Stories 15-18

15. GNU and Copyleft

Talking about free software reminds me a talk I went to when I was in school. It was by Richard Stallman, the founder of the GNU project which includes many necessary tools like Emacs, gcc, gmake, gdb, etc. The first five minutes of the talk was quite exciting. Then the videographer stopped him saying the recording wasn't running. And Mr. Stallman started the talk all over again; exactly the same five minutes repeated in my life.

Anyhow, the main points to take from the talk were: 1. Big software companies like Microsoft are evil; 2. Software should be free; 3. Free as in Freedom. Let’s skip the arguments for the first two points, and elaborate the last.

The essence of the GNU project relies on the principle that end users (individuals, organizations, companies) have the freedoms to use, study, share (copy), and modify the software. Therefore, by definition a lot of software like your Plants vs. Zombies app is not free; they are just free of charge. Because you do not have the freedom to study, modify, or redistribute them.

However, even with the GNU General Public License (or the free software license), there are terms and conditions that you must comply! They even invented a term so-called “copyleft”, which means all modified and extended versions of the GNU licensed software must be free as well. For example, say Microsoft were to create a new compiler by extending gcc. Then that compiler must be free.

By now you should understand why the big companies have to create their own inferior software while there were so many great GNU licensed options. This proves the first point of the talk.

16. Gamification

IT industry never runs out of ideas. But after 100 issues of SMH, I ran out ideas of what to write for my column. This means only one thing: I am getting too old L. Fortunately, WeChat saved me – specifically the “plane shooter” game in WeChat inspired me to write about gamification.

(English professor would tell you, “game” -> “gamify” -> “gamification”). Gamification is the use of game thinking and game mechanics in a non-game context, mainly to engage users. Strictly speaking, the mini-game that comes with the instant messaging app is not an application of gamification; the ladder chart of scores that can be shared in the Moments is. It does effectively engage the users and successfully make the app more appealing.  To Tencent, this method has succeeded many times on their QQ.

Gamification techniques strive to leverage people's natural desires for competition, achievement, status, self-expression, altruism, and closure; or in one word, show-off. Earning badges and accumulating points to gain levels on Weibo are good examples of gamification as well.

When I saw some friend shows off his score in WeChat, I have to say that he is still too young. I won’t do that myself not because I am not too naïve, because the version I am using (WeChat 5.0 in English is different from 微信5.0) does not have this feature.

17. Electronic Trading

Having graduated for many years, I often wondered what I would have done for a living if I didn’t become a humble programmer – I probably would be an arrogant technical support in an investment bank to play with some electronic trading. Luckily no bank recruited me; I guess they decided that I don’t have much of the potential to spare or much of the hair to lose.

I did learn about electronic trading during some interviews. Simply put, electronic trading is a method of trading securities, foreign exchange or financial derivatives electronically; in contrast to older floor trading (where people yell all the time) and phone trading (where people still yell, but over the wire).

Electronic trading has a number of advantages. The most obvious one is that you do not need to be physically present on a trading floor, negotiate with your buyers and sellers, and fill in paper works in order to complete a transaction. Of course, that may sound fun to us now; when we can simply sit in front the computer, monitor the bulletin board, and place the straight-through trading orders. All we need is just to follow the protocol and use an e-trading platform.

The convenience being told, little glitches caused by whatever human error or system malfunction can erupt into a disaster in a split second. For example, a trading glitch in the systems of Chinese brokerage Everbright Securities caused mayhem in Friday morning trade; the index was up 5% in just 5 minutes.

18. Algorithmic trading

Last time we were talking about the Everbright’s flash strike on August 16th, which reminds me of the Crash of 2:45 -- it was a United States stock market crash on Thursday May 6, 2010 in which the Dow Jones plunged about 1000 points (about 9%) only to recover those losses within minutes.

I know little about the financial theories; but it is quite obvious that only machines can achieve such a responsive point swing in such magnitude.  In my mind, the moments were like this: a human trader sit in front of the monitor, kicked off a flawed trading algorithm. The only button you can see is a big red “Stop”. After 5 minutes, people found something went seriously wrong. And the human trader hit the stop button.

This is not a sci-fi scene; because Algorithmic trading is almost the most important “future” for the investment banks, mutual funds, etc. If you ever wonder where the top physicists or the top computer scientists are, I will point you to the Wall Street. With the help of the electronic trading system we introduced last time, those top talents are trying to build “robots” for entering trading orders which executes pre-programmed trading instructions. And the pre-programmed trading instructions are called trading algorithms.

One over simplified example of a trading algorithm: “Buy 100 shares of this stock if it is over 1 dollar per share, and sell 50 shares if it is 2 dollar per share”. In fact, trading algorithms are very complicated and are built on sophisticated mathematical models which take into account the variables such as timing, price, and quantity of the order. Yet its most difficult part is to model and to predict human psychologies and reactions over the index change.

So the future is that algorithms fight with algorithms on the stock markets without human interaction; and the human can have more time to grow plants to fight against zombies.