"Makiko Segawa is a staff writer at the Shingetsu News Agency. She prepared this report from Fukushima and Tokyo. She can be reached at shingetsunewsagency@gmail.com"
Look up who the "Shingetsu News Agency" is. Note that they have no real press credentials and their articles, especially those by Miss Segawa fall well into the fear-mongering "OMG!! BIG GOVERNMENT COVERUP!!" end of the scale.
The situation in Fukushima is being watched by nuclear experts all over the world and the basic facts of the aituation are posted on the IAEA's site. Anything beyond the stating of pressure, temperature and radiation readings as well as remediation steps being taken should be taken as pure guesswork. There has been way too much "This could mean that the reactors are undergoing fission and could go critical" kind of speculation.
You're bringing up a false dichotomy of the electric vs human-powered bicycle as though an electric bike uses the battery all the time. Here in Japan what has become hugely popular are the electrically-assisted bicycles especially the type used by housewives to truck kids to and from school andto buy groceries. I live in Kanagawa-kan just outside Tokyo and there are LOTS of hills. I'll be riding around on the weekends slogging up a hill in the lowest gear on my mountain bike when a Japanese mum on her grocery-loaded electrically assisted "Mama-charin" will come cruising on by and not be breaking any sweat at all. With easily replaceable battery packs and short charging times these make bike commuting, even in hilly locations possible. The weather, of course, is a separate issue.
Japan is VERY dependent upon imported oil and LNG hence the aggressive solar programs and attempts to upgrade nuclear facilities in the face of considerable opposition.
Take a look at how the automobile has developed since the 60's and tell me that the private sector doesn't do anything "inspiring". (As long as there is some regulatory oversight for safety)
This is why a huge portion of Tokyo including the street where I used to live is no longer covered by Streetview. The wall outside our landlord neighbour's house is about 2m high. I couldn't see over it when walking by it but the Google pics when they were up it was easy to see into their living room. Most Japanese urban houses are less than 2 meters from the road. In these cases you are able to see what someone walking would not, hence the application of laws related to unnatural viewpoints.
One amusing thing I found about the Family Guy Star Wars spoof was that the graphics weren't a cheap animated copy of the original, they *were* the original graphics and matched the quality of the rest of the animation perfectly. I lovely little comment that what was amazingly cool in a major blockbuster 30 years ago is now typical in a regular animated TV show.
Look at the order time. The order number is just the date and time. They'd better not have more than one order/second.
Order No. 20100108063848 Order Date 2010-1-8 6:38:48
The site is just there to pick up personal info.
Could you tell speed and error correction by ear?
on
A Brief History of Modems
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
After thousands of times listening to my various modems connecting from 300bps to 56K and with the various incarnations of error correction I was eventually able to knowing how fast I was connected by sound alone. The problem was that as modems got faster and more sophisticated the connection time kept getting longer and longer. Sometimes I'd have to wait through 45 seconds or more of whistles, grinds and groans before the two modem would train. Ah, the good old days.
In the vain hope that they'll have nostalgia value someday I still have in my possession:
1) Mint condition Hayes Smartmodem 2400. The original workhorse. 2) Practical Peripherals 14.4K. long box with a one-line LCD that displays the connection speed and error correction mode 3) US Robotics 56K Courier - The last great standard.
Four months ago I started at a quasi-governmental organization that looks after the needs of the widows and orphans of my province. The current state of the system reflects the mentality of the late 80's-early 90's. Everything in a word processing document or spreadsheet. Ad-hoc, unstructured storage of said documents on mapped network drives ("It's on the G: drive? I thought it was supposed to be on the U: drive!"). Telnet-based trust accounting system. Badly-utilized email system being used for any and all communication within the organization including sending the aforementioned documents as email attachments. They've had SharePoint for 6 years but never used it for more than a standard HTML intranet.
If the lessons of the past 15 years are to be learned from, every operation within this organization can be done with centralized or distributed servers and a browser interface. With the possible exception of the relatively few documents in the legal department, the information generated, managed and communicated within our organization can be done without using heavy client-server applications.
Now, if someone was able to come up with a browser OS allowed us to roll out light, inexpensive end-user workstations that can be easily managed due to the lack of requirements for things such as Word, Excel, Outlook, anti-virus, Telnet app, Telnet 3270 app, DMS interface for Word and Outlook etc., our support and capital costs would drop immensely.
Chrome OS is probably not that solution now, but being open source and our requirements not being anywhere near unique, it shouldn't be too long before the requisite changes are made.
Some may say that what I describe are just the old mainframe dumb-terminals or X-terminals. I would reply that those were the right paradigm with the wrong technology. A browser OS provides the richer interface the dumb terminals lacked and the local processing ability the X-Terminals couldn't provide.
I was waiting for that. The Aussie road trains really are a sight to be seen.
On topic though, I have seen a demo of this technology at least 10 years ago so in that time they've had plenty of time to work through issues, test scenarios out the wazoo, so all this "But what if..." BS is just annoying.
You're out of date. The fingerprinting and picture taking of all non-Japanese passport holders entering the country started a couple of years ago. This includes permanent residents like myself.
They were also going to make us PRs go back in the gaijin visitor line (we could use the Japanese passport line) but relented when the obviously discriminatory nature of the fingerprinting became obvious, especially in cases of PRs married to Japanese citizens and with kids. I tend to use the special "re-entrants" line they set up, which is actually better as there is rarely anyone there. I get to bypass both the foreigner AND Japanese line-ups.
Richard Branson is a really smart guy and savvy businessman. He has the vision required to expand his companies but he also knows when to drop something before it becomes too much of a drain.
Read his autobiography "Losing my Virginity" to see what sets him apart from the typical board of directors who are just trying to hop on the latest bandwagon.
Slashdot Mirror
Look at the byline:
"Makiko Segawa is a staff writer at the Shingetsu News Agency. She prepared this report from Fukushima and Tokyo. She can be reached at shingetsunewsagency@gmail.com"
Look up who the "Shingetsu News Agency" is. Note that they have no real press credentials and their articles, especially those by Miss Segawa fall well into the fear-mongering "OMG!! BIG GOVERNMENT COVERUP!!" end of the scale.
The situation in Fukushima is being watched by nuclear experts all over the world and the basic facts of the aituation are posted on the IAEA's site. Anything beyond the stating of pressure, temperature and radiation readings as well as remediation steps being taken should be taken as pure guesswork. There has been way too much "This could mean that the reactors are undergoing fission and could go critical" kind of speculation.
Now that's some hot shit!!
You're bringing up a false dichotomy of the electric vs human-powered bicycle as though an electric bike uses the battery all the time. Here in Japan what has become hugely popular are the electrically-assisted bicycles especially the type used by housewives to truck kids to and from school andto buy groceries. I live in Kanagawa-kan just outside Tokyo and there are LOTS of hills. I'll be riding around on the weekends slogging up a hill in the lowest gear on my mountain bike when a Japanese mum on her grocery-loaded electrically assisted "Mama-charin" will come cruising on by and not be breaking any sweat at all. With easily replaceable battery packs and short charging times these make bike commuting, even in hilly locations possible. The weather, of course, is a separate issue.
Actually they start dinging at 110Km/h. Some cars increase the rate the faster you go.
Fun was had a long time ago going up the Kan-Etsu at 160.
Sorry, but you are dead wrong.
In 2001 oil made up 50% of Japan's electrical energy production, coal 17%, nuclear 14%, natural gas 13% and hydroelectric contributing only 4%. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Japan#Electricity_generation
Japan is VERY dependent upon imported oil and LNG hence the aggressive solar programs and attempts to upgrade nuclear facilities in the face of considerable opposition.
Yes, doing something worthwhile like, say, posting on Slashdot?
Take a look at how the automobile has developed since the 60's and tell me that the private sector doesn't do anything "inspiring". (As long as there is some regulatory oversight for safety)
Not a chance.
Japanese has many homynyms making puns a breeze.
A family on a TV show had a pet turtle that liked to chase their dachsund around the house.
Turtle in Japanese is "Kame" (pronounced "ka-meh").
The turtle's name was "Diji".
So they had "Diji Kame". (=Digital Camera)
Don't you mean "[cetacean needed]"?
I remember writing that exact same program. The rising and falling of the speaker tones as I twisted the paddle knob back and forth.
Good times.
This is why a huge portion of Tokyo including the street where I used to live is no longer covered by Streetview. The wall outside our landlord neighbour's house is about 2m high. I couldn't see over it when walking by it but the Google pics when they were up it was easy to see into their living room. Most Japanese urban houses are less than 2 meters from the road. In these cases you are able to see what someone walking would not, hence the application of laws related to unnatural viewpoints.
Well DONE, sir!
From the article: "800×480 screen, 720p Video playback support"
Someone care to enlighten me as to how you get a 720 progressive-scan image on a screen that is only 480 pixels high?
What if it is not that our best minds couldn't produce to our expectations, but rather, they were prevented from doing so by our not-so-best minds?
One amusing thing I found about the Family Guy Star Wars spoof was that the graphics weren't a cheap animated copy of the original, they *were* the original graphics and matched the quality of the rest of the animation perfectly. I lovely little comment that what was amazingly cool in a major blockbuster 30 years ago is now typical in a regular animated TV show.
A bit sad to think that there will be places on Mars that we will have a better view of than ones on earth.
My mother-in-law's house in Japan, for example.
Maybe that's a good thing...
That's probably an ancient joke (Henny Youngman maybe?) but I still laughed.
Thanks, I needed that.
I'm not sure if that came out the way you intended...
Or maybe it did.
Look at the order time. The order number is just the date and time. They'd better not have more than one order/second.
Order No. 20100108063848
Order Date 2010-1-8 6:38:48
The site is just there to pick up personal info.
After thousands of times listening to my various modems connecting from 300bps to 56K and with the various incarnations of error correction I was eventually able to knowing how fast I was connected by sound alone. The problem was that as modems got faster and more sophisticated the connection time kept getting longer and longer. Sometimes I'd have to wait through 45 seconds or more of whistles, grinds and groans before the two modem would train. Ah, the good old days.
In the vain hope that they'll have nostalgia value someday I still have in my possession:
1) Mint condition Hayes Smartmodem 2400. The original workhorse.
2) Practical Peripherals 14.4K. long box with a one-line LCD that displays the connection speed and error correction mode
3) US Robotics 56K Courier - The last great standard.
Four months ago I started at a quasi-governmental organization that looks after the needs of the widows and orphans of my province. The current state of the system reflects the mentality of the late 80's-early 90's. Everything in a word processing document or spreadsheet. Ad-hoc, unstructured storage of said documents on mapped network drives ("It's on the G: drive? I thought it was supposed to be on the U: drive!"). Telnet-based trust accounting system. Badly-utilized email system being used for any and all communication within the organization including sending the aforementioned documents as email attachments. They've had SharePoint for 6 years but never used it for more than a standard HTML intranet.
If the lessons of the past 15 years are to be learned from, every operation within this organization can be done with centralized or distributed servers and a browser interface. With the possible exception of the relatively few documents in the legal department, the information generated, managed and communicated within our organization can be done without using heavy client-server applications.
Now, if someone was able to come up with a browser OS allowed us to roll out light, inexpensive end-user workstations that can be easily managed due to the lack of requirements for things such as Word, Excel, Outlook, anti-virus, Telnet app, Telnet 3270 app, DMS interface for Word and Outlook etc., our support and capital costs would drop immensely.
Chrome OS is probably not that solution now, but being open source and our requirements not being anywhere near unique, it shouldn't be too long before the requisite changes are made.
Some may say that what I describe are just the old mainframe dumb-terminals or X-terminals. I would reply that those were the right paradigm with the wrong technology. A browser OS provides the richer interface the dumb terminals lacked and the local processing ability the X-Terminals couldn't provide.
You're a few years too late with that idea:
The biggest:
Zipcars.com
Co-Operative Auto Network
A bunch of other car sharing links: http://www.carsharing.net/where.html
I was waiting for that. The Aussie road trains really are a sight to be seen.
On topic though, I have seen a demo of this technology at least 10 years ago so in that time they've had plenty of time to work through issues, test scenarios out the wazoo, so all this "But what if..." BS is just annoying.
You're out of date. The fingerprinting and picture taking of all non-Japanese passport holders entering the country started a couple of years ago. This includes permanent residents like myself.
They were also going to make us PRs go back in the gaijin visitor line (we could use the Japanese passport line) but relented when the obviously discriminatory nature of the fingerprinting became obvious, especially in cases of PRs married to Japanese citizens and with kids. I tend to use the special "re-entrants" line they set up, which is actually better as there is rarely anyone there. I get to bypass both the foreigner AND Japanese line-ups.
Richard Branson is a really smart guy and savvy businessman. He has the vision required to expand his companies but he also knows when to drop something before it becomes too much of a drain.
Read his autobiography "Losing my Virginity" to see what sets him apart from the typical board of directors who are just trying to hop on the latest bandwagon.