Wang Hsin Tse was the son of famous calligrapher Wang Hsi Tse during the Chinese Song Dynasty almost a thousand years ago.  Wang had the talent of his father, and because he had early good training from the dad, he learned to write and draw very well at an early age.  Having received much accolade from people who normally did not know better, he in fact believed that he was now as good as his dad.

One day, he wrote a full piece of paper of his best calligraphy work, and thinking that it was as good as his dad, he went about to show it to him proudly.   His dad looked over his work, but did not say anything.  All he did was took up his brush, and in one of the words added a small point, and told the son to show it to his mom.

The son carried the full piece of paper to his mom, and asked, " Mom, how is it?  don’t you think I can write as well as my dad now?"

The mom looked at the piece of paper, went through his words, and then after a while, pointed to the small addition his dad had added, and said, " Yes son, I think you are improving very well.  In fact, this particular point here - it is starting to look like your dads!"

The son knew then that while for the untrained eye he was as good as his dad, for the trained eye, he was still unskilled, as his mom innocently was able to immediately discern the difference of what he wrote, and that of his dad.  He swore to improve, put in thousands of more hours into diligent practice, and indeed grew up to be as good his dad. 

But before that he learned the difference of what is merely good, and what is really great. 

 We are now in the information society, and of course, 

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Products from Microsoft Research always fascinates me, as it continually pushes the envelope on how technology can really improve the way we do things and the potential possibilities it holds.

Microsoft links technology, common tools - Yahoo! News

Sticky notes. White boards. Videogame consoles. For a Microsoft Corp. event designed to show off cutting-edge software inventions, there are a lot of familiar tools on display. That’s intentional, said Rico Malvar, the managing director of Microsoft Research’s Redmond lab, at TechFest, the annual gathering of the software maker’s international research department Tuesday.