From Paul Thurrott:...But although XP SP2 would indeed add new features, to the chagrin of users who took Microsoft's legendary but oft-abused "no new features in service packs" promise at face value...
Saying that Japan doesn't want reunification is nonsense.
There already IS a nuclear "Korean government". The North. And the weapons are currently in the hands of a madman. Japan may have problems with South Korea, but they would much see nukes in the hands of the somewhat reasonable South than the batshit-crazy North.
In addition, reunification would mean the withdrawal of most American forces from the Peninsula, increasing the strategic importance of the American military holdings in Okinawa. A stronger military relationship with America in the Far East means Japan is safer from potential attack by either China or Korea.
In addition, North Korea also has in its possession a number of Japanese abductees, who were kidnapped to be brainwashed and trained as anti-Japanese spies. That's a HUGE political issue, and the prime minister who can finally resolve this issue will be made out to be a national hero. That's simply not going to happen until reunification. Reunification will be a political blessing for whatever Japanese prime minister is around to try to take part of the credit for it.
Also, when sanctions against Korea are lifted, Japan will have a new trading partner, poor though they may be. Because the North Koreans can't afford to buy Sony just yet, the Japanese government will do the same thing with them that they've done with all of their poor South-East Asian neighbours. The government will send Japanese construction companies overseas to do "charity work". The Japanese government will pay for the majority of it, making it little more than corporate welfare, but at the end of the project, they'll erect a sign saying "This ~~ was built with funds donated by the Japanese government." That's part of the way that they build good will amongst their neighbours.
IMHO, there's no way they *don't* want reunification.
The point is likely not to get a 30-year weather prediction system up and running, it's to fund technological research. I'm sure they know damn well that they will never be able to accomplish this 30-year prediction system. I mean, they will probably make a lot of headway on the subject, but basically, the government is just channeling public funds into private companies and universities. Think of it as corporate welfare.
America does this all the time, but its approach is often military-based. Ever heard of Star Wars?
Japan, however, does not have the "luxury" of doing a lot of military research, as their constitution specifically forbids war as a means of solving international disputes. So they come up with equally zany schemes, like this one.
Yes, but you're counting the hits, and not the misses.
The truth is, we don't know how many times this bug has occurred before and gone undetected. I haven't read the article (this is Slashdot, after all--there'll be a dupe of it tomorrow I can check out), but I can't see any reason this bug would be a one-time thing. Isn't it more likely that it's persistent?
Researchers asked the subjects "Do you remember when 3DR first announced Duke Nukem Forever?" If the subjects replied "yes", they were judged to have a good long-term memory.
2-megapixel is "cutting edge"? Last time I made a post about Japanese cell phones being better than the ones in the West, I got a bunch of replies telling me that "I was wrong", "if they're better, why haven't they taken over the market" and so on.
But, I haven't lived in North America for a while, so I honestly don't know. Is 2-megapixel "cutting edge"? Is that how pathetic cameras are in the West? My current 3G Japanese cell phone is by no means top of the line (it cost less than one American cent, and came with no commitment--I was already a subscriber when I bought it) and it still has a 2-megapixel camera (including video, digital zoom, barcode reader), flashlight (that doubles as the camera's flash), schedule, calculator, currency converter, alarm clock, MP3 player, Bluetooth interface, I can surf the web, use it as a television remote control, check train schedules, play video games, interface with my television, sing karaoke on it, and on and on and on. I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot of stuff. And NO, the battery life for modern Japanese phones isn't as crappy as people say it is.
I've actually moved away from Japan, so I'm not sure, but I imagine that all self-respecting Japanese phone companies have moved away from 1-megapixel phones completely, and are just selling their existing stocks to bargain hunters and the elderly. After all, a cell phone is an absolute necessity in Japan. Even octogenarians have them. I've heard that in Japan there are 3 cell phones for every 2 people.
The only phones that DON'T have a camera are made for niche markets. For example, one of my friends works at a Japanese bank, and she's not allowed to bring a camera of any kind to work, even if it's just a cell phone camera. So she had to buy one without a camera in it. I imagine she had a hard time finding it; that's the only phone I've ever seen in Japan without a decent camera in it.
This is Japan we're talking about. There will be no next-gen duck hunt. They'll customize their product for each different market.
The Japanese will have "Whale Hunt". Use the next-gen controller to aim the harpoon. The Canadians will have "Seal Hunt". Swing the controller like a club. The Americans will have "Helen Hunt". Available in both harpoon and club versions.
Check the prices. (This info is from Bloomberg). There are 1,001,633,000 Sony Corp shares on the market. In order to get controlling interest of the company, Microsoft has to buy 50% plus one. That's 500,816,501.
Sony stock today is trading at 5,700 yen/share. Total = $24,220,719,970.31 In August of last year, it was 3,640 yen/share. Total = $15,467,266,788.07
So in other words, Microsoft could have saved 9 BILLION dollars by buying it last August.
But I'm no business expert, and I haven't read the article, so everything I just said could be dead wrong.
At any rate, if they were going to buy it, last August sure as hell would have been a better time.
Another little jab in the side of MS. From the official website: "Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means it'll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world."
And the best part is: that line isn't even in the article.
FTFA: "The player will sell for 110,000 yen (US$936) in Japan. In the North American market there will also be a cheaper player, the HD-A1, priced at $500."
Who actually says: "I could care less about about my mother" when they mean "I care about my mother." You might have a case if this were true, but it just ain't so. It should never be confusing because it always takes its idiomatic meaning.
Since the phrase appears verbatim in the most reputable of all English dictionaries, and never actually means "I care about this", I would suggest that your confusion is your own fault.
"Bit-by-bit copies are fine and good in theory, but that's for discs already in release, serving the languages for which the discs already have subtitles or alternative soundtracks. But by then, there's already been a brisk trade in bootlegs those films."
Not true. I sit in Thailand now, where guesthouses play pirated DVDs on a daily basis. Usually, the guesthouses leave the English subtitles on, so those the who want to watch the movie can hear over the conversation of the people who don't.
Unless the movies are really old ("The Last Emperor" and "Amadeus" were perfect), the subtitles are APPALLING. On almost every single one, there are TONS of errors. And these are public-release-DVD rips. They have full DVD menus and no screener warnings.
My favourite mistake is from "Memoirs of a Geisha", where at one point, according to the subtitles, the lead actress says, "I was a famous truck." I don't remember the real line, but it sure as hell wasn't that. I'm pretty sure the real line didn't contain a single one of those words.
A couple of times other times, I remember thinking "The subtitle guy watched this with the Chinese subtitles on, and translated them with Babelfish." The words were all correct, but the grammar was jumbled straight to hell, and if they had actually listened to the movie, there was no way that they could possibly think that that was what the actors were saying.
The pirated DVDs I've seen generally have more subtitle options than the real thing too. The ones I've picked up in Northern Laos have had at least English and Chinese, with most of them also having Thai, German and French.
It seems like the pirates are paying an "interpreter" to sit down with the Chinese version of the movie and scrawl down whatever the hell they think the actors are saying. Sometimes when the actors are speaking quickly, or using obscure idioms, the subtitles just stop altogether.
They already had more than enough protection against hearing damage:
#1. The click wheel lets you change the volume from full to mute with one quick turn of the thumb. #2. The "Hold" switch prevents the volume from changing when it's in your pocket. #3. The "Sound Check" option, which normalizes the volume of all the songs. #4. If you're among the white-earphone-wearing masses, the headphones that come with the iPod are so crappily designed that they fall right out of your ears if you take off the little black felt "earphone covers".
Actually, I thought France's problem with the iPod's sound system was that it came bundled with in-ear headphones. The iPod headphones are actually quite good if you leave the little black felt things on them, but the second you take them off (which most people seem to do), they fall half way out of your ear canal and the music sounds super soft and tinny. Then you have to crank the volume and jam them back in.
At any rate, this is just to make some politicians happy. You can easily accomplish the same affect as the new Volume Lock using just #1, #2 and #3. The only really new feature is that the volume can be controlled with a combination, which is touted on the website as a "parental control" option. Parental control? Oh, please.
The only other reason I can see for this is that update is that it gives Apple a simple way (i.e. through internet firmware updates) to control the max dB levels for every iPod in every country, just in case there are any hearing-protection laws passed.
Slashdot Mirror
From Paul Thurrott: ...But although XP SP2 would indeed add new features, to the chagrin of users who took Microsoft's legendary but oft-abused "no new features in service packs" promise at face value...
http://www.winsupersite.com/faq/xpsp2.asp
As I recall, that used to be the rule at MS. SPs were for bug fixes only. That changed with XP.
Saying that Japan doesn't want reunification is nonsense.
There already IS a nuclear "Korean government". The North. And the weapons are currently in the hands of a madman. Japan may have problems with South Korea, but they would much see nukes in the hands of the somewhat reasonable South than the batshit-crazy North.
In addition, reunification would mean the withdrawal of most American forces from the Peninsula, increasing the strategic importance of the American military holdings in Okinawa. A stronger military relationship with America in the Far East means Japan is safer from potential attack by either China or Korea.
In addition, North Korea also has in its possession a number of Japanese abductees, who were kidnapped to be brainwashed and trained as anti-Japanese spies. That's a HUGE political issue, and the prime minister who can finally resolve this issue will be made out to be a national hero. That's simply not going to happen until reunification. Reunification will be a political blessing for whatever Japanese prime minister is around to try to take part of the credit for it.
Also, when sanctions against Korea are lifted, Japan will have a new trading partner, poor though they may be. Because the North Koreans can't afford to buy Sony just yet, the Japanese government will do the same thing with them that they've done with all of their poor South-East Asian neighbours. The government will send Japanese construction companies overseas to do "charity work". The Japanese government will pay for the majority of it, making it little more than corporate welfare, but at the end of the project, they'll erect a sign saying "This ~~ was built with funds donated by the Japanese government." That's part of the way that they build good will amongst their neighbours.
IMHO, there's no way they *don't* want reunification.
Here's the video in question:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM6HmxlU-hI
And here I was thinking that the Japanese used yen, not dollars.
Here's the link to the Encyclopaedia Dramatica article in question, if anyone cares:F Jason_Craigslist_Experiment
http://pr0n.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/R
This is a ridiculous question.
As everyone knows, the most common Linux development environment, and the one that has been most effective thus far is:
The basement of your parents house, surrounded by empty Cheetos' bags.
The point is likely not to get a 30-year weather prediction system up and running, it's to fund technological research. I'm sure they know damn well that they will never be able to accomplish this 30-year prediction system. I mean, they will probably make a lot of headway on the subject, but basically, the government is just channeling public funds into private companies and universities. Think of it as corporate welfare.
America does this all the time, but its approach is often military-based. Ever heard of Star Wars?
Japan, however, does not have the "luxury" of doing a lot of military research, as their constitution specifically forbids war as a means of solving international disputes. So they come up with equally zany schemes, like this one.
"Japanese Scientists Make Alzheimers Progress"
Uh, shouldn't we be trying to STOP the progress of Alzheimers?
Yes, but you're counting the hits, and not the misses.
The truth is, we don't know how many times this bug has occurred before and gone undetected. I haven't read the article (this is Slashdot, after all--there'll be a dupe of it tomorrow I can check out), but I can't see any reason this bug would be a one-time thing. Isn't it more likely that it's persistent?
The study methodology was as follows:
Researchers asked the subjects "Do you remember when 3DR first announced Duke Nukem Forever?"
If the subjects replied "yes", they were judged to have a good long-term memory.
In Communist Russia, running your own web server bans you.
2-megapixel is "cutting edge"? Last time I made a post about Japanese cell phones being better than the ones in the West, I got a bunch of replies telling me that "I was wrong", "if they're better, why haven't they taken over the market" and so on.
But, I haven't lived in North America for a while, so I honestly don't know. Is 2-megapixel "cutting edge"? Is that how pathetic cameras are in the West? My current 3G Japanese cell phone is by no means top of the line (it cost less than one American cent, and came with no commitment--I was already a subscriber when I bought it) and it still has a 2-megapixel camera (including video, digital zoom, barcode reader), flashlight (that doubles as the camera's flash), schedule, calculator, currency converter, alarm clock, MP3 player, Bluetooth interface, I can surf the web, use it as a television remote control, check train schedules, play video games, interface with my television, sing karaoke on it, and on and on and on. I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot of stuff. And NO, the battery life for modern Japanese phones isn't as crappy as people say it is.
I've actually moved away from Japan, so I'm not sure, but I imagine that all self-respecting Japanese phone companies have moved away from 1-megapixel phones completely, and are just selling their existing stocks to bargain hunters and the elderly. After all, a cell phone is an absolute necessity in Japan. Even octogenarians have them. I've heard that in Japan there are 3 cell phones for every 2 people.
The only phones that DON'T have a camera are made for niche markets. For example, one of my friends works at a Japanese bank, and she's not allowed to bring a camera of any kind to work, even if it's just a cell phone camera. So she had to buy one without a camera in it. I imagine she had a hard time finding it; that's the only phone I've ever seen in Japan without a decent camera in it.
This is Japan we're talking about. There will be no next-gen duck hunt. They'll customize their product for each different market.
The Japanese will have "Whale Hunt". Use the next-gen controller to aim the harpoon.
The Canadians will have "Seal Hunt". Swing the controller like a club.
The Americans will have "Helen Hunt". Available in both harpoon and club versions.
Check the prices. (This info is from Bloomberg).
There are 1,001,633,000 Sony Corp shares on the market.
In order to get controlling interest of the company, Microsoft has to buy 50% plus one. That's 500,816,501.
Sony stock today is trading at 5,700 yen/share. Total = $24,220,719,970.31
In August of last year, it was 3,640 yen/share. Total = $15,467,266,788.07
So in other words, Microsoft could have saved 9 BILLION dollars by buying it last August.
But I'm no business expert, and I haven't read the article, so everything I just said could be dead wrong.
At any rate, if they were going to buy it, last August sure as hell would have been a better time.
Oh my God...
I've never laughed so hard as when I saw that the parent thread was modded "funny".
Now THAT'S funny.
You mean a 180, right?
Another little jab in the side of MS. From the official website:
"Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means it'll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world."
Hahaha. Wicked.
Can we have a link to the article?
= 442f6db28940ab38&ei=RLkvROmcMIP2owLY6oXGCQ&url=htt p%3A//www.taipeitimes.com/News/bizfocus/archives/2 006/04/02/2003300573&cid=1105507413&sig2=gMedfCfB_ 7_xnCSz_t4tKg
Never mind, here's one:
http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct=us/0-0&fp
And the best part is: that line isn't even in the article.
FTFA:
"The player will sell for 110,000 yen (US$936) in Japan. In the North American market there will also be a cheaper player, the HD-A1, priced at $500."
No mention of the HD-XA1's price.
Main page content:
Not tonight darling, I'm online
By Adrian Turpin
Published: March 31 2006 15:19 | Last updated: March 31 2006 15:19
Who actually says: "I could care less about about my mother" when they mean "I care about my mother." You might have a case if this were true, but it just ain't so. It should never be confusing because it always takes its idiomatic meaning.
Since the phrase appears verbatim in the most reputable of all English dictionaries, and never actually means "I care about this", I would suggest that your confusion is your own fault.
That's like arguing that you can't say "that movie was wicked" because "wicked means "bad".
To quote the Oxford Dictionary:
-I (or he, she, etc.) couldn't (or also could) care less - used to express complete indifference : he couldn't care less about football.
It's idiomatic usage. It started as an ironic expression. But now it's a part of our language and no longer pronounced ironically.
Language changes. Get over it.
"Bit-by-bit copies are fine and good in theory, but that's for discs already in release, serving the languages for which the discs already have subtitles or alternative soundtracks. But by then, there's already been a brisk trade in bootlegs those films."
Not true. I sit in Thailand now, where guesthouses play pirated DVDs on a daily basis. Usually, the guesthouses leave the English subtitles on, so those the who want to watch the movie can hear over the conversation of the people who don't.
Unless the movies are really old ("The Last Emperor" and "Amadeus" were perfect), the subtitles are APPALLING. On almost every single one, there are TONS of errors. And these are public-release-DVD rips. They have full DVD menus and no screener warnings.
My favourite mistake is from "Memoirs of a Geisha", where at one point, according to the subtitles, the lead actress says, "I was a famous truck." I don't remember the real line, but it sure as hell wasn't that. I'm pretty sure the real line didn't contain a single one of those words.
A couple of times other times, I remember thinking "The subtitle guy watched this with the Chinese subtitles on, and translated them with Babelfish." The words were all correct, but the grammar was jumbled straight to hell, and if they had actually listened to the movie, there was no way that they could possibly think that that was what the actors were saying.
The pirated DVDs I've seen generally have more subtitle options than the real thing too. The ones I've picked up in Northern Laos have had at least English and Chinese, with most of them also having Thai, German and French.
It seems like the pirates are paying an "interpreter" to sit down with the Chinese version of the movie and scrawl down whatever the hell they think the actors are saying. Sometimes when the actors are speaking quickly, or using obscure idioms, the subtitles just stop altogether.
It's quite an interesting "industry".
They already had more than enough protection against hearing damage:
#1. The click wheel lets you change the volume from full to mute with one quick turn of the thumb.
#2. The "Hold" switch prevents the volume from changing when it's in your pocket.
#3. The "Sound Check" option, which normalizes the volume of all the songs.
#4. If you're among the white-earphone-wearing masses, the headphones that come with the iPod are so crappily designed that they fall right out of your ears if you take off the little black felt "earphone covers".
Actually, I thought France's problem with the iPod's sound system was that it came bundled with in-ear headphones. The iPod headphones are actually quite good if you leave the little black felt things on them, but the second you take them off (which most people seem to do), they fall half way out of your ear canal and the music sounds super soft and tinny. Then you have to crank the volume and jam them back in.
At any rate, this is just to make some politicians happy. You can easily accomplish the same affect as the new Volume Lock using just #1, #2 and #3. The only really new feature is that the volume can be controlled with a combination, which is touted on the website as a "parental control" option. Parental control? Oh, please.
The only other reason I can see for this is that update is that it gives Apple a simple way (i.e. through internet firmware updates) to control the max dB levels for every iPod in every country, just in case there are any hearing-protection laws passed.