James Zhuo 卓宇翔

  
A SHORT LOVE STORY IN STOP MOTION from Carlos Lascano on Vimeo.

I don't think I can put it any better than Colin Powell. This man has some real substance I must say. He's also probably the first leader to publicly condemn the wrongful association of Muslim and Terrorists, suggesting that this would only serve to further segregate American society and the world at large.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/27265490#27265490


PS: How could America contemplate voting for McCain given his choice of running mate? McCain's choice of Sarah Palin clearly shows his lack of judgement.

This should be pretty handy if you are looking for compulsory third party insurance for your car in Australia - http://prices.maa.nsw.gov.au/index.html I must say it works much better than I had expected it to.

The banning of short selling around the globe is all over the news. But I have not found a single article that even attempted to explain what short selling is and how the ban affects the ordinary mum and pop investors in their everyday trading.

The short answer is that it doesn't affect the ordinary mum and pop investors, you can still do your everyday trading. This is a regulatory measure aimed solely at big investment funds to help curb the speculative nature of the practice.

So what is short selling? In an ordinary trade, you will buy before you can sell, short selling allows you to sell before you buy. This is kind of strange and most people has to wonder how this happens or why this practice is even allowed.

HOW SHORT SELLING IS TRANSACTED
I've extracted the following from an wikipedia article which explains the how:
"Short selling is a form of speculation that allows a trader to sell securities that he does not own ....  In order to make the initial sale, the standard method is to "borrow" securities from a current shareholder, typically a bank or prime broker, agreeing to return them on demand by the lender. The seller delivers these borrowed shares to the buyer, a third party. The seller/borrower is generally required to advance the worth of the shares to the lender, who is then able to earn interest on this amount (a partial "rebate" may be returned to the borrower). When the seller wants to "unwind" the position, he buys back the shares in the market and returns them to the lender. This short/borrow system ensures the trader has shares to deliver to his buyer, while the lender earns interest on a position that he was not actively trading."

WHY SHORT SELLING IS ALLOWED
I don't think I could articulate a better argument for short selling than the following articles.
1. ASIC caught short on using regulatory power (read this one)
2. A step too far

 
Great talk for entrepreneurs.

On a more personal front. I used to go through emotional ups and downs a lot more. In retrospect, this was probably because of fears, fear that while others make money in a full-time job to pay off their house, that I would come out of it with nothing. These self-doubts can sometimes kill one's entrepreneurial spirit, I am just glad that I no longer seem to suffer from these mental struggles.

Using python decorators you can easy do inject behaviours through declaration.
A good example of how this might be used in an web application is as follows

@authenticated
def home(request):
  """ a function to handle web request for the home page """
  .... code to handle web request ....

@authenticated injects authentication functionality through a decorator implemented
as either a Python decorator function or decorator class. Here's a great 3 part tutorial on
python decorators http://muharem.wordpress.com/2006/10/18/3/

One of those lovely things about python.

This was some python geek's signature in a python mailing list that I've recently joined. I thought it's quite funny.

"Thus spake the Lord: Thou shalt indent with four spaces. No more, no less. Four shall be the number of spaces thou shalt indent, and the number of thy indenting shall be four. Eight shalt thou not indent, nor either indent thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to four. Tabs are right out."

http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff261/ikaika_34/check.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adYbFQFXG0U
    

This TedTalk is pretty average but Al Gore was being really funny.
   

Now if you want an interesting TedTalk and has 20 minutes to spare now, try "Classical Music with Shining Eyes" by Benjamin Zander

   

Glassdoor.com is a really cool site. If you are like me and constantly try to understand how companies and businesses work. Glassdoor enables (ex)employees to reveal a different side of every company. These reviews are subject to individual opinions and experiences but taken together they are a great insight into a company and its culture. For example, Google has been seen as this great company to work for that does great things, but perhaps they are more like the next Microsoft than most people think, here's a few extracts


See for yourself here.

PS: tradevibes.com is another great site, a new startup trying to be wikipedia but for information related to startup companies, they seem to be attracting enough people to their site to get the whole movement going. This is another 1 dollar bet for me and Michael. I think they might just make it, though they do have a formidable competitor - crunchbase.

Everything about Google looks so promising, bar the following Google sued over 'unwanted ads', or more specifically the fact that their revenue relies solely on online Advertising which is unreliable and potentially a bottomless pit hole. Perhaps I am overly concerned since Google's revenue has been steadily increasing despite these lawsuits. But instinctively I see no substance in Google's online advertisements. I've asked many around me and none of them pay any attention to Google's text based ads, their acquisition of DoubleClick is probably a good sign that they've realised this. Personally I am much more inclined to click on ads with pictures or Flash similar to TV ads and even then I might click on at most 3 ads every year (yes I can count the number of times I've clicked).

What's most promising about Google for me is their push into software as a service (Saas). I can see Google becoming a leading enterprise software maker in the not too distant future. In fact I would argue that they already are, Gmail is the proof. But there are also Google doc, Google site (wiki), Google reader, Google calendar and let's not forget their newly launched App Engine service. We are boot-strapping our startup operation using all of these Google technologies and we see absolutely no reason to use anyone else. In a sense we are at the bleeding edge of using all these technologies and we see many others following swiftly in the same direction. This is really the root of my optimism about Google.

Google may face competitions from Microsoft in all of these areas, but I just can't see Microsoft transitioning from their existing business model to the new cheap, on-demand, commodity based, enterprise, web solutions model. It's the culture of these companies that ultimately dictate what they become and I think Google's culture is much more well-suited to the new economy built around the web.

Having said all of these, is $552.12 USD at a P/E of 38.81 a good buy given the current state of the US economy? Or would you buy Apple at a similar P/E, an equally promising company with arguably less risk and more prospects for growth? Or Amazon with a P/E of almost 70, again very promising with the release of Amazon Kindle and Amazon web services. I think in the long term all these companies will be good buys, for me it's just a matter of what price to buy into them. If you've any valuation model to share with me, I would love to see it.

JZ

http://www.justin.tv/hackertv/97862/DHH_Talk__Startup_School_2008

This is definitely one of the better presentations that I've seen from DHH.
He sounded a lot more matured and his arrogance seemed to have subsided.
But great advices on how to build a startup. I think many internet entrepreneurs
or indeed any other entrepreneurs would really appreciated this information.
DHH was just being honest and trying to help, which is really good to see :)

Great video!

I was just chatting to my friend Michael about how the MacBook Air fits into an envelope. So I thought I would try it with my MacBook pro. Voila, IT FITS!!! hahahaha, well that just kills Apple's MacBook Air promotion ...

Before I start my rant, here's a more balanced perspective about China and Tibet from my friend George, who has a passion for East Asian cultures, and who understands China and Chinese more than most westerners because he has studied and lived in China and Korea. After reading my blog, another friend sent me a post on a public forum by M.A.Jones who presented some empirical evidence on the subject matter. His view is consistent with mine but he goes into much more details.

Let me start by revealing the true face of western media as the author of this video puts it.

             

BBC, CNN, Washington Post, N-TV, Bild Zeitung, RTL, Berliner Mogenpost, Der Spiegel, the list goes on ...  no wonder why people in the west think the way they do about China.

Here's an extract from Time Magazine, March 2008 "Playing the Games" by Joshua Kurlantzick - "the unrest in Tibet stems from years of brutal Chinese religious, economic and political repression". Let me dissect each one of those 3 repressions for you since Time Magazine is unwilling or unable to do so.

"Economic repression" - China has pumped billions of dollars into Tibet since its economic revival. Tibetan region enjoys tax exemptions and a large capital inflow for its infrastructures and tourism-based economy. Tibetan has been treated in the same consistent way that 54 other minorities has been treated in China, i.e. being given special privileges and economic support. People must also understand that China's rise is a step by step process, The 3 special economic regions in China has been given priorities to kick start the Chinese economic engine. The rest of the country will prosper along side as investments spread in-land for lower costs over time. The Tibetan Automous Region already enjoys a lot of benefit from the Chinese government. Chinese Han and Muslim entrepreneurs are doing great businesses in Tibet, why don't Tibetan people do something for themselves instead of rioting and looting from those who have?

"Political repression" is rubbish. Tibet is an Automous Region in China which means they get to govern themselves with funding provided by the Chinese government (not to mention the tax exemptions). But of course Tibet must still be governed in line with the Chinese constitution because it's part of China. It's no different to how states in Australia are governed by local state governments, but each must still be governed in line with the Australian constitution while the central government overlooks everything.

"Religious repression" may have occurred in the era of communist ideals (pre-1980 era), but this applied across all of China, and it is in the past. Tibetan are free to practice their religion today, only political dissidents are suppressed in light of social unrest, some of them being monks.  If you ask Tibetan monks whether they like the Chinese government, of course they will say no because their authority and power has been stripped by the Chinese government when the slavery system was overthrown in Tibet (where the monastery, monks and the upper class enjoyed privileges and power over the ordinary people and slaves). If you ask descendants of Tibetan slaves whether they like the Chinese government, of course they would say yes. This is about the interests of particular groups, not about religious repression.

But most westerners would never understand these because they hardly understand a thing about China and Tibet. Yet they are happy to stand along side those exiled Tibetans and protest for Tibetan independence, claiming cultural genocide and human rights abuse. Sure, the Chinese cultural revolution was wrong, the Tian An Men Square event was wrong. But the west can be less hypocritical by not talking about China like the west haven't done worst. Europeans have done far worst things than what China has ever done to people of other cultures, you name it, ethnic cleansing, cultural genocide, the list doesn't end. But the world has largely put this past behind and wants to move onto a better future, so why don't the west do the same when looking at China instead of nitpicking on every little thing. Why not stop looking at China with prejudice and stereotype and learn more about China if you so wish to talk about China.

I've brought this topic to the open table with my business partner and friend Michael who is a white Australian, and his view is that surely I would understand why Tibetans wants independence, and sure I do. If I was a Tibetan I would probably do the same, well maybe not the rioting and looting and killing but I would certainly have joined the independence movement. Having said that, the west must surely also understand that Tibet is situated at a very strategic location in China and for this reason alone China would never allow Tibet to become independent. Same story goes with Taiwan but that's another story all together.

Some people like to talk about the legitimacy of Chinese claim to Tibetan land. Tibet has been occupied and controlled by China since the 13th century, i.e centuries before the founding of European colonies in America and Australia. Ask why Britain won't allow independence of Northern Ireland, ask Canada why Quebec is not allowed to become an independent nation, Ask Germany why Bavaria is not an independent nation, Ask Belgium why Flanders is not an independent nation. I don't think I have to make my point any more explicit.

IMHO, if Tibetans are smart, they can take advantage of Chinese investments, take advantage of the tax exemptions, take advantage of special privilege that the Chinese Government has given every ethnic minority cultures in China, all 55 of them including Tibet and make a better Tibet. Independence is only for the idealist.

I am interested in what your think.
twitter me: jamesz
email me: james.zhuo [@] gmail.com
MSN me: yuxiangzhuo [@] hotmail.com

You can get to know a bit more about the cast system that was in place in Tibet from the video below.