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Just hold off another few months on that switchover. Number portability is coming soon (within the year), so that will be the best time to jump ship.

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY20060 2080145.html

Might be possible if they can beat the 50 yen per album price Apple was doing as their initial "promotion".

But if Intel really believes this is "fair and lawful", why is it that Intel does not use written contracts for these deals?

I took japanese at university and the only access we had to computers was in the library, not during class.

The school offered no e-learning but our coursebook had a homepage. So technically if you accessed the homepage at the library the university was offering e-learning.

Not having specific e-teaching is fine since teaching languages doesn't really need/benefit from using computers. Especially japanese: all reports and essays have to be written by hand anyway, doing japanese auto-input on a keyboard doesn't exactly help the students kanji writing skills.

That's not saying that you should't have computers. They are very good for self-study. What you can do / what I did at home was:

Put various websites through rikai like slashdot.jp or asahi shinbun.

Lookup kanji/words with gjiten for linux or jquicktrans (radical lookup is great) for windows. This is almost like a denshi-jisyo.

Flashcard programs: kgold etc.

Of course it's important to have a correctly set-up keyboard and all fonts installed. Windows handles this just fine. I had no problems with linux, but it could be my great dist. The macs at school were a catastrophe (you had to cut/paste kanji from a table containing all kanji).

Jim Breen has an extensive page about japanese with a lot about software. You can google for his name.

Remember to have a goal for each teaching session and to properly teach the students how to use all software you're going to use in class. I.e. don't just plunk students in front of a computer, tell them to open a program and hope they'll take it from there. They will also need a task/exercise to do if they are going to use the computer. Otherwise everyone will just sit there, doing nothing, waiting for class to end. This is a common problem with schools who hope computers will magically teach the students as long as the students sit for a while in front of the computers.

The Japanese Diet passed a law a few weeks ago, banning reverse importation of CDs. Beginning in January, it will be against the law to bring a legimately licensed US version of a Japanese music CD into Japan, because of the differences between the two markets.

If you don't believe it, read this favorably-worded article in Japan's most reputable newspaper. Or read this response from one of Japan's major music distributors.

It's BS, and of course I didn't believe it when I first heard about it. The worst part is that in some facility, I work for the bill's sponsors.

Japan relies on oil for 49.3% as primary source of its energy-production. Nuclear power accounts for 25%.

IRC, there are currently two countries, which rely on nuclear power as primary energy source, France with nearly 80% and Belgium with something over 60%. Belgium has voted in December 2002 to phase out its Nuclear reactors.

> USA has not built nuclear plants since 1970s

Because they stopped massive subvention programs for building them. Otherwise, they are commercially not viable.
Neither the US or the UK, nor Japan.

years until the surrounding areas become habitable
I have news for you, chemical pollution is just as bad if not worse. Chemicals are often stable. Meaning they'll stay dangerous forever, at least until they get diluted or are broken down through chemical means. Many poisons can remain deadly for thousands of years in a contained enviroment.

Air pollution from coal-fired power plants accounts for about 30,000 premature deaths in the USA each year
Times Beach became a superfund site, relocated 2,000 people, and 265 kilotons of soil incinerated
Don't forget oil spills!
Polluted Sand isn't going anywhere
200 homes rendered uninhabitable due to wood preservative

Give me a break. There is an "ENGLISH" button on the web site. Didn't anyone bother to click it?!?

http://www.asahi.com/english/nation/TKY20040513020 9.html

here

here

• TOYOTA's Press Release
  
• TOYOTA PARTNER ROBOT Page(movie)
  
• Movie(WMP)
• Movie(Real)

Others Robotics sites

• TMSUK T-52(Movie)
• HAL(Hybrid Assistive Leg)
• Bipedal Locomotor WL-16

• TOYOTA's Press Release
  
• TOYOTA PARTNER ROBOT Page(movie)
  
• Movie(WMP)
• Movie(Real)

Others Robotics sites

• TMSUK T-52(Movie)
• HAL(Hybrid Assistive Leg)
• Bipedal Locomotor WL-16

Of course not... Japanese doesn't use the Latin alphabet; they have their own set of squiggles. However, Europeans have come up with various ways of trying to represent the Japanese language using the Latin alphabet, and in one of the more common ones, "n" changes to "m" in front of "p", "b", and "m," since that's pretty much how it's pronounced. In the same vein, "ti" changes to "chi," "tu" changes to "tsu," "wo" changes to "o," etc...

Besides, Asahi Shimbun disagrees with you--see the bottom of their webpage: "Copyright 2004 Asahi Shimbun"

Michael Flatley I'm not, but I - even in my inherent inability to grasp the simplest dance steps - could hardly call that dancing.

PS - For those wondering about the video post slashdotting, imagine an akward looking slot machine with pointlessly complex legs wobbling aimlessly across a stage in a rythm and fashion in no way whatsoever resembling the happy-love-fun-time-gogogo japanese techno music playing in the background.

Then call that "dancing".

It has a funny way of walking! Watch the video.

But it won't do the dishes, though...

That is your government, participate. The quote "Every people gets the government it deserves" holds true, especially in democracies.
Others spend ridiculous amounts of money for it.

On the other hand, a survey showed that users of toll based systems are more satisfied.

If the NES was considered "historical" why was there just a museum exhibition dedicated to it? Level-X just ended its showing at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. I was lucky enough to get to check it out last month when I was there. Tons of history - and lots of boxes!

"Altogether, 1,200 titles were produced for the system. Remarkably, a sample of each one can be found at ``Level X,'' together with 50 or so different consoles and the accessories made for them."

They had pristine boxes for each and every one of those games, and perfect condition consoles, too. Maybe it's not thought of as such anymore, but boxes and manuals used to be art. Sure, the 8-bit character on the screen didn't look like much (remember NES Link?), but the box/manual art was great, so it was easy to imagine him as something more heroic. These days manuals are barely one step above photocopies - black and white inside and nothing much worth looking at. I remember full-color manuals being so nice that it was cool to look through them and read about the game while you waited for your turn to play.

When's the last time anybody did that with a current-gen game?

Plasma is looking like a transitional tech just like it was in the early days of "portable" PCs. LCDs could not be made big enough economically so the Plasma has wormed its way back. With big LCDs coming soon plasma TVs will probably disappear within a few years.

>Is there REALLY anything wrong with Fission power?

Well, some people are waging wars to avoid that they come into wrong hands.
Next, they are highly profiliated targets for terroristic attacks, and are in need of strong protection.
Finally maybe, because the backend costs of nuclear reactors make nuclear power (after over 45 years of commercial use) more expensive as conventional power-plants.
Which is all inherent to the fact that they use and need very refined and radioactive fuel and produce waste with similar attributes.

This guy must have shot out of some sort of bizzare-o world. I mean, Nintendo may be having a rough generation, but the rest of the industry seems to be just fine, and the overall numbers are still always better than last year.

not true. according to this random article, "Game sales, meanwhile, shriveled 9 percent to 336.7 billion yen." (when compared to the previous year, i presume). Combined with a 33% decline in console hardware sales for the year, mentioned in the article, the video game industry in Japan is going through hard times. Especially relevant given that no new hardware is planned for release for at least another year or 2... (i.e., hardware sales are only going to get worse.)

From Asahi News:
Windows Real

Looks more like that olympic speed walking than running ta me. That bot sure can throw tho.

From Asahi News:
Windows Real

Looks more like that olympic speed walking than running ta me. That bot sure can throw tho.

From Asahi News:
Windows Real

Looks more like that olympic speed walking than running ta me. That bot sure can throw tho.

> pre-set friendly relationship
Due to some historic circumstances (occupation of Korea pre-and while WWII), the goverment of (South) Korea did/does not exactly encourage Japanese imports, which have cultural strings attached. (Music, TV, films, computer games).

Here some headlines from Asahi Shinbun (in English):
Further easing of Japan culture ban
Dated: September 17, 2003

This stance (banning Japanese culture) may not reflect the public opinion. Still, it is not something I've heard about Canada/US/Mexico.

If this were an OS to OS comparison between Windows and OS X, perhaps we wouldn't be getting so frothed up. But this is hardware, and dammit, PC hardware is supposed to *always* be cheaper than Mac hardware!

To summarize what others have said:

1) Dell gave UT a sweetheart deal

2) Apple gave VT a sweetheart deal

3) Nobody has dredged up any information to indicate that the $38M UT spent includes the cost of a building. As csoto pointed out:"A "Center" at UT is a special term for a particular type of organized unit, often a research unit. It does not necessarily mean this place gets its own building. In fact, at UT, space is such a premium that most "Centers" don't have their own (yeah the place is huge, but has lots of people). In fact, I'd venture to guess that NO center has its own building."

4) Hardware is only a portion of the total cost, obviously. UT and VT have set up their supercomputing projects differently. This again is obvious.

5) The really important point of all this is that VT manage to put together a very powerful supercomputing cluster using Macs at a cost that in no way can be considered more expensive than if they'd used PC hardware.

You can argue that costs would have been cheaper had they built their own, or used PCs from some source cheaper than Dell. But they still would have had to deal with labor costs in assembling the PCs, or higher maintenance costs associated with keeping all of those commodity PCs running properly.

UCLA is already using OS X to run Beowulf-style clusters. Tokyo University is replacing over 1,100 Linux PCs with OS X boxes.

Even the total cost of installing, operating, and maintaining large numbers of Macs running OS X is cheaper than either PCs running Windows or PCs running Linux, people often seem incapable of absorbing that information.

You can talk all you want about the Reality Distortion Field, but the truth is that Apple is always working against an incredibly strong bias that says Apple is always more expensive.

That's simply no longer true.

When illogic prevails, reason gives way. -- Japanese proverb Well, for one, quoting a Japanese proverb discredits your post. Japan is one of the most fucked up over-commercialized places in the world, as chronicled here and here. You really don't want the megamonolithic corporations Japan has. Trust me. By instiuting megamergers the chance for America to have the same problems only increases due to lack of competition between companies to satisfy consumers as well as employees. The suicide rate in Japan is phenominal due to extreme corporate pressure. Just today a Tokyo resident blew himself up along with a few coworkers. Sayonara, dude!

To clarify for you:

PS2 worldwide figures: Asahi Shimbun (also contains Nintendo figures)
Xbox worldwide figures: MSFT 4th Quarter Earnings Report
Gamecube worldwide figures: Forbes from Reuters (at the bottom of the page). There are a few other pages quoting this figure as well.

PS2 US figures: NPDFunWorld
Xbox US figures: Unknown. Possibly the same as above?
Gamecube US figures: Guessed from estimate listed on AMO.NET Please note that this article does seem to be biased towards the Xbox, with multiple opinions to that effect. Nevertheless there is one good quote:

The real truth about these sales figures and future sales opportunities is that no single gaming system fan can be trusted with anything he or she has read regarding one system selling better, or performing better than the other.

See here for a little pre-conflict analysis, here (I love Asahi Shimbun) for a look at what's happening in the Diet, here and here for a look at the political fallout of Koizumi's position.

See here for a little pre-conflict analysis, here (I love Asahi Shimbun) for a look at what's happening in the Diet, here and here for a look at the political fallout of Koizumi's position.

See here for a little pre-conflict analysis, here (I love Asahi Shimbun) for a look at what's happening in the Diet, here and here for a look at the political fallout of Koizumi's position.

U.S. gives war orders to media

Maybe you should not construct your world-view from PR-releases from the US goverment, or CNN news. (AFAIK, not even they are stating such thing, only suggerating it. Otherwise, feel free to delusion me with a link)

Others take a different view, 2.
The European goverments supporting the US-American move do not have the support of the public opinion on that matter. Especially, not in the "new Europe". Denmarks goverment can acutally be added to that list too,. According to these polls, the strongest support is to be found in the UK, with 67% opposing a war without UN backing. The list is tailed by Germany (87%) and the "new Europe" (some ~70% opposing it even with UN backing)

Japan is in a similar position. The goverment is backing the US position, but has not the public support for it. Prime Minister Koizumi has his own opinion on that matter.

Here's the article, no registration, no fake registration, nothing.

90% of the NYT stories that Slashdot posts can be viewed without registration through a deal that the New York Times has with Asahi.com. You can see the listing of stories here.

http://www.asahi.com/business/update/1116/005.html For those of you than can read Japanese.

Hello, I'm Japanese guy.

I read this news in the Asahi news paper.
This news was not a small news, but the top news of the paper.
Why don't you check the source on Asahi.com?
You can see the translation here.

I've already heard it from Asahi

> > "(the US agreed to 7%.)"
Furthermore, its not "agreed to", but "did not agreed to".

> Germany allready lowerd the emissions by about 10%.

Well, this is mostly due to the collapsed industry in the eastern part (ex. GDR), which consisted mostly of inefficient industry in the ex-communist part (welcome to capitalism :)).
So it's not quite as impressive as it sounds, but still better than nothing.

In contrast, Japan, which ratified the protocol on 2002/05/22, increased its greenhouse by 7%.
But several parts of its industry signaled support in attaining the goal.

Hope, the goverment will not give in to the lobbying of opposing companies in implementing the regulations.

he Japanese are only able to maintain a defensive force, not an army, so even if it was weapons research, it would only be for use in self defense.

I guess you're unaware of the recent push in the Diet to introduce legislation to change this law (partially, at least) so that Japanese are capable of joining wars in some cases.

Link to story at Asahi.com

Hey, where are the karma whoring posts for how to bypass the free registration at NYTimes.com?

In case you're interested, you can always go to asahi.com to view the stories registration-free. This story can be found here.

And the NYT has already deleted it. They're not as dim as you might think...

I much prefer the method of finding alternate links, such as this one. It's easy: Simply go to http://www.asahi.com/english/nyt/index.html and search away!

Someone else is already posting a reg-free version of the site. http://www.asahi.com/english/nyt/technology.html here for a banner ad supported version of the site...

The story, no registration required.

You can all find this yourselves by going to this page and looking for the same headline. They have all of the NYT articles without any registration required.

How about a page that doesn't require any login at all?

The story, sans login. This can be replicated for every single NYT story on Slashdot or any other site via this page.

Actually, my wife read about this on asahi.com a few hours before we got it here, and it turns out most Japanese chefs are passing on this idea because they say any sea life at that depth would be too soft and lack any texture.

It's also funny because the Japanese article basically ignores all the interesting bits about sticky tentacles etc. to focus on the culinary benefits. Different priorities, I guess...

Japanese url.

Interesting -- they mention that the areas hit by the laser emit 680nm light, and are 400nm in diameter, and are separated by 100nm in all directions...

They also mention that this is about 2500 times as much data in one square centimeter, and that they extracted different data from different layers of the cube by varying the type of doping material, thereby varying the frequency of emitted light from each layer...

By the way, why does the lameness filter prevent me from posting the url link in japanese with unicode? That's pretty lame...

The original Asahi Shimbun article mentions that Sega is hiring a guy named Tetsu Kayama as a consultant for their network operations, then goes on to list his previous accomplishments, including creating joint-managed companies with Nintendo and Komuro. This got interpreted as the things that Kayama is going to do for Sega, somehow.

VIdeo-Senki