Blogs February 2005

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I am slightly dyslexic. Please, try to tolerate some misspellings. 
The order of notes is from newer to older. Within a note, the order is the opposite. 

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February

Monday, 2005-02-28

Animated gestures

The local people are quite animated here. Especially younger women tend to twist their faces, make all kinds of facial expressions, and other gestures with their heads, when they talk. I assume that those facial expressions are somehow meant to emphasize the meaning of their words, but I have great difficulties in interpreting them. Sometimes, the extra animated facial expressions leave me so puzzled, that I cannot get any idea of the actual verbal expressions, and I just nod benovelently. But that's just because of my cultural limitations. There is, however, a more general question to consider. I have noticed, that the most common expressions are the same ones that the second rank actresses use in sitcoms (when one is not that good in acting, one has to use them). The question is: is it so, that the young women have adopted the animated facial expressions from these sitcoms/soap operas, or do the sitcoms/soap operas accurately reflect the common behaviour here? Or, is it both ways, which would create a positive feedback loop, which would mean the animated facial expressions would just get more and more animated, and I would be losing more and more of the actual message due to my confusion. So, I would end up being as happy as in France, where I do now understand anything, and always think that people discuss about philosophy, poetry, and other romantic topic everywhere. It is a comforting thought, and well worth the flight tickets to Paris once a year.

Daily crono

I stayed up late last night reading the Apollo-material, which meant that I did not get my regular 8 hours of sleep. The same thing happened today. I assume that I have to get used to 7 hours of sleep, and get even more efficient and organized. Today was, however, very productive. As usual, I walked to MIT with you know whom, and we discussed some interesting issues on the way. Then 1.5 hours of risk analysis, which I thought I got, but when I tried to do the exercises later today, I realized I was too bold and optimistic. I just did not get it. I will later, for sure. Afternoon was also quite busy: some research for Apollo, the Apollo class, then group meeting for 1 hour, some research for disruptive technologies for 1 hour, 2.5 hour group meeting on the same topic, some discussions with class mates on diverse issue, getting back home, reading some news articles (e.g. this article, which tells a story of a teen ager writing a zombie story, and getting arrested and charged for felony. Yes, it is funny, and show the exact limits of free expression. In another country, the parliament decided that anyone suspected for being a terrorist may be placed under house arrest for indefinite periods and without any charges, and without ways to defend him/herself. Yes, I do not know that the goals of certain organizations are, but I do not like these developement. Neither I do like the continuing and worsening security situation in one other country. Etc. Read the papers, and you will get so much merrier. And read from the newest "Foreign Affairs", how the situation now is very much similar as to it was before the first world war, and this is worrysome, at least if you find globalization a good things (for the most parts)), and still doing some work and reading and whatever, and now it is already 12.15 am. Too bad.

Etymology of "Perkele"

Tapio sent me email and reminded me that "perkele" is not from Kalevala. Instead, it came to being with the introduction of Christianity in Finland in 12th century (I am not sure about this timing, and do not have energy to check it either). "Perkele" comes from Lithuanian "Perkunas", who is the god of thunder (i.e. the local Zeus). So, Christians took a foreign devil and imported him to Finland. Tapio assumes, that even Christians did not dare to adopt the Finnish Zeus, "Ukko" (man), as their main enemy. See also more professional explanations.

Sunday, 2005-02-27

New cell number: +1 617 820 91 18

Adopted motto

Jorma Panula, who is a conductor and famous teacher of conductors, has this motto:

Kun painaa vaan perkeles niinkun nyt justihin tuntuu, niin sitten se on oikein

which in English reads something like When one perkeles presses on just like it feels right, then it will be right. One cannot really translate "perkeles". It comes from the word "perkele", which means the devil. But it is much more, it is a very strong call for "sisu" (guts, daring, strength). Well, one just have to get it, or otherwise "perkeles" does not help at all. I got it long time ago, and it helps me a lot, also here in MIT.

Panula also has a saying that "truivaase siitä". It is a very powerful motto too, but we cannot even exactly rephrase it in Finnish. The main meaning of it is "just do it fast, with intuion, as it feels right, do not hesitate at all". This is how I do all I do, and 95% of time everything goes just fine. This is also one central part of lean studying/working. (thanks to S for the exact quotations.)

Finns have a very strong pagan trait. This is where "perkeles" really comes from. It comes from Kalevala, it comes from the collective unconsciousness. We may look modern, but we are still close to something very ancient. And it is really our secret strength.

Sabbath

I think, that the ancient religions have got something right. For example, it really seems that one needs to have one free day, day of resting and taking it easy, every week. Otherwise, the amount and quality of work is going to suffer for good. I, personally, like to take Saturdays off. I just cannot get going on Saturdays with studies or work (well, yesterday I wrote 2 pages for the innovation paper, did some patent searched, some system optimization exercises, and read some articles, but they count as appetizers, not real work or study, more like fun only). Now, on Sunday, I am again so full of energy, and perskeles, that nobody or nothing can stop me. Life is so nice when one feels perskeles/strong - I have had this feeling when doing intellectual work as long as I can remember, and I enjoy and cherish it.

British criminals roaming USA

Beware, some British criminal will soon arrive in USA and try to break as many dumb laws as possible. See the article. I wish the FBI is vigilant and will catch these evil wrong-doers. This is just plain wrong thing to do: intentionally break laws, and even boast! 

I can also make a confession. I have broken the following Massachusetts' laws.

• It is illegal to go to bed without first having a full bath.
• Snoring is prohibited unless all bedroom windows are closed and securely locked. [although I am not sure, but window was not securely locked for sure, when it was broken]
• No one may cross the Boston Common without carrying a shotgun in case of bears.

Soon I will also go to New York and break this law: "A person may not walk around on Sundays with an ice cream cone in his/her pocket.". But I am still hesitating whether I dare to break this one: "The penalty for jumping off a building is death." I wonder if it applies in case of fire in a building. 

One dumb law from Finland, just to be fair: "Taxi drivers must pay royalties if they play music in their cars for paying customers. "

On creativity

Dan Ariely's main points in his lecture on 18th of February were the following. First, we cannot wait for the customer to come up with creative new solutions or product ideas. In general, the users do not know, when there is no similar product in the market. We all are good in recognizing a new, creative product, when we see one. We think very often: "Why did not I think of that before?" or "I could have invented that, it is so simple/trivial". Second, we generally cannot wait for sparks of genius to light up. They are rare and far between. For these reason, we must ways of being creative systematically. When we have new ideas, we can go to our customers, and ask for their opinions. 

According to Ariely, there are some common problems for not being creative. First, we tend to insist on taking the shortest route (like a fly banging its head on the window pane 10 cm from open window). We usually cannot expand the possibilities, back over, and try to solve a larger problem. Second, we do not think systematically. Third, we have the habit of trying the same solution over and over again. To overcome these difficulties, Ariely proposes using creativity templates. One of these is the dependency table, which is an easy way to create novel dependencies between internal attributes (those that the manufacturer can control) and external (those the manufactures cannot control) ones. The trick is to create a table, putting internal attributes in column headers and internal ones to row headers. In each cell we put "1" if there already exists a product utilizing the dependency, "0" otherwise. Once we have filled the whole table, we try to figure novel ways to create new dependencies, and thus products, in the "0"-cells. 

Here is an example how to use the method and design new product, or new chairs.

	Height	Seat width	Back rest	Upholstery	Cushion softness	Reclinable seat	Armrest	Head/nect rest
Sitting position	1	0	0	0	0	1	0	1
User height	1	0	1	0	0	1	1	1
User weight	0	0	1	0	0	1	0	0
User age	1	1	1	0	0	0	0	0
User clothes	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Room temperature	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Length of average sitting session	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

Some new product possibilities are:

1. Let cushion softness depend on the user's weight. The heavier the users, the harder the cushion, since heavy users carry their own padding and do not want to sink in the chair.
2. Let cushion softness depend on the sitting session length. The longer the session, the softer the cushion.
3. Let the seat width depend on the user's weight. Wider chairs for wider/heavier people (or adjustable seat width).
4. What about armrest and user's clothes? Maybe we could have a glove compartment in the armrest. For Americans, installing a cup holder to armrest would make sense.
5. What about backrest and user's clothes? Many people want to take the jackets off when sitting. Integrating a hanger into backrest could make sense.

Saturday, 2005-02-26

Air traffic policies

Our seminar on next generation air traffic systems is interesting for two reasons. First, the topic is interesting, and I learn a lot about air traffic systems and related issues. Second, one cannot talk about policies without talking about values and personal views/understanding of the way the international policies work and should work. There are rather large differences in this sense between the participants, and discussions are really fun. It seems that spending time abroad somehow widens one's views, and diminishes prejudices. But this is nothing new.

The etymology of "hangar" is quite interesting (source)

1852, "shed for carriages," from Fr. hangar "shed," from M.Fr. hanghart, perhaps an alteration of M.Du. *ham-gaerd "enclosure near a house," or from M.L. angarium "shed in which horses are shod." Sense of "covered shed for airplanes" first recorded in Eng. 1902, from Fr. use in that sense.

Nice way to reuse an old word in a new modern context. Icelandic and Tamil, which has written history of more than 2000 years, regularly do the same. When they need a word to describe some new thing or phenomenon, they go back to old books, and reuse some old word, which is not used anymore. I think, this is better than inventing new words, as it keeps the language intact.

I wrote about how technology gets all the time more virtual. Yesterday, I learned about a new trend. The Air Force of USA is moving towards unmanned fighter planes. So, in the future wars, machines are fighting each other (or dropping bombs on people). I think we should go further in this direction. We should the whole war virtual: all battles should be fought within a computer, maybe in some UN-produced war-simulator. This would save million of humans from totally unnecessary suffering and early death. This would also provide a nice way to the "eternal peace" Kant saw dreams few hundred years ago. The other way to reach the same goal is to transform wars into boxing matches between the heads of states. 

I am still totally puzzled about the meanings and especially differences of meaning or "safety" and "security". They are rather frequently used words here, and somehow central in the air policy discussion. Yesterday, someone defined "security" as having to do with "intentional harm" and "safety" with "unintentional harm". Well, how do we define intention? I think we have to define these word, and the whole US media would do well to do the same. Otherwise, we are just repeating some official propaganda or common speech prejudices. Either way, the discussion is going to be fruitless.

Daily crono, Friday

Friday was an easy day. We discussed on Air Traffic Policies in the morning, then I read books for one hours, had Bengali-lunch with Kumar, read something for the marketing class. The marketing class was interesting. talked about sales and marketing. He was funny, but also said very interesting things. For example: "Anything which is of value, cannot be done in 8 hours a day", on which I agree. I used to think that 8 hours would be the optimal amount of work per day, but now I have noticed, that if one has passion, one can and needs to (for peace of mind and fun) indeed work much more. But one cannot work in large bureaucracies for more than 8 hours a day, since one cannot maintain passion in those environments. Morse also gave a good career advice for selecting bosses: "Look for the demanding SOB, who cared passionately for customers, and does not give a shit about internal politics". I did not follow this in Nokia, and I suffered dearly. Now I know better. After the class, we had a couple of beer in the Muddy Charles (yes, I swallowed my pride). Back at home at 7 pm, I took a nap, and read for 3 hours. I finished Christensen's "Innovators Dilemma", and read a couple of articles from the new Foreign Affairs".

Daily crono, Saturday

I assume I will be mostly studying today. 

Thursday, 2005-02-24

Living on borrowing

Thomas L. Friedman has a great sentence in his column in today's New York Times.

When a country lives on borrowed time, borrowed money and borrowed energy, it is just begging the markets to discipline it in their own way at their own time.

I have just one thing to add: this country also lives on borrowed talent. It saw it today myself. I was sitting in the Stata Center reading a book, when a class ended and undergraduates started to exit the classroom right next to me. At least 80% of them looked Asian. I have been reading on the lack of talent in USA, but I have never seen it first hand. Now, if and when the dollars crashes, life in USA gets harder due to some paranoid security regulation, or otherwise the Asian countries get their act together, the borrowed talent may exit just as easily as the borrowed money. This would spell disaster for this great country. 

I also realized, that I like to look at crowds of people. It is for me as relaxing as looking at fire/sea/desert is for some other people. I like to be in a large group, watching people, trying to figure out what their life is like, etc, or just enjoy the movement. 

Daily crono

The day was really good. In the morning, at 8 am, we had the RFID class. We were talking about the required SW-system (RFID causes another level of complexity to supply chain SW-systems, while at the same time removing lots of manual labor. It is another example of products/services getting virtual, which is one of the fundamental phenomena in all industries and technologies). There will also be some security issues (actually, privacy) , too. After the class, I spent a few hours reading Christensen's "Innovator's dilemma", which is interesting and easy to read. At 14.30 we had the disruptive technology class. One researcher presented his new dynamic models of the development of industries. ( Henry Weil) Pretty interesting results: it takes a technology about 10 years to get any significant market share after the technology has been conceived. And the R&D spending peaks at 20 years. This seems to be true, and also supports my intuition that 3G is going to die off. Then, from 4.30 pm to 8pm, I was first in the product development class, and after that working with the group. I was really pleased to notice, that the group is getting together, and we are able to do real work. Great, and it did not take even much time. Today, about 13 hours of fun. I could still have 1.5 hours more, but I am not so sure whether I can without becoming too hilarious, i.e. freaking out. Well, I may as well read something before going to bed at 12pm. 

Becoming a happy camper

Professor Roemer said to me today: " You really do destroy all stereotypes". It is the most flattering thing I have heard for a long time.

I must confess, that I have not been fulfilling my duty as a student. I have not been stirring up trouble, and I think Tom Allen may be a bit disappointed at me. I may have to become more active on this too rather soon. If I am really clever, I will outsource this to someone else. Beware, my dear classmates, you will not even notice when you become part of my supply chain of trouble!

Democracy über alles

Link of the day: Currency Transaction Tax (CTT) Wiki, another web-site of NIGD, or Network Institute for Global Democratization , which I am member of, not that active though. Earlier, the dream of have global democracy was a pipe-dream, but today, as we have Mr. Bush on our side, I think democracy will reign supreme soon enough. It may, of course, be of rather imperfect type, or even not that democratic after all.

Wednesday, 2005-02-23

Daily crono

I was not feeling exactly well today. I had terrible headache, which more or less prevented all intellectual activities. Physically, I was still present in the risk analysis class, in a group meeting about disruptive technologies, in Apollo class, and I even talked at length about my thesis proposal. We also polished our stakeholder analysis for the Air Policy-class. Quite much anyway. In the evening, I slept for some hours, spent some hours by doing risk analysis assignments, and read something. Rather normal day after all. 

It is fashionable to work in groups. Sometimes working with a group is more efficient than working alone, but most of the times it is not. There are several conditions which must hold if the group is going to be more time-efficient than individual work: 1. We must be able to divide the task into parts. These parts must be either independent, so that we can work on them at the same time, or serial (so that different members can work on them after each other. For example: one defines the stucture and contents of a document, and the another does the actual writing). 2. The group must have some common idea what to do. 3. The members of the group must trust in each other. 4. The group members must have same level of ambition. 5. The members must be of the same intellectual capacity. If any of these conditions is not true, working in a group does not add any value. Or it may add value, by allowing us to complete more assignment in a given time, but with very low quality. Now, I understand why working in groups is fashionable. I see two reasons. 1. there is less material for the professors to read, and 2. in the exceptional cases in which the group really adds some value, the results are really good. 

My prepaid SIM-card ran out out minutes. So, I have no working mobile phone at the moment. I will get one next weekend, I have already some plans for cheating the phone companies. 

Tuesday, 2005-02-22

Daily crono

It seems to be getting busier all the time here in MIT. I have the problem that I cannot lay the blame at anyone's but my own door, which would of course be counterproductive. So, I will just have to bite the bullet, and keep on working, which is exactly what I did today. 

MIT had decided, that this Tuesday was actually Monday. So, walking to MIT in time for the 9.30am risk analysis class, which was as fun as usual. I was somehow still out of focus because of yesterday's hard work and stressing about our product development. I could not focus totally on the class, which was a pity. But now I notice, that I still remember at least 90 percent of it, so I am still on top of the material, at they say here (it is so nice to try to use all the new idioms I have learned, bear with me). From 11 to 13 we tried to put together our RFID-kit, but without too much success. Fortunately, other group members (Vineet, Srini, Kumar) agreed to finish that assignment. I went on to the Apollo-class, where we discussed the historical importance of Sputnik, especially on the US space policy. Then we divided into groups. The group I am in has Robbie, Bill, and Spences as its member, and we will study the overall architecture of the Apollo. Fortunately, Ben seems to like to participate in our groups as an external consultant. 

In the afternoon, I had to visit my bank as I do not have an ATM-card yet. Visiting the bank was like visiting the museum of business. I just wanted to withdraw some money from my account, which I thought would be a simple thing to do. Not so here in USA. First, the teller went and took a folder and painstakingly wrote something to a paper within the folder. Then she produced a blank check, which I had to write (I wrote a check to myself, and signed it). The teller proceeded to write the number of my passport on the back of the check, inputted all the information to the computer, and then went to the other side of the bank hall. There was a manager, who took the check, signed it, and inputted some information to his computer. Teller came back, asked someone to open her computer terminal (she evidently did not have the password). Finally, the teller was able to use the computer and printer to print something on the check. After all this, the teller was able to take some keys, and open the door to the vault (which, by the way, has also a numerical code, but which the tellers apparently do not (need to) know). The whole procedure took more than 10 minutes. Exercise for the readers: try to come up with some reasons for doing this simple things in such a complicated manner. I think it has something to do with the lack of trust.

Later, I cleaned my studio, and called the laundry service. They will pick up my laundry tomorrow morning and return it in the afternoon. After all these practical errands, I was able to do the marketing assingment, and read some 100 pages for the Apollo-class. 

Oh, and I also invented a simple and easy way to develop the product for the Product development class. It is so simple, that I would develop it myself in a few days. The whole thing started as a joke, so why not continue joking to the end.

Monday, 2005-02-21

Daily crono

I was a bit lazier than I hoped to be during this weekend and our free Monday. On Saturday, I did not do much, I just rested. On Sunday, I went shopping with Kumar and Vineet. We have now some experience, and takes us only 2 hours to do necessary shopping for a couple of week. Some optimization. After shopping, even though it not all fun, we decided to do some work. We did the assignments given in the RFID-class. They were not that hard, but one of them contained some 40 questions ranging from trivial to tedious. But we managed to crack all of them. This was good, since they are due soon, and other assignments are pressing too. Late Sunday evening, I did some 2 hours for the product development class, and thought about system optimization tasks. Oh, and we did together some work for the marketing class too.

Today, on Monday, I was lazy too, woke up late, and did not hurry. After walking around, and reading newspapers, I did most of the risk analysis assignment, which were not too hard. A couple of them were, but I will work on them later. It seems that the assignments are still within my intellectual grasp, which is nice. I also worked a couple of hours on our product development: I interpreted the customer needs and prepared an Excel-sheet. It was quite fast, and somewhat even fun. I am not too confident that we will get anything real out of this exercise, but maybe it is just good that the task is not too easy. At least I hope so. Late, after 9pm, I read the necessary materials for the Tuesday's Apollo-class (e.g. the famous speech by JFK etc).

So, I have either rested or worked. Nothing much else is happening. I did read an interesting article from Washington Post. According to it, president Bush is going to meet president Putin soon. As we remember, mr Bush boasted, that USA will remove all autocrats, and enforce freedom and democracy everywhere in the world. Now both liberal and (neo)conservatives are waiting for mr Bush to tell mr Putin, that mr Putin must reinstitute democracy in Russia. If mr Bush fails to do so, it will be really interesting to see what happens. Maybe mr Bush must retreat to his oval office and get high. As he did earlier, and he even inhaled. Mr Clinton did not inhale, as we remember. We are just waiting for rumors of adultery (by Mr Bush) to break out. They will...

Saturday, 2005-02-19

Daily crono

I have noticed, that my brains get tired just like my muscles. It just takes longer, and I tolerate mental exhaustion/tiredness better than physical. It is also easier to notice when physical powers are fading than when mental ones are. Somehow, will is powerful, and can force one to "work" even after all real creative thinking has ceased. Fortunately, at some point, mental tiredness somehow turns into physical, and at that point even I take note. So, I took mental rest today. I just did some interviews, read a few tens of pages, and started to do some assignments, without too much success. So, I rested, and now I feel much better. Of course, having nice dinner with Dave, Britney, Patty, Christian, Matt, Spiros, Kumar in the Dali restaurant may have something to do with it. Earlier, I had Indian food for lunch, and helped Kumar with his new futon. It was suppose to take 5 minutes to put it together, according to the seller. It took us more or less 2 hours. I think we should take some courses in manufacturing and assembling. I did some shopping at Trader Joe's, which immediately became my favorite grocery store around here. It seems to be fair, and they do sell European dark chocolate, which I have been missing quite much. For some reason, I have not found any decent local US-made chocolate so far. It is not a matter of taste, since there are objective measures for goodness of chocolate. Believe it or not. And chocolate is a really serious thing, and has really interesting cultural history, of which I will write more later. If I continue to get it, that is.

Friday, 2005-02-18

Daily crono

You do not need to read this. It may be getting boring, as my life is quite uneventful here. Waking up at 8.20, walking to MIT, 9.30-11 the air traffic policy-seminar (talking about policies in general, and shareholders in particular, doing some group thinking on shareholders of air traffic system, their roles, values, influences, and power), some Chinese food for lunch from the lunch truck, 11.30-12.30 devising an interview template for our product development course with Atif and Shrini, 12.30 having coffee with Olli (who does not drink it), 13-15.30 class on innovation in the marketplace (on creativity, good stuff, and interesting assignment (more about it later)), 16.15-17.15 group meeting on disruptive technologies (RFID in our case), taking T back home, having dinner in the local Pho Pasteur ( not good, too expensive), sleeping, 20-22 working on product development, air traffic policies, and other issues, and later visiting Kumar, who has beer and a TV, both of which I do not have.

If you want to help us in our product development, please send your answers to the following questions by [email]

Team 16 of the product development class needs your help.
Could you, please, donate a few minutes of your valuable time
and type in some answers to the following questions.
Just write whatever comes to your mind right away, no need to
be fancy, exact,etc. Your answer are important in defining
the needs of our customers.

You do not need to answer all questions, even one answer is valuable.

Our product is going to be about enabling people to get more exercise.

Thanks for your help!

Team 16: Atif, Ben, John, Matti, Robbie, Srini, and Suraj

1: does sitting cause health problems/pain to you? If yes, in which part of the body?
2:  How many hours a day do you spend in your chair or sitting in general?
3: what are the main reasons for not exercising for you?
4: do you do stretching? If not, why? What would make you to
do stretching?
5: are the current chairs comfortable? If not, why?

6: how does taking long-haul flight affect your overall well-being?
7: What kind of chair do you currently own and how much did you spend on it? Does it allow enough
movement?
8: how much time would you have to do exercise per day/week?
9: how much money would you be willing to invest in exercising?

10: what would make you have more exercise?
11: would you like to do some exercise while sitting in a class/
at office? If yes, what kinds?
12: "Would you carry around an exercise tool if it were light and compact?
 or would you prefer that it be integrated in the class or office seat?"
 13:  If you had the option to replace your current chair, would you?
 14: "Please identify which part of your daily routine constitutes the greatest
 bottleneck or hindrance to achieving a healthy lifestyle."
 

Thanks a lot for your help!

Thursday, 2005-02-17

Daily crono

No problems of free time today, either. Waking up at 7, quick breakfast, walking to MIT with Mr Kumar, 8-9.30 RFID class ( a person from ThingMagic explaining the physics of RFID and giving some demonstrations, pretty interesting), 9.30-10 Master Thesis seminar (on simulations and systems engineering, quite OK, but I joined in the middle, but made a comment still, or two), 10-12 writing my thesis proposal, 12-13 lunch in the local Bengali restaurant (good food, and plenty of salad), 13-14.30 reading Utterback's books for the disruptive technology class, 14.30-16 disruptive technology class (interesting presentation about Lotka-Volterra models by Moise Solomon, MITRE. The model presents quite accurately how different technologies develop their market-share, more about this later, perhaps), 16.30-18 an interesting lecture about product architecture by professor Whitney, 18-19 talking within the group about product development assignment, 19-20 writing interview plans in a library and reading an interesting article about generating ideas using computers (someone has implemented a program, which produces better advertisements that the ADs do, but IMHO it is just showing that computers are good in mechnanical task, i.e. producing lots of combinations from existing lists of ideas, nothing deep in this, but interesting still), 20-21 participating in Chinese new year celebrations (free food and beer, and typical Chinese program), walking back home, finalizing the book report, blogging, and wrapping up the day by reading some articles and books, getting to bed at 23.30 or so. Quite much in one day.

Oh, I even spent 10 minutes reading New York Times and got to know that e.g. Lance will race in Tour De France, and that mr Greenspan supports mr Bush' retirement system privatization even though it will result in borrowing trillions of dollars. And now I will stop blogging for today. 

The creativity article

The main claim in the article is that the so called random theories of creativity are wrong. Those theories (like brainstorming, random input etc) claim, that best ideas are found by creative sparks when the normal rules and boundaries of thinking are cast aside. According to the article, there have been and will be such sparks, but they are rather rare. For most of the time, we would be better by just following some field specific templates. The article bases this claim on extensive literature survey, and on the experiment of using computers to create new advertisements. The methos was as follows: take a product and some of its traits (like softness, safety etc). Find another product/symbol, which also has the same trait. Replace the second product with the first. E.g. like bullet shaped car to denote a fast car etc. The authors collected a few hundred such relationships from magazines, and then used computer the combine them in novel ways (more or less enumerating all possibilities). Then they asked laymen to create advertisements by using similar template technique and without using such a technique. Then some judges rated the results. In all cases, the computer generated advertisements were considered to be more creative by the judges. So, does this prove anything? I am not sure. I tend to agree (based on my experience) that random shooting in creating ideas is not the most efficient way to be creative: one usually does better by following some patterns (adding some formalism to brute force). One certainly cannot create the most creative scientific theories by computer, not can write novels automatically, I think. But using computers might help in creating e.g. system architectures, and other somehow limited artifact, at least in a given, well known application domain. Well, this is basically what Mr Koo did in his thesis. It is also what someone did using genetic algorithms: he created some at one time novel electrical circuits automatically using genetic algorithms and some well know goodness metrics. If this is not enough, read the article "Templates in Creative Sparks".

Wednesday, 2005-02-16

Daily crono

Waking up at 8am, rather tired, not enough sleep or too much fun. Chatting with S using Skype, walking to risk analysis class with Kumar, having lunch in the best Indian in Cambridge (Gandhi), writing a 3 page draft for our RFID-essay, listening to the Apollo-class (it is hard, too many acronyms, and too many cities, villages taken for granted, I am lost, my knowledge in US history and geography is too limited (but getting better)), some exercise and hair washing in the Z-center, walking back home, drafting my thesis proposal, writing preliminary ideas for the disruptive technologies essay, reading for tomorrow's classes, having a late dinner with Olli in Pho Pasteur and beer in the Lenox-hotel, again back home, blogging. 

I decided to drop the "Entrepreneurship in Innovation"-class (aka "CEO class"), since it destroy my Wednesdays. Without it, I have free time for reading and writing after 3 pm, and I desperately need all the time I can have for managing the excessive workload I have voluntarily, but insanely, decided to take. The number of credits in the spring term will still be large enough, maybe 80 or so. So far, everything has turned out to be well. I (and our team) got A- in Human Side of Technology, I got full score in the 1st Optimization assignment, and a decent score in Apollo quiz. Lean studying rules

Music

I grew up listening to New Model Army and I seem to have adopted some attitudes from their music. They have a famously loyal following following the band everywhere. Now they are coming to Boston on the 6th of March, to the Middle East club. I will be there. What a happy coincidence.

It is surprising, how much the music one listens to as a teenager determines what kind of person one becomes. Or is it the other way around? I started by listening to punk: Crass, GBH, Discharge, Dead Kennedys, Ramones, Black Flag. I think my extreme need for freedom and autonomy has something to do with this. Later, I moved to New Model Army, Sonic Youth, REM, Limespiders, Husker Du, Eastern Dark, Residents, to name just a few. I think they have also left their marks on my personality. Now I will see New Model Army live in Boston (I last saw them in Stockholm in 1990), and I would definitely like to see Sonic Youth live in New York (I have never seem them live).

Tuesday, 2005-02-15

It is getting busier every day. Today, I had classes from 8 am to 6pm, and then some group meetings until 7.30pm. Back at home, I cooked some dinner, and spend a 2 hours reading really fascinating material for tomorrow's Apollo-class. But in addition to study fun (e.g. we had a nice lecture about patents etc, and of course the always just plain fantastic "disruptive technologies"-class), I had Bengali food for dinner, and played some pinball in the evening. Not just work.

I try to keep on blogging, but I am afraid the the quantity will get smaller for the next 4 weeks. We have 4-5 team works going on, and in addition we have some exercises for the risk and benefit analysis, and some reading for more than 3 classes. Let's see. If I can manage this, I will be rather proud of myself. But "failure is not an option". 

Many classmates have found the risk and benefit analysis hard, and claim that it is absolutely waste of time. It is not, the tools we learn are useful. I use my 4 principles for studying applied mathematics (and other things too) and I am doing just fine at the moment.

1. Stay calm - when you panic/think you cannot crack it, you have lost. As long as you remain calm, you are winning. If you panic, take a walk, deep breath etc, and start over again.
2. Look at the problem, and let the problem talk to you. In most cases, the problem will tell how to solve it, if you listen and look calmly for some time, like an hour or two. (this applies to all problems, in all fields)
3. Try to understand the meaning of formulas, but if you cannot:
3.1 If you do not know what to do, write down possible solution approaches (there are not that many in ERBA), and try them out one by one (this is called formalistic brute force and it is in general enough to solve problems in applied mathematics - if you are fast enough...)
4. Buy a good math handbook. You need it to handle the integrals, diff equatios, distributions.

These will later be part of my lean studying-book.

Monday, 2005-02-13

Barking Crab 

Thank to Ilana, who lent me a guide book to Boston, I and Olli had dinner in the Barking Crab restaurant. Now I know where I will take all my Finnish friends. I also know where I will have dinner on Sundays. Today, I had deep fried calamari, a lobster, and a piece cheese cake. Olli had mussels, another lobster, and also a piece of cake. Everything was good, and we were really happy campers afterwards. Oh, I did not remember how nice it is to eat excellent food in nice restaurants. I need to get some money so that I can visit the restaurant more often. 

Otherwise, the was quite normal. Risk analysis in the morning, Apollo in the afternoon and lots of reading. Now, at 10 pm, I will read some pages for tomorrow and then go to sleep. I am quite tired, drinking too much and studying in MIT are incompatible activities.

Sunday, 2005-02-13

Daily crono 

No real blog today. I have been too lazy and then too drunk to blog (that would make a great song, too). Waking up at 10 am, chatting with mom (how sissy), going to MIT to work on RFID-course, realizing that the course is too much, going to meet my friend Olli at the airport, having a nice walk in Beacon Hill, and some beer and food at Boston beer works in North End, and then some more in some bar in Back Bay, coming to home, and trying to blog, and failing due to being too much under influence of legal drugs. After all this, being relaxed and ready for some more abuse by MIT. 

Saturday, 2005-02-12

Daily crono 

Waking up 7.30 am, no breakfast, taking the T to the Marriot Hotel next to MIT, listening to some excellent lectures/speeches in the Sloan leadership seminar, meeting some new people, getting mistaken for an artist (for being to only one with ponytail in the room of 400 persons in suits/dresses, and non-hippy appearance), having lunch and too much coffee, taking 10 pages of notes, and returning to Back Bay at 6 pm, having "deluxe combo" sushi-platter at Shino express, listening to Green day, chatting on phone, writing, eating too much cereals, trying to forget studies for some hours, wondering why I do not receive any mail anymore, missing the Guardian Weekly, hanging the new map of the world on the wall and dreaming of traveling to far away places.

Sloan leadership seminar 

The seminar was good. I especially enjoyed talks by Jim Parker, ex-CEO of SW airlines, and professor Ed Schein. 

Parker started lousily by telling bad jokes, and I was about to get annoyed by the jokes and the rather overwhelming admiration of the audience. But then I started to admire mr Parker, too. He seemed to be really sincere, when he all the time, repeatedly, emphasized how the employees, the people of SW airlines (SWA), have been really the force behind the miracle of keeping SW profitable for more than 12 years in row, and still. He also told that it was the employees, who in the beginning of 1970's proposed and found ways to reduce the airliner turnaround time to 10 minutes, not anyone in the management. It is also remarkable, that SWA has never laid-off a single employee due to ecomonic hardships. It seems that SWA is following/has reinvented the Japanese lean methods and ideology. This all sounds even too good, but it is true. Some more or less quotes. "SWA takes care of the people [employees and customers], the people takes care of SWA", which has been true. After 9/11, the board of SWA froze their own salaries and benefits for several months, but did not require anyone else to do. Many did still. And some customer even sent money to SWA to help it out of the slump. "Hire for attitude, pay for skills".

Ed Schein gave a speech about "Leadership, culture, and rigidity of organizations". He pointed out that neither the view of leaders of lone heroes or the view that leaders emerge when historical circumstances so require is not enough by itself. We need to consider both of them if we want to understand the reasons for failure and success of leaders and companies. In general, when a new leader joins a team/company, there can be three possible outcomes: the leader goes full blast with new visions etc and gets marginalized, the leader is not strong enough and adopts the existing culture and does not manage to change the organization, or leader is wise enough to go in and listen, get adopted as member and only then starts to change some elements of the existing culture. Changing the whole culture is only possible by changing all members of the team/organization. 

Organizations are not usually willing to change, and it seems that successful change is only possible when the existing culture is experiencing a crisis (of any kind, but in case of business usually economical), and when there are some leaders with new ideas. The new ideas require new values, which then lead to new behavior. If the new values and behavior deliver their promises and dissolve the crisis, they and the leader get adopted. But even in this scenario, only elements of the culture can change at the same time. Schein also pointed out that even if it seems that some leader has accomplished some heroic and decisive changes in some organization, all they have done is to have refreshed the existing culture (e.g. Jobs is Apple). 

Leaders are not free to change, because they are usually trapped in the existing culture and their own biases. The existing culture refers to both the corporate culture and the culture of the society the leader and organization are part of. Schein listed many seemingly self-evident cultural fact, which Americans take for granted, but which are not global (e.g individualism, emphasis on eye-contact when discussing, the idea of seeing business as competition/war, using groups but not giving them power etc). In the end, Schein gave the following advice. 

• Look inside yourself, get to know your own taken for granted cultural assumptions.
• Do not look for role models.
• Take responsibility.
• Learn to know which kind of leadership is needed in each occasion. Then you can rise to the occasion, to do something other than you know to do, but which the situation requires.

Some other nice quotes from the seminar

• Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
• Crisis prevention may lead to paralysis by fear. (Well put)
• Get bad facts out as fast as possible, be honest, communicate as much as possible.

Other interesting issues. The CEO of Kodak, Daniel A. Carp told that they take the company values in Kodak seriously. It is the right and responsibility to challenge anyone for violating Kodak's values (which are at least "respect, integrity, learning, honesty, trust"). He said that he receives these challaenges by email from several layer's down and they are always investigated. Given my experience of large companies, this sounds way too good to be true.

In summarum, it would be hard and expensive to hear all these CEOs and professors anywhere else than in MIT, Harvard, etc. It is nice and well worth time time it takes even with my current courseload. I hope there will be other similar opportunities soon.

On language and cities etc 

I was also thinking of the usage of American English. I am really puzzled by the overuse of superlative words here. Everything seems to be "great", "awesome", people tell that they "love" this and that. I have not yet understood which words they will use when something really is "great" or "awesome", or when they really "love" something or someone. Given the current usage, I would not be too flattered hearing from someone, that (s)he "loves" me. In Finland, we try hard not to empty words of meaning by using them sloppily. So, if you meet a Finn and (s)he tells you that (s)he loves you, it tends to be serious. I mean, if it happens in Finnish. When we speak English, we have bad tendency of aping American usage, even though the British English would allow more fine-grained distinctions. 

I overheard someone saying that the difference between Boston and Minneapolis is, that Boston is a "walking-city" while Minneapolis is a "non-walking city". I tend to think, that "non-walking city" is an oxymoron. I try to stay away from such places. There are places for humans, and there are place for cars. Boston belongs to the former group, luckily for me.

My human experiment on the amount of sleep has produced new results. I seem to be able to manage with having 6 hours of sleep for one night, if I get 8 hours next night. This is quite important, since the 8am classes make it next to impossible to get 8 hours of sleep. 

I think this is more than enough for today. Please, send any comments or questions by email.

Friday, 2005-02-11

IP-telephony 

This link proves that IP-telephony is coming and will definitely change the industry. Microsoft may also become a strong player in this area, which is a bit frightening. It could become even more comprehensive a monopoly. Thanks to mr Ranto for the link. 

The most mind-boggling thing so far in USA 

I was going to Muddy Charles, one of the campus pubs, for one beer. I wanted to have a beer and chat with my class mates after one more week at MIT. There was a young fellow at the door. He asked to see my ID. I showed him my MIT-ID. It was not enough. He wanted to see some ID, which would have my date of birth on it. I do not carry an ID with me for some reason unknown also to me, and in general pub doorman has no reason to know my birth date.So, I asked what is the age limit to Muddy Charles. He said it is 21 years. So I asked whether I look younger than 21 years old. He said, no you do not, but I must ask for IDs. I decided I am not so much needing a beer in a bar, where employees may not use their own judgment at all. Either these people are just too afraid of using their brains in this land of freedom, initiative and individualism, or the law is not really about not serving alcohol to underage people, but about checking IDs. So, the police may turn up and ask whether everyone has been asked for ID. If not, they will take the door man, apply some nasty bondage and take him away, all the way to Cuba. Or then not. But I just wonder whether e.g. Noam Chomsky, or Nelson Mandela would get it without showing their ID. I would say anyone can tell than mr Chomky and my Mandela are well older than 21. Not that there should be any confusion about my age, either. I have been in about 50 countries, and I have never seen as stupid policies as this one in any of the countless bars I have been drinking in. 

Air traffic policies 

The seminar on next generation air transport systems started today. It will be very interesting. See the NGATS website. We will try to figure out the stakeholders, ways to reach the very ambitious goals set by the US government, and give our estimates on how the implementation might succeed. Really interesting, a real-world task, which could have some impact on the ways at least Americans live and fly in the future. MIT is strange place: one gets to participate in this kind of seminars and project after being here for just one month.

Daily crono 

Just for myself, just to have some way to remember how life was here in MIT in 2005. Waking up at 8.15, some breakfast, talking with S, walking to Kumar's door, taking bus to 77 Mass Av, NGATS0-seminar, reading a case study for marketing class and writing some notes and answers, Chinese food for lunch, a coffee break, the marketing class (1 to 4 pm), writing a book evaluation on "Super-optimum solutions and win-win policy" by Stuart Nagel, writing the following 3G marketing note, trying to get in Muddy Charles, visiting a library to do some blogging, walking back home, and at home doing the risk analysis assignments (done). And Friday is the easy day of the week...

Some notes on 3G history 

I wrote this after our marketing class. It may have some sense/ideas, or then not. Quite many articles are missing, some words too, but this quality level is good enough for early notes.

On 3G marketing. There are three views/concepts on marketing: selling, engineering, and production. For 3G, and Nokia in particular, the emphasis has been very much on selling and engineering. Since the whole idea of 3G grew from standardization, and not from any real customer needs or wants, there has been many attempts to sell video phones, multimedia messaging etc. On the other hand, there has been lots emphasis in making the 3G better than 2G, both in network fundamentals (bw utilization etc) and customer features (high bitrates even when there was no real need/want for them). This created all kinds of problems in R&D, and in general the whole industry, which is one reason for the whole 3G being late. 
(funny parallel story: the IP-hype in 2001-2003. It was, maybe, one effort of the traditional telecom industry to get into IP-market. It failed, at least Nokia could not make the necessary equipment - it was trying to (more or less) just take the existing dominant design and apply it to fundamentally different market). 
There were additional problems. First, the product (3G) was not clear to anyone, not even for manufacturers, it was just getting standardized, not growing in any way out of any customer needs (here IP-system are following more fruitful path: just setting the basic systems up, without any real guarantees of QoS, and seeing what the market would want. And there are lots of lead users, and other ways to find out what the markets wants.). Second, the placement was not thoroughly thought: it was considered that the first users would be business users, who can afford the expensive first phones and services. These users, however, are not enough to create demand for services (whatever they might be), which means that the supporting industry will not get an opportunity to grow. This also relates to pricing: similar mistakes, but these are known also from 2G MMS: too high prices keep demand low. The services are social, group services, which require a large user base. Without large user base, the services will not mature, or even come into existence. For promotion: there was none. But there were the infamous bw auctions, which gave 3G a very bad reputation. 

We must write a 10-page essay by mid-March. I calculated, that I write about 1 page after each of the 6 classes, it will take me about 5 hours to combine the fragments into one coherent and good essay. This is how lean studying makes my life so easy and efficient.

Thursday, 2005-02-10

Repetitio est mater studiorum

But there is a limit to that too. At least here in MIT, if a professor assigns a chapter for us to read before his/her class, and then just repeats (using slides) almost word by word main points of the chapter, most of us stop listening and open their laptops. It is rude, of course, but the lecture must add something to the reading. Otherwise either time used for reading or the lecture is waste of time. Not both. 

Disruptive technologies 

We gave our presentation/proposals of disruptive technologies we would like to study. Many of them were really interesting, or actually all were interesting. Again they laughed at me or my proposal. It always happens. Maybe I should consider a new career in stand-up comeby. I made some observations about the culture. There were at least 4 (out of 30) proposals to study TV over IP and another 4 about video on demand. This tells something about the central place of TV in our culture. Video on demand is an old idea, and has been tried for a long time. With the current broadband networks, it may be technically feasible, but I still doubt a little. Sending TV signal over IP is a fascinating idea, especially when coupled with the idea of having all ever produced TV-programs available. Of course, there will be some copyright, licensing and cost issues to solve. I do, however, think that there is something more at stake with these issues. It may well be, that when technologies develop, the whole concept of TV, as we now know it, may become obsolete, an historical relic. If that happens, and we start to use our computers/cell phones/PDAs for entertainment, it may have profound effects on family, free time, cultural unity, political processes etc. 

Someone also had some interesting new insights on 3G mobile networks and internet telephone. Skype has started a marketing campaign with Hutckinson in Hongkong. They are promoting handheld IP-phones. This spells doom for 3G, since IP-telephony is going to be cheaper. I think now, that 3G is the last, desperate incremental development step in the traditional telephone business. It is too complex, it will be too expensive to use. The main assumptions behind 3G do not hold. There is no shortage of bandwidth (except in air), and the idea of customers requiring better, or even same, quality of service than in 2G (gsm, cdma) is just absurd. The popularity of non-mobile internet telephony proves this point. This is a disruption, and companies, who fail to change, will fail. There will be many.

Daily crono 

I walked to MIT with Kumar. The RFID-class was as good, or even better than/as usual. We also got our RFID-kits, and are now able to build our own RFID-systems. It will be really fun thing to do. I had a few hours free time between classes. I used the time by going to the gym, having lunch (Chinese, as always, from the food-truck), reading some books, and day dreaming about being able to stay in MIT-like environment for the rest of my life. In the afternoon, we had two classes, and after that I discussed with mr Koo about his work and my thesis. I left home at 7.30 am and returned at 8.30 pm, after which I read 40 pages for the Air Traffic Policy seminar. A normal MIT-day. I do not have any need for TV, not even one that uses IP. Or ATM, for that matter. 

My proposal of developing a chair, in which one can do some discrete exercises while listening to a lecture, has been accepted for further development. We also have a team for doing the development. Very good team I would say. Maybe we will invent a real hit product and laugh all the way to the bank in one year.

Wednesday, 2005-02-09

Daily crono 

This week is easier than last. We only have one assignment to do. So, I had time to write my first draft thesis proposal. This is strange program: after studying 1 month we must/should already have decided thesis topic and lured a professor to supervise us. But the faster, the better. At least I cannot get bored. What else today. Well, a great lecture about ERBA (risk analysis). I think the topic is important for any system architect, and I am sad I did not have the conceptual tools earlier. They would have made my life much easier. Then, another great lecture about Apollo. It is getting even more interesting - and I may even have time to read some books during weekend. Then, writing thesis proposal, and now relaxing by writing this blog. It is 5pm. At 6pm, we will have some CEO lecturing us about marketing and advertising industry. I am sure it will be interesting. Oh, on Saturday, I will participate in Sloan leadership seminar. Lecturers include Peter Senge and others. 

We have small cubicles in the SDM-office. We could use them for studying, but I cannot concentrate there at all. It is much easier for me to work in the libraries. There are at least 14 libraries in the MIT-campus, so one is never too far way. What's even better, is that one can have a window seat in the library, which makes it even more pleasant. 

My proposals for thesis topics are really theoretical: "developing context dependent Crawley-machine (CM/OPN, later CM)", "adding natural language interface by merging GF and CM", and "Mathematic properties of complex system models". They are all exciting and hard topics, and I am not sure whether they are small enough for SDM-thesis. But what the heck: doing something easy and simple would be wasting time. It is better to (try to) do as hard things as possible (person dependent). I base my proposal on mr Koo's PhD-thesis, which is really good one. It is surprising that he has written thesis on the topics I have been interested for the last 6 years. What is more surprising is that he has come up with the same token passing structure, which I invented in April 1999 in the Types-seminar. I just did not do anything with my idea even. Sad, or funny, I do not know. A fact anyway.

Regrets?

Sometimes, when studying here I regret spending too much time in the industry. I could be a professor already by now, if I had only studied. But I ran out of money, and was spoiled enough to want to have some. Then again, maybe my time in the industry taught me something, which many professor do not have. And it was fun, at least at times. Anyway, I have now realized, that I have been just going on 10% speed for the last 1 or 2 years. Now I try to speed up, and try to make up the lost time. Keep your thumbs up for me, please. 

MBA - second thoughts 

I went again to the so called CEO-class today. Today the founder and boss of WPP was there talking. It was pretty interesting and actually nasty. The CEO told, implicitly, that one should not study in an American business school. Instead, one should study in China or India. I am not sure if the MBA student caught the bun. 

Personally, I am really happy that I chose the SDM program and not any of the MBA-programs. I would suffer in an business school. I just cannot/could not get myself motivated enough to study just management, finance, etc. I would get bored, it is not rigorous enough, and making money and getting rich is not what motivates me (even though I thought so when having boring and miserable time in Nokia, not that it helped even then). Also, somehow I sensed too much pure admiration, too much idolization in the class today. The MBA-students seems to be too amazed by seeing an real CEO, and could not really bring themselves into making hard question. Neither could I, but it was because I had not done any research. I did not even now, nor do I know now, what WPP is etc. To get credit from the course, we should write 3 memos. Right now, I feel that I cannot get enough interested in the task, even though it might not require that much. Let's see. In short, I think that my motivation is coming from science and technology. When you combine that with extreme need for freedom and autonomy, going to an MBA-school would have been a really bad alternative (just to let you know, I applied to IMD and was promptly rejected; they now what they are doing there).

Beer and fish and chips - and friends

I have nice dinner with Spiros, Dave, Christian and Kumar in the Cambridge Brewery. They serve just excellent "Russian porter", which is strong in taste and in alcohol content. I took fish and chips as I always do. This time it was not so good, but just decent. The brewery itself is a nice place, and I am sure to visit it several times this year. After dinner, we did some shopping: groceries.

Tuesday, 2005-02-08

Hurting

Rajeev asked professor Simchi-Levi, who teaches system optimization and has a company producing optimization software, whether the tools are of any practical value (or something to this effect). Levi replied: "Please, this hurts", smiling. He then explained how the optimization software can save any number of millions of dollars. Funny thing, and a good class.

Tuesday notes

Tuesday is way too full of things. Basically, classes from 8 am to 6 pm, and some group work after 6pm, maybe even to 8-9 pm. And then there are things to prepare for Wednesday. It will get easier in mid-March when the some courses end.

Total Care Laundry Service delivered its promise. They picked up my laundry on Monday evening. When I came back from MIT at 10pm on Tuesday, they had already delivered washed and folded clothes at my door. They had even paired my socks. Excellent. Price was $25 for 24 pounds of washed and folded clothes. This service is highly recommendable! Use it, washing your own clothes is not really worth the effort when this kind excellent service is available.

Disruptive technologies 

Professor Utterback asked us to think about current products which we will still produce and use in 100 years (like the current light bulbs). Here is my preliminary list, which is rather long. 

• Kitchen utensil: forks, knives, spoon, vessels, frying pans, chopsticks 
• Some basic tools: axe, screwdriver, scissors, combs, shovels, etc 
• Clothing: suits, ties (fortunately not), etc
• Cloth hangers
• Pens, pencils, paper 
• Basic furniture: sofas, chairs, tables, beds, etc, futons 
• Bicycles 
• Walking sticks
• Different bags: shoulder, back, etc
• Basic medication: tylenol, lotions, vitamins
• Needles and strings 
• Blackboard and chalk (in universities!)

Humour?

See mr Bush and friends and foes singing and dancing. They are almost as funny as they are in real life. Thanks to Uday for the link. 

Lean turned into fat

My lean studying efforts failed due to my stubbornness in using too much time and effort in solving some worthless equations (or actually just doing simple multiplications) for the first ERBA-assignment. In the future, I will just skip similar hard calculation, I will just develope the model and leave it unsolved. I have better things to do, and many of them. But one cannot learn without making mistakes. And because I am still at least a day ahead my assignments, I have no need to worry. But I had some success today, too. My product idea (of an exercise seat for class rooms) received warm laughter in the class. I am a happy camper, since my idea is to have fun and let others have fun too. 

Judges deciding what is good science!

A set of chemical manufacturers are suing some historians and their publishers for trying to publish a book on the environmental history in USA. And not only the authors, but also the peer referees, who have supported publishing the book. They claim that the book is bad science and harms the reputations of the companies. This is strange. Not only will judges decide the presidents, but also the value of science. I wonder where this all leads to. See the the article and start to get worried. If this thing goes on, it is even worse that state censorship. Thanks to S for the link. 

Who are heroes ?

Professor Apostolakis claimed, that astronauts are heroes, because they travel into space with the Shuttle, whose failure probability is about 1/100. I tend to agree that astronauts are heroes, but in general just doing something dangerous does not make anyone a hero. For example, I would not call BASE-jumpers heroes, nor would I call anyone who has non-safe-sex with a South African prostitute (or any prostitute for that matter, I guess) a hero. So, clearly there is more to being a hero than just taking risk. I would suggest taking risk and somehow contributing to the common good. This works rather well, if we can agree what common good is - but this is incredibly hard. And someone could claim that not all space flights contribute anything to any common good, but are just waste of money and effort (I would not). So, let's consider taking great risks and mitigating risks of others as a criteria for being a hero. I cannot come up with any counter example right away, so I will tentatively accept this definition (it would cover firemen, doctors, nurses, UN peace-corps, Doctor without borders, policemen, etc). You may send you own ideas by email, if you do not have anything better to do with your life. Like being a hero...

Monday, 2005-02-07

New week

Second week of the spring semester starts. 14 to go still. I am still in very good and productive mood, all courses are interesting. I even enjoy the risk and benefit analysis. It may turn out to be hard, but it is rather important topic, and the tools are certainly useful later, whatever I end up doing. 

It is still sunny, maybe 5C, no wind. I walked to MIT with Robbie. It was a pleasant walk in good company. The walk was maybe even too short, only 20 minutes. I need more exercise. But I felt fresh and alert, and the first lecture was fine. Afterwards, I read the required pages of the Apollo books, and now it is time to have some Chinese food for lunch.

The Apollo-course was as good, or even better, as/than last week. It so much fun, but also so much reading and writing too! But that is exactly why I came here. I also met mr Koo, and after talking to him I am all more convinced that I must write my thesis with him and others related in the pursuit of developing system architecting tools. It is what I have been thinking about and missing for the last 5 years now. And now I have a possibility to do something useful. What a happy coincidence. Or so I think right now. Ask me about all this in early December and I will may have other opinions.

I talked about leadership and my career plans with Jan Klein. Mostly private issues, but one thing has now become clear. I cannot work anymore in any large organization, ever. It would just be an intellectual suicide. My career anchor seems to be freedom, and I am willing to pay any price I need to just to work in a place, which has lots of intellectual freedom and in which I can plan my work flexibly, and in which hard intellectual work is respected. MIT would be one such place, but there are others, too. Let's see what materializes.

I started to use the service of Total Care Laundry Services. They will pick up my laundry, which I leave at my door, wash and fold it, and return it next day. All for $1.05 per pound. Excellent. Next service I would need and be willing to pay for would be cleaning my studion. If anyone know a cheap, but not exploitative, cleaning service, let my know. Use the email at the top of this page.

Sunday, 2005-02-06

Bad showers

USA may be the most technologically advanced country in the world and MIT may well be the epicenter of new technology, but still the one cannot get a decent shower here. Yesterday, I went to the MIT-gym, which is excellent, spacious, clean, with enough new equipment for any kind of strength training. And they give free towels, too. But I was bitterly disappointed by the quality of the showers. It not that there would not be enough water, even hot one, and that it would be hard to adjust the temperature. No, all that is OK. The only problem is that these folk just are unable to manufacture decent shower heads. All the water is just wasted, sprinkled to the walls. I was lucky enough to spot a shower for the disabled, in which I got take the system apart and just use the water hose. Finally, I got my hair washed properly, for the first time after coming to USA. I have not encountered this bad showers since I was in Poland in 1990. 

Lean studying

I have been experimenting and developing my new concept of lean studying. The principles I have created so far are:

1. Learn to think on your feet. (I got this from mr Koo)
2. Do not stop the value, when it is flowing. For example, if you get an assignment is a class, and have 1 hour free time after the class, try to complete the assignment and turn it in. This way you get it done, and you can start worrying something else. And it is always faster to continue doing something than to start anew. 
3. Try to be 2-3 days ahead of your assignments. It gives you freedom in doing other things, and also some flexibility. Also, if you can do something, let it be for 2 days, and then check it before turning it in, the quality is much better.
4. Write when walking. Do not stop thinking ever, develop your ideas all the time. Be careful not to think wrong things: when walking to an exam/presentation, think of something else. Thanks to S for this advice.
5. Load your mind before going to sleep and most of the things will be clear in the morning. (idea gotten from professor Crawley)
6. Think things trough once and well. Do not just assume you understand them, test yourself by trying out the new methods to some small exercises. (this is a hard principle to obey to with the current workload).
7. Learn how to read and walk at the same time. It sometimes helps to cope with excessive reading amount.
8. Keep breaks. If you just cannot figure out something after trying hard for an hours or so, change to some other subject. (this is a variant of the loading and sleeping principle). Thanks to S for clarifying this. 
9. Divide your time among the different classes/topics. Do not use more than allocated time for each class even if you cannot solve/complete all assignments in that time. If you overdo anything, you will end up in vicious circle of being late and underdoing everything.
10. Remember that the goal is to learn. Good grades will follow. Worrying about grades is waste of time and mental energy. 

MIT weekend

The going is getting tough, but I am still working only at about 60% or less of my capacity. I am just warming up my brains. Anyway, I have completed all assignments due next week. Now I just need to read some 300 pages next week, and of course do the next assignments. I have not been doing anything else but studying this weekend, but I have had a lots of fun. I even developed a program for building the sum of product forms needed in risk and benefit analysis. I was just too stupid not to understand what to do and did the wrong thing, which was too hard to do by hand. Funny, a good programming exercise, too. Not commercial as of now. We had a group meeting in E40 today with Kumar, Srini, and Vineet. We work on risk analysis, RFID, and system optimization together. It is fun, and more efficient than just to work alone. 

The weather is getting nice. It is warm enough to use spring/summer clothes already. Sun shines, it is not raining. I assume this is a nice place after one month, but I will be studying even then. 

The Guardian Weekly has started to appear in my mailbox on Saturdays. It is as good as I remembered (I have not subscribed to it for a year now). Still no sight of the Economist even though I sent a notification of my changed address a month ago. They are so slow, they have such a good magazine, that they do not have to worry about their customers. Customers have nowhere else to go to. But I have not been able to follow what is happening - I must add this to my lean efforts somehow. 

Soon I will go to Brian's with Sam and other to watch the Superbowl (?). I have no real idea of the rules of the local football, and no cultural skills needed in watching it. But I am sure I will learn. I just hope they have some beer - I am getting thirsty. 

I sometimes take the T to MIT. On the way, I often see some musicians. One old guy is often playing clarinet in the Copley station, an not-so-easy-to-understand man raps in front of the local 7-11. Quite often there are some guys playing makeshift drums in the Copley place. Today, in the Park street station 2 older men were playing guitars and singing. They were really good, much better than most house bands is most pubs. If I see them again, I will ask them to play in some of the parties we will soon throw. 

Friday, 2005-02-04

Practical matters

I manage to read one chapter of the "Mastering the dynamics of Innovation", while waiting in the Social Security office. This time they accepted our (= I and Vineet) application and will send us either the card or a letter telling that we unworthy aliens will never get the card. The social security office is a sad place, full of poor, sick, and down trodden people.

We also took the flu vaccination, which is available for all MIT-students in the MIT-medical. We cannot afford getting flu this spring. They also told us that one of the most important ways to prevent flu is to sleep 8 hours every night. So much for the heroic cult of not sleeping etc. It is plain stupid cult.

Another nice course started today. Eric von Hippel lectures about "Innovation in the marketplace": how the so called lead user are often the real inventors of new product, and how companies may take advantage of this insight. Not that many do. The course is nice, its workload light, and assignment small enough to do after class. Which I did. 

In the evening, I and others in our class went to the graduate student happening in the Museum@MIT. Nice museum, excellent collection of robot, holograms, and photographs. A must place for anyone interested in technology. Free drinks, no food. 

We continues to Dave's and Christian's mansion in Cambridge: Uday, Kumar, Matt, Matt, Sam. Nice evening, looking at some business possibilities, but not committing to anything. In MIT, one must consider businesses. Furthermore, rather many of us are getting unwilling to work in any large corporation. Independence and autonomy rule!

Thursday, 2005-02-03

Democrazy spreading

Thus spoke Mr Bush, and the governments in Syria and Iran will promptly collapse and turn into democracies. As we remember, most 9/11 terrorists game from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, so it is only matter of time, when the retreating troops from Iraq will put freedom and democracy in place in Saudi Arabia. It would be a good thing to do: the Saudi kingdom is really a medieval relic and should be overturn.

The weather is excellent: -4C, sunshine, no wind. It takes me 20 minutes to walk from my home to 77 Massachusetts Avenue, in vicinity of which we have our class in the spring term. Nice way to start a day. And 2 times 20 minutes plus other walks in the campus are quite enough for keeping me in fit. 

Day in MIT

Today's classes: RFID from 8 to 9.30 am, disruptive technologies from 2.30 to 4 pm, and product design and development from 4.30 to 6 pm. From 6 pm to 8 pm we will get a free dinner, but we have to do some marketing of SDM-program. So, it is maybe not that free after all. 

We had interesting classes today, the same ones as on Tuesday except "System optimization". First, professor Sarma continued his explanation of RFID-technology, the work of MIT's Auto-ID-center during the past 6 years. Excellent, and really valuable and current information, and presented in a manner which even I could understand. We also managed to participate in the "Thesis seminar", which is about how to write the thesis and how to lure an advisor. Speaking of which, I have a nice talk with Benjamin Koo, SDM00, who has recently defended his PhD-thesis on "Meta-language for system architecting". Pretty interesting and fascinating stuff, which I would love to work on in my thesis. I may, if I get lucky. Stay tuned. Then, later in the afternoon, professor Utterback gave one of his superb lectures about disruptive technology.It is so nice to listen to someone, who has been studying something already before I was born. And is still going strong, writing articles and books, teaching. But he is a bit troubled by our class: in his words "you are so bright, you want to have the course in one lecture". Maybe we are, at least we are profoundly interested and curious. After another good 1.5 hours of "Product design and development", it was time to go for the free dinner, and to discuss with prospective new students in an information session/open house.

I decided, that it is high time to do some homework. So, I submitted my proposals for both "Product development" and "Disruptive technologies". It was really fun to write those, and it will be even more fun to give my presentation in "Product design" class next week.

It is getting late (10.45 pm), but I still have some energy to read mr Koo's thesis. Oh, life is nice. Of course, having S around would make it nicer, but, on the other hand, I do not have too much time for anything but MIT for the time being. 

Another SDM-fellow, Sam, has started blogging on regular basis. He has interesting insights, very much worth reading. 

Wednesday, 2005-02-02

What a great day! 

First, we had a class about engineering risk and benefit analysis, which is supposed to be hard, and to contain some difficult mathematics. After the first class, and the general setting of the course, I do not believe. It is not pure mathematics, which is sometimes hard, but applied one, which is more about recipes and understanding the application than about proving some theorems or doing really complicated formal derivations etc. So, it also should be fun, even though some SDM04ers have led us to believe otherwise. 

Second, the class on Apollo moon program started. It is about Apollo as a complex system, and covers at least technological, architecture, engineering, political aspects of the Apollo. The main lecturer, David Mindell, is both professor of electrical engineering (specializing in submarine robotics) and established historian of engineering. The other, Laurence Young, professor has been working with space systems for the last 40 years or so, and been part of the Apollo program itself. And there is more to come: each lecture features guests. Today Jeff Hoffman, astronaut himself, gave an overview of the next generation space systems, which should take humans to moon and Mars, in a sustainable and repeated manner. Later, we will also have guest lectures by, among others, one physics professor, who went to moon and even came back, etc. See Buzz Aldrin. The only downside of the course is the amount of reading required, but I guess one cannot avoid that when talking about large scale historical project. I will list of the books later. 

Third, I went to "Entrepreneurship in innovation" class, in which we discuss with Fortune 500 CEOs about their business. Today, Joe Liemandt from Trilogy. His main point was that outsourcing and open software are undermining the business value of pure software engineering in USA and in Western world. His company has solve this problem by moving up in the value chain and starting to provide business value improvement services etc. Anyway, the underlying technological change here has been the dramatic decrease of communication costs. Joe did not mention this, but it is apparent. So, in the future the communication cost will continue to decrease, which will just speed up globalisation. So, as Joe pointed out, the industrial countries must continue to innovate with increasing efficiency if they want to keep up to current living standards. But is this the right goal to strive for? Well, no time for ethics today. I need to read some 40 pages still for tomorrows "Disruptive technology"-class. Anyway, Joe's company is a good and rare example how a company may survive a disruptive new technology. 

So, I still think that this SDM@MIT-program is really worth every euro it costs. Consider applying, your life will never be the same boring office- work after being here for one year. 

Tuesday, 2005-02-01

Quite a day: classes from 8 am to 6 pm with only one 2 hours break. But the classes are really interesting. See what Yoav has to say about them. I have not so much to add to his remarks. Except that I take the RFID-class, in which we will build a simple RFID-receiver and experiment with it. It will definitely be a lot of fun. 

Classes are rather condensed, we cover lots of material in very short time. The assignments are interesting, and for the most part fun to do, but they will definetely require a lot of time. We also face some challenges since we all will be members of several groups, and finding common free timeslot will be hard. 

Professor Utterback, who lectures on disruptive technologies will require us us read only books and articles, whose authors will give guest lectures. Nice principle, and gives us important opportunities to meet signicant persons. 

I went to check out the gym of MIT. It is well equipped, clean and busy. I did not have any excercise, since it was already too late. But I will start to go there on Tuesdays and Saturdays, just to wash my hair. My shower here at home is of no use. 

And now I should come up with an idea for a new product, which has less than 10 parts, can be prototypes with less than $1000, and which will have at least small business potential. It is hard for one who has been dealing with large system for the last years. But I think I will figure something out. Maybe I will just go to some hardware stores on Saturday and see what kinds of gadgets there are. Then all I have to do is to find an unsatisfied need, and write a short proposal. It should be possible. This is for the product development-course. For the disruptive technologies I need to figure out an emerging technology. All in one week, in addition to all kinds of other assignments etc. Well, no panic, just entertainment and creative thinking.

All opinions are mine and do not reflect opinions etc of my current or future employers as far as I am aware.

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