Tuesday, April 26, 2005

thank goodness there's a term limit

Interesting discussion on slashdot:

Time Magazine is reporting that the Bush Administration is removing U.S. delegates from the Inter-American Telephone Commission because they gave money to John Kerry in last year's election.


Send in the Clones! (Score:5, Insightful)
by ackthpt (218170) * on Monday April 25, @06:01PM (#12341438)
(http://www.dragonswest.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday February 24, @01:27PM)
call us nutty

I'd rather call them transparently corrupt. How about a rubberstamp government, like those we lately seem to be suggesting oughta respect democratic principles, etc. (so long as they represent the right democratic principles, unlike all those heathen socialists in South America.)

Monday, April 25, 2005

Japanese post: new vocab

失敗を恐れない: Unafraid of failure.

Friday, April 22, 2005

Japanese post: new vocab

該当する:correspond to
条件に該当する:fit the requirements; fulfill the conditions

Thursday, April 21, 2005

racism

I don't deal with it all that much these days, as Japan is still a pretty homogenous country, but it struck me recently.

Fundamentally, racism is to treat someone differently because of their ethnicity (or perceived ethnicity). I think it's very interesting how people justify their racism.

In my opinion, it is acceptable to hate individuals for their actions (and corporations - although their actions tend to be the result of individuals in control), but to say that you hate a nameless population because they are a specific ethnicity seems to be clear racism.

Nationality versus ethnicity is an interesting issue. For certain countries, they are almost one and the same (to an extent), although I don't think any country can claim complete homogenity of ethnicity and nationality. So, is hatred of a nation racism? It seems pretty close, but really hard to tell.

I find this interesting because Japan is a pretty homogenous nation, but there are quite a few different ethnicities here. There are the native populations, of which the Ainu are probably the most well-known. There is Okinawa, which historically was an independent nation that frequently traded with China. There are the generations of Korean descendents who have been born and bred in Japan and have recently become full-fledged Japanese citizens (I believe). There are also at least one generation of Chinese descendents who live here. So we talk about the population of Japan, it is not as homogenous as people may think.

Racism is an issue where my parents truly do not seem to understand my thinking. I think the difference must be in education. Do they talk about racism in Taiwan? I don't think they talk about it much in Japan or China. But it's a huge issue in the U.S.; I surmise because of the civil rights movement. It's very interesting how education affects consciousness.

A local sushi restaurant has a sign advertising for employees which says "no foreigners." The whole concept of racism seems to be alien. I think the U.S. concept of equal opportunity is rather alien. Of course, it took the U.S. a while to develop this concept from U.S. and European theories of justice and rights. Women's suffrage took a while! And African American suffrage took even longer. Rather different from what I know of Confucianism. Confucious had some good ideas, but he had some really stupid ones too.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Japanese post: pizza

昨夜、下北沢にある「PIZZAロクサン」というレストランに食べに行きました。結構美味しかったです。Chewy pizza crust too. How do you say "pizza crust" in Japanese?

Japanese post: possible

可能です。

可能性があります。
「可能性です」と言わない。
The people at slashdot are pretty funny.

Regarding a comment by some guy at CA about the Linux kernel:
Not what we want. (Score:5, Funny)
by ShaniaTwain (197446) on Tuesday April 19, @08:19PM (#12287753)
(http://slashdot.org/)
"We are not interested in the game drivers and music drivers that are being added to the kernel."

..we want text, orange, perhaps green on a black background. We want large buzzing metal boxes that only we are allowed access to. We want to store our data on large spinning reels of magnetic tape, or better yet punch cards.

also we want a sandwich.

That is all.


What is CA's motive in saying this ? They have no real experience in developing operating systems, nor are they producing data and a testing methodology to backup their opinion.

Monday, April 18, 2005

which external hard disk?

Debating between 2 external hard disks, both by IOData. Should I go with the 5400 rpm drive or the 7200 rpm drive? They're both 120 GB in size. They differ in price by about 1400 yen (about 14 dollars).

Friday, April 15, 2005

identity theft

A very interesting article on "identity theft" by Bruce Schneier. He states the problem very clearly.

Japanese post: manga, etc.

お久しぶりです。誰かが読んでいますか? (敬語を書けません。m(__)m 漢字も変換できません(゜.゜))

昨日「ホイッスル」という漫画二冊を買いました。これから一冊しか買えません。あればすぐ読むので、遅く寝ました。健康的にちょっとよくないです。

「ホイッスル」は悪くない漫画です。「SlamDunk」ぐらい感動してないけど(全然違う)、面白いです。「ビューティポップ」の主人公のほうが面白いと思うけどね。「ホイッスル」はかなり単純な話ですね。

どんな漫画を進めますか?「SlamDunk」ぐらいの漫画を探しています。

「Beck」というのは結構いい漫画だけど、やっぱり男の漫画ですよ。ちょっとやらしいだから。本当に男の考え方かなと思います。

「ヒカルの碁」という漫画は多分「ホイッスル」よりよくできたけど、結局あきました。

Saturday, April 09, 2005

job postings should be in html

I don't understand why people feel the need to pass around job postings as MS Word files.

Issue 1) The problem of viruses in Word documents.

Issue 2) They're big files

Why not use HTML? Sure, nothing is completely safe, but it's safer.

They can be easily converted to text too.

Friday, April 08, 2005

cookies and chocolate ice cream

This cookies and chocolate flavor from Haagen Dazs is kinda gross.

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

external hard disk

So, as the simplest backup solution ever, I'd like to get an external hard disk.

One option is to get a case for an existing hard disk and use that. We have a bunch of hard disks lying around apparently.

Alternatively, I could just buy the whole thing. This sounds like the simpler option.

Next, I need to decide what kind of external hard disk to get.
Requirements:
space: >=40 GB
interface: USB
price: as low as possible

I don't have very many requirements. I can get an 40 GB IODATA HDA-iU40 for 7000 yen. That was the very cheapest thing on kakaku.com.

currently reading

The way old Java Code Conventions. It's a good starting point at least.

Sunday, April 03, 2005

Japanese post: new vocab

孤独(こどく): solitude

I'm betting it's an anime song that I'm listening to right now. It's a very pretty song. Ah, it is an anime song: 宝石(ほうせき)曲:井上麻里奈(いのうえまりな).

The website for the radio station I'm listening to is rather amusing. It has an unfriendly blue rabbit charging at the screen.

Lands' End Japan President

Keiko Hayashi, President of Lands' End Japan is a pretty interesting person.

a train fan

A true fan of trains and stations, Hirohiko Yokomi visited all 9,843 train stations in Japan.

Saturday, April 02, 2005

quote

"To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice."