I think most critical fatal mistake Apple made when releasing this thing in Japan is that they didn't add a hole for attaching a wrist strap.
Without that, if you want to hang dozens of little charms on your phone, you need a third-party case of some sort.
Other than that, people here don't keep a phone very long or use many of the features. Lately I've been seeing a phone advertised on the basis of having some little piano keyboard app that looks suspiciously like the "Band" app for the iPhone. Who is really going to use that for more than a few minutes?
Other than the TV tuners, I doubt many people actually use the clever features that are so touted when they bring out a phone here.
I have all of Wikipedia, all of Google, all of YouTube, in fact all of the data available on the Internet here in my pocket on a device about the size and shape of about 30 playing cards. It's constantly updated and refreshed in almost real time.
It's my iPod. I get all of this as long as I have an Internet connection somewhere nearby.
In practice, that's really good enough for me. Why would I want to carry around terabytes of data that I couldn't trust to have not gone stale since it was committed to memory, 99.99% of which I have no need for?
You know, back in the early 1970's, when I was seven or eight, my friend Eddie was showing me how cool it was to flick matches across the striker on the pack with your thumb, how they flared like a tracer bullet and burned out as they hit the ground.
It was tremendously cool.
It worked flawlessly hundreds of times, even when they started a little fire, which you could easily stomp out, there in the tall, dry grass behind the A&P Supermarket.
In fact, we would have said with certainty that it was a harmless way to spend the afternoon, had it not been for one match that didn't behave as we wanted and kept on burning, with a fire that quickly outpaced our ability to stomp it out.
How do you stomp out a black hole that doesn't want to behave as you expect it to?
Oh, come on. Japan does the 21st century better than any other country on the planet.
The difference is that Japan has rules dictating what is considered politeâ"unwritten, but universally-acknowledged rules that dictate hundreds of aspects of daily life... You could spend your whole life trying to learn the intricacies (as a foreigner) and never get it quite right.
One main difference is that Westerners think first about their rights, while Japanese think first about their responsibilities. Until you grok that, you're not going to understand.
True, true, true... Since you really can't have much privacy here, you have to do so much more to pretend you do. Here they have a culture where people don't traditionally touch very much, don't shake hands, don't dance, yet you get crammed so close to each other on the train that you know how many coins the guy next to you has in his pocket. There are so many strange, unspoken rules about how to behave and where and when to avert your eyes in a situation like that. I won't even get into the bizarre dynamics you encounter at a sento or onsen... Of course your neighbors know what you eat and how much you drink by what you put out in the trash. It's just a way to deal with life in such close quarters, I guess and for the most part, it works.
I should have put in the submission another example: Japanese houses have a little area inside the front door called a Genkan which is where you are supposed to take off your shoes. Since this little area is "dirty", it's not really considered to be inside your house, even though it physically is. (It's sort of a dirt "air-lock", if you will.)
Anyway, since it's really not considered to be inside, it's somewhat socially-acceptable to open the door and step inside a stranger's house that far. Many times I've been surprised by a delivery man or NHK collection lady who stepped inside before announcing their presence.
As I said, different rules apply. Neither better nor worse, just different.
Still, if I walked around my neighborhood and took pictures of people's laundry and futons hanging above the street, I have no doubt I'd get hauled off to the local police station.
To be fair and tip my hat to this century, on my last trip to China, aside from the above, I also brought an aging iBook, one of the first white ones I think, a G3, a laptop that I didn't care in the least if I lost.
First, I wiped it clean. Next I set up two accounts, on that I would use, the other set to be the default, no password login, in case customs wanted to see what I was up to. Browsing was done through an SSH tunnel to my home proxy server (mainly because my own blog was on China's great firewall) and any files I wanted to keep were SCP'd back home.
Web mail is better than a POP app, as long as you avoid Nigerian net cafés and use your own laptop. Skype seems fine everywhere.
Take a pocket digital too. The one you have from a few years ago. Use that for all of the crap photos you will inevitably take and save your film for the good stuff. Upload all of the digital junk to Flickr or whatever from your hotel every day, so you won't worry about losing it.
For the real pictures, use film and take your time to enjoy it. Slow down and write down your impressions of the place and give it some real thought.
If I were to take such a trip (aside from the fact that I'm sort of on an extended version of such a trip for the past ten years) I'd grab a mechanical Leica, probably my M2, a dozen rolls of B&W film, a good, sturdy notebook and a nice pencil.
Yes, I'm taking the luddite stance, but take it from experience, the more you slow down and digest your experiences, the better you will present them later. I get more from my paper notebooks than I do from my Flickr, Twitter and blog postings.
You'll also spend far less time worrying about where to recharge batteries and more time enjoyoing the sights, sounds and smells of the place you go.
It's worth remembering that one of the most asymmetric military actions of WW2 was a French resistance girl who visited a German tank base on her bicycle, wandered around putting grease loaded with carborundum into track bearings, and disabled a battalion, riding off home again for lunch.
Have you got a reference for that? It sounds like a fascinating story.
Someone pointed out a funny thing to me a while back:
"Man is the only animal that drinks anything other than water as an adult."
If you think about that, it makes sense that we should do the same. A coder might argue that they need coca-cola to program, but drinks like that actually make your brain work less efficiently than plain water. Caffeine contributes to sleep deprivation, which also impedes clear thought.
If you want to be at your best, get enough sleep, put yourself on a strict diet that doesn't include sugar, gluten, caffeine, salt or fat. Meditate a bit before a project. Then, when it comes time to sit down and write some code, compare the clarity of thought you have with how you feel while on an all-night caffeine-fueled, pizza-fed coding binge.
Slashdot Mirror
I think most critical fatal mistake Apple made when releasing this thing in Japan is that they didn't add a hole for attaching a wrist strap.
Without that, if you want to hang dozens of little charms on your phone, you need a third-party case of some sort.
Other than that, people here don't keep a phone very long or use many of the features. Lately I've been seeing a phone advertised on the basis of having some little piano keyboard app that looks suspiciously like the "Band" app for the iPhone. Who is really going to use that for more than a few minutes?
Other than the TV tuners, I doubt many people actually use the clever features that are so touted when they bring out a phone here.
I have all of Wikipedia, all of Google, all of YouTube, in fact all of the data available on the Internet here in my pocket on a device about the size and shape of about 30 playing cards.
It's constantly updated and refreshed in almost real time.
It's my iPod. I get all of this as long as I have an Internet connection somewhere nearby.
In practice, that's really good enough for me. Why would I want to carry around terabytes of data that I couldn't trust to have not gone stale since it was committed to memory, 99.99% of which I have no need for?
It's industry jargon.
Photographers use the term and understand it.
That would make it a real word, wouldn't it?
You've seen this, right?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7665747.stm
I can't help but thing Gary Larson was somehow involved.
You know, back in the early 1970's, when I was seven or eight, my friend Eddie was showing me how cool it was to flick matches across the striker on the pack with your thumb, how they flared like a tracer bullet and burned out as they hit the ground.
It was tremendously cool.
It worked flawlessly hundreds of times, even when they started a little fire, which you could easily stomp out, there in the tall, dry grass behind the A&P Supermarket.
In fact, we would have said with certainty that it was a harmless way to spend the afternoon, had it not been for one match that didn't behave as we wanted and kept on burning, with a fire that quickly outpaced our ability to stomp it out.
How do you stomp out a black hole that doesn't want to behave as you expect it to?
to append the phrase "in America" to every statement you made in that post.
The original post is about cultural insensitivity, not applying the American legal code to the rest of the world.
but I can't wait until she wakes up and I can show her the parent's house!
Expect her to be a bit horrified, as mine was.
Japan needs to realize the 21st century.
Oh, come on. Japan does the 21st century better than any other country on the planet.
The difference is that Japan has rules dictating what is considered politeâ"unwritten, but universally-acknowledged rules that dictate hundreds of aspects of daily life... You could spend your whole life trying to learn the intricacies (as a foreigner) and never get it quite right.
One main difference is that Westerners think first about their rights, while Japanese think first about their responsibilities. Until you grok that, you're not going to understand.
True, true, true...
Since you really can't have much privacy here, you have to do so much more to pretend you do. Here they have a culture where people don't traditionally touch very much, don't shake hands, don't dance, yet you get crammed so close to each other on the train that you know how many coins the guy next to you has in his pocket. There are so many strange, unspoken rules about how to behave and where and when to avert your eyes in a situation like that.
I won't even get into the bizarre dynamics you encounter at a sento or onsen...
Of course your neighbors know what you eat and how much you drink by what you put out in the trash.
It's just a way to deal with life in such close quarters, I guess and for the most part, it works.
I should have put in the submission another example:
Japanese houses have a little area inside the front door called a Genkan which is where you are supposed to take off your shoes. Since this little area is "dirty", it's not really considered to be inside your house, even though it physically is. (It's sort of a dirt "air-lock", if you will.)
Anyway, since it's really not considered to be inside, it's somewhat socially-acceptable to open the door and step inside a stranger's house that far. Many times I've been surprised by a delivery man or NHK collection lady who stepped inside before announcing their presence.
As I said, different rules apply. Neither better nor worse, just different.
Still, if I walked around my neighborhood and took pictures of people's laundry and futons hanging above the street, I have no doubt I'd get hauled off to the local police station.
"Want to know what gets between me and my Kelvins? Nothing"
(I guess you will need to be an old fart like me to get that. Sorry.)
IE6 and IE7 are obviously on crack...
To be fair and tip my hat to this century, on my last trip to China, aside from the above, I also brought an aging iBook, one of the first white ones I think, a G3, a laptop that I didn't care in the least if I lost.
First, I wiped it clean. Next I set up two accounts, on that I would use, the other set to be the default, no password login, in case customs wanted to see what I was up to. Browsing was done through an SSH tunnel to my home proxy server (mainly because my own blog was on China's great firewall) and any files I wanted to keep were SCP'd back home.
Web mail is better than a POP app, as long as you avoid Nigerian net cafés and use your own laptop. Skype seems fine everywhere.
Take a pocket digital too. The one you have from a few years ago. Use that for all of the crap photos you will inevitably take and save your film for the good stuff. Upload all of the digital junk to Flickr or whatever from your hotel every day, so you won't worry about losing it.
For the real pictures, use film and take your time to enjoy it. Slow down and write down your impressions of the place and give it some real thought.
Enjoy your trip.
If I were to take such a trip (aside from the fact that I'm sort of on an extended version of such a trip for the past ten years) I'd grab a mechanical Leica, probably my M2, a dozen rolls of B&W film, a good, sturdy notebook and a nice pencil.
Yes, I'm taking the luddite stance, but take it from experience, the more you slow down and digest your experiences, the better you will present them later. I get more from my paper notebooks than I do from my Flickr, Twitter and blog postings.
You'll also spend far less time worrying about where to recharge batteries and more time enjoyoing the sights, sounds and smells of the place you go.
What's "offtopic" about asking for a citation?
Douchebag...
Thanks!
[Citation Needed] --NT
It's worth remembering that one of the most asymmetric military actions of WW2 was a French resistance girl who visited a German tank base on her bicycle, wandered around putting grease loaded with carborundum into track bearings, and disabled a battalion, riding off home again for lunch.
Have you got a reference for that? It sounds like a fascinating story.
3828'55.68"N 11924'18.17"W
If that's him, it only took me an hour or so to find.
Go look through http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://moller.com/
Yep - I'll believe it when I see it.
Actually, your dollar is compressed into a dime, split up and some fraction of that goes to the artist...
Exactly.
More so if you get the porn you offer by downloading stolen porn via bittorrent in the first place.
He was pretty funny, pity his career went nowhere...
Someone pointed out a funny thing to me a while back:
"Man is the only animal that drinks anything other than water as an adult."
If you think about that, it makes sense that we should do the same.
A coder might argue that they need coca-cola to program, but drinks like that actually make your brain work less efficiently than plain water.
Caffeine contributes to sleep deprivation, which also impedes clear thought.
If you want to be at your best, get enough sleep, put yourself on a strict diet that doesn't include sugar, gluten, caffeine, salt or fat. Meditate a bit before a project. Then, when it comes time to sit down and write some code, compare the clarity of thought you have with how you feel while on an all-night caffeine-fueled, pizza-fed coding binge.
It's so they can finally shut down The Pirate Bay, or at least make it very hard to reach them.
Sure, I also think it's strange to call a few Swedish kids with a website "Terrorists" but I doubt it's beyond the scope of the DHS.