Amiram Hayardeny's My China Experience

Ten Years After - the Pain is Still Here

Ten years ago, about the end of June of 1997, I felt down.  I was sad and I couldn't figure out why.  Indeed, my grandmother died at the age of 87, but she had a long full life, and she died in her bed, surrounded by her loved ones.  I thought that I was over it right after the period of mourning, the Shiva.  Everything else looked up: my divorce was final, and I found a new love and a new exciting job.  It took several months for me to realize what it was.  And as you may have guessed, it was my grandmother's death that made me feel so sad.

I consider myself lucky to have lived near and around this amazing woman for as long as I did.  She was a rock.  She was no great cook (although her chicken soup, mamaliga and gefilte fish were second to none).  She was no great scholar, I don't think she graduated high school.  She wasn't rich, nor famous.  But trust me, if you shook her hand you would know - she was no ordinary woman.  When she gave me a hug and a kiss, I always had this clear realization that everything was going to be just fine.

Who was this grandmother of mine?  Dora (Deborah) Segal-Kovaliu whose departure made me feel so alone in the world?  Why was she so significant, not only to me, but to the entire family, and I dare say, her people?  Because she was a survivor.  She had come out of a burning hell, with her chin up, in stride.  She walked out of the flames and she was the reason why we are all here today.  My mother, myself, my sister Liat, Director of Research at Teva Pharmaceuticals, my brother Eyal, VP for Business Development for Shamir Optical.  My children Keren, Tamary, Shiri-Deborah (named after her) and Guy, and many others.  We are all here because she was resourceful enough to survive.

When I was little, I always thought I was a normal little boy with an extra anxious mother.  We lived close to my grandparents, who owned a grocery store back then.  I used to love staying over at my grandmother's on Friday nights.  She used to make a bed for me, actually it was more like a living room sofa, with starched linen - she starched everything, and I mean everything.  Just before going to sleep, my grandfather would sit next to me and tell me a bedtime story.   How he walked for twenty miles for a loaf of bread, and how he was walking ten miles every day to work as a helper in a Ukranian farm.  He spoke about the difficulty to see his family starving, to see his parents dying.

My grandmother told about selling the household goods first - linen, tablecloths, pots and pans - for food.  Then the jewelry, the toys, the rugs - for food.  She sold everything for food.  And then came the eviction, and the expulsion, and the long marches in the winter.  My grandmother's favorite bedtime story was of my two year old mother sick with typhoid, burning with fever, and how people told her that my mother would never make it through the trip, through the winter.  That she should just leave her by the side of the road and let her die.  And how she insisted on holding on to her until she was well enough to walk.

I thought that those bedtime stories were common, that all the kids were listening to them.  Stories from the "Lager".  It took me twenty years to realize that not all kids were subjected to these stories, and that "Lager" meant "Konzentrationlager" or more known as concentration camp.

It's been ten years, Savta (Hebrew for grandmother) and I miss you today as I did every single day in the last ten years since you have left us.  If you were alive today, you would have been proud of us.  The kids are studying well, and they are beautiful.  And Shiri, who just turned eight, is carrying your name with pride, and although she had never met you, she is a lot like you.  She speaks three languages, and she is smart and witty, like you were.

I'm sorry that only ten years after you have passed that I find it in me to tell you: thank you for being there for me, my debt to you is much more than I can ever pay.

Posted at 09:13PM Aug 31, 2007 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[1]

My Adentures with my New Mac

My first computer was a Mac.  It was a Mac IIe, and the year was 1985.  There was no mouse, no color, hell, no hard drive.  But still, the Mac IIe was more elegant than the IBM PC AT which was the other option at the time.  There were others.  Not too many though, it was the beginning of the personal computer era.  Twenty two years went by, and the variety of personal computers, laptops, hand-held devices, phones, palms is growing by the day.   They all follow Moore's Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law) which fundamentally claims that computers will double in power every two years.  I always thought it was eighteen months, and was surprised to see that the original claim was two years.

During my school years, I worked on terminals.  Mainframes (IBM, Control Data, Data General to name a few), but also Mini Computers (DEC's legendary VAX 11/750, VAX 11/780).  UNIX and VMS.  They were all fast, technically innovative, elegant.  But my first job, again, was programming on a Mac.  And so was my second job.  Between KPMG and HBO I have worked and developed on Macs for nearly a decade.

Moving to Windows was an adjustment for me.  Not an easy one.  The Mac always had a better way of doing things.  Better, easier, friendlier.  It was a real personal computer.  When you walked around a Mac development shop, you could tell by the screens that they each reflected their owner's personality.  Indeed, Windows does it well today, but I am talking well over a decade ago.  In any case, Mac OS moved forward, and so did Windows.

I was disconnected from the Mac for years.  From mid 1996 and until last week, I haven't touched a Mac.  AIX, Windows and most recently Solaris were my choices, depending on where I was working at the time.  About a month ago, I had an opportunity to change my IBM Thinkpad T60, running Solaris and Windows XP.  I chose a MacBook Pro.  I could easily use the words "longing" and "yearning" in this context.  I wanted to to work on a Mac again.

I received the new MacBook Pro last week.  It was pre-installed with the Chinese version of the Mac OS 10.4 - Tiger, I believe (somewhat confusing with the variety of Big Cats).  I needed assistance from a Chinese colleague to change the language to English.  I personally think it's funny that you must know the language you don't understand in order to change to a language that you do...  It was love at first sight.  The MacBook Pro is silver colored, shiny, beautiful.  The screen has a quality that I have never seen on any other laptop (note: that doesn't mean that there aren't any, I simply have never seen none).  The keyboard is unusually comfortable.  The battery lasts way more than double the time I have seen on my ThinkPad.  I was a happy camper.

Then, as the infatuation faded, as it usually does, I started to see other things.  I was missing the "del" key.  Really missing it.  I know it may seem childish, but I loved that key.  And the "home" key and the "end" key, which won their independence years ago, and on the MacBook Pro, they are part of a command-right arrow combination.  Most of all, I was missing the right click (I am not even talking about the middle click which is essential to any UNIX developer).  Let me state right here, right now: had I known that this computer doesn't have the right click, I may have chosen another computer.  And a word of advice: when the system is stuck beyond hope, the rainbow colored turning wheel provides no consolation...

But then the Mac surprised the heck out of me.  It actually let me make a fatal error, while giving me the usual "Are you sure blah blah blah?" dialog.  It actually let me drag a system file into the trash, and wasn't able to recover.  The nasty question mark came up when I tried to reboot and there I was, Saturday morning, puffy eyes, unshaved, on my way to the office to get the system disks to reinstall.  I was mad.  But the Mac, surprising me again, saved the day by giving me the easiest installation I have ever seen on a computer.  That was the first reinstall.  The second one was somewhat harder, because I had to reformat the disk.  Less than two weeks, one original dealer installation, and two home-made.  Not a good statistic.

Another big and unpleasant surprise, was the instability of some OpenSource applications on the Mac.  I never saw FireFox or ThunderBird crash in Solaris.  A few times on Windows.  Multitude of times on the Mac.  In fact, I had to reinstall FireFox thrice in  as many weeks (not counting the systems installation).  Disappointing?  Na.  Very disappointing? Absolutely with a Capital A.

I also have a small confession to make.  In over a week of endless trials, I was not yet successful in seeing even one frame of video stream, nor one sound soundbite of live radio.  Everything I installed,, downloaded, on Firefox or Safari, using Windows Media Player, QuickTime, WMV Player.  Absolutely nothing.  Will that qualify me as a complete idiot? probably.  Was I able to do it on Windows and Solaris with no or minor effort, absolutely.  Will I keep trying until it works - you bet.

Ah, and one last thing.  If this Mac had a small chamber for water, it would make a fine steam iron.  Rephrase, since I got this computer, the AC in the house is working overtime.  Rephrase, when I work with the MacBook Pro in front of the TV, I have to wear fire retardant clothes, like race drivers (I always wanted to be Michael Schumacher).  No worries, Mom, the burns are minor, and I expect to recover fully...

Bottom line: the Mac is cool, Mac OS is (despite what I was expecting) not that much better than Windows if at all.  Solaris on the Mac is outstanding!  I will adjust to the missing limb (the right click), and will try and enjoy the new experience.  Will I buy it again?  Not so sure.  And how can I end this without a metaphor?  I feel like a farmer a thousand years ago, being offered a golden plow.  Shiny and beautiful.  Expensive.  Tempting.  But would the crops be better and more?

Douglas Adams said in the mythological "Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy": "A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof, is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools".  I am aware of the implication.  But if the Mac is a foolproof device, I believe it just met a very ingenious fool to work with...

Posted at 06:57AM Aug 29, 2007 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[11]

The "Medical Business" or "How to Financially Survive a Bunion"

When I was young, there was the "Medical Profession".  Doctors were distinguished people with white robes, who spent many years and lots of money in schooling and practicing, only to land a job in a hospital in which they were underpaid, overworked, but basically happy.  They had a mission.  The brilliant ones, even then, had a Park Avenue clinic, in which they would charge you thousands of dollars only to give you the bad news that you contracted a Common Cold.  Insurance companies were raising large hairy eyebrows, but were still paying.  Originally, they paid the entire bill, then 80%, then less and less until they realized that if people are not restricted with their choice of doctors, the medical insurance companies would go bankrupt.  So they "strongly suggested" for us to see their own doctors.  Unlike the "other" doctors, these doctors were very cautious in ordering expensive tests, or prescribing expensive treatments.

Some countries, started a national health system in which everyone pays a certain percent of their salary, and receives uniform medical assistance.  Indeed, the wealthier you were, the better medical assistance you would get.  All you need to do is go to nearest private clinic, or private doctor, and pay through your nose to get the same antibiotic that everyone else gets at their HMOs.  Admittedly, your diagnosis would be a lot more solid.  It would be based on X-Ray analysis, CAT scans, Nuclear Tomography, trace analysis in phlegm, urine, throat cultures, blood and other body fluids.  Your diagnosis will be worth its weight in gold.

Why am I saying that?  I live in Beijing.  I know that Chinese traditional medicine is good, less pervasive, and it helps people recover from whatever illnesses they have.  However, my poor Chinese prevents me from going to a Chinese hospital.  Most Chinese hospitals, because they do speak English in some.  Anyway, when I don't feel well, I just ignore it and go on with life, usually it works, and whatever it is goes away.  But when it comes to the point that I really must see a doctor, I schlep myself to the American hospital whose name shall remain undisclosed.  When I get to the doctor, I already know the rotutine.  I will have blood drawn, cultures taken.  I will be asked a few questions, after which a diagnosis will be made.  I could probably write a Java program that could do the same without the blood tests.  And no, I am not such a sharp programmer (I used to be).

The antibiotics work, and I get better.  The insurance pays.  Everyone's happy.  Yet I always feel that some serious waste is involved.  And what's worse is that I feel that I haven't come to see a doctor, but a Medical Sales Representative, that works not at a hospital, but at a Medical Dealership.  It seems that the doctor has some kind of a quota to fill: 10 blood tests, 5 cultures, 1 CT etc.  Seems that the metrics for a doctor's success is not the percentage of patients becoming well as a result of good treatment.  It seems like the metric for success is the average amount of money left behind by an unsuspecting customer.  Yes, customer, not patient.

Don't get me wrong.  I admire the medical profession, I am always amazed by the innovation, new inventions, new treatments and medications that medical research comes up with all the time.  On occasion though, it seems that medicine has turned from a mission into a business.  Maybe this is the nature of things.  I still don't like it.

Posted at 09:45AM Aug 25, 2007 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[1]

Space, the final frontier. These are the Voyages of the Starship Enterprise...

If the title intrigues you, maybe you should read ahead? 

One of my favorite activities is watching Star Trek, the Next Generation, with my daughter Shiri.  I am a life long science fiction fan, a Trekkie.  She is becoming one.  Last week we were watching an episode called "Night Terrors".  In this episode, the Enterprise is stuck in a "Tyken's Rift" (a space-time irregularity: http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Tyken's_Rift), immobile, with no impulse engines, no warp drive, adrift.  But this is only the small part of the problem.  The larger part is that the crew has lost its ability to have REM sleep and the ability to dream.  The crew becomes more and more agitated, paranoid, tired and incapable of carrying out its duties.  A floating ship found nearby had its entire crew killed by one another as a result.  A life threatening situation.

They are stranded for almost two weeks.  Deanna Troi, the ship's counselor being the only one capable of dreaming.  Lieutenant Commander Data, the android who needs no sleep, is the only one who can perform his duties.  Then something happens.  They realize that there's another spaceship, stuck on the other side of the rift, asking for help.  In fact, they realize that this cry for help is the causing the dream deprivation phenomenon.  They figure that the other ship is asking the enterprise for a substance they are short of, Hydrogen, in order to stage an explosion which will release them both from the rift.

The Enterprise's crew is comprised of representatives from dozens of planets (the Enterprise is part of Starfleet of the United Federation of Planets...).  Most of the crew are "humanoids", but Lt. Commander Data is an android, and Counselor Troi is a Betazoid (from the planet Betazed).  In this episode, Data and Counselor Troi play a critical role BECAUSE they are different life forms, because they have different life patterns - Data needs no sleep, and Troi dreams in a different frequency...  A wide variety of life forms is critical for the Enterprise's survival.

A wide variety of people, from different countries, different cultures, different education styles, different heritage, beliefs, traditions and customs, are much more likely present a wider variety of solutions to any given problem.  Put together a multi-national engineering team, and you are guaranteed to have more and better solutions.  Sometimes, a single, different view, is all it takes for a long sought solution.  Yes, diversity is not only politically correct, it is critical for success.

The other point is that in this episode, the Enterprise was dependent for its survival on another spaceship which is completely unknown.  With which the crew had never communicated.  In this extreme scenario, the Enterprise must communicate through a dream (remember, Counselor Troi is still capable of dreaming) one word: "now".  If this communication is successful, the alien ship would ignite a large amount of Hydrogen released by the Enterprise.  Again, two foreign entities cooperate for survival.  Sometimes we only have a partial solution, and someone else has the other part, with no communication, the complete solution can never be found.

For the ones who are either not familiar with Star Trek, or are familiar but not fans, I have this message.  This series only happens to take place in space, but in fact, it could take place anywhere.  The episodes deal with a variety of issues, in a very special setting.  The episodes are usually interesting and inspirational.  I got my wife Dorit, to the point where she does not want to miss an episode.  And if she's into it, anyone can...  Maybe the last point is that it is possible to learn from anything and from anyone.  The actual learning is performed in one's mind.  Teachers only present you with the learning material...

Posted at 07:40AM Aug 21, 2007 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[1]

Stock Market and Toys Recall

On August 14, Mattel recalled 18 million toys made in China.  The toys recalled include vehicles based on the movie "Cars", which are painted with lead based paint, and some Barbie, Polly Pocket and Batman toys which have powerful magnets that could hurt children if swallowed.  A similar action was taken by Fisher-Price just a few weeks back.  It is apparent that these are not isolated incidents.  They are common, some may say way too common.

The papers, written and on-line alike are full with China-bashing articles.  China is synonym for low quality and low price, the papers suggest.  Some bloggers and talkbackists go as far as suggesting to avoid China made goods altogether.  Don't be too quick to blame China, lets reflect a little first.  Let me remind everyone that goods from China are bought by billions of people around the world not because they are of excellent quality, but BECAUSE they are cheap and for the most part, of reasonable quality.  Clearly, quality was never the motivation behind buying Chinese products.   The entire world buys "Made in China" goods not because of some rare altruistic genetic disease, but because it is cheaper and acceptable.

For many years China has been providing the world with what it really wants: cheap toys and appliances, dishes and clothes, pens and tires, and parts for almost everything you can imagine.  China has practically consolidated entire industries and moved them into the Mainland.  Socks, belts, toys are hardly made anywhere else.  China is by far the largest manufacturer of toys in the world.  How is that possible?  China has access to low cost labor.  Really low cost.  A lot lower than you might think.  With this cheap labor, it is far more competitive than any Western manufacturer.  For a while, it seemed sufficient: low cost labor yields cheap stuff, cheap stuff sold in the Western world and everyone's happy.  Not quite.  After a while greed kicked in.  In order to compete, some very large retailers decided that the prices are not cheap enough.  They started a very interesting wholesale price negotiation method.  They simply force it in a very brutal way.  There is no negotiation anymore, there's presentation.  Chinese manufacturers are told the price.  They are presented with an impossible choice.  They are asked, constantly, to deliver better goods at lower prices year over year.  Or else.  Or else, the super large retailer(s) will go elsewhere and buy this cheap stuff somewhere else.  End of negotiation.

And this practice is condoned and supported by everyone, because when people go to the local store and buy something for next to nothing, they have a strange tendency to not ask too many questions.  Questions like: who is making this stuff?  How is it possible that with all the shipping costs and the fact that everyone has to earn a buck or two, the price is still so low?  Don't they have to pay for raw materials and labor?  It doesn't really add up.

Guess what.  Manufacturers that refused to deliver goods at impossibly low prices, went out of business.  Others, not wanting to lose the business, resorted to lowering the cost even more.  How were they able to do that?  They moved factories from the Beijing and Shanghai  and other metropolitan areas further inland where labor is even cheaper.  In American terms, this is practically unthinkable, people are actually working 12 hour shifts with less than $100 per month in salary.  I know, some of you would say the following, with a $6.00 Latte Look on your face: "where these people live, $100 per month makes you rich".  Well, let me break it to you: this isn't the case.  This keeps people on the brink of starvation.  You can call it survival salary, nothing more.  Some resorted to using other, cheaper, less safe, raw materials.  Like lead paints for example. 

Looks like a combination of the following: on one hand we have millions if not billions of people who want to buy cheap things by the shiploads.  On the other hand we have the greed - the desire to make more and more money - to show "double digit growth" year over year - for the "Street", and the shareholders.  The result isn't pleasant - it manifests itself in lead paints and magnets.

Does this sound familiar?  Let me try to phrase it: millions of people who want to buy houses they can't afford using cheap loans, combined with builders who are willing to cut corners filling loan applications, to satisfy the "growth targets".  The result isn't pleasant - in this case it manifests itself in foreclosures and bankruptcies.

An old American phrase says: "If it's too good to be true - it probably is".  Next time you go shopping and you see something that is too cheap to be good - it probably is.  Pay a fair price, and insist on quality you deserve.  The bottom line: you get what you pay for.

Posted at 03:06PM Aug 17, 2007 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[3]

An Attempt to Explain the Troubled Stock Market...

I'm confident that many, as I am, are following the stock markets around the world these days.  I am not a day trader, nor a night one.  I am just a curious guy.  I was trying really hard to understand what happened suddenly, what was the source of the problem and how it spread globally.  I collected some data for myself, and then I thought that maybe others can benefit from a (hopefully) simple explanation of what's going on.  So here is my two cents.  It has no analysis, forecasts or financial advice, and should definitely be taken with a large grain of salt.  It's just my way of putting some order into things...

According to what I gathered, the source is the US housing market.  What used to be called the "American Dream", the suburban house with the front lawn and the white picket fence.  It used to be simple.  If you wanted to buy a house you had to have a stable job, you had to save some money for down payment, you had to have a credit history - which means that you had to have a good reputation for borrowing as well as for returning money.  Once you had the down payment, you would look for the house of your dreams, you would make sure that it's within your means (if you didn't, the bank or the lender would have rejected your loan).  Once you have found the house, you would inspect it, negotiate its price, make a bid on it, win it, close with the bank and the seller - and move in.  Then, of course, you would have to pay the monthly payments on the loan until it's finished.  Many used to take a thirty year mortgage loan, and have a big celebration when it was paid up.  This scenario had mostly winners: you would have the house of your dreams, the bank would make some good money of your interest payments, you even get to save some money because interest payment in the US are income tax deductible.

What happens if you couldn't afford the house of your dreams?  In the past you would either have to move on, or wait until you could afford it.  But in recent years, it seemed that you could get some "help" getting the house you like but can't afford.  What kind of help?  "Arranging" your loan application so that the loan is approved, misleading you on interest rates, monthly payments, real estate taxes and fees, value of the house etc.  When it's done on a local basis, it has the potential to bring you, the buyer, down.  When it's done by nationwide builders, it has a much more destructive potential: scores of homeowners losing their homes, scores of lenders losing their money, distrust throughout the money and credit markets.  This is the story of the current stock market unease.

So here is a typical scenario as described by some homeowners on the news media:

• A buyer is in the market for a new house
• The buyer's down payment, income, credit history will not qualify him for a loan for this house
  
• The builder comes to the buyer's assistance and offers to finance the house
• The builder puts down false information on the loan applications - misrepresenting the buyer's income and ability to pay back the loan (in other words artificially lowering the risk)
  
• The builder promises that the first year or two will include "reduced" monthly payment (sometimes no monthly payments at all)
  
• The builder "miscommunicates" the inevitable rise in monthly payments, home owner's association fees, taxes
• The builder "misrepresents" the idea behind variable interest rate mortgage loans
  
• Some time later, the builder, who happens to be the lender, sells the loan to Wall Street (the value of a loan is the original amount plus the interest payments for the life of the loan minus the risk associated with the loan.  It can be sold for less than that value.  The assumption is that the buyer already paid some of the loan back, and by that has proven his ability to pay back the loan).
• The "real" payments kick in, or the interest rate changes upwards, and suddenly the buyer gets into financial difficulties and can't pay the monthly payments anymore.
• The buyer loses the house (the house goes to foreclosure, which means the bank sells it, takes its share and the rest goes to the buyer.  Foreclosed houses are usually sold for much less than their real value).
  
• The builder, supposedly, is home free - literally, he is out of the picture after selling the loan.
  

When it happens on a nationwide basis, the symptoms are: homeowners moving out of their homes, the homes are sold by the loan owners.  In foreclosure-infested areas, the value of the houses inevitably goes down, and ghost towns appear.  The government launches a (late) investigation against the lending practices of some builders, the builders and lenders stock is going down, while creating a serious distrust in the credit markets.  The government is pumping money into the market to help the credit crunch (the fundamental worry that cheap credit which drives the consumption will seize to exist). 

What caused all this?  A combination of the desire to own a house regardless of one's means, the greed of the builders and the need to satisfy Wall Street.  The last one probably needs some more explanation.  In order to show serious growth for the stockholders, and meet the analysts forecast, the builders had to show growth in the housing markets, so they built more.  But they ran out of buyers (actually they ran out of good, solid, qualified buyers) so they took risks in loaning significant amounts of money to unqualified buyers - people who really couldn't afford the houses they were buying, and were not able to pay the loans back.  The bubble burst when the markets realized that too many bad loans are out, and too many foreclosures are in progress.

How did this become a global problem: now after this lengthy explanation, it is rather simple to understand how this became a global problem.  Markets throughout the globe were seriously alarmed by the news from the US that some banks and funds are exposed to high risk investments in the mortgage markets.  The assumption is that if a lot of money is lost, the cost of money will rise, which means loss of cheap credit, which actually drives growth around the world.  The reaction is almost predictable.

The American Federal Reserve Bank is doing all it possibly can to guarantee that cheap credit will continue.  In the meantime, the Dow Jones and the NASDAQ have been shedding value daily for the last two weeks.

Lessons, or observations.  I am not really competing with the know-it-all Wall Street analysts:
Buyers: buy what you can afford, don't overextend yourself, be realistic.  Better to live in a 2 bedroom house that's yours than a 3 bedroom house that ends up in foreclosure...
Builders: infinite growth is not realistic.  Build to satisfy demand, don't build and then create the demand by falsifying loan applications...
Lenders: make sure that your mix has a vast majority of solid loans...
Investors: be more inquisitive when you invest.  Sometimes fast growth is a sign for a malignant growth...
Analysts: double digit growth targets are great if they are realistic.  If they aren't, some companies may try to get them using unacceptable methods...

Source: Yahoo Finance. 

Posted at 09:40AM Aug 14, 2007 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[1]

Peer Review and Software Quality

Or just "Review and Quality" 

I hate to do it to you, but I have some bad news.  It involves most of us, if not all.  We are human, and we make mistakes.  I know, some of you are smiling a sad smile thinking: "of course".  While others say: "speak for yourself".  With few exceptions, we all make mistakes.  While others may disagree, I contend that the claim of making no mistakes is the biggest mistake of all.

Living in Beijing, it is very refreshing to see that the city is doing plenty to make its foreign residents and tourists feel at home.  Whether it is aimed at getting Beijing ready for the 2008 Olympic Games, or just as part of opening up to the world, the City of Beijing is doing a great job.

My wife and I took the kids to Di Tan Park for the "Beijing Ethnic Culture & Art Expo" on Saturday.  We've been there before for the Chinese New Year celebration.  A multitude of shows, arts and crafts booths from different places all around China, food stands with a large variety of foods from all over the country.  There was a central stage where ethnic performances were being showed in succession.  It was colorful, lively and happy.  Plenty of people, young and old walking the great green park.  Great place to go visit year round, and most certainly around the Holidays and special events.

The signs in English suggested that we were attending the "Beijing Ethical Culture & Art Expo".  I thought it sounded strange at first, but didn't think much of it.  But there must have been hundreds or more of those signs around the park, and then it hit me.  What they really meant to say was "Beijing Ethnic Culture & Art Expo".

Hebrew is my first languages.  English is a close second.  When I have to write an important, very visible email, I always ask someone to take a second look, a third is even better.  In my mind, there is no shame in asking for help in verifying and validating one's work.  In fact, the alternative is much worse.  Think about it.  When you ask for a review, one or two people see your mistakes, when you don't, you run the risk of having your errors seen by thousands.

I draw a direct connection to software development and quality.  Design reviews are critical.  During design reviews, it is possible to evaluate the gap between the customer requirements and the proposed solution.  It is possible to evaluate whether the design is solid, of good quality, and will survive a deployment.  Furthermore, resolving design issues usually means that the implementation is much faster and straightforward.  The alternative is manifested in code patches, low quality, multitude of bugs and low customer satisfaction.  Code review is as critical.  More bugs are found in code reviews than in test.  It is much cheaper to find a bug during review than in test, and certainly at a customer site.  Let me try and present a scenario for you.  A bug is found in review.  A fix is provided.  When a bug is found at a customer's site, a lot more has to be done.  Not mentioning the possible damage to the customer's business and the reputation damage to your own.  There's a lot of work to be done: find out all the deployments in which this bug exists, identify all customers exposed to it, and assess whether they should or shouldn't receive a patch.  This is expensive and has much potential for long term consequences.  Judge for yourself.

Having said that, here's a thought.  If software can benefit so immensely from just a couple of reviewers, think about OpenSource.  Every design, every line of code has the potential of being reviewed by hundreds, sometimes thousands of experts.  In my mind, this is a very powerful quality statement.  In fact, you can't beat it.

By the way, since Chinese is a far third in my list of languages, I had to verify my assumption that an error was made.  I asked a valued Chinese friend.  He verified.  Otherwise, this entry would never have been written.

The bottom line is that we had a wonderful time at Di Tan Park.  We always do.  We even won a couple of stuffed animals for the kids, which was really nice.  In fact, the vendors at the booth made so much effort for us to win, that I honestly don't think we could have lost...  And the weather is changing, thank God.  It is now very pleasant in the afternoon.  It's almost cool in the shade, and the absolute need for Freon is diminishing... 

Posted at 10:03AM Aug 12, 2007 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[2]

Miscellaneous

I always wanted to share the following but didn't find the right forum.  I decided to put together a couple of unrelated items for either entertainment or benefit - your choice.

An idea for plant lovers.  I tried it, and it works really well.  Suppose you have to leave your home for a few days or even a few weeks.  You really like your plants and you don't want to find them dried up and dead when you return.  What do you do?  Ask the neighbors to come in and water the poor plants every day or two?  Cross your fingers for them?  Pack them and take them with you?  The following is for those who find the alternatives mentioned above unacceptable, like yours truly. 

We were practically at the door, leaving for a two week vacation when my daughter Shiri said in a distressed voice: "but Dad, what about the plant?  The plant I got from the teacher for safekeeping during the Holidays?  It will certainly die if not watered for two weeks"...

Mind you, the door is opened, the taxi is waiting, mountains of luggage ready to be hauled into the elevator.  What to do?  What to do?  I took out a Glade sandwich bag and filled it up with water to the top.  Then closed the zipper carefully.  Then I took a needle, a really really small one, and I punctured the bag.  One hole, almost invisible.  Water started to drip really slowly from the punctured bag.  I placed two of these bags on Shiri's plant and on another one.  Simply placed it there, with the hole pointing to the soil.  Lastly, I placed the two plants in the kitchen sink, just in case the new invention drips out of control.  We looked at each other, crossed our fingers and left for the airport. 

We completely forgot about it, until the day we came back.  The house smelled a little stuffy, as expected, but everything seemed to be in order.  Including the two plants, sitting quietly in the kitchen sink, waiting for someone to come save them.  The soil was still damp, and the bag still had a little water in it.  We could have stayed out for a few more days and the plants would have still be fine.

Another miscellaneous: quotes.  Being a part of the "People of the Book", the Jewish people, I deeply respect the power of the word.  I always thought that the ability to express a deep thought, an abstract idea, in just a few words is more of an art than linguistics.  I am not going to write any ancient Hebrew proverbs, but I will share a few that I have heard over the years and I always liked.  They are (usually) short, concise, and express deep ideas.  I love them.

"The moral majority is neither."
"Positive Momentum Leads to More Positive Momentum"
"Only Dead Fish Swim With the Flow"
"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof, is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. " (Douglas Adams, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy)
"More is lost by indecision than wrong decision"

Posted at 01:56PM Aug 09, 2007 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[0]

The Communication Revolution

Quite often I spot something in one of my favorite news pages on the Web and I link to it to see what it is.  Quite often I realize right away that I stepped into a trap, a shopping trap most likely.  A promise of some sort to make my life better, skinnier, cheaper.  Usually, it's straight out deceit.  But, since curiosity is part of my nature, I never get to upset about it.  And if all that's left of the exchange is some unwanted cookies, I remove then and move on.  On a side note: then why does this work?  People must know already that most of these links are empty promises, that ,most likely they will be disappointed at best.  The answer is simple, sometimes, you do find something new, refreshing, well priced or free altogether, and you are grateful for stepping in.  In the grand scheme of things, curiosity is a good thing...

I linked to something like this on Sunday.  I thought that this was what I have been waiting for in Voice over IP area.  After trying Messenger, Skype, AIM, SameTime and most recently (and the longest standing) Jajah, I figured it was time to see if something else can take their place.  Clearly, when it come to plain vanilla VoIP, the competition is not based on price (as far as I know, when you do Peer to Peer VoIP communication all the way, when both sides are members of the service, it is completely free).  The competition is based more on QoS (Quality of Service) and features.  Depending on the bandwidth you have at home, your upload capabilities (download capabilities are usually fine), headphones, speakers, you can get very reasonable quality of conversation between two people across the country and around the world.  Add picture to it, and most likely quality of voice will decrease, sometimes significantly.  And then there's the personal preference: do you like talking to the microphone and hear your mother on the speakers?  Or a headphone next to the computer?  It's a choice.  Clearly not mine.  I like a handset...

And one last consideration (for me).  What do you do when you call people who are not as computer savvy as you are, your grandmother for example.  My parents don't own a computer (if they did I am sure it would be overweight and loaded with guilt feelings...).  You still want to get the advantages of VoIP.  What do you do?  All services have a pre-paid service in which you purchase minutes and you can make phone calls to land lines and cellular phones around the world.  Not bad at all.  I tried, it works.  And then came Jajah.  It is basically similar to Skype, with one great addition.  It connects to your home phone.  When you initiate the call, Jajah calls the phone where you currently are (you can have up to three: home, office, cellular), and then it connects with the other party.  At the end of the process, you speak on the phone.  This is exactly the way I want to speak to my mother.  And it's ridiculously inexpensive.  Slowly, it became our choice for long distance communication.  In fact, I no longer have a long distance carrier at home.  Between Skype, Jajah and the cellulars, we are completely covered.

So what caught my eye on Saturday?  Spikko.  A new start-up in the area of VoIP with a new and refreshing concept.  The service is free.  You get a local phone number (more like a phone number and an extension - which is significantly less convenient, but this isn't the point), and people can call you paying for a local phone call in Israel (I am not sure whether this service will be expanded to more countries), calling this number rings at your computer wherever you are, and you got yourself a conversation.  So what's the difference?  The difference is simple, and ingenious at the same time.  It's free.  For you that is.  When paying people call you, you collect minutes which can be used later for outgoing calls.  You can't buy minutes.  I thought about it.  And then I thought about it again.  And then some more.  And then I realized that I don't like the concept.  One, the free local number you get is a cellular one, which usually implies that whoever is calling you is going to pay for relatively expensive cellular calls if they call outside their network.  Two, somehow it strikes me that it is wrong for people to pay for calling you, while you use their calls to call them back for free.  And last, I am not sure I understand the business model, but somehow it feels like the cellular carrier has something to do with it, because it has the potential to increase the volume of calls to the carrier.

Spikko has a manifest published on the Web.  It makes a very interesting reading material.  The manifest is in Hebrew, and it is very obvious that (at least currently) only Israelis are invited.  Yet, I thought it would be interesting to share the ideas behind the manifest.  It starts by stating how our lives had changed since the Internet revolution.  That we can do almost anything using computers now.  The manifest acknowledges that some people may have traveled to great distances in search of jobs.  And that communication costs had risen to the point that they do not match the technological revolution.  The manifest keeps saying that the volume of communication throughout the world is great, and that the service providers' profits are skyrocketing.  In what seems to be the climax of the manifest, Spikko suggests that "freedom of speech is not freedom if you have to pay for it".  The facts are, however, that the current projection suggests that communication costs will eventually come down to nothing (yes, nothing).  The carriers' profit will come from paid services and special features, and not from the actual calls.  Let me use my personal experience as an example.  When I was attending college in New York in the mid-eighties, my parents were paying roughly $1.00 per minute to talk to me.  I was paying roughly $0.70 per minute.  I currently pay less that 1%.  So the communication costs are indeed moving, but to the other direction.  Also, I am not so sure that the Freedom of speech refers to calls you make on the phone, or that it has anything to do with communication costs...  Freedom of Speech is a value not to be confused with anything else.

Later on, the manifest turns into something that up until today I thought was only screamed through loudspeakers in political gatherings in third world countries: "... The ability to communicate with whom our hearts desire is an integral part of our freedom as human beings!  Its importance, this freedom is equal to the basic right of receiving medical treatment, education, or the right to make a living...".  Please.

Another thought I had in relation to this exchange, is that loyalty to a service provider is something that deteriorated into, well, ashes would be a good word to describe it.  I remember when I was young (mental note: I am sliding into the middle aged nostalgia mood too often lately), we only had one choice when it came to selecting a long distance carrier.  Then we had more choices, but we developed loyalty to one.  Then we started to move every time the other was offering better prices, or better service, or whatever new feature we thought was cool.  And now, we have the absolute best: we can have them all installed on our computers, and choose which one to use according our mood, situation, circumstances...  Nightmare for vendors, heaven for consumers.  But remember: this phenomenon drives quality, variety of features, and yes, cost as well.

Last but not least.  Time to market is a critical consideration when developing software or hardware or anything that goes to the consumer market.  Quality is another consideration.  Cost is yet another one.  When you release a beta, particularly when introducing yourself to the market, quality is almost critical.  It's better to wait and introduce yourself to your potential customers when you are reasonably ready for it.

Posted at 02:40PM Aug 06, 2007 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[1]

Read Shiri, Read!

I doubt that there are genes for being a bookworm.  Yet, my eight year old daughter is showing the signs.  Either way, it's difficult for me to describe my gratefulness when I have to tell her: "Shiri, please don't read in the book, you will hurt your eyes", or "Shiri, please don't read when you eat", or "please go to bed, you can continue tomorrow" to which she always responds: "please, please, just a couple of more pages to the end of the chapter..."

I was the same way when I was her age, although, I only read in Hebrew.  She reads in English too.  But there are other differences as well.  Times were different.  We didn't buy reading books.  We went to libraries.  I was registered in one public library and two private ones, simply because there was a limit on how many books you could take at one time...  My daughter has her books at home.  We buy them when we go to Israel, order via Amazon, ship them in the mail, ask friends and family to carry them when they come to see us.  If she wants to read, we will get the books.

I made it my business to read what she's reading to see if it's appropriate.  I don't consider it spying or invasion of privacy, I call it responsibility and curiosity.  Recently I have read two books that she's been reading.  One is a book written following an Israeli television show.  The other is a book written in Italy in the nineteenth century.  The books were appropriate for her age, in fact I have to admit, I read one of them when I was older than her (the other one wasn't yet written back then).  I guess we are witnessing bookworm evolution here... 

"The Eight", "Hashminia" in Hebrew is a book about eight junior high-school kids, boys and girls, who get into adventures.  The idea is not bad, each one of the eight is skilled with some unusual expertise, whether it is computers, history, math and more.  They are presented with interesting situations and they resolve them successfully.  But the plot is simple, even for an eight year old, and there appear to be no lessons to be learned.  I would call this book hollow.  The kins of book you read and quickly forget about.  There are advantages to this kind of books - you can read it in a year, and enjoy it again, because you may have no recollection you have read it before.

"The Heart" (Heart) was published in Italy in October of 1886.  Yes, not a typo, it was published almost 121 years ago.  Just the thought that my kid is reading a book written around the time my great grandfather was born, is heartwarming.  I am reading it again now, and I must say, the impact is stronger than when I first read it almost forty years ago.  I can't seem to turn a page without wiping a tear.  The obvious question is why does she love this book?  After all it has no magic, no supernatural skills, Barbies or Bratz, no wands, dragons, and fairies.  The book is a diary of a kid attending a public school.  The diary entries describe his daily life, his interactions with his friends, peers, teachers and parents.  It deals with issues that I haven't found in the "Eight": poverty, death, loyalty, patriotism, friendship.  It is a book that once you read it, it will not leave you, for as long as you live.  "The Heart" is a classic, it's been read by millions of children who lived in different times.  The first kids who read it did not have electricity, cars, television or telephones.  Not to mention iPods, and cellulars...

A small anecdote, I inherited my copy of the book from my mother's cousin who got it from her brother who received it as a gift for his 10th birthday.  When I got it it had a red plastic cover, some of the pages were a little stained, and it was obvious that it's been read many times by many children.  My sister and brother inherited it from me, one of them (don't know who) is keeping it for his or her children.  The continuity is not only the millions of children who read this book over more than a century, it is also the particular children who read this particular copy...

So Shiri, keep on reading.  Your mother and I will do the best we can to get you all the books you want.  You have a wonderful imagination, reading will develop it further.  We are thankful that you have discovered the joy of reading at such a young age.  Congratulations!

Posted at 10:29AM Aug 04, 2007 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[1]