"Twenty-one hundred" for 2100 is just fine, as is "twenty-one forty-six" (because you're just omitting the word "hundred"). The "k" stuff only works until 2099, when it stops being an advantage. Then we go back to what we did in the nineteen-hundreds, which is to take out the word "hundred". In the current century, there's no word "hundred" that needs to be abbreviated.
"Two thousand sixteen", the most natural way to say the number, uses three syllables for the "20.." part.
How can we make that shorter and easier to say? Using "twenty..." sounds a bit silly as it doesn't flow well and there's no "twenty hundred" to abbreviate from. The retro hipster in me wants to see something with "two ought" in it, but let's face it, the "2k" thing saves a syllable and is already popular, and has a futuristic, metric/computer feel to it. It's perfect.
(Now can we get started on actually bringing 2k10 into the "metric age"? It was disappointing to pick up Clarke's classic on the first day of 2010 and see him make a wrong prediction in the first sentence!)
Japanese banks are notorious for denying loans even to long-term residents of Japan if they don't have Japanese nationality or permanent residence (which can be hard to get). I've lived in Japan for eleven years, and, when buying my first home last year, actually found myself looking into borrowing the money from a bank in Australia! Despite having 90% of the purchase price in cash, you can't even get in the door unless you meet the requirements; it's not like the sliding scale of credit scores.
It hurts to see those nice cheap rates posted in the windows of the banks, knowing that they're for other people and not for you.
Here in Japan, you have to pay an insane amount of money to write a personal check (I don't even know anyone who has such an account), and they charge through the nose for bank transfers, which is what everyone uses.
To an account holder at the same bank, you generally pay Y105 ($1.15) at minimum -- the odd amount is because there's a 5% consumption tax on that fee -- and a Y210 minimum to another bank. This is for electronic transfers; triple those numbers if you want to do it through a teller.
I hate having to pay these fees -- parting with more than 1-2% of my money can add up. Exercise for the reader: assuming 0.01% annual interest earned on a savings account, how much money would you have to have in your account to earn enough interest to offset the fee on a single bank transfer per month? (Hint: it's frightneningly high.)
If they want to get rid of checks, pass a law making free bank transfers a guaranteed right for account holders. Watch people give up their checkbooks in a flash.
Driving IS MOST certainly a right because one is unable to function in our society normally without the ability to drive.
In that case (and forgive me for picking on you, GButler; you're just one of many who hold this opinion), shouldn't the visually impaired have all the extra privileges (hiring preferences and the like) that are normally granted to other disabled people? These people (of which I am one) cannot drive automobiles no matter how conscientious and careful they may be -- they're refused at the eye-test stage. Remind me again why I should have sympathy for some oaf with multiple DWIs, or even a single instance of inattentive driving with a cell phone in hand!
There's one "majority" that's more privileged than white people, or the rich, or any other favored group you care to name, ever were: people who can drive cars.
"All employees must have a valid driver's license and access to an automobile" is (or seems to be) a legal clause in an employment contract, and "Our company does not discriminate against anyone when hiring, except the visually impaired, whom we refuse to hire" is ludicrous on its face, yet the first directly implies the second. A past employer of mine had the first clause, andnoticed after I'd been hired that I didn't adhere to it, and while I didn't get fired, I had to expend social capital to stay employed.
By further restricting the "rights" of unsafe drivers, we do two things: (1) make the roads safer, obviously, and (2) give society a much-needed reminder that not everyone can operate an automobile, and that running a business that requires the use of an automobile for access is discriminatory. As someone who can never benefit from lax driving rules, my best interest is for even the slightest bit of unsafe driving to be punished severely -- get spotted driving with a cell phone, lose your license forever. What? Too harsh? Well, I was born with the "lose your license forever" restriction. These cell phone users who don't respect the dangers of driving unsafely can come see how the other half lives.
I myself am partially blind, and while my eyesight is good enough to drive, I wouldn't want to depend on a car for my daily commute and the roads are just too dangerous to be driving on every day at 30+ miles per hour. I'll stick to bicycling and walking.
Or so I thought. During my last summer after college, I decided to learn to drive, just in case I'd ever need to in a pinch.
Those years from 17-21 where I rode a bicycle everywhere left me massively over-prepared in terms of alertness and defensiveness. I drove, in the words of the instructor, "like the other cars couldn't see me". SOP when on a bicycle!
I also appreciated the positioning of traffic lights and road markings, the heights of street signs, etc., etc. in a way that someone who had no experience not being in an automobile never could. All that stuff is designed specifically with the automobile in mind, and after over 20 years of never driving one, suddenly it was like everything in my environment had been designed specifically for my convenience.
By setting the driving age as low as 16 (is it 15 in some states?), society is practically having kids go from being ferried around in cars by their parents to driving the cars themselves. At no point are they forced to walk or ride bicycles -- modes of transportation that not only amply demonstrate the danger of automobiles (get hit by one and you will be injured and the driver might not have a scratch), but also demonstrate how roads are geared totally for automobiles. When you're getting behind the wheel for the first time beyond your teenage years, I claim that your ability to navigate the roads and your ability to drive defensively and alertly are much better.
I'd be interested to see insurance statistics broken down by when the driver first obtained his or her license.
If I'm not an exception, and the typical person who drives for the first time after age 20 and has lots of experience cycling and walking on the roads is safer than the person who starts driving at age 16, it might be worth it to try something like this. The backlash against automobile-centrism which would surely develop among college-age people going to work by bike would certainly make the automakers and city planners upset!
I don't think it's a Japanese thing so much as it's a "corporations squeezing money out of people whenever they can" thing, though it does seem like there's a bit more of this in Japan. I've had friends try to cancel telephone service because they're leaving the country, and the mobile phone company will tell them that certain papers have to be signed and returned by registered mail, etc., and they they'll take a week or so to get the papers to the customer, squeezing another week of unneeded service out of them. I'm sure this kind of stuff is pulled the world over.
Also, an addendum: I may have been able to remember the name of the game when I deleted it from my phone, but I couldn't when I made that post. It was "Before Crisis" that was on cell phones, not Crisis Core. Crisis Core is on the PSP.
"Crisis Core" was handled in just about the same way when I downloaded it on my cell phone a few years ago. There's a 500 yen monthly charge, which they're totally up front about, but stopping the charges are another matter.
The first i-mode mobile phone game I ever played was a Tetris clone that cost 150 yen per month, and the first time you loaded the application in a given month, the game would inform you of that fact, and that a new 150-yen charge would appear on your bill. You had the chance to say yes or no.
So I had no idea that Crisis Core would be any different. I downloaded it for the first time at the beginning of a month, played it for a bit, realized that I wasn't getting much out of it, and deleted the application from my phone toward the end of the month.
I wasn't receiving an itemized bill, and not until over a year later did I realize that I was still paying for that game, month after month, despite not playing it at all. Given my previous experience with monthly-fee games on that phone, it never occurred to me that they could charge you repeatedly without your explicit permission (and without you actually having the game).
Fortunately I was able to remember the name of the game, and was able to get the Docomo Mobile staff to find it on their online menu, and was able to cancel the contract.
$60 to play a pathetic little cell phone game for less than a month, thanks to a combination of their sneakiness and my ignorance. Live and learn.
The timing of this does indeed make Square Enix look just about as callous as they could possibly look.
This is only a personal anecdote -- get enough of them and maybe you can call them data -- but back when they were still Squaresoft, they weren't like this. As an intermediate-level student of Japanese in college, I translated a large amount of dialogue and other material for games of theirs that never got any release outside Japan, and put the stuff on my web site. When Square found out about it, they invited me to interview with them, paying what was to me an insane amount of money to get me to their offices and meet the staff.
I didn't get chosen to be a translator -- and there's no shame at all in losing out to the genius that is Alexander O. Smith -- but it was a great thrill for an ordinary undergraduate like myself, and at no time did they ever issue any stern warnings about putting my translations into ROMs, or selling anything I'd created; they were interested in what my abilities could do for them, not in stamping out the creative force of their fans.
I'm surprised -- well, maybe not anymore -- that these modders didn't get better treatment from the game maker that they so admire, and that the significant abilities they demonstrated in making this hack were, it seems, totally ignored. Instead, the Big Corporation sat on its hands for five years watching these fans work their magic, then dropped the hammer, giving them five days to unconditionally surrender to their demands. And without even the courtesy of putting an individual person in position to answer possible questions and arguments from the Compendium! No, SE just left a generic phone number, and no name, at the bottom of a legally-binding letter. They couldn't have been more insulting if they'd tried.
I'm still a little unclear about how the North American branch of SE is involved in this -- the game was made by Squaresoft in Japan, and the only thing added to it by the North American team is the translation, none of which, obviously, is being used in a fan-made game with a totally new script. The copyrighted material that's being "borrowed" was made in Japan, where doujin material is a standard part of game/manga fandom. I know things are looking bleak for the Compendium, but I wonder if an appeal to Square Enix KK (Japan) might save the project. The way things are now, it certainly couldn't hurt.
The Japanese have some Shinto temples they've routinely destroyed and rebuilt every 20 years.
It must be noted, however, that the Ministry of Construction, and the politicians in cahoots with them, are quite determined to make sure that every structure in the country is destroyed and rebuilt every 20 years (more often if possible).
And unlike your typical apartment block, the Ise shrines are actually beautiful. Regular folks are stuck purchasing homes that are [i]scheduled[/i] to deteriorate and wear out, like automobiles do.
I'd rather see the philosophy of the Horyu-ji, the world's oldest wooden structures, brought back. No intentional wasteful destruction, just solid maintenance.
It's actually a little older -- Anthony Burgess relates the use of this phrase by Evelyn Waugh while discussing Orwell and the influences on his Newspeak.
Some brief Googling brings up someone quoting it here:
Actually, such a joke wouldn't have been made. I'm no expert in Thai spelling, but if you hear his name said, it's more like "Pumipon", with heavy aspiration on the P's. He's also known as Rama IX, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's what he called himself in the English-speaking world. (Anybody know? He *was* born in Massachusetts, after all. He must have had a childhood nickname.)
As an American, I must say, we need to take a look at this nomenclature: Shadow Minister sounds so much cooler than Senate Minority Leader or the like.
I fully expect to see (by AD 2505 when Idiocracy is in full swing, perhaps) a House of Representin' in which legislation features full-on battles between teleporting Shadow Ministers and weapon-wielding Whips. C-SPAN's ratings should go sky high!
I'm at a Japanese company and start at 9 PM and finish at 5 AM, so I always get a seat on the trains because everyone's going in the other direction. I've got the whole office to myself, can concentrate easily, and have no boss watching over me. Three weeks on, then one week off -- what a schedule!
Over here unpaid overtime and sleep deprivation are practiclaly the national pastimes. When I first started, I had to work like everyone else -- 8:30 AM to about 10 or 11 PM, Monday through Friday. There wasn't enough time to get eight hours of sleep each day even if you climbed into the futon as soon as you got home! And as a 22-year-old new recruit, I couldn't exactly express and opinions about this system, or express any desires to actually get a good night's sleep and stay healthy. It was pure misery being so tired all the time, and when the weekend rolled around, I'd sleep until past noon on Saturday and then not be able to sleep Saturday night, meaning that it was that much harder to get into the next work week.
And despite the night shift being so much easier, no one's jealous of me in the least. The typical Japanese office worker associates night work with staying at the office all night long after already having worked all day, so nobody's clamoring to take my position away!
The only problem with night work is having to sleep in the day in a possibly noisy neighborhood. I'm lucky in that my area is quiet. I can't recommend this enough. A 40-hour night workweek is so much more tolerable than a 50- or 60-hour daytime workweek -- your body will thank you!
K-Mac, thanks for the input. Aren't there a lot of foreign factory workers up in Gunma? I'm surprised you haven't been stopped more.
While the police officers who stopped you at the bus station may have been polite, that doesn't excuse them for actually stopping you without cause. Had you accidentally left your wallet at home (let's say you were visiting the airport to pick someone up), you would have been taken to the police station and detained until they could be sure of your legal status. Had your ID been nicked from you unknowingly (airports are breeding grounds for these kinds of crimes), could you count on them believing you when you reached into an empty pocket and said that it must have been stolen?
I appreciate the general level of safety in Japanese cities, but it comes at a fairly high price, civil-liberties-wise. At least when a mugger takes your wallet in the US, *you* don't become an unwilling criminal by dint of not having ID on you!
Mstroeck, please forgive the generalization -- I only know that in some parts of the EU these cards are mandatory (and people don't seem to mind too much). Actually, when I was in Austria a few years ago, it felt very strange to not have to carry anything and to not have to register my existence anywhere despite not living there permanently and being a tourist fresh off the plane, whereas in Japan, where I live and work, things are much more restrictive. I'd go back to Vienna immediately if I had the chance; it's fantastic!
Petaris, I used to live in Kyoto but now live in Tokyo. I've actually never had any trouble at all in airports (knock on wood) and have been able to pass through immigration without anything beyond the most perfunctory questions, and have only had to open my bags in front of the customs officer. The streets are a different matter.
In Kyoto I never had any trouble with police, but in Tokyo they can be a nightmare. I once went to the 7-11 right in front of my own house and a police officer asked for the card. I'd left it at home and was only carrying small change for my purchase. He wouldn't even let me go up and get the thing; I had to be taken to the police station while I sat there all night long answering inane questions and waiting for the Ministry of Justice to open so that they could confirm my legal residence status.
The people who really have it bad are the bicyclists. Pretending that a bike might be stolen is the perfect pretext for a police officer to start interrogating someone right on the street, and they don't care about falsely accusing someone if it means an opportunity to show the public how tough they are on immigrants.
This might sound insensitive, but I'd gladly accept the border controls of the US if it meant also adopting the US system and eliminating internal controls. In the US, once you get past immigration at the border, you're basically free. No petty official is going to "randomly" stop your wife on the street and throw her in a holding cell if she's not carrying her green card. If the US ever goes that far, it's time to move out.
Petaris (and I'm going on a tangent as well; readers not interested in Japan, feel free to skip), at least your wife will only have to give her fingerprints and data once; as you surely know, even if you were a permanent resident of Japan, you would still be fingerprinted, photographed, and questioned each and every time you re-entered Japan. And you have to acquire and pay for a $30 re-entry permit, to be used upon your return, before departing Japan!
(Think about that... a tourist can enter Japan free of charge, without any advance notice, yet someone who already resides in Japan and presumably has been vetted by the government has the same fingerprint/photo requirements as an out-of-the-blue tourist, and has to pay for the privilege!)
And in Japan, the US-style entry requirements are just the beginning. In Japan, police officers are empowered to function as immigration officials, and have no qualms about pulling non-Japanese-looking people aside and questioning them, particularly during politically sensitive events ilke the G8 summit, which was recently held in Hokkaido. They'll demand to see your Alien Registration Card, which all non-citizens are required to carry at all times and which contain enough personal information (printed in plain text!) to make an identity thief salivate.
I find this more egregious than anything done at the border, since you can prepare for a plane flight and psychologically ready yourself for their questions, but it's impossible to keep yourself on guard for random street stoppages.
Japan has managed to combine the most fascist parts of both the US system (severe border checks, personal information on file) and Europe's (mandatory ID cards which must be carried and shown to police on demand).
I don't doubt that politicians like Hatoyama are chuckling to themselves at what they've been able to get away with while the big bad evil-empire USA gets all the bad press and all the internet outrage. We all have to be on our guard, or all the world powers will take turns bootstrapping themselves into total police states.
That's absolutely the point. They're willing to deal with these materials because the money they're making is worth the costs.
Are people in China right now sitting around debating whether they have some kind of moral responsibility to stop making the electronics they sell us Westerners? Do they worry in an almost-parental manner that the repetitive-stress injuries that come from our using them daily, the road rage we endure in getting to our computer-using offices, and the general loss of mental well-being that comes from working in a big city as opposed to enjoying a peaceful, bucolic, computer-free life are somehow their fault, like we do when we sell toxic parts to these rural villages, and that maybe they should be footing our psychiatrist bills or auto-repair costs?
We have no more of a responsibility toward them than they do to us. They want to deal with the materials because dealing with them outweighs the ancillary costs, just as we cheerfully accept costs in our society that other people would find abominable. Let the people of Guiyu make this decision for themselves.
Cornwallis, something tells me that the government will simply hire incompetents instead. It's not like they're going to let the budget go unspent and let positions go unfilled. Rule of thumb: government never gets smaller.
I myself was born partially blind and am often asked by "normal" people if it's difficult to get through life. I have the irresistible urge to quote Hall-of-Fame Chicago Cubs pitcher Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown, who, when asked the same question regarding the disfiguring hand injury he sustained in a mining accident as a child, would reapond, "I wouldn't know. I've never tried it the other way."
I know Japan is pretty much the opposite!
Foreigners have pretty much all the basic rights as citizens, and the people there will generally bend over backwards to help you(searching the entire building for someone who speaks English, etc).
I really must disagree (and please forgive the long reply; this stuff needs to be said). People bending over backwards to find an English speaker? That's called "hospitality", and has nothing -- really, nothing -- to do with one's legal rights or legal protection from authorities.
"Pretty much all the basic rights"? Japan and the USA are neck-and-neck in paranoia.
Only the USA and Japan (so far) fingerprint any non-citizen crossing the border, and in Japan it's not just when you first enter -- you're fingerprinted, photographed, and questioned every time. Businesspeople are already turning away from Japan just as they are from the US.
In the USA, green card holders are expected to carry that card around with them, but (so far) only immigration officials have the right to demand to see it. In Japan, non-citizens must carry Alien Registration Cards at all times, and police officers (there are little police boxes every few blocks on the streets!) can demand to see them basically whenever they like. Lose your wallet on the train? Technically, you're a criminal! (Now try not to get picked up for anything -- unlike in the US, there's no bail for non-citizens! Somehow, despite the nation being an island country and there being fingerprint checks at the border, all non-Japanese are flight risks.)
In addition, these alien cards contain more than enough information, right there in plain text, to make identity theft a snap. I don't know about most people, but I prefer not to have to carry a little card with my full name, birthdate, home address, work address, place of birth, residence in home country, and foreign passport number printed on it. Any business who has a copy of this card then gets all that private info.
(Thought experiment: How many prudent-minded citizens would write all this personal information in one place and carry it wherever they go?)
In the US, banks and financial institutions are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of national origin (among many other things)l in Japan, if you're a non-citizen, you'll have a very hard time getting a home mortgage, and credit in general. Illegal immigrants in the USA can borrow money easier than legal ones can in Japan!
Japan got a free pass on this stuff in the old days because neighboring China was (and is) worse, and now they get a pass again because of George Bush and the US. They deserve to be called on it just as much as their paranoiac rival across the Pacific does.
Slashdot Mirror
"Twenty-one hundred" for 2100 is just fine, as is "twenty-one forty-six" (because you're just omitting the word "hundred"). The "k" stuff only works until 2099, when it stops being an advantage. Then we go back to what we did in the nineteen-hundreds, which is to take out the word "hundred". In the current century, there's no word "hundred" that needs to be abbreviated.
This time it isn't bytes, but pronunciation.
"Two thousand sixteen", the most natural way to say the number, uses three syllables for the "20.." part.
How can we make that shorter and easier to say? Using "twenty..." sounds a bit silly as it doesn't flow well and there's no "twenty hundred" to abbreviate from. The retro hipster in me wants to see something with "two ought" in it, but let's face it, the "2k" thing saves a syllable and is already popular, and has a futuristic, metric/computer feel to it. It's perfect.
(Now can we get started on actually bringing 2k10 into the "metric age"? It was disappointing to pick up Clarke's classic on the first day of 2010 and see him make a wrong prediction in the first sentence!)
Japanese banks are notorious for denying loans even to long-term residents of Japan if they don't have Japanese nationality or permanent residence (which can be hard to get). I've lived in Japan for eleven years, and, when buying my first home last year, actually found myself looking into borrowing the money from a bank in Australia! Despite having 90% of the purchase price in cash, you can't even get in the door unless you meet the requirements; it's not like the sliding scale of credit scores.
It hurts to see those nice cheap rates posted in the windows of the banks, knowing that they're for other people and not for you.
Here in Japan, you have to pay an insane amount of money to write a personal check (I don't even know anyone who has such an account), and they charge through the nose for bank transfers, which is what everyone uses.
To an account holder at the same bank, you generally pay Y105 ($1.15) at minimum -- the odd amount is because there's a 5% consumption tax on that fee -- and a Y210 minimum to another bank. This is for electronic transfers; triple those numbers if you want to do it through a teller.
I hate having to pay these fees -- parting with more than 1-2% of my money can add up. Exercise for the reader: assuming 0.01% annual interest earned on a savings account, how much money would you have to have in your account to earn enough interest to offset the fee on a single bank transfer per month? (Hint: it's frightneningly high.)
If they want to get rid of checks, pass a law making free bank transfers a guaranteed right for account holders. Watch people give up their checkbooks in a flash.
Driving IS MOST certainly a right because one is unable to function in our society normally without the ability to drive.
In that case (and forgive me for picking on you, GButler; you're just one of many who hold this opinion), shouldn't the visually impaired have all the extra privileges (hiring preferences and the like) that are normally granted to other disabled people? These people (of which I am one) cannot drive automobiles no matter how conscientious and careful they may be -- they're refused at the eye-test stage. Remind me again why I should have sympathy for some oaf with multiple DWIs, or even a single instance of inattentive driving with a cell phone in hand!
There's one "majority" that's more privileged than white people, or the rich, or any other favored group you care to name, ever were: people who can drive cars.
"All employees must have a valid driver's license and access to an automobile" is (or seems to be) a legal clause in an employment contract, and "Our company does not discriminate against anyone when hiring, except the visually impaired, whom we refuse to hire" is ludicrous on its face, yet the first directly implies the second. A past employer of mine had the first clause, andnoticed after I'd been hired that I didn't adhere to it, and while I didn't get fired, I had to expend social capital to stay employed.
By further restricting the "rights" of unsafe drivers, we do two things: (1) make the roads safer, obviously, and (2) give society a much-needed reminder that not everyone can operate an automobile, and that running a business that requires the use of an automobile for access is discriminatory. As someone who can never benefit from lax driving rules, my best interest is for even the slightest bit of unsafe driving to be punished severely -- get spotted driving with a cell phone, lose your license forever. What? Too harsh? Well, I was born with the "lose your license forever" restriction. These cell phone users who don't respect the dangers of driving unsafely can come see how the other half lives.
When I'm famous I'll be auctioning my /. account. See how well it fares:
You just know somebody on eBay will bid:
L@@K Super Rare PALINDROMIC UID on SLASHDOT! No Reserve!!!
Yours is more interesting than the dull number I've got.
Let me play devil's advocate also.
I myself am partially blind, and while my eyesight is good enough to drive, I wouldn't want to depend on a car for my daily commute and the roads are just too dangerous to be driving on every day at 30+ miles per hour. I'll stick to bicycling and walking.
Or so I thought. During my last summer after college, I decided to learn to drive, just in case I'd ever need to in a pinch.
Those years from 17-21 where I rode a bicycle everywhere left me massively over-prepared in terms of alertness and defensiveness. I drove, in the words of the instructor, "like the other cars couldn't see me". SOP when on a bicycle!
I also appreciated the positioning of traffic lights and road markings, the heights of street signs, etc., etc. in a way that someone who had no experience not being in an automobile never could. All that stuff is designed specifically with the automobile in mind, and after over 20 years of never driving one, suddenly it was like everything in my environment had been designed specifically for my convenience.
By setting the driving age as low as 16 (is it 15 in some states?), society is practically having kids go from being ferried around in cars by their parents to driving the cars themselves. At no point are they forced to walk or ride bicycles -- modes of transportation that not only amply demonstrate the danger of automobiles (get hit by one and you will be injured and the driver might not have a scratch), but also demonstrate how roads are geared totally for automobiles. When you're getting behind the wheel for the first time beyond your teenage years, I claim that your ability to navigate the roads and your ability to drive defensively and alertly are much better.
I'd be interested to see insurance statistics broken down by when the driver first obtained his or her license.
If I'm not an exception, and the typical person who drives for the first time after age 20 and has lots of experience cycling and walking on the roads is safer than the person who starts driving at age 16, it might be worth it to try something like this. The backlash against automobile-centrism which would surely develop among college-age people going to work by bike would certainly make the automakers and city planners upset!
I don't think it's a Japanese thing so much as it's a "corporations squeezing money out of people whenever they can" thing, though it does seem like there's a bit more of this in Japan. I've had friends try to cancel telephone service because they're leaving the country, and the mobile phone company will tell them that certain papers have to be signed and returned by registered mail, etc., and they they'll take a week or so to get the papers to the customer, squeezing another week of unneeded service out of them. I'm sure this kind of stuff is pulled the world over.
Also, an addendum: I may have been able to remember the name of the game when I deleted it from my phone, but I couldn't when I made that post. It was "Before Crisis" that was on cell phones, not Crisis Core. Crisis Core is on the PSP.
"Crisis Core" was handled in just about the same way when I downloaded it on my cell phone a few years ago. There's a 500 yen monthly charge, which they're totally up front about, but stopping the charges are another matter.
The first i-mode mobile phone game I ever played was a Tetris clone that cost 150 yen per month, and the first time you loaded the application in a given month, the game would inform you of that fact, and that a new 150-yen charge would appear on your bill. You had the chance to say yes or no.
So I had no idea that Crisis Core would be any different. I downloaded it for the first time at the beginning of a month, played it for a bit, realized that I wasn't getting much out of it, and deleted the application from my phone toward the end of the month.
I wasn't receiving an itemized bill, and not until over a year later did I realize that I was still paying for that game, month after month, despite not playing it at all. Given my previous experience with monthly-fee games on that phone, it never occurred to me that they could charge you repeatedly without your explicit permission (and without you actually having the game).
Fortunately I was able to remember the name of the game, and was able to get the Docomo Mobile staff to find it on their online menu, and was able to cancel the contract.
$60 to play a pathetic little cell phone game for less than a month, thanks to a combination of their sneakiness and my ignorance. Live and learn.
And back to English:
This is poppycock!
I think I've made my point.
Actually, "poppycock" covers both the English and Dutch steps at the same time:
http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-pop1.htm
Clearly this is a word for the multilingual, multicultural, interconnected modern world.
Get started with Google Mail
First name: ________
Last name: ________
Desired Login Name:
Examples: JSmith, John.Smith
bozemansucks@gmail.com is available
The timing of this does indeed make Square Enix look just about as callous as they could possibly look.
This is only a personal anecdote -- get enough of them and maybe you can call them data -- but back when they were still Squaresoft, they weren't like this. As an intermediate-level student of Japanese in college, I translated a large amount of dialogue and other material for games of theirs that never got any release outside Japan, and put the stuff on my web site. When Square found out about it, they invited me to interview with them, paying what was to me an insane amount of money to get me to their offices and meet the staff.
I didn't get chosen to be a translator -- and there's no shame at all in losing out to the genius that is Alexander O. Smith -- but it was a great thrill for an ordinary undergraduate like myself, and at no time did they ever issue any stern warnings about putting my translations into ROMs, or selling anything I'd created; they were interested in what my abilities could do for them, not in stamping out the creative force of their fans.
I'm surprised -- well, maybe not anymore -- that these modders didn't get better treatment from the game maker that they so admire, and that the significant abilities they demonstrated in making this hack were, it seems, totally ignored. Instead, the Big Corporation sat on its hands for five years watching these fans work their magic, then dropped the hammer, giving them five days to unconditionally surrender to their demands. And without even the courtesy of putting an individual person in position to answer possible questions and arguments from the Compendium! No, SE just left a generic phone number, and no name, at the bottom of a legally-binding letter. They couldn't have been more insulting if they'd tried.
I'm still a little unclear about how the North American branch of SE is involved in this -- the game was made by Squaresoft in Japan, and the only thing added to it by the North American team is the translation, none of which, obviously, is being used in a fan-made game with a totally new script. The copyrighted material that's being "borrowed" was made in Japan, where doujin material is a standard part of game/manga fandom. I know things are looking bleak for the Compendium, but I wonder if an appeal to Square Enix KK (Japan) might save the project. The way things are now, it certainly couldn't hurt.
The Japanese have some Shinto temples they've routinely destroyed and rebuilt every 20 years.
It must be noted, however, that the Ministry of Construction, and the politicians in cahoots with them, are quite determined to make sure that every structure in the country is destroyed and rebuilt every 20 years (more often if possible).
And unlike your typical apartment block, the Ise shrines are actually beautiful. Regular folks are stuck purchasing homes that are [i]scheduled[/i] to deteriorate and wear out, like automobiles do.
I'd rather see the philosophy of the Horyu-ji, the world's oldest wooden structures, brought back. No intentional wasteful destruction, just solid maintenance.
It's actually a little older -- Anthony Burgess relates the use of this phrase by Evelyn Waugh while discussing Orwell and the influences on his Newspeak.
Some brief Googling brings up someone quoting it here:
http://enmasse.ca/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7519&view=next&sid=bf3c691e58dff22645eacc20f5a2fe4f
Actually, such a joke wouldn't have been made. I'm no expert in Thai spelling, but if you hear his name said, it's more like "Pumipon", with heavy aspiration on the P's. He's also known as Rama IX, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's what he called himself in the English-speaking world. (Anybody know? He *was* born in Massachusetts, after all. He must have had a childhood nickname.)
As an American, I must say, we need to take a look at this nomenclature: Shadow Minister sounds so much cooler than Senate Minority Leader or the like.
Hey, we've got Whips, which are almost as cool.
I fully expect to see (by AD 2505 when Idiocracy is in full swing, perhaps) a House of Representin' in which legislation features full-on battles between teleporting Shadow Ministers and weapon-wielding Whips. C-SPAN's ratings should go sky high!
Wouldn't the police then simply convict innocent people so as to avoid incurring those costs?
I also work odd hours, and love it.
I'm at a Japanese company and start at 9 PM and finish at 5 AM, so I always get a seat on the trains because everyone's going in the other direction. I've got the whole office to myself, can concentrate easily, and have no boss watching over me. Three weeks on, then one week off -- what a schedule!
Over here unpaid overtime and sleep deprivation are practiclaly the national pastimes. When I first started, I had to work like everyone else -- 8:30 AM to about 10 or 11 PM, Monday through Friday. There wasn't enough time to get eight hours of sleep each day even if you climbed into the futon as soon as you got home! And as a 22-year-old new recruit, I couldn't exactly express and opinions about this system, or express any desires to actually get a good night's sleep and stay healthy. It was pure misery being so tired all the time, and when the weekend rolled around, I'd sleep until past noon on Saturday and then not be able to sleep Saturday night, meaning that it was that much harder to get into the next work week.
And despite the night shift being so much easier, no one's jealous of me in the least. The typical Japanese office worker associates night work with staying at the office all night long after already having worked all day, so nobody's clamoring to take my position away!
The only problem with night work is having to sleep in the day in a possibly noisy neighborhood. I'm lucky in that my area is quiet. I can't recommend this enough. A 40-hour night workweek is so much more tolerable than a 50- or 60-hour daytime workweek -- your body will thank you!
K-Mac, thanks for the input. Aren't there a lot of foreign factory workers up in Gunma? I'm surprised you haven't been stopped more.
While the police officers who stopped you at the bus station may have been polite, that doesn't excuse them for actually stopping you without cause. Had you accidentally left your wallet at home (let's say you were visiting the airport to pick someone up), you would have been taken to the police station and detained until they could be sure of your legal status. Had your ID been nicked from you unknowingly (airports are breeding grounds for these kinds of crimes), could you count on them believing you when you reached into an empty pocket and said that it must have been stolen?
I appreciate the general level of safety in Japanese cities, but it comes at a fairly high price, civil-liberties-wise. At least when a mugger takes your wallet in the US, *you* don't become an unwilling criminal by dint of not having ID on you!
Mstroeck, please forgive the generalization -- I only know that in some parts of the EU these cards are mandatory (and people don't seem to mind too much). Actually, when I was in Austria a few years ago, it felt very strange to not have to carry anything and to not have to register my existence anywhere despite not living there permanently and being a tourist fresh off the plane, whereas in Japan, where I live and work, things are much more restrictive. I'd go back to Vienna immediately if I had the chance; it's fantastic!
Petaris, I used to live in Kyoto but now live in Tokyo. I've actually never had any trouble at all in airports (knock on wood) and have been able to pass through immigration without anything beyond the most perfunctory questions, and have only had to open my bags in front of the customs officer. The streets are a different matter.
In Kyoto I never had any trouble with police, but in Tokyo they can be a nightmare. I once went to the 7-11 right in front of my own house and a police officer asked for the card. I'd left it at home and was only carrying small change for my purchase. He wouldn't even let me go up and get the thing; I had to be taken to the police station while I sat there all night long answering inane questions and waiting for the Ministry of Justice to open so that they could confirm my legal residence status.
The people who really have it bad are the bicyclists. Pretending that a bike might be stolen is the perfect pretext for a police officer to start interrogating someone right on the street, and they don't care about falsely accusing someone if it means an opportunity to show the public how tough they are on immigrants.
This might sound insensitive, but I'd gladly accept the border controls of the US if it meant also adopting the US system and eliminating internal controls. In the US, once you get past immigration at the border, you're basically free. No petty official is going to "randomly" stop your wife on the street and throw her in a holding cell if she's not carrying her green card. If the US ever goes that far, it's time to move out.
Petaris (and I'm going on a tangent as well; readers not interested in Japan, feel free to skip), at least your wife will only have to give her fingerprints and data once; as you surely know, even if you were a permanent resident of Japan, you would still be fingerprinted, photographed, and questioned each and every time you re-entered Japan. And you have to acquire and pay for a $30 re-entry permit, to be used upon your return, before departing Japan!
(Think about that... a tourist can enter Japan free of charge, without any advance notice, yet someone who already resides in Japan and presumably has been vetted by the government has the same fingerprint/photo requirements as an out-of-the-blue tourist, and has to pay for the privilege!)
And in Japan, the US-style entry requirements are just the beginning. In Japan, police officers are empowered to function as immigration officials, and have no qualms about pulling non-Japanese-looking people aside and questioning them, particularly during politically sensitive events ilke the G8 summit, which was recently held in Hokkaido. They'll demand to see your Alien Registration Card, which all non-citizens are required to carry at all times and which contain enough personal information (printed in plain text!) to make an identity thief salivate.
I find this more egregious than anything done at the border, since you can prepare for a plane flight and psychologically ready yourself for their questions, but it's impossible to keep yourself on guard for random street stoppages.
Japan has managed to combine the most fascist parts of both the US system (severe border checks, personal information on file) and Europe's (mandatory ID cards which must be carried and shown to police on demand).
I don't doubt that politicians like Hatoyama are chuckling to themselves at what they've been able to get away with while the big bad evil-empire USA gets all the bad press and all the internet outrage. We all have to be on our guard, or all the world powers will take turns bootstrapping themselves into total police states.
That's absolutely the point. They're willing to deal with these materials because the money they're making is worth the costs.
Are people in China right now sitting around debating whether they have some kind of moral responsibility to stop making the electronics they sell us Westerners? Do they worry in an almost-parental manner that the repetitive-stress injuries that come from our using them daily, the road rage we endure in getting to our computer-using offices, and the general loss of mental well-being that comes from working in a big city as opposed to enjoying a peaceful, bucolic, computer-free life are somehow their fault, like we do when we sell toxic parts to these rural villages, and that maybe they should be footing our psychiatrist bills or auto-repair costs?
We have no more of a responsibility toward them than they do to us. They want to deal with the materials because dealing with them outweighs the ancillary costs, just as we cheerfully accept costs in our society that other people would find abominable. Let the people of Guiyu make this decision for themselves.
Cornwallis, something tells me that the government will simply hire incompetents instead. It's not like they're going to let the budget go unspent and let positions go unfilled. Rule of thumb: government never gets smaller.
That's absolutely the right way to go about it.
I myself was born partially blind and am often asked by "normal" people if it's difficult to get through life. I have the irresistible urge to quote Hall-of-Fame Chicago Cubs pitcher Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown, who, when asked the same question regarding the disfiguring hand injury he sustained in a mining accident as a child, would reapond, "I wouldn't know. I've never tried it the other way."
I know Japan is pretty much the opposite! Foreigners have pretty much all the basic rights as citizens, and the people there will generally bend over backwards to help you(searching the entire building for someone who speaks English, etc).
I really must disagree (and please forgive the long reply; this stuff needs to be said). People bending over backwards to find an English speaker? That's called "hospitality", and has nothing -- really, nothing -- to do with one's legal rights or legal protection from authorities.
"Pretty much all the basic rights"? Japan and the USA are neck-and-neck in paranoia.
Only the USA and Japan (so far) fingerprint any non-citizen crossing the border, and in Japan it's not just when you first enter -- you're fingerprinted, photographed, and questioned every time. Businesspeople are already turning away from Japan just as they are from the US.
In the USA, green card holders are expected to carry that card around with them, but (so far) only immigration officials have the right to demand to see it. In Japan, non-citizens must carry Alien Registration Cards at all times, and police officers (there are little police boxes every few blocks on the streets!) can demand to see them basically whenever they like. Lose your wallet on the train? Technically, you're a criminal! (Now try not to get picked up for anything -- unlike in the US, there's no bail for non-citizens! Somehow, despite the nation being an island country and there being fingerprint checks at the border, all non-Japanese are flight risks.)
In addition, these alien cards contain more than enough information, right there in plain text, to make identity theft a snap. I don't know about most people, but I prefer not to have to carry a little card with my full name, birthdate, home address, work address, place of birth, residence in home country, and foreign passport number printed on it. Any business who has a copy of this card then gets all that private info.
(Thought experiment: How many prudent-minded citizens would write all this personal information in one place and carry it wherever they go?)
In the US, banks and financial institutions are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of national origin (among many other things)l in Japan, if you're a non-citizen, you'll have a very hard time getting a home mortgage, and credit in general. Illegal immigrants in the USA can borrow money easier than legal ones can in Japan!
Japan got a free pass on this stuff in the old days because neighboring China was (and is) worse, and now they get a pass again because of George Bush and the US. They deserve to be called on it just as much as their paranoiac rival across the Pacific does.