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Cool Japanese Gadgets You Can't Have
CitizenC writes "C|Net is running a story on really cool gadgets that we don't get here in the US or Canada. (At least, not yet anyway.) Included are an in car, dashboard mounted DVD player (VERY bad idea), a digital camera that stores images on a MiniDisk, the PlayStation 2 (Although we WILL be getting it this fall), colour LCD cell phones for web-surfing, and finally (my personal favorite), a digital fish tank!"
These peripherals DO exist. Unfortunately, they are outrageously expensive.
MDs are cool, but they're not that well suited to using as general purpose storage devices. MD music sounds so good, because it is ATRAC compressed - an MD only holds about 150MB of information.
Other disadvantages:
- Throughput/latency isn't that good, either. I think it's aproximately equivalent to a 2-spin CD drive.
- The media is expensive. To store general purpose data, you need higher-quality minidiscs that cost more than 5 times what regular music MDs. ATRAC encoding can compensate for bit errors, wheareas to store general purpose data, bit-errors are not tolerable.
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#include <malloc.h>
free(your.mind);
I've often wondered why there are no minidisc peripherals for computers. They would make great data storage devices if a standard format could be decided on. For that matter, why didn't the minidisc take off here in the states? If you've ever tried one you know that they can record incredible digital audio, they're rewritable, you can insert track markers and tap in your own labels for each track. It's also compact. Maybe someone else has more information.
(Offtopic): It seems many moderators misunderstand the meaning of "Troll". Many of you mark a post as Troll when it is really "Flamebait". To quote the Jargon file: "The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in on it. "
Moral: Don't dignify a stupid post by labeling it a troll unless it really is subtle and clever enough to deserve it. Mark it flamebait or offtopic instead.
-JD
Having lived in Japan for three years, I know this list is DRASTICALLY understated. There were things out in Japan before I arrived there which STILL are not available in the States. Take a vacation there sometime, I think you'll be very surprised....
In the article please read "Are not available anywhere in this world except Japan" instead of "Are not available in .us and .ca".
.us, .ca and .jp.
:)
The europeans have nukes too! Try to comprehend that the world is round and bigger than
Someone give CmdrTaco a map
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
You have to PRINT stuff in order to keep it alive. I tried this. HP's really sneaky, eh? You have to print gobs and gobs of stuff so you can keep your fish alive. Then you go and buy more printer cartridges. Thus HP gets your money....HP, sneaky sneaky.
Welcome to Slashdot. Please do not feed the trolls.
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
Very often, historically, U.S. invents or creates some very useful or cool technology, and Japan put its touch on it - basically ultra-commercialize it for consumer use. They add a bunch of really cool features, switch a few more things around and come up with some pretty innovative stuff. Then it gets copied by the other Asian mass-producing copy-without-regards-to-anything countries like Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong. These countries have creative energies of their own, but is strongly influenced by Japan. And then everything is Made In China (nowadays), because it's so cheap and there are so many people there.
Japan has tremendous cultural influence in the world of commercial technological consumerism. The way it most often played out is in the gadgets and appliances. They keep some of the most outrageous or cool stuff in Japan, because very often, they are the only ones who can really appreciate it.
If anything, I would expect Japan to come out with very cool Internet gadgets, because that is what they are great at. They are a force to watch in the rapidly moving world of Internet technologies, because they can commercialize and consumerize anything.
A lot of Japanese products may seem utterly frivolous and useless, but nothing is ever really totally useless. There's always a lesson to be learned in creating completely computer generated fish tanks, etc.
Sony has recently released a second gen minidisc format. It stores 640 Megs (like a cd-rom) but keeps the small minidisc form factor.
It also has built in ethernet. For a camera it's pretty cool. Although the video capture is only crummy at best.
Sony has released a special Digital Camera that uses the format. (In the US even). Check it out at http://www.sel.sony.com/SEL/consumer/mddiscam
I have a quantum CD evaporator. (Note use of quantum here because it just *has* to enahnce the coolness factor of whatever your talking about!) Alright im sitting there installing FreeBSD munching some Oreo's mudding and doing some C code for binary tree's thinking this is great!.
,after a 2 hour unsucesful CD hunt you tend to de devolve with prejduice.
:p
Then my CD player evolved without telling me. Suddenly the FreeBSD install stops and goes "I/O error, there was an error parsing some binary information" or something like that. So I scratch my head and pop the CD open and low.. the CD has disappeared. Im like hmmn maybe I took it and did something with it. So I gather up my posse (my cat's) and send them on a CD hunt. No such luck so I break out my devolution tools (screw driver) and begin to de evolve my cd drive
So I peek at my highly demolished CD drive and there it is! The Golden FreeBSD CD. I gently lift it out and with the casing off of my CD drive I pop it back in.. My cat seemed to find it highly entertaining to SLAP a cd spinning in a 40X drive. *mutters* Anyways its not really a quantum CD evaporator thingie but it was damn frustrating!