This confused me for a minute, so I had to ask my younger brother about. Same thing, no official name, evidently. It's night for you guys, but it's morning in Asia - don't do this to me before I've had my coffee slashdot!
It is a good way to kill time, but there are people who don't have internet access at home (a lot of my college friends were like this) who primarily used their phones to access sites like mixi (the Japanese facebook), weather, news, etc.
It seems like most of the comments so far are against the idea of having machines you can control via the web or your phone and I too don't see the point of having web access to my laundry machine or my dishwasher (well, my hypothetical dishwasher).
But I live in Japan and that means a few things; I rely heavily on my cellphone to get things done. Internet, mail, news, weather, etc. Moreover, my apartment, like most Japanese housing, doesn't have central heat. Instead I rely on a (admittedly reasonably high tech) kerosone heater. It has a built in timer to switch on, which I can use at fixed times, like 10 minutes before my alarm clock goes off. But since the stoves are dangerous by themselves (supposedly, a lot of people don't care), I can't tell it to switch on when I come home - what if I am late from work, or stuck somewhere. It would be great if I could mail it or access it from my phone right before I left work and it would switch on (it is only a few minutes from my work to my home). Ditto the bath tub - it takes forever to fill it with hot water. If I could mail it before I got home I may be able to use it as soon or soon after I get back.
I am not saying such a thing could soon be possible (it may be already, I was given the kerosene heater so I have no idea what the current features are for such machines) - knowing how stagnant Japanese consumer products can be (really, how much has the kotatsu changed in 10 years??) even if it were implemented it may not catch on. But it would be great if it happened.
I am a huge fan of The Economist - for the daily gripes on slashdot, digg, and other websites about the pap that is journalism today, the paper has been a bastion of good writing and in depth coverage, even when I don't agree with the editorial/political stances. That said, I read this article earlier today (students are on winter break but I'm stuck coming into the office with nothing to do!) and it seemed like a mix of the obvious (more user created content? You don't say!) and the unlikely - when net speed starts becoming a customer service issue, you can bet the ISPs will get on board. American ISPs and those running the infrastructure have been dragging their feet in the U.S., while in Asia you can get really high speed internet (anywhere from DSL to fiber) even in the boondocks (believe me, I live in the middle of nowhere and could have gotten fiber).
The second prediction seems likely, though again, the U.S. is drawing up the rear. I know people here (Japan) that interact with the Internet solely or primarily through their mobile phone (not to mention things like GPS, and broadcast TV I got on a phone that cost less than $100 US). I hope Google does lead the way on this front next year, though I feel like we're going to have another year of baby steps unless Apple or Google or someone else with some clout decides to turn the American cell phone market on it's musty, stagnant head.
The third prediction seems very pie in the sky. I've used Windows, Linux, and OS X extensively, and I think (for my needs) OS X best matches my needs. I think there's a level of polish that is very difficult to for Linux to achieve in relation to the power home user. Ubuntu has probably got almost easy enough for the average user, if you disregard games and things. Linux certainly has a place as a great developer tool, server OS, and power-power user OS, but the article seems to imply that Linux is set to take over the entire PC world in 2008. I've heard that it's "the year of desktop Linux" since Redhat 5 and experience has taught me to wait for actual proof on that claim.
Someone can correct me if I'm off my nut here but: I think that's the major definition, but further categories can be made on things like different physical or (like in this study) genetic characteristics. Also, if the populations are genetically (and possibly morphologically, as the summary suggests) and do not interbreed in the wild that would suggest that giraffes may be well divided into subspecies.
I feel like every time I post to Slashdot in the last few months, it's almost been exclusively about my cell phone (I live in Japan).
I bought my phone this summer and the QR is awesome. My au phone bill comes with QRs to the site and this month's free downloads. I just went shopping at the Village Vanguard (like a cooler Japanese Spencer's) and the bag I got for the stuff I bought had three QRs, for directions, info on the store, and other things. I've even used QR on PC websites to access mobile versions of sites.
It's really, really useful, but I think it needs a semi-decent camera on one's phone. I'd love for it to become popular in America, but American phones would have to start supporting it and then others will. While the three major Japanese phone companies are follow each other, getting American cell phone companies to go in one direction is like herding cats. I seriously doubt it'll take off in America.
Don't get me started on the Japanese OCR program, which can take pictures of kanji and passes it on to the Japanese / English dictionary - it's so awesome.
Well, I don't mean to sound like an apologist - I like Apple, but they need gutchecks, often.
That said, the semi-transparent menubar hasn't bothered me that much, or I would have switched it off, using some terminal voodoo. The darker windows don't bother at all and for consistency, they're great. I would have preferred Uno's behavior - brushed metal windows having the darker smooth look and normal windows having a lighter smooth look, but it's not that bad.
Like I said I changed the dock to the flat version using the terminal and like it much better.
The icons suck and to me are the worst part of the whole UI.
The mail buttons don't bother me much.
The finder isn't great, but I can do what I need and coverflow is actually pretty cool in some situations (browsing different versions of my some word files, my wallpapers folder, my general download folder).
There isn't a UI competitor to OS X, but OS X users are really militant. Take Uno as an example. There's already been fixes I'm using to make Quicklook work better with directories and zip files, programs that let you change the dock style, and bring hierarchal menus back to the dock. I'm sure a lot of these problems will be hammered by independent developers. Not that it takes Apple off the hook, but a lot of those things don't bother me as much either.
Normally I don't reply to these kind of articles, as they tend to be obvious flame bait, but the whole PC Mag article seems very anecdotal. As far as my own experience is concerned, upgrading to Leopard was the easiest OS upgrade I've ever done and I've had pretty much no issues since I upgraded. I've never had the machine crash or freeze.
The only real nitpicks I have with Leopard are that the UI occasionally seems slower and some of the UI choices are baffling (the menu bar can be grody with some wallpapers, I ended up switching off the dock shelf, and the folder icons are a huge step backwards) and even those nitpicks are worth it to get a UI that is otherwise relatively clean and consistent (under Tiger I was using a UI called Uno. Before upgrading, I uninstalled it, and Tiger's UI is really grating).
I have one of those rotating screen phones, au's W52CA. The TV quality is actually quite good and like most phones like it, it came with headphones so it is quite possible to watch TV on it.
As for the DS, I only see kids playing DS (though when some of my middle school students found out I had one they busted their DSes out and begged me to trade Pokemon) in public, but obviously someone wants these TV tuner because they've sold like veritable hotcakes.
Mod parent up. This unabashedly stupid story about a friend of a friend in al Qaeda has been used to push this useless legislation through. It's sickening and the scare tactics used are as bad as America's. I hate Japanese politics but the al Qaeda story is a new level of stupidity to me. There were some people questioning it, but it got the job done.
Yeah, Americans get high and mighty about these stories, but I am an American citizen (but of South Asian descent) and traveling between the U.S. and Japan with my American passport I have been treated pretty well up until now in Japanese airports (my parents on the other hand, who are not American citizens, got questioned pretty thorougly leaving Japan after visiting me, but my American passport-ed brother flew by), whereas I get grilled in the U.S. It sucks to be stuck in the crossfire, and I am sad that this place I love living is becoming more like the U.S., but the Americans started this stupid airport mess. And it's still better than always getting selected for "random" screening and taking off my shoes.
already live in Japan... I wonder if I will have to do this if I go on vacation and am coming back home?
I live in Aomori-ken and yes, it does. I love living here, but I am very upset about these measures. Rightly or wrongly (stastically wrongly, but seeing the way some English teachers and others behave here, I'm not surprised many Japanese people see things this way) the uptick in immigration is associated with crime (though in the U.S. it's the same way). I am very unhappy that while I have been a productive citizen here I am going to be treated like a criminal when I leave to visit other countries and return.
There's a lot to love here, but the conservative party and those supporting it (including the supposed opposition party) need to go.
Um, I work in a Japanese office in Aomori and I don't have an iPhone but one of my coworkers is an Apple fan and he's stoked about the iPhone (he went and bought an iPod touch a couple of weeks ago).
The design is light years ahead of even the best Japanese phones (I have one of au's best summer phones and while I like it a lot and it has a lot of features the iPhone doesn't, like TV and a English/Japanese dictionary) and the UI is better than American phones but still clunky compared to the iPhone.
The Japanese market is far more nationalistic than the US market...Selling a US console in Japan is probably harder then selling a Japanese cowboy hat in the US
I am so sick of hearing this meme bandied about the Internet. It's frankly a little racist, if you ask me - "of course the Japanese are xenophobes!" Let me refute this bit of armchair cross cultural punditry.
I live in Japan and people like to buy quality here. Usually that is associated with a Japanese company, but not always. Apple's products, the iPod, their laptops are considered cutting edge here and a lot of people have them. Even in my office out in the middle of nowhere, one of my coworkers has a Macbook and just got an iPod Touch. The mayor has an iPod video (they both beat me, I just have a 4G Photo). Most PC makers are having trouble here (though Dell isn't doing so bad), but most U.S. PC makers suck. Apple caters to the audience here and if the Apple stores in Ginza and Shinsaibashi are any indication, they are doing just fine.
When companies take Japanese consumers into consideration (robust options in language and aesthetics) they tend to do well here.
Maybe it's not all of Japan being xenophobic - maybe Microsoft won't cater to Japanese audiences? The most popular games in Japan this week that I know of are Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2 (which is awesome, by the way) and Mario.
When I go to GEOS (sadly, Tsutaya, my favorite game/cd place in Kansai isn't as popular in Tohoku) there are tons of Xbox 360 games for sale, including Oblivion. The same game that was sold for the 360 UNTRANSLATED in Japan. It would have been impossible to play for 99% of Japanese people. Even despite that, there are few games Japanese people like playing for the Xbox. Most Japanese gamers don't like FPSes.
Another coworker has a 360, which he mostly uses as a media center. He has two games for it Blue Dragon and Dead Rising (he's also played Eternal Sonata). I'm an Oblivion fan but I see how it probably doesn't appeal to Japanese tastes.
Agh, I gotta use that preview button. In that truncated last sentence in the middle, my point is most of those features for my phone I listed are comparable to a PC. There are original Final Fantasy games and ports of the first few Dragon Quest games. My au phone came with Puyo Puyo Fever for free. It's not as pretty as the PSP version but it's far less conspicuous when I am slacking off on a train or something.
Even for the net and applications that use it, at au (it it's probably similar for docomo and softbank) the most I can ever pay for using the internet on my cellphone is around $40 on top of my cellphone bill. If I were Japanese and I didn't have a huge need for a computer, a top of the line cell and then internet on top of that seems like it might be a better deal.
Er, about the camera, I of course meant 2 and 5 megapixels, not megabytes, though this does lead to something interested as well. I don't use it, but my camera has a miroSD card slot, so one can store music, pictures, etc. on it, further lessening the need for a dedicated PC, especially for the younger set.
I fully expect a ton of comments on how the PC is vital to every day life these days, but I live in Japan as an English teacher (wanted to be back for a bit before going to school again) and I can tell you it seems like the article is right.
In the big electronics stores, like K's or Yamada Denki, PCs aren't the big draws - it's other stuff, including TVs.
Out of my middle school students, many of them don't use PCs on a regular basis and many of the high school students I know don't either (though I am in basically the Arkansas of Japan, but even when I lived in Osaka, I felt like this was true). Those that do don't have their own, they use their parent's. Most of what we do on a PC, including casual games, e-mail, and web surfing (and increasingly other things - my cell phone has a decent 2MB camera [a friend of mine has the summer's top of the line au phone with a 5MB], an MP3 player with iTunes like software ([au's lismo service]), Japanese/English dictionary, and simple Japanese OCR).
It's part of the reason why the web channel on the web was a big deal. For Americans, it just meant we might not have had to get out of bed to check Gmail, but for a lot of Japanese is was an important vector onto the Internet.
That said, when I went to college in Japan a lot of my friends ending up buying laptops or using them extensively in the school's various computer labs. And at work now, everyone can use a PC and desktop publishing / graphics (granted, I work at a town cultural hall, so they might come to the job with some of those skills already). One of my coworkers is even a Mac guy and another, the main graphics guy is thinking about upgrading from his Toshiba to a MacBook. Stuff like Macs and the iPod are going more ground here.
And the internet culture here is still pretty big - most people my age know about 2chan, even if they don't post and the big drama from two years ago was Densha Otoko, based on a supposedly true story about a nerdy anime fan who met a beautiful girl, began dating her, and asked for help on 2chan. You can still get 2chan's mascot, noma neko dolls around as well. Mixi (an invite only Japanese facebook site) and other internet groups are still pretty big here, so it's not like the things computers represent are going away, but rather PCs like devices, like phones and game consoles, are taking their place.
If the dollar gets much worse you British better watch out. You won't be complaining about BBC fees when you've got American taxmen jonesing for more money;)
This phrase is derived from the noun "deep six," meaning burial at sea and referring to the depth of water necessary for such a burial. The term was later used as slang for a grave (customarily six feet underground) and, by extension, as a verb meaning "to kill."
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, thank you. It's a lame name. Someone needs to mod my previous post down.
There's a PSP Slim and a PSP Lite??
This confused me for a minute, so I had to ask my younger brother about. Same thing, no official name, evidently. It's night for you guys, but it's morning in Asia - don't do this to me before I've had my coffee slashdot!
+1 Confusing.
It is a good way to kill time, but there are people who don't have internet access at home (a lot of my college friends were like this) who primarily used their phones to access sites like mixi (the Japanese facebook), weather, news, etc.
It seems like most of the comments so far are against the idea of having machines you can control via the web or your phone and I too don't see the point of having web access to my laundry machine or my dishwasher (well, my hypothetical dishwasher).
But I live in Japan and that means a few things; I rely heavily on my cellphone to get things done. Internet, mail, news, weather, etc. Moreover, my apartment, like most Japanese housing, doesn't have central heat. Instead I rely on a (admittedly reasonably high tech) kerosone heater. It has a built in timer to switch on, which I can use at fixed times, like 10 minutes before my alarm clock goes off. But since the stoves are dangerous by themselves (supposedly, a lot of people don't care), I can't tell it to switch on when I come home - what if I am late from work, or stuck somewhere. It would be great if I could mail it or access it from my phone right before I left work and it would switch on (it is only a few minutes from my work to my home). Ditto the bath tub - it takes forever to fill it with hot water. If I could mail it before I got home I may be able to use it as soon or soon after I get back.
I am not saying such a thing could soon be possible (it may be already, I was given the kerosene heater so I have no idea what the current features are for such machines) - knowing how stagnant Japanese consumer products can be (really, how much has the kotatsu changed in 10 years??) even if it were implemented it may not catch on. But it would be great if it happened.
I am a huge fan of The Economist - for the daily gripes on slashdot, digg, and other websites about the pap that is journalism today, the paper has been a bastion of good writing and in depth coverage, even when I don't agree with the editorial/political stances. That said, I read this article earlier today (students are on winter break but I'm stuck coming into the office with nothing to do!) and it seemed like a mix of the obvious (more user created content? You don't say!) and the unlikely - when net speed starts becoming a customer service issue, you can bet the ISPs will get on board. American ISPs and those running the infrastructure have been dragging their feet in the U.S., while in Asia you can get really high speed internet (anywhere from DSL to fiber) even in the boondocks (believe me, I live in the middle of nowhere and could have gotten fiber).
The second prediction seems likely, though again, the U.S. is drawing up the rear. I know people here (Japan) that interact with the Internet solely or primarily through their mobile phone (not to mention things like GPS, and broadcast TV I got on a phone that cost less than $100 US). I hope Google does lead the way on this front next year, though I feel like we're going to have another year of baby steps unless Apple or Google or someone else with some clout decides to turn the American cell phone market on it's musty, stagnant head.
The third prediction seems very pie in the sky. I've used Windows, Linux, and OS X extensively, and I think (for my needs) OS X best matches my needs. I think there's a level of polish that is very difficult to for Linux to achieve in relation to the power home user. Ubuntu has probably got almost easy enough for the average user, if you disregard games and things. Linux certainly has a place as a great developer tool, server OS, and power-power user OS, but the article seems to imply that Linux is set to take over the entire PC world in 2008. I've heard that it's "the year of desktop Linux" since Redhat 5 and experience has taught me to wait for actual proof on that claim.
Holy shit man, I don't know if that's factually correct but it sounds damn good.
Someone can correct me if I'm off my nut here but:
I think that's the major definition, but further categories can be made on things like different physical or (like in this study) genetic characteristics. Also, if the populations are genetically (and possibly morphologically, as the summary suggests) and do not interbreed in the wild that would suggest that giraffes may be well divided into subspecies.
It's simply called Text Reader and is a feature on my au phone.
I feel like every time I post to Slashdot in the last few months, it's almost been exclusively about my cell phone (I live in Japan).
I bought my phone this summer and the QR is awesome. My au phone bill comes with QRs to the site and this month's free downloads. I just went shopping at the Village Vanguard (like a cooler Japanese Spencer's) and the bag I got for the stuff I bought had three QRs, for directions, info on the store, and other things. I've even used QR on PC websites to access mobile versions of sites.
It's really, really useful, but I think it needs a semi-decent camera on one's phone. I'd love for it to become popular in America, but American phones would have to start supporting it and then others will. While the three major Japanese phone companies are follow each other, getting American cell phone companies to go in one direction is like herding cats. I seriously doubt it'll take off in America.
Don't get me started on the Japanese OCR program, which can take pictures of kanji and passes it on to the Japanese / English dictionary - it's so awesome.
Well, I don't mean to sound like an apologist - I like Apple, but they need gutchecks, often.
That said, the semi-transparent menubar hasn't bothered me that much, or I would have switched it off, using some terminal voodoo. The darker windows don't bother at all and for consistency, they're great. I would have preferred Uno's behavior - brushed metal windows having the darker smooth look and normal windows having a lighter smooth look, but it's not that bad.
Like I said I changed the dock to the flat version using the terminal and like it much better.
The icons suck and to me are the worst part of the whole UI.
The mail buttons don't bother me much.
The finder isn't great, but I can do what I need and coverflow is actually pretty cool in some situations (browsing different versions of my some word files, my wallpapers folder, my general download folder).
There isn't a UI competitor to OS X, but OS X users are really militant. Take Uno as an example. There's already been fixes I'm using to make Quicklook work better with directories and zip files, programs that let you change the dock style, and bring hierarchal menus back to the dock. I'm sure a lot of these problems will be hammered by independent developers. Not that it takes Apple off the hook, but a lot of those things don't bother me as much either.
Normally I don't reply to these kind of articles, as they tend to be obvious flame bait, but the whole PC Mag article seems very anecdotal. As far as my own experience is concerned, upgrading to Leopard was the easiest OS upgrade I've ever done and I've had pretty much no issues since I upgraded. I've never had the machine crash or freeze.
The only real nitpicks I have with Leopard are that the UI occasionally seems slower and some of the UI choices are baffling (the menu bar can be grody with some wallpapers, I ended up switching off the dock shelf, and the folder icons are a huge step backwards) and even those nitpicks are worth it to get a UI that is otherwise relatively clean and consistent (under Tiger I was using a UI called Uno. Before upgrading, I uninstalled it, and Tiger's UI is really grating).
I have one of those rotating screen phones, au's W52CA. The TV quality is actually quite good and like most phones like it, it came with headphones so it is quite possible to watch TV on it.
As for the DS, I only see kids playing DS (though when some of my middle school students found out I had one they busted their DSes out and begged me to trade Pokemon) in public, but obviously someone wants these TV tuner because they've sold like veritable hotcakes.
This is the attitude that makes me think this isn't nearly as bad an idea as it seems.
Mod parent up. This unabashedly stupid story about a friend of a friend in al Qaeda has been used to push this useless legislation through. It's sickening and the scare tactics used are as bad as America's. I hate Japanese politics but the al Qaeda story is a new level of stupidity to me. There were some people questioning it, but it got the job done.
Yeah, Americans get high and mighty about these stories, but I am an American citizen (but of South Asian descent) and traveling between the U.S. and Japan with my American passport I have been treated pretty well up until now in Japanese airports (my parents on the other hand, who are not American citizens, got questioned pretty thorougly leaving Japan after visiting me, but my American passport-ed brother flew by), whereas I get grilled in the U.S. It sucks to be stuck in the crossfire, and I am sad that this place I love living is becoming more like the U.S., but the Americans started this stupid airport mess. And it's still better than always getting selected for "random" screening and taking off my shoes.
already live in Japan... I wonder if I will have to do this if I go on vacation and am coming back home?
I live in Aomori-ken and yes, it does. I love living here, but I am very upset about these measures. Rightly or wrongly (stastically wrongly, but seeing the way some English teachers and others behave here, I'm not surprised many Japanese people see things this way) the uptick in immigration is associated with crime (though in the U.S. it's the same way). I am very unhappy that while I have been a productive citizen here I am going to be treated like a criminal when I leave to visit other countries and return.
There's a lot to love here, but the conservative party and those supporting it (including the supposed opposition party) need to go.
Um, I work in a Japanese office in Aomori and I don't have an iPhone but one of my coworkers is an Apple fan and he's stoked about the iPhone (he went and bought an iPod touch a couple of weeks ago).
The design is light years ahead of even the best Japanese phones (I have one of au's best summer phones and while I like it a lot and it has a lot of features the iPhone doesn't, like TV and a English/Japanese dictionary) and the UI is better than American phones but still clunky compared to the iPhone.
The Japanese market is far more nationalistic than the US market...Selling a US console in Japan is probably harder then selling a Japanese cowboy hat in the US
I am so sick of hearing this meme bandied about the Internet. It's frankly a little racist, if you ask me - "of course the Japanese are xenophobes!" Let me refute this bit of armchair cross cultural punditry.
I live in Japan and people like to buy quality here. Usually that is associated with a Japanese company, but not always. Apple's products, the iPod, their laptops are considered cutting edge here and a lot of people have them. Even in my office out in the middle of nowhere, one of my coworkers has a Macbook and just got an iPod Touch. The mayor has an iPod video (they both beat me, I just have a 4G Photo). Most PC makers are having trouble here (though Dell isn't doing so bad), but most U.S. PC makers suck. Apple caters to the audience here and if the Apple stores in Ginza and Shinsaibashi are any indication, they are doing just fine.
When companies take Japanese consumers into consideration (robust options in language and aesthetics) they tend to do well here.
Maybe it's not all of Japan being xenophobic - maybe Microsoft won't cater to Japanese audiences? The most popular games in Japan this week that I know of are Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2 (which is awesome, by the way) and Mario.
When I go to GEOS (sadly, Tsutaya, my favorite game/cd place in Kansai isn't as popular in Tohoku) there are tons of Xbox 360 games for sale, including Oblivion. The same game that was sold for the 360 UNTRANSLATED in Japan. It would have been impossible to play for 99% of Japanese people. Even despite that, there are few games Japanese people like playing for the Xbox. Most Japanese gamers don't like FPSes.
Another coworker has a 360, which he mostly uses as a media center. He has two games for it Blue Dragon and Dead Rising (he's also played Eternal Sonata). I'm an Oblivion fan but I see how it probably doesn't appeal to Japanese tastes.
What makes you think the average user needs photo editing?
Even that considered, I can do basic photo editing on my phone - rotating, cropping, and adding text and stamps.
And my phone has TV on it as well.
Who needs a PC?
The iPhone is not the most advanced phone in the world, by the way.
Agh, I gotta use that preview button. In that truncated last sentence in the middle, my point is most of those features for my phone I listed are comparable to a PC. There are original Final Fantasy games and ports of the first few Dragon Quest games. My au phone came with Puyo Puyo Fever for free. It's not as pretty as the PSP version but it's far less conspicuous when I am slacking off on a train or something.
Even for the net and applications that use it, at au (it it's probably similar for docomo and softbank) the most I can ever pay for using the internet on my cellphone is around $40 on top of my cellphone bill. If I were Japanese and I didn't have a huge need for a computer, a top of the line cell and then internet on top of that seems like it might be a better deal.
Er, about the camera, I of course meant 2 and 5 megapixels, not megabytes, though this does lead to something interested as well. I don't use it, but my camera has a miroSD card slot, so one can store music, pictures, etc. on it, further lessening the need for a dedicated PC, especially for the younger set.
I fully expect a ton of comments on how the PC is vital to every day life these days, but I live in Japan as an English teacher (wanted to be back for a bit before going to school again) and I can tell you it seems like the article is right.
In the big electronics stores, like K's or Yamada Denki, PCs aren't the big draws - it's other stuff, including TVs.
Out of my middle school students, many of them don't use PCs on a regular basis and many of the high school students I know don't either (though I am in basically the Arkansas of Japan, but even when I lived in Osaka, I felt like this was true). Those that do don't have their own, they use their parent's. Most of what we do on a PC, including casual games, e-mail, and web surfing (and increasingly other things - my cell phone has a decent 2MB camera [a friend of mine has the summer's top of the line au phone with a 5MB], an MP3 player with iTunes like software ([au's lismo service]), Japanese/English dictionary, and simple Japanese OCR).
It's part of the reason why the web channel on the web was a big deal. For Americans, it just meant we might not have had to get out of bed to check Gmail, but for a lot of Japanese is was an important vector onto the Internet.
That said, when I went to college in Japan a lot of my friends ending up buying laptops or using them extensively in the school's various computer labs. And at work now, everyone can use a PC and desktop publishing / graphics (granted, I work at a town cultural hall, so they might come to the job with some of those skills already). One of my coworkers is even a Mac guy and another, the main graphics guy is thinking about upgrading from his Toshiba to a MacBook. Stuff like Macs and the iPod are going more ground here.
And the internet culture here is still pretty big - most people my age know about 2chan, even if they don't post and the big drama from two years ago was Densha Otoko, based on a supposedly true story about a nerdy anime fan who met a beautiful girl, began dating her, and asked for help on 2chan. You can still get 2chan's mascot, noma neko dolls around as well. Mixi (an invite only Japanese facebook site) and other internet groups are still pretty big here, so it's not like the things computers represent are going away, but rather PCs like devices, like phones and game consoles, are taking their place.
I wish they'd teach me math then; considering my college math grades, I'm worse off than these monkeys.
Wow! I hadn't realized the IRS took over the UK!
;)
If the dollar gets much worse you British better watch out. You won't be complaining about BBC fees when you've got American taxmen jonesing for more money
Possibly karma whoring, but I haven't heard the phrase deep six in a while and wondered where it came from.
That bastion of knowledge, The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, says this:
This phrase is derived from the noun "deep six," meaning burial at sea and referring to the depth of water necessary for such a burial. The term was later used as slang for a grave (customarily six feet underground) and, by extension, as a verb meaning "to kill."