Seiryu said...

Seiryu at 12:13 PM JST - 12th October

people just don't understand the hardware market. Apple makes about 12 cents a song

Margins on hardware vs. consumables vary between markets and vendors for various reasons. For Apple, their iPods are their highest margin item, but iTunes is razor-thin.

In game consoles, client hardware such as the Xbox…

Posted in Amazon cuts Kindle price, adds global version at 12:13 PM JST - 12th October
Seiryu at 03:02 AM JST - 21st April

Poor Toshiba. But global solid-state storage demand is growing, isn't it?

More layoffs and it's always the part-time workers - I can only imagine what it must be like for a part-time worker in Japan right now :O.

Posted in Toshiba looking for Y500 billion boost at 03:02 AM JST - 21st April
Seiryu at 02:56 AM JST - 21st April

The hassle-free espresso machine is not only very common now, but it is not really novel either. Fully automatic espresso machines are everywhere, such as the Mastrena (and formerly the Verismo) used at Starbucks, and the popular Franke series used by Sodexho, McD and other places.

I personally have a…

Posted in Hassle-free espresso machine at 02:56 AM JST - 21st April
Seiryu at 02:50 AM JST - 21st April

Import country-of-origin relabeling is extremely common throughout many idustries, from textiles to machinery parts. But in Japan it's especially popular with agricultural products such as rice due to consumer geographical "brand" perceptions and occasionally to also cheat protectionist tariffs.

There was a story a while ago, I believe, about a…

Posted in Russian, Chinese bracken passed off as homegrown by food processor at 02:50 AM JST - 21st April
Seiryu at 02:45 AM JST - 21st April

Behind that great marketing cant, anyone else wondering where they got all this data from?

Microsoft's Customer Experience Improvement Program, available since Windows XP and now implemented across a wide family of Microsoft products, allows users to voluntarily and anonymously send clickstream data to Microsoft. I assume this is…

Posted in Behind the scenes with Windows 7 at 02:45 AM JST - 21st April
Seiryu at 06:58 AM JST - 23rd October

No payment was made for the car contract.

No money down for a car in Japan?!

Posted in Suspected killer of lottery winner says he used money to repay debts at 06:58 AM JST - 23rd October
Seiryu at 01:45 PM JST - 21st July

Haha, a "tender" offer, to acquire a majority "stake" ;)

Posted in Yoshinoya to take control of steak house Don at 01:45 PM JST - 21st July
Seiryu at 03:00 PM JST - 10th July

Did anyone else happen to monitor the ping times between the US and Europe during the weeks after the tall buildings fell? ... BTW, the ping times grew significantly, and haven't diminished since, and the trace routes no longer tell you where the packet is being monitored

I assume…

Posted in Senate bows to Bush and approves surveillance bill at 03:00 PM JST - 10th July
Seiryu at 02:30 PM JST - 8th July

Seiryu -hearts- crackberry :D....

for medium sized frames, packet size = 512 bytes, then 80,000*512/1,000,000 = 41MB ...41 megabytes.

Mobile phone apps, though, tend to send in bursts of very small data packets (think e-mail, maps, etc), not to mention "chatty" protocols like IM and push-pull e-mail (fake push…

Posted in DoCoMo to sell BlackBerry to individual users from August at 02:30 PM JST - 8th July
Seiryu at 03:34 AM JST - 21st May

The name of the store is "La Mer Riche", so blame the French, not the Japanese.

What is lamb raisin? Is it a lamb that has been fed only with raisins? Has anyone tried it to explain how does this flavour taste?

I don't know if it's been fed…

Posted in Gelato at 03:34 AM JST - 21st May