On Research ...

• Motivation:
  • God creates the world, and it is human's responsibility to administer the world properly. To this end, man tries to construct a simplified and intelligible picture of the world.

  • the following are some interesting essays about motivation for scientific research:
    • "the world as I see it"---Einstein, 1931.
    • "principles of research"---Einstein, 1918.

• How to :
  • doing the important thing at the right time in the right way---take a look at what Hamming said.

  • unless you truly understand the problem, do not pretend to. Never be cheated by the "Cargo Cult Science", as so named by Richard Fayman.

  • There are many solutions to any problem, but what is the criterion to choose the right one? ---simplicity, the Nature's philosophy

  • If you truly believe that God creates this world in a unified fashion, when you get stuck with a problem, seek your inspiration from around: nature, art and other sciences. Essentially, the principles are the same.

  • Never be overwhelmed by the mathematics other people are boasting in their papers if you are in engineering: the more equations, the fewer ideas --- see some quotes from Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology
  • understanding the physics of the problem is still the most important, which is almost the landmark of modern science, but what else ...

• Others :
  • Non-Technical Talks by David Patterson, U.C. Berkeley
  • How to Read, Write, and Present Papers---advice from Nitin Vaidya
  • How to Increase the Chances Your Paper is Accepted at ACM SIGCOMM---advice from Craig Patridge.
  • A Sigcomm reviewer's plea---take a look at what Mark Allman said.
  • An Evaluation of the Ninth SOSP Submissions, or, How (and How Not) to Write a Good Systems Paper--- by Roy Levin and David D. Redell