> Seriously, I've taken countless hand-held shots > with my old Canon AE-1 down to 1/60 with 200 speed > film. Methinks you've consumed too much 'Dew, > maybe??;-)
Film speed doesn't matter if we're talking jitter (it does if we're talking grain). The general rule is that Joe Average, exhaled and concentrating on a steady hand, can get adequate results with a shutter-speed denominator roughly equal to the focal length of the lens. Examples:
1/60 @ 50 mm 1/30 @ 28 mm 1/250 @ 200 mm
A steady hand can often let longer exposure times be used with good results, e.g., 1/30 @ 50 mm.
And exactly *where* would the average Chinese hacker get the funds for a satellite dish, the contact for a satellite dish on the black market, a place to install the satellite dish covertly so as not to generate any unwanted interested in the hardware they use and the free access to the information that might tell them which bloody satellite might have the datafeed they could tap into?
It's one thing for a/.er to think about dropping by Walmart and buying a satellite dish to bypass their oppressive ISP end-user policies and another thing entirely for a Chinese resident to even begin to have the first opportunity to consider alternatives that won't immediately get their ass tossed in a behaviour-modification camp.
Really, people, I wonder whether you actually think about the issues before you post. A large number of/.ers might be able to bypass proxies, but that's because those same/.ers have had unfettered access to the information that taught them *how* to bypass those obstacles. A newbie in China -- or anywhere else -- is screwed under those circumstances.
> In the USA we are busy trying to censor > Napster,Kazaa and programs that are peer to peer.
Had Napster and Kazaa been only used to trade scans of artwork made by children in reverence of their loving parents, no censorship would have taken place. As soon as these peer-to-peer networks were used to pass copyrighted material in a fashion that stepped outside the typical fair-use bounds, the hammer fell.
This isn't the same deal and you make a mockery of the issue of absolute censorship when you try to make the illegal distribution/procurement of copyrighted material equivalent to keeping a country's population potentially ignorant of a great many truths.
Google is nothing like Napster or Kazaa. Google is a snapshot of the free world, full of news, information and inflammatory, asshole-written comments. The people of China are being *deprived of the right to decide for themselves what is relevent*. It is a ploy by the Chinese government to maintain ignorance in the population, thereby making the population easier to control.
Are you more ignorant of the world if you can't download the latest Britney single for free, depriving poor, poor Britney the royalties due because you appreciate her tight little ass? I highly doubt it, mate.
Valid point. I do remember seeing something on Discovery channel about kuru. It was very interesting. I agree that discarding of the brain may help, but merely handling the brain matter in an unclean fashion would probably be enough to contract the disorder. This would put anybody involved with skull preparation at risk, regardless of whether they intentionally ingested the brain matter or not.
IIRC, mortuary cannibalism often goes hand in hand with skull-shrinking/preservation, so contact with infected brain matter is a given.
>> inadvertently break something while attempting to >> fix something else? > > The key word there is "inadvertently".
Sure, and I even thought of it myself.
> Worrying about Microsoft modifying and/or > destroying your personal data files and/or > modifying third party applications is well into > downtown Paranoia.
I think you're confusing the issues here. I, for one, am not worried about this happening. But since you want to discuss the nasty side of business, it's quite possible under such an agreement that software would be "inadvertently" broken during an upgrade quite on purpose. Ever hear of OS/2 For Windows and how a particular MS bugfix suddenly made things very difficult for OS/2?
With the DOJ attention that MS has received over the last few years, I suspect it's unlikely we'll see the likes of the Win vs. OS/2 debacle again, but the precedent _has_ already been set.
Cheers, mate. Good comments and an interesting discussion.
>> Great, your encoders and decoders were free. MP3 >> itself is not. > > Apparently it is.
Apparently, it isn't. From the MP3 Licensing website FAQ:
"What does it cost?
A per unit royalty is taken on mp3/mp3PRO products and applications, such as ripping software, jukebox applications, mp3/mp3PRO-enabled CD/DVD players and portable mp3/mp3PRO players. For companies broadcasting, streaming and distributing mp3/mp3PRO-encoded music, the royalty paid is based on the revenue generated."
The distinction I made is valid: the encoders and decoders you use are free only by virtue of the fact that you downloaded them for free. Thomson does not license software or patents to end users, but it absolutely will go after anybody who sells a product that includes MP3 technology. Red Hat didn't pull MP3 stuff from its distribution because of GPL-fuzzy reasoning, they did so to avoid getting charged for making money on patents they hadn't licensed.
>> Normally, I wouldn't worry about this sort of >> thing coming true, but with Sun and Microsoft >> changing EULA's willy-nilly to let them legally >> muck with the software on our computers > > Except that Microsoft has not done that. And it > wouldn't be legal for them to, anyway.
What, it wouldn't be legal for Microsoft to inadvertently break something while attempting to fix something else? It's only one small step further to 100% automate Windows Update. And, last I heard about it, Microsoft has never been held accountable for their software hosing a system and causing data loss.
The Sun/Microsoft agreements let them upgrade various installed software on the computer. How is that illegal?
> Sorry, but paranoia is not reason.
I fail to see where any of my comments have even remotely indicated paranoia. Cautious about EULA's and disappearing "free for non-commercial" clauses? You betcha.
> Funny, I've downloaded both MP3 encoders and > decoders free*.
Great, your encoders and decoders were free. MP3 itself is not. This can't be such a leap of understanding, can it? And it should matter, too. Why did Thomson remove the "free for non-commercial" disclaimer from the MP3 license?
If nothing had changed, it would have been cheaper to leave it in place. They removed it to free up the possibility to exact a fee retroactively.
Normally, I wouldn't worry about this sort of thing coming true, but with Sun and Microsoft changing EULA's willy-nilly to let them legally muck with the software on our computers, I'm beginning to realize that, ethics be damned, companies will do whatever they feel to be in their best interest.
> You realize, of course, that the trailer park > comment completely negated your entire argument?
I apologize for the comment. It was uncalled for.
That said, I disagree that truth is negated by stupidity. While *my* credibility may have been compromised, the meat of the original post stands up to scrutiny on its own merit.
I'm a not-so-infrequent air traveler and, man, if I'm not able to use my laptop onboard, I'm screwed. I travel between Tokyo and Vienna and with an 11-12hr. flight, you wanna bet that a couple of hours of working with the notebook helps to pass the time. Efficiently, even.
(Deep Breath)
One would hope that sensibilities will prevail. I'm allowed to take my cell phone on the plane and I do make calls right up to the point we are about to taxi out to the runway. No hassles from anybody. As long as I turn off my phone, the crew is happy.
As with not using CD-ROM drives on board -- I don't -- one should just be able to disable the WiFi and use the computer. Let's hope that they realize that business people really do require the use of their laptops while they fly.
Sure, a 486-class system will be sluggish with KDE, but as long as it has a healthy dose of RAM, it'll do fine.
As for the banal comments about Laotian/third-world intelligence, the fact is that these people are human beings with the very same potential that we all have. The difference is that many of them have simply not had the same opportunities. This project aims to rectify that problem. A Cisco and Dilbert 2-thumbs up!
While watching Discovery Channel here in Tokyo a month ago or so (I admit it, I'm a Discovery junkie), an interesting comment regarding mammoth-hunting early homo sapiens was made. The jist of it was that if you took one of these early homo sapiens and raised them in our world, they'd have just as much potential for success as any of us.
I would hope that might make folks who spew "third-world-stupid" comments think twice before doing so. Opportunistically challenged does not equate with stupid. Unless, of course, you're married to your sister and live in a trailor park somewhere in the South.:-P
What a cool idea. I'd love to have a go at Missile Command again. I can't even begin to imagine how many rolls of quarters I burned through at our local, small-town bowling alley on Friday's after school. That heavy, smooth-rolling trackball was JUST the greatest for both feel and accuracy. Playing PC ports of the game just doesn't come close to the original arcade version.
As for modern-day games that I "miss," Descent 1 still ranks as my all-time favourite game. I used to play that for so many hours that I'd get vertigo when I went to bed. And once Kali came out and head-to-head was possible over the 'net, sleepless nights became the norm.
Unfortunately for Descent 1, much of the joy of playing the game ended when my CH Flightstick Pro died an untimely death. The MS Sidewinder Precision 2 that replaced it just didn't offer the same feel and response.
I've never been much of a gamer, but those two really were it for me. *sigh*
I've been a software engineer with my current employer for some 6 years and change now. In February, I began telecommuting. It has, so far, worked out very well.
I work for a company that has offices in various cities around the world. In our Japanese affiliate, I am the sole software engineer. What ultimately made telecommuting possible for me is the independent nature of my work. I'm responsible for localization of our corporate software into Japanese, as well as doing customer-specific extensions for our domestic projects. This means that I have historically dealt more with head office (i.e., HQ-based development teams) than I have with staff at the local office.
For six years, the work got done, on budget and on time. I was left more or less to my own devices, only given cursory management (a monthly report indicating what I had been working on). Totally hands-off from the company here and everybody was happy. When the company decided to dip a toe into Lake Telecommuting and test the water, I was the crash-test dummy given the nod.
I guess the company has been pleased with the results. Two other employees have since started working at home. I hope it works out for them, too.
The biggest thing that I see, at least in our situation, is that telecommuting is well suited for a person/position that doesn't require a lot of over-the-shoulder management. I work in software, but I think that any number of positions could be well suited for telecommuting. The primary requirement is that the person will put in a full-day's work instead of surfing/. Another requirement, however -- and presented by others in the thread already -- is that the person should be able to turn off, too. Overwork happens with telecommuting because the home is the office. "Just 10 more minutes, hon" has often been heard in my house over the last few months.
If you do really well with phone calls and e-mail -- which I prefer due to the ever-present audit trail it affords -- your goals might be well served by any number of positions.
One thing I may have missed is this: with the difficulty of nailing a telecommuting-from-the-start position, what are the chances of you making the transition to telecommuting within your current company? It seems to me that if you could do that, then moving to another city becomes less of an issue later on rather than worry about finding a telecommuting position later just prior to a move.
> When (or if) they finally decide to embrace the > Information Economy, which IMO will be immensely > hard because of their difficulty with English, > they will be even more powerful and wealthy. If > they don't manage the transition and fix the > economy, they will fade. But I don't think that's > gonna happen. Do you agree?
I couldn't agree more, and I don't think it's a matter of if, either. My eldest daughter goes to a school that does *not* follow Mombusho guidelines. They make all their own texts for the curriculum, which, as you can imagine, makes this a somewhat expensive school to attend. One of the things that has not yet been adequately addressed, IMO, is *proper* English communication, but those in power are absolutely available to me in order that I might suggest such things.
I'd like to believe that this is going to become more the norm here. In the 10+ years I've been here, I've even seen academia propose that Japanese be deprecated in favour of English to cement Japan as a modern, global economic force. Although such ideas will obviously be met with incredulity here, it definitely points toward a Japan that will take its global communicative skills, i.e., English, with considerably more sincerity than has been the case up till now.
Fixing the economy will, however, take some resolve. Unfortunately, that has not been forthcoming from the Diet over the years I've been here. It will be interesting to see just how bad it gets before the Diet finally comes round to taking the bull by the horns and making the tough decisions necessary to make the system genuinely work. Up till now, I've always felt that Japan more or less survived in spite of its best efforts.
You here for the long haul? I hadn't planned on it, but inertia is a funny thing. I expected to leave about 8 years ago.;)
It's a logical extension of the "conclusions" presented in the article. We assume that since most of us non-meth-snorting humans have common brainwave characteristics that there should be common sonic patterns that will help induce relaxation and/or sleep.
It's not much different than chanting-based meditation techniques except that whereas saying "ooooohm" is based on religious practice, we now have a way of analyzing things in a scientifically sound fashion that, by rights, should be reproducible.
Of course, while some will be studying how to use such tones to relax and induce sleep, you wanna bet yer sweet bippy that there are going to be Very Secret Places studying how to use these same techniques to induce stress, terror and other psychological trauma.
"We have ways of making you talk" will undoubtedly get scarier.
> Did you notice that - these structures might be > chemical artifacts, or they might be geological > processes. The equivocations are there, a very > nice thing to see - science is rarely so open > about the alternative explanations when quoted in > the popular press.
More appropriately, the popular press is rarely so open to the alternative explanations offered by science. Lucky for us, these articles are too obscure to be of much interest to the popular press. Science-oriented journals are generally less likely to try to sell with sensational headlines and more likely to get into the meat and potatoes of a particular subject.
Filter out the differences among various subjects, figure out what the common patters are and we'll have a nice, common bit that should work for anybody. Cool idea. I don't have trouble sleeping most of the time, but this would be nice to have at my disposal for those "project crunch" moments.
> I heard they were thinking about using lasers to > read (and write!) huge, 5" round plastic-coated > metal discs... better cancel the project to put > those in laptops.
You seem to miss the point: Ever go running with a portable CD player? Most skip horribly when subjected to sudden G-forces and require oversampling and large buffers to overcome read errors. This works fine, however, in a read-only device. The more serious problem involves writing the data, though that will surely be overcome by comparing data in memory with that committed to disk, with rewriting taking place until the integrity of the data is assured. As for your portable CD-R/RW, don't give 'em a solid jostle while you're burning a disc.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that this can't be done, only that there will be some challenges to bring this technology to mobile computing. As usual, we'll see it on servers and workstations before the technology makes it to portable storage.
There's no question that being able to jump from giga- to tera- orders of storage/sq. in. is a Good Thing, but I have to wonder how delicate these drives are going to be. Typically, lasers need to be focused pretty accurately to be, uhm, accurate. Methinks that widescale rollout of these drives will be delayed considerably as they figure out ways of ensuring that the focus (mirror-based?) remains unaffected by the typical knocks 'n shocks that are so much the norm, especially in mobile computing.
As was mentioned in an earlier post, solid-state storage has such a great advantage due to the lack of moving parts. The hurdle to overcome there, however, is how to get the same storage density out of a solid-state device. There's always a catch.
> It's a very common misconception that Japan is > way out ahead of the US in the absorption of > technology into the culture.
Agreed. Where Japan does differ, however, is that once something is accepted, it does so at a breakneak pace. Broadband, especially the ADSL camp, *has* widespread acceptance among computer users here. The demand far outstrips the ADSL-capable infrastructure, the latter being a huge investment for NTT (which owns almost all land lines in Japan).
It's an interesting cultural phenomenon. Japan is almost always late to the party, but once they arrive, they party with gusto.
> DSL (YahooBB) just came available in Mito, which > is a small city north of Tokyo.
YahooBB is, itself, late to the party. I'm down in Machida and have used eAccess since May 2001. And my installation came almost a year after the initial rollout to the central-Tokyo wards.
> Compare this to a comparable size city, Lubbock > TX, which has had DSL and cable BB for years and > years.
Right. The difference is that Lubbock probably has multiple telcos competing for customers. Mito had to wait for NTT's agenda to be served. It looks to me as though NTT has used Tokyo/Osaka as beta sites prior to rolling out more stable CO equipment throughout the rest of the country.
It's also worth noting that Japan's ADSL standards are not interchangable with the rest of the world. We've got Annex.G, I believe. (Sorry, been a while since I read up on it.) As usual, Japan has to do things differently even when they're doing the same thing. I have no idea whether the differences in the Japanese ADSL standards actually make for a better user experience, though I can say my 1.5Mb down/512Kb up connection is boringly stable. (A Good Thing.)
> the NTT monopoly held Japan back for a long > time, but BB is finally catching on.
It was a combination of both NTT and the standards committee(s). As much as I'd love to dump the whole nightmare at NTT's doorstep, it's not realistic. The Japanese-specific modifications to the xDSL standards delayed the rollout as much as NTT's sluggishness.
> Japan seems much less technologically advanced.
Proliferation of computing is slower, yes. A lot of that is due to the size of the rabbit hutches that real estate agents like to call "mansions" here. My family of 5 (+2 cats) live in a 3DK. Most Japanese households are in a similar situation. Finding space to put traditional boxen/CRTs is a challenge. This explains why notebooks are so popular here. They can be folded up and stuffed in the closet easily, an important consideration in an overcrowded, cluttered living space. Once you have a market stuffed full of uncrippled notebooks available for 100,000-150,000, you'll see another burst of widescale home-computer adoption in Japan.
In the meantime, we'll continue to see zillions of Japanese riding the trains and even their bicycles while they WAP-surf on their cellular phones.
When I see so many posts commenting on how expensive 40-60 bucks/month is, I have to smile. Here in Tokyo, I jumped at the opportunity to install ADSL in May last year. My price for the telco fees + ISP port connection/services was just under 80 bucks/month. It has since dropped, thankfully.
However, prior to ADSL, my dial-up charges were on the order of about $250/month. The North American all-you-can-eat dial-up courtesy of no-charge local calls would have delayed my adoption to xDSL for a very long time. The move was made because the pricing was so much more attractive.
Of course, now things are different. Telecommuting and doing the VPN into the office network wouldn't be possible with dial-up, so when the company asked me if I wanted to work at home, I was suddenly VERY pleased to already have ADSL installed.
Hmmm. It occurs to me that some of you folks stateside might have a good argument to present to your local representatives. Telecommuting really does require broadband. If the broadband providers are forcibly slowing the adoption of broadband in wide areas, it's plausible that there are negative economic consequences coming about as a result.
> We probably won't be getting the beer machines > here, even though a machine is probably better at > checking IDs.
Here in Tokyo, one doesn't see alcohol-laden vending machines anymore. About a year ago, the government sent out some suggestings "encouraging" the brewers/distributors to remove their vending machines. It seems that too many young kids were getting drunk.
In the same vein, most cigarette vending machines are closed up between 11 PM and 5 AM, precisely the time when the drunks are heading home and are in desperate need of a nicotine fix. At least it's not too difficult to find a convenience store that sells tobacco in the wee hours (not all of 'em sell tobacco).
Slashdot Mirror
> Seriously, I've taken countless hand-held shots ;-)
> with my old Canon AE-1 down to 1/60 with 200 speed
> film. Methinks you've consumed too much 'Dew,
> maybe??
Film speed doesn't matter if we're talking jitter (it does if we're talking grain). The general rule is that Joe Average, exhaled and concentrating on a steady hand, can get adequate results with a shutter-speed denominator roughly equal to the focal length of the lens. Examples:
1/60 @ 50 mm
1/30 @ 28 mm
1/250 @ 200 mm
A steady hand can often let longer exposure times be used with good results, e.g., 1/30 @ 50 mm.
I've checked successfully under both Moz 1.0 (home system) and *cough*IE5*cough* (work).
Interesting. Mind pointing a dummie in the right direction to figure out how this works?
And exactly *where* would the average Chinese hacker get the funds for a satellite dish, the contact for a satellite dish on the black market, a place to install the satellite dish covertly so as not to generate any unwanted interested in the hardware they use and the free access to the information that might tell them which bloody satellite might have the datafeed they could tap into?
/.er to think about dropping by Walmart and buying a satellite dish to bypass their oppressive ISP end-user policies and another thing entirely for a Chinese resident to even begin to have the first opportunity to consider alternatives that won't immediately get their ass tossed in a behaviour-modification camp.
/.ers might be able to bypass proxies, but that's because those same /.ers have had unfettered access to the information that taught them *how* to bypass those obstacles. A newbie in China -- or anywhere else -- is screwed under those circumstances.
It's one thing for a
Really, people, I wonder whether you actually think about the issues before you post. A large number of
> In the USA we are busy trying to censor
> Napster,Kazaa and programs that are peer to peer.
Had Napster and Kazaa been only used to trade scans of artwork made by children in reverence of their loving parents, no censorship would have taken place. As soon as these peer-to-peer networks were used to pass copyrighted material in a fashion that stepped outside the typical fair-use bounds, the hammer fell.
This isn't the same deal and you make a mockery of the issue of absolute censorship when you try to make the illegal distribution/procurement of copyrighted material equivalent to keeping a country's population potentially ignorant of a great many truths.
Google is nothing like Napster or Kazaa. Google is a snapshot of the free world, full of news, information and inflammatory, asshole-written comments. The people of China are being *deprived of the right to decide for themselves what is relevent*. It is a ploy by the Chinese government to maintain ignorance in the population, thereby making the population easier to control.
Are you more ignorant of the world if you can't download the latest Britney single for free, depriving poor, poor Britney the royalties due because you appreciate her tight little ass? I highly doubt it, mate.
Valid point. I do remember seeing something on Discovery channel about kuru. It was very interesting. I agree that discarding of the brain may help, but merely handling the brain matter in an unclean fashion would probably be enough to contract the disorder. This would put anybody involved with skull preparation at risk, regardless of whether they intentionally ingested the brain matter or not.
IIRC, mortuary cannibalism often goes hand in hand with skull-shrinking/preservation, so contact with infected brain matter is a given.
>> inadvertently break something while attempting to
>> fix something else?
>
> The key word there is "inadvertently".
Sure, and I even thought of it myself.
> Worrying about Microsoft modifying and/or
> destroying your personal data files and/or
> modifying third party applications is well into
> downtown Paranoia.
I think you're confusing the issues here. I, for one, am not worried about this happening. But since you want to discuss the nasty side of business, it's quite possible under such an agreement that software would be "inadvertently" broken during an upgrade quite on purpose. Ever hear of OS/2 For Windows and how a particular MS bugfix suddenly made things very difficult for OS/2?
With the DOJ attention that MS has received over the last few years, I suspect it's unlikely we'll see the likes of the Win vs. OS/2 debacle again, but the precedent _has_ already been set.
Cheers, mate. Good comments and an interesting discussion.
>> Great, your encoders and decoders were free. MP3
>> itself is not.
>
> Apparently it is.
Apparently, it isn't. From the MP3 Licensing website FAQ:
"What does it cost?
A per unit royalty is taken on mp3/mp3PRO products and applications, such as ripping software, jukebox applications, mp3/mp3PRO-enabled CD/DVD players and portable mp3/mp3PRO players. For companies broadcasting, streaming and distributing mp3/mp3PRO-encoded music, the royalty paid is based on the revenue generated."
The distinction I made is valid: the encoders and decoders you use are free only by virtue of the fact that you downloaded them for free. Thomson does not license software or patents to end users, but it absolutely will go after anybody who sells a product that includes MP3 technology. Red Hat didn't pull MP3 stuff from its distribution because of GPL-fuzzy reasoning, they did so to avoid getting charged for making money on patents they hadn't licensed.
>> Normally, I wouldn't worry about this sort of
>> thing coming true, but with Sun and Microsoft
>> changing EULA's willy-nilly to let them legally
>> muck with the software on our computers
>
> Except that Microsoft has not done that. And it
> wouldn't be legal for them to, anyway.
What, it wouldn't be legal for Microsoft to inadvertently break something while attempting to fix something else? It's only one small step further to 100% automate Windows Update. And, last I heard about it, Microsoft has never been held accountable for their software hosing a system and causing data loss.
The Sun/Microsoft agreements let them upgrade various installed software on the computer. How is that illegal?
> Sorry, but paranoia is not reason.
I fail to see where any of my comments have even remotely indicated paranoia. Cautious about EULA's and disappearing "free for non-commercial" clauses? You betcha.
> Funny, I've downloaded both MP3 encoders and
> decoders free*.
Great, your encoders and decoders were free. MP3 itself is not. This can't be such a leap of understanding, can it? And it should matter, too. Why did Thomson remove the "free for non-commercial" disclaimer from the MP3 license?
If nothing had changed, it would have been cheaper to leave it in place. They removed it to free up the possibility to exact a fee retroactively.
Normally, I wouldn't worry about this sort of thing coming true, but with Sun and Microsoft changing EULA's willy-nilly to let them legally muck with the software on our computers, I'm beginning to realize that, ethics be damned, companies will do whatever they feel to be in their best interest.
MP3 is not free. Good mantra; it even rhymes.
> I have better things to do with my time,
> particularly since MP3 is free.
Ogg Vorbis is free, MP3 is certainly not, whether we're talking beer or speech.
> You realize, of course, that the trailer park
> comment completely negated your entire argument?
I apologize for the comment. It was uncalled for.
That said, I disagree that truth is negated by stupidity. While *my* credibility may have been compromised, the meat of the original post stands up to scrutiny on its own merit.
I'm a not-so-infrequent air traveler and, man, if I'm not able to use my laptop onboard, I'm screwed. I travel between Tokyo and Vienna and with an 11-12hr. flight, you wanna bet that a couple of hours of working with the notebook helps to pass the time. Efficiently, even.
(Deep Breath)
One would hope that sensibilities will prevail. I'm allowed to take my cell phone on the plane and I do make calls right up to the point we are about to taxi out to the runway. No hassles from anybody. As long as I turn off my phone, the crew is happy.
As with not using CD-ROM drives on board -- I don't -- one should just be able to disable the WiFi and use the computer. Let's hope that they realize that business people really do require the use of their laptops while they fly.
Sure, a 486-class system will be sluggish with KDE, but as long as it has a healthy dose of RAM, it'll do fine.
:-P
As for the banal comments about Laotian/third-world intelligence, the fact is that these people are human beings with the very same potential that we all have. The difference is that many of them have simply not had the same opportunities. This project aims to rectify that problem. A Cisco and Dilbert 2-thumbs up!
While watching Discovery Channel here in Tokyo a month ago or so (I admit it, I'm a Discovery junkie), an interesting comment regarding mammoth-hunting early homo sapiens was made. The jist of it was that if you took one of these early homo sapiens and raised them in our world, they'd have just as much potential for success as any of us.
I would hope that might make folks who spew "third-world-stupid" comments think twice before doing so. Opportunistically challenged does not equate with stupid. Unless, of course, you're married to your sister and live in a trailor park somewhere in the South.
What a cool idea. I'd love to have a go at Missile Command again. I can't even begin to imagine how many rolls of quarters I burned through at our local, small-town bowling alley on Friday's after school. That heavy, smooth-rolling trackball was JUST the greatest for both feel and accuracy. Playing PC ports of the game just doesn't come close to the original arcade version.
As for modern-day games that I "miss," Descent 1 still ranks as my all-time favourite game. I used to play that for so many hours that I'd get vertigo when I went to bed. And once Kali came out and head-to-head was possible over the 'net, sleepless nights became the norm.
Unfortunately for Descent 1, much of the joy of playing the game ended when my CH Flightstick Pro died an untimely death. The MS Sidewinder Precision 2 that replaced it just didn't offer the same feel and response.
I've never been much of a gamer, but those two really were it for me. *sigh*
I've been a software engineer with my current employer for some 6 years and change now. In February, I began telecommuting. It has, so far, worked out very well.
/. Another requirement, however -- and presented by others in the thread already -- is that the person should be able to turn off, too. Overwork happens with telecommuting because the home is the office. "Just 10 more minutes, hon" has often been heard in my house over the last few months.
I work for a company that has offices in various cities around the world. In our Japanese affiliate, I am the sole software engineer. What ultimately made telecommuting possible for me is the independent nature of my work. I'm responsible for localization of our corporate software into Japanese, as well as doing customer-specific extensions for our domestic projects. This means that I have historically dealt more with head office (i.e., HQ-based development teams) than I have with staff at the local office.
For six years, the work got done, on budget and on time. I was left more or less to my own devices, only given cursory management (a monthly report indicating what I had been working on). Totally hands-off from the company here and everybody was happy. When the company decided to dip a toe into Lake Telecommuting and test the water, I was the crash-test dummy given the nod.
I guess the company has been pleased with the results. Two other employees have since started working at home. I hope it works out for them, too.
The biggest thing that I see, at least in our situation, is that telecommuting is well suited for a person/position that doesn't require a lot of over-the-shoulder management. I work in software, but I think that any number of positions could be well suited for telecommuting. The primary requirement is that the person will put in a full-day's work instead of surfing
If you do really well with phone calls and e-mail -- which I prefer due to the ever-present audit trail it affords -- your goals might be well served by any number of positions.
One thing I may have missed is this: with the difficulty of nailing a telecommuting-from-the-start position, what are the chances of you making the transition to telecommuting within your current company? It seems to me that if you could do that, then moving to another city becomes less of an issue later on rather than worry about finding a telecommuting position later just prior to a move.
> When (or if) they finally decide to embrace the
;)
> Information Economy, which IMO will be immensely
> hard because of their difficulty with English,
> they will be even more powerful and wealthy. If
> they don't manage the transition and fix the
> economy, they will fade. But I don't think that's
> gonna happen. Do you agree?
I couldn't agree more, and I don't think it's a matter of if, either. My eldest daughter goes to a school that does *not* follow Mombusho guidelines. They make all their own texts for the curriculum, which, as you can imagine, makes this a somewhat expensive school to attend. One of the things that has not yet been adequately addressed, IMO, is *proper* English communication, but those in power are absolutely available to me in order that I might suggest such things.
I'd like to believe that this is going to become more the norm here. In the 10+ years I've been here, I've even seen academia propose that Japanese be deprecated in favour of English to cement Japan as a modern, global economic force. Although such ideas will obviously be met with incredulity here, it definitely points toward a Japan that will take its global communicative skills, i.e., English, with considerably more sincerity than has been the case up till now.
Fixing the economy will, however, take some resolve. Unfortunately, that has not been forthcoming from the Diet over the years I've been here. It will be interesting to see just how bad it gets before the Diet finally comes round to taking the bull by the horns and making the tough decisions necessary to make the system genuinely work. Up till now, I've always felt that Japan more or less survived in spite of its best efforts.
You here for the long haul? I hadn't planned on it, but inertia is a funny thing. I expected to leave about 8 years ago.
I like the sound of that. Makes me mourn the loss of all of my "environmental soundscapes" I had all those years ago.
> Did you just snort a fat line of meth?
Now there's an intelligent comeback.
> Where did you come up with that idea?
It's a logical extension of the "conclusions" presented in the article. We assume that since most of us non-meth-snorting humans have common brainwave characteristics that there should be common sonic patterns that will help induce relaxation and/or sleep.
It's not much different than chanting-based meditation techniques except that whereas saying "ooooohm" is based on religious practice, we now have a way of analyzing things in a scientifically sound fashion that, by rights, should be reproducible.
Of course, while some will be studying how to use such tones to relax and induce sleep, you wanna bet yer sweet bippy that there are going to be Very Secret Places studying how to use these same techniques to induce stress, terror and other psychological trauma.
"We have ways of making you talk" will undoubtedly get scarier.
> Did you notice that - these structures might be
> chemical artifacts, or they might be geological
> processes. The equivocations are there, a very
> nice thing to see - science is rarely so open
> about the alternative explanations when quoted in
> the popular press.
More appropriately, the popular press is rarely so open to the alternative explanations offered by science. Lucky for us, these articles are too obscure to be of much interest to the popular press. Science-oriented journals are generally less likely to try to sell with sensational headlines and more likely to get into the meat and potatoes of a particular subject.
Filter out the differences among various subjects, figure out what the common patters are and we'll have a nice, common bit that should work for anybody. Cool idea. I don't have trouble sleeping most of the time, but this would be nice to have at my disposal for those "project crunch" moments.
> I heard they were thinking about using lasers to
> read (and write!) huge, 5" round plastic-coated
> metal discs... better cancel the project to put
> those in laptops.
You seem to miss the point: Ever go running with a portable CD player? Most skip horribly when subjected to sudden G-forces and require oversampling and large buffers to overcome read errors. This works fine, however, in a read-only device. The more serious problem involves writing the data, though that will surely be overcome by comparing data in memory with that committed to disk, with rewriting taking place until the integrity of the data is assured. As for your portable CD-R/RW, don't give 'em a solid jostle while you're burning a disc.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that this can't be done, only that there will be some challenges to bring this technology to mobile computing. As usual, we'll see it on servers and workstations before the technology makes it to portable storage.
There's no question that being able to jump from giga- to tera- orders of storage/sq. in. is a Good Thing, but I have to wonder how delicate these drives are going to be. Typically, lasers need to be focused pretty accurately to be, uhm, accurate. Methinks that widescale rollout of these drives will be delayed considerably as they figure out ways of ensuring that the focus (mirror-based?) remains unaffected by the typical knocks 'n shocks that are so much the norm, especially in mobile computing.
As was mentioned in an earlier post, solid-state storage has such a great advantage due to the lack of moving parts. The hurdle to overcome there, however, is how to get the same storage density out of a solid-state device. There's always a catch.
> It's a very common misconception that Japan is
> way out ahead of the US in the absorption of
> technology into the culture.
Agreed. Where Japan does differ, however, is that once something is accepted, it does so at a breakneak pace. Broadband, especially the ADSL camp, *has* widespread acceptance among computer users here. The demand far outstrips the ADSL-capable infrastructure, the latter being a huge investment for NTT (which owns almost all land lines in Japan).
It's an interesting cultural phenomenon. Japan is almost always late to the party, but once they arrive, they party with gusto.
> DSL (YahooBB) just came available in Mito, which
> is a small city north of Tokyo.
YahooBB is, itself, late to the party. I'm down in Machida and have used eAccess since May 2001. And my installation came almost a year after the initial rollout to the central-Tokyo wards.
> Compare this to a comparable size city, Lubbock
> TX, which has had DSL and cable BB for years and
> years.
Right. The difference is that Lubbock probably has multiple telcos competing for customers. Mito had to wait for NTT's agenda to be served. It looks to me as though NTT has used Tokyo/Osaka as beta sites prior to rolling out more stable CO equipment throughout the rest of the country.
It's also worth noting that Japan's ADSL standards are not interchangable with the rest of the world. We've got Annex.G, I believe. (Sorry, been a while since I read up on it.) As usual, Japan has to do things differently even when they're doing the same thing. I have no idea whether the differences in the Japanese ADSL standards actually make for a better user experience, though I can say my 1.5Mb down/512Kb up connection is boringly stable. (A Good Thing.)
> the NTT monopoly held Japan back for a long
> time, but BB is finally catching on.
It was a combination of both NTT and the standards committee(s). As much as I'd love to dump the whole nightmare at NTT's doorstep, it's not realistic. The Japanese-specific modifications to the xDSL standards delayed the rollout as much as NTT's sluggishness.
> Japan seems much less technologically advanced.
Proliferation of computing is slower, yes. A lot of that is due to the size of the rabbit hutches that real estate agents like to call "mansions" here. My family of 5 (+2 cats) live in a 3DK. Most Japanese households are in a similar situation. Finding space to put traditional boxen/CRTs is a challenge. This explains why notebooks are so popular here. They can be folded up and stuffed in the closet easily, an important consideration in an overcrowded, cluttered living space. Once you have a market stuffed full of uncrippled notebooks available for 100,000-150,000, you'll see another burst of widescale home-computer adoption in Japan.
In the meantime, we'll continue to see zillions of Japanese riding the trains and even their bicycles while they WAP-surf on their cellular phones.
When I see so many posts commenting on how expensive 40-60 bucks/month is, I have to smile. Here in Tokyo, I jumped at the opportunity to install ADSL in May last year. My price for the telco fees + ISP port connection/services was just under 80 bucks/month. It has since dropped, thankfully.
However, prior to ADSL, my dial-up charges were on the order of about $250/month. The North American all-you-can-eat dial-up courtesy of no-charge local calls would have delayed my adoption to xDSL for a very long time. The move was made because the pricing was so much more attractive.
Of course, now things are different. Telecommuting and doing the VPN into the office network wouldn't be possible with dial-up, so when the company asked me if I wanted to work at home, I was suddenly VERY pleased to already have ADSL installed.
Hmmm. It occurs to me that some of you folks stateside might have a good argument to present to your local representatives. Telecommuting really does require broadband. If the broadband providers are forcibly slowing the adoption of broadband in wide areas, it's plausible that there are negative economic consequences coming about as a result.
> We probably won't be getting the beer machines
> here, even though a machine is probably better at
> checking IDs.
Here in Tokyo, one doesn't see alcohol-laden vending machines anymore. About a year ago, the government sent out some suggestings "encouraging" the brewers/distributors to remove their vending machines. It seems that too many young kids were getting drunk.
In the same vein, most cigarette vending machines are closed up between 11 PM and 5 AM, precisely the time when the drunks are heading home and are in desperate need of a nicotine fix. At least it's not too difficult to find a convenience store that sells tobacco in the wee hours (not all of 'em sell tobacco).