So with some help from Boris, I now have SlashLinks running on my own site.
Thank you to Ben for building this tool and thank you to Boris for help in installation.
February 2006 Archives
I have not installed this yet and I'm not even sure if my host supports RoR but this is a GREAT idea for anyone who has a blog and also uses del.icio.us.
Here's why this tool/service is important:
1) create an archive of your del.icio.us links on your own site
2) control your own presentation of your own links (i.e. it's on your own site so you can css it as you wish)
3) adds numerous links to your site so that you can be better googled for the links that you choose.
Own Your Del.icio.us Links! | SlashLinks
via kottke
Diego, who is a member of the same guild I am in for Warcraft, writes about his perspective on the game for the TED Blog.
So what have I learned? First, it really is the New Golf: WoW facilitates surprisingly rich social interactions between players. In WoW I’ve set up meetings, arranged introductions, even asked for a favor or two. All the things that used to happen at a country club can now occur in this online space, only with an order of magnitude more people and without the limitations of geography or tee times.Second, this is the first time that I’ve seen the internet really live up to its potential to enhance the performance of far-flung teams. It’s amazing what gets accomplished in WoW – complex objectives are routinely solved using a combination of top-down leadership, individual creativity, and emergent strategies. WoW is a prototyping lab for new paradigms of collaboration.
See you on Eitrigg server!
I've never read Kiyosaki's book.
Now, I never plan to.
"Rich Dad, Poor Dad contains much wrong advice, much bad advice, some dangerous advice, and virtually no good advice."
John T. Reed’s analysis of Robert T. Kiyosaki’s book Rich Dad, Poor Dad
The page is a bit hard to read as it is very long but the content is well-researched and on point.
What is more disturbing is reading this stuff:
Selected responses to John T. Reed’s analysis of Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
When it's too good to be true, it's too good to be true.
The skeptic in me stays strong.
For decades Sony had a policy where senior executives, once "retired" from the company, would be given a position as "advisor." Advisor status meant a salary often larger than what they were making while an employee, a personal assistant, sometimes a car with a driver. These were the most expensive employees in the company and in "retiring" they didn't work but continued to cost the company the highest wages in the firm.
Sony recently cancelled this system- something they should have done a decade ago. The stock jumped 3%.
It is a small but important step. It's important for investors to show that there is change, even incremental, afoot. It's important for employees, who resented this system that they saw as a drain on the resources. But most importantly it is a step, albeit a small one, towards a new Sony.
Sony is burdened with huge ranks of old men. Old men who do not understand the current marketplace, let alone the future.
Getting these 45 "advisors" out of the company is a good first step. It is only one step, however, towards a revitalized Sony.
MSN Money - Reuters Business News: Nikkei rises helped by economic data; Sony shines
In the technology sector, Sony rose 2.9 percent to 5,630 yen after the electronics and entertainment conglomerate said on Wednesday it is scrapping 45 adviser positions as part of restructuring, leading to the departure of well-known names in its old guard.
This is insane.
Some exec of a failing game company was street racing his $1,000,000 Ferrari Enzo in SoCal and crashed it going 150 mph. The photos are insane!
The fact that this guy walked away from a crash that would have killed anyone in just about any other car is a testament to Ferrari engineering.
I'm happy to hear that all is well at Six Apart as I have probably 15 friends working there :)
When you think about it, as Boris did, it is absurd.
Heh...
I will quote the New York Times editorial on Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso in full as I am 1000% in support of the stance of the NY Times.
Japan's Offensive Foreign Minister
Published: February 13, 2006
People everywhere wish they could be proud of every bit of their countries' histories. But honest people understand that's impossible, and wise people appreciate the positive value of acknowledging and learning from painful truths about past misdeeds. Then there is Japan's new foreign minister, Taro Aso, who has been neither honest nor wise in the inflammatory statements he has been making about Japan's disastrous era of militarism, colonialism and war crimes that culminated in the Second World War.
Besides offending neighboring countries that Japan needs as allies and trading partners, he is disserving the people he has been pandering to. World War II ended before most of today's Japanese were born. Yet public discourse in Japan and modern history lessons in its schools have never properly come to terms with the country's responsibility for such terrible events as the mass kidnapping and sexual enslavement of Korean young women, the biological warfare experiments carried out on Chinese cities and helpless prisoners of war, and the sadistic slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians in the city of Nanjing.
That is why so many Asians have been angered by a string of appalling remarks Mr. Aso has made since being named foreign minister last fall. Two of the most recent were his suggestion that Japan's emperor ought to visit the militaristic Yasukuni Shrine, where 14 Japanese war criminals are among those honored, and his claim that Taiwan owes its high educational standards to enlightened Japanese policies during the 50-year occupation that began when Tokyo grabbed the island as war booty from China in 1895. Mr. Aso's later lame efforts to clarify his words left their effect unchanged.
Mr. Aso has also been going out of his way to inflame Japan's already difficult relations with Beijing by characterizing China's long-term military buildup as a "considerable threat" to Japan. China has no recent record of threatening Japan. As the rest of the world knows, it was the other way around. Mr. Aso's sense of diplomacy is as odd as his sense of history.
Very cute video by UCSD students on the topic of racial popularity.
YouTube - Yellow Fever
or
Yellow Fever - Google Video
production info:
Wong Fu Productions
Shin @ fukumimi.wordpress.com has an interesting new blog looking at the Japanese finance world. I recommend his blog. Good stuff Shin!
When will Japan join the modern world? When pigs fly.
The cruel reality of Japan is that alongside the very high smoking rate, the Japanese live longer than anyone else. So smoking doesn't kill the Japanese, it just makes it very smoky in Japan. :(
LONDON, Feb. 14 — After a tortured debate, Parliament voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday for a total ban on smoking in indoor public places in England — a move that seemed certain to end the time-hallowed traditions of the smoky British pub, where a pint of ale and a cigarette once defined the downtime of generations.
The decision, by an unexpectedly high margin of 384 to 184, brought England into line with Ireland, which barred smoking in public places in March 2004, and with Scotland and Northern Ireland, where bans are to come into force over the next 13 months. The local parliament in Wales has also said it will seek a full ban. The English ban is expected to come into effect next year.
I've always felt pretty ambivalent about Japanese mainstream/mass media because of the way in which it operates (the presss "kisha kurabu" club system), etc. Basically, I know that the Japanese media often works hand-in-hand with the Japanese government, which is often the case in other nations as well, of course. Also, I've always felt that the Japanese mainstream media is basically about different shades of grey- i.e. that the tone of the media might be slightly different from outlet to outlet, but that in general the message is very similar. Within the shades of grey, I've always seen Asahi as the most left-leaning, Yomiuri as the most right-leaning, but this is really semantics.
So it is interesting to see one of the media barons of Japan, Tsuneo Watanabe of the Yomiuri Shimbun, at age 80, coming into the media spotlight for a strong anti-Koizumi stance. It would be somewhat akin to Rupert Murdoch doing interviews against Bush.
You can read the interview with Watanabe in a rival's magazine here:
Now, the Japanese public is divided because of that sort of thing, which has destroyed our diplomacy with Asia.
It is wrong in the first place to allow a Shinto shrine to hold such power.
To deny the shrine any authority, the best way is for prime ministers not to pay visits to the shrine. They should never pay visits in their official capacity to Yasukuni. That is the only way.
Yomiuri, Asahi editorial chiefs call for a national memorial
The NY Times covers this issue again here:
Watanabe seems troubled by some aspects of the nationalist movement he helped engender. The editorial, which reflected his worries about Japan's relations with its Asian neighbors, sent shock waves through the political world. It called for the building of a secular alternative to the shrine and bluntly said the country's prime minister did not understand history.
Nowadays, Watanabe is unsparing in his criticism. Koizumi worships at a shrine that glorifies militarism, said Watanabe, who equates Tojo with Hitler.
"This person Koizumi doesn't know history or philosophy, doesn't study, doesn't have any culture," Watanabe said. "That's why he says stupid things, like, 'What's wrong about worshipping at Yasukuni?' Or, 'China and Korea are the only countries that criticize Yasukuni.' This stems from his ignorance."
Publisher dismayed by Japanese nationalism - International Herald Tribune
Greater Asia is watching Japan very carefully with respect to the Yasukuni Shrine controversy. Koizumi has damaged relations with China and other East Asian nations with his visits to the shrine and it will be up to the next leader of Japan to mend these fences.
This lady motorcyclist in Los Angeles had her helmet camera on when a car in the lane next to her had an accident and caused her to crash into the car.
At the time of this posting, there's 16 pages of commentary. The upside is that this video will exonerate the motorcyclist and will implicate the car driver for the idiot that he is. Sadly, it looks like he's an undocumented Mexican without a license and insurance (a fairly common occurance in SoCal) and the motorcyclist may not get anything from his insurance.
SoCalSportbikes - General Sportbike Discussion - Vid of My Accident Today - Downed R1
This is my final post on "Memoirs of a Geisha," which I've written about in the past quite extensively with regards to casting the movie, my thoughts on the film, tracking reivews. The movie is a failure by any stretch of the imagination with the actors defending the movie in hindsight.
Then the Chinese government decided to cancel the release of the movie in China, which was supposed to be a significant reason for the casting of the Chinese female leads. Of course this means that the movie is now very popular in the underground, pirated movie market- which means none of those profits will go to legitimate rights holders.
The ban, however, only applies to theater screenings of "Geisha." DVD stores in Beijing quickly began selling pirated copies in English for about €1 per copy. "It's been sold out for days now," says one dealer, who sells his wares in the state-owned "Friendship Stores" in Beijing's embassy district. "I have no idea what it is about this film that people like so much."
The popular underground sales of the film suggest that the official censors' argument is just a pretext for the real reason. They haven't banned the film out of fear of anti-Japan protests. The real reasoning behind the decision to shut "Geisha" out of the Chinese market is that the conservative censors themselves felt their national honor had been damaged -- and they wanted to teach their beautiful Hollywood exports that they shouldn't just be thinking about money and fame, but also their homeland. But it also gave the censors the opportunities to thumb their noses at the Japanese. The Chinese allege the Japanese have few regrets about the past atrocities they committed against them, and the message to Tokyo through this decision was clear: "We're not interested in your culture." Der Spiegel
William Pesek of Bloomberg has some interesting insights into the mess that this movie has become.
Japan's qualms with ``Memoirs of a Geisha'' miss a bigger point relevant to Asia's largest economy. Yes, a film with so specific a setting should star Japanese. While many seethe that major roles went to Zhang, Gong and Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh, Marshall also has a point. His casting decisions reflect a dearth of internationally known Japanese actors who can speak English.
After all, Hollywood wouldn't have made the film if it wouldn't appeal to the lucrative, yet subtitle-adverse U.S. market. One reason there are few globally known Japanese actors: Japan's large domestic market creates few incentives for film studios and actors to search for audiences or projects abroad.
There's a lesson here for Japan Inc. Japanese are ravenous consumers and, until now, a 127 million-person market seemed big enough. As sales soared in the heady 1980s and stayed reasonably brisk during the recession-plagued 1990s, companies were slow to look abroad.
Chinese critics are missing the point, too. Seeing homegrown actresses eclipse Japan's should be reason to celebrate China's rising dominance not only in the area of economics, but culture. Instead, nationalist tendencies are spoiling this moment in the spotlight.
Finally, there's a lesson here for investors. While it may come as a surprise to folks in the West, Chinese, Japanese and Koreans don't tend to think they look alike. Hollywood's who'd- know-the-difference mindset in casting films is comparable to how some investors view Asia. Some see it as an undifferentiated collection of nations that are hard to get their arms around.
Bloomberg.com: 'Geisha' Offers Asian Business Lessons
The reality of this financial and political mess is that it will be harder to get an Asian or Japanese or Chinese movie green-lighted because studios will be more risk-averse. The lack of global-quality Japanese actresses will continue.
Status quo, sadly for us all.
Jane Campion, who directed "The Piano" presents this documentary on Megumi Yokota, the Japanese girl who was abducted by North Koreans decades ago. This incident (and others like it) are still significantly affecting political communication between Japan and North Korea.
DivX Movies - Abduction, The Megumi Yokota Story (trailer for movie)
'Abduction' Wins Best Documentary at Slamdance | Christianpost.com
Film brings Yokota story to new audience- The Japan Times Online Articles
Pallalink.net has a new desktop image up on Flickr!!!
Look at this mess at SonyBMG.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Sony Corp. (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research) and Bertelsmann AG (BERT.UL: Quote, Profile, Research) are close to announcing a change in leadership of their joint Sony BMG Music Entertainment venture to resolve a dispute between the two companies, a source familiar with the situation said on Thursday.
The source said Andrew Lack, chief executive officer of Sony BMG Music Entertainment, and Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, its chairman, are expected to change roles.
...
Lack's contract as CEO is about to expire after nearly two years, and senior Bertelsmann executives have told Reuters the company was displeased with Lack's performance.
Holy crap- BMG is using Reuters to criticize their own CEO? What's the word for this? oh yeah, "pathetic" is what I was looking for.
Do you want to know what a healthy company looks like?
- A healthy company does not use the news media to criticize it's own executives.
- A healthy company does not use a "rootkit" to attack their own customer's computers.
- An honorable company would apologize to it's customers for dishonest tactics.
- A healthy company's CEO would not complain of an "unfair" press beating when it was totally warranted.
- A CEO who really respected his own customers would never say in an interview on NPR "Most people I think don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
- A healthy company does not spend untold time and money managing the egos of the top executives in plain sight of the investors.
This is the part that is most galling to me. If there was any active/effective leadership above these egomaniacs, this would not be an issue. Sadly, effective leadership at Sony is MIA again.
Thanks to Jay for the tip.
Heh :)
The bad thing right now is that since we've moved "We Know" to Eitrigg, a new server that is not accepting new accounts - only transfers from specific servers, is that newbies can't join until Blizzard changes this rule.
I'm now level 23 and my WoW game is definitely better than my golf game.
web 2.0 in logos
They were just talking about this on the radio but it was actually stunning to me.
Of the 5 movies nominated for best picture for the Academy Awards, as of Feb. 1st, none, zero, 0/5 of them are available for viewing in Japan (except from shady p2p networks or illegal pirated DVDs from China.)
If content providers, in this case Hollywood, are not going to take their "International" markets seriously, then no wonder there's as much piracy as there is. And no whining about costs for releasing movies globally. If you want a global market then you have to pay the costs associated with access to a global market. That should be the standard, not the exception.
Chris has an early write-up of Lismo- the new AU service for mobile music.
My friend was the key person in the development of uta-tomo- the social network piece of Lismo, a.k.a. Last.fm for Lismo.
We'll see how this goes.
Ore no Buloggu � Blog Archive � au LISTEN MOBILE SERVICE, aka Lismo
Apple software exec leaves for Sony.
Let's hope Tim knows what to do because Sony desperately needs help.
Frankly, one guy isn't going to turn around the shop there, not when whole businesses are predicated on software that doesn't work.
For those of you watching Sony- here's the transcript of the recent earnings call.
Let me pull out some interesting parts (as far as I am concerned.)
A - Takao Yuhara [Sony executive]
Geographical breakdown of the PS2 in the third quarter, the total shipment was, the 5,360,000 with which in the Japan its 1.13 million and in North America 2.21 million and lastly in Europe it is 2.02 million. So that is, the Playstation 2. On PSP, in the third quarter, total shipments quantity was 1.2 million, sorry, this is of course 9 months, 622 seldom period. Asia 6.2 million, in Japan 1.35 million and in North America 1.68 million and in the Europe is 1.2 million. That is a geographical distribution of this, of Playstation portables.
But, as we all know, Nintendo DS is kicking everyone's ass in handheld platforms.
Q - Paul Smith
Okay thank you very much for that and congratulations on, on that improvement, the other area which again was supposed to surprise, which I’m not sure I understand is the, the walkman side, MD revenues, because I understand that the revenues were flat year-on-year, can you explain the, how do you see, and maintaining business in Walkman?
A - Takao Yuhara [Sony executive]
You mean that the Walkman, these are how our A-series to purchase, how this can approximately or the, MD and CD Walkman?
Q - Paul Smith
MVCD products.
A - Takao Yuhara [Sony executive]
This, the, MD or CD walkman in this, particular third quarter, the sales was almost falt [flat] compared to the, rest of the year then again that we did make good quarter reduction efforts, the couple of revisions that favor growth, the current situation and then we could increase up the operating profit of this, the walkman compared to the last year.
Q - Paul Smith
I understand that you introduced new product in, in Japan and Europe but I’m not quite sure, why that it was this popular or I think in the absence of new products one would have expect to the big decline in that area?
A - Takao Yuhara [Sony executive]
Mr. Smith, actually within the audio segments, I think sales are more or less flat I don’t have to take them in front of me for the entire segment. But I think quite of that sales have been for CD and MD walkman, quite substantially. They shrunk by about half in fact, since the previous year. We all think…
A - Jonathan Bates [Sony investor relations]
Slightly positive results from the A-series walkmans in Japan, they have 20%, 25% of the market share.
A - Takao Yuhara [Sony executive]
But, of course, they have a pretty dominant share. In the UK, we have gained around 20%. I should also comment that the, the technology that we use in our, in our high definition flash walkman is, they have a very long life time actually about for very long time, they also use organic video screen, which keeps the kind of, the design of the walkman to kind of futuristic kind of sale. Obviously, there was room for improvement but we have got, a small kind of, of that what takes around 20% in the market in, in the UK and Japan, I hope I that helps or answer your question.
No one at Sony wants to talk about the mess at Connect.
The Japan Stock Blog � Sony F3Q05 (Qtr Ending Dec 31, 2005) Earnings Conference Call Transcript (SNE)
