Look at things from a different perspective

I quote from Albert Einstein:

Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.


If you distill the three rules of work, the common denominator is that things are never what they seems.  Look at things using a different perspective and you may find something interesting, and this need not be only applied to work.

What students are being churned out by our education system?

I find it very interesting to read this quote from a person in NTU:

When I interact with Swedish companies here, they tell me they employ Singaporeans at a more basic level because they are good at carrying out what they are instructed to do. But for higher-level positions, they hire people from Scandinavia because they are more trained to run projects.


Is this true? I recall hearing certain "complaints". The gist is as follows:

1. The PSLE question is not fair. It is not being taught.
2. Why do we need tuition in order for our students to score?
3. What did the lecturer say? Is that English?

Looking at what I've heard, and what this person has said in NTU, it seems like what he said may be true. Ranking of schools is one thing, but how students turn out should depend largely on the teacher, and not how many 10 year series the student has done or which tuition centre that the person has attended.

If this is the case, why should we go to schools? We might as well just go to tuition centres and take our exams as private students.

Furthermore, I always think that exams are a waste of time. People say that exams are a way of testing if the student understood the concepts of what was being taught. So will the students know the correct answers to those exam questions? Will someone explain why those answers were chosen? Or in the end do we just get a grade point average or a grade?

Back to the point in contention. Are we only good at carrying out what we are instructed to do? There are people with good grades that are able to think out of the box but you may also want to look for people beyond the grades that you see on that piece of paper. You may be surprised.

Hong Kong has set a minimum wage. So when is it Singapore's turn?

Hong Kong has finally set a minimum wage at 28 HKD an hour. Although it is lesser than the 33 HKD an hour asked by the unions, this wage is suppose to boost their pay by 16.9% on average. It seems that Hong Kong understands that employees are the most valuable asset to enterprises, and they are trying to address the growing income gap.

Many countries already have minimum wage legislation in place, with hourly rates in New York and London set between 7.25 and 8.80 US dollars. According to Wikipedia, the following countries already have a minimum wage legislation:

• Australia
• Brazil
• Canada
• People's Republic of China
• European Union
• France
• Hong Kong (just added)
• Ireland
• Japan
• New Zealand
• Pakistan
• Romania
• Taiwan
• United Kingdom
• United States

So when is it Singapore's turn??

Why so many Android App Stores?

I don't understand why there is a need for so many Android App Stores. According to what I read, Amazon is going to set up their own Android App Store, and many will soon follow suit. The funny thing is developers welcome it.

Looking at it from a customer perspective, I will only want to go to one place to get all my apps. Will I want to go to different AppStores to just look for a certain app? It's true that customers don't care where the app comes from, but it's also true that they will not want to go to multiple app stores to look for a single app. In fact, I think the only time where someone will make such an effort to find an app is when the app is free.

Anyway, the fragmentation of Android is getting worst by the month. Not only you have Android handsets that cannot be updated immediately when a security vulnerability is detected, you may even be downloading apps from rouge AppStores that may have malware embedded within it.

The funny part is, why developers think that this is a good thing?

Why Flash and Java are no longer installed by default on Mac OS

Apple has announced that they are no longer installing Flash and Java by default on Mac OS. Many said that Apple is trying to restrict the options presented to developers. I disagree.

It may be one of the reasons but in my opinion, it's not the main reason. I feel that there are 2 main reasons why they are no longer pre-installed:

1. Flash and Java do not run optimally on Mac OS
2. Number of Flash and Java security vulnerability reports have been increasing

Anyone who uses the Mac knows that Flash for some reason runs quite slowly on the Mac, and it uses quite a bit of resources. I have no idea why but this has been the case for some time. For Java, I do not really think it's significantly slower though. However, we all know that Steve Jobs focuses a lot on user experience and given his track record, it's not surprising that he's making some noise over it.

The main reason I feel though is the number of security vulnerability reports for Flash and Java. Everyone knows that Microsoft and Apple are playing a number game now. Apple has always claimed that they are more secured than Microsoft. By not installing Flash and Java by default on Macs, they will indirectly reduce the number of security vulnerability reports for Mac devices on the whole, thereby making them more secured. That's also the reason they stopped doing a Mac version of Java. They do not want to waste resources fixing a product that is not theirs, and they do not want to keep patching the Mac OS over problems unrelated to their product. Mac OS patches are quite big by the way.

I do not think that they will restrict Flash and Java from the Mac OS itself, with the exception of iOS. Flash can always be downloaded and installed and in the case of Java, if it is truly open source, someone will be able to make a version that runs on the Mac. After all, Mac is Unix based and Java can be installed even on a Linux machine. I don't see why it cannot be installed on a Mac.

We'll wait and see.

Contentment

I quote from Mohandas Gandhi:

Man falls from the pursuit of the ideal of plan living and high thinking the moment he wants to multiply his daily wants. Man's happiness really lies in contentment.

Quantitative Easing is about Payback!

When I heard the news that the Feds are again flooding the economy with USD600 billion, my first thought was that the Feds are doing it for the sake of proving to people that they are trying to do something, even though it will do nothing to help in the US unemployment rate.

However after reading some of the comments on this Quantitative Easing (QE2), it hits me that the reason for this round of easing has nothing to do with the unemployment rate or the economy. Personally, I think it's all about payback time to the economies that control their currencies.

What does QE2 guarantees? USD currency depreciation. Any difference between USD currency depreciating and other currencies appreciating? None that I can see.

My belief is that the Feds are going to continue doing QE2 as long as

1. inflation is below average
2. economy growth is below average
3. other countries' currencies are strictly controlled by the respective governments from following the market

I believe the last point may be the deciding factor for the Feds. Therefore, the more you see some countries refusing to let the market decide the currency rates, well the more the Feds will continue their QE2. What can the other countries do about it? I guess none. Who wants to be the reserve currency of the world? I don't think anyone does.

It's payback time, at least from the US perspective.

Students think that attitude does not count in job hunting??

I find it quite disappointing that students nowadays think that grades are everything. It seemed that based on the recent Singapore Kindness Youth Forum, they have the impression that grades take higher priority than all else, especially in finding jobs. I'm not sure who gave them this impression but this is not exactly true. Let me explain.

I do agree that grades do take a part in the screening of the job interviewees, but attitude also plays a big part in the hiring process. In the final round of interview, it's always the way you present yourself and your attitude, that determines the result. For all those working adults, it's well known that grades may only help you in your first job. After that, your grades don't matter that much.

I find it quite disappointing that student nowadays think that grades supersedes everything. Are our schools teaching this kind of values to the students? Are students now dragged into the rat race so early?

That portion on compulsory community work is another area which I cannot phantom. Kindness comes from the heart. If you do not have the heart, does it matter if you're forced to do it? Isn't it better to have it as a CCA? I believe it will be more meaningful for everyone if one volunteers to do community work instead of being forced to.

Is that how Singapore will evolve? Everything is all about grades?

What does the loss of the Chief Software Architect signify?

This news is pretty old but most will know that Ray Ozzie from Microsoft is stepping down as Chief Software Architect. Personally though, I think this does not bode well for Microsoft.

I would think for a company to survive, there should be someone at the helm heading the direction that the company should go towards to. In a software company, the direction is implicitly given by the Chief Software Architect through the foundation of all the products created by the company.

With the removal of this position, I feel that Microsoft has lost their direction. That would mean that they will go any direction that the new trend will bring them. The Chief Software Architect is suppose to unite the architecture and framework so that all products will be "grown" through the base architecture.

Personally, I think that if the product cannot be created from the base fundamental architecture, that would mean that it should be best handled separately by another company. However, this doesn't seem the direction that Microsoft is taking.

Looking forward, it seems that Microsoft will form different divisions for the different products within the company. It may start acting as if it is a conglomerate, and no longer as a single company. Not a good direction in my opinion because lessons learned from one product cannot be applied to others due to the different architectures.

My thoughts of course.

Effective Communication

I quote from Jim Rohn:

Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know.


Simply said, it doesn't matter what you know but what you do with that knowledge.