While it's true that the iPod has a much hipper brand image than the other MP3 players, I think it's more accurate to say that the iPod *has* a brand image, whereas other players have almost no image whatsoever. How many other MP3/Ogg players can you name off the top of your head? I'm a geek, but I couldn't think of any offhand other than the Nomad, and that only because of Taco's infamous "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." comment about the iPod.
When was the last time you saw Nomad, iRiver, Archos, Yepp, or Rio air TV adverts? Have U2 cross-promote them with a special edition player? How about even any print ads in "regular people" publications like Time or Newsweek? I think I've only ever seen those for the Sony and Dell players.
If a geek like me is so ignorant of iPod competitors, imagine how little any non-geek would know. I doubt most people could name one rival MP3 player, let alone know what "Ogg Vorbis" is. It's not because they're stupid, it's because you have to actively go looking for information on such things, whereas the iPod is right there in front of everyone's faces.
That's way more than just 'hipsters', the iPod is now safely middle-class.
I think the iPod is now the Dremel Tool of the MP3 player market; sure, there are lots of competitors, but anyone who has not read up on the market can only think of the leading brand. And it fills is niche so well, with a thriving accesory market, that other brands would find it almost impossible to break through.
Oh come on, how is a non-geek supposed to figure out that it's a bad idea?
I actually know a girl with a null@ address (no I won't tell you the ISP). She's sort of a 'geek' but more in art than in computers. I think she chose null because it sounds cute and has an interesting meaning, even outside of the computer field.
I don't think it's stupid for people not familiar with computer geek culture to not know that 'null' is often used for testing or system purposes, any more than I would expect a non-native English speaker to know that 'John Doe' is an example name.
I think you are confusing the question of whether something is personally 'admirable' with the question of whether it is 'effective'. One is something that an priest or romantic poet would ask, the other is something an scientist or engineer would ask.
Reading your post, it sounds like you want scientists to be the ascetic monks of rationalism. Well, that's just not right. Scientists are not there to be your personal heroes, they are there to do science. If having higher wages in the field means having more and more qualified scientists, then that is good at a societal level, regardless of whether you personally like them. If you think that those people scrounging in the garbage for parts are so admirable, have you tithed any money to them, or donated your things?
Imagine how much more that man could accomplish if he didn't have to waste time dumpster-diving.
On the other hand, while you may like to think that there would be poor tinkerers doing science in their garage if science became a wageless profession, real scientific work would be restricted to the handful of independently wealthy people(usually born into a wealthy family), just like in the 19th century and before. Ironically, it would be only the people who seek wealth (who you seem to dislike) who will end up propping up science. Work in any field takes money - you can pay for it with wages for the middle class, or the upper class's personal wealth, but one way or another someone has to pay for labor, equipment, and space.
It reminds me of the days when amatuerism was made a virtue in sports and music, because the upper classes did not want to compete in these fields with 'mere commoners'. The amatuerism requirement meant that only the independently wealthy or those funded by the rich could even compete. Since then, we have found that people from poor backgrounds can excel in these fields if they are able to earn money doing it.
One of the good things about science is that it is results- and evidence-oriented. It is not like art or religion which says that your inner motives matter as much as your results. If some scientist works for money and their colleague works for love of the work, it is their results that will be judged against the others, not whether one is 'more admirable' than the other. That is Romanticism, not Science.
So in closing, making scientists work for piss-poor wages makes for good presonal drama and character, but is bad for science and society in general because it would lower the overall output of the scientific community.
I think your post touches on one difference between the U.S. and the Japanese market - Americans will tend towards a "more X for my money" approach, where X is a quantifiable variable like size, processor power, or horsepower and ignore unquantifiables like aesthetics and 'feel', whereas the Japanese will take an approach that emphasizes the unquatifiable feel or usability of a device, and less on getting "more" of whatever is being sold.
Take your assertion that: most large manufacturers sell a model that is basically the same as a competing model other than interface, casing, support, build quality, and stuff like that.
Most Japanese will look at that and think, "you mean, the same except for everything that matters". It's like saying, "A croissant and a bagel are the same thing, just cooked differently"
Also, there is a tendency in America to think that "there is no such thing as too much of a good thing", so you buy things in huge portions or sizes because you're "getting more from your money", even if you don't use it all. In Japan on the other hand, there is a cultural assumption that the smaller something is, the better made it must be, because it takes skill or artistry to shrink something down, but it takes only resources to make something bigger.
And that's just setting aside the fact that Apple are masters of marketing and design, and Microsoft are not noted for either, and mishandled the Japanese Xbox release even by their own standards.
WTF are you talking about? In the protests that have erupted since the cartoons were published, over 40 protesters have died, none on the 'western' side. It's worse than Kent State or the Boston Massacre, but all I hear around here is whining about how western media is being 'oppressed' because some editors don't have the balls or hatred to print some cartoons.
Frankly, muslims have as much reason to protest now as people did during the Vietnam war, and we all know that sometimes got violent and radical. And for all you who supported the Vietnam war, how would you like to have had 'the west' judged based on the unwashed hippies burning American flags? What is with the double standard that says Muslims are violent savages for their reaction to the west, but the west was not for the reaction of violent leftists to precieved injustices during the '60s?
As a non-muslim, I have to say that there are not many Islamic countries I would really like to live in, but I have no illusions about the supposed inherent superiority of the west - you guys are just as capable of savagery as those guys are.
Actually, I heard HP used to make LED watches that would light up when you shook your wrist, instead of pushing a button, which means you can do it one-handed, unlike the other watch.
I wish I could find a watch that does that today, it's a PITA turning on the light everytime I need to see it in the dark, esp. if I'm carrying something in my other hand.
The one other feature I'd most like to see in a watch is the thinnest band and buckle I can find. It hurts my hand when I type with the watch on and my wrists are resting on the table or keyboard, so I usually take my watch off when I type now. Would be nice not to have to do that.
Does anyone know of a watch with these features today?
"Sure, I'll boycott GTA - if you'll do me some 'favors'" *nudge nudge, wink wink*
Well, finally a group I can have sympathy for. Seriously, the depiction in GTA of hookers is not exactly positive, and while it mirror's society's treatment of prostitutes, it's not sommething to encourage. Running over hookers seems to e pretty common, even if it's not a stated goal in the game.
And to other posters talking about how cops and gangsters are depicted in the game - there are enough positive depictions of both in other media (too much for gangsters, really), so they don't really need them.
In closing: hooray for hookers!! (No, I've never used their services. I swear.)
(Say, does anyone know where to contact, er, beautiful professinal women in the Portland, OR area?)
I admittedly have not RTFA, but there are many simulators that are more than just sitting in front of an X-box playing Halo. Even many video games actually simulate uncertainty of target and friendly fire these days, but there are sims made especially for the military that go a lot further.
In particular, there are simulators where you have a large projector screen, and a laser-based weapon similar to the MILES gear that can use blank shots. Some police agencies use such a system, and run scenarios where they show people as a cop would be expected to interact with, and the 'player' has to make decisions on whether to shoot or not based on their actions. It's not just a case of playing 'Duck hunt' on an NES.
I think the Australian Army used a similar system to train for their deplyment in East Timor, and the U.S. is using them to train people on convoy protection. They have sets that have an Humvee with turret, and screens that can simulate nearly any environment. There's a good article on the system at wired.
Not that it would be a complete replacement for actual field training, but sims are faster to set up, take less room than a field, and have advantages that are hard to replicate with large field excercises.
No, that is correct, there is a stigma attached to suicide in Japan based on the association of suicide with shameful acts. It is automatically assumed that a suicide was because the person couldn't handle the pressures of life or shame about something.
It is similar to the stigma attached to killing in western(and eastern) society; if you tell someone that a person had killed someone, they would automatically assume the worst, until you clarify that it was self defense, or as a soldier, etc. Just because killing people in those circumstances is considered okay does not mean there is no stigma against killing people in western society. The concept of suicide in Japanese society is similar - it's sometimes seen as okay, but not in ordinary circumstances.
Having lived in Japan, and having family that's Japanese, I would have to dispute your second assertion. While it's true that suicide is more 'accepted' than in the west, it carries a somewhat heavy stigma in Japan.
In Japanese history, many people commited suicide for one reason or another, but mostly it was to escape shame and dishonor after having been disgraced. A general who had lost an important battle for his lord, a woman who had been raped, or a samurai who had disgraced his master would be expected to commit suicide if he/she could not handle the shame of other's judgements of them. A famous ghost story tells of a maidservant who killed herself by throwing herself down a well after she broke some of her master's favorite chinaware.
Basically, suicide still carries with it a connotation of 'having fucked up', or 'running away from judgement', so people might be ashamed to admit that one of their family members commited suicide. Of course, there are cases where it's seen as more noble to kill yourself than live - particularly when there is a precieved injustice against you, or you did not cause the bad event that led you to someone having to commit suicide. If you kill yourself to avoid capture in battle, that is seen as more honorable than being captured.
Now, the kamikaze are an exception, they're not seen as commting suicide, more like having gone on a suicide mission from which there was no turning back. I think they're still called 'special attack squadrons' over there.
But yeah, your first assertion is correct, the Japanese attitude on mental illness and homelessness is akin to America in the '50s.
the Viccodin didn't do much for me and I ended up not taking it because it screwed with my attention span, which was bad when I was drilling myself through AP Calculus and English among other things (girlfriend included!).
You were "drilling your way" through your girlfriend? Ouch. Did you at least give *her* some Vicodin?
WTF? I realize that those laws passed by congress are what ultimately gave equal rights to women and minorities, but you might want to ask yourself why in the absence of those laws, was it commonly ruled that women and minorities did not have rights?
IIRC, the constitution allowed the Fed. Gov to end the importation of slaves, and counted slaves as only 3/5ths of a person for the census, but it did not specifically say that they did not have any rights. In particular, I would consider the fact that one could be born into slavery to be against the idea of 'due process of law', let alone the legitimatizing of what was basically kidnapping and torture.
And I thought one of the principles of the US consitution was that rights are not given by the government or constitution, but exist independently to be asserted by the individual. Certainly, the colonists had no right to rebel under the British constitution, yet asserted their rights anyway - I see no reason why blacks or women should not have had their rights recognized, or why the law had to presume that they did not in the first place.
I am not an engineer, but I have taken some physics classes, and I have studied linguistics.
I would have agreed with the guy is he had only said, "technical or scientific definition", instead of "the common definition". As a linguist, I must point out that it does in fact meet the common definiton.
In common usage, 'explosion' can refer to any violent conflageration or fire. For example, one often hears of an apartment fire that 'exploded out of control', or the 'Hindenburg explosion', or something similar. I think you and the fellow in the story hang out with too many engineers, as you guys both confuse the 'common definition' with the 'engineering definition'. Unlike technical definitions or jargon, real languages like English have their words follow people's usage, so if enough people call what happened to the Challenger an 'explosion', then that becomes the definition of the word.
Heck, even these are accurate: "Yugoslavia exploded into violence in the 1990s", "Nixon exploded with rage".
He would have been right if only he had said "scientific definition".
I know you're joking, but really, it wouldn't work - because they already have kickass PVRs. That Sony beast has 11 tuners (1 sat, 10 analog broadcast), 1 Gig RAM, 1 TB HDD, built-in streaming server (WLANa/g, LAN), DVD+-R/RW/RAM - all for 27,9800 yen, or $2,421.88. Oh, and it has an Intel Pent-D 820 and GeForce 6200(256MB).
Or This thing, which I think is a pure PVR with no PC, 8 tuners, (Cable and broadcast), up to 2 TB HDD, $776.95.
Somehow, I doubt they need to import giant jerry-rigged American PVRs.
oh, and why is it that Japan makes products that are *so* much more attractive looking than American ones? Only Apple seems to match them in aesthetics...
What the hell? I could just as easily say "What is 'Western Culture', aside from the forced subserviance of the world to the ideals of propertied elites under the banner of religious-nationalist mercantilism on one hand, and the promised liberation from it through Marxist-Leninist collective fascism on the other."
You have to look at the negative as well as the positive history of the west, and that includes Columbus, Cortez, Hegel, Napoleon, Marx, Hitler, and a whole host of nastiness.
Not that I am saying any non-western culture is better, just that you guys had a lot of guys fighting against 'enlightenment values and science' as well as for them.
Heck, I'll be happy if there were no malicious users trying to screw it up for fun.
Having to live in a apartment full of college students, I've found that some 'clever' assholes will just press every button past the floor they want to go to. This makes the elevator make a stop at each floor, wait for someone to get in, then go on to the next one. This can take up to 5 minutes on my 16-story building, because stopping, opening the door, and waiting take more time than the travel between floors. Until it reaches the top(or bottom) floor, it's essentially under a denial-of-service attack.
This, obviously, gives no benefit to the asshole at all, but they do it out of the satisfaction of knowing that they're causing a disruption.
It might be fixable if they put in a motion sensor to sense when there is someone in an elevator, and clearing the floor requests when there is no one there.
Windmill presents choking hazard for children aged 0 to 3. Do not operate heavy machinery while under the influence of windmill. Pregnant women should consult doctor before taking windmill. For oral and underarm use only. Not for rectal use. Do not mix with alcohol, bleach, or Don Quixote.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you mean, "ZELDA!!!!!!!"
While it's true that the iPod has a much hipper brand image than the other MP3 players, I think it's more accurate to say that the iPod *has* a brand image, whereas other players have almost no image whatsoever. How many other MP3/Ogg players can you name off the top of your head? I'm a geek, but I couldn't think of any offhand other than the Nomad, and that only because of Taco's infamous "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." comment about the iPod.
When was the last time you saw Nomad, iRiver, Archos, Yepp, or Rio air TV adverts? Have U2 cross-promote them with a special edition player? How about even any print ads in "regular people" publications like Time or Newsweek? I think I've only ever seen those for the Sony and Dell players.
If a geek like me is so ignorant of iPod competitors, imagine how little any non-geek would know. I doubt most people could name one rival MP3 player, let alone know what "Ogg Vorbis" is. It's not because they're stupid, it's because you have to actively go looking for information on such things, whereas the iPod is right there in front of everyone's faces.
And for the record, the iPod sold 22 million units in 2005 alone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipod#iPod_sales
That's way more than just 'hipsters', the iPod is now safely middle-class.
I think the iPod is now the Dremel Tool of the MP3 player market; sure, there are lots of competitors, but anyone who has not read up on the market can only think of the leading brand. And it fills is niche so well, with a thriving accesory market, that other brands would find it almost impossible to break through.
Oh come on, how is a non-geek supposed to figure out that it's a bad idea?
I actually know a girl with a null@ address (no I won't tell you the ISP). She's sort of a 'geek' but more in art than in computers. I think she chose null because it sounds cute and has an interesting meaning, even outside of the computer field.
I don't think it's stupid for people not familiar with computer geek culture to not know that 'null' is often used for testing or system purposes, any more than I would expect a non-native English speaker to know that 'John Doe' is an example name.
I think you are confusing the question of whether something is personally 'admirable' with the question of whether it is 'effective'. One is something that an priest or romantic poet would ask, the other is something an scientist or engineer would ask.
Reading your post, it sounds like you want scientists to be the ascetic monks of rationalism. Well, that's just not right. Scientists are not there to be your personal heroes, they are there to do science. If having higher wages in the field means having more and more qualified scientists, then that is good at a societal level, regardless of whether you personally like them. If you think that those people scrounging in the garbage for parts are so admirable, have you tithed any money to them, or donated your things?
Imagine how much more that man could accomplish if he didn't have to waste time dumpster-diving.
On the other hand, while you may like to think that there would be poor tinkerers doing science in their garage if science became a wageless profession, real scientific work would be restricted to the handful of independently wealthy people(usually born into a wealthy family), just like in the 19th century and before. Ironically, it would be only the people who seek wealth (who you seem to dislike) who will end up propping up science. Work in any field takes money - you can pay for it with wages for the middle class, or the upper class's personal wealth, but one way or another someone has to pay for labor, equipment, and space.
It reminds me of the days when amatuerism was made a virtue in sports and music, because the upper classes did not want to compete in these fields with 'mere commoners'. The amatuerism requirement meant that only the independently wealthy or those funded by the rich could even compete. Since then, we have found that people from poor backgrounds can excel in these fields if they are able to earn money doing it.
One of the good things about science is that it is results- and evidence-oriented. It is not like art or religion which says that your inner motives matter as much as your results. If some scientist works for money and their colleague works for love of the work, it is their results that will be judged against the others, not whether one is 'more admirable' than the other. That is Romanticism, not Science.
So in closing, making scientists work for piss-poor wages makes for good presonal drama and character, but is bad for science and society in general because it would lower the overall output of the scientific community.
I think your post touches on one difference between the U.S. and the Japanese market - Americans will tend towards a "more X for my money" approach, where X is a quantifiable variable like size, processor power, or horsepower and ignore unquantifiables like aesthetics and 'feel', whereas the Japanese will take an approach that emphasizes the unquatifiable feel or usability of a device, and less on getting "more" of whatever is being sold.
Take your assertion that: most large manufacturers sell a model that is basically the same as a competing model other than interface, casing, support, build quality, and stuff like that.
Most Japanese will look at that and think, "you mean, the same except for everything that matters". It's like saying, "A croissant and a bagel are the same thing, just cooked differently"
Also, there is a tendency in America to think that "there is no such thing as too much of a good thing", so you buy things in huge portions or sizes because you're "getting more from your money", even if you don't use it all. In Japan on the other hand, there is a cultural assumption that the smaller something is, the better made it must be, because it takes skill or artistry to shrink something down, but it takes only resources to make something bigger.
And that's just setting aside the fact that Apple are masters of marketing and design, and Microsoft are not noted for either, and mishandled the Japanese Xbox release even by their own standards.
Have you tried wasting away in Margaritaville? I usually forget how I got there, so maybe it can help you. But then, maybe it's your own damn fault.
A cheeseburger in Paradise usually helps me forget these things, too.
WTF are you talking about? In the protests that have erupted since the cartoons were published, over 40 protesters have died, none on the 'western' side. It's worse than Kent State or the Boston Massacre, but all I hear around here is whining about how western media is being 'oppressed' because some editors don't have the balls or hatred to print some cartoons.
Frankly, muslims have as much reason to protest now as people did during the Vietnam war, and we all know that sometimes got violent and radical. And for all you who supported the Vietnam war, how would you like to have had 'the west' judged based on the unwashed hippies burning American flags? What is with the double standard that says Muslims are violent savages for their reaction to the west, but the west was not for the reaction of violent leftists to precieved injustices during the '60s?
As a non-muslim, I have to say that there are not many Islamic countries I would really like to live in, but I have no illusions about the supposed inherent superiority of the west - you guys are just as capable of savagery as those guys are.
Actually, I heard HP used to make LED watches that would light up when you shook your wrist, instead of pushing a button, which means you can do it one-handed, unlike the other watch.
I wish I could find a watch that does that today, it's a PITA turning on the light everytime I need to see it in the dark, esp. if I'm carrying something in my other hand.
The one other feature I'd most like to see in a watch is the thinnest band and buckle I can find. It hurts my hand when I type with the watch on and my wrists are resting on the table or keyboard, so I usually take my watch off when I type now. Would be nice not to have to do that.
Does anyone know of a watch with these features today?
1!
Uh, you do realize that 'Therapist' spells - wait for it - Therapist?
Yes, I've pointed that out to my therapist, who found it rather amusing.
Granted, I would not post too much personal info online regardless of what the other dude was called, but your example was not really all that good.
"Sure, I'll boycott GTA - if you'll do me some 'favors'" *nudge nudge, wink wink*
Well, finally a group I can have sympathy for. Seriously, the depiction in GTA of hookers is not exactly positive, and while it mirror's society's treatment of prostitutes, it's not sommething to encourage. Running over hookers seems to e pretty common, even if it's not a stated goal in the game.
And to other posters talking about how cops and gangsters are depicted in the game - there are enough positive depictions of both in other media (too much for gangsters, really), so they don't really need them.
In closing: hooray for hookers!! (No, I've never used their services. I swear.)
(Say, does anyone know where to contact, er, beautiful professinal women in the Portland, OR area?)
I admittedly have not RTFA, but there are many simulators that are more than just sitting in front of an X-box playing Halo. Even many video games actually simulate uncertainty of target and friendly fire these days, but there are sims made especially for the military that go a lot further.
In particular, there are simulators where you have a large projector screen, and a laser-based weapon similar to the MILES gear that can use blank shots. Some police agencies use such a system, and run scenarios where they show people as a cop would be expected to interact with, and the 'player' has to make decisions on whether to shoot or not based on their actions. It's not just a case of playing 'Duck hunt' on an NES.
I think the Australian Army used a similar system to train for their deplyment in East Timor, and the U.S. is using them to train people on convoy protection. They have sets that have an Humvee with turret, and screens that can simulate nearly any environment. There's a good article on the system at wired.
Not that it would be a complete replacement for actual field training, but sims are faster to set up, take less room than a field, and have advantages that are hard to replicate with large field excercises.
No, that is correct, there is a stigma attached to suicide in Japan based on the association of suicide with shameful acts. It is automatically assumed that a suicide was because the person couldn't handle the pressures of life or shame about something.
It is similar to the stigma attached to killing in western(and eastern) society; if you tell someone that a person had killed someone, they would automatically assume the worst, until you clarify that it was self defense, or as a soldier, etc. Just because killing people in those circumstances is considered okay does not mean there is no stigma against killing people in western society. The concept of suicide in Japanese society is similar - it's sometimes seen as okay, but not in ordinary circumstances.
Having lived in Japan, and having family that's Japanese, I would have to dispute your second assertion. While it's true that suicide is more 'accepted' than in the west, it carries a somewhat heavy stigma in Japan.
In Japanese history, many people commited suicide for one reason or another, but mostly it was to escape shame and dishonor after having been disgraced. A general who had lost an important battle for his lord, a woman who had been raped, or a samurai who had disgraced his master would be expected to commit suicide if he/she could not handle the shame of other's judgements of them. A famous ghost story tells of a maidservant who killed herself by throwing herself down a well after she broke some of her master's favorite chinaware.
Basically, suicide still carries with it a connotation of 'having fucked up', or 'running away from judgement', so people might be ashamed to admit that one of their family members commited suicide. Of course, there are cases where it's seen as more noble to kill yourself than live - particularly when there is a precieved injustice against you, or you did not cause the bad event that led you to someone having to commit suicide. If you kill yourself to avoid capture in battle, that is seen as more honorable than being captured.
Now, the kamikaze are an exception, they're not seen as commting suicide, more like having gone on a suicide mission from which there was no turning back. I think they're still called 'special attack squadrons' over there.
But yeah, your first assertion is correct, the Japanese attitude on mental illness and homelessness is akin to America in the '50s.
Shit, how do I hang myself with 802.11b?
On a separate note, does this mean we'll be Slashdotting a bridge? It'll look like a horde of lemmings leaping to their deaths, I suppose.
the Viccodin didn't do much for me and I ended up not taking it because it screwed with my attention span, which was bad when I was drilling myself through AP Calculus and English among other things (girlfriend included!).
You were "drilling your way" through your girlfriend? Ouch. Did you at least give *her* some Vicodin?
WTF? I realize that those laws passed by congress are what ultimately gave equal rights to women and minorities, but you might want to ask yourself why in the absence of those laws, was it commonly ruled that women and minorities did not have rights?
IIRC, the constitution allowed the Fed. Gov to end the importation of slaves, and counted slaves as only 3/5ths of a person for the census, but it did not specifically say that they did not have any rights. In particular, I would consider the fact that one could be born into slavery to be against the idea of 'due process of law', let alone the legitimatizing of what was basically kidnapping and torture.
And I thought one of the principles of the US consitution was that rights are not given by the government or constitution, but exist independently to be asserted by the individual. Certainly, the colonists had no right to rebel under the British constitution, yet asserted their rights anyway - I see no reason why blacks or women should not have had their rights recognized, or why the law had to presume that they did not in the first place.
Re: "Explode"
I am not an engineer, but I have taken some physics classes, and I have studied linguistics.
I would have agreed with the guy is he had only said, "technical or scientific definition", instead of "the common definition". As a linguist, I must point out that it does in fact meet the common definiton.
In common usage, 'explosion' can refer to any violent conflageration or fire. For example, one often hears of an apartment fire that 'exploded out of control', or the 'Hindenburg explosion', or something similar. I think you and the fellow in the story hang out with too many engineers, as you guys both confuse the 'common definition' with the 'engineering definition'. Unlike technical definitions or jargon, real languages like English have their words follow people's usage, so if enough people call what happened to the Challenger an 'explosion', then that becomes the definition of the word.
Heck, even these are accurate: "Yugoslavia exploded into violence in the 1990s", "Nixon exploded with rage".
He would have been right if only he had said "scientific definition".
Dunno if that was a joke or a mistake, the typo is in the extra 'I' in 'Itanium' - psst, it's not 'Iitanium', guys.
I know you're joking, but really, it wouldn't work - because they already have kickass PVRs. That Sony beast has 11 tuners (1 sat, 10 analog broadcast), 1 Gig RAM, 1 TB HDD, built-in streaming server (WLANa/g, LAN), DVD+-R/RW/RAM - all for 27,9800 yen, or $2,421.88. Oh, and it has an Intel Pent-D 820 and GeForce 6200(256MB).
Or This thing, which I think is a pure PVR with no PC, 8 tuners, (Cable and broadcast), up to 2 TB HDD, $776.95.
Somehow, I doubt they need to import giant jerry-rigged American PVRs.
oh, and why is it that Japan makes products that are *so* much more attractive looking than American ones? Only Apple seems to match them in aesthetics...
Better yet, let's all submit searches for "Bush Twins Porn", "Jenna Barbara lesbian sex", and best of all, "Clinton Bush gangbang". Quick, everyone click on them to increase their ranking!
Actually, it occurs to me that if they are going to be reading searches, we could send them messages directly, like "Chelsea is hotter than the Bush twins". How about "Hey Mr President stop looking over my shoulder at my porn"
What the hell? I could just as easily say "What is 'Western Culture', aside from the forced subserviance of the world to the ideals of propertied elites under the banner of religious-nationalist mercantilism on one hand, and the promised liberation from it through Marxist-Leninist collective fascism on the other."
You have to look at the negative as well as the positive history of the west, and that includes Columbus, Cortez, Hegel, Napoleon, Marx, Hitler, and a whole host of nastiness.
Not that I am saying any non-western culture is better, just that you guys had a lot of guys fighting against 'enlightenment values and science' as well as for them.
Heck, I'll be happy if there were no malicious users trying to screw it up for fun.
Having to live in a apartment full of college students, I've found that some 'clever' assholes will just press every button past the floor they want to go to. This makes the elevator make a stop at each floor, wait for someone to get in, then go on to the next one. This can take up to 5 minutes on my 16-story building, because stopping, opening the door, and waiting take more time than the travel between floors. Until it reaches the top(or bottom) floor, it's essentially under a denial-of-service attack.
This, obviously, gives no benefit to the asshole at all, but they do it out of the satisfaction of knowing that they're causing a disruption.
It might be fixable if they put in a motion sensor to sense when there is someone in an elevator, and clearing the floor requests when there is no one there.
Windmill presents choking hazard for children aged 0 to 3.
Do not operate heavy machinery while under the influence of windmill.
Pregnant women should consult doctor before taking windmill.
For oral and underarm use only. Not for rectal use.
Do not mix with alcohol, bleach, or Don Quixote.
Maybe they should call them something else, like say... GNU Markets?