> Wed, 02 Jan 2008 02:47:09 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/2/66ca7b3e12a9d6378fae1170483e1e6d.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/5/58ac9e47c869763753cce1ec6cae7740.html

• Microsoft focusing on Webtop applications. No, as I mentioned Microsoft should shift their strategy completely away from the online area and let Yahoo, Google and other smaller ventures take over that space. The better area should be in appliances, robotics, space, and medicine. Those are more difficult business opportunities with far more money collectively involved and bigger prizes at the end of the tunnel. Microsoft would do themselves and the world a huge favor by not competing in the online space, and focusing on those other areas, which I doubt these web companies will bother with.
• Apple opening up the iPhone. Truthfully, Apple's killer is that they have a bad history of keeping their resources closed. Eventually, having too much proprietary stuff just hurt them in the end and it might do the same thing here. So I do agree with this point. But in general, I think Apple should not just focus on that area but also on other aspects of lifestyle outside of music like appliances. Music is a nice-to-have, not a need. Apple should work on things like intelligent microwaves along with Sony to improve these aspects of integrating computer functionality with the rest of the home.
  
• Facebook's data retention. Yeah, I do agree that they should open up their data. But I believe this should be the case of all major social networks. The bigger picture for Facebook is the fact that they're quickly becoming a platform, not just a service for social networks. Their APIs should be expanded upon to increase the number and granularity of services while developers can focus on creating the polish. That would save Facebook the issue of doing any work outside of regular maintenance.
  And make sure that the CEO's young ego is in check. This isn't about pride. It's about making things work in a transparent manner.
• Yahoo using their traffic. I think the traffic really doesn't matter at this point for Yahoo. I think it's manipulating the traffic to employ their services in a more efficient manner. Again this is the whole problem of enforcing people to use their "My Yahoo" piece as opposed to having this ugly front site that is a clusterfuck to look at.
• ebay selling off Skype. Well, ebay's big problem is that like other big internet companies, they still want to be everything to everyone. Instead of selling off skype (because it's really a great service), ebay should consider creating a holdings company that manages the various services. Just look at what IAC did. This would work out well because the holdings company could manage all the subbrands from ebay and ebay would focus on auctions and internet shopping. The problem was that Skype along with some other websites like Stumbleupon, truthfully had no business being in a business portfolio (no pun intended) in an online auction site. I don't think ebay acquiring other potentially decent companies is a horrible idea; but I think not aligning these companies up with their core business model is a huge problem for investors.
  

]]> Sat, 05 Jan 2008 11:07:26 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/5/58ac9e47c869763753cce1ec6cae7740.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/18/bbfc930bbc61b9295616c74a8329d3c1.html
To start off, having overall 8 years now in the IT business, I have to say that I'm at the peak of my abilities and still going stronger day by day. Before I used to be a little intimidated in doing something simple like setting up an application server because the documentation was an unreadable mess. These days, everything comes fairly quickly with reading a good tutorial online, some hands on practice then the actual implementation.

Besides, improving my programming skills, I also try to improve my other skills like system administration. For instance, this week I got a chance to really work with NFS, IPTables/Firewalls, and more of the security aspects of Mysql. And just yesterday I got my first chance at exploring mod_proxy because of a technical difficulty we're having with one of our servers. This is actually some fun stuff, especially considering that I've worked very little with these technologies.

Things never go as envisioned but that's the times where you really learn your stuff, especially after conquering a particularly impossible seeming problem. For instance, the last two days I was experimenting with getting a remote connection setup with Mysql. We're going to be doing a three layer architecture with a proxy server + application/web server + database backend (actually, it's even more complicated than that since we'll also be doing some NFS stuff, but more on that another day). So I needed to get the application server to be able to connect to Mysql remotely. First, I had to try it on a development/testing server. I've always said that networks are probably one of the most unreliable and confusing pieces of a computer around and it's hard to figure out what to do when you get a failure. In this case, I had to really dig into the way Mysql was setup from an administrative point of view. But I soon ran into problems when I did everything one tutorial mentioned and still couldn't do a simple test remote login with the mysql client.

Fortunately, I'm not the only one with similar problems. I found that the last issue was that iptables had been blocking almost all traffic. So I had to configure iptables under /etc/sysconfig/iptables and add a few rules to get port 3306 open and allow UDP and TCP traffic to come in. This nice tutorial shows how to handle this situation. After restarting iptables, I was able to login. I had to bang my head against the wall for a few hours, but those are the times when you literally beat the knowledge into your skull. After such times you really never forget such lessons.

I hope to be able to do more stuff like this at work. I really want to get my hands dirty with LDAP next. Although we only have a few machines, I like the idea of having centralized, unified login information. After I fix up my home system, I'm going to give LDAP a try. Also, I'm really looking forward to working with mod_proxy. I've worked with similar tools before in using the ajp/Coyote Connector for Apache to Tomcat. But this time, I'm going to be configuring a reverse proxy.

There's always more barriers to breakdown with technology and this is the stuff that I really like.
]]> Fri, 18 Jan 2008 21:04:04 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/18/bbfc930bbc61b9295616c74a8329d3c1.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/19/9d1acda6f5ce7f42755af897cce668bc.html iPhone, in LA via Skype. Apparently, my number appears as some random gibberish when the caller receives my Skype Out call. This is trash. Apple should go into a partnership with Skype/Ebay to integrate the service with Skype. There is a service which handles what I'm talking about, but it should be a natural match between both providers. I don't even mind if Apple takes a cut as part of the service, but it would be nice for something like this to work (either that or my friend should really start answering the phone more often!)]]> Sat, 19 Jan 2008 23:58:55 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/19/9d1acda6f5ce7f42755af897cce668bc.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/23/dbe364465b37d5669fab035477556205.html SpaceShipTwo, which is the much anticipated more or less first ever publicly available ship for space tourism.

I'm not sure about the practicality of what they intend though. Currently, the design only allows for 4 minutes of weightlessness in space. Considering the price tag of $200k/flight one way, this prevents ordinary people from partaking in this journey and only the elite of society can live a partial dream of moving to space, but it seems only novel. I mean, I don't think it's going to be like a cruise ship and the size is too small to really be able to do much.

Part of me believes that this situation is similar to the old, first Creative MP3 player when it came out. Clunky, fat, and limited in terms of portability and battery life, the Creative player lost quickly to the iPod, which had a far better interface and more practicality. In other words, SpaceShipTwo and Virgin Galactic might be the first to pioneer the concepts of space tourism in practice, but someone else is certainly going to do better.

We need to think of practical application for this such as moving from destination to destination. At the moment, there aren't obviously a lot of "space ports" around. So are people expected just to take flight and come back to the same landing spot? I mean, I would imagine a great application for this would've been to figure out how to cross the Pacific/Atlantic faster. But again you need those space ports placed around the world to make that application practical.

Also, the 4 minute mark of weightlessness seems like a low standard. While you can say that it's an achievement, I consider $200k/4 minutes to be quite the ripoff for nothing more than an expensive thrill. If I were these guys, I'd also be thinking of building commercial space stations that you can refuel. Not that clunker ISS, but I'm talking something elegant, allowing people to travel and conduct business or get away from earthbound life.

At any rate, I congratulate them on their move towards getting us off the planet. But also, I just hope that these people start setting the bar higher.]]> Wed, 23 Jan 2008 17:14:24 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/23/dbe364465b37d5669fab035477556205.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/30/44b835a10bf0630b8f83ab12f50af2c2.html
However, the Internet has spurned new hope, not geographically, but virtually. In America, you are greeted by security guards and military forces when approaching the entry points to the country. The Internet allows anyone with a connection and a device to become part of a virtual geography, one limited only by politics, bandwidth, infrastructure, and imagination. Still, the Internet has allowed people like myself to create a new space where geographically places in the world no longer provide the means necessary to support me.

I believe in the Internet frontier because it's completely unpaved. People are building up territories and colonies just in the same way America, Japan and other countries had been created by pioneers who were unsatiated by their governments and sought freedom. Internet, unlike America, has given me a job and opportunities to live my dreams, put food on my table, a roof over my head and support myself and my family. if the internet did not exist, i would probably be handing coffee out to customers at the local Starbucks in my hometown. if it did not exist, my knowledge of the world would be even more limited. i would have less communications and be ignorant about many things. the internet has provided nearly limitless information for me, only hampered by the legal and politics of those who have large coffers.

the better thing about the internet is that i'm helping to contribute the virtual sand to create the ground, the foundation of the virtual cities that will grow in the future. this is progress.]]> Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:36:48 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/30/44b835a10bf0630b8f83ab12f50af2c2.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/1/adc5d62cd532aa7e453a1083bb6a965f.html
recently, i had found an interesting article on the various PHP questions you can ask during an interview written by an Indian blogger. funny thing was that the questions included non-PHP topics like mysql as well (which demonstrates a misnomer and fault in the person's communication skills). The questions reminded me of a trivia test to see how much one can memorize. Along those lines, I met a very good Oracle DBA back when I was working at Racesearch.com. He claimed that he memorized the entire Oracle 8i book when he went for his certification. That's an amazing feat.

However, these two examples lead me to my next point in that rote memorization is great, but it does not offer insight to an individual's creativity, problem solving skills (especially in tight situations), ability to communicate and most importantly, whether or not you just gosh darn like the person.

When I was working at Nikko Citigroup, we had outsourced part of our system administration duties to WiPro for an audit project. On paper, if you saw their resumes, they were littered with credentials and experience. However, in practice these guys plain sucked. One guy didn't even know how to use SSH properly. I yelled at another guy when it took my workstation down after running a multi-tasking script that went out of control.

At HLIKK, we used another group, Satyam, for our e-Business project. The code came back with all of Sun's Best Practices and usage of design patterns employed. From a high level, in examining the UML diagrams, it looked great. In practice, the code stunk. It was ugly, redundant and you could tell there was no art involved in coming up with employing those best practices. It seemed like a bunch of junior programmers who were reading Sun's J2EE patterns for the first time and trying each pattern out to claim that they have experience on those patterns, on the technology and in the business realm. Worse yet, the company had hired a ton of these people and the cost and times went out of control.

I'm not the best coder in the world (if I was, I'd work for Blizzard, EA or Google). I don't claim to even be a great coder, nor a good coder. I'm adequate and I know enough to allow myself to be productive. Better yet, I'm elegant enough to know what works best for me and how to code with good speed, readability and organization (which mostly stems from my writing capabilities, believe it or not). The thing is that at some point, I realized that just sticking with the books blindly is no good and that you have to have the experience to back up what you put on paper. That's what I've always attempted to state on my resume. That I have these buzzwords and I've worked to learn as much as I can about them. Otherwise, I won't write them down.

The other thing is that I've been in IT now for 8+ years and have learned a lot about coding, best practices and started even doing my own. It's like what Arn Anderson had said in one interview. He spent 15+ years in the pro-wrestling industry and formulated a right to an opinion. Having been beaten up, laid off, threatened, worn out and intellectually hazed, I too have earned a right to my opinion of the tech industry and what I do as a profession.

When I see companies though, blindly outsourcing because upper management have been led to believe that numerous certifications, college degrees and certain gratuitous titles in working for these consulting firms = ROI, I get disgusted.

Quantity != quality.

I'm not saying that outsourcing is bad. I'm not saying these people who receive these opportunities are bad. All I'm saying is that companies should really understand what outsourcing means.]]> Fri, 01 Feb 2008 20:07:20 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/1/adc5d62cd532aa7e453a1083bb6a965f.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/4/f1c22feea27dbbe450503b724cd1176b.html youtube videos or peruse numerous news articles. While the production value of the new wave of media is no way near the level of what Hollywood and big budget companies can produce, I love the things being put out by independent people, using sheer creativity over the traditional boardroom writing of Hollywood. If not that then I go for the plethora of news out there, which even as enormous as it is, I find still limited in quantity.

Sometimes, I wonder though if my viewing habits are far worse than my parents' or my friends who are addicted to TV. While the information I glean is more useful to me or vested in what I find interesting, the amount of time I spend consuming information far exceeds the amount my mom does. I was thinking of how TV shows are not on demand, but scheduled. So you can pattern your sleeping habits or viewing habits based on what's on (unless you use devices like TiVo). Internet technology though is completely on demand, which means an infinite amount of consumption.

But truthfully, the stuff on the net is the best stuff out there. It's raw and unimposing, just waiting to be grabbed by active viewers who search for these bits of data.]]> Mon, 04 Feb 2008 10:18:47 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/4/f1c22feea27dbbe450503b724cd1176b.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/7/82d5433b2ed60592ba111e38d338a215.html
Yes, that locker PISSED me off!

The guy gave me an almost unreadable piece of paper instructing me which locker to look for and the number to look at. Great, so when I tried using that number to open the lock. *DING!* No go! I tried several more times in futility, only realizing that I ended up locking myself out (fortunately, the failed attempts thing resets, otherwise I'd have to wait until the little manager dude gets up in the morning). I didn't even realize that you had a little code to go with that thing. So I got a bit consternated knowing that trying to locate the code in my messed up apartment would be nearly impossible. Fortunately, all my information is pretty housed in this folder in my closet so I wasn't as screwed as I had thought.

Overall though, the fact that this annoyed the hell out of me gave natural rise to a great idea (which is where all my great ideas come from). First, I think it's absolutely idiotic for these real estate agencies to hand people a booklet and expect them to remember all these details about things like fire insurance, locker combos, etc. We're talking about PAPER! In 2008! Japan always talks a great story about conservation, but they waste so many trees with their love of packaging, documents and other tree detrimental artifacts.

So instead, why not have something like an online profile containing all of your information?

It makes far more sense to store this information in an organized manner online. It'll eliminate the need for space consumption (these folders are HUGE at times) and there will be little confusion as to where to find your information, compared to having to scrounge through folders, boxes and cabinets of junk. And for these real estate agents who need to maintain their info on their users, it makes plenty of sense. I mean, I'm certain many of these agents are not computer savvy and probably end up storing boatloads of documents in non-portable Excel and Word files.

Naturally, people living here would probably find my ideas both great and ludicrous for logistics reasons. One, if all your information is stored online then the rising concerns would be privacy, initial accessibility (as being able to retrieve it prior to moving into your new place; I mean, you will be in transit at that point), and older people who probably thought turning on a computer meant sticking their finger in a light socket. The way I address each issue is the following:

1. Privacy concerns. Any online application ought to be secure. So if there was a trustworthy system established that has good security and was proven to be near unhackable, then this should not be a problem. If a person can access their bank account information online and even perform transactions, then housing should not be an issue either.
2. Initial accessibility. In other words, what happens when you don't have access to a computer to grab that information? Well, in my theory, each mansion setup to handle this type of system would have a kiosk installed onsite to specifically handle incidents at any time of the day. Additionally, the system would have mobile access. This will provide multiple ways of being able to access your account information.
3. Old people. Well, to be honest, many of the places that have sophisticated home systems are sprouting up in the major urban areas, places where young kids and hot business people are residing. I see the old people in Japan as a residual that needs to move on and allow progress to happen at a more rapid pace. In other words, either they figure out how to use such a system or simply not live at those places.

Now, to resolve the last part about that crappy locker, well, I think they should simply supplied some USB key containing an encrypted code. My stupid apartment complex has two keys. One for my door and the lobby entrance and one for this crummy locker that has enough room for a single suitcase. Why not consolidate them into one electronic key? You always forge keys so that itself is a potential security violation. But the chances for replicating an electronic key for a specific complex would, in my opinion, be a hundred times more difficult. Also, the USB key would allow access to the kiosk machine so you might not even need a username/password combination to try to access your information.]]> Thu, 07 Feb 2008 09:09:31 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/7/82d5433b2ed60592ba111e38d338a215.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/7/4391fc69f051fd8f71cabd644780690f.html
So let me give all my billions of readers out there my little insight on how my wonderful ideas sprout from my tiny neuron in my skull:

I just look at things that annoy me and figure out how to not make them annoy me as much.

That's it!!!!!!!

That's all I ever do when it comes to creating ideas.

Okay, maybe there's a little more to this.

Often I apply a technological bent to my ideas. Like my microwave idea or my online housing information idea. But again, you have to figure out practical uses for situations that annoy you. An idea often starts from me in figuring out how to make my life suck less because my life sucks BIG TIME. I ask myself, how can I save 30 more seconds of my life by doing something more efficient? Or perhaps, what can I apply differently to improve the efficiency of my life? Am I repeating myself senselessly and can I automate that in some way? Is my life completely disorganized and I need a better, more central way to force me to move into better habits? How can I shortcut my route from having to go from A-B-C-D-E-F....Z to simply A directly to Z?

A lot of my ideas are partially derived via common sense. The microwave idea, for instance, was partly based on common sense. Well, the functionality of a microwave is universal, so why do the buttons need to be in different languages and why are instructions for heating in different languages? There's no easy localization function on these devices, the way software, websites or even your iPod has a nice Japanese-to-English feature.

Common sense to me means more than wisdom (from a Dungeons and Dragons point of view). It means patterns; commonly occurring behavioral patterns. Repetition is often where I look the first. Especially meaningless, meandering repetition. My premise for this line of thinking is simple: we're on this world for a limited time. So if we do this meaningless, meandering repetition, we're simply wasting our lives in Buddhist circles. To break out of these cycles, we need for something (or someone at times) to handle the repetition for us or eliminate it completely.

Also, time wasting activities that annoy me for no good reason are other great candidates for places to invent. Take airports for example. Flying never has been fun but with America's wonderful Homeland Shitcurity and TSA (Totally Shit Administration), it's made the experience something akin to violent, prolonged flogging with a spoon. Let's look at the inherent problems with this experience. Long lines, inability to transport all necessary items, invasion of privacy, inability to trust workers, long flights, potential delays in flights, uncomfortable passivity for long periods (especially if you travel international between say LA and Japan), rude workers, etc. If a person could suddenly just leap through all this like through a portal and seamlessly appear at the next stop without hassle that would be ideal. How can we avoid all these factors that make flying an inexcusably excruciating event?

Well, firing everyone in those administrations and closing them down would help somewhat, but it doesn't solve all the existing problems. We simply want to get to another place with all our stuff faster. That's the problem and that's where you have to come up with a solution to resolve that. Forget existing logistics, go for the ideal. Look at the iPod and iPhone for instance. If people saw this thing a decade ago, they'd laugh because it looks like a dream. But that's part of invention is how to turn a dream or idea into a reality.

To me, also the fine of invention also means not doing trivial stuff. Obviously, geeks love to have fun. That's why we're geeks. But good inventions are not trivial in my view. They serve a clear purpose with the intent on improving the quality of life. I often see trivial inventions that look more for amusement than holding any practical value. Things that are not elegant and probably only exist to amuse the geeks. Games are okay because they're strictly for entertainment purposes. But you gotta differentiate when you invent. I recall Pirates of Silicon Valley where Steve Jobs yells at his employees for clowning around. Sometimes, I see people doing this and I'd love to yell at these people in a similar manner.

The other thing is that you gotta kinda see how the average person can make use of something. This is the practical application of an invention. I sometimes think that people have trouble putting themselves in other people's shoes. Inventors are often highly intelligent people with extreme egos. That implies quite often that they are a mind of singularity and don't really recognize that other beings in this universe are not as intellectually qualified as themselves. Unfortunately, by taking this viewpoint, they end up alienating themselves from normal people and might miss out on potentially creating useful applications.

I guess the good thing about myself is that I recognize that I'm not a genius or anything and see myself as just a normal person (okay at least in terms of what I want, not in how I do things). So I can easily put myself in someone's shoes and appreciate what others might think. That allows me to leverage my creative strengths and technical knowledge in providing practical application for people. In other words, I think of the bottom line.

Anyway, hopefully some people who are typically uninspired but excel in technical ability can learn something from this blog and will create something to benefit people.]]> Thu, 07 Feb 2008 09:41:08 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/7/4391fc69f051fd8f71cabd644780690f.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/9/ede6c944d25d3e4b61487b0a876351b3.html
More returning users * (mistaken ad clicks + page impressions) = jumbo profit

This formula will run its limits eventually and companies like Google will get tremendously hurt if they continue to depend upon it as the ultimate source of income. And I think companies outside of the smallest ad driven sites that manage to have low operating cost and high traffic should watch out in depending upon this formula as their only source of revenue.

I've been a firm believer in hard numbers, a hard product that gives you some kind of money back because people are willing to purchase it. Information, for all intents and purposes, is practically free, driven by the economies of the social web formula of accounting. Therefore, information should be the only source of development for the web for companies wishing to make a profit and looking for new ideas.

A more difficult path that should be explored is appliances. We've started already with the easy things like TV and media players. However, I haven't seen enough innovation things like home appliances where a refrigerator is the same kind of refrigerator you could buy 10 years ago.

I mentioned before about these ideas of mine like the automated microwave, the intelligent vacuum, the apartment profile, and home security, etc. You can look up a previous blog to see it. But the main concept is that we need more emphasis on these areas. You have Apple's concept of "Apple Life" or Sony's "Sony Life". But they almost solely revolve around computing and home entertainment. In my viewpoint, the entertainment is the frosting on the cake and we need to eat our salad and veggies before we get to the good stuff.

So the salad and veggies are our chores we need to accomplish at home. But as a lazy person, I don't want to handle them. I'd prefer to spend more time on the entertainment section. I mean, it's a royal pain in the butt putting my clothes in the basket. You should see all the clothes lying on my floor! Or to clean my toilet, it's just a bitch having to buy the little toilet brush and scrub, etc. And doing the dishes....I don't mind doing the dishes but I tend to let them sit in the sink for almost a week (because I mostly cook on the weekends). The worst part is that I never can invite friends over because my place is a mess. I'm too tired, lazy and energiless to to handle sweeping shit up.

My friends suggested a maid but it's too costly. And you'd have to get these recurring cost. Not to mention there's always the possibility of some violation of privacy or theft.

It's really ironic for myself too. When you see my computer, everything is organized extremely well. I have all these filters for my email, my folders are nice clean, I have methods for handling back ups. So my virtual life is handled extremely well.

My personal life....well, I'm hoping if I ever get a wife that she's really compassionate :)

More than likely, I'd have to do these corrections myself. But imagine being able to have something like a virtual cleaner or service that can manage your home life from your desktop at work. Click, your floor is clean! Click, your bed is made!

I don't think the solution is a robot honestly. These tasks are too complicated at the moment for AI and are better suited to specialized applications and devices. But I do think that we need to think more about the marriage between our home life and our virtual life through the internet, embedded systems, and devices that can handle this.



]]> Sat, 09 Feb 2008 12:05:46 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/9/ede6c944d25d3e4b61487b0a876351b3.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/23/80169212607c5c6be7fd0efd51b96dd7.html
To be perfectly honest, I've worked in few companies that had CIOs. I have worked in companies that had CTOs and I do think the domains cross over. Perhaps, we need to explore general characteristics of what may describe a "technological leader."

• Appreciates and understands technology. I'm a firm believer that executives in these positions who meet this requirement tend to have followers with similar beliefs. I'm not talking about getting yes-men, but those who are attracted by a person's smarts to want to work with these people.
• Has been in the trenches. To work up to this level of executive, I think a person should spend significant time getting their ass handed to them in working with technology. This does not mean hooking your monitor up to your desktop or turning your laptop on. This is significant work dealing hands on with the daily rigors of the difficulties of technology. They should have at one point been a system administrator, a developer, a QA person, a DBA, etc. so that they appreciate people working on issues at critical times. Its hard for your staff to respect you if you lack knowledge.
• Business domain knowledge. Knowing technology is critical, but also understanding how to apply technology to the business domain you're in charge of is equally pertinent. One chief role of a technology executive, as I see it, is to be able to communicate to other executives the decisions made in the technology department. For instance, I might understand web technologies very well, but I would have limited ability to go into a securities company and attempt to apply the same knowledge. It's just not that simple.
• Ability to take ownership and responsibility during a crisis. This seems obvious but one of the keys in the article about bad CIOs is that the bad ones are quick to blame and even quicker to run during a crisis. Taking ownership means getting in the trenches with your team, trying to understand the core problems and giving your team the breathing room to fix situations. Or accepting blame for failure without trying to point the finger. Technology can be frustrating to deal with, but those who can keep their cool to me demonstrate that they understand how technology works and can explain failures.
  
• Having a broad field of knowledge of technology. One CIO/Managing Director at a previous company was excellent in that he could talk about any range of topics in technology. He didn't have to know exactly how each technology worked, but he knew enough to communicate with those reporting to him. When you're given a position of responsibility like this, you should be able to cover a broad range of issues, especially if there's no person acting as your second (i.e. where a company has both CTO and CIO positions filled).
• Be willing to upgrade your knowledge constantly on technology. If you want bragging rights of having the cutting edge technology, you better be on the cutting edge with the rest of the industry. I think a good CTO/CIO still has some geekiness to himself/herself so that they constantly are examining the latest technologies and trying to differentiate between fads and real winners.
• Excellent people skills. Being good with technology is just one aspect of being a technologist. If you're isolated and doing a research project for yourself, you probably don't have to deal with anyone. However, when you get to this level, you really need to be able to handle all types of personalities. Again, this is a leadership position so aspects like communication, patience, understanding, all come into play here.
• Having a vision. My previous CIO would take us into a room and explain his "vision." The "vision" ended up being a kindergarten mat stuck on the wall with little circles plotting towards the finish line. I considered this a horrible insult to my intelligence. More than that, what was on the wall honestly was wrought by everyone else rather than him. That's not a vision. A vision is how you want to mold your department and the technology inside. Great leaders create trends so others follow. That's why they're leaders.
• Knowing how to prioritize. I saw the opposite line in the article, but this is important. Part of telling where your technologists should go is about prioritization. That includes budgeting, allocation of people, deciding whether to outsource or not and when, etc. Also, it means knowing when to schedule your projects. This is all tactics. You don't want to fire an empty gun at an incoming attacker. Interestingly enough, the other day my boss wanted me to make changes to the system. He asked me how long it would take. There were two changes, one easy, one hard. Then there was this research project. The easy one was a low hanging fruit. But the hard change would interpret my research project. So I posed the question, "Which one should go first?
• A history of successes. If a person is to be groomed into this position, he/she should have significant amount of successes that lead towards being promoted into such a position. A person being hired into the position from the outside should have numerous success stories on his/her resume and these should be validated by the company. Hiring a CTO/CIO is not the same as hiring a jr level developer. Just because someone had the title of CTO/CIO in the past does not necessarily imply that they were successful at it. Companies should carefully perform due diligence against such people who come through the side doors.
• Ability to build confidence quickly with the staff. Leaders should never portray themselves as the new version of Adolf Hitler, unless they're a real military dictator. But we're talking companies here, not war. The thing is that I've found that executives easily have the ability to intimidate and that's the last thing you want to do with your staff. In IT, people are extremely sensitive and the market is wide open for the most talented people. So even if you're not the most tech savvy of CIOs/CTOs, the least you can do is cater to your talented people to help you out as you develop as a CIO/CTO in your organization.
• Be willing to protect your staff. You are the hand that feeds but the mouths that are feeding also often times feed you. Business people tend to pushy and lack understanding of what a techie does. But as a techie yourself, you understand that a bug takes significant time to work on or that people require a good deal of time to launch a piece of software. Business people don't understand these things and it's up to you to make them realize it by taking a stand against them. One of my previous CTOs was a really nice guy, but the business people (especially the Vulture Capitalists) often times pushed him around. He managed to protect the IT staff as much as possible, but he still was shoved around and eventually the company collapsed. Likewise, a previous CIO would suck up to the business side and cater to them too much and then come down on the IT staff during failures. You can't have these situations as a leader. You need to take charge and show them that geeks have feelings and are critical components to the organization, not just some door mat. Again, even if you lack understanding of technology, the best thing you can do is serve for your staff because they'll bolster you when you're weak.

Well, that's my thoughts. I'm certain there's hundreds of other characteristics in becoming the idealistic CTO/CIO. But I'll give you a little secret: if I were to become CTO/CIO, these are the things I'd do.]]> Sat, 23 Feb 2008 08:06:43 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/23/80169212607c5c6be7fd0efd51b96dd7.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/7/14f90bf188613b065de75e0a28672f7d.html
Recently, I've been doing a lot of challenging coding (for myself at least). I've worked on integrating things like Trackback, OpenID, some avante garde AJAX and whatnot as well as work. Each time I had to overcome a new stumbling block. That lead me to realize that perhaps the difficulty of implementation might be a new way of evaluating technologies.

Of course, this somewhat is subjective because what's easy to one person might fare far more troublesome or even impossible to others. However, I do consider it an interesting way of looking at Web 2.0 technologies, especially as the duplicated work continues to compete over innovation.]]> Fri, 07 Mar 2008 06:34:56 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/7/14f90bf188613b065de75e0a28672f7d.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/7/522e010bfcf270d8c1c30090c6ed8908.html local jobs. However, I am for allowing foreigners to work within the country as it helps improve their understanding of American business, creates more cultural diversity in the workplace and gives people more opportunities. Not to mention increasing the technical knowledge within the US as opposed to making it competitive against the US.

There are two opposing forces in this. One is that large technology companies like Sun, Oracle, Microsoft, etc. require cutting edge tech, which apparently isn't being supplied by those in the US. You often hear complaints about how the US trails behind as a first world nation in math and science. And it's true really. So it's hampering a lot of technology companies from getting that competitive edge locally. Not to mention hiring people who can't perform in the first place.

On the other side of the barrel, you get people fearing for their jobs. Truthfully, I think only major companies are doing the outsourcing. There's still plenty of jobs locally from smaller offices because they simply cannot afford the whole H1-B visa process. It's interesting to note that the article points to how politicians only look at the issue in terms of their ability to secure an office, rather than seeing the whole picture. In particular, the article points to Detroit and Ohio, which are major auto manufacturing regions. Nonetheless, I find the US auto manufacturers as being too lazy to upgrade their way of thinking, which is why countries like Japan and even Korea have been quick to catch up and even beat them at their game.

I had to step away and look at the whole picture to see what the core issues are. It seems that the US poor quality of education in science and math is playing a huge role in this. More kids are being pampered rather than forced to think competitively. MTV, games, sports, etc. have pretty much diluted the importance of being studious and placed more emphasis on being a celebrity, making being a geek look perpetually uncool. Also, the US isn't funding public education enough. Some people say that the schools lack of resources are the problem. I see a bigger problem in the low quality of teachers in the US. Most are those who half-heartedly trudge out of a state college with little ambition or knowledge to become more than an elementary school teacher. If the teachers would motivated to do well by giving them a significant increase in pay based on performance of their class, then maybe schools would perform better.

The other issue is simply laziness. But it's not "good" laziness like Perl or programmer efficiency laziness. The laziness is that Americans just don't want to do anything nor change. That's my impression of Detroit and Ohio. If you can twist a bolt into a car a certain way, hey, you've got a great job! Bizzzzzzzzttt! These companies need to innovative and force their employees to find something to improve the manufacturing processes, the energy consumption, the quality of people's cars to get people once again motivated to purchase cars in the states. Just creating a bigger, fatter, gas guzzling SUV doesn't cut it with the stock meltdown and the oil crunch.

But America has got to start welcoming more people inside. I mean, think about Toyota's new Hybrid Camry plant in Kentucky. Who the fuck wants to live in Kentucky? Well, if there's jobs available, maybe people would be motivated to live out there. And perhaps the little town where the plant exist might improve the local conditions of living. It's a natural process. And hiring people out in Utah from other countries would hopefully create more diverse communities and vote the conservatives out of office. I mean, the possibilities are endless!

The other thing that I think about in all of this is just fairness. I have a number of friends who want to work in the US for the opportunities and lifestyle. I think by preventing these people from coming in, the US is essentially saying that they are a highly xenophobic country and want to protect a monotheistic belief system rather than following their hypocritical doctrine of accepting anyone into the country. It really says a lot about the perception of the American lifestyle when you meet people from other countries who really want to partake in the American culture. It's not that people should fear for their jobs, but embrace other cultures to help teach them and grow.]]> Fri, 07 Mar 2008 20:25:53 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/7/522e010bfcf270d8c1c30090c6ed8908.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/5/3/1a8b9f892627cedea802a61723da5fc3.html Ford, GM and Chrysler are basically dead weights because of their inability to adapt to the changing climate. They have stopped innovation in favor of pandering towards glut. However, where Detroit has failed, others may succeed within America.

Apparently, Tesla Motors has just released their sports car, which looks quite sweet honestly. Now, it is only on order for the moment and at a hefty price starting from $109,000 and won't be released for another 15 months. Stores so far are being planned initially in LA while the company itself is based in Silicon Valley. The big model coming out is the Roadster. But the chief selling point of this two door baby is that's got an all electric engine.

Of course, part of the hoopla has been the help of investors Sergie Brin and Larry Page of Google fame. But this isn't the only player in this game. Down in Carlsbad California, we another player coming out with an incredibly efficient model. This company, Aptera Motors, is producing an electrical model and a hybrid plug-in model as well. Their model looks more futuristic, a bit spacey, if you will, compared to the more sleek and sporty Roadster. The mileage can be impressive 300 mpg at 65 mph. Not too shabby. Also, the price tag is more competitive to a Prius at roughly $27,000 for the electric model.

Then over in Boston you have another innovator, not so much in terms of attempting to reduce our dependence upon oil reserves, but on where we're trying to go. Terrafugia is trying to get us one of the first real "air-cars". While it'll probably be impractical for the majority of the people, it's definitely a start on our way to the Jetson's lifestyle we've all been dreaming about. These puppies allow travel between cities, where commutes might be from San Francisco to LA. It's kinda like driving a prop jet, except that after landing, you continue to drive your car to the office and park it . Certainly, I hope one problem this will solve is forcing people to use the messed up airlines industry and put more control into the driver's hands again.
Certainly, Japan and maybe Korea are getting a leg up over America in terms of the current market. However, what I'm starting to see emerge quite quickly looks promising if these new companies can deliver in the next 2-3 years, where travel and oil are going to be critical issues to most consumers. Electric, hybrid and aviation are certainly going to free us from the dependence upon these bottlenecks that we're currently facing. However, if there's one thing I can depend upon in the American market, it's the ability to adapt quickly and move fast when they need to. And right now, we need to move fast to compete and survive.]]> Sat, 03 May 2008 02:35:00 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/5/3/1a8b9f892627cedea802a61723da5fc3.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/5/3/cb4374585fd6a28370298d6922601dd7.html
Well, I don't see cloud computing limiting us since major companies like Amazon, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Sun are all proposing and providing means for allowing us to quickly shift our services onto their platforms. However, I do see limits where bandwidth restrictions are imposed either artificial or just incompetence.

In a country like the US, logistics have played a key political point in deciding how infrastructure is laid out and has forced many people to be enslaved to a far slower internet compared to countries like Japan or Korea. Personally, I feel that this limit is simply an excuse by the telephone monopolies and cable oligarchies to keep people bound to their crappy services. But that's the supposed truth that happens whenever you try getting ADSL in the states.

So it's clear that physical lines are the bottleneck of more internet services and rich media from springing up on the net. Imagine, for instance, if we didn't have to optimize for the web our pages if we had something more efficient in terms of allowing us to download.

Well, here's my solution: physical, wireless P2P hardware networks.

I'm not a network guy, nor will I ever care to be one. But the thing is that common sense seems to dictate that what we did with P2P software, we can do with hardware. Imagine this scenario. You having small, wireless nodes installed in your home, on top of your roof that bounces signals to your neighbor and their neighbors all the way across town. If a lag is detected because perhaps the signal died or it's down temporarily, another bounce occurs to find a new node. I think this will work really well in large cities and probably be cheaper in terms of installations than digging lines under homes or city infrastructure. I've seen certain ideas like this but the use seemed more like for businesses or security than home users.

In some way, this idea is kinda similar to ham radio, except that you're essentially mass sharing your signal with everyone. Of course, you're going to face three major issues in this infrastructure format:

• The hops between cities and dealing with that. Naturally, you'll need something to interconnect cities together. Satellite or major ISPs would have to do some work in this regard. Either that or perhaps some mass dishes that would provide major bounces between silent points (where silent points are like the edge of LA to Central California in Santa Barbara).
• The adaptation of technology to make it worthwhile. For a service like this to work well, you'll need a lot of people subscribing to it or implementing it. So perhaps universities and geek towns will be early adopters, but it'll be hard to get those AOL subscribers out in Arkansas to switch over ;)
• FCC and other potential regulatory bodies. The FCC likes to fuck things up like this. But at this stage, who are they really benefiting in the long term by denying a service like this only to cater to the communication monopolies?

The main thing is that we need to move towards 1 TB/sec bandwidth. That should be the goal in the next 1-2 years. Cable modems and ADSL speeds in America aren't going to cut the next generation of rich media and internet applications to really push the web into overdrive. For this to happen, we need something more efficient than the current crappy routers, hubs and ethernet that we're bound with.]]> Sat, 03 May 2008 02:54:21 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/5/3/cb4374585fd6a28370298d6922601dd7.html