Public officials in Japan must be Japanese

Interesting. A recent Japanese Supreme Court decision.

The top court said, "Only Japanese are allowed, in principle, to serve as 'local officials who exercise public authority on the principle under which the sovereignty resides with the people,'" and the country's "legislation has not taken into account the appointment of foreign nationals" to such posts.

The decision was 13-2.

communication

通信 means communication in Japanese, but is only used for communication between machines or objects. Not for people, as I learned yesterday. Laf. Robots communicating would be 通信。So what's communication between robots and people?

Also, the dictionary form of the verb is called 終止形。Full stop form, if you look at the meaning of each character.

french fries

AKA fried potatoes in Japan.

Which is better, MiniStop fried potatoes or Burger King french fries?

Both are delicious!!!! In my opinion.

RSS and related formats

I'm just doing a little research into RSS and Atom right now, and is it me or is it just one big happy mess?

RSS 0.90, 0.91, 0.92, 0.93, 0.94, 1.0, 1.1 (out this month!), 2.0
Atom (now on 0.3 API spec)
RDF (old school)

java coding style

Still wondering which coding style is best.

I found links at JavaRanch and Sun, but I'm sure there are others. Which do you like?

techie blog

I found an interesting blog while researching the GPL(GNU General Public License) for MySQL.

gmail threads

It's a little annoying when two unrelated threads get linked together in gmail. It's happened twice now.

Also, it's really irritating when I send email and the other person sees it as gibberish, but the sent message shows up properly in my email account.

Sigh. I still need a good email solution.

fastest way to check a windows box ip address

Press the windows start key
Press R
(the "set file and run" box should appear) type "cmd" and hit OK
(the windows command prompt window should appear) type "ipconfig" and hit return
(the IP address and other settings should be displayed)

Any other fast methods?

security

Lately (since Bush started trying to react to Sept. 11th), all the columns by Bruce Schneier are pretty depressing. Schneier mostly focuses on computer security but also delves into other areas of security. I first started reading his newsletter in 1999 after taking Ron Rivest's introduction to Security class. It was fun to read him rip apart various security companies' attempts at providing secure solutions.

website redesign

time to actually make my site nice and neat.

Simplicity is good.

fixing bugs is fun

While finding the source of a bug is not always fun, right now, fixing bugs is very satisfying. As long as they don't pile up faster than I can fix them.

I hate discovering a bug in a change that I made though.

hitachi is cooler than sony

Check out this page where they have sound clips of sounds that make indicate a failing hard disk.

How cool is that?

On a completely unrelated note, I use my dictionary and my mp3 player more than my phone. Hrm. Laf. If I don't count checking the time on my phone as using it.

Random rant: Paypal's help section is poorly organized. Weak! Took forever to figure out how to downgrade my account to a personal account.

cool little video

Hugh sent me this link to a nice little music video. Pleasant song and really nice video. I think the song would make a nice car commercial, actually. Like a trendy VW ad. But the video (cinematography and all) was quite cool.

happy new year! And, on plagiarism

I owe some people holiday cards.

Much apology for the delay! I'll be writing them Saturday, after my informal presentation is over.

In other news, was The Matrix plagiarized? A current 6 year lawsuit also appears to involve the Terminator movies. Some documents are online but I haven't looked at them. The lawsuit is still in progress so there's no actual ruling yet (other than that a ruling that Stewart can proceed with her lawsuit in the California courts).

tsunami

Good grief. The death toll has reached 120,000 people. It's hard to fathom.