Dr. Pausch concluded his lecture with words of wisdom from his lessons learned, summarized as follows:
Loyalty is a two-way street.
Never give up.
You get people to help you by telling the truth. Being earnest. I'll take an earnest person over a hip person every day, because hip is short term. Earnest is long term.
Apologize when you screw up and focus on other people, not on yourself.
Get a feedback loop and listen to it. ... Anybody can get chewed out. It's the rare person who says, oh my god, you were right. ... When people give you feedback, cherish it and use it.
Show gratitude.
Don't complain. Just work harder.
Be good at something, it makes you valuable.
Work hard.
Find the best in everybody. ... No one is all evil. Everybody has a good side; just keep waiting, it will come out.
And be prepared. Luck is truly where preparation meets opportunity.
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
當我休學之後，我再也不用上我沒興趣的必修課，把時間拿去聽那 些我有興趣的課。這一點也不浪漫。我沒有宿舍，所以我睡在友人家裡的地板上，靠著回收可樂空罐的退費五分錢買吃的，每個星期天晚上得走七哩的路繞過大半個 鎮去印度教的Hare Krishna神廟吃頓好料，我喜歡Hare Krishna神廟的好料。就這樣追隨我的好奇與直覺，大部分我所投入過的事務，後來看來都成了無比珍貴的經歷（And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on）。舉個例來說。當時里德學院有著大概是全國最好的書寫教育。校園內的每一張海報上，每個抽屜的標籤上，都是美麗的手寫字。因為我休學了，可以不照正 常選課程序來，所以我跑去上書寫課。我學了serif與sanserif字體，學到在不同字母組合間變更字間距，學到活字印刷偉大的地方。書寫的美好、歷 史感與藝術感是科學所無法掌握的，我覺得這很迷人。
我再說一次，你無法預先把點點滴滴串連起來；只有在未來回顧時，你才會 明白那些點點滴滴是如何串在一起的（you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards）。所以你得相信，眼前你經歷的種種，將來多少會連結在一起。你得信任某個東西，直覺也好，命運也好，生命也好，或者業力。這種作法從 來沒讓我失望，我的人生因此變得完全不同。（Jobs停下來喝水）
我很確定，如果當年蘋果電腦沒開除我，就不會發生這些事情。這帖藥很苦口，可是我想蘋果電腦 這個病人需要這帖藥。有時候，人生會用磚頭打你的頭。不要喪失信心。我確信我愛我所做的事情，這就是這些年來支持我繼續走下去的唯一理由（I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did）。
你得找出你的最愛，工作上是如此，人生伴侶也是如此。
你的工作將佔掉你人生的一大部分，唯一真正獲得滿足的方法就是做你相信是偉大的工作，而唯一做偉大工作的方法是愛你所做的事（And the only way to do great work is to love what you do）。
當 我十七歲時，我讀到一則格言，好像是「把每一天都當成生命中的最後一天，你就會輕鬆自在。（If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right）」（聽眾笑）這對我影響深遠，在過去33年裡，我每天早上都會照鏡子，自問：「如果今天是此生最後一日，我今天要做些什麼？」每當我連續太多 天都得到一個「沒事做」的答案時，我就知道我必須有所改變了。提醒自己快死了，是我在人生中面臨重大決定時，所用過最重要的方法。因為幾乎每件事－所有外 界期望、所有的名聲、所有對困窘或失敗的恐懼－在面對死亡時，都消失了，只有最真實重要的東西才會留下（Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important）。提醒自己快死了，是我所知避免掉入畏懼失去的陷阱裡最好的方法。人生不帶來、死不帶去，沒理由不能順心而為。
你 們的時間有限，所以不要浪費時間活在別人的生活裡。不要被教條所侷限--盲從教條就是活在別人思考結果裡。不要讓別人的意見淹沒了你內在的心聲。最重要 的，擁有追隨自己內心與直覺的勇氣，你的內心與直覺多少已經知道你真正想要成為什麼樣的人（have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become），任何其他事物都是次要的。（聽眾鼓掌）
CBS said Thursday it would buy CNET Networks for $1.8 billion in cash. I'm surprised that CBS hadn't made such a move a lot sooner. A year and a half ago, Leslie Moonves, the chief executive of CBS, told The New York Times that his efforts to expand CBS's Web footprint would not include expensive acquisitions. "We are not going to spend $1.6 billion on YouTube," he told The New York Times, referring to the video-sharing site that Google had recently bought. "We are looking for the next YouTube and Quincy knows all the players." Mr. Moonves now appears to have decided that CBS needs to spend at least that much to build out its Internet presence and make it attractive to advertisers. For more related news, please refer to here: http://finance.google.com/finance?q=CBS
Cast: Ioan Gruffudd (William Wilberforce), Romola Garai (Barbara Spooner), Benedict Cumberbatch (William Pitt), Albert Finney (John Newton), Michael Gambon (Lord Charles Fox), Rufus Sewell (Thomas Clarkson), Youssou N'Dour (Olaudah Equiano), Ciarán Hinds (Lord Tarleton), Toby Jones (Duke of Clarence), Nicholas Farrell (Henry Thornton), Sylvestra Le Touzel (Marianne Thornton), Jeremy Swift (Richard the Butler), Stephen Campbell Moore (James Stephen), Bill Paterson (Lord Dundas), Nicholas Day (Sir William Dolben).
1807, William Wilberforce is the main force behind the passage of the bill eliminating the slave trade in the British Empire
Below is a summary of the entire movie.
By the 18th century, over 11 million African men, women and children had been taken from Africa to be used as slaves in the West Indies and the American colonies. Great Britain's empire was built on the back of slaves. The slave trade was considered as acceptable by all but a few. Of these, even fewer were brave enough to speak against it.
England 1797. William Wilberforce is riding in a carriage when he has the driver stop so that he might stop two men from abusing their exhausted horse. William visits with his cousin Henry and his wife Marianne. Marianne tells her husband to tell William that he is killing himself with overwork.
That night William has a nightmare of people laughing and having a high old time in a theatre box and of him overturning the bottles of liquor. Henry gives William some laudanum to help him sleep. Perhaps he is haunted by the failure of his last attempt to pass the abolition of the slave trade bill in Parliament. Marianne and Henry try to fix William up with the lovely Barbara Spooner. But neither of the recipients of this attention will put up with this and walk out on the attempted fix. They meet outside and exchange a few words with each other, but that is the end of it. Barbara tells William that she admires his efforts on the abolition bill.
House of Commons, 15 years earlier. William participates in a game of cards where betting is involved. He is doing well while his main competition is running out of money. With no money, the member of Parliament offers his black slave as part of his bet. William is offended and leaves the table. (William is friends with William Pitt and the two cooperate together on many issues. Pitt tells him that he is planning to become prime minister and he wants William by his side.) Later William sings "Amazing Grace" to his fellow members of Parliament.
A former slave, Mr. Equiano, talks to crowds about the horrors of the slave trade. William talks with a number of fellow anti-slave trade people. They know he is torn between choosing the clergy and political activism. They suggest that he can do both. The odds are against success. The slave trade has 300 members of Parliament in their pockets. So it will be 1 against 300. For moral support, William pays a visit to John Newton, a former slave trader who had transported some 20,000 slaves and the composer of the hymn "Amazing Grace". Newton says he cannot be of much assistance since "I have blood on my hands." William goes to Jamaica and sees up close and personal tragedies such as slaves being scalded to death by molten iron.
Back to the present. At a formal dinner William and Barbara are seated together. This time they seem to be doing just fine with each other. They speak of his society for the prevention of cruelty to animals and about the failure to pass the bill for the abolition of the slave trade. Barbara wants to know more about Equiano. He wrote a book about his experiences as a slave. Equiano had given William a tour of one of the slave ships. William sees the cramped and crowded conditions the slaves had to endure during the three weeks long journey. He also spoke of the crew raping the women.
William speaks out once again for the abolition of the slave trade. There is a lot of grumbling about his bringing up the subject again. He mentions that one of the obstacles he faces is the opposition of many members of Parliament who have vested interests in the slave trade. A key objection to the bill is that if there are no slaves, there are no plantations and with no plantations there is no money with which to fill the coffers of the king. William has only 16 members of Parliament on his side. On the bright side, William Pitt is now the prime minister.
William shows a number of Parliamentary members a slave ship and tells them how horrible it was. The ship carried 600 slaves, of which only 200 survived the journey. The audience especially objects to the smell of the ship, which William calls the smell of death.
The political climate starts to grow more favorable for the abolitionists. Equiano sold 50,000 copies of his book in two months. The abolitionist cause grows stronger. Now they have a year to gather information for the next assault on the slave trade. William's critics start becoming nastier and they now often slander his name. Barbara Spooner asks him one day how long has he been on laudanum. He says he uses it to deal with the pain of his colitis.
The abolitionists are able to unroll in Parliament a petition of some 390,000 names opposing the slave trade. The conservative's key spokesman, Charles Fox, gets up and signs his name to the petition. The proponents of the anti-slave trading bill applaud the man while those on the other side boo him. Then Parliament is adjourned until the veracity of the names on the petition can be checked. Tarleton and Coconut Clarence go to see the Home Secretary, Lord Dundas, to get support to oppose the bill. William and his crew had labeled Dundas a probable supporter of the bill. Charles Fox tells them to be wary of Dundas. The man controls the Scottish vote of some 34 members of Parliament. The talks is that Lord Tarleton is going to use slave trade money to reward those who will speak out against abolition. William Pitt speaks with Lord Dundas and tells him his recent political moves are threatening their friendship. Dundas does not seem phased by the threat.
Pitt speaks to William. There have been five attempts to pass the abolition bill. Pitt says that the French Republic will declare war with Great Britain within a year. He says in the case of war William will have the wrong friends: Clarkson, Equiano and even Thomas Jefferson. Pitt adds that when war comes, what is called opposition will soon be called sedition.
A clergyman speaks out against the slave trade and many of his parish leave the church service. During the war there is not much sympathy for the abolition bill. William starts losing some of his key supporters. Equiano dies in his bed, Clarkson is out of it and Fox is just watching and waiting. The hope is that when the people stop being afraid, their compassion will come back.
William and Barbara marry. At the service Barbara has everyone sing "Amazing Grace". William and Barbara move to the neighborhood of Chapham to be near their friends Marianne and Henry.
William tells Prime Minister Pitt that he is going to try again to get the abolition bill passed. John Newton speaks out against the torturing of slaves common in the slave trading business. William speaks with Newton who is still wracked with guilt: "We were apes. They were human." He also speaks of his 20,000 ghosts that haunt him. William goes to tells Clarkson that he must return to London for the next fight. James Stephen arrives from the Indies. He talks about how many Africans are charged with crimes they did not commit and then are burned for it. He adds: "This time gentlemen, we cannot fail them." He has a new novel idea to get the bill passed. It involves nosus decipio, meaning "we cheat". They are going to pull a fast one on the opposition.
Most of the slave trading ships fly under the flag of neutral countries, especially under the American flag. If the use of the neutral flags could be banned, without the protection of the American flag, 80 percent of the British slave trade would be almost finished overnight. The abolitionists are going to hide the bill by disguising it. The hope is that half the slavers will be bankrupt within two years. Then they can pick off the slave trader's M.P.s one by one. They are going to disguise the bill as an anti-French bill which just also happens to be an anti-slavery bill. The slavers must never find out that it is the abolitionists who are behind the bill. This way the bill might just sail through Parliament.
Few members of Parliament are in attendance when the bill is discussed. But one day Tarleton notices that the abolitionist Clarkson is in the audience. He starts getting suspicious. He doesn't know what the abolitionists are up to, but he senses that something is wrong. But it is already too late for him to get an adjournment. So Tarleton runs out of the chamber and starts calling his people together for a meeting. Imagine his shock, when Charles Fox tells him that most of his supporters are at the races, compliments of free tickets from William Wilberforce. At home William has a bad attack of colitis. Barbara offers him laudanum but he tells her that he wants to kick his addiction.
Two years later. Barbara and William have a young boy that is not yet two years old. And Barbara is pregnant again. William goes to visit a very ill William Pitt. Pitt tells William that Lord Granvile will be the next prime minister and Fox will be secretary. Furthermore, the crown will remain neutral on the abolition bill. Pitt remarks to William: "Next time you'll be pushing on an open door."
Clarkson is at Equiano's grave drinking to the coming victory of their bill. He says: "Wish you were here to see this." The atmosphere is now of "just one more push, one more". In Parliament the vote is taken. The Home and Foreign Slave Trade Act is passed. There were 16 nos and 283 yeses. The supporters are absolutely ecstatic. Charles Fox speaks highly of the contribution of William Wilberforce to the passage of the bill. There is a big applause for William.
William Wilberforce kept working on many different reforms. He died in 1833. He is buried in Westminster Abbey next to his friend William Pitt.
Good movie. At times it was hard slogging through all the infighting between the opponents and proponents of the bill for the abolishment of the slave trade. But it gets better at the end when the proponents use a kind of trick to get the bill passed. There was a lot of focus on various anti-slavery speeches and some may get tired of this. The movie is nearly two hours along and that's a lot of time for speeches. There were a lot of well-known actors in the movie including Albert Finney and Michael Gambon.
Skype has released a Java client for mobile phones, compatible with S60 and UIQ devices. While the application looks like a "normal" Skype client known from PC or Windows Mobile, it is not a true VoIP solution as it uses the mobile network (rather than the Internet) to make and receive calls. This means that in addition to your Skype credit, you will also be charged by your network operator for a local call. Call quality is not that great, either, but it's just a beta version so things may get better. To try it yourself, visit http://www.skype.com/m.
It was not surprising that Microsoft decided to abandon the acquisition. Steve Ballmer had hinted at least two weeks ago. But, what is the next way Microsoft would like to do? Take longer time to build the scale by itself? I don't think so.
Jonathan
Q&A: CEO Steve Ballmer, Before Microsoft Walked Away
By ROBERT A. GUTH May 4, 2008 2:40 a.m.
With a letter Saturday afternoon, Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Steve Ballmer withdrew his company's bid to buy Yahoo Inc., ending three months of anticipation over a possible acquisition that gripped Wall Street, the media and the broader Internet industry. The withdrawal came as a surprise to many people, particularly after executives at the two companies had stepped up talks late last week in an attempt to bridge an impasse over how much Microsoft should pay for the Silicon Valley icon.
But at least two weeks before, Mr. Ballmer had hinted privately and publicly that Microsoft was considering stepping away.
Two days before Microsoft withdrew its offer, Mr. Ballmer, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, outlined his thoughts on Microsoft's options if the Yahoo deal didn't work and talked about the prospect of Microsoft's expanding its online business with or without a partner.
The Wall Street Journal: There is perception that going after Yahoo is an acknowledgment that Microsoft's build-it-yourself strategy isn't working…
Steve Ballmer: We like our strategy. We don't like our position. I'd like to have a better position relative to the guy [Google] who sells the most advertising. But we like our strategy. No question about that. The question is, can we accelerate our strategy?
There are probably a number of things our strategy entails: Some fundamental innovation around the way the business and user experience works; some tactical differentiation; there's some things we've got to do just to match competition in the online space. And it turns out scale matters. It's not true in every business that scale matters. But the way you get increasing return on scale in the ad system -- scale matters. The only way to get scale quickly – or more quickly -- is to do an acquisition.
WSJ: Yahoo is the biggest, easiest way to get that scale. But if that doesn't happen, are other acquisitions necessary to get that scale?
BALLMER: No, no, not at all. It could just take more time. Look at all the properties on the Internet -- everything on the Internet. There's really only five or six that have any scale. Worldwide, you'd maybe get seven or eight. You have MySpace, Facebook, MSN, Yahoo, Google, Baidu, AOL. But then -- boom -- it really falls dramatically after that. So there are really a few guys and [if] something works, it works. And if it doesn't, it doesn't. But then we're just taking longer to build the scale [on our own].
The graph shows that there is a positive statistical correlation between level of education and income (Baum, Sandy, and Payea 10). The higher education the workers have, the more they earn. According to statistics on College Board Online, people who have professional degrees have the highest median income, earning US$95,700 in 2003. The earnings of people with professional degrees are almost twice as high as those of people with bachelor's degrees. In fact, yearly income decreases as the level of education goes down. For example, people without high school diplomas only earn $21,600 a year, which only equals 43.3% of the median earnings of people with bachelor's degrees and 22.6% of the median earnings of people with professional degrees (qtd. in Mclntyre et al. Table 3). To sum up, level of education correlates with income; workers with higher educational achievement get higher pay.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2004a, PINC-03; Internal Revenue Service, 2004, Table 3; McIntyre, et al., 2003; calculations by the authors.
Computers cannot be compared to human brains. The first reason is that the information-processing capacity of the human brain is more powerful than any computer. According to an article titled “Can a Computer Be Conscious?” in U.S. News & World Report, “It has been estimated that the information-processing capacity of even the most powerful supercomputer is equal to the nervous system of a snail—a tiny fraction of the power available to the supercomputer inside the human skull” (64). Moreover, the kinds of processing in a human brain and a computer are different, too. For example, author Steven Pinker reported that computers found it easy to remember a 25-digit number but found it hard to summarize the gist of [children's story] “Little Red Riding Hood,” and humans found it hard to remember the number but easy to summarize the story (64).
In this year, the wireless industry will have some significant milestones to be reached by new members from the computer and Internet industry. Both Apple and Google are trying to break into a world that is dominated by operators. Whereas both Apple and Google will mark a developmental milestone in the wireless industry by offering mobile software, they have different incentives to develop it. Apple's major incentive is to sell more iPhones; however, Google's incentive is more complicated. In fact, the causes of the introduction of Android involve the potential of mobile advertising, the development of Google's mobile search engine, and the extension of Google's Internet services; on the other hand, the effects of Android may change the way that the wireless industry operates and may bring a new business model to the wireless industry.
The first reason why Google wants to invent Android is that the market of mobile advertising is very promising. The market of mobile advertising has great potential because advertisers could tailor their advertisements to match each subscriber's hobbies. Like its online ‘pay-per-click’ advertisements, Google's AdSense for Mobile delivers advertisements relevant to the advertiser's mobile audience. By introducing Android, Google can extend its hugely profitable key-word search advertisements business from the Internet market to the wireless market. Moreover, it is easy to understand why Google has been putting so many resources into the wireless market. While Google has dominated Internet search advertising with a 62.7% market share, according to research by the consultancy Compete, the company needs another arena to support its growing market capitalization. According to Informa Telecoms & Media, a research firm, although spending on mobile advertising was only $871 million worldwide in 2006, the annual expenditure will reach $11.4 billion by 2011 (The Economist, 10/6/07), a bit more than Google's revenue in 2006.
The other two reasons behind the introduction of Android are the development of Google's mobile search engine and the extension of Google's Internet services. Although Google is a leading Internet search engine company, “the company is lagging behind Microsoft and Yahoo in mobile search and other applications for the cell phone” (BusinessWeek, 9/6/07)4. Google has been focusing its attention on the mobile market for the past two years. To enter into this market, Google has steadily introduced new services that are designed specifically for mobile phones, such as downloadable Java applications for Google Maps and Gmail. By introducing Android, Google can work closely with the company's mobile search engine and other Google applications that are already popular on the Internet.
It is clear that Google has great ambitions toward the wireless market. When the gPhone is introduced in the future, the effects of Android may change the way that the wireless industry operates and may bring a new business model to the wireless industry.
The first effect of Android is that it may change how the wireless industry operates by providing an alternative mobile network, mobile operating platform, and billing system for users and service providers. While most mobile operators only allow users to browse their own branded mobile portals, Google may offer an alternative mobile network where users can browse the Internet as freely on phones as they do on computers, and service providers can provide their varied applications without being controlled by mobile operators. In August, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, has said that the company may participate in a federal auction in early 2008 on contracts to build a new mobile network with no restrictions on what applications users can use. Second, Google could provide an alternative mobile operating platform, which could save the service providers' cost if the gPhone wins a large scale of handset market. Unlike the computer market, in which there are just three operating systems, the handset market has more than 40 software platforms (BusinessWeek, 10/29/07). If the handset market consolidates around several platforms, the service providers can save a lot of time and money when they develop applications for mobile devices. Third, Google could offer an alternative billing system for service providers. Today, service providers collect money through operators' billing systems in that mobile operators can charge up to half the revenue for their transaction fees. One expected feature of the gPhone platform is that it could offer a mobile payment system by which service providers allow their users to pay for their services via text messages. If Google could introduce an alternative billing system that charges service providers lower fees, the whole wireless ecosystem could become healthier.
Another effect of Android is that it may bring a new business model to the wireless industry, offering ad-supported free mobile phone calls and text messages for mobile subscribers. Two existing cases may offer some thought about what strategies Google might apply in its mobile business model. Blyk, a new mobile virtual network operator in Britain, in September launched a service that offers subscribers 43 free minutes of voice calls and 217 free text messages per month if they agree to receive six tailored advertisements by text messages every day. To sign up for this service, users have to fill in a detailed questionnaire about their hobbies and habits so that advertisers can provide tailored advertisements to highly relevant customers. This model is very familiar to Google's online advertisement strategy, which helps advertisers to find their target users and organizes the information related to users' interests. Furthermore, it is important for Google to make sure its applications work everywhere in the world; therefore, since it is impossible to bid for wireless spectrum licenses in each country, Google could lease space as a mobile virtual network operator. Another case is America's Virgin Mobile, which launched a “Sugar Mama” service last year, offering subscribers the chance to earn free minutes of voice calls if they agree to receive an advertisement via text messages or to view a 45-second advertisement. This model is controlled by mobile operators; therefore, Google might play a role as a partner that offers its mobile search engine or some applications—such as mobile YouTube service or mobile Gmail service.
In conclusion, Google may see a blue-ocean market in the wireless industry, not only providing an alternative mobile network, mobile operating platform, and billing system for service providers, but also offering ad-supported free mobile phone calls and text messages for mobile subscribers. Google's goal is to connect advertisers with mobile subscribers based on offering information from its mobile search engine, mobile gmail, Google maps, Google earth, and other applications, just as it has done on the Internet.
Reference: 1. BusinessWeek (2007, October 16). Will Apple Open the iPhone? 2. BusinessWeek (2007, October 29). Apple, Google vs. Big Wireless. 3. The Economist (2007, October 4). The next big thing. 4. BusinessWeek (2007, September 6). Getting Inside Google's gPhone.
If I am a Googler, I will not worry about the merge of Microsoft and Yahoo. In fact, if I am an executive of Google, I will happy to see the Microsoft-Yahoo! deal; moreover, I will try to raise the buyout by encouraging the other potential buyer in oder to increase the financial burden of Microsoft. Why I am saying that for the following reasons. First, both Microsoft and Yahoo! run their Internet businesses very similarly and not very well. Microsoft and Yahoo! have two not-bad consumer brands, two so-so online-advertising systems, and two all-right search engines. Together, they will still have all those things, plus the added nightmare of intergrating. Second, if the future of Internet is ad-centered era. Google has stood on a better position than either Microsoft or Yahoo, or the combination of both of them. According to statistics in December 2007, Google owned 62% of all Web search wordwide. Yahoo! and Microsoft had only 16% combined. The worse news is both of them are not very good at the online advertising industry. Two less talented childs can not figure out smarter plans. Internet advertising is about size and smarts, and both of them have nothing, only traffic. Google has both. So releax and no worries.
Source: Economist.com (Feb 7th 2008). Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google Giants in combat
Google and Yahoo, both of which are Internet giants, have some differences in their businesses and services. Google, whose mission is to connect worldwide information and users, provides a portfolio of searching services—such as web search, image search, news search, scholar search, video search, map search, book search, and mobile search—to fulfill its commitment. Yahoo, on the other hand, whose strategy is to be a portal site for the user, provides a portfolio of channel services—such as the news channel, finance channel, movie channel, music channel, answer channel, shopping channel and auction channel—to maintain its portal site. Unlike Yahoo, which expects users to stay at its web site as long as possible, Google expects users to leave its web site as quickly as possible when they find what they want. Whereas Yahoo makes money by selling banner advertisements, Google earns money by selling key-word search advertisements. Google's strategy is to organize more content; in contrast, Yahoo's is to control more content. Since Yahoo tries to control content in its web site, Google applies more flexible strategies than Yahoo does to cooperate with other web sites and thus earns more money through its alliances. For example, Google's key-word search advertisements can be found on millions of blogger's web sites through its AdSense program, in contrast to Yahoo's banner advertisement, which can be found only on its web site. Therefore, Google is more attractive than Yahoo for advertisers.
BTW, please refer the billboard of Yahoo! "Yahoo! a nice place to stay on the Internet"
There are many similarities between coffee plants and tea plants not only in their appearance but also in their cultivation. First of all, coffee plants are similar to tea plants in their appearance. Both coffee plants and tea plants are evergreen plants. Coffee plants can grow to a height of 3 to 5 meters, just as tea plants can. Like tea, coffee is a bush. Also, coffee plants, just like tea plants, have white flowers with five petals. In addition to appearance, coffee plants are similar to tea plants in their cultivation. Neither coffee plants nor tea plants are productive until they are three years old. Coffee plants are cropped to keep them short; tea plants are too. Coffee plants grow best at high elevations; tea plants do also. Coffee plants and tea plants require heavy rainfall. Finally, coffee plants are similar to tea plants growing best in volcanic soil rich in potash.
Coffee, which is a widely consumed beverage in the modern society, is prepared from roasted seeds, commonly called beans. Coffee berries, which are known as ‘cherries’, are produced by several species of small evergreen bush of the genus Coffee. Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora, which are the two main cultivated species of the coffee plant, are cultivated in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Coffee beans from different countries usually have different characteristics such as flavor, aroma, body, and acidity. These taste characteristics are dependent not only on the coffee's growing region, but also on the process of manufacturing coffee. The process of manufacturing coffee has several steps.
First of all, the coffee berries, each of which contains two coffee beans, are picked by hand. After coffee berries are picked, the flesh of the berry is removed and the beans are squeezed out in pulping machines. After that, the beans are slightly fermented in tanks for 24 hours. When the slight fermentation is finished, the beans are washed in a washing canal with large quantities of fresh water to remove the fermentation residue. Then the beans are spread on the ground and turned over regularly by hand for two to three weeks until the beans are dried completely. When the beans are dried, they are hulled and polished with hulling machines to remove remaining outer skin. After the beans are hulled and polished, they are sorted for size and graded; following that, they are loaded onto ships and exported to other countries. Arriving in these countries, the green beans are unloaded from ships and taken for roasting by roaster companies. The final step in the process is that the roasted beans are ground with coffee grinders before they are sold.
In conclusion, the process of manufacturing coffee contains a series of steps: picking, pulping, fermenting, washing, drying, hulling and polishing, sorting and grading, loading and exporting, unloading and roasting, and grinding. Among these steps, the roasting process is the most important step to decide the taste of the coffee.
The Beach, Alex Garland's first novel, which was published in 1996 and won a prize in 1997, describes the main character, Richard, a young backpacker from England. Not wanting to be an ordinary tourist, Richard wants to find experience outside the textual authority of the guidebook and to have an adventure in Thailand. After Daffy Duck leaves behind a carefully drawn map of a remote island, Richard travels with Etienne and Francoise, the two French travelers he shares the map with and takes with him on his journey south. After they eventually arrive on the secret island, they are all captivated by the utopian world, living and enjoying themselves on the idyllic beach. However, as the book progresses, the idyllic beach becomes a living hell, turning out to be a dystopian nightmare world. The standard elements of utopia and dystopia that Mr. Garland employed in this novel consist of the location, the lifestyle, humanity, and death.
The first two are standard elements of utopia. First, Garland's beach, similar to Sir Thomas More's fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean, is on a secret island somewhere in the Gulf of Thailand. According to Mr. Duck's map, the secret island is in a national marine park west of Ko Samui and Ko PhaNgan (The Beach 5). Unlike Ko Samui and Ko PhaNgan, the secret island is unspoiled because tourists are not allowed to visit the islands in the national marine park. As the book describes, it is “…a lagoon hidden from the sea and passing boats by a high, curving wall of rock…idyllic white sands and coral gardens...waterfalls surrounded by thick jungle…On the white sands, fishing in the coral gardens, is a select group of travelers” (The Beach 12). It sounds like paradise on earth. The second standard element of utopia is the lifestyle. The lifestyle on the secret island is in a primitive and simple state, but full of hedonistic possibilities, happiness, and fulfillment. As Sal, the leader of the camp, says, “[People] come here to relax by a beautiful beach but it isn't a beach resort because [people are] trying to get away from those sorts of places” (The Beach 22). The beach people's demands are few and their desires are limited. Both are easily satisfied by the natural environment, such as fish, fruit, vegetables, and dope. They work in the morning, have dinner at four o'clock, and get stoned after dark. Also, they live like a big family and say good night to someone different in turn until everyone has been mentioned. “No one's name was ever forgotten,” the book states (The Beach 27).
Another standard element of dystopia in this book is three qualities of humanity: selfishness, fear and weakness. The first quality of humanity is selfishness. Francoise, for instance, behaves selfishly when she knows about the secret beach. She is unwilling to share the secret with others, so she warns Richard, “[He] shouldn't tell people about [their] beach” (The Beach 10). The second quality of humanity is fear. People will be afraid to face the truth and choose to escape from the unpleasant situation. For example, after the shark disaster, the beach people avoid having to see Christo—“pretending [the disaster] hasn't happened maybe” (The Beach 62). Sal even says that now that [the people on the beach] have started to get things back to normal, nobody has to find out [about Christo's condition] (The Beach 67). The third quality of humanity is weakness, which will stop people from doing the right thing. For example, “[Richard] knew [the rafters] were going to make the mistake even before it happened,” but he is too weak to give a warning to them (The Beach 70). As a result, Richard’s weakness indirectly causes the deaths of the rafters.
Finally, death also plays an important element of dystopia in this book. It causes the idyllic beach to change from paradise to hell. At the beginning, the behavior of Daffy cutting his wrists indicates that the beach is not a utopia. In fact, just like Daffy says, “Cancer in the coral, blue water, my [beach]. Nearly killed me” (The Beach 1). Second, a series of disasters begins with the rotten rice, which is followed by severe food poisoning. After that, the shark attacks the Swedes, causing the death of Karl and serious injury to Christo. Next, when the dope guards abuse and kill the rafters, the living environment on the beach becomes a nightmare. The dope guards suddenly appear on the beach during the special beach festival, giving a warning and leaving the beach people with a reminder—the dead bodies of the dead rafters. Scared by the dead bodies, the beach people start screaming and crying. With the combination of dope and alcoholic coconut milk, the beach people start to attack the dead bodies, kicking and stabbing them. Finally, when Sal sees the map which Richard had drawn for Zeph and Sammy—the rafters—she realizes that it is Richard who brought the rafters to the beach; therefore, the beach people start to attack Richard. At that moment, the beach has become a living hell.
In conclusion, in The Beach, Mr. Garland uses four standard elements to depict utopian and dystopian society: the location, the lifestyle, humanity, and death. In his depiction, the beach has a beautiful location and peaceful and simple lifestyle, but due to humanity and death, it fails to maintain such a utopian society and becomes a dystopian society. According to an article on Utopia and Dystopia in Wikipedia, “Due to [people's] inherent qualities, attempts at creating such a perfect world inevitably end in failure.” Indeed, people are born inherently evil. People go to the beach to build the civilization, but it turns into a savage society in the end.
There are various forms of natural phenomena existing in our environments. Some natural phenomena, like thunder, lightning, earthquakes, and volcano eruptions, challenge humans through disease, famine, and catastrophic destruction. Some natural phenomena, such as rainbows, shooting stars, the aurora borealis, and coral reefs, create good memories due to their enchanting beauty. Among these beautiful natural phenomena, rainbows are loved by many people no matter how old they are or which genders they are. People always love rainbows because of their beauty in colorful appearance and importance in folklore.
First of all, rainbows are beautiful because of their multicolored arcs with red on the outer part of the arch and violet on the inner section of the arch. Although rainbows span a spectrum of colors, people usually remember them as seven colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. People always feel amazed at the rainbow's momentary beauty, trying to count how many colors it has whenever it appears in the sky. When I was a child, I used to look for rainbows after a rainy day and I always had such a good time because beautiful rainbows filled me with happiness and imagination. When I was in college, I also used to look for rainbows during mountain climbing. Recalling my first time to challenge Snow Mountain in central Taiwan, I had felt fatigued, pained and depressed until I saw a rainbow appearing over a waterfall. The rainbow was so vivid and close that I suddenly forgot all my problems at that moment.
Moreover, rainbows have many beautiful mythological legends. It was difficult for ancient people to explain the phenomenon of rainbow; therefore, many people interpreted rainbows as a sign that a storm was over. For example, in Chinese culture, the rainbow was seen as an incarnation of the goddess Nuwa, who used stones of five different colors to repair a slit in the sky in order to prevent heavy rain from falling again. Another example is a story in the Bible, which describes rainbows as a symbol of the covenant between God and living creatures, and they were God's promise to Noah that he would never again flood the entire earth. In addition to the traditional meaning of rainbows, they also have a new meaning of Eternal Love in modern marriages. People like to exchange wedding rings under the rainbow-like wooden arch. Many famous songs related to rainbows also use in thousands of wedding ceremonies. For example, one of my friends used “Over the Rainbow” as his wedding song. When the music played at the climax of wedding, everyone felt touched.
To sum up, rainbows have marvelous beauty not only in their multicolored appearance but also in mythological legends. Rainbows are often drawn in the crayoned pictures by young children because of their colorful appearance and rainbows are the essential part of fairy tales when the stories describe their dreamlike places. Rainbows were also given new meaning in the modern society. Therefore, people always love rainbows due to their charming beauty.
A suitable apartment can be found by the following systematic approach. The approach begins by deciding which neighborhood would be most convenient. When the most convenient neighborhood has been decided, an affordable rent is determined by how much budget is allowed. After that, since new listings appear every day, the classified ads in the newspapers or on the Internet have to be checked regularly. Next, after regular checking, the likely choices can be found, and then the apartments are telephoned to ask for details and to schedule an appointment to visit them. Finally, a long journey is begun to inspect each one of them.
![[Steve Ballmer]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/HC-GK116_Ballme_20070925232954.gif)
