I live in Japan, and while I agree that their security is far less intrusive, it's mainly because they're not being as thorough. Granted, one could argue that they're being *reasonable*, but with the Japanese, it's more likely due to their lingering naivety in the face of an increasingly nasty world, and the fact that they really hate to inconvenience people.
I did a lookup on Getty myself and discovered that the image on the first page, #AA011147, is marked as RF: royalty-free. So, actually, the copyright advocacy group in question has full rights to publish that image. I've used Getty for years, and their usage agreement for low-res images is very liberal; hence their popularity among designers.
I think that we should get over hating ourselves, get over the inferiority complex that not only does somebody out there really care and that they've decided they don't like us, and realize that the universe has expressed its willingness to have us around by the fact that we already exist. If the universe wanted something besides humanity, then we wouldn't be here. QED.
At whatever point the rest of existence gets tired of us, I'm sure it'll let us know.
I don't take any crap from my wife and I'm also not divorced. However, I am also smart enough to concede small things that just aren't worth arguing about.
If you RTFA, you'll see that the iPhones were activated off-campus and were trying to access a non-existent IP, most likely related to the first IP that the iPhone came into contact with after being activated. Whenever the iPhone lost connectivity on campus, it would try to seek out that original IP upon re-establishing a connection. In the case of Apple testing on their own campus, the phones were most likely activated at Apple and stayed the majority of the time at Apple - thus the problem never had a chance to crop up. Bizarre behavior, but bugs will happen.
As others have said, the contents of the Japanese vending machine are vastly different than their American counterparts; they might as well be on different planets. There is no such thing as a candy vending machine in Japan, and most of the candy that we eat the Japanese regularly pass over as too sweet. Japanese vending machines are tea-oriented, with iced coffee (sweetened or black), Coca-cola, Mitsuya Cider (like Sprite), Ginger Ale, and some form of sports drink thrown in besides. There are occasionally still beer vending machines as well.
As for Japanese meals involving "large amounts" of vegetables, that would be a different Japan than I'm used to; the typical Japanese diet is notoriously vegetable-poor, with people just now starting to get into salads and the like. Even then, the average Japanese salad still typically involves an almost impalatable heap of shredded lettuce with just a hint of dressing to wash it down. What the Japanese diet lacks in vegetables it more than makes up for in fattening starches (such as rice, which the Japanese refuse to consider bad for their diet, and a wide assortment of noodles.)
Despite its shortcomings, the Japanese diet is still one of the healthiest in the world. That, and the fact that a lot of people still have to walk 3km to work every morning can't hurt, either.
Not a JET, but working for a prefectural government.
Actually, the poster was in fun and completely harmless. There are much more serious offenses committed by JETs every day, and the disciplinary board was merely taking advantage of the opportunity to "make an example." He proffered an excellent apology and got off scott-free.
JETs don't need help to look bad; if the Japanese were going to shut the program down due to the bad behavior of the participants, they would have done so already. The JETs are doing a good enough job of looking bad, however, that people do question why the government's spending so much money on the project. Many prefectures are cutting down on or eliminating participation altogether.
The good news is, the new government under Prime Minister Abe is doing a serious review of the Japanese education system, and is talking about mandating English studies starting in elementary. Regardless of what happens to JET, there are enough private companies and teaching opportuninities that people like Azrael will be able to find a place to work for a long time to come. JET may have the highest profile, but it's not the only game in town.
Hrm. I've never personally seen one of those, but I wonder what the legality is of responding with your own megaphone? Maybe even following them around, refuting everything they say over and over, citing examples of negative things they did, etc. OK, first of all, senselessly refuting everything they say and citing examples of negative things they did is not only incredibly childish, it's also considered slander and harrassment, which is illegal in many countries. Not the best way to make your point.
As a foreigner in Japan, it's also a really good way to get arrested and lose your job. I had a friend of mine who jokingly posted a fake flyer on a designated political materials bulletin board near the train station, and he was called up in front of a disciplinary committee at the board of education. He was given liniency because he was a foreigner who didn't know any better, but he was told that as a teacher, he was expected to maintain a certain image. The Japanese really don't have a sense of humor about these things.
I think it's nice that Linux users save $50, but I think this will have zero effect on Windows users. People aren't going to switch because it's cheaper; rather, they're more likely to say, "You get what you pay for," and see the $50 extra as a vote for Windows' quality.
Luckily, Nature has a built-in cure for sex addicts, which is called the orgasm. After the event occurs, the subject's interest in sex naturally abates for a time, and they either roll over and fall asleep or go and see what's in the fridge.
The "music industry" isn't the one upset by all this, it's the record stores only. They're ticked off because any profits made from distributing the CD are going to go to the newspaper in question, not the record stores. Their complaint was that they have a hard enough time competing with online retailers and supermarkets as it is without this kind of thing going on.
"The thing I don't understand is where the leading o in osphere comes from. Blog-sphere seems like the natural derivative to me."
Ah, yes, but it's even harder to say, and still just as annoying. Sounds more like a very uncomfortable bowel movement to me.
As for the other spheres, since "sphere" derives from Greek, and the other prefixes, such as"atmo-", also derive from Greek. Not even to mention that they are all terms for important scientific concepts to boot. I'd say that we can rest easy using them as real words, and not some sort of pop culture bastardization of a real word.
"B: The piracy problem isn't as bad as they make it out to be. (While they calculate lost profits based on a per file transfer basis, they fail to remove those people that likely wouldn't have bought the movie anyways.)"
On the one hand, I agree that *some* piracy isn't as bad for the industry as it's made out to be (versus completely unchecked piracy, which would be very bad indeed), I don't see how you couldn't calculate lost sales on a per-file transfer basis. The argument is "they wouldn't have bought the movie anyway," but quite often the reason seems to be, "because it was so easy to steal it." Movie rentals aren't that expensive; you can view it without buying it, and return it when you're done. Pretty much 100% of the time, you buy a movie because you already saw it and you liked it. Very rarely do people buy a movie before they see it, but very frequently the people downloading are getting material they've never seen.
That all being said, if the producers and distributors of content are still making a moderately insane fortune, I think things aren't too awful just yet.
"Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I really like Gnome, and Apple's UI irritates me, because it gets in the way of the way I like to work. But I guess that's all part and parcel of the way Apple insists that you "think outside the box the way WE tell you to, dammit!"
Ironically, that's the same way I feel about Gnome, and I'm primarily an OSX user. When I use Linux, I prefer KDE, because I find it less stifling than the box that Gnome forces me into with their spatial interface and the requirement that I *must* edit obscure configuration files in order to fix it. It really just goes to show that it depends on what kind of interface makes you happy.
No, the comparison doesn't work, I'm afraid. One person borrowing one book and choosing to make mediocre black-and-white copies for themselves a few pages at a time doesn't even begin to compare to tens of thousands of people downloading a perfect copy of an artist's entire works at one go. The principle isn't the same at all; the libraries are more closely favoring the original principles of fair use, not to mention that the books and CDs are not only paid for, but you get fined if you don't return them.
What the grandparent is trying to say is that you didn't actually list the hardware specifications. There is more than one model of Mac Pro, and I for one seriously doubt that you could undercut one at the same price, unless you build it yourself, and then that would be for perhaps a couple of hundred dollars. I know this because I have played the hardware spec game of Apple vs. PC for more than ten years, and since the G4, the only significant difference in hardware has been the processor. Now with the Intels, I'd have to say that by claiming a $1400 savings, you're blowing smoke. Unless you went with a completely different mid-range, single-core processor vs. the four-core offerings Apple currently has. Also, the PCI vs. the PCIe motherboard will also mean a significant price difference (not to mention it's hard to find video cards for it.) But at that point, the machine is already nothing like the Mac Pro and the comparison fails.
"I think Linux rules for open source apps, Windows for Commercial apps, and OS X is in the middle somewhere."
Depends on what you want to do. Apple computers are still very multimedia-centric, which is why you can get more bang for your buck for home-movie editing (or professional media creation, for that matter), using a Mac rather than a Windows-based machine. iLife '06 comes with every Mac, which means you don't pay anything over the purchase of the system; video editing, DVD and music authoring bundled? Try doing that on Windows. I recently had a friend who wanted to create a DVD for his students at school and he came to me for help in finding a solution that didn't involve spending money and was actually user-friendly. Needless to say, that wasn't going to happen. Even settling on what worked and was reasonably priced, he still ended up spending way more than the $80 price tag of a stand-alone version of iLife, minus the quality of Apple's templates and user interface.
An independent movie maker myself, the Mac platform has been the most cost-effective for putting together a professional solution that doesn't break the bank. Final Cut Studio, LightWave, Combustion, and Adobe CS2 as my foundation, complimented by free(!) applications like Audacity for advanced audio processing.
"I Agree with Apple not offering a mod-able box cheaper than the Mac Pro. But for most users, the "upgradable" model between the Mini and the Mac Pro is the iMac, which you can upgrade the hard-drive and the memory easily. This is a real complaint of mine for Macs, they don't address the group of users who would normally build their PC, or the group of users who play games. And I fully expect these users to shun Macs until they do. Because I fall into these groups, I'm torn between building a quad core Linux box for myself or buying a Mac Pro."
I don't think Apple will ever address the kind of people who build their own PC. They build complete computers; they don't sell components. Neither does Dell, nor HP, nor any other PC manufacturer, for that matter. To use the oft-abused car analogy, car manufacturers don't lose a lot of sleep on people who want to build their own cars; PC manufacturers (not to mention, Microsoft) don't lose a lot of sleep on computer hobbyists, either. They are a small minority in the overall PC market. I also agree with the overall sentiment expressed elsewhere, that the days of upgrading your PC component by component have become largely a thing of the past. I put together my own AMD-based PC for Windows and Linux, and there is nothing in it that I can upgrade that I can't upgrade on my G5. Hard drives, memory, video card? No problem. Processor? Whoops - that's going to require a new motherboard, which will in turn require new components, which results in a new computer, in the end. I guess my PC isn't any better than my Mac in that respect. On the bright side, Apple doesn't put any restrictions on installing OSX onto any Mac that I want, without activation, and 99.9% of the time it's going to install without obtuse hardware problems, unlike Linux.
This is Japan. This ruling is totally useless. First of all, the market for people who want to save their music online to listen to on their cell phones is very small indeed; "full browsing" internet time costs 300 yen (US $2.50) just to initiate, and cellphone-centric browsing is pretty pricey as well. There are all-you-can-eat plans for about 5000 yen a month, but since they make several cell phone models that are designed to be music players and offer multiple gigabytes of internal storage, not to mention swappable microSD cards, I predict the number of people living in Japan who will actually care about this ruling to total about 3.
Add on top of that the fact that Japanese law is based on the "don't ask, don't tell" school of thinking, and that music and CD rental stores not only sell blank media right by the register, but also helpfully label the CDs your renting with the play time so that you'll know how many CDs/MDs/whatever you're going to need, and I really find this hard to care about. This is, as with many landmark cases in Japan, a lot of posturing with very little follow-through.
The only place I've ever seen the Japanese remotely strict about managing is on-line images of celebrities. You want to get a take-down notice, just put up a pic of Erika Sato and see how long that lasts.
If you want to watch shows that portray things realistically, why are you watching sci-fi in the first place? Humans have always had a desire to make things look beautiful, or powerful, or graceful, etc. Firefly is a perfect example of things done for the aesthetics rather than because they're "practical"; heck, it's a western set in space. They often ride horses. The ship is designed to look like a big bug because it *can*. It has a butt and it lights up, for goodness' sake! I think you're barking up the wrong tree here.
Slashdot Mirror
I live in Japan, and while I agree that their security is far less intrusive, it's mainly because they're not being as thorough. Granted, one could argue that they're being *reasonable*, but with the Japanese, it's more likely due to their lingering naivety in the face of an increasingly nasty world, and the fact that they really hate to inconvenience people.
I did a lookup on Getty myself and discovered that the image on the first page, #AA011147, is marked as RF: royalty-free. So, actually, the copyright advocacy group in question has full rights to publish that image. I've used Getty for years, and their usage agreement for low-res images is very liberal; hence their popularity among designers.
It's the exact same effect you get when you shoot with a consumer DV camera and a small CCD? Awesome, now I'm on par with the big boys!
I think that we should get over hating ourselves, get over the inferiority complex that not only does somebody out there really care and that they've decided they don't like us, and realize that the universe has expressed its willingness to have us around by the fact that we already exist. If the universe wanted something besides humanity, then we wouldn't be here. QED.
At whatever point the rest of existence gets tired of us, I'm sure it'll let us know.
I don't take any crap from my wife and I'm also not divorced. However, I am also smart enough to concede small things that just aren't worth arguing about.
Actually, there are only 6 million sheep. 60 million would be pretty amazing.
If you RTFA, you'll see that the iPhones were activated off-campus and were trying to access a non-existent IP, most likely related to the first IP that the iPhone came into contact with after being activated. Whenever the iPhone lost connectivity on campus, it would try to seek out that original IP upon re-establishing a connection. In the case of Apple testing on their own campus, the phones were most likely activated at Apple and stayed the majority of the time at Apple - thus the problem never had a chance to crop up. Bizarre behavior, but bugs will happen.
As others have said, the contents of the Japanese vending machine are vastly different than their American counterparts; they might as well be on different planets. There is no such thing as a candy vending machine in Japan, and most of the candy that we eat the Japanese regularly pass over as too sweet. Japanese vending machines are tea-oriented, with iced coffee (sweetened or black), Coca-cola, Mitsuya Cider (like Sprite), Ginger Ale, and some form of sports drink thrown in besides. There are occasionally still beer vending machines as well.
As for Japanese meals involving "large amounts" of vegetables, that would be a different Japan than I'm used to; the typical Japanese diet is notoriously vegetable-poor, with people just now starting to get into salads and the like. Even then, the average Japanese salad still typically involves an almost impalatable heap of shredded lettuce with just a hint of dressing to wash it down. What the Japanese diet lacks in vegetables it more than makes up for in fattening starches (such as rice, which the Japanese refuse to consider bad for their diet, and a wide assortment of noodles.)
Despite its shortcomings, the Japanese diet is still one of the healthiest in the world. That, and the fact that a lot of people still have to walk 3km to work every morning can't hurt, either.
Not a JET, but working for a prefectural government.
Actually, the poster was in fun and completely harmless. There are much more serious offenses committed by JETs every day, and the disciplinary board was merely taking advantage of the opportunity to "make an example." He proffered an excellent apology and got off scott-free.
JETs don't need help to look bad; if the Japanese were going to shut the program down due to the bad behavior of the participants, they would have done so already. The JETs are doing a good enough job of looking bad, however, that people do question why the government's spending so much money on the project. Many prefectures are cutting down on or eliminating participation altogether.
The good news is, the new government under Prime Minister Abe is doing a serious review of the Japanese education system, and is talking about mandating English studies starting in elementary. Regardless of what happens to JET, there are enough private companies and teaching opportuninities that people like Azrael will be able to find a place to work for a long time to come. JET may have the highest profile, but it's not the only game in town.
As a foreigner in Japan, it's also a really good way to get arrested and lose your job. I had a friend of mine who jokingly posted a fake flyer on a designated political materials bulletin board near the train station, and he was called up in front of a disciplinary committee at the board of education. He was given liniency because he was a foreigner who didn't know any better, but he was told that as a teacher, he was expected to maintain a certain image. The Japanese really don't have a sense of humor about these things.
However, your average consumer doesn't buy $1.1 million in gas per day. I think that logic is a bit misleading.
I think it's nice that Linux users save $50, but I think this will have zero effect on Windows users. People aren't going to switch because it's cheaper; rather, they're more likely to say, "You get what you pay for," and see the $50 extra as a vote for Windows' quality.
Luckily, Nature has a built-in cure for sex addicts, which is called the orgasm. After the event occurs, the subject's interest in sex naturally abates for a time, and they either roll over and fall asleep or go and see what's in the fridge.
The "music industry" isn't the one upset by all this, it's the record stores only. They're ticked off because any profits made from distributing the CD are going to go to the newspaper in question, not the record stores. Their complaint was that they have a hard enough time competing with online retailers and supermarkets as it is without this kind of thing going on.
"The thing I don't understand is where the leading o in osphere comes from. Blog-sphere seems like the natural derivative to me."
Ah, yes, but it's even harder to say, and still just as annoying. Sounds more like a very uncomfortable bowel movement to me.
As for the other spheres, since "sphere" derives from Greek, and the other prefixes, such as"atmo-", also derive from Greek. Not even to mention that they are all terms for important scientific concepts to boot. I'd say that we can rest easy using them as real words, and not some sort of pop culture bastardization of a real word.
"B: The piracy problem isn't as bad as they make it out to be. (While they calculate lost profits based on a per file transfer basis, they fail to remove those people that likely wouldn't have bought the movie anyways.)"
On the one hand, I agree that *some* piracy isn't as bad for the industry as it's made out to be (versus completely unchecked piracy, which would be very bad indeed), I don't see how you couldn't calculate lost sales on a per-file transfer basis. The argument is "they wouldn't have bought the movie anyway," but quite often the reason seems to be, "because it was so easy to steal it." Movie rentals aren't that expensive; you can view it without buying it, and return it when you're done. Pretty much 100% of the time, you buy a movie because you already saw it and you liked it. Very rarely do people buy a movie before they see it, but very frequently the people downloading are getting material they've never seen.
That all being said, if the producers and distributors of content are still making a moderately insane fortune, I think things aren't too awful just yet.
Well, apparently they've updated it since the last time I gave up on it. Good for them. :)
"Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I really like Gnome, and Apple's UI irritates me, because it gets in the way of the way I like to work. But I guess that's all part and parcel of the way Apple insists that you "think outside the box the way WE tell you to, dammit!"
Ironically, that's the same way I feel about Gnome, and I'm primarily an OSX user. When I use Linux, I prefer KDE, because I find it less stifling than the box that Gnome forces me into with their spatial interface and the requirement that I *must* edit obscure configuration files in order to fix it. It really just goes to show that it depends on what kind of interface makes you happy.
No, the comparison doesn't work, I'm afraid. One person borrowing one book and choosing to make mediocre black-and-white copies for themselves a few pages at a time doesn't even begin to compare to tens of thousands of people downloading a perfect copy of an artist's entire works at one go. The principle isn't the same at all; the libraries are more closely favoring the original principles of fair use, not to mention that the books and CDs are not only paid for, but you get fined if you don't return them.
What the grandparent is trying to say is that you didn't actually list the hardware specifications. There is more than one model of Mac Pro, and I for one seriously doubt that you could undercut one at the same price, unless you build it yourself, and then that would be for perhaps a couple of hundred dollars. I know this because I have played the hardware spec game of Apple vs. PC for more than ten years, and since the G4, the only significant difference in hardware has been the processor. Now with the Intels, I'd have to say that by claiming a $1400 savings, you're blowing smoke. Unless you went with a completely different mid-range, single-core processor vs. the four-core offerings Apple currently has. Also, the PCI vs. the PCIe motherboard will also mean a significant price difference (not to mention it's hard to find video cards for it.) But at that point, the machine is already nothing like the Mac Pro and the comparison fails.
"I think Linux rules for open source apps, Windows for Commercial apps, and OS X is in the middle somewhere."
Depends on what you want to do. Apple computers are still very multimedia-centric, which is why you can get more bang for your buck for home-movie editing (or professional media creation, for that matter), using a Mac rather than a Windows-based machine. iLife '06 comes with every Mac, which means you don't pay anything over the purchase of the system; video editing, DVD and music authoring bundled? Try doing that on Windows. I recently had a friend who wanted to create a DVD for his students at school and he came to me for help in finding a solution that didn't involve spending money and was actually user-friendly. Needless to say, that wasn't going to happen. Even settling on what worked and was reasonably priced, he still ended up spending way more than the $80 price tag of a stand-alone version of iLife, minus the quality of Apple's templates and user interface.
An independent movie maker myself, the Mac platform has been the most cost-effective for putting together a professional solution that doesn't break the bank. Final Cut Studio, LightWave, Combustion, and Adobe CS2 as my foundation, complimented by free(!) applications like Audacity for advanced audio processing.
"I Agree with Apple not offering a mod-able box cheaper than the Mac Pro. But for most users, the "upgradable" model between the Mini and the Mac Pro is the iMac, which you can upgrade the hard-drive and the memory easily. This is a real complaint of mine for Macs, they don't address the group of users who would normally build their PC, or the group of users who play games. And I fully expect these users to shun Macs until they do. Because I fall into these groups, I'm torn between building a quad core Linux box for myself or buying a Mac Pro."
I don't think Apple will ever address the kind of people who build their own PC. They build complete computers; they don't sell components. Neither does Dell, nor HP, nor any other PC manufacturer, for that matter. To use the oft-abused car analogy, car manufacturers don't lose a lot of sleep on people who want to build their own cars; PC manufacturers (not to mention, Microsoft) don't lose a lot of sleep on computer hobbyists, either. They are a small minority in the overall PC market. I also agree with the overall sentiment expressed elsewhere, that the days of upgrading your PC component by component have become largely a thing of the past. I put together my own AMD-based PC for Windows and Linux, and there is nothing in it that I can upgrade that I can't upgrade on my G5. Hard drives, memory, video card? No problem. Processor? Whoops - that's going to require a new motherboard, which will in turn require new components, which results in a new computer, in the end. I guess my PC isn't any better than my Mac in that respect. On the bright side, Apple doesn't put any restrictions on installing OSX onto any Mac that I want, without activation, and 99.9% of the time it's going to install without obtuse hardware problems, unlike Linux.
I don't know, I think a VW Passat with a V6 engine would probably have enough power to tow that boat for ya.
This is Japan. This ruling is totally useless. First of all, the market for people who want to save their music online to listen to on their cell phones is very small indeed; "full browsing" internet time costs 300 yen (US $2.50) just to initiate, and cellphone-centric browsing is pretty pricey as well. There are all-you-can-eat plans for about 5000 yen a month, but since they make several cell phone models that are designed to be music players and offer multiple gigabytes of internal storage, not to mention swappable microSD cards, I predict the number of people living in Japan who will actually care about this ruling to total about 3.
Add on top of that the fact that Japanese law is based on the "don't ask, don't tell" school of thinking, and that music and CD rental stores not only sell blank media right by the register, but also helpfully label the CDs your renting with the play time so that you'll know how many CDs/MDs/whatever you're going to need, and I really find this hard to care about. This is, as with many landmark cases in Japan, a lot of posturing with very little follow-through.
The only place I've ever seen the Japanese remotely strict about managing is on-line images of celebrities. You want to get a take-down notice, just put up a pic of Erika Sato and see how long that lasts.
If you want to watch shows that portray things realistically, why are you watching sci-fi in the first place? Humans have always had a desire to make things look beautiful, or powerful, or graceful, etc. Firefly is a perfect example of things done for the aesthetics rather than because they're "practical"; heck, it's a western set in space. They often ride horses. The ship is designed to look like a big bug because it *can*. It has a butt and it lights up, for goodness' sake! I think you're barking up the wrong tree here.
Except that nobody comes after you if you eat your own (or your mate's asexually reproduced) young. Chalk up one to sharks.