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If you are confused by terms like 401(k), Roth IRA, stuff like that, you are not alone. After some intense reading, I have somewhat a rough idea and I will try to make it as simple as possible for you. ;) There are 4 types of retirement plans: TraditionalRoth401(k)Traditional 401(k)Roth 401(k)IRATraditional IRARoth IRA What’s the difference between 401(k) and IRA? 401(k) is a plan offered and managed by your employer, while IRA is a plan managed by yourself. The obvious advantage of 401(k) is that your employer often matches your contribution, in return you keep your retirement money at your employer. For IRA, you manage your own retirement money with bonds, stocks, etc. Of course you will need to know what you are doing. ...

A few days ago I needed to pick up my cousin at the SFO airport. I was searching around for good real time flight info websites and eventually nailed it down to these two. There are quite a few of these flight stats websites claiming to have the most up-to-date flight info, however I only found the following two sites doing that. I could say that because my cousin’s flight landed one hour earlier, and only the following two sites gave the correct info. Without further ado, here they are: ...

Interesting stuff. Do people work better with higher reward? That’s only true when the work is very simple and involves straight forward tasks. However, any work that requires conceptual and creative thinking, people actually do worse with higher reward. This video is very informative and fast-paced, a must-watch. [youtube &hl=en_US&fs=1&] ...

If you are looking for the world cup schedule this year, here it is. [ world_cup_2010_calendar.ics] You can add that to your outlook, or google calendar, wherever. Wikipedia has the entire schedule but in local time UTC+2. You can do your own time conversion at http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html.

Angiogenesis means the growth of new blood vessels, or you can get a more detailed definition from wikipedia. Why go against the growth of new blood vessels? That’s a new idea from Dr. William Li to combat against the cancer cells. Without blood vessels, the cancer cells simply cannot grow. He found out that you can achieve anti-angiogenesis simply from our diet, not necessarily from drugs. The implication of this is a natural and relatively cheap cure of many of our diseases. ...

[youtube &hl=en_US&fs=1&] Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy: Inside a school for suicide bombers http://www.ted.com/talks/sharmeen_obaid_chinoy_inside_a_school_for_suicide_bombers.html Wonder why anyone would choose to become a suicide bomber? Filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy will tell you step by step how that works.

I have been reading some articles on UML and how nice it is to draw the initial picture of the whole system design. There are claims that say there are some tools out there that automate code generation to create empty classes and methods based on the UML diagram. What a novel idea! So I went and hurt for “those tools”. To my disappointment, I found many “old websites” and dead links… a domain was on sale as well… This doesn’t look exciting… ...

These guys are inspiring! “If you don’t believe you can actually walk on water, it’s not gonna happen for you.” [youtube &hl=en_US&fs=1&] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ry2aG9QES0

Just watched a very interesting PBS video called College Inc. Basically many colleges are struggling financially and investors are coming in to help make them profitable. However, being a for-profit college somewhat turns you into a commercial institution that has the obligations to make profits. Imagine if you were the financially struggling school official making a choice between raising school fund somehow or turning to investors (quick cash but with strings attached), how would you make that decision? Was it a simple financial decision? Or was it a little more than that? ...

Winner: “Best Animated Short - 2009 Animarte Film Festival” [youtube &hl=en_US&fs=1&] Official Site : http://www.getout-lefilm.com/ Youtube link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYJnQPoL2iw