Great profile of the Firefoxflicks.com contest in the NY Times.
What is probably most surprising about the Firefox ads is how much they resemble the traditional work of the ad world's high priests. Firefox is considering buying air time for some spots. Interestingly, the open-source company still believes in some old-school strategies; it once even collected donations from its fans to buy, of all things, an ad in The New York Times.
If you do not already subscribe to What Japan Thinks, you ought to. Ken is covering great stuff here.
Over 90% of Japanese bloggers are anonymous � 世論 What Japan Thinks
This is going to be fascinating.
When Clint Eastwood's two films about Iwo Jima, one of the darkest periods of the Pacific War, reach cinemas this year, audiences could be excused for forgetting the man behind them was once the trigger-happy Dirty Harry.
The 75-year-old director has promised Flags Of Our Fathers and Red Sun, Black Sand will attempt to show for the first time the suffering of both sides during 36 days of fighting in early 1945 that turned the island into a flattened wasteland.
On a recent trip to Japan, Eastwood said his time on Iwo Jima had forced him to re-evaluate the one-dimensional portrayal of America's former enemy in so many war films. 'There were good guys on one side. Life isn't like that,' he said.
He describes Red Sun, shot in Japanese and with a largely Japanese cast, as his attempt to understand the country's soldiers. 'I think those soldiers deserve a certain amount of respect,' he said. 'I feel terrible for both sides in that war and in all wars. A lot of innocent people get sacrificed. It's not about winning or losing, but mostly about the interrupted lives of young people. These men deserve to be seen, and heard from.'
YouTube Exclusive...
Read the book though- will stop you from eating fast food.
Adamu at the Mutant Frog Travelogue and Shin at from the inside, looking in both cover the recent Japanese political scandal where a young LDP member, Taizo Sugimura, plagiarized information that he then called his own on his website.
Frankly, anyone who is this stupid should have NO business being in politics. Will Japanese voters vote him out? I do not hold my breath.
So not only is this Honourable Member of our legislature an immature child, he is a thief and a liar. Puts him right at home, then.
It'll really be interesting to see if the LDP will nominate him next time around….. Says something (not very flattering) about the LDP's nominations process. But then, seeing the people being nominated by other parties (Nagata@DPJ for a recent example), it may unfortunately be par for the course.
It seems we get to choose from naive/stupid/gullible youngsters, old school geriatrics still comfortable with doing under-the-counter and you-rub-my-back-I'll-rub-yours type deals, or so called bureaucratic/academic/internationally experienced elites who are prepared to sell the country out to the highest bidder.
And we wonder why there is political apathy in this nation. (Of course apathy is good for those who play the game…)
from the inside, looking in � Plagiarism and liars
Thank god for the Internet. If you watch the video in which he admits to the plagiarism, you’ll notice just how little he seems to care that he’s a freaking dumbass for ripping off a popular book.
It sounds like he thinks it’s all over since he just deleted the passages in question. Doesn’t he realize it’s too late?
Mutantfrog Travelogue � Blog Archive � Dietman Taizo Sugimura an Idiot After All? (At least he is an admitted plagiarizer)
Also I don't know if it is just me, but the default Wordpress installs has these weird ">>" characters that show up as "�". Pretty annoying.
Kotaku editor and readers ranting about the PSP. These are hard-core gamers and they are so sad about Sony and the PSP.
Let's look at the score card:
Location Free TV is overpriced and not fully supported.
Web browsing is a hellish pain in the ass thanks to the telephone-style text entry.
Music is essentially in the same boat as video support.
Hollywood has given up on UMD.
The video games are still very hit or miss.
And images... well, at least they got that right.
Well.. yeah.. the PSP is a lot of broken promises and such... but.. it's Sony.. shouldn't we be used to this by now?
Unfortunately, the PSP has a lot of potential that's wasted by Sony's apparent need to turn every piece of plastic and metal they churn out into the newest expensive, gee-whiz, multimedia devices. Overpriced UMD movies, a library with titles that are mostly stale, and the fact that it's still getting raped in U.S. sales by the Nintendo DS (even more so once the DS Lite arrives here in June) are the least of it's problems. I'm beginning to wonder whether Sony even considered making their PSP a simple gaming handheld during it's development.
Sony has screwed up everything there is about the PSP, they have great graphics capabilities but no good games to use them, they have good features which are all crippled due to poor management and functionality. I think Sony couldn't have done worse if they were actually trying to make the PSP fail.
This comment is brilliantly funny:
Good luck finding a studio that's willing to chuck the cash to convert an entire season of any TV series over to UMD. You'll probably find them next to the studio that's including hours of must-have bonus features with their UMD movies.
Brilliant! Brilliant! Brilliant!
David Rees of mnftiu.cc and more famously for Get Your War On presents at Columbia's Political Union.
TOPICS COVERED IN THIS LECTURE INCLUDE:
# The Thomas Friedman Metaphor Illustration Service
# David Horowitz vs. Michel Foucault
# The Council on Foreign Relations, wizard-related truth behind
# Dennis Miller, role as official spokesman for NetZero dial-up internet access
# Clipart, aesthetic beauty of
# Christopher Hitchens, ubiquity of
# Afghanistan, self-immolation of girls therein
# A gazelle
# Political cartoonist, exciting lifestyle of
# MOST IMPORTANT: My five ideas about foreign policy and politics that I wrote down in the park before my lecture!!! David Brooks I'm coming for your job!
Foul language but quite funny. It's great to know that Rees is as funny in real life as he is with his comics.
This is not good.
I've come to wonder whether the problems I've had with MySQL errors on Barbelith over the last couple of years have been more to do with comment spam than anything else, and - while I want to make it clear that in no way do I blame Six Apart or Movable Type or anything and while I'm sure there's a way out of this situation - it has started to feel like having the mt-comments.cgi script sitting on my server is like having a bullseye painted on my chest.
If Tom Coates can't deal with comment spam on MT, then how are others less capable than him dealing with this?
re-naming the mt-comments.cgi script is a common move. Tom I wish you luck and I worry now about my own blog....
I'm interested in Wal-Mart's failure in S. Korea because it's an interesting case of both a business which did not respect local markets and a market where local competition is very strong.
Carrefour left Japan a few years ago and Nokia has no presence in Japan either. Wal-Mart in Japan is struggling with their Seiyu brand. Google in Japan is "struggling" as well (i.e. they are not dominant.)
Wal-Mart and Carrefour, which entered the country in 1996, put off South Korean consumers by sticking to Western marketing strategies that concentrated on dry goods, from electronics to clothing, while their local rivals focused on food and beverages, the segment that specialists say attracts South Koreans to hypermarkets.
The Wal-Mart and Carrefour outlets in South Korea are simpler in appearance than those of E-Mart and other competitors.
Wal-Mart and Carrefour sold products by the box, while E-Mart and Lotte built eye-catching displays and hired clerks who hawked their goods with megaphones and hand-clapping.
Over the years, South Korea has been a graveyard for some of the most competitive global brands. It is hard to find any Nokia cellphones in South Korea, for example.
Local giants Samsung and LG dominate, and Nokia, the world's primary cellphone maker, basically stopped promoting its cellphones here in 2004.
Google is a small player in the local Web search engine market, which is dominated by the Naver Web site of the South Korean company NHN and the portal of Daum Communications.
Naver and Daum encourage users to post questions and let others answer them, creating a fast-expanding Korean-language database that attracts Web surfers.
Nestlé, the food and beverage company, also failed to make a mark with its flagship baby formula segment.
Wal-Mart Selling Stores and Leaving South Korea - New York Times
Linus Torvalds is interviewed by CNN (Kristie Lu Stout)
KLS: In the last year we've seen tremendous growth in Linux usage especially on desktop computers, especially with stuff out there like Open Office, especially the Firefox browser. Do you think we're nearing a tipping point where Linux is becoming mainstream?
LT: Well as far as I'm concerned it's actually been pretty mainstream. Already I've been doing this for 15 years and you have to realize that I've got a slightly different viewpoint on the whole thing.
KLS: I understand, but let's say your mom or my mom, they're surfing the Internet but maybe they're not surfing with Firefox just yet or they don't really know what Linux is just yet.
LT: Open source is definitely getting to the point where a lot of people who don't actually know about the technology start to know about the notion of open source and start to use the products. Not just Linux, I mean Firefox is certainly the one that a lot of people will have seen because they prefer it, because it's better or because it's more secure or for any other number of reasons.
KLS: Another reason, because it's an alternative to Microsoft?
LT: Well that is, I think, played up more than it necessarily needs to be. Because there is a very vocal side to this which is the whole anti Microsoft thing. I think it makes a better story than is necessarily true in real life.
It would take too long for me to explain this Japanese TV comedy show... just enjoy :)
Bakafish has subtitled the newest Hard Gay comedy routine.
Enjoy!
YouTube - [Bakafish] Hard Gay Cupid Part 1 English Subtitles
YouTube - [Bakafish] Hard Gay Cupid Part 2 English Subtitles
YouTube - [Bakafish] Hard Gay Cupid Part 3 English Subtitles
There has been a ton of ink spilled over Vodafone's failure in Japan. I won't go over the list because it is very long but suffice it to say that the British firm did not respect the market's differences.
So it's very strange to see Vodafone JV-ing with Softbank in Japan for mobile. I was convinced that Masayoshi Son, having significantly impacted the broadband market in Japan with Yahoo! BB, and having purchased Japan Telecom for a pretty penny, was going to re-brand and re-start Vodafone Japan as Yahoo! Japan Mobile. Softbank could then offer a full suite of telecommunications offerings- mobile, broadband, fixed-line, and of course all of the content via Yahoo! Japan.
Steven Town's confusion over at The Japan Stock Blog is valid. This deal doesn't make sense at face value or in light of how Son and Sarin are selling it to the press.
Vodafone, Softbank Set Up Joint Venture: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance
The Japan Stock Blog � Following Buyout, Softbank and Vodafone Form Questionable JV (SFTBF, VOD)
Apple's new Intel-powered MacBook has been released. Including a nice black model!
It's hard to see what the MacBook Pro gets you besides extra screen space.
Anyone out there considering this cool new machine?
If you are American, and you read only one news article this week, take the time to read this exclusive report by USA Today on the NSA's spying program on all Americans.
The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.
If you are not thoroughly disgusted with the state of affairs in America, with this administration, and it's torrent of bald-faced lies since day 1, then I don't know what news you read.
USATODAY.com - NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls
danah boyd has a great post up AOL's support for only IE on their new AIM Pages service, social network services in general, cluster effects, and browsers. I really cannot say it better than she can, so I will quote her liberally.
The important thing is that when you think about browser-access, you cannot simply think in terms of "90% market" because there's a decent probability that many of those 90% have critical connections to people who are in the 10%. You need to think in terms of clusters, not individuals, because it is clusters that will make your application work. People participate when all of their friends can.
Corporations force this through regulation software, but this is not how consumer markets work. Launching a beta of AIM Pages on IE-only is foolish at best. Sure, a lot of people will try it, but if their friends can't play, they won't really get into it. Meaningful activity won't spread unless entire clusters can play along. (Trying it out by creating an account is not the same as being active.)
Getting social applications going requires a baseline.... That baseline is that everyone can play along so that there's no structural barrier to network spread. This is why mobile shit is so hard to get off the ground. This is why getting people to download applications for social interaction is such a barrier to participation. Replicating this problem on the Internet is foolish at best. It doesn't matter if you're launching in beta - first impressions really do matter. If you're targeting an audience that's IE-only (like corporations), go for it. But if you're trying to go after a mainstream, younger audience, you're being idiotic if you think you can get away with not supporting Firefox or Safari. (And besides, if you're AOL, what on earth are you doing supporting Microsoft hegemony?)
apophenia: Cluster Effects and Browser Support (IE-only social software is idiotic)
ITpro has a cool profile on the city of Ninomiya, Tochigi-ken, who have switched over to a Linux desktop for all 140 city employees, including Open Office, Firefox and Thunderbird.
I hope to go out there and visit with them and learn how they have done this and share their lessons with a wider audience in Japan.
Quite surreal, but great!, to see imagery and news from World of Warcraft in the NY Times.
I don't get much time to play these days though :( too busy!
I am very glad that my fellow Americans now feel the way I have been feeling for years. I wish it hadn't taken this long but....
Having worked at Toyota in the US for 4 years, I'm disappointed but not necessarily surprised.
Japanese managers, even executives transferred to the US, forget that they are in America and not Japan.
If Ms. Kobayashi's story is true, and it rings true for me even just from this relatively short article, it will be an expensive but important lesson for Toyota and TMS.
Sexual harassment in the workplace in Japan is a whole other story that I won't cover here.
Toyota Official Is on Leave After Harassment Charge - New York Times
Had a great time meeting Lee and Sachi who are travelling around the world this year.
New Hard Gay English subtitled video up at the Bakakage Forums.
I'll link the first video to YouTube but you'll have to go to the Bakakage Forums to see the second half or to download the torrent.
Very happy to see voluntary fan-subtitling of Razor Ramon's wackiness for non-Japanese audiences.
Jazz-not-jazz covers the new 3 CD set I picked up this weekend. Excellent house music!
With over 75 single and 20 album releases one can argue what should appear on a best of because everyone has his or her personal favourites but these 22 full length cuts selected by label owners Lofty and Bob Jones hardly can do no wrong with lovers of soulful house music.
Fans of Chillifunk will need this album for the tracks they’ve missed (or for the new Marathon Men song Blessings) and who haven’t heard of Chillifunk yet will need this as an introduction anyway.
There will hardly be a better dance music compilation in 2006. Here’s to Chillifunk and another ten years of great house music!
____[ J ]__[ A ]_[ Z ]_[ Z ]___[NOT]___[ J ]__[ A ]_[ Z ]_[ Z ]_________________________________ [jazz-not-jazz.com]
Brian Krebs at the Washington Post compares Apple's Safari browser to it's competition in terms of browser security. What he concludes is more than a bit troubling.
Over the past two years, after being notified about serious security flaws in its products, it took Apple about 91 days on average to issue patches to correct those vulnerabilities. I also found that almost without exception, other open-source Linux vendors were months ahead of Apple in fixing the same flaws.
This is one of those where you don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Sony announces that they are preparing another digital music player to compete with the Apple iPod. The Sony executive quoted, Takao Yuhara, is quoted as saying that the upcoming Sony product will be "typically Sony." In fact the only two words quoted in the whole article are those two words.
What does "typically Sony" mean to most digital music player customers?
Why not ask all the Sony Connect customers who've struggled with and lost their battles with Sony's non-functional software. I have literally thousands of comments from Sony Connect users who are, for the most part, exasperated with the software. Many have left comments that they will never purchase another Sony music player again. Yuhara-san, I hope you are considering a different market segment because the "previously purchased a Sony Network Walkman" market segment is gone.
Sony has lost a tremendous amount of goodwill with the debacle surrounding Sony Connect, and whatever challenge that the company had in front of them, their own internal issues developing software to support their digital music players is at least as large of a problem as the competition is.
Yuhara should have said "atypically Sony" i.e. something that is non-traditional from Sony, because that, I believe, is what the market is looking for. Not another run-of-the-mill digital music player with mediocre (or worse) software.
I'm quoting myself (hey, it's my blog, so I can do what I want to :) from a comment I left on Henry Blodget's post on MSN's declining fortunes: declining advertising revenue, declining search revenue, declining operating income.
I would imagine that Redmond is betting the farm on the upcoming launch of IE 7 and Vista, wherein MSN will be the default home page and default search engine for all Windows Vista users (and everyone who upgrades to IE 7 from XP.)
Because search has become extremely important _since_ the debut of IE 6, 5 years ago no less, no one really knows how much of an impact the change in the defaults will be. Will users switch back to Yahoo! or Google? Will users stay with the default MSN? Defaults are a really, really, really powerful advantage. People who spend time in search know that most users do not adjust defaults. Thus Google and Yahoo! ought to be doing whatever they can to influence and educate search engine users. Google seems to be trying a number of different approaches. Yahoo! perhaps less so.
In Tokyo, I know for a fact that MSN Japan and Microsoft Japan have an army of recruiters looking for Internet engineering talent which is largely non-existent or is firmly encamped at the competition (Google Japan, Yahoo! Japan, etc.)
Internet Outsider: MSN: Another Quarter Closer To Irrelevant
There's been a lot of debate over the recent Stephen Colbert roast of the President at the White House Correspondent's Dinner. I'll just join the chorus and say, "Thank you Stephen Colbert!"
Thank You Stephen Colbert. [thankyoustephencolbert.org]
Metafilter has a lot of good links and a good discussion. This is why I like Metafilter so much.
Truthiness to Power | MetaFilter [metafilter.com]
Finally, I really liked this Peter Daou piece on how the mainstream media is choosing not to cover the Colbert roast part even though it was clearly the most impact-ful part of the evening.
The AP's first stab at it and pieces from Reuters and the Chicago Tribune tell us everything we need to know: Colbert's performance is sidestepped and marginalized while Bush is treated as light-hearted, humble, and funny. Expect nothing less from the cowardly American media. The story could just as well have been Bush and Laura's discomfort and the crowd's semi-hostile reaction to Colbert's razor-sharp barbs. In fact, I would guess that from the perspective of newsworthiness and public interest, Bush-the-playful-president is far less compelling than a comedy sketch gone awry, a pissed-off prez, and a shell-shocked audience.
This is the power of the media to choose the news, to decide when and how to shield Bush from negative publicity. Sins of omission can be just as bad as sins of commission.
Ignoring Colbert: A Small Taste of the Media's Power to Choose the News
This is why Virtual PC is so interesting.
You can't normally run 4 different versions of IE on Windows.
