IIRC, the manufacturer also has an SD Card 802.11b device that works with PalmOS 4.x upward. Bit odd considering that there's not a single PalmOS 4.x device that I can think of which supports an SD Card slot. OTOH, I mailed them asking to support PalmOS4.x with their MemoryStick device - benefitting users of slightly older Clies like my NR70 - but it would seem the request fell on deaf ears.
And the title of the first research project using this? "The Environmental Impact of Meeting the Power Requirements for an 1100-Node Dual-G5 Server Cluster: A Simulated Model"
Well, rice is definitely a commodity product. It's not a question of how people treat it, it's the sheer volume of consumption that defines that one.
Population density: Try comparing with a EU country like the UK, Belgium or Holland. Mind you, that's not an accurate measure of "crowdedness" because of the shortage of flat land in Japan. But it's the only measure I can think of.
Many businesses are moving out of Yokohama and shifting "back" to Tokyo because the Tokyo rents are that much cheaper these days due to the excess supply of new office space. There is absolutely no point in setting up shop in Yokohama when you can pay the same for the same floor space in Shinagawa. My company is no exception.
In the US, amost everything is cheaper than in most other developed countries. Yes, from your perspective fruits must seem very expensive.
I think the "expensive means better" mentality is still prevalent, but I don't think this relates to commodity goods such as rice. Johnny Walker is a luxury good and as such, I guess what you say is right - demand must have dropped off after the price cut.
Regarding population density, I think it's not too crowded in the countryside. Sure, it doesn't compare to the US midwest, but that's not comparing like for like. Take somewhere like the UK. It's probably a better comparison. Regarding companies moving in to Tokyo, that is ironically exactly what my company is planning on doing this year. It's where most of our customers are. Geographical proximity is still extremely important in Japanese business.
Funny thing about fruits. I shop around but strangely enough, I'm in Tokyo and I can find stuff that's reasonably priced. Sure, fruits are expensive as a whole but I can get 2 whole grapefruits for 50 yen. Bunch of bananas for 80 yen. Not bad at all by European standards. But it doesn't explain why you can't get the cheap stuff where you live so evidently YMMV.
EU/US were brought in just to put some perspective on things. There is not a country in the developed world that does not have protectionism in some form or other in agriculture. The argument is moot.
*Have you tried making sushi with Thai rice? Onigiri rice balls with saffran? Mochi with Chinese rice? It just doesn't work. Me? I would like cheaper Japanese rice. The solution is not just to import the stuff (although given time, that may help just a liiiittle.) Japan tried this in '93; a 5kg bad of Thai rice was 980 yen, compared to 3500 yen for Japanese rice (non-subsidised, FYI). The shops gave up stocking the imported stuff after a few months because it simply didn't sell. I should know; I bought the much cheaper imported stuff but for Japanese cooking (I was a bachelor in those days) it simply did not cut it.
*Land is in short supply in the cities. That's not because the countryside if full of subsidised rice paddies though. Land redistribution is possible only when industry and commerce move out from the overcrowded cities. They won't. The govenment tried it with Sendai and it flopped _Relatively_, land is still dirt cheap in the countryside (pun intended).
*Fruits are damn expensive. Are you saying that's because there's no land to grow them on, because it's all taken up by rice paddies? Tell you what, the fruit farmers have to be geographically near to their markets (i.e., cities) due to the short shelf-life of their produce. Land is expensive around cities, and there are no rice paddies here. That's why fruit is expensive in Tokyo.
Hell, I can live without watermelons but my BB connection... no way;o)
Pot calling the kettle black. In the US and Europe, you not only have protectionism in farming, you also have massive subsidies which are used to buy votes. In Japan, at least the politicians aren't relevant to the economy.
I wonder how much the record industry spends on legal fees, disseminating misinformation, bamboozling politicians and hiring a new 100-lb gorilla to head the RIAA every few months. If the record industry, as represented by the RIAA, pursue their current practice, they will eventually collapse due not just to declining sales but also to their inability to cut costs (including legal!) It's not because of the piracy itself; it's because in their total obsession with it, they are completely losing the customer focus. (What little they had in the first place.) Whatever, it looks like Apple and co., are willing take up the slack.
Maybe I'm missing the point or something but
mp3s are not "perfect digital copies" of copyrighted material because the compression is lossy. The original PCM data cannot be reconstructed from an mp3 so the loss in quality is permanent.
If you're talking about what the users call you, why not just give them your name? "Hi, I'm Joe. I work in IT." To your users, it doesn't really matter what your corporate title is.
What you term "vision" can be an impediment to flexibility. Sony don't know exactly what the consumers will eventually choose - or who will win the "war" - so they distribute the risks. It makes sound business sense. Do Matsushita or Siemens have a "vision". Phillps?
So you don't know who the CEO of Sony is. Well why should businesses be centered around one person's "vision" or ego? It's about survival. Read the journals; Idei (Sony's CEO) comes across as an articulate, forward-thinking and open-minded individual. What distinguishes him, I think, from many of those more prominent CEOs is that he seems to nurture his company rather than slap it around.
One decade on and Japan is still in a seemingly endless recession, yet companies are still spending about the _same_proportion_ of income on R&D. The thinking is different; you don't plant fewer seeds after a bad harvest.
If the discussion is about the Compact Disc as a medium, the RIAA has little relevance. As in the past, audio is supplied to us in whichever format runs with the mass market. LPs, tapes and CDs were/are all overpriced media that never got cheaper, even while they were being phased out.
Or are we talking about the audio content itself? CDs are fine as a delivery format but if the typical album contains a ratio of, say, 2 good tracks to 10 crap ones, therein lies the problem. I've been buying CDs for maybe 17 years now, and before that, LPs. In all my music-buying years, I have never once bought an album which contained all the tracks that I wanted. Sure, some tracks that I thought were "crap" initially, actually turned out to be cool later. But the point is that I didn't go out and buy the album for those "crap" tracks; I bought it for the "good" ones, which only account for a fraction of the album that I ended up paying for.
If, for 12 bux or so, I could pick and choose 12-15 tracks myself from a variety of artists on a variety of labels, then have them burned to a single CD and delivered to my doorstep Amazon-style, I'd be happy to splash out. The technology is there, the channels are there, and the industry has the resources to deliver. The will is missing.
Public works projects are commonplace during times of economic recession in order to keep people in jobs. Well, that's how the politicians' rhetoric goes anyway. So the Tokyo-Chiba tunnel served its purpose in helping to keep the construction industry afloat. (It's no coincidence that the construction industry has vested interests in government either.) That virtually nobody uses the tunnel is besides the point. Yeah it's a daft policy, particularly in the eyes of the Japanese public who have to pay for it. But there you go. We elect the morons who implement these policies.
The space program is something altogether different and it's hard to fathom the logic sometimes with respect to economics. The US had the largest national debt in the industrialized world during the 1980s, but it didn't stop them launching shuttles did it?
In-car TV & DVD already exist so what makes this any more of a distraction? The people who are gonna install this and use it while driving are the same people who'd otherwise mount a TV/DVD combo and watch it while driving. Some drivers will always find stupid things to do while driving. Nothing new here.
- Registering personal information at the police station is not something Japanese people do. I have no idea what this means.
- There are lots of words like "puraibashii" that have no Japanese equivalent but that's not to say the concept is unknown. The culture relies to a certain extent on "unsaid" rules which go deeper than language itself.
- Housing and employment do not require "family register" information. However, you raise a good point when it comes to marriage. Sometimes, it's been known that the parents of the bride- or husband-to-be will quietly hire a detective firm to check up on the other party's family past.
Japan's a fast changing society and there is a definite generation gap. In "traditional" Japan - the Japan portrayed by the original poster - people would have actually been more likely accept such an ID system without protest, to keep the "wa" (peace, harmony). It is precisely because Japan is changing that we are now starting to see people protest about these and other things. It's good to see people starting to give a sh*t at last.
What of the persistent rumours that OSX will be available for x86? We may never see it as open-source Linux code but it might reappear as a commercial Un*x product. Incidentally, Emagic developed a version of Logic 4.0 for BeOS 4 but scrapped it because of Be's precarious situation at the time. It means the GCC code is there already.
Yeah but the problem is you're still stuck with the keyboard and mouse for real-time manipulation, regarless of what the GUI looks like. At least by looking like the original 303/808/909, it's familiar to the musician. Get an inexpensive external controller like the Keyfax Phatboy.
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IIRC, the manufacturer also has an SD Card 802.11b device that works with PalmOS 4.x upward. Bit odd considering that there's not a single PalmOS 4.x device that I can think of which supports an SD Card slot. OTOH, I mailed them asking to support PalmOS4.x with their MemoryStick device - benefitting users of slightly older Clies like my NR70 - but it would seem the request fell on deaf ears.
And the title of the first research project using this? "The Environmental Impact of Meeting the Power Requirements for an 1100-Node Dual-G5 Server Cluster: A Simulated Model"
Population density: Try comparing with a EU country like the UK, Belgium or Holland. Mind you, that's not an accurate measure of "crowdedness" because of the shortage of flat land in Japan. But it's the only measure I can think of.
Many businesses are moving out of Yokohama and shifting "back" to Tokyo because the Tokyo rents are that much cheaper these days due to the excess supply of new office space. There is absolutely no point in setting up shop in Yokohama when you can pay the same for the same floor space in Shinagawa. My company is no exception.
In the US, amost everything is cheaper than in most other developed countries. Yes, from your perspective fruits must seem very expensive.
I think the "expensive means better" mentality is still prevalent, but I don't think this relates to commodity goods such as rice. Johnny Walker is a luxury good and as such, I guess what you say is right - demand must have dropped off after the price cut.
Regarding population density, I think it's not too crowded in the countryside. Sure, it doesn't compare to the US midwest, but that's not comparing like for like. Take somewhere like the UK. It's probably a better comparison. Regarding companies moving in to Tokyo, that is ironically exactly what my company is planning on doing this year. It's where most of our customers are. Geographical proximity is still extremely important in Japanese business.
Funny thing about fruits. I shop around but strangely enough, I'm in Tokyo and I can find stuff that's reasonably priced. Sure, fruits are expensive as a whole but I can get 2 whole grapefruits for 50 yen. Bunch of bananas for 80 yen. Not bad at all by European standards. But it doesn't explain why you can't get the cheap stuff where you live so evidently YMMV.
*Have you tried making sushi with Thai rice? Onigiri rice balls with saffran? Mochi with Chinese rice? It just doesn't work. Me? I would like cheaper Japanese rice. The solution is not just to import the stuff (although given time, that may help just a liiiittle.) Japan tried this in '93; a 5kg bad of Thai rice was 980 yen, compared to 3500 yen for Japanese rice (non-subsidised, FYI). The shops gave up stocking the imported stuff after a few months because it simply didn't sell. I should know; I bought the much cheaper imported stuff but for Japanese cooking (I was a bachelor in those days) it simply did not cut it.
*Land is in short supply in the cities. That's not because the countryside if full of subsidised rice paddies though. Land redistribution is possible only when industry and commerce move out from the overcrowded cities. They won't. The govenment tried it with Sendai and it flopped _Relatively_, land is still dirt cheap in the countryside (pun intended).
*Fruits are damn expensive. Are you saying that's because there's no land to grow them on, because it's all taken up by rice paddies? Tell you what, the fruit farmers have to be geographically near to their markets (i.e., cities) due to the short shelf-life of their produce. Land is expensive around cities, and there are no rice paddies here. That's why fruit is expensive in Tokyo.
Hell, I can live without watermelons but my BB connection... no way ;o)
Pot calling the kettle black. In the US and Europe, you not only have protectionism in farming, you also have massive subsidies which are used to buy votes. In Japan, at least the politicians aren't relevant to the economy.
I wonder how much the record industry spends on legal fees, disseminating misinformation, bamboozling politicians and hiring a new 100-lb gorilla to head the RIAA every few months. If the record industry, as represented by the RIAA, pursue their current practice, they will eventually collapse due not just to declining sales but also to their inability to cut costs (including legal!) It's not because of the piracy itself; it's because in their total obsession with it, they are completely losing the customer focus. (What little they had in the first place.) Whatever, it looks like Apple and co., are willing take up the slack.
Maybe I'm missing the point or something but mp3s are not "perfect digital copies" of copyrighted material because the compression is lossy. The original PCM data cannot be reconstructed from an mp3 so the loss in quality is permanent.
If you're talking about what the users call you, why not just give them your name? "Hi, I'm Joe. I work in IT." To your users, it doesn't really matter what your corporate title is.
What you term "vision" can be an impediment to flexibility. Sony don't know exactly what the consumers will eventually choose - or who will win the "war" - so they distribute the risks. It makes sound business sense. Do Matsushita or Siemens have a "vision". Phillps?
So you don't know who the CEO of Sony is. Well why should businesses be centered around one person's "vision" or ego? It's about survival. Read the journals; Idei (Sony's CEO) comes across as an articulate, forward-thinking and open-minded individual. What distinguishes him, I think, from many of those more prominent CEOs is that he seems to nurture his company rather than slap it around.
One decade on and Japan is still in a seemingly endless recession, yet companies are still spending about the _same_proportion_ of income on R&D. The thinking is different; you don't plant fewer seeds after a bad harvest.
Or are we talking about the audio content itself? CDs are fine as a delivery format but if the typical album contains a ratio of, say, 2 good tracks to 10 crap ones, therein lies the problem. I've been buying CDs for maybe 17 years now, and before that, LPs. In all my music-buying years, I have never once bought an album which contained all the tracks that I wanted. Sure, some tracks that I thought were "crap" initially, actually turned out to be cool later. But the point is that I didn't go out and buy the album for those "crap" tracks; I bought it for the "good" ones, which only account for a fraction of the album that I ended up paying for.
If, for 12 bux or so, I could pick and choose 12-15 tracks myself from a variety of artists on a variety of labels, then have them burned to a single CD and delivered to my doorstep Amazon-style, I'd be happy to splash out. The technology is there, the channels are there, and the industry has the resources to deliver. The will is missing.
According to this, it's about an hour.
Public works projects are commonplace during times of economic recession in order to keep people in jobs. Well, that's how the politicians' rhetoric goes anyway. So the Tokyo-Chiba tunnel served its purpose in helping to keep the construction industry afloat. (It's no coincidence that the construction industry has vested interests in government either.) That virtually nobody uses the tunnel is besides the point. Yeah it's a daft policy, particularly in the eyes of the Japanese public who have to pay for it. But there you go. We elect the morons who implement these policies.
The space program is something altogether different and it's hard to fathom the logic sometimes with respect to economics. The US had the largest national debt in the industrialized world during the 1980s, but it didn't stop them launching shuttles did it?
In-car TV & DVD already exist so what makes this any more of a distraction? The people who are gonna install this and use it while driving are the same people who'd otherwise mount a TV/DVD combo and watch it while driving. Some drivers will always find stupid things to do while driving. Nothing new here.
- Registering personal information at the police station is not something Japanese people do. I have no idea what this means.
- There are lots of words like "puraibashii" that have no Japanese equivalent but that's not to say the concept is unknown. The culture relies to a certain extent on "unsaid" rules which go deeper than language itself.
- Housing and employment do not require "family register" information. However, you raise a good point when it comes to marriage. Sometimes, it's been known that the parents of the bride- or husband-to-be will quietly hire a detective firm to check up on the other party's family past.
Japan's a fast changing society and there is a definite generation gap. In "traditional" Japan - the Japan portrayed by the original poster - people would have actually been more likely accept such an ID system without protest, to keep the "wa" (peace, harmony). It is precisely because Japan is changing that we are now starting to see people protest about these and other things. It's good to see people starting to give a sh*t at last.
What of the persistent rumours that OSX will be available for x86? We may never see it as open-source Linux code but it might reappear as a commercial Un*x product. Incidentally, Emagic developed a version of Logic 4.0 for BeOS 4 but scrapped it because of Be's precarious situation at the time. It means the GCC code is there already.
Yeah but the problem is you're still stuck with the keyboard and mouse for real-time manipulation, regarless of what the GUI looks like. At least by looking like the original 303/808/909, it's familiar to the musician. Get an inexpensive external controller like the Keyfax Phatboy.