..your argument only works if Japan and the US are seperate entities that make their own items and don't export to each other.
There are hundreds of kaizen-ed products released in Japan (products intended for world consumer markets) for each ONE product released to world markets. Those incremental revisions are tested for consumer acceptance in the fast-paced Japanese market, products live and die in a matter of weeks or months, and go through another revision. Those that are accepted are released to the world. So it's just exactly like you said, there are separate markets. If you don't believe me, get someone to ship you a digikame magazine, keep it a year, and see how many models of cameras sold in Japan ever make it to the US. The reason they don't export it is because it flopped in Japan.
Only certain stores will do this, because it requires special licensing. Be sure to go to the "Duty Free" stores.
Incorrect. Duty-free stores are unnecessary. Almost all the big electronics store have the proper forms, and it's not a licensing issue. I've bought goods from Yodobashi and Sakura using the no-tax forms, and neither of them is a duty-free shop.
LAOX is a crappy place to shop, particularly the Akihabara stores. Prices are not good. Prices in Nishishinjuku are much better. And even then, prices in Japan may not be cheaper than the US. I remember when the Canon Ixy came out, it cost the Yen-equivalent of US$450, and it was out of stock everywhere. I got back to the US and the same model was selling for $299.
The reasons for Japan's preeminence in consumer electronics is simple, and completely absent from this article. The major reason is plain: kaizen.
Japan has a different system of product development. It dates back to ancient methods of production of artworks like lacquerware. Specialists in certain production methodologies allow the tasks to be separated. Many specialists were hereditary lineages, some families had practiced and continuously improved their techniques over hundreds of years.
And THAT is kaizen. Each product builds on the strengths of the previous generation, and eliminates weaknesses (or at least tries another approach). The Western approach is to build a product (or the packaging, at least) from scratch each time. Kaizen products are frequently updated, with minor incremental improvements. In many ways, it is a predecessor to Open Source methods like "release early and often" or "many eyes make bugs transparent."
The other factor is the short lifetime of fads in Japan. Fads like the Tamagotchi build to hysterical intensity in mere weeks. I still have an ad from the Asahi Shimbun with an apology from the President of Bandai. He apologizes at the inadequate supply of Tamagotchi, and promises Bandai is building new plants and within 2 months they will be able to produce 2million units a month. Unfortunately the fad was over long before the plants got up to speed, and Bandai ended up with millions of units they couldn't even give away. Bandai lost billions of yen and the President had to resign. So you've got to be nimble to keep up with quick-moving fads.
So anyway, how come complete idiots with NO knowledge of Japan get paid to write crap like that article? Jeez, the stuff I just wrote is far more informative than Slate's rubbish. I wonder if the author has evern BEEN to Japan.
This is NOT an "orbit" of the earth. Skimming around the edge of Antarctica is NOT an orbit of the earth. It's like the guys who work at the south pole, there's a marker to indicate the true geographic pole, you can walk around it and claim you orbited the earth in a few seconds. I'll save my praise for someone who orbits around the equator, like Dick Rutan and Jeana Yaeger did.
While looking at the Apache setup in MacOS X, I decided to set up log analysis, and discovered that this security update implements Apache's rotatelogs. A minor upgrade, but a nice improvement that shows Apple is serious about their server platform. The (fairly) speedy response to ththe OpenSSH and Apache security holes also shows Apple is taking pains to do it right.
I must protest, Cyberiad is a quite sophisticated tale, not mindless fun at all. It's not like His Master's Voice, but it does deal with sophisticated allegories. And it is a work of poetry, even the translatied version keeps the amazing wordplay intact.
I'm personally more fond of some of Lem's experiments with the writing format. One Human Minute is a review of nonexistent books, it's hilarious. Imaginary Magnitude is a book containing prefaces of nonexistent books. Of course, it has a prefix itself. I will never forget the first line of the preface, "I have often thought the art of writing prefaces deserved more attention."
Anyway, the SF world to me divides into two poles, represented by Lem and Phil Dick. In fact there was a widely known dispute between Lem and Dick. Lem lashed out at Dick because he thought Dick was dragging SF ideals through the mud. He thought Dick was too lowbrow, too much drugs and puke and mental illness and dystopianism. A lot of writers came to Dick's defense and finally convinced Lem that he was more like Dick than he cared to admit. Someone once called Lem the most intelligent man that ever lived, and that's diametrically opposed to the speed-freak paranoid California PKD we all know and love. To me, they're just two different routes that brought about cyberpunk. Couldn't have done it if either Lem or PKD weren't there first.
yeah, I've had a few runins with shippers. I remember taking delivery of a $250k Agfa imagesetter, it was a brand new large format machine and top of the line. Except the shipper bounced it over a curb when they rolled it on a dolly. The whole unit got torqued, and the unit got a light leak in the internal mechanism. All the film we ran through the machine had long streaks from the light leak. Agfa techs worked for weeks trying to find the hole, they had most of the imaging chamber covered in black tape before they gave up and replaced it.
This sort of stuff happens all the time. At a startup where I worked, we waited for weeks to get our new custom painted file cabinets and shelves. But the shipper bopped them off the truck on handcarts and bent up the lower edge of all the file cabinets. They wouldn't even stand up straight. They had to replace about $100k worth of brand new custom office fixtures. And we had to work out of boxes for a few more weeks.
I had a cyberstalker who harassed me mercilessly on usenet. Finally, a private detective came forward after seeing this bozo go after me, and offered to take him down for me, and he wouldn't even charge me for it. Aside from helping me sucessfully prosecute a criminal complaint, the guy made it pretty clear that he also provided services that I would be better off not knowing anything about. I got the distinct impression that he sent one of his P.I. buddies to go beat the shit out of the idiot perp. But what I don't know won't hurt me. And the cyberstalker was silenced forever. If he harasses me again, he'll get deported, and no doubt with an extra beating thrown in for good measure.
No, YOU are rewriting history, buying into BillG's revision of the GUI, to make it look like Apple was no innovator.
Apple was working on the GUI long before they ever saw Xerox PARC's demo, and before PARC even started their initial GUI work. This was all documented on slashdot ages ago, when Apple released some early GUI interface docs to Stanford. Go hunt it up.
And to put to rest that OTHER stupid rumor, Apple did not copy Xerox's GUI. Xerox licensed certain aspects of their GUI to Apple. Apple needed only a couple of pieces to finish the job, and Xerox made good royalties from Apple, more than they ever made from their own products. Apple did not copy Xerox, the Apple GUI was substantially superior to Xerox's. Xerox and had almost nothing in common with LisaOS or anything else.
I used to sell Lisas back when they were new. A fair percentage of them went to government research offices. Some of them were wiped of LisaOS and they put SCO Xenix on them, and went straight onto the net. I also used to sell the old original Apple Portable (you know, the huge one with the lead-acid batteries) with AIX and they went on the net too.
So this bozo is going about it entirely the wrong way. It's not like its the first time anyone used a Lisa on the net. It's just that there was no HTTP back when the Lisa was new. Most people used UUCP and FTP.
I'm a buddhist and I don't mind working xmas, it's just another day to me, and I don't mind working when the workload is light around the holidays. But what bugs me about buddhism is that we don't have ANY holidays. I guess I'm supposed to go to the temple on New Years, and a few times a year like obon, but hey, there isn't a temple within 450 miles of me. It's not fair, we don't get any religious holidays, not even buddha's birthday.
Yeah, it was "quite an accomplishment" too, when the IMDB ranked "Battlefield Earth" as the highest rated film of all time, but that was just hordes of mindless scientologists stuffing the ballot boxes. However in this case, it's hordes of..
Of course Apple is dying for that sort of publicity. That's exactly why Disney doesn't want any. Disney wants a monopoly on all publicity relating to itself. They figure that if anyone wants to use the Disney brand for publicity, they'll have to pay for it. And pay big.
I work for a government weapons lab and have seen no great move to OS X. And we are the largest Mac site in the world.
Bullshit. You aren't even in the top 5, there isn't any government facility in the top 5. The largest Mac facility in the world is Disney Imagineering in Burbank CA. Disney has a contractual obligation with Apple to never reveal the extent of their Apple CPU purchases. I know this because I negotiated that contract, and I was their sales rep. But now I don't work there anymore so fuck the NDA.
Yes, it is about the vietnam war. In fact, I believe he wrote it while in the vietnam war.
Yes, it's about Vietnam. No, Haldeman wrote the book while he was working on his Masters of Fine Arts degree at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. Every Writer's Workshop attendee must write a major work as their MFA thesis. Forever War was Haldeman's thesis.
I know this for a fact because my high school journalism teacher took a SF writing course with Haldeman, and I got to hear almost daily secondhand stories about Haldeman and the notorious "SFLIS" group.
There is a legend that Haldeman's book was not accepted for his MFA degree until it won the Hugo, and then the Writer's Workshop was forced to reevaluate after the Hugo award. I once wrote about this on Usenet, dismissing this as impossible. I actually got an email from Haldeman the next day, he said he got his MFA well before the Hugo award. Interesting.
$100 or $200 rebates on Sony TiVo!
on
Comparing the DVRs?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I suppose I should mention there are rebates on Sony TiVo units. I prefer Sony equipment and the $100 rebate on the SVR-2000 standalone Tivo made the deal for me.
You can download the rebate form here in.pdf format
I will agree wholeheartedly. I asked a question about TiVo on usenet, and got an email reply directly from the chief engineer at Tivo corp. I was impressed even more when he took quite a bit of time to exchange emails with detailed info on the units, hacking them, etc.Tivo unofficially supports hacking their unit, it is common to add a 2nd cheap IDE hard disk of up to 120Mb to expand your storage space over the current 30mb. But if you bust it while hacking, you're screwed, they won't help you fix it. So you have to do a linux-based backup before you hack on a Tivo (the Tivo runs on Linux).
I will note that if you have both cable and DirecTV like I do, you need the standalone Tivo. For the first time I can have my local channels and DirecTV all on one continuous rotation on a single remote!
Now you're treating the issue like Microsoft defines it, which is the same blindness that lost them the Antitrust lawsuit in the first place. It's not a matter "freedom to innovate" or of whether bundling apps like IE or WMP is illegal, it is a matter of those products benefitting from previous illegal anticompetitive actions. For example, MS clearly took illegal action against Apple on media players (the "knife the baby" incident). It is only fair that they get their baby knifed in return.
A darned good idea (imho) would be to force Microsoft to publish their APIs, and restrict them from anti-competitive practices.
No, that is precisely the sort of thing MS wants. Publishing the APIs merely keeps people tied into the MS operating system world. It does nothing to address the Barrier To Entry issue on other platforms.
I am considering what sort of Public Comment form to submit to the court. The only thing I can think of that will address the Barrier To Entry issue is to prohibit MS from releasing any middleware product that competes with a product that has previously been subjected to illegal anticompetitive pressure by MS. As far as I can tell, the only solution is to force MS to completely withdraw Microsoft Media Player, Internet Explorer, and Passport. Completely prohibit them from the market. Let Quicktime/Real, Netscape/etc, and Kerberos continue without any MS competition. MS must not be allowed to use the power and the cash hoard it accumulated in its OS monopoly to move into new areas. Deny them the fruits of their illegal efforts.
I setup Macs in labs at my school and I don't believe there is a way to disable external booting. I've never seen a mac with external booting disabled and I've worked with a lot of macs locked down in a variety of ways.
No, it's easy to disable external booting. You can set a password in Open Firmware to prevent booting from any external device, or anything but a specified device without a password. It's customizable and your choice. Any Mac with Open Firmware can do this. There are a couple of shareware gadgets to set passwords via a GUI, if you're squeamish about using the OF command line. The only way to reset the machine without the password is to reset OF by removing RAM and OF will reset when it detects the changed configuration. So all you have to do is install the password and keep the CPU cabinets locked, and you're secure.
Slashdot Mirror
Incorrect. Duty-free stores are unnecessary. Almost all the big electronics store have the proper forms, and it's not a licensing issue. I've bought goods from Yodobashi and Sakura using the no-tax forms, and neither of them is a duty-free shop.
LAOX is a crappy place to shop, particularly the Akihabara stores. Prices are not good. Prices in Nishishinjuku are much better. And even then, prices in Japan may not be cheaper than the US. I remember when the Canon Ixy came out, it cost the Yen-equivalent of US$450, and it was out of stock everywhere. I got back to the US and the same model was selling for $299.
The reasons for Japan's preeminence in consumer electronics is simple, and completely absent from this article. The major reason is plain: kaizen.
Japan has a different system of product development. It dates back to ancient methods of production of artworks like lacquerware. Specialists in certain production methodologies allow the tasks to be separated. Many specialists were hereditary lineages, some families had practiced and continuously improved their techniques over hundreds of years.
And THAT is kaizen. Each product builds on the strengths of the previous generation, and eliminates weaknesses (or at least tries another approach). The Western approach is to build a product (or the packaging, at least) from scratch each time. Kaizen products are frequently updated, with minor incremental improvements. In many ways, it is a predecessor to Open Source methods like "release early and often" or "many eyes make bugs transparent."
The other factor is the short lifetime of fads in Japan. Fads like the Tamagotchi build to hysterical intensity in mere weeks. I still have an ad from the Asahi Shimbun with an apology from the President of Bandai. He apologizes at the inadequate supply of Tamagotchi, and promises Bandai is building new plants and within 2 months they will be able to produce 2million units a month. Unfortunately the fad was over long before the plants got up to speed, and Bandai ended up with millions of units they couldn't even give away. Bandai lost billions of yen and the President had to resign. So you've got to be nimble to keep up with quick-moving fads.
So anyway, how come complete idiots with NO knowledge of Japan get paid to write crap like that article? Jeez, the stuff I just wrote is far more informative than Slate's rubbish. I wonder if the author has evern BEEN to Japan.
Not funny. Here's funny:
Did you hear about the constipated mathematician? He worked it out with a pencil.
This is NOT an "orbit" of the earth. Skimming around the edge of Antarctica is NOT an orbit of the earth. It's like the guys who work at the south pole, there's a marker to indicate the true geographic pole, you can walk around it and claim you orbited the earth in a few seconds. I'll save my praise for someone who orbits around the equator, like Dick Rutan and Jeana Yaeger did.
While looking at the Apache setup in MacOS X, I decided to set up log analysis, and discovered that this security update implements Apache's rotatelogs. A minor upgrade, but a nice improvement that shows Apple is serious about their server platform. The (fairly) speedy response to ththe OpenSSH and Apache security holes also shows Apple is taking pains to do it right.
I must protest, Cyberiad is a quite sophisticated tale, not mindless fun at all. It's not like His Master's Voice, but it does deal with sophisticated allegories. And it is a work of poetry, even the translatied version keeps the amazing wordplay intact.
I'm personally more fond of some of Lem's experiments with the writing format. One Human Minute is a review of nonexistent books, it's hilarious. Imaginary Magnitude is a book containing prefaces of nonexistent books. Of course, it has a prefix itself. I will never forget the first line of the preface, "I have often thought the art of writing prefaces deserved more attention."
Anyway, the SF world to me divides into two poles, represented by Lem and Phil Dick. In fact there was a widely known dispute between Lem and Dick. Lem lashed out at Dick because he thought Dick was dragging SF ideals through the mud. He thought Dick was too lowbrow, too much drugs and puke and mental illness and dystopianism. A lot of writers came to Dick's defense and finally convinced Lem that he was more like Dick than he cared to admit. Someone once called Lem the most intelligent man that ever lived, and that's diametrically opposed to the speed-freak paranoid California PKD we all know and love. To me, they're just two different routes that brought about cyberpunk. Couldn't have done it if either Lem or PKD weren't there first.
yeah, I've had a few runins with shippers. I remember taking delivery of a $250k Agfa imagesetter, it was a brand new large format machine and top of the line. Except the shipper bounced it over a curb when they rolled it on a dolly. The whole unit got torqued, and the unit got a light leak in the internal mechanism. All the film we ran through the machine had long streaks from the light leak. Agfa techs worked for weeks trying to find the hole, they had most of the imaging chamber covered in black tape before they gave up and replaced it.
This sort of stuff happens all the time. At a startup where I worked, we waited for weeks to get our new custom painted file cabinets and shelves. But the shipper bopped them off the truck on handcarts and bent up the lower edge of all the file cabinets. They wouldn't even stand up straight. They had to replace about $100k worth of brand new custom office fixtures. And we had to work out of boxes for a few more weeks.
http://antiani.tripod.com/
I had a cyberstalker who harassed me mercilessly on usenet. Finally, a private detective came forward after seeing this bozo go after me, and offered to take him down for me, and he wouldn't even charge me for it. Aside from helping me sucessfully prosecute a criminal complaint, the guy made it pretty clear that he also provided services that I would be better off not knowing anything about. I got the distinct impression that he sent one of his P.I. buddies to go beat the shit out of the idiot perp. But what I don't know won't hurt me. And the cyberstalker was silenced forever. If he harasses me again, he'll get deported, and no doubt with an extra beating thrown in for good measure.
There's an old legal maxim, "your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins."
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
h nology/134387111_mit05.html
n t05.shtml
MIT alleges patent violation; Microsoft, Photoworks named in suit
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstec
Microsoft accused of violating patents
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/53365_pate
Okay, that last one wasn't so on-topic, no universities were involved, but hey, we all love to see Microsoft in deep shit, so what the hell..
Why don't the slashcoders try to fix the horrible, mangled HTML first, before they try to add "coolness" features? Maybe they can't. Go read this:
http://www.macedition.com/cb/cb_20011203.php
No, YOU are rewriting history, buying into BillG's revision of the GUI, to make it look like Apple was no innovator.
Apple was working on the GUI long before they ever saw Xerox PARC's demo, and before PARC even started their initial GUI work. This was all documented on slashdot ages ago, when Apple released some early GUI interface docs to Stanford. Go hunt it up.
And to put to rest that OTHER stupid rumor, Apple did not copy Xerox's GUI. Xerox licensed certain aspects of their GUI to Apple. Apple needed only a couple of pieces to finish the job, and Xerox made good royalties from Apple, more than they ever made from their own products. Apple did not copy Xerox, the Apple GUI was substantially superior to Xerox's. Xerox and had almost nothing in common with LisaOS or anything else.
I used to sell Lisas back when they were new. A fair percentage of them went to government research offices. Some of them were wiped of LisaOS and they put SCO Xenix on them, and went straight onto the net. I also used to sell the old original Apple Portable (you know, the huge one with the lead-acid batteries) with AIX and they went on the net too.
So this bozo is going about it entirely the wrong way. It's not like its the first time anyone used a Lisa on the net. It's just that there was no HTTP back when the Lisa was new. Most people used UUCP and FTP.
I'm a buddhist and I don't mind working xmas, it's just another day to me, and I don't mind working when the workload is light around the holidays. But what bugs me about buddhism is that we don't have ANY holidays. I guess I'm supposed to go to the temple on New Years, and a few times a year like obon, but hey, there isn't a temple within 450 miles of me. It's not fair, we don't get any religious holidays, not even buddha's birthday.
Yeah, it was "quite an accomplishment" too, when the IMDB ranked "Battlefield Earth" as the highest rated film of all time, but that was just hordes of mindless scientologists stuffing the ballot boxes. However in this case, it's hordes of..
..oh nevermind.
Of course Apple is dying for that sort of publicity. That's exactly why Disney doesn't want any. Disney wants a monopoly on all publicity relating to itself. They figure that if anyone wants to use the Disney brand for publicity, they'll have to pay for it. And pay big.
Bullshit. You aren't even in the top 5, there isn't any government facility in the top 5. The largest Mac facility in the world is Disney Imagineering in Burbank CA. Disney has a contractual obligation with Apple to never reveal the extent of their Apple CPU purchases. I know this because I negotiated that contract, and I was their sales rep. But now I don't work there anymore so fuck the NDA.
Yes, it's about Vietnam. No, Haldeman wrote the book while he was working on his Masters of Fine Arts degree at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. Every Writer's Workshop attendee must write a major work as their MFA thesis. Forever War was Haldeman's thesis.
I know this for a fact because my high school journalism teacher took a SF writing course with Haldeman, and I got to hear almost daily secondhand stories about Haldeman and the notorious "SFLIS" group.
There is a legend that Haldeman's book was not accepted for his MFA degree until it won the Hugo, and then the Writer's Workshop was forced to reevaluate after the Hugo award. I once wrote about this on Usenet, dismissing this as impossible. I actually got an email from Haldeman the next day, he said he got his MFA well before the Hugo award. Interesting.
I suppose I should mention there are rebates on Sony TiVo units. I prefer Sony equipment and the $100 rebate on the SVR-2000 standalone Tivo made the deal for me.
.pdf format
0 20 131.pdf
You can download the rebate form here in
http://www.jandr.com/images/pdf/rebates/SON9_20
I will agree wholeheartedly. I asked a question about TiVo on usenet, and got an email reply directly from the chief engineer at Tivo corp. I was impressed even more when he took quite a bit of time to exchange emails with detailed info on the units, hacking them, etc.Tivo unofficially supports hacking their unit, it is common to add a 2nd cheap IDE hard disk of up to 120Mb to expand your storage space over the current 30mb. But if you bust it while hacking, you're screwed, they won't help you fix it. So you have to do a linux-based backup before you hack on a Tivo (the Tivo runs on Linux).
I will note that if you have both cable and DirecTV like I do, you need the standalone Tivo. For the first time I can have my local channels and DirecTV all on one continuous rotation on a single remote!
Now you're treating the issue like Microsoft defines it, which is the same blindness that lost them the Antitrust lawsuit in the first place. It's not a matter "freedom to innovate" or of whether bundling apps like IE or WMP is illegal, it is a matter of those products benefitting from previous illegal anticompetitive actions. For example, MS clearly took illegal action against Apple on media players (the "knife the baby" incident). It is only fair that they get their baby knifed in return.
No, that is precisely the sort of thing MS wants. Publishing the APIs merely keeps people tied into the MS operating system world. It does nothing to address the Barrier To Entry issue on other platforms.
I am considering what sort of Public Comment form to submit to the court. The only thing I can think of that will address the Barrier To Entry issue is to prohibit MS from releasing any middleware product that competes with a product that has previously been subjected to illegal anticompetitive pressure by MS. As far as I can tell, the only solution is to force MS to completely withdraw Microsoft Media Player, Internet Explorer, and Passport. Completely prohibit them from the market. Let Quicktime/Real, Netscape/etc, and Kerberos continue without any MS competition. MS must not be allowed to use the power and the cash hoard it accumulated in its OS monopoly to move into new areas. Deny them the fruits of their illegal efforts.
No, it's easy to disable external booting. You can set a password in Open Firmware to prevent booting from any external device, or anything but a specified device without a password. It's customizable and your choice. Any Mac with Open Firmware can do this. There are a couple of shareware gadgets to set passwords via a GUI, if you're squeamish about using the OF command line. The only way to reset the machine without the password is to reset OF by removing RAM and OF will reset when it detects the changed configuration. So all you have to do is install the password and keep the CPU cabinets locked, and you're secure.