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Much as Russia has always longed for a warm water port, Japan has always needed a reliable source of raw materials. Their invasions of China and Russia, and their involvement in WWII, were all based on the limited resources of their homeland. The partnership with the U.S. has provided both a market and a supply of materials for the remarkable post WWII growth of Japanese industry. Space is the perfect answer to a continuing joint effort. I own a Honda and am convinced it is a superior product in every way. I see no reason to believe their robots will be any different. The Japanese are sometimes accused of being better copiers than inovators, at least when it comes to technology. That may be true, but we should also consider that many American companies have copied Japanese management techniques with great success. Traditionally the Japanese people have excelled at successful integration of large populations in small areas with limited resources. Their society incorporates complex and specific codes for individual behavior. In an artificial environment, such as a lunar settlement, the ability to get along in crowded conditions and the socialization of necessary protocols for environmental adaptation are powerful tools for success. The typical Japanese's willingness to give loyalty to the greater good makes them ideal partners in enduring the hardships of space exploration. Note that the articles refer to the Japanese contribution to a lunar colony centering on building and mining robots. Of course the technicians to maintain and control those robots will be a part of that contribution. It may be that in the long run, the lessons learned from the Japanese culture will outweigh the benefits of their technology. Personally I like the idea of a U.S. partnership with a society that is absolutely against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It will make it that much easier for US to do the right thing.

billy - we have no space-based weapons...no really...we promise...really...

Using a standard protocol like SIP allows any kind of data stream to be established. There is already a rapidly growing market for SIP phones that support video using the H.263 protocol.

Sure. This quotes the IDC as expecting "China's PC sales to nearly double in a few years, from 11.3 million in 2002 to 21.1 million in 2006." Note that IDC's estimates are even higher than Xinhua's.

Furthermore, do not confuse current market share of NEW computers with the installed base of PCs as a whole.

Who's showing signs of confusion? I estimated conservatively (assuming people keep computers for 3 years), that there are 20 million PCs in use in China, based on sales figures in 2002. I further quoted that China now has the second largest PC market, which is not the same as installed base.

It is quite possible for China to have much millions more NEW sales than Japan because of their economic growth and still have fewer installed computers at the end of the year or even 5 years.

That's actually less likely. Poor countries are likely to hang on to PCs longer than rich countries. I wouldn't be surprised if there were a good number of 5-year old computers in use in China.

When, at last count, less than 1% of households have PCs and few people are likely to be able to afford or use multiple computers; it's basic math and a tiny amount of extropolation.

Your 1% figure is simply inaccurate. The 10.1 or 11.3 million PCs sold in 2002 already account for the 1%, and that's assuming nobody in this third world country throw away their computer after one year.

However, your meaning came across quite clearly on my end because of your insistance that the apparent disparity needs to be justified somehow.

Try to understand that some people don't give a damn one way or the other, except that people are arguing the right topics (in this case, actual users versus percentage of population), and are using the right numbers to back up their arguments.

Kind of like Texas? Even New York wants to copy us.

Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and New Mexico - well they're all just a bunch of back-woods hicks who don't know nuthin 'bout them 'puters. :)

Oh, I don't know. Photoshop works fine under Linux.

10 years of Wine finally paid off. I think you can get Wine to work in FreeBSD, including Crossover Office, as well - using lxrun

i highly doubt gun rights advocates would ever swallow wide implementation of computer technology in guns, especially if TCPA and RFID ever come to their attention.

A fuel cell is a great solution, and the progress is going quickly. Of course, you still have to deal with carrying fuel, which either means storing hydrogen (another whole problem) or carrying a converter to strip hydrogen off of methanol/gasoline/whatever.

If you want a purely-electric solution, keep your eye on ultracapacitors. They're still pretty expensive, but they're already starting to beat the energy density of batteries. Check out this story from today. Seems this company has built a 2500 Farad capacitor that weighs less than a kilogram and can discharge current at 625 Amps. (Anyone with a bit of electronics knowledge should have jaws on the floor about now; I did). It stores power at 2.5 V, which gives it about 10x the energy density of batteries.

There are still some problems before we can use them to power cars (leakage current, dielectric breakdown at temperatures above 80 C etc.), but the advantages are great, not least among them that you can charge a capacitor pretty much as fast as you can feed current - no more waiting for batteries to charge! The company's web site also lists a 4-farad capacitor that weighs 5.5 grams. Anyone want to recharge that mobile phone in five seconds?