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The Best Tech You Can't Get in the US
DigitalDame2 writes "The US isn't always on the cutting edge of technology. We see a new product release that has just the blend of styling and features we've been looking for, but alas, it's only available overseas. From the Thanko MP4 watch to Sony's OLED TV, these are the hottest new gadgets to drool over, that you can't get here."
I'm not usually one to rag on the editors for shitty or misleading summaries, but that one was completely pointless.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Or even just a flying jet-powered motorcycle? Anyone? I'm looking at you Japan.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
From the Thanko MP4 watch to Sony's OLED TV, these are the hottest new gadgets to drool over, that you can't get here.
They *need* cutting-edge displays like that to keep up with the continuing advances in tentacle hentai technology.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Yea, this is pretty well known amongst us nerds...
Personally I'd rather be able to buy a new Land Rover Defender, or better, import a 10-year old used one. Most of the devices on the list are easy enough to smuggle in.
Yeah, years ago a mate when to Japan for a month and brought back the absolute coolest combo radio/CD player. I checked the local Sony stores and found they didn't have it. Nothing even close to as nice as the Only Japan Market model. That was about 16 years ago. Nothing new here.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The US is a mixed bag, on average it's far behind the technology curve. It's not population density because Canada is less dense but more in touch with technology. Some areas and industries are cutting edge but the average American seems pretty low on the tech literacy totem. At least from my interactions with Americans on trips there and on visitors here.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Stupid. It's a whole list of gadgets that are roughly comparable to things we already have, but these particularly ones are only available in Japan. -yawn- I'll summarize the list:
UMPCs
Laptops
TVs
Media players (including a watch with a screen guaranteed to give you eyestrain)
Phones
Yeah, great stuff.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
There must be some new definition of "can't get" that I am not aware of. According to the article you can "get" all these items here in the US via specialty importers like Dynamism.
Oooh...a watch thats also a music player. Who gives a damn?
Ooooh, and oled tv. Again, who cares?
Most people I know don't wear digital watches, or carry music players. Then again, I don't hang around with college kids, and instead associate with people that do not live and breathe the crap put out that's considered "entertainment" these days.
Get off my lawn! Damn kids....
Most of today's consumer-electronics available in US are designed and/or made elsewhere.
That some of the stuff is not available here is not, in itself, the sign of US lagging behind, but rather that of US consumers not being interested enough for the companies to introduce these particular products here.
If root beer is not (widely) available in Japan, it is because the Japanese don't like root beer — not because they can't afford it, or don't know where to get it.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
.... Is available at ThinkGeek.com. This watch:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/watches/8e18/
Is the same one listed in the PC Mag article:
http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow_viewer/0,1205,l=217864&s=1562&a=217876&po=13,00.asp?p=y
So it looks like you can get at least one of these items in the US.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Since when did a walk through of Dynamism's gadget inventory rate as a story? And not available in the US? WTF? That is exactly what Dynamism does, they are a tech importer for international product lines who also provides specialty tech support of the products that they sell.
The watch is not available at thinkgeek. Try to buy one if you don't believe me.
This article and description are sensationalist, but the fact remains that patent law in the states is broken. It hampers innovation and keeps great products from being made or sold here.
I think the reason the "cool" toys are someplace else is because the American market on a whole does not care for these products. Yes a few geeks may find some of these gadgets cool but the US market on a whole does not care for it. If only 5 million people of the whole US population think the gadget is cool and of those 5 million only 250,000 would ever purchase the product; what is the point of selling it in the US? I think most companies know if you want to make it big and you have a product to sell you sell it in the US. Just like if you are a rock band and you are from another country your sales jump when you cross the pond.
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
Nine of the sixteen were just cell phones that had pretty standard variations on the normal designs of any recent cell phone. None were remarkable or any more desirable than an iPhone in terms of function or design.
Some of the UMPCs were nice, but again, aside from the addition of colors, none were significantly better than what can be obtained here.
The next is from Sony. Er, Sony? No thanks, I don't need another rootkit. They day they rooted my computer was the day I decided to never ever EVAR buy another Sony ANYTHING.
I see a link to another article "20 of the best tech gadgets you won't find in the U.S.". It says they include:
- HTC Touch Dual, WTF is it? Who knows? Who cares?
- Kenwood HD10GB7 - I assume this is a stereo. I can buy a stereo here, thanks.
- Motorola Z8, again what IS it? Isn't Motorola a US company? I bet it's a cell phone, and yes, I can get cell phones here. In fact I have one in my pocket.
- Sony XEL-1 OLED TV. As I said, 1) Sony can shit and fall back in it and 2) I can buy TVs here too. There's one in my living room.
- LG Prada, I swore off them too; not for being pure evil like Sony but for selling me the buggiest piece of shit I ever bought, and sending me an even buggier one when I sent it back under warrantee. Whatever it is, I bet I can find one from another manufacturer here, too, and its competitor's model might actually function.
- Nokia N76, do they sell anything but telephones? Already have one, thanks.
- Raon Everun, they've almost got me clicking the link, WTF is an "everun", some sort of perpetual motion machine? If it wasn't for that pesky 2nd law of thermodynamics I'd be interested, can't congress repeal that?
- Samsung i450, is that a phone, TV, or stereo?
- Ok, that's enough... I clicked, they got me. What do I see? Pictures of ordinary crap like phones, TV sets, and laptops that you CAN buy here.
What's that old saying? Lets see, in soviet russia, website scams YOU? No, that's not right. Beowolf cluster of... nope, that's not it eiather. Uh...1) publish web page full of ads with link to another page
2) have that page full of ads with even more links (pictures only)
3) ???????
4) PROFIT!!!!!
Oh wait, it's that other thing, nothing to see here, move along!
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
The market and business majors have done thier jobs. The market for that specialized type of geek-tech just isnt here. In japan, dancing MP3 players get them all whipped up and horny. Over here? Not so much. We'd rather spend our money on cadillacs and beer. And war. yeeeeehaw!
"A gentleman never strikes a lady with his hat on." - Fred Allen
So... You only get the tat, not the quality gear. A few years ago that wouldn't have been the case.
Deleted
Yeah, it's a bunch of whiz-bang crap without any real value. The prime example is the "MP4 Watch". Besides apparently not supporting MP4 (but who really knows, at this low level of journalism) it's stupid in the first place. It's not like it's hard to make a crappy little MP3 player, glue some straps to it, and call it a "watch". Whoopdy-do.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Where I live, you can easily take the price of a certain item in dollars, replace the $ with an EUR, and multiply it by _at least_ 1.5 (it gets much worse if there are rebates for US residents).
For example, recently I found out about a beautiful digital camera. Price in the US, after rebates? $250. Price here? 425 EUR. Seriously. You know what the best part is? If I were to ship it from across the ocean, it would cost me 500 EUR.
Then I got interested in a particular LCD monitor that costs $600 in the US (which is more than half my monthly salary, by the way). It costs 1100 EUR here.
Go figure.
P.S. It would really be nice if Slashdot knew how to deal with the EUR symbol.
They use their own market as a test market before trying to sell it in the US.
I'm pretty sure UMPC is Ultra-Mobile PC or something.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
Gimme a break. These products suck and show that whole "It's-a-new-product-if-we-add-a-clock-to-it" crap is true.
Besides, all this junk will end up as refurbs on woot or jellyfish anyway...
I don't know what a UMPC is either, so it just isn't as drool-worthy as a good countersink flange.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Wake me up when I can get a Lucy Liu bot
UMPC's in general are met with a big yawn here, and the iPhone may well kill them off for good. The integrated TV tuner is a pretty killer feature though, though the price of the average UMPC will still chase people away the same as it did for tablets.
We don't much like cutesy anthropomorphic gadgets in the USA. And there's other "jostleable" players out there, the Sansa Shaker comes to mind.
In a stunning display of website usability, I see no way to navigate to the NEXT ad-filled crap-laden page. So this review gets cut short. Mercifully.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
With many of the UMPCs (that's Ultra Mobile ...), one may not be able to buy that model, but what about the OQO? It claims to be "the smallest full featured pc" and for the masochists out there, it even runs Vista.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Ok I've had enough of Slashdot and this sort of tripe. I'm going to troll until I'm bored with that.
I saw a similar article titled "The Hottest Human Rights You Can't Get In Darfur"
:-)
Apparently, they only make those here
Why waste time worrying about which countries have the best useless tech gadgets when the US is so far behind in more important areas: internet connectivity and infrastructure?
100mbit internet for $20/month.
sig?
well, at least we get the iphone first!
Its not the point that you can or cannot get these items. The point is, this article is yet another opportunity for the Sour Grapes "America Sucks" people to come on out in droves and comment about how their country in Europe or wherever is sooooooo very much better than america because (pick one) they can get mp4 watches/they have solved poverty and hunger/nobody in their country has ever even heard of guns let alone would own one/they abolished police states millenia ago/they invented interstellar travel/whatever is fashionable to complain about America this week.
If that's the best tech we can't get in the US then I feel pretty good! That's some crappy junk I really don't want.
So basically if you don't know what it is you don't need it, if Sony makes it you don't need it, and if it's a competing product with new/improved features you don't need it. Basically to sum everything up you don't need anything. How in the hell did you ever buy a computer if you're so dead set against tech products? Someone hold a gun to your head?
Honestly, I don't know how you were even modded up.
I mean, can't you get your hands on a record player in the USA? Has it come to this?
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Call it sour grapes if you want, but I'm not really clamoring over a hip-hop, breakdancing, mp3-playing egg.
Although I'll gladly pay to import whatever drugs the Sony execs were taking when they gave this thing the green light.
Tiny laptops have never caught on in the US, although they've been around for years. "Americans have fat fingers". You can certainly get one in the US if you want one, but they're don't sell well. The Via Nanobook is a reasonable choice, and Sony has a whole range of them. Then there are the UMPC machines, which are little laptops partially usable without a keyboard.
Designers are still struggling in the "too big for a phone, too small for a laptop" niche. There's a long history of duds in that space. Remember the Nokia N-Gage? (Nokia's relaunching that brand next month, with a new form factor.)
Incidentally, the One Laptop Per Child machine is in mini-laptop scale. It fits kid-sized hands. This isn't obvious from most of the publicity pictures.
All of the cyberpunk novels of the 1980's were about a future, not too far from today, assume that the US was a technical backwater slum. Is this the first sign we are going down that path?
I feel like repeating my comment from a few days ago.
Think Deeply.
If root beer is not (widely) available in Japan, it is because the Japanese don't like root beer -- not because they can't afford it, or don't know where to get it.
What if root beer was difficult to transport far from the farm and only grew well in the US. Or Japan had a steep tariff on root beer. Or laws or companies conspired to prohibit you from making said device even if there were demand? What if the root beer made in Japan was a drastically inferior quality and no one would drink it?
There's a good demand for the devices on this list... as evidenced that there are tons of equivalents in the US that do the same thing. 18 of 20 of the items on the list looked and behaved like things I've seen on this side of the pacific, so I don't know why from the meager article it makes the claim that these things are so special.
One device in particular that stood out to me, however, was the vinyl to MP3 recorder. As the article said, the one you get in Japan allows you to save to any media you like. On the US side options on current vinyl recorders are limited probably due to RIAA interference to "encourage" people to buy a new copy of songs rather than re-copy the legal copies they already bought.
Just because someone won't sell a widget doesn't mean they won't buy a widget.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Tech differences between the US and Japan are a mixed bag. When I'm in the bay area or Seattle area people are far more tech savvy and have far more gadgets then the people I met when I lived in Tokyo. There is some great technology in Japan but has to do with tech gadgets and at times we have better stuff in the US. In the US you have a much better selection of computers and computer parts and they are cheaper. Fujitsu and Sony don't make the greatest machines so your not missing much by not having their latest model right away. In contrast if you want a great gaming machine your options are more limited in Japan. Cell phones are one of those items people like to bring up and thats also a mixed bag. The service is more expensive and the data rates are far more expensive in Japan. My cellphone bill last month went from $50 to $200 just from sending emails to other people's phones. In contrast I have sent far more emails and text messages from my US phone without extra charges. They have some neat models if you look but most places offer the same lineup of phones who's design is more limited than the designs we see here. Take a ride on the subway and it will seem like 90% of the people are using the same model flip phone. You will see far more people using smartphones and similar devices in the US. When people in Japan saw my old T-Mobile MDA they are always amazed. Those types of devices aren't as popular there among everyday people. Here you can easily find people using smartphones and blackberrys who don't even use the email features or web browser. They tend to stick to the flip phone design with no keyboard in Japan. But they do tend use web services that are tailored to mobile devices more often. If you really want to see superior Japanese technology that is not common here go to a love hotel. The last one I went to required no face to face communication with any employees. You walk in the building take a number, go to the room number on the slip. When you get to the door a voice greets you from an intercom and then your door unlocks. You go inside, the door locks you in :( and it stays that way until you pay the talking touch screen machine that is built into the wall which bills you by the hour. In the bathroom there is a hot tub with a large plasma tv built into the wall. In the bed room is another plasma, a PS2, a Sega Genesis, an NES, a karaoke machine and a sex toy vending machine. Overall it was average for that type of establishment.
That would be lamentable... Can you demonstrate anything of the kind actually happening with the products listed in the article (or closely related ones)?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
As an aside, responding to your post since it's (indirectly) referring to the watch.
Thinkgeek sells that OLED MP4 Watch.
It sucks.
The headphones and USB cable jacks are proprietary. The headphones have the Motorola style cellphone jack, but buying a third party earbud for your headphones with that kind of jack will result in one channel being dead... presumably because the contact for Mic on the cell hands-free bud is the contact for the other speaker according to the watch. Bad.
The sound quality on the watch is also horrendous. Crackling with music that could be considered "intensive." Not even the overcompressed stuff we complain about... but just varied, sonically. Low volume stuff would crackle if it just happened to have a full sound in range.
Video isn't standard. It uses a proprietary codec that is basically a codec with really bad compression. Lower bitrates bring the size down, but the video quality really suffers. The Crazy Frog video was included with the watch (ANOTHER reason not to buy it! FIE!) and the 4 minute video, at highest quality, took almost 900MB.
The strap is very clunky, tends to get caught on just about anything and isn't replacable with a standard watch band. Broken strap? SOL.
Horrible, horrible watch. Don't get it.
Captcha: Betrayer. Sorry ThinkGeek and Slashdot. But the product does suck.
- A car? What the hell for, I have a car!
- A 52 inch color TV? Pfft, I have a 42 inch color TV already.
- What is this PC thing these foreigners are selling? I can get one here if I want one
Maybe if I'd clicked on each of the twenty pictures after clicking on TFA and then clicking on the other TFA I'd agree with you, but I didn't see anything revolutionary. What was there that I can't get? TFA didn't say, and neither did you.And yes, if Sony makes it I don't need it. I'll buy one from a company I can trust not to install rootkits into their products instead. Same with LG and their badly made crap, neither company has any sort of meaningful monopoly whatever. I don't need to be rooted, and I don't need to be swindled.
I probably got modded up because the mods clicked on the link too. You got a flying car? I want one! You got an Escalade? You can keep it; it's not new, it's just a car, albeit a really big really expensive one.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I agree with everyone that these gadgets are mostly crap, but am I the only one that thought the Raon Everun was kind of neat? I've been wanting something small and portable (but with a good sized display) for reading PDFs. I didn't like any of the "eBook" devices that can and went, and I think a tablet pc is too much to pay for a simple use like this. I've been drooling over e-paper is a big way. I can't wait for them to perfect it and make devices from it. I liked that device that Sony came out with except for the lack of color and back lighting.
Anonymous Cowards suck.
"The US isn't ever on the cutting edge of technology...
There, fixed that for you.
...in the latest stage of an Asian space race with Japan and India The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river, the Euphrates; and its water was dried up, so that the way would be prepared for the kings from the east.-- from The Book of Revelation
Well, it's not mentioned, but it should be -- automotive technology. If you're not insanely jealous of the vehicles and powertrain options that Europe and Asia get that North America doesn't, then you're part of the reason why things have stagnated here for so long.
-
Inventor of the term 'pardon my French'.
I have been in consumer electronics for years. The products that I have "invented" have won the innovation award at the consumer electronics shows 6 times. I have worked in Consumer Electronics for GE/RCA/Thomson, AT&T and a couple other small companies. I decided a few years ago to take some of my ideas and develop them on my own. Some of the Largest Retailers were aware of my work and told me they would be willing to carry new products from my company. To make a two year story very, very short their is no money in the US for Consumer Electronics, sure there has been some for a couple of products like Slingbox and Firefly but few others have got funding. I had sure fire product, and I finally found minimal funding in China. So I don't feel it is an innovation problem, it is a money problem.
In Japan, it's often more difficult to get a refund for a defective product. Also, consumer safety standards tend to be lower. Things that are illegal in the USA are legal in Japan, such as a batting cage that serves hardballs at 200km/h:
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=NMSgAs7VLTI
Is the turntable since it would help in the process of converting old records into FLACs.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Most of it is too small for our comparatively large hands. And you know what they say
about guys with big hands.
I'm not remotely jealous of fancy cars. I do not need more 'powertrain options'. My Civic gets me where I want to go.
Diesel cars like they have in Europe could be nice, but if the price of diesel fuel increases much more it won't be worth it.
Love of technology for its own sake is great -- don't get me wrong. But if a given nation's consumers as a whole decide that they don't need a particular technological advance, they aren't automatically wrong or ignorant. It's important not only to have technological development, but for it to be in the right direction.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
You've got a Slashdot account, you encounter some technology you don't recognize, you neglect to Google it, but you don't hesitate to form a negative opinion. If that's indicative of the attitude of Americans, I can understand why these gadgets haven't made it over here. We're just too damn stupid to use them
Fortunately, I know that most Americans are not nearly that knuckleheaded, so I'm comfortable in the knowledge that the reason we don't have these gadgets is something else. Perhaps it has something to do with the US being a cash cow for the multinationals. They can send us their bargain-basement garbage because we're so thoroughly trained as consumers that we'll just take whatever they give us and pay top dollar. Plus, the monopolistic practices of US corporations work against consumers, giving substandard products (Vista, anyone?) huge market share. That would explain why home internet speeds in the US are so far behind most other civilized countries (and quite a few that aren't civilized). AT&T doesn't offer really good bandwidth because they don't have to.
You are welcome on my lawn.
1) Buy component record player
2) Buy RCA to 9mm audio cable
3) Plug record player into PC audio "in"
4) Record to your vinyl to any format under the sun, probably for half the price of $device.
5) No profit, but you probably saved a few bucks.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
I'd fight Nazis. I'm just not keen on killing and destabilizing in the name of terr^^^^^oil.
Quack, quack.
But, just because Canada is larger than the US and has a smaller population doesn't mean the US has a denser population.
80 or 90% of Canadians live within an hour or 2 of the US border. 85% of Canadians live in urban or suburban areas, compared with about (IIRC) 65% of Americans.
Just 4 big cities of Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, and Toronto account for about 8 or 9 million Canadians, or somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of the the population.
The difference is, in all of Canada's huge land mass, most of it is either northern and uninhabitable, and unsuitable for any economic activity except for mining. Mining operations tend to have small clusters of people living/working in densities about what you'd find in a city.
Whereas those vast areas of land in the US, with the exception of a desert of two, some mountains, are mostly suitable for farming.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Forget getting tech from overseas, I can't even get most of the cool cellphones available IN the US because GSM is non-existent in most of rural America. Verizon will soon roll out 3G CDMA within 80 miles of my home, but I can't even get GSM service if I want to. How's that for 'Tech I can't get.'
LRN 2 SWM
The HTC touch dual is a remarkable phone. Take the iPhone, turn it into a slider so that it has a real keyboard, subtract Apple's single-provider lockdown garbage (along with their updates that "unintentionally render the device useless"), and you have one of the best upcoming phones out there.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/01/htcs-3g-touch-dual-slider-with-hsdpa-arrives-in-europe/
The problem with this specific phone is that the European version = no WiFi, but the Japanese version has WiFi.
I'd love to have this phone unlocked and use it on my carrier's network. It's funny that this phone has been out for quite some time now, but to see that Sprint is just now getting the original (non-slider) version of the Touch.
Actually, it's not funny. It's disappointing that it takes this long for the technology to filter over here. It's also disappointing to see WiFi filtered off the device before hit hits Eurpoe (and most likely the US when it makes it's way over here).
Why does the US get all of the shit side of the tech products? This year, Verizon introduced VCAST while Vodaphone in Europe has had television on their cell phones since at least 2002! I am getting sick of living in a second-hand flea market when it comes to products.
The United States SUCKS!
The real problem in the US is that you dont have Kitchen Gun, especially considering the US's love of all things shooty!
Warhammer forums
It's just a BAD article. An acronym should be named at least once, with the exception of commonly accepted acronyms in a publication's field. In a computer magazine, it's ok to not define RAM, but it's NOT ok to not define RAM an an article in an air travel publication. At slashdot it's fine to use the acronym WTF or IANAL but again, if it's a specialized non-nerd acronym, not acceptable.
I should never have to google anything to figure out WTF an article's writer is talking about, unless it's a specialized journal in someone else's field. That's just bad writing, plain and simple. It was a bad article, period.
If the article were better written, NOT having me click a second article from the first article to see twenty pictures, each of which I have to click without a clue what any of these are (and they all looked like plain ordinary tech available anywhere), it might have raised my hackles.
As it was, my response was "hmmm... somebody submitted a useless article he wrote himself for his own publication, which looks to me thats only reason is to get advertising hits".
Now, if it had "You can get electronic paper in Europe but not the US" I would have sat up and noticed. If it had "Flying cars in Japan", ditto.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
" the Z8 is a full fledged Symbian smartphone, "
Um, isnt a Symbian like a vibrator on a saddle for women to go OMFG YES YES YESSSSSS ?
Guns are for wimps... Use a crossbow.. this way you can pin them to their chair when you go postal.
Anonymous Coward writes
"Slashdot isn't always on the cutting edge of flagology. We see a new flag release that has just the blend of
white and red stripes we've been looking for, but alas, it's only available if you google image search "American
Flag". From Picasa to Flickr, these are the hottest new flags to drool over, that you can't get here."
Some of these wouldn't survive in the US market. For instance, the Flybook is like a more expensive/crappier version of a fujistu's newer models. It has less battery life, less features and it still costs more than most fujitsus... That's just an example of a pile of products, many of which may never get to market... There are only a few products in the list which will be successful and not make it to the US!
"The US isn't always on the cutting edge of technology."
which planet are you on??
the US is never on the cutting edge of technology!
I think Americans are a lot more pragmatic with their consumer technology. They're generally only willing to adopt some bit of technology once its fairly well established. This means the technology has been proven, its reasonably reliable and its a well-supported standard.
People in Asia jump all over any bit of new technology. They're a lot more willing to embrace anything new, whether or not it's actually any good. As far as Europe is concerned, I don't really think they're all that different from the US. And my impression from my family there is that they're reluctant to go out and get anything cutting-edge because things there are generally so expensive.
Look at Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Most people are reluctant to adopt either format because they don't want to be stuck with an unsupported format in a few years. Or lets say televisions in public places. When I was in Taiwan a few years ago wide-screen flat panel displays were installed throughout the subway system; they had a good dozen or two at most stations running nothing but advertising. Sure, it's cool, but is it necessary? Not really. Why spend $2000 on a flat-panel display when a $500 standard television serves the same function?
A good example is the little known, at least in the US, format VCD. For those who dont know it was basically a CD with an mpeg file on it. These showed up between the VHS and DVD eras. In Asia, however they were huge. But they were pointless. The image quality was no better than VHS and most movies came on two CDs. There was some convenience over tape but not enough to justify the transition. DVDs offered a more tangible improvement.
A lot of this technology is compelling merely because it isn't available to Americans. Often times when we finally have access to these products here they turn out not to be anything special. I think the only segment America truly lags in is in the mobile phone market. However, as long as service providers maintain their grip on the market that isn't going to change.
A. A GPS device.
B. A pocket cutting torch capable of melting steel. (Still sci-fi AFIK)
C. A white LED flashlight. (My nomination for coolest, most elegant tech solution of the decade.)
D. An Asus Eee. (To replace my workhorse HP Jornada 800
with the busted hinge.)
E. A lightsaber.
F. A Trump Deck, (Amber)
G. A Leatherman Mini (Still the very best folding pliers ever made)
H. A SPACE 1999 stun gun (Campy as camp can be, but I was seven at the time, and the bar was forever set for cool space weaponry. Note the handy "Stun/Kill" toggle switch.)
I. A Pentel Brush Pen.
J. Afterbite mosquito bite instant relief.
K. A lock pick gun (You have to have a locksmith license to own one in most states.)
L. A humble pencil. --Possibly the best writing instrument ever invented. Still used today!
M. A candle lantern. (Burns for hours, folds up neat and tidy. Best with the bees wax candles.)
That's all I can think of for now. The Sonic Screwdriver is certainly neat, but with one of those, you can pretty much do away with about half the items on the above list.
Oh, and the reason the Leatherman Mini is the best version of the now ubiquitous folding pliers on the market is that nobody has yet made a pair which when closed is as small, and when open is as large, AND (very important) which has a smooth grip that doesn't bite into your palms when you apply pressure. I find it somewhat astonishing that it was one of the very first models ever to grace the market place, and nobody has come close since. I still regularly use my original pair purchased fifteen years ago. Rugged, useful, small, comfortable to use. --The only thing I'd do to improve upon it is to remove the knife and file, which would make it even smaller and lighter than it currently is.
Japanese twinkie-iPhoney-too-small-keypad bits of fluff seem kind of utterly useless to me.
-FL
When it could just as easily be done here?
The interesting thing is that I engineered some of the cool gadgets which are in production overseas. Strangely, no domestic company is interested in marketing them here.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I think I know one of the people who works for one of the firms that make watches like this, and he doesn't like them either ... :)
As for the video codec, all "MP4"-* products from China have more or less the same one. No compression, proprietary (but quite simple, if I remember correctly), limited to jaggy framerates, low resolutions.
But the real reason why the person I know doesn't like these devices is because they're heavy, have little battery-life, and broke rather spontaneously. AFAIK, the built-in flash memory may also be faulty more often than you'd expect.
BTW, if I haven't made it clear enough, these watches are relatively common gadgets in China, and not really affiliated with ThinkGeek.
I think I'd like one anyway, but please with a calculator, or hell, ARM processor, wifi and UMTS or something (so I can make beowulf-clusters out of them), GPS, lasers, and whatnot.
Just a few more years, I think
Hell, we're jealous of the platforms and powertrains the European models get! There's an amazing amount of innovation that goes on in the Big Three and its supply satellites. However, the vast majority of what they invent can't or won't be sold here because either:
A) some dumb cluck Congressman decreed that every American-built car must include $GIZMO that would completely invalidate, destroy, etc. said innovation; or
B) some dumb cluck marketer decided that "Americans will never buy" said innovation, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.
Every year, if you read the News and the Free Press coverage of the Detroit auto show, they're absolutely drooling over the scores of shiny, slick new models, and then it turns out that it's all destined for the European and Asian markets. Meanwhile, we just get the same lame sedan, minivan and SUV retreads with the same lame 3.0L V6 and 4.7L V8 that we've gotten every new model-year since 1997. Is it any wonder that everyone else's imports are eating our lunch?
First rule of trauma: Bleeding always stops.
This story is an obvious PR piece, and Slashdotters have swallowed it hook, line and sinker.
I agree that the article is poorly written. But your comment indicated that you were dismissing these devices based on the fact that you didn't know what their names mean.
Some of the gadgets looked pretty good, and in fact they are not available in the US. Technology corporations, including pharmaceuticals, use the US market as a place to dump old technology. We're supposed to have a competitive "free" market, but it works out to be just the opposite. The climate for technology companies in Europe and Asia is much more competitive than it is the US, where corporations have so much political clout that they don't have to worry about doing a good job.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Or a similar one anyway.
You're not missing much, it's real bleeding edge stuff... maybe some of these things are not available elsewhere yet because of tighter quality regulations? I mean the watch suffered "burn-in" during the first day I got it, I don't think that'd be allowed by trading standards etc in the UK or US.
When I was living in the bay area a few years ago, cell phone calls were being dropped when you crossed the various bridges from the East Bay to the Peninsula. I could never get the latest cell phones and there were just a handful of brands and models to choose from. Now I live in Asia and I am using a 3.6Mbps HSDPA high speed mobile phone for my http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-mode/ service. The latest phone models from Samsung, Nokia or Sony Ericsson come out every 2-3 months. Changing mobile phones is like buying new clothes for most people.
What technical break throughs were required to put rovers on Mars?
The thing that bothers me is that the US does not seem to respect engineering and science. In the long run the US is destined to be a back water unless that changes.
Think Deeply.
It's not:
"The best tech you can't get in the US"
it's:
"The best tech you can get elsewhere, and no 'service provider' corporation has stripped down to a mere 10% of its actual capability by installing its own firmware"
Give me the import gadget any day.
Well, if we started respecting engineering and science it would discriminate against all those who cannot or do not want to study either of these.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Funny you should ask that because they don't. Things are usually written in one paragraph. They don't even put spaces between the words and when you write something formal or in a book or magazine, it's written from top to botton then from right to left.
Wonder what would happen if companies said "hey, I want that, you know the thing that you're not selling here. If not, we won't buy anything from you." The world economy is still tied to the US economy. Low dollar, so what. That makes our goods more desirable because they're cheaper. If we stop buying, the rest of the world slides into depression.
I'm not sure what you mean about the turntable. I have a USB turntable I bought from Thinkgeek. I can rip my records to any format I like (MP3, WAV, OGG, etc) that Audacity supports. Half of my Ipod library is my ripped vinyl, and I have a lot of CDs made from my record collection. And it works fine on Linux.
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
YOu have got to be kidding me. The Infobar2 on that page is the only candybar phone that I have ever found appealing. I'd like to know when someone can make candybar phones look good, and they did that. Ordinary crap? Hardly.
OSx86 FTW
Oh, you CAN get all that in the US. It'll be through an importer and cost more, though. And yes, you'd understand far better if you clicked the pictures. The PC, for example, is far better suited to being carried around than most of what US makers sell as "ultraportable". Especially the Kohjinsha- that's something that the average person can stuff in their bag and carry around at school for long periods of time(and I'm not talking about a separate laptop bag- it's smaller than most college textbooks). Most HP laptops- not so much.
OSx86 FTW
I want one of those Rolly things, but I couldn't have one. If I brought one home the next thing you know it would have fucked the Roomba and then I would have little retarded robot bastards running around everwhere.
But we made them wait to see Gigli!
USA! USA! US... oh nevermind.
To boldly use to and too two times and get it right too! They're not gonna believe their eyes when they see it there!
And the USA has the iPhone.
That device has the most advanced technology ever devised:
A personal portable Reality Distortion Field (tm)
It's like you can carry a part of The Steve aura with yourself!
Try to beat that Asians!
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that it's a hell of a lot easier to get diesel cars running on biofuels. Seems like a worthwhile bit of futureproofing given the way the oil trade appears to be heading.
Annoyed at the rather closed minded (and often ignorant) comments of some as usual, but anyone who's flown to various parts of asia (mostly japan), already knew all this.
a good example is the kind of mobile phones we walk around with in the west today were old school in 2002 over there.
But, in reality it extends to all things in ways you dont think about until you see it in use.
Sadly if it doesn't have an intel/amd cpu and run an OS, the west is behind japan by a long shot - and always has been, always will be.
It might be the post-globalist age if your outsourcing jobs from the US/AU/etc to india, but when it comes to building tech its a different story for a number of reasons, but japanese building technology (especially anything human-interactive) for japan and chinese speaking continents is a huge market and making it western'er worthy is often of no real value to them given then bang/buck ratio.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
When I arrived in the States some 10 years ago, British phones were so far ahead of the American system it was pathetic, and yet 10 years before that, America had the edge on tech stuff, therefore what goes around comes around, perhaps the Iphone is the beginning of the USA leading the world once again. Fingers crossed.
Can't think of anything clever or funny.
I just lost the game.
I'm sorry, but when my phone is half the thickness of my old one, has about three times the screen resolution, plays games, music and movies, makes voice and video calls, can connect to the internet, lasts for a week on a single charge, and has a better built in camera than most commercial standalone digital cameras 5 or 6 years ago, THAT is impressive.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
With my all-American Barrett M468, I'll simply take you cool Jap tech. Bwahahahaha!
http://www.barrettrifles.com/rifle_468.aspx
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
We've all got flying cars in Europe now. No, really.
Remember the space race, all of sudden it was to land a man on the moon. That was IT, goal completed, end of race. Nevermind that the USSR then went on to spend year after year with a continues manned space presence breaking record after record while the americans blew up, that didn't count. That was the goal the americans said had to be reached, that is what they reached first, therefore they won.
It is amazing really, american standups never got tired of joking of Mir when it was in its final stages (nevermind that it never had any accidents) but mention the Nasa blowing up schoolteachers and ooooh, that is too nasty.
I think it is due to american tv. When I grew up in Holland if you wanted to watch another tv station,depending on where you lived, you had to watch a foreign channel (English, german or belgian). Most of europe gets far more exposure to foreign culture then americans ever get.
Back in days long past the Discovery channel would occasionally air a program that would look at things from an other perspective. A look at the russian side of WW2 for instance, not lately, nowadays they air a program on choppers and loudly claim that ejection seats are impossible in choppers. Might come as a suprise to the russians who have had them for ages.
Americans can't/don't/won't look outside. They can't, it is not the american way.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Any American who thinks they're at the forefront of technology should go and hang out in South Korea for a while...
Innovation, production? The US didn't have these before WW2 either, in fact, they didn't have the first DURING WW2 either. That is right, check your history, the US wasn't the innovator. The jet engine came from england, the rockets after WW2 from germany, nukes were made by immigrants, and its land war tech was way behind the USSR and even germany.
But when the americans finally accepted that WW2 was ineffitable and got their asses into gear they suddenly managed to get their production up to record speed (and with it their economy) and even get some tech going. But make no mistake pre-WW2 the US was NOT a powerhouse. If anything it was considered as backwards as russia. A land of peasants, unworthy of the attentions of the rest of the world.
At the opening shots of WW2 american tech was inferior to the axis nations AND its allies. What suprised everyone, and won the western front was its amazing capacity to get its industry converted to war and crank up the production to unprecedented levels.
Who is to say the US can't do that again?
Sure sure, empires fall. It happens, but every empire that lasted for hundreds of years will have had people proclaim its downfall for every single one of those years. If you keep saying something long enough, eventually it will come true. Tomorrow, the sun will explode. Keep on saying it, someday, it will be true. I wouldn't bother placing any bets however.
But WW3 won't happen, unless you think it is already happening. None of the powers are willing to go to war at the moment, because there is more profit in global peace with localised war. The current conflict involves a group of people who by nature can't ever mount an effective fighting force (religious extremists never can fight, Israel military might does not come from Orthodox jews, it comes from normal jews, christians and yes muslims and even sane people who are willing to fight for their country) vs the entire rest of the world who views religion as something you use, not obey blindly.
Just consider how many muslims in the west talk big, but do nothing because Allah may be great, but Big Brother (reality tv) is greater and you got to pay of that loan for that big screen tv. If there really was such great support for the cause, you could certainly do a lot better then a few meager bombings, most of which fail. When a dozen people in a country of 60 million decide to blow something up, that is not something to be too concerned about. PETA got more activists. Greenpeace manages to organize bigger raids with more results. Remember those assaults in the US on Abortion Clinics? Hell, even the KKK managed to keep their terror campaign alive for longer. Muslim terrorists, pathetic. Check the history of the IRA for how you really do it.
No, the US will one day fall, but not in our life-time. The current war is just another Vietnam, sucks to be Iraq but the US isn't that affected by it. Huge debt? So what, who is going to collect? Who is going to the US? Europe (nah, we are to busy fight8ng amongs ourselves) Russia? They are laughing their heads off, they like the US getting its ass kicked in afghanistan, vengeance is a dish best served cold in a hot desert.
China? Please, they got their own populace to oppress.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
And when dutch forces called for support to stop a genocide, the americans didn't send any. The genocide happens, the dutch got the blaim and the americans showed that as ever make a lousy partner.
Check the history a little bit closer. THe US role is not something to be proud off.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Enter key on your keyboard.
"Plain Old Text" formatting.
"Preview" button.
Makes it a lot easier to read.
Really.
Thanks.
But if a given nation's consumers as a whole decide that they don't need a particular technological advance, they aren't automatically wrong or ignorant. You mean like cars which get over 35 MPG?
I pick by technical feat.
OK, then which is the most impressive, to do what we've been doing since 1971 (if you're too lazy to read, the Soviets landed a rover on mars in 1971, except contact was lost with it due to a dust storm) except make it last longer, or drop a probe on a frozen satellite 15 times farther without even knowing what hides under its thick clouds, make it land smoothly, take pictures and communicate with another probe before running out of power (due to the fact that little solar power is available under the thick clouds of Titan)?
By any criteria you choose the martian rovers stand heads and shoulders beyond those efforts.
Riiight. Like I said, we're just doing what we could do 36 years ago except make it last longer. Big fucking whoop.
You just got troll'd!
The fact of the matter is, there are ways in which America is seriously behind Europe and Asia (no, I'm not talking about MP4 wristwatches) and there's no reason we shouldn't learn from their experience. The mindless fury with which many Americans react to any suggestion that the USA is not absolutely, positively #1 in every single way is a much bigger problem for the country than anti-American bigotry ... not to mention that a lot of the bigotry is a reaction to that particular type of arrogance.
I can agree with the statement that the U.S. is "lagging behind" on many important issues as compared with particular countries, but I would also like someone to acknowledge that this type of comparison between UK and America, or France and America, or Germany and America is quite unfair.
Sorry to break it to you, but your total land area per country is a pittance compared to that of the U.S. Your total population is likewise trivial compared to the U.S. as a whole. European "countries" are much closer in size and composition to American "states". Compare ALL of Europe to ALL of America, you get a MUCH different picture.
Look at California(163,707 sq. mi, 36,457,000 people) compared with France(339908 sq mi. 60,144,000 people). California is what, the 9th largest economy in the WORLD? Where is France on the list? Compare Florida to England, again, no comparison. Compare North Dakota to Poland and you might get somewhere.
Please, try to be fair when doing comparisons.
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
Yeah! Finally someone has written an article on this topic! For years Nokia has been selling cell phones with built-in hard disk drives (i.e. think cell phone meets iPod classic) overseas. I've never seen any of them get into the US. The best I can get in the US is a cell phone with a small flash drive like the Apple iPhone. The only problem with this article is that it didn't mention enough products.
Another example is the Nissan Skyline. Remember how many years it took for THAT to get into the US?
I've also been wishing that some of the cool LED T-Shirts in the UK would get imported to this side of the pond. So far, no luck. For an example, see: http://www.otherlandtoys.co.uk/sound-activated-illuminating-tshirt-p-1878.html
I've been primomising it for years, one of these days I'll actually get around to writing "indoor rocketry for children". It wil have photos of the actual pyrotechnic rockets actually being launched indoors, with children.
No, I'm not actually normal!
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Bad writing on my part to then, I guess. But in my defense, nobody's paying me to do it.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
This is just my experience, but take it for what it is worth... a few years ago, my wife and I went to Paris for a week. She has a Master's in French, so right away I had an advantage that most Americans do not - the ability to break the language barrier. She'd lived in Belgium for 9 months, so there was another advantage - culture knowledge. She made sure that we blended in. There were concerns at first about going, as we arrived 2 days after Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq. But all went very well, and the trip was great. Many of our friends thought that we were crazy, that we would be chased out of the country with pitchforks and torches for being from the US. But the bottom line was, we tried to fit in. She spoke the language, and I tried. We were treated normally. It was funny, we could spot American tourists a mile away (unless of course, they were blending like we were). The NASCAR T-shirts, tennis shoes, caps, etc. They were very loud and demanding in restaurants. It was embarassing. Now you could argue that they shouldn't change who they are, but you can't expect to get 'normal' treatment if you don't respect the country you are in. I heard one man saying "doesn't anyone here speak English?!" And yes, normally they do - as I found out when a kind waiter switched from speaking French to English when he realized his English was better than my French.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
(Parden the pun) They have toilets with seat warmers, measure your body's vital signs, provide audio & viedo entertainment, disquise the sound of peeing and flushing, fit in your car, and so on.
What I most regret is the absence of legal cell phone jamming technology in the United States. Someday soon, most Americans will go overseas to visit libraries and movie theaters or to find a quiet place to eat.
Firstly I presume when you said 9mm you meant 3.5mm.
Secondly most seperate turntables give a very weak output and therefore require either a seperate turntable preamp or a device with one built in. You can get turntables with line level outputs but they are the exception not the rule.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Err... Yeah, 3.5mm... Wow... that was a major Fruedian slip...
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.