Author: Omer Zak

I am deaf since birth. I played with big computers which eat punched cards and spew out printouts since age 12. Ever since they became available, I work and play with desktop size computers which eat keyboard keypresses and spew out display pixels. Among other things, I developed software which helped the deaf in Israel use the telephone network, by means of home computers equipped with modems. Several years later, I developed Hebrew localizations for some cellular phones, which helped the deaf in Israel utilize the cellular phone networks. I am interested in entrepreneurship, Science Fiction and making the world more accessible to people with disabilities.

How to create a Silicon Valley

Paul Graham, in his How to Be Silicon Valley essay (also discussed in Slashdot), mentions that a Silicon Valley requires that two types of people – nerds and rich people – live in the same city.

I noticed lack of mention of the Israeli experience in the discussions following the essay. The Israeli experience appears to confirm Graham’s thesis. The relevant areas in Israel (Jerusalem, Gush Dan and Haifa) are separated from each other by at most 1-2 hour long driving. They have several academic institutions, which have strong computer science and biotech departments (Weizmann Institute of Science, Technion, Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, and more). There is another factor – military service in Hi Tech units of the army, which allows teams of people, who trust each other, to form. After end of their army service, those teams go on and build startups.

Israelis are also born entrepreneurs and risk takers. People who “made it” support new startups, like in the Silicon Valley.

Several years ago, this was not the situation in Israel. But several Israelis left for the Silicon Valley, and some of them were successful there. Some of the successful ones brought back to Israel their experience. Some culture was transferred also by Silicon Valley companies, which opened R&D centers in Israel (for example, Intel). Over time, attitudes and policies were adjusted to make the Israeli version of Silicon Valley possible.

Another country, which was successful in attracting High Technology, is Ireland. It was not discussed either, and I do not know how much cultural adaptation they made to the demands of Hi Tech startups.

Yael Rom R.I.P.

The Hebrew Wikipedia has an article about her in http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%99%D7%A2%D7%9C_%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%9D.
Here I’ll write about my personal experience with her.

The year was 1976. When I was 19 years old (and exempt from military service), I decided to study Electrical Engineering in the Technion. I came to the Technion with my father to inquire and register. We were directed to the Unit for Advancement of the Students, which is responsible for helping students with disabilities, from disadvantaged populations, and those who had overdose of reserve duty.

There we met Yael Rom. We found her to be warm and resourceful woman.

Arrangements were made to find volunteer notetakers for me in the lectures. Discussions how to inform lecturers that there is a deaf student sitting in tests, so that they should write all instructions on the blackboard in addition to saying them. Feeling welcome to come and talk with her anytime I felt like it during the years I was in the Technion.

I finished my B.Sc. summa cum laude.

Thank you, Yael Rom, for your help.

I smelled a fiddle

Few weeks ago I was informed about few software development openings in a startup. I figured that it may be good idea to work for a while for a startup, to peer with strong software developers, to pick up again the last word in the practice of managing software development projects, after few years of having been alone at top of the software development part of another organization.

I contacted the source of the information about the openings. Few questions and answers were exchanged by E-mail.
Then a week elapsed without further progress.
I E-mailed him again, asking what is the status, if they already found people to fill the openings.
He apologized for not having the time to forward my information to the appropriate manager. After I sent him link to my resume, he promptly forwarded it to the manager. During the next few days, I and the manager grilled each other by E-mail.

After having been satisfied with the answers, we set up a date for face to face interview.

One day before the interview, he asked to postpone it by one and half weeks because he has to fly abroad for a week, few hours after the scheduled interview time.

Here I had strong smell of a fiddle, because there was already one-week delay.
I pointed out the delays.
The bottom line is that no interview is currently planned.

I am not sure I made the right decision.

On one hand, their Web site has the look of a small organization, which is too hectic and busy to ensure that the Web site is up-to-date and all external links are working.
They are also at a very busy and disruptive stage of operations – development, capital raising, expanding.
Especially capital raising could lead to unpredictable changes in managers’ scheduling.
I am used to few days’ time constants in hiring decisions (time from initial contact until decision after interviews), and I do not how many startups are comfortable with longer time constants.

On the other hand, interviewing and recruiting is high priority in a busy and expanding startup. The delays were before interview, not between interview and making offer (which could be delayed due to delay in funding or to interviewing more people to round out the team).
I also have my own circumstances (deafness and older age), which may make me less desirable as an addition to a team in a startup, yet managers may prefer to remain politically correct and fiddle away the opportunity to have me in the team.

It was not an April Fool Day news item

How to suppress display of the Israeli flag in Israel turned out to have been a serious news item.

According to news item in today’s Yediot Aharonot, the Israeli Ministry of Interior is still planning those imbecile regulations under misguided attempt to promote respect for the Israeli flag. The only change is that they are going to impose a fine rather than one year imprisonment.

There are fascist traits in some of the regulations. It was also mentioned that people are upset by incidents of flag burning by Haredi Jews.

My suggestion:

  1. Subject only government and organizations getting government funds to regulations.
  2. Everyone else is to be free to celebrate Freedom of Expression by burning the Israeli flag.
  3. Remove altogether regulations, which have fascist traits such as standing to attention when the flag is raised, or “proper disposal” of old flags.

Yediot Aharonot did not read "Rich Dad, Poor Dad"

In response to the news about the anticipated $1BN tax windfall from the Iscar Metalworking Co. 80% interest sale to Buffett deal, today’s Yediot Aharonot publicized an article listing 12 ideas what to do with the $1BN.

ALL THOSE IDEAS are about spending the money in one year.

Where are the suggestions to use the money to reduce taxes and/or the national debt in various combinations?

Personally I favor the idea of using all of this windfall money to pay off government debts. This way we’ll benefit from it also in future years, by having to reserve smaller part of the yearly budget to debt payoffs (interest and capital).

What?! Am I so Omer?

In addition to being the TDDPirate (without eyepatch, however; although I almost earned the right to wear one in an accident one and half years ago), I am also Omer because this is the name, which my parents gave me almost half century ago.

Turns out that the Urban Dictionary has an interesting definition for Omer. And I won’t mention here the definition of my surname.

The guy in another city to the southwest of my living place, who is sharing my name, must be very cool person.

Zen outside the realm of martial arts; outside the realm of zen

Kan: The Intuitive Mind of the Martial Artist discusses one way of thinking, which is applied by masters of far Eastern martial arts, and which is suitable for winning battles.

This way of thinking is optimized to solve the problem of dealing correctly with unpredictable events, when response time is of the essence.

However, most of life, we do not have to deal with such events. We have the time to think with some leisure. Sometimes we are not in a battle situation at all, such as when we are creating a book or a painting or a software application.

In other cases, we are at war but events proceed sufficiently slowly that we can think for several minutes, or even for several days, before making the next move. Business competition is an example of such a war. There is almost always time to convene a meeting of the stakeholders and hash out a plan of action.

I wonder how do zen and other far Eastern philosophies deal with such situations.

Another question, to which I do not recall having seen an answer: every Westerner is familiar with the eerie and unreal feeling, which he has when he tries to grok zen. I wonder how do far Easterners feel when they learn our Western anti-zen philosophy. How do they look at it. With which problems it is better than zen at dealing with.

How did the superego come into existence and survive?

Thoughts after reading the article On awakening the intuitive mind as part of a modern lifestyle:

According to the article, the intuitive, unconstrained mode of thought is probably more productive than the usual constrained mode of thought.

The question is, then, why do we have at all a constrained mode of thought?

I suspect that the answer lies in the pack nature of humans. Humans are similar to dogs in following a leader. Several humans can switch between being leaders and being followers. When they are followers, they are supposed to subordinate their senses and thoughts to those of their leader. They should integrate with the pack way to maximize its effectiveness. The leader alone is supposed to have fully independent thoughts.

The symbolic representation of the above subordination is having in one’s mind the concept of a super-ego, a captain, who gives orders and does not allow the rest of one’s mind to have full freedom to follow wild thoughts.

When an human is alone or is the leader, he is supposed to make full use of his brain. Then the super-ego or the captain are supposed to go offstage until the human is again working in a subordinate role.

Consider the economics of the situation. One human with very free and productive mind can create intellectual output (say, a symphony, an inspiring book, or an ingenious computer program) at rate of say 100 times that of someone whose mind is always in the subordinated state.

However, if a great project needs the intellectual output of 1000 geniuses, then the only practical way to accomplish it is to subordinate the minds of millions of more or less ordinary people to accomplish the great project. It is even impossible to coordinate the workings of those 1000 geniuses without seriously impairing their individual intellectual outputs.

NOTE:
When considering a great project, consider the Manhattan Project, or the project of building a space station capable of housing one million humans.