[French accent] I farte in your generale directione!! [/French accent]
Japan has contactless credit cards already
on
Contactless Credit Cards
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Japan has had contactless debit cards for quite some time, with technology developed by Sony. The Japan Railway East 'SUICA' cards are similar to the Octopus cards in Hong Kong.
http://www.tcvb.or.jp/en/hot/sizzling/0112/sizzl in g_12c.html and http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD /europe/02/18/biz.trav.smart.cards.ap/
Also the EDY cards use similar technology and are embedded into credit cards so one card can be both a swipable credit card as well as a contact-less debit card.
http://www.sony.net/Products/felica/contents04_0 1. html
Not trying to be snarky but if you break out your TiBook on any random NYC street and spend more time looking at your screen than at the people around you, you'll have it jacked right quick. If Verizon thinks that people will be logging in while on the street, I doubt it. Maybe from the cafe nearby?
We had this exact problem on our servers at work and it was a real headache getting them upgraded to the new firmware. It's a serious problem and it's imperative that you upgrade to the newest rev. of the firmware, not just the patch.
Intel's site has a technical advisory dated Jan 29th, 2002 regarding drives being 'marked offline".
Some of the best writing on the impact of the internet and geography comes from Frances Cairncross' (Financial Times) "The Death of Distance" and Thomas Friedman's (NY Times) "The Lexus and the Olive Tree."
Both of them are more boosters of the net than this Economist perspective, but it's clear that net technology has significantly impacted geography in many unexpected ways.
As someone who has a foot firmly in both American and Japanese cultures (speak both languages, travel frequently between both nations, have extended family in both nations, etc.) I respectfully disagree with Gibson. To his defense, many non-Japanese sci-fi authors seem to have a love affair with stereotype of Japanese modern/popular culture.
I'll wager Gibson has never spent an extended amount of time in Japan (i.e. months or years on end.) He seems to have a stereotypical view of the facade of Japan, certainly not any meaningful insight into the Japanese people. If he were to spend time outside of the major metropolitan centers, he'd see that the "Mobile Gal," "Muji," and "otaku" are not anywhere near central to or representative of Japanese culture in any lasting or meaningful sense. These are all trends less than 5-10 years old (within one of the older cultures of the globe) and his focus on these particular aspects of Japanese popular culture shows his lack of understanding of the more central aspects of what it is to be Japanese.
Americans are much farther ahead than the Japanese with respect to our use of the web in general. PC ownership is MUCH lower in Japan than in other nations because many Japanese don't have the space for a PC in their homes and the national monopoly (NTT) on local phone calls makes getting online via dial-up prohibitively expensive. So while the Japanese are much farther ahead in the wireless space, the rest of the world is much farther ahead in the PC/Web space and I'd argue that's more important over the long run.
As a related issue- let me ask MeFi & Slashdot readers to name one piece of Japanese software, besides PlayStation games, which is used by people all over the globe. (Your Japanese car doesn't count either;) Can't do it? That's because there is none. Japan's weakness in software development (vs America, Germany, Canada, Ireland, Israel or India) might be argued as central to their declining dominance of "high tech." One other thing to note is that the consumer "technologies" which Japan dominates in -i.e. mobile and gaming, are not platforms that are capable of the flexiblity and power of the PC. The personal computer is obviously capable of communications and entertainment but can also be used for business, education, art, science, and a myriad of other applications that cellphones and PlayStations can't. Even with the promise of 3G wireless or PS3, it is clear that those technologies alone will not help Japan significantly for the future.
Manufacturing quality is rising all across the globe and isn't the dominant differentiator it was 3 decades ago. Not to mention that the newest innovations never did come from Japanese companies. One slashdot poster recently noted that none of the best graphics accelerator chips are made in Japan (those are mainly Canadian!)
The rest of the world has "otaku" just like the Japanese- spend time on any non-general interest mailing list and you'll find that otaku-ness is certainly not only the domain of the Japanese. I think one reason otaku-ness has been connected to the Japanese is their love of things- their "materialism" (which isn't necessarily a negative characterization in this case.) One could easily argue that being an "otaku" is being slave to an extreme form of materialism, so consider that as part of the equation.
Muji
(which is a chain of stores that sell high quality products without brands) is merely the Japanese love of brands taken to one natural end- i.e. the brand without a brand. I love Muji as an idea and I think it's success in Japan is a positive sign that there are some who are moving away from the slavish deference to global brands (most obvious with women and fashion brands, but apropos across the spectrum of products) to a brand without a brand (which in itself is a brand nonetheless.)
Gibson's clearly only seeing what he wants to see in Japanese pop culture. Japanese culture, like many across the globe, is misunderstood and misrepresented by the dominant global media. It's easy to see only the glittering technology or the geishas or the sushi or the anime or whatever it is that the media and foreigners always gravitates towards. It's not so easy to look at the 10 year recession of the 1990's, the revolving door at the Prime Ministership, the non-reforms in the banking and education sectors which will hold back positive change for years to come. It's even harder to see the hidden aspects of Japan, the parts of the culture that aren't often open to foreigners and certainly aren't represented in the global media. (How many of you know the first thing about a Japanese tea ceremony?)
I urge you to reject the stereotypes and continually question the representation of Japan (or for that matter any culture not your own) that you see in the global media. You'll be far richer for it.
That Sega died due to management is yet another canary dying in the coalmine. Japan suffers from a rainbow of problems including a political system unwilling to get out of it's own way; a banking system in utter ruins; an education system churning out clones of the 1980's ideal; and at the core, an utter lack of personal responsibility for actions and their consequences.
Try to name one single piece of software built in Japan and used around the world (outside of games/entertainment software.) Ireland and India are the new up and coming software behemoths, certainly not a place like Japan where people aren't interested in owning PCs and would rather SMS each other on their iMode phones while on the train.
I suspect the Japanese economy will be in recession for many more years because in the past decade, nothing has changed. No fundamental shift in policy, education nor any significant financial reforms. Until the nation begins to feel MUCH more pain will they try to call back the spirit that guided them from the post-war period to their height in the 1980s.
I'll excerpt the first few paragraphs here and you can go to epinions if you want the whole thing. Please rate my review if you do check out the whole thing- thanks!
Gen
The best movie of 2000: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
by: gkanai (Tue Dec 12 '00)
Pros: You'll be amazed at what you see
Cons: You'll want to see it again
Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
CAUTION: Spoilers ahead in this review!
The movie that stole the show at Cannes, The Telluride Film Festival, and the People's Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival (which last year chose "American Beauty" as it's winner) has finally opened in limited release in the US. And what a masterpiece it is! It was the first time in I can't remember how long that I went to the opening night of a film and I have to say it was well worth it!
Let's take an overview of what Ang Lee brought together for this film:
Not only two of the top leading actors in cinema (Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh), but also one of the leading male heart throbs of Chinese cinema today (Chang Chen), and the 1960's female martial arts star Cheng Pei-Pei, and clearly the brightest female rising star (Zhang Ziyi).
Let's not forget music by Tan Dun, cello solos by none other than Yo-Yo Ma, and theme song performed by Hong Kong pop superstar Coco Lee.
Mix in the incredible beauty of the seldom-appreciated Chinese wilderness be it the Gobi Desert or the bamboo forests.
Finally add in martial arts director/choreographer extraordinaire Yuen Wo Ping and clearly an innovative mix of martial arts and computer graphics editing.
a friend of mine works at a top notch NYC lighting design firm. When I sent him the EE Times article, he replied:
"LED can be electronically dimmed and when in an array for red, blue and green LEDs, you can simulate full spectrum color mixing. The low-tech way to do a seamlessly color changing lightbox, for example, would be to use dimmable fluorescent with color sleeves or three colors of neon."
"If you find yourself at the Shoreham Hotel Bar, or Stueben Glass Showroom, you will see some of our work. The only problem with LED is that is prohibitively expensive. There were only a handful of quality LED suppliers 2 years ago. I'm glad it's catching on though, hopefully prices will go down."
"Neon is $30/ linear foot installed in NYC. Raw LED strips can cost a minimum of $150/ft. sans necessary programming and playback devices."
"Colorcorp and Color Kinetics are doing some interesting display lighting with LED."
How about at least educating students about using the network to save files to say X-drive or any of those many companies that are using VC money to build large server farms and raid arrays?
I hold no specific interest in any of those companies but as long as your school's computers have browsers and are on the net- why not see if students use that instead? I'd have to assume that their dorm/home computers are on the net as well...
Gen
It is clear that there will be an immediate future where both "open" and "closed" news/media will tentatively co-exist, but as more people use the net, learn to share their experiences and learn from others, "open" media will become more powerful and influential.
Photo.net is an ideal example of the power of open media/news/community on the web. If you have any questions about photography, there is really no other site worth visiting. Spend a few hours there and you'll immediately see the parallels between/. and photo.net
Another great aspect of open media is that at least for Photo.net and Slashdot.org, the code that runs these sites is free and "open" for use by anyone who can get it to run properly. As OSS community/news platforms become easier to use and administer, powerful sites such as photo.net and/. won't be the domain of the web 31337. I look forward to the day that those of us without a significant CS background can easliy run Slashcode or ArsDigita Community System on the powerful OSS platforms we have today.
Although I agree with most of what Katz was trying to say, I would argue that Slashdot, in so far as it is an open news site, is supported by Andover.net- perhaps not to the extent that Slate is by MSFT, but let's not forget who's paying the salaries of the Slashdot folks.
Also, it's a little ironic that Katz skewers traditional "closed" media for navel-gazing when what he is doing here, (albeit for a good cause) is navel-gazing at "open" media/news.
I read about this article at scripting.com because Tim O'Reilly sent it to Dave Winer (of Userland fame.)
Slashdot Mirror
Banryu is nothing new. It was running around Tokyu Hands Shibuya-ten back in April '03 when I saw it.
The Banryu guard-robot
"I fart in your general direction"
[French accent] I farte in your generale directione!! [/French accent]
Japan has had contactless debit cards for quite some time, with technology developed by Sony. The Japan Railway East 'SUICA' cards are similar to the Octopus cards in Hong Kong.
l in g_12c.htmlD /europe/02/18/biz .trav.smart.cards.ap/
0 1. html
http://www.tcvb.or.jp/en/hot/sizzling/0112/sizz
and
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORL
Also the EDY cards use similar technology and are embedded into credit cards so one card can be both a swipable credit card as well as a contact-less debit card.
http://www.sony.net/Products/felica/contents04_
Not trying to be snarky but if you break out your TiBook on any random NYC street and spend more time looking at your screen than at the people around you, you'll have it jacked right quick. If Verizon thinks that people will be logging in while on the street, I doubt it. Maybe from the cafe nearby?
We had this exact problem on our servers at work and it was a real headache getting them upgraded to the new firmware. It's a serious problem and it's imperative that you upgrade to the newest rev. of the firmware, not just the patch.
e rv er/ta_445.htm
Intel's site has a technical advisory dated Jan 29th, 2002 regarding drives being 'marked offline".
http://support.intel.com/support/motherboards/s
Some of the best writing on the impact of the internet and geography comes from Frances Cairncross' (Financial Times) "The Death of Distance" and Thomas Friedman's (NY Times) "The Lexus and the Olive Tree." Both of them are more boosters of the net than this Economist perspective, but it's clear that net technology has significantly impacted geography in many unexpected ways.
As someone who has a foot firmly in both American and Japanese cultures (speak both languages, travel frequently between both nations, have extended family in both nations, etc.) I respectfully disagree with Gibson. To his defense, many non-Japanese sci-fi authors seem to have a love affair with stereotype of Japanese modern/popular culture.
I'll wager Gibson has never spent an extended amount of time in Japan (i.e. months or years on end.) He seems to have a stereotypical view of the facade of Japan, certainly not any meaningful insight into the Japanese people. If he were to spend time outside of the major metropolitan centers, he'd see that the "Mobile Gal," "Muji," and "otaku" are not anywhere near central to or representative of Japanese culture in any lasting or meaningful sense. These are all trends less than 5-10 years old (within one of the older cultures of the globe) and his focus on these particular aspects of Japanese popular culture shows his lack of understanding of the more central aspects of what it is to be Japanese.
Americans are much farther ahead than the Japanese with respect to our use of the web in general. PC ownership is MUCH lower in Japan than in other nations because many Japanese don't have the space for a PC in their homes and the national monopoly (NTT) on local phone calls makes getting online via dial-up prohibitively expensive. So while the Japanese are much farther ahead in the wireless space, the rest of the world is much farther ahead in the PC/Web space and I'd argue that's more important over the long run.
As a related issue- let me ask MeFi & Slashdot readers to name one piece of Japanese software, besides PlayStation games, which is used by people all over the globe. (Your Japanese car doesn't count either ;) Can't do it? That's because there is none. Japan's weakness in software development (vs America, Germany, Canada, Ireland, Israel or India) might be argued as central to their declining dominance of "high tech." One other thing to note is that the consumer "technologies" which Japan dominates in -i.e. mobile and gaming, are not platforms that are capable of the flexiblity and power of the PC. The personal computer is obviously capable of communications and entertainment but can also be used for business, education, art, science, and a myriad of other applications that cellphones and PlayStations can't. Even with the promise of 3G wireless or PS3, it is clear that those technologies alone will not help Japan significantly for the future.
Manufacturing quality is rising all across the globe and isn't the dominant differentiator it was 3 decades ago. Not to mention that the newest innovations never did come from Japanese companies. One slashdot poster recently noted that none of the best graphics accelerator chips are made in Japan (those are mainly Canadian!)
The rest of the world has "otaku" just like the Japanese- spend time on any non-general interest mailing list and you'll find that otaku-ness is certainly not only the domain of the Japanese. I think one reason otaku-ness has been connected to the Japanese is their love of things- their "materialism" (which isn't necessarily a negative characterization in this case.) One could easily argue that being an "otaku" is being slave to an extreme form of materialism, so consider that as part of the equation.
Muji (which is a chain of stores that sell high quality products without brands) is merely the Japanese love of brands taken to one natural end- i.e. the brand without a brand. I love Muji as an idea and I think it's success in Japan is a positive sign that there are some who are moving away from the slavish deference to global brands (most obvious with women and fashion brands, but apropos across the spectrum of products) to a brand without a brand (which in itself is a brand nonetheless.)
Gibson's clearly only seeing what he wants to see in Japanese pop culture. Japanese culture, like many across the globe, is misunderstood and misrepresented by the dominant global media. It's easy to see only the glittering technology or the geishas or the sushi or the anime or whatever it is that the media and foreigners always gravitates towards. It's not so easy to look at the 10 year recession of the 1990's, the revolving door at the Prime Ministership, the non-reforms in the banking and education sectors which will hold back positive change for years to come. It's even harder to see the hidden aspects of Japan, the parts of the culture that aren't often open to foreigners and certainly aren't represented in the global media. (How many of you know the first thing about a Japanese tea ceremony?)
I urge you to reject the stereotypes and continually question the representation of Japan (or for that matter any culture not your own) that you see in the global media. You'll be far richer for it.
Gen
I agree with your assessment 100%.
That Sega died due to management is yet another canary dying in the coalmine. Japan suffers from a rainbow of problems including a political system unwilling to get out of it's own way; a banking system in utter ruins; an education system churning out clones of the 1980's ideal; and at the core, an utter lack of personal responsibility for actions and their consequences.
Try to name one single piece of software built in Japan and used around the world (outside of games/entertainment software.) Ireland and India are the new up and coming software behemoths, certainly not a place like Japan where people aren't interested in owning PCs and would rather SMS each other on their iMode phones while on the train.
I suspect the Japanese economy will be in recession for many more years because in the past decade, nothing has changed. No fundamental shift in policy, education nor any significant financial reforms. Until the nation begins to feel MUCH more pain will they try to call back the spirit that guided them from the post-war period to their height in the 1980s.
Gen
Matt,
Everything you ever wanted to know about CPRM, but ZDNet wouldn't tell you...
CNet suckered by CPRM spin
Linux lead slams 'pay per read' disk drive plan
Stealth plan puts copy protection into every hard drive
4C retreats in Copy Protection storm
EFF's Gilmore calls for CPRM hardware boycott
http://www.epinions.com/./mvie-review-331D-AE1DCD7 -3A36EFF1-prod1
I'll excerpt the first few paragraphs here and you can go to epinions if you want the whole thing. Please rate my review if you do check out the whole thing- thanks!
Gen
The best movie of 2000: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
by: gkanai (Tue Dec 12 '00)
Pros: You'll be amazed at what you see Cons: You'll want to see it again
Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
CAUTION: Spoilers ahead in this review!
The movie that stole the show at Cannes, The Telluride Film Festival, and the People's Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival (which last year chose "American Beauty" as it's winner) has finally opened in limited release in the US. And what a masterpiece it is! It was the first time in I can't remember how long that I went to the opening night of a film and I have to say it was well worth it!
Let's take an overview of what Ang Lee brought together for this film:
Not only two of the top leading actors in cinema (Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh), but also one of the leading male heart throbs of Chinese cinema today (Chang Chen), and the 1960's female martial arts star Cheng Pei-Pei, and clearly the brightest female rising star (Zhang Ziyi).
Let's not forget music by Tan Dun, cello solos by none other than Yo-Yo Ma, and theme song performed by Hong Kong pop superstar Coco Lee.
Mix in the incredible beauty of the seldom-appreciated Chinese wilderness be it the Gobi Desert or the bamboo forests.
Finally add in martial arts director/choreographer extraordinaire Yuen Wo Ping and clearly an innovative mix of martial arts and computer graphics editing.
more at
http://www.epinions.com/./mvie-review-331D-AE1DCD7 -3A36EFF1-prod1
a friend of mine works at a top notch NYC lighting design firm. When I sent him the EE Times article, he replied: "LED can be electronically dimmed and when in an array for red, blue and green LEDs, you can simulate full spectrum color mixing. The low-tech way to do a seamlessly color changing lightbox, for example, would be to use dimmable fluorescent with color sleeves or three colors of neon." "If you find yourself at the Shoreham Hotel Bar, or Stueben Glass Showroom, you will see some of our work. The only problem with LED is that is prohibitively expensive. There were only a handful of quality LED suppliers 2 years ago. I'm glad it's catching on though, hopefully prices will go down." "Neon is $30/ linear foot installed in NYC. Raw LED strips can cost a minimum of $150/ft. sans necessary programming and playback devices." "Colorcorp and Color Kinetics are doing some interesting display lighting with LED."
Joel Spolsky also writes on these same issues: interviewing programmers, hiring programmers, user interface design for programmers, functional specifications, as well as productive software schedules.
How about at least educating students about using the network to save files to say X-drive or any of those many companies that are using VC money to build large server farms and raid arrays? I hold no specific interest in any of those companies but as long as your school's computers have browsers and are on the net- why not see if students use that instead? I'd have to assume that their dorm/home computers are on the net as well... Gen
It is clear that there will be an immediate future where both "open" and "closed" news/media will tentatively co-exist, but as more people use the net, learn to share their experiences and learn from others, "open" media will become more powerful and influential.
Photo.net is an ideal example of the power of open media/news/community on the web. If you have any questions about photography, there is really no other site worth visiting. Spend a few hours there and you'll immediately see the parallels between /. and photo.net
Another great aspect of open media is that at least for Photo.net and Slashdot.org, the code that runs these sites is free and "open" for use by anyone who can get it to run properly. As OSS community/news platforms become easier to use and administer, powerful sites such as photo.net and /. won't be the domain of the web 31337. I look forward to the day that those of us without a significant CS background can easliy run Slashcode or ArsDigita Community System on the powerful OSS platforms we have today.
Although I agree with most of what Katz was trying to say, I would argue that Slashdot, in so far as it is an open news site, is supported by Andover.net- perhaps not to the extent that Slate is by MSFT, but let's not forget who's paying the salaries of the Slashdot folks.
Also, it's a little ironic that Katz skewers traditional "closed" media for navel-gazing when what he is doing here, (albeit for a good cause) is navel-gazing at "open" media/news.
I read about this article at scripting.com because Tim O'Reilly sent it to Dave Winer (of Userland fame.)
Gen