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Software In The Land That Time Forgot
Sara Chan writes: "The Economist has an interesting story about software in a country described as 'The land that time forgot.' This country has wealth and technology to rival the USA, and over 125 million people. Yet it has a software industry that discourages creative thinking and gives no chance to entrepreneurs. Firms that specialize in custom software charge a pre-fixed amount for a system. And Microsoft has little presence there, because most software runs on the antiquated mainframes with which the software came bundled. Yes, it's Japan. (And if you're not well familiar with Japan's culture, it's also worth reading the articles now appearing in The Atlantic Monthly.)"
Instead of a single version of Windows that lets the user install his preferred language, MS has many dozens of "localized" versions that are incompatible with one another. (Try reading a disk in US windows with Japanese filenames). Without cross compatibility, much US software is useless in Japan. Regionalising cuts off ideas from spreading.
No a good plan. The purchasing habits of the Japanese society has alot to do with running Japans economy into the ground. A lack of consumption by a society is BAD! Wealth that rivals the USA? That is the most uneducated and misinformed statement I've read in a very long time. Japan is in the opposite of infaltion right now, deflation. Banks in Japan are literally giving money away to try and resusitate there dead economy.
The very fact that you are asking this question shows how little clue you have. Comparing Linux to a Mainframe OS is like comparing...oh, I don't know, a Model T to a Formula 1 race car. They are both OS's that drive hardware, but the reliabilty and performance can't even be compared.
Exactly how is it simpler to port them all over to Linux as compared to NT? Chances are they are running on some archaic OS that probably more resembles VMS to anything else. I'm not real sure what you are actually asking, to port linux to these mainframes or to port the mainframe apps to linux? I dont know, either way its probably pretty impossible/absurd.
I mean come on. This is data that is possibly running entire financial institutions and you honestly think they will just lets a few 'hackers' in port your system and then trust its reliability? Sometimes the people around here are so clueless its funny.
http://www.microsoft.com/japan/
Sure, according to Microsoft, but http://www.japan.com/microsoft is what counts.
All in all, I'd say Japan has the advantage of being able to skip all the stupid mistakes that have been made (and are still being made) during the silly "Home PC" era. In the end, it will be the quality of the mobile IP network that give Japan a distinct advantage over other countries. Right now that might not be easy to see, as Japan is just on the virge of rolling out 3G country wide (actually, I'd argue they're already there) and the first wave of 3G device are in the process of undergoing the first round of darwinian selection. The whole evolution is producing some what of a renasance in chip fab/design and display technology development. Stuff like that will break companies like Motorola, Qualcom and others who haven't seen the faintest hint of competition in the mobile IP sector (WAP, indeed!).
Yes, for technological reasons, this is another area China and the rest of the Eastern Asian world should change for, because it is so technically difficult to accomodate the 'old style'. But I still think that the beauty of the writing and it's characters should not go away completely. Similarly, Japan should be building new and technologically great things in their country, but not needlessly destroying beauty as the articles state that they have been doing for years, just to support trying to be like their western neighbors.
> Yet it has a software industry that discourages
> creative thinking and gives no chance to
> entrepreneurs.
But corporations give bonuses for using best practices like reuse..."discouraging creative thinking" can be an okay thing when creative thinking becomes Not Invented Here.
> Firms that specialize in custom software charge
> a pre-fixed amount for a system.
I think software engineering in Japan is closer to other types of engineering as far as process goes, compared to what we do in the states (see http://www.laputan.org/mud for what happens all too often).
Pay attention to software development in Japan...eventually, I think the dust will settle in the US and software engineering will (hopefully) become a more formal task...
I'd say that a better analogy would be a sports car (Linux) to a tractor-trailer (Mainframe.)
The sports car may be better for executing tight turns and personal enjoyment/expression/fun, but if you're looking to transport metric tons of materials from warehouse to factory, a tractor-trailer is a better choice.
I spent the better part of 10 years in various locations in Japan and tend to agree that it is an odd culture (I especially liked the super-highways to nowhere, and the obligatory chat before each conversation would get going.).
To take over the Japanese software industry you must subject your programming and your personality to their culture, and not expect to change their culture.
You cannot throw a kanji patch onto a word processor and call it a japanese word processor. Business documents in japan are damn near typeset, follow very formal rules and are nothing like american documents.
Thrown into this is a culture based on personal relationships, positioning, and pride in culture (often blurring the lines of culture vs racism).
Windows is not "popular" although it is used. MacOS is a bit more popular (it fits in the culture better (as well as supporting japanese better)). There is some Solaris around, but I never met too many people who were any good with it. Turbo Linux is getting to be very popular lately. And NEC has some other OS that is the standby (I don't know what it is, and it might run on top of DOS, the times I saw it it reminded me of GEO Works), but I think it must be expensive as homes usually have something else (if anything, most people do not have PCs at home).
One thing to keep in mind is that the "paper-less" office is a practical impossibility in Japan. Every important document I ever signed, from traffic tickets to rent agreements to insurance forms to hotel reciepts; regardless of how they were created; would be printed then they would get out their family stamp kit and press their little wooden stamp into the red ink and then carefully press that onto the document, and THAT made the document official.
Also, much of our recent progress in America has been on the backs of the unwashed, uncouth, unshaven neo-hippies of the "Dot-Com" age, and while their accomplishments may be legion they would never hold jobs in Japan. People think IBM is straight-laced...Try Japan on for size some time. There you respect age and experience along with culture, both national and corporate.
When you have all of this down we will explore trying to keep all of the obligatory social relationships going from across the ocean, in Japan you do not suck up to customers, sell them your product and then forget them, you now have a relationship that will need renewed periodically with karoke nights and golf days. All this so you can sell them something they really still wish they could get from a japanese company.
Ah yes, that addicive like heroin game was ported to Free Unixes not once but twice (at least):
xpuyo, although the author is ashamed of the quality of this version.
and
xpuyopuyo, which is quite nice. This one even has some AIs that will occasionally give beginners some challenge. Actually some of the AIs in here are annoyingly hard. The internet play on this one is quite good to boot.
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
Federal anti-trust laws themselves are not authorized under the constitution, and that's the thin end of the wedge.
Article I, Section 8, clause 3 grants Congress the power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes".
That's the constitutional basis for federal anti-trust laws.
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Hm. I wonder what Japanese filenames look like on the command line of OS X?
:-) - it appears as:
OS X uses Unicode, so they just look, uh... weird. For example, when I try to complete a Japanese filename in zsh (I typed some random Japanese characters, they're probably nonsense
\M-c\M-^B\M-5\M-e\M-\M-^P\M-h\M-^N\M-+
OS X has the same input methods as OS 9, except with much nicer looking Japanese fonts.
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Well, now it is Score:5, Interesting :P All these years, wasted :)
I concede
Several third-party hacks? Looks like I should throw out my Japanese version of NT then. I mean what's the point if it needs more hacks to work with Japanese text!
Perhaps you could explain what hacks you are talking about?
> memory chip?)
Just off the cuff, tere's te 64k (yes, that's a k, kids) dram from Texas Instruments, whic ad to be recalled . . .
And bugs in processors are too numerous to consider . . .
awk
Yes, imagine such a world. "Slashdot" would be called "C-colon-backslash-right-angle-bracket" for a start, and it would be full of kids raving about this marvellous thing called an "Explorer" and how it was way better than primitive command line interfaces, and how refreshing it was to reboot your system from time to time, and some crazy dude named ESR would write these amazing rants about how shipping pre-compiled binaries was like building a cathedral... ;0)
No, what Japanese corporations excel at is execution and operations. Historically, they haven't been great innovators. Take the example of motorcycles, televisions (and consumer electronics in general) and even heavy industry. The Japanese are great at manufacturing, they tend to buy innovation, either directly or by sending students overseas to study (I don't have the figures to hand, but Japan sends dozens of college students to the US for every one the US sends to Japan).
Couple this with a regulatory environment that is paranoid about defending Japanese home markets, and strict competition laws that amount to a government sponsored oligarchy, and you have a model for Japanese industrial success.
Japanese markets are hideously inefficient compared to ours (US/UK), for example the retail sector is dominated by a few huge manufacturers, but many thousands of tiny, single-premesis retailers. Very difficult to get economies of scale in retail like that, and even more difficult to get good marketing data (no, not banner ads, I mean data that informs product development). Their wholesale financial services sector is positively primitive compared to Wall Street, the Square Mile or Singapore.
It's these factors that mean that what the Japanese do well - bulk manufacturing of sophisticated products with gradual refinement - they do very well indeed, but they are very poorly positioned to compete in a world where the value is locked into innovative intellectual property which changes rapidly and where execution is commoditized. Their system can cope with long term capital investment in tangible assets such as factories, but it cannot cope with what we could call high-risk venture capital.
It will be fascinating to watch their attempts at reform, but I think that the only thing that will end the 10-year recession is full-scale deregulation, and opening up to inward investment.
There are many exceptions to the "Japansese discourage creative thinking" meme, but I think that it is generally true. However it's interesting that this thought is a recent innovation.
The future presented by William Gibson (among others) is dominated by Japanese culture and thoughout the eighties it was the Japanese electronics companies that everyone was afraid of. Intel left the memorty market because of them; Microsoft backed the MSX machines.
Todays successful Japanese companies are buying into Western 'creative' companies (think of Sony here).
Who'd have thought it?
>Many things that I've read have indicated that the Japanese mainstream truly believes that the internet is entirely pornography and is a complete waste of time.
>
>Anyone in Japan want to comment on that?
Many things I've read have indicated that the internet _is_ entirely pornography and a complete waste of time. Any internet users want to comment on that?
In other words: don't believe everything you read.
Yes, those people exist, but the same type of people exist in the US and elsewhere, too.
As a Japanese person living in Japan, I'm intrigued by this alleged Japanese caste structure thingy, because I'd never realized there is one. (Unless you consider discrimination against foreigners as a caste system, Japan today is a lot less of a caste society than, say, the UK.) Would you care to elaborate what the castes are?
The article tells about how the Internet market is controlled by NTT and other 3 Japanese companies and about copies of IBM mainframes. But I recall form years ago that IBM was about the only case of success of a foreign company in the Japanese market, and it was because IBM Japan behaved like a Japanese company.
Can somebody comment on IBM Japan and its differences with other Japanese companies or the rest of IBM?
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Although you can in theory write every Japanese text in Hiragana (a syllable alphabet) it would be almost unreadable.
Without the Kanji you just can't be sure a) where one word ends and the next one begins and b) what most words mean, because of the endless number of homophones in Japanese.
Really? The Japanese can understand themselves on the phone. Whay couldn't they use romaji? And about the word ends, it should be easier with a Latin alphabet. They only need to decide the rules.
The Vietnamese also transitioned from ideographs to Latin. But probably Vietnamese has less homophones.
__
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
If you are still there, I remember that some very important medioeval Japanese novels were written by women in kana, because that's all they were taught. Are they published currently in kanji? Were they difficult to read?
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
Now?
They've been doing that for last 50 years in order to stimulate the economy. It worked just fine when they could export so much more than import; but it eventually caught up with them when people realized that investments made no money without growth. Japan's economy depends a lot more on the second derivative than most western nation's economies do.
Is their economic way of life inferior? Who knows, only time will tell. It sure doesn't look that way right now, but then again the western nations had a great depression and we emerged much the wiser for it.
The only thing that really disturbs me about Japan are the reports of their crumbling higher-education systems; critics claim that their educational system is only intended to make good corportate drones (to use y2k vernacular) and to avoid too much open thought. Since I live in the US, it's hard to meter these claims -- but what I do know is that I never hear anything bad about Japan from Japan itself, and that sets of warning bells. A heathy society can have sprited fights about what's right-and-wrong; a sick society must support the status quo regardless the situation.
The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
Which is less than the global average of $12.923 (according to the international version of the previously mentioned Bill Gates Personal Wealth Clock).
I think that the personal cassette player was invented and patented in the US before the Sony Walkman. However, the inventor made the mistake of including a belt and belt-clip in the design and not claiming for a player that did not use those.
I'd guess that the filenames are stored in UTF-8. If it's possible to convince zsh that non-ASCII characters are OK, and if the terminal can handle UTF-8, then it might be possible to display them properly.
Okay, I read the links. A guy who lives in Russia with his Russian wife sensibly writes an article about Russia, and a bunch of people (mostly Americans) claim that he's wrong and is an anti-Russian bigot besides. Okay, sure, whatever. So what was your point again?
You can choose which time zone you want things expressed in somewhere in the preferences, but it doesn't always work on everything. F'rinstance, I submitted a story last Saturday night around 9 or 10 Eastern Daylight Time, but the "pending" notice that came back said Sunday morning at 1.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
In the video game arena, the Japanese are responsible for MOST of the innovation of the entire planet! (There are innovative American games, but they're definitely the exception rather than the rule.) There are whole categories of video games in Japan that don't even exist in the US (Princess Maker, Dating Sim, Super Robot Wars, etc).
Part of this may be due to the fact that their market is comparitively huge, and will support more niches, but still...
Sega's output for the Dreamcast alone had more new ideas than all of the PC games market put together for that year! I'm not saying that to put down Western programmers, but rather to give credit to the Japanese where and when it's due.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Firstly, as someone else already noted, video games. Some game programmers are household names within the industry, sucha as Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid) or Shigeru Miyamoto (Zelda, Mario).
I've seen a lot of Japanese-created software for the Palm Pilot too.
Or how about the TMPGEnc MPEG encoder written by Hiroyuki Hori? It's often called the best in its class.
Many corporations such as Unisys also have Japanese divisions which are run and staffed by Japanese.
In short, this isn't much of an article.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
I have a friend who has lived in Japan on and off for the past five years, and according to her it's not quite as simple as that. The successful multinational companies (Honda and Sony, for example) have a much less hierachical and seniority-oriented corporate culture - and, funnily enough, they produce funky innovative products. However, Japan's domestically-oriented companies, such as banks and retailing, live up to every bad stereotype you have of conservative, addled mandarins stifling innovation and creativity.
Go you big red fire engine!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
the non-creative guys at Nintendo and Sony had taken the console scene by storm and were posed to give Microsoft a very hot welcome party to THEIR market.
Specifically, the non-creative guys at Nintendo had been coding classic game upon classic game for what seems to be ages now.
Also, every two years a new japanese idea spreads like fire among the world's children, their parents "cluelessness" notwhitstanding. Yes, I am talking about the Zodiac Knights, Tamagoshi, Pokemon etc.You can argue those are not primarily software, but marketing devices. I would agree they are memes, but except for the first of my examples, the others are mainly software. Very non-creative.
They printed a ridiculously long, biased hatched job called Russia Is Finished back in May to try to get everyone "familiar" with Russia's culture. Intelligent letter-writers have pointed out that it was mostly a crock.
So why would I care what they have to say about Japan?
I think I will stick to what fellow geeks without a political axe to grind tell me.
They're just not doing daylight savings time. Note: your "Mon Jul 2 15:13:14 EDT" is equivalent to their "Monday July 02, @02:13PM EST". Different timezones (EST vs. EDT) mean different indicated times for the same moment. Doesn't mean that they shouldn't go to UTC, since it's a worldwide site, but they're not wrong.
The PC98 series was made by NEC, not Fujitsu - NEC had an 80% market share at one point, but they don't make them any longer. All the PCs sold in Japan now are the same AT-compatibles that you get in the States.
Actually, Accenture already has a very bad reputation in Japan... if you read Japanese, try going to one of the university-graduate jobhunter discussion websites (www.2ch.net is a good start). They consider it to be the epitomy of "hype" companies (ie, hyping themselves while doing absolutely bugger-all for their clients).
Great. So when Japan is first with something, you say "They're fools for rushing into the market... we'll one-up them later... Rah! Rah! USA!!". When the Japanese one-up the US on a US-born technology, you say "Japan is a country of copycats... they never produce anything original."
So which one is it?
Hahaha. Talk to Japanese Linux users instead. TurboLinux is the biggest joke in Japan - the real leaders are Vine Linux, Kondara Linux and Red Hat.
Interestingly enough, the version of Linux can actually run as the only OS on the machine. Not many places would choose that path, though, I think...
*Sigh*.
The Macintosh is widely used in the design and publishing industries. Just because you don't see them in the average office doesn't mean they're not out there.
For Linux, you need to visit places that actually carry it. (Hint: Shibuya is not the best place to go for software.) Try Platform in Akihabara, for a specialist shop, or the Laox next door for a general retail store.
The garbage can isn't needed because (*gasp*) most suburban Japanese put their trash out on certain days of the week, so it isn't left lying around on the sidewalk. In central Tokyo, there are large communal trash bins that are used instead.
The Alex Kerr stuff is actually pretty close to the truth (not THE truth, of course, since there's no such thing, but not a bad apparaisal of Japan's current situation). The Economist article, on the other hand, is pure Microsoft publicity bullshit. I thought I was going to puke reading it - the guy obviously has no idea whatsoever about PCs and software in Japan.
Interestingly enough, Toshiba does exactly the same thing (relabelling Sun servers).
OS: The TRON series (B-TRON, etc.) Used widely for embedded systems; you probably own an appliance that uses it.
Web browser: w3m
Programming language: Ruby
Don't speak of that about which you know nothing...
Let's see - 30 million i-mode users out of a population of 125 million. 3G (broadband) wireless access in progress, while the U.S. is still arguing over which part of the spectrum to allocate.
[Insert pithy quote here]
From my expierience in embedded linux, most are from Japan. They are embracing it faster than you can shake a stick at it (including many other eastern countries... I'm betting that they will be ahead of us in software in a few short years.)
If they are as innovative in software under linux as they are in hardware... Microsoft will be only a footnote in a history book...
Yes, fear the penguin, as it is starting to grow really big sharp teeth... and lots of them.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The games are good. The console hardware is good. The cell phones are also a step ahead of the rest of the world.
But, consoles don't run businesses. As such, the whole game playing computer scene is a financial drop in the bucket compared to the stuff which makes banks and factories tick.
Actually, if you buy a Fujitsu workstation or Enterprise class server in Japan, you'll see it's simply a Sun Ultrasparc with the sun logo ripped off and a Fujitsu logo glued on.
So, if you're right, then Fujitsu should market what it's got better and it will rule the World. Or at least the Japanese islands.
The truth comes out: anti-virus software companies really are computer virus companies...
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I fail to see how this is a bad thing - this just encourages good software estimation. The number one complaint about EULAs in the U.S. is that you can't really take the software company to task for poor products; here's a case where they actually do pay for their mistakes. Sounds good to me.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Has anyone ever seen any of the competitions Honda hold whereby employees are allowed to build crazy and useless inventions? I wish I had a link, but it shows what the Japanese can do. Maybe this sort of approach should be used by computer software and hardware companies?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I bet they can hardly wait!
--
Poliglut
Japanese Windows is not English Windows with Add-ons. It is totally native Double-byte code -
Japanese Windows is just as good (or bad) as its English counterpart, right out of the box.
Also, Linux works great in Japanese. KDE, GNOME - They are all working well.
Since I'm in Japan, I just buy "Linux Magazine" or one of the others - They come with a couple of distros on CD (Sometimes on DVD!)
Set up a new box as a Japanese KDE system and then you can do input with no trouble. You can also then change the language to English from the KDE control panel.
Japanese enabling an English Linux install is much more difficult. I've never been able to get the Japanese input working on such a system, though the display works fine.
Cheers
Jim
MMDC Mobile Media
-- My Weblog.
Do you mean that private homes do not have trash removal?
Blar.
> I was working with a Japanese system programmer, and he was telling me that US-style programming (individualistic) just don't fit the mindset of Japanese people (consensus). Even when Japanese programmers are given the freedom to do it, they can't (Exceptions occurs for sure).
US-style programming tends to result in a lot of exceptions too.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
When you walk up and down the aisles at CompUSA, are you struck by the impression that the US software industry encourages creative thinking?
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
No hard numbers, but the new Netcraft survey (which, oddly enough,
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The /. blurb seems to have ommitted one key point with respect to the Economist article. The KEY POINT of the article is that the "big three" Japenese hardware manufacturers (NEC, Fujitsu, and Hitachi) dominated the business computing industry for years in Japan. Since these hardware companies use an older 1970s business model derived from US mainframe and supercomputer companies like IBM and Cray, software has been tied to the platform. It is not at all surprising, in this context, that PC software companies (Microsoft included) experienced sluggish sales.
Just take a look at the time history of PC sales and Microsoft sales shown in the article. They're both tightly correlated, and both skyrocketing. The main point is that MICROSOFT IS RAPIDLY BECOMING AN INCREASING PRESENCE IN JAPANESE COMPUTING. The plot shows Microsoft sales increasing six-fold in the last six years. I would hardly call that a negligable presence.
I would suggest that many of the previous posters try something new, and check out the original article, before ranting on their own little soapboxes.
Bob
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
Many things that I've read have indicated that the Japanese mainstream truly believes that the internet is entirely pornography and is a complete waste of time.
Anyone in Japan want to comment on that?
-B
By second derivative do you mean growth. Which is the derivative of GNP, but whats the GNP's antiderevative.?? Or did you mean second derivative of GNP, which would be change in growth. I really don't see how a constant changing in the growth rate would really help.
Now you see the money....
Now you don't.
so what exactly are they saying here?
Rule #1, people are stupid. There are no exceptions.
Can you elaborate on what you think are different social norms and purchasing habits between "western culture" and Japan?
So is there a command-line shell for OS X that will show you Japanese filenames? Does KTerm or something similar do this? Has anyone built it on OS X? Sorry, I just don't have the time to try any of this on my own boxen.
Yeah, recently I did some development for a WinCE platform, and was really relieved to find that everything is built in Unicode. It makes some tasks much easier when you don't have to think at all about character conversions.
If that's true, then how is it that I was able to throw out KanjiKIT on my wife's Win95 machine? Well, Microsoft Word & Outlook 2000 work quite well with MS' integrated IME for Japanese. And IE 5 works fine, too. She needs no "third-party-hacks." Now if you want to save with Japanese filenames, that's another story. But I don't know how to do that in *NIX, either.
Please clarify.
I would have to say that the Macintosh has this down quite well (and has for some time). My brother-in-law has a fully functioning bilingual (English/Japanese) system on his (MacOS 9) PowerBook. [Hm. I wonder what Japanese filenames look like on the command line of OS X?]
Windows2000 works fine with Unicode filenames, as does windowsCE, no problem at all and I didn't have to download anything. This was using chinese, but I'm sure japanese is a similar issue
What's really amazing about WinCE though, is that it dosn't at all support 8bit ASCII text, so everything is unicode unless you go way out of your way, and write your own ASCII libs.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
according to the Bill Gates Personal Clock the average US cizan's personal contribution to bill gate's forune is about $280.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Actualy, Linux has been ported to IBM mainframes, by IBM itself. The problem isn't the coding, the 'problem' if you really want to call it that is that the Mainframes simply work and work fine.
If you have a box thats handling, say, $1 million dollars worth of transactions per day, and it's been doing it for the past 20 years, why the hell would you stop? Why fix it if it aint broke?
IBM has put plenty of web-integration stuff out there for their mainframes, or you can interface them with PCs (Use tons of web-facing PCs with a Big-ol mainframe as your DB server).
Just because a hack exists dosn't mean you need to, or have any reason, to use it.
Linux is there for the mainframes for people who want it, but if you've already got a mainframe... what's the point?
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Companies are tied to particular computer manufacturers and must pay for bad tailor-made software that can often be bought for a small fraction of the price off the shelf. Japan's hardware revolution offers a chance to change all this. First, though, the Japanese will have to get the software right, too.
Instead, they can be tied to a particular software manufacturer, and pay for bad rehashes of old technology that can be had for free off the Net. First, though, the Japanese will have to start changing thier desktop backgrounds, downloading e-mail viruses and sending each other useless, overly-formatted memos in proprietary formats. Then they will lead the world in IT efficiency.
(newer | glitzy) != more_efficient
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
It must be rather obvious to everyone that Japan has invented, created and developed many things.
.. these were all invented in the west, but are typically manufactured in Asia.. Even the Walkman (arguably the biggest invention to come from Sony) is just taking an existing product and making it portable..
It's not obvious to me. Can you give some examples of the inventions that have come out of Japan in the last 100 years?
The way I see it, Japan is good at taking existing inventions, and making them better - not at inventing them in the first place.
Some examples that come to mind are Television, IC's (or computers in general), and telephones (any sort of telecommunications)
Can you give me some examples of Japanese inventions?
There's been a recent flap in the news here in East Asia about Japanese History Textbooks for students which make light of Nanking, Korea and other Japanese behaviour during their colonial phase.
Some Japanese veterans have gone, almost as pilgrims, to places like Nanjing and the Phillipines to atone, but the official line remains unrepentant.
If they did admit guilt, then they would lose a lot of face and for the Asian mindset, that's worse than dying.
dave
You are not required to use the GPL if you develop an application for Linux. Now if you modify and existing GPLd app, then yes, you must GPL the results, but it's quite possible to run proprietary apps on Linux.
Anyway, much of this software will be inhouse accounting/inventory/etc software and not of much interest to the 'Linux Community'.
dave
VM is the "sandbox" in which Linux runs.
Furthermore, it is possible for Linux to run on the S/390 (z-series) bare metal, and have a single Linux image on one huge big-ass mainframe box. It's just pretty stupid to do that. It would waste the tremendous capacity of a mainframe.
however, the MSCE gravy train is probably at an end-road... Businesses are going to want college graduates instead of test taking "professionals".
... hi bingo
"In short, this isn't much of an article"
No but it does re enforce the racist stereotypes of most americans so it gets published in a major magazine and of course here on slashdot.
I wonder who they will target next maybe those damned a-rab ragheads they write with funny characters too.
War is necrophilia.
But, consoles don't run businesses. As such, the whole game playing computer scene is a financial drop in the bucket compared to the stuff which makes banks and factories tick.
You should ask Sony about this. They make about 1/3rd of their revenue from the Playstation console(s). That's a bit bigger than a drop.
Linux runs on mainframes, so I'm not sure I understand the distinction being made here.
- Have a picture
Yes it does. It runs on the S/390, which is an IBM mainframe.
- Have a picture
This isn't a surprise to people who have seen the anime "Serial Experiments Lain", and have noted the "Be" in "To Be Continued" is red and blue, an exact copy of the Be Inc. logo. Most of the development resources I've come across for the Be Operating System are in Japanese or else dead links for English stuff.
;), as anyone who installed the small component in the Pro version would know.
Furthermore, editing Japanese text is quite simple in BeOS (says a foreigner
Daniel
Doesn't seem to be much of a difference.
t ml
http://www.encyclopedia.com/articlesnew/14137.h
Wow... that's only $11.20 USD per man, woman, and child. What kind of money is MSFT making off of the average US person?
I think that point that needs to be realized with Japan is that they're currently in a 10 year recession.
Antiquated hardware? Antiquated software? Place have stuff like this on both sides of the Pacific but to label all of Japan as "The Land That Time Forget" for technology is wrong. After all where do almost all of the driving force for video games come from? Where have almost all of the ground breaking advancements in game/console software and hardware come from? Japan! The PS2 and Gamecube are certainly not Atari 2600.
When I read these headlines about "countries that time forgot", I just can't help thinking about the same headlines that are routinely applied to our countries (continental Europe), saying:
"Oh, look, those poor little Europeans that still live in the Middle Ages with such some obsolete things as welfare systems, social security for all, minimum wages, and so on. Why don't they realize they live in the 21st century and scrap all those dinausoresque social systems ?"
One world, one language, one socio-economical framework.
Thomas Miconi
Well, shibuya is the only place I saw even a hint of linux (it was probably an ad for german soap anyway), and there was not one person living in a design and publishing industries office in all the design and publishing industries office that I visited. I was talking about computer stores Electric City.
Shut up and let the Score:4, Insightful talk. They always do ;*)
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Japan is the BASF of countries. We didnt invent the tv, we made it cheaper. We didnt invent the automobile, we made it smaller and cheaper. We didnt invent the video game, we just make good ones and then dont release them in the US, to spite them for nuking us back in the day.
The difference lies within how a business should be run/managed/controlled.
This is exactly right, and japanese buisness are doing a crappy job of rewarding innovation, due to the way they run their buisneses. Theres the story of the japanese guy who invented the blue diode, the invention that makes white diodes possible, along with faster optical drives etc. His invention made the company hundreds of millions of dollars, all he got was a measly raise and no promotion. He then got offers from various US companies offering him salires 2-3x what he was getting, royalties on anything he invented, and offers to head departments at various colleges. He decided, wisely that his talents werent appreciated in japan, and immigrated. The seniority system in japan and gaurenteed job placement for life prevents raises and advancements for innovative people, thus stifling innovation as a whole. This is not good or bad, if your goal is 100% employment and job security, its very good, if you want innovation, its not such a good idea.
the major problem has to do with there banking and accounting systems. THER IS NO ACCOUNTING REQUIREMENT in japan. this meens banks could investing deposits in anything they want, and carry those investments in their books at a purely arbitrary value. and this has yet to change.
i remenber the 80's, and i would imagine that if they got their act together, they coud do for software what they did for autos. (forced USA to make a better auto than they did in the 80s.)
i'm just waiting for it to happen.
cheers
TIME is the Aether...
http://www.microsoft.com/japan/
--
But I've seen a bunch of features in the media with stuff about Japanese inventions - there's some competition that Honda (I think) run each year to come up with new cars, Sony has it's own wacky development department that I read about in Wired a while back, and so on.
As I understood it, the problems in the corporate structure over there arose from similar reasons as the problems in politics - their high life-expectancy. There's still a bunch of 60-year-old guys running everything, and they're rather stuck in their ways (and they were brought up in Japan before it started embracing a more Western way of working). But they're finally starting to retire and everything's changing over there.
Please feel free to criticise me if I'm talking out of my ass BTW; I'm just saying what I half remember from a bunch of documentaries and stuff.
Unix isn't different than anywhere else, but the claim that MS doesn't have a presence is bullshit. It dominates the desktop almost as much as anywhere else. Macs are considerably more popular, though.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
AFAIk zaibatsu is more a name for the practice of forming groups of companies that hold large segemnts of each other's shares so that they are very resistant to buyout attempts from outsiders.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
What the fuck have you been smoking? Lack of consumption? Japan is just about the most consumption-oriented society imaginable! Seems that YOU are uneducated and misinformed, for while Japanese companies are in a bad mood right now, the general populace doesn't seem to have any problems buying all the latest high-tech toys, and designer clothes.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Or were you just referring to computer consumption habits, like sticking with mainframes as the article discusses? That doesn't seem too great either. I'm confused...
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
...and this is wrong. The ISP market is wide open, with many choices for dialup providers (even free ones too) and PC prices are quite comparable to that of the states, sometimes better.
Setting up an ISP takes all of an hour or two, over the phone without any credit card transactions necessary, and is much smoother than anything I have ever done in the states.
I think this article trivializes the many changes that have taken place over the last year alone, much less the last 3. As more and more people realize the Internet through their iMode phones, and understand that there is more to it than that small screen provides, more and more computers are being sold. While Japan may not offer as much in terms of product diversity in their computer stores, the fact is that prices are continually dropping and are not unreasonable.
OTOH, this Scientific American article says that he left Japan for UC Santa Barbara because he considers the Japanese industrial R&D system as "communist". "Here I can start a venture company-in five or 10 years, if I could invent a new device. I want to achieve the American dream."
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
When we used mainframes for business applications, not so very long ago, most of the systems were mostly written by in-house programmers. Some of them were quite creative, within the limited languages that were then available, and the pay was generally considered good. Obviously, the overall efficiency was probably not as great as it would have been with centralized software creation, but the users were much more satisfied and the application worked much better. If they didn't, then you got beeped and fixed it pronto!
Many of these systems are still in use. Some of the more creative parts are quite difficult to maintain and modify, but that's all part of the game. If you use an open architecture like J2EE, you can hook up your web-based apps to these legacy systems with surprising ease, using either message queueing or Java connectors.
I think the key was that in the US, corporations kept everything under their own control, and had the staff to make it work. Obviously, these people have less computer science knowledge than the guys writing operating systems and device drivers, but they know how to get and keep this stuff working.
Hehe,
;)
The distinction is that Linux doesnt RUN the mainframe.
Get it? No one in their right mind uses it for anything mission critical.
They leave that to the real OS'
Jeremy
linux runs on IBM's S/390 mainframes, and i thought the problem in japan was not proprietary application software (Which they write in-house), but the proprietary hardware and server OS. if they are writing the app software in-house already, why isn't linux a good fit to fix the proprietary server OS problem?
The REAL sam_at_caveman_dot_org is user ID 13833.
did you read my comment? where did i say they should GPL everything and give anything away? unless you are buying microsoft's crap about the GPL being a viral license, running Linux as your OS has exactly -what- to do with anything else the business may be doing or selling?
The REAL sam_at_caveman_dot_org is user ID 13833.
if this isn't a situation literally screaming for linux adoption, i don't know what is. all it takes is a few talented hackers reverse-engineering these weird mainframes and boom, you are out of this proprietary lockup. why isn't this happening? are these mainframes so extremely weird and obscure? for goodness sakes, linux has been ported to video game consoles, ancient macs, and even worse things.
The REAL sam_at_caveman_dot_org is user ID 13833.
Read Debito's site to find out what happens to a westerner (even a naturalized Japanese citizen westerner) tries to visit a bath in Hokkaido...
This article, while a good read, more or less neglects the Japanese videogame industry. There's tons of games pumped out each year, some with amazing amounts of creativity. Yes, a fair amount of the software is derivative sequels. But, I'll put the guys at Nintendo, Sega, Sony (Gran Turismo) up as some of the best game designers around.
Nathan Mates
[And yes, I do work in the games industry.]
Doh, hasn't anyone played that game involving Mario, Luigi, turtles, crabs, gold coins, head bumping things upside down?
:).
;). Whereas in Japan the industry insiders seem to contribute a lot more (Nintendo, Sony etc).
If someone suggested making a game like that in the US, he or she may be forced to take a urine test accompanied with nice uniformed people
How about Pacman, or the various dancing games for instance?
Just look at the Japanese game software industry and that should settle it.
As for other software - you don't need creativity to do accounting or add figures up, and you don't need some stupid paperclip no matter what Microsoft thinks.
In the US, innovations and creativity seem to come from the industry outsiders, battling in, succeeding only to be "sequeled"
Japan's entertainment and toy industry encourages a lot more innovation and creativity than the US toy industry. The US toy industry just keeps pushing what the Sumerian kids had in 4000BC. Dolls (Barbie, GI Joe), weapons, vehicles. Whereas, from Japan you get really really weird/strange/innovative stuff, and they are often pushed by the mainstream industry.
The Little Faces light up as a paperclip asks them if they need help? You overestimate people if you think HorseSh*t macros/addons are going away. Most business users I meet do use the crap I prefer to live without, I only have a job because the software brings down the systems. hmmm I need another nap.
PC's: Bah, who needs 'em when you have cell phones? (Okay, that's an overstatement, but not as much as you might think.)
I'd have thought any of the Sony Vaio range would amply demonstrate that the Japanese excel at making PC's too... just that they like them small, light, portable and stylish. Notice a trend here regarding how the Japanese like their electronics?
This is ridiculous. Take a look at this very short and very incomplete list of the Free Software that Japanese programmers have written or contributed to - it's nothing to be sneezed at:
And this is just a very short and very incomplete list that I knocked up in a few minutes.
Sorry, I don't buy this article at all. Granted, the PC has never taken off in Japan in quite the same way it has elsewhere in the world, but that's the price of having an already extremely wired and hi-tech population, something of a distrust of western domination of any one market (why do you think Linux is such a huge hit over there, with the now famous retail sales figures showing TurboLinux outselling Windows?), and also the debacle that is the Japanese PC98 specification. So, yes, perhaps given its size and technological level, Japan is not as well represented in the PC software world as it could be, but to suggest from that that Japanese programmers are no good is outrageous and smacks of the American cultural arrogance that the rest of the world is sick to the back teeth of. Note also the implication that because the Japanese shy away from Microsoft software, that this makes them somehow backward. Very disturbing that this is the prevailing view of a major media outlet such as The Economist.
Oh, and as for mainframes being out of date - tell that to IBM and all its customers using z390's to consolidate servers, and whose reliability and I/O performance wipe the floor with anything the PC industry could come up with now or in the next 15 years.
You could always ask Slashdot Japan.
Drool...
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
However, compare this to what the article is talking about in Japan. Japanese companies are still buying, on the whole, computer systems that are copies of the IBM mainframe systems. Mainframes ceased being a growth industry 25 years ago. The software written for these systems is foisted on the buyers in a way that, in the early 80's and late 70's was proved to stifle innovation in the worst possible way. This is why PC's (for better or worse) took off in the United States - they might be based on a cruddy, rickety architecture and hobbled by a couple of rather odious quasi-monopolies, but at least they allow for a great deal of flexability. The fact that Linux even exists is probably the greatest teastament to this flexability yet.
So, when compaired to IBM in the early 70's, or Hitachi, Fujitsu and NEC today, even the Dreaded Microsoft is a fantastic innovator. You and I might bemone the limp-risted nature of "innovation" that comes from Redmond, but at least there is something to bemone.
--
In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
__
Whoa... don't get me wrong, dude. I play all the PC games (specially Sid Meier and God aka Warren Spector), but in the console market (which I explicitly stated), there are tons of good games made by Japanese companies.
True, they haven't competed well in the PC market. In fact, they hardly touched the PC market. There is a good explanation, though. Financially, look at how PC Games rank compaired to console games in net income. Console games are a lot more profitable than PC games. X-Box may change this a bit, also, by allowing easy porting of PC Games. Then, maybe, we'll see some Japanese contribution to the PC Gaming world...
--
"That's one small step for man..." "STOP POKING ME!!!!"
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Japan still makes the best games:
Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, ZeroWing (all your base... game). Honestly, if you play games that originated in Japan, they are incredibly creative and top notch (not to mention fun).
These are also console games, not PC games, which is probably the reason...
--
"That's one small step for man..." "STOP POKING ME!!!!"
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Which one produces a superior product? That's the superior business culture. The fact of the matter is that some economic systems are downright inferior. This is business, not race-relations.
. --- If you're looking for free e-mail you won't find it here! http://www.noemailhere.com
Japan has invented virtually nothing...
:)
They invented sushi. which is quite yummy I might add.
-----
-----
"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
You missed my point.
The whole idea is that basing your view of a country on the actions of individuals and/or governments in the past is not a worthwhile pursuit. Holding a 'pissing contest' of what nations is 'purest' or 'nicest' is a total waste of time that many people engage in constantly.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
If you want to compare wartime atrocities, the US Army systematically wiped out hundreds of thosands of native people in the 1870's.
Britian subjugated and murdered plenty of Irishmen
France murdered alot of Spanish.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
So you seriously mean its not "inventing", "creating" and "developing to do all things you mention here? How could they possibly had done this if it wasnt for all creativity that came from within the company. But if you prefer to believe that ALL ideas came from the Board of Directors, go ahead ;-)
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
It must be rather obvious to everyone that Japan has invented, created and developed many things. Just think of all the Multinational companies from Japan.
The difference lies within how a business should be run/managed/controlled. Business cultures are of course very different, but why say its worse ? (there's a negative tone in such statements and the one quoted above).
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
Does anyone have any numbers/statistics on Linux use in Japan?
I am impressed - how did they got those mainframes into the i-mode phones ?
I can buy a Palm, for example!
sulli
RTFJ.
What, a country where Microsoft makes $1.4B a year in revenue is a country "without Microsoft?" I don't buy it. Yes, the "enterprise" market in Japan still uses mainframes more than it does here (and perhaps more than it should), but the last time I checked, Windows was the standard on the vast majority of PCs sold in Japan.
sulli
RTFJ.
I worked for a software company that produced ERP software running on NT/SQL Server for a Japanese company - and as a DEVELOPER I can tell you we didn't have to do anything other than have it support Unicode 100% and have a Japanese contractor convert our Visual Studio String Table to Japanese. Now... the installer... there were a few tricks needed there.
Your problem is starting at CompUSA, then. The most creative software usually pops up on the Internet for free before you can buy it in a box for $50-300 a pop. (See also: DooM, NCSA Mosaic, Linux, and your favorite MP3 player)
Which one produces a superior product? That's the superior business culture.
Hm, let's see...
- Household electronics: Sony, Sharp, Sanyo, Panasonic...
- Walkman: That's the Sony Walkman.
- Cell phones: Can you say i-mode?
- PC's: Bah, who needs 'em when you have cell phones? (Okay, that's an overstatement, but not as much as you might think.)
Now what was that you were saying again?--
BACKNEXTFINISHCANCEL
I'd have thought any of the Sony Vaio range would amply demonstrate that the Japanese excel at making PC's too...
Perhaps, but since the HD on my Vaio laptop at work just died yesterday, I'm not overly fond of Vaios at the moment...
(BTW, I wasn't saying the Japanese aren't good at making PC's, I was just commenting on the fact that Net-enabled cell phones have supplanted PCs for some uses in Japan, hence there aren't as many PCs in use here as there on the consumer end.)
--
BACKNEXTFINISHCANCEL
Personally, I think many people confuse the difficulty of making good Japanese-language software with a lack of ambition for Japanese software. It's not the case. However, making a good Japanese user environment is *hard*. This is not roman script, folks, or anything remotely like it. It takes several third-party-hacks to get Windows useable in Japanese. BeOS ships with Japenese suport, and Linux is well on its way. It it any suprise that there is little Microsoft market there?
CPU or memories, on the other hand, requires consensus, that's one of the reason they are so good at it (Did you ever encounter a bug in a memory chip?)
I wonder if this is why Intel's had so many problems in their CPUs?
I don't know enough about far eastern culture to be able to suggest any changes that would have to occur in America to cause Microsoft to have to shift it's business strategy, although Microsoft has adopted the concept of a Keiretsu from Japanese corporate culture. Perhaps we need to adopt the purchasing habits of Japanese consumers...
--CTH
--
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Other than the obvious legal issues, whats stopping anti-virus software companies from producing virii? I can't think of a single factor other than ethics, which we all know isn't on most businesses' priority lists. Releasing a virus by some untracable means and being the first company to cure many such virii would generate quite the revenue stream at minimum risk(assume the method used to release the virus is almost completely detectable, which is very possible in this world).
"// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"
So now we have companies that produce computer virii? How do they make a profit? They must get kick-backs from anti-virus software companies... grrrr...
"// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"
Japan is usually ahead once they know what to make. Why? Because people pay money for aesthetics, and the remaining 20% extra performance or whatever... In the US, even if it looks worse, if it is 10 dollars cheaper, it will sell more. And that has been the standard for so long. Of course, some may argue that the iMac was different, but heck, that looked good AND was cheap.
I have no idea where this article is coming from, but I must second Oyume's point. Microsoft has a monopoly with PCs. Every businessman with a PC, or rather, a Laptop (and we're primitive?!), has Windows running and has Office. I assume this article is only talking about the software consulting industry and the slower detatchment to mainframes... but to say Microsoft has no presence is like saying Sony doesn't sell computers. Every sony computer has Windows, just as all the other PCs. Macs are popular with graphics use as usual, but businesses that buy laptops buy PCs, and they come with Windows. And there are many large successful software houses, and there are millions of shareware and freeware programmers. Yes, the software industry as a whole is smaller than the states. And one major reason is because Japanese software doesn't get ported to foreign countries as easily as US software does. And most Japanese products are tailored for Japanese users. The companies that produce them aren't interested in exporting. So this article is either false, or just misguiding.
This is totally misleading. First, Japan's main line of PCs are $2000+. Why? because they come with an LCD monitor, are small, aesthetic, come with tons of software, TV tuner, a remote, and some even with a slot for your MDs. They have plenty of "US" type 500 dollar computers but they just don't sell them where they sell the mainstream PCs. Secondly, Japanese are just as afraid of PCs as Americans. That isn't the problem. Japanese computers have more keys, and require sophisticated input sequences to type like you write. Imagine if you couldn't even type to begin with... an heck, did you know that Japanese Windows crashes MORE than English Windows? I know that is unbelievable, but indeed, we Japanese have to live with MORE crashes. So maybe its just MS' fault.
Word macro's achieve another distinct use. Torturing UK A-level IT Students. As well as a steady diet of mistakes and down-right lies (Bill Gates apparantly invented BASIC according to my text book) we got it drummed into us that we should use Word macros for everything.
Word got as good as it was ever gonna get in '97, since then MS have just tried to persuade us all that we need their nice new features.
Let's not forget there's a huge presence of mainframes in the US as well. A couple of years ago the mainframe market in the US started to pick up again. They're still the foundation of technology in our financial institutions. You use one every time you use a credit card. Not that I'm all for mainframes, but they have a history and they still have many uses.
---
Developers: We can use your help.
I was working with a Japanese system programmer, and he was telling me that US-style programming (individualistic) just don't fit the mindset of Japanese people (consensus). Even when Japanese programmers are given the freedom to do it, they can't (Exceptions occurs for sure). And that why he was here, to learn how to program alone (and he was good at it).
CPU or memories, on the other hand, requires consensus, that's one of the reason they are so good at it (Did you ever encounter a bug in a memory chip?)
Nobox: Only simple products.
Keiretsu and Zaibatsu? Isn't Zaibatsu another form of japanese megacorporation?,br>
I always thought that a Zaibatsu was a single large mega-corp while a Keiretsu was a group of large corporations who have allied together against other Keiretsu.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
German programming is stable and efficient (most of it)...
M$ Word is like a macro virus, It's spreading over the world, also to japan. I prefer M$ IE I like it more than netscape and mozilla Netscape takes somtimes the double amount of memory, maybe mozilla wil be better somtimes...
sorry, couldn't resist
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
I second that argument, you anonymous coward. Come to think of it, I can't remember the last time I was discouraged when I attempted to program creatively in Windows. No one ever told me I couldn't develop or start my own business either.
Not all creativity exists only in free software or whatever you want to call it. Sure things have become stagnant as far as games and such, but that's because ideas that fly in the face of common ideas isn't widely accepted or revenue generating. People fear/don't want change. That's why we're stuck with hundreds of crappy Quake/Counter-Strike/Unreal/Doom clones in the FPS genre. Who wants to innovate when just simply being generic makes money?
So try to think about what's going on outside your little "free" world before making blanket and incorrect statements.
Excuse me, but how can this article jive with the creation of Ruby, a really cool object-oriented language from Japan? www.ruby-lang.org. I just don't buy it. This is someone's propaganda. For what end, I know not.
Software monopoly has these kind of details. If there's a world without M$Word, who would use expensive-and-full-featured-M$Word?
Please, throw the first reply who really need M$Word macros (Virus makers, please, stay out). This is a feature that costs money, I think that if there weren't macros in M$Word it should be sheaper.
The point here is, my company buys M$Word because the others companies also uses M$Word, and many other companies does just like us. It's like VHS vs Betamax, but today Betamax is winning, and anyone who wants to have full support to M$Word have to pay.
What can we do about this? At home I don't have M$Word, but my office's docs must be converted first before I use it at home (this sux!).
Japanese people can do something. There they don't need to use M$Word, they can choose to do so. That's wonderful, I'd like to choose to use Netscape at linux, but unfortunatly, I must use netscape/mozilla, because there's no other market-supported-good-enough browser.
What can we do?
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
This is an interesting piece. The japanese caste structure (and yes, for the most part, one still exists) and its relation to the corperate structure (over in japan, and somewhat in the us) is intriguing. For the most part, creativity or difference from the norm is shunned. The software industry is one of the only industries where the japanese haven't taken what the americans have done, made it better, and packaged it to sell. Maybe it has something to do with WIPO? who knows...
Which programmers are making fortunes these days with the current stock market and the flood fresh out of university/college?
Screw 3...
You make some good points, and things ARE getting better in Japan, but there are still a lot of obstacles in the way to getting the near ubiquitous net access that you see in the US.
Telehodai is a great example. Sure you can make unlimited calls from 10pm-8am, but you are still paying $20 a month on top of your ISP charges, and it is a terrible roadblock to people who want to put up servers in thier homes or to those who really want to participate in the net community.
As far as computers themselves are concerned, yes Japan makes some really incredible laptops, and there is a growing community of users, but because of the increased performance requirements (Japanese machines usually need to be faster and need more memory than thier American counterparts, if for no other reason than being able to display the language itself) they become cost prohibitive for many consumers.
And finally, the language barrier I was referring to was the fact that computers (and computer languages) are almost universally refered to by thier English terms. Sure the Japanese can figure out the Japanese terms for Mhz, GB, RAM or whatever (terms even ENGLISH speaks sometimes have trouble dealing with), but there still is a fundamental divide that occours when you foce people to use another language to understand your products. It isn't insurmountable, but it is just one more thing that must be overcome to participate.
Here in San Francisco, I have my machine up almost 24/7, and I am constantly writing email, checking out slashdot, K5, cnn and the like, all during the day, writing emails every so often, and generally squeezing every last bit of usefulness I can out of the internet round the clock. Without things like unlimited local calls, broad-band available across the board, and cheaper PCs Japan will always lag behind.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
...and I was amazed by two things. First, by thier technology. They have a great deal of what we would call "gagetry", lots of things will bells and whistles, cell phones with GPS and a range finder for the nearest train station, web browsers, voice recognition. And second, by thier LACK of computers. When it comes to computers, they were suprisingly behind the times. Computers were amazingly expensive (compared to the US at the time. I think what would have cost $500 in the US then would have cost over $2,000 in Japan), they were hard to use. Setting up an ISP account could take you a month or more and cost you a great deal of money. And since all calls cost per minute (this includes local calls) the internet is only for the rich or the incredibly geeky (and due to the language barrier, there are few resources for the "geeks" in Japan). What's more, people in Japan have no fear of thier gagets at all, but when it comes to computers they become as pertified as your grandmother setting up AOL for the first time. Things are going to eventually have to change in Japan, but they are still a long way off...
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Does anyone know anything about this?
Keiretsu and Zaibatsu? Isn't Zaibatsu another form of japanese megacorporation?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
You are wrong. It was not about complete lack of innovation in Japan but comparative lack of innovations in a country with SECOND largest economy in the world.
...and you can't blame meteors for everything.
"Japan is NOT for Westerners....we are not to judge or belittle this country, since we have no idea what it is. "
Why not ?
We are looking at it from our Western perspective and , frankly , it is all what matters. I don't care how it is viewed by Japanese people since I AM NOT one of them and my opinions will be from position of somebody on outside. They only world I really know is my world and declaring that I have no right to judge others simply because they are different than me is ridiculous.
...and you can't blame meteors for everything.
And why in the world it is WRONG to think that way ?
Maybe I have tried many ways and have seen many other places and finally came to conclusion that the way I live is the best there is for me?
Who are you to say what is good for me and what is not? Who are you to proclaim that my little world is too not enough for me and limits my real potential ?
...and you can't blame meteors for everything.
No.
I have never said that your world sucks.
All I said is that your world sucks FOR ME and therefore I will stay with mine.
The author of the original article pretty much said the same thing. He judged Japan by American standards which he had every right to do.
...and you can't blame meteors for everything.
It's really quite simple. All over Japan are billboards depicting the rogue software entrepreneur so eager to steal customers away from Japanese conglomerates. The villain, a light-skinned blonde man, has been given the moniker "Cats". The text of the billboard, roughly translated from Kanjii, encourages conglomerate developers to "make their time".
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
Yes it does. There is absolutely nothing that has created so much third-party (as in not-microsoft-employed individuals) wealth and entrepreneurship as microsofts products (like backoffice and others).
Exactly, now compare that to the income of the common sourceforge developer. :)
They also have the absolutely kick ass mobile phone system, DoCoMO, that make look wap like the bullshit it is.More Info
Having read through the replies to this article, I must say, once again, that I am stunned by the attitude that appears to be generic amongst Americans: That in this world there's nothing good, true, innovative, etc etc except for 'The American Way'. So, the Japanese are against innovation... Come to think of it, the Chinese are just as bad, but the of course they are 'commies' and 'subversive' ;-) And we Europeans are the worst of all, I'm sure, since we assume that we can challenge NATO and the American economy by going our own ways.
Seen from outside USA, I suspect the Americans are seen as superficial, hasty, condescending, not too concerned about truth and a lot of other things. Remember that what we see as specifically American is Hollywood films that, at best, present wildly inaccurate versions of reality; we see politicians that are obviously and grossly dishonest and hypocritical; we see enormously bloated companies that relentlessly and shamelessly steal and crush everything in their way; we see an advertising 'culture' where anything but honesty is allowable.
I think we are well advised to stay just a little bit on the conservative side.
I agree with Japan covering everything in concrete but I would argue that there technology is not behind the US but ahead. I have yet to see many 3CCD digital cameras in the US, I haven't seen many digital projectors. and PC Software is everywhere. Microsoft, MAC's, Linux you name it and you can find it. Only one problem, they drive on the wrong side of the road.
Hmm...when you say Alex Kerr "knows NOTHING about present day Japan, nor will he likely ever know", it sounds more like you're talking about yourself. Just because you haven't been able to penetrate the culture doesn't mean it's not possible; it just means that the opinions of those who have--like Kerr--are all the more valuable.
Far from confusing the 2 countries, Kerr knows quite a lot about both China and Japan. The Chinese cultural influence on Japan is great, and it's perfectly valid for him to title his book that way. Perhaps you'd like every book about Japan to have the words 'chrysanthemum' or 'sword' in the title?
Strange thing is, Alex Kerr is just as Japanese as lots of Japanese people are. His Japanese is perfect (in fact, better than your average Japanese Joe), he's lived there forever, and he's had access to a lot of amazing behind-the-scenes stuff that lots of regular Japanese don't know about. He's not just some dude that just went to the University of Minnesota and got a PhD in writing articles on Japan.
He's not lying when he says that a lot of the stuff he writes about resonates with--and was inspired by--lots of Japanese people. The guy is what he is supposed to be: an expert on Japan who can, among other things, clue you in to what ordinary Japanese people feel (some of them, anyway).
At the very least, his opinions are worth listening to.
Well, I've lived in japan for the last 3 years, and I've seen many many computers, I've even bought 2 since I've been here, and EVERY computer I've seen is running a Japanese Native Windows. I'm using Japanese Native Windows 2000 to type this, I installed Japanese Windows onto my English Laptop. Point being, Windows is everwhere. It's the #1 OS in Japan. I walk into an Electronics store here, and out of about 30 machines on display, 100% of them are windows! So, someone doesn't quite have their facts straight...