JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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- English Instructor (Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe)
- Berlitz Japan, Inc. (ベルリッツ・ジャパン株式会社), Kansai
- Salary: ¥125,000 ~ ¥250,000 / Month
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- FT English Teachers for Kids - Osaka
- Kohgakusha Co., Ltd. （株式会社興学社）, Osaka
- Salary: ¥255,000 ~ ¥275,000 / Month Travel Expenses, Encouragement of Japanese learning*
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- Translator
- ZAIHON, Inc. (日本財務翻訳株式会社), Tokyo
- Salary: ¥6.0M / Year Negotiable
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gonemad
Ever since the invention of writing the elder have complained about the bad manners of the young, but never the other way around. Since it always went downhills, does that mean the old Sumerians were infinitely more polite than we are today?
Posted in: Do you think children of past generations had better manners than kids today when it comes to gestures like saying "please," "thank you?"
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gonemad
No one needs a tool which works only for one particular company while there are bazillions of other privacy violators in the web, for which it doesn't help. And who believes that putting your privacy control in the hands of one of the biggest privacy violators is a good idea? It seems, Mr Fleischer, that people are not as stupid as you thought...
Posted in: Google executive pushes privacy concerns
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gonemad
Well, you invite large quantities of foreigners, tell them they are supposed to return to their home countries later, don't care whether and how their children learn the local language, don't care when those children drop out of school, keep all kind of barriers to naturalization and then you complain that these people do not integrate? This is not a failure of "multiculturalism" (whatever that would mean anyway), but pure hypocrisy. And may I guess that the party which was responsible for all of that mess was Merkel's own party?
Posted in: Merkel: German multiculturalism has 'utterly failed'
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gonemad
Yes, it's an invasion in privacy, but really among the ones I'm least concerned with. What bothers me much more is when airlines have to transmit all kind of personal data to Big Brother, as they have to do in an increasing number of countries.
Posted in: Are airport body scanners an invasion of privacy?
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gonemad
All these measures are mostly targeted at malware distribution by email as well as outbound spam detection, where they can be somewhat effective. The first one is more or less a problem of the past and the second, spam, is in itself one of the smallest problems of online safety. So don't hold your breath about the effectiveness of these measures.
By deep packet inspection? No, thanks. Once they have the infrastructure, they will use it for advertisement purposes and the next step will be censorship.
Posted in: U.S. eyes ways to make computer use safer online
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gonemad
I think what you need to understand about service in Japan is the often rigid working hierarchies and that superiors expect that their staff members do exactly what they have been told. That's why they tend to create huge manuals with rules and rules when trying to improve their service. Add to that that in places like chain restaurants you have mostly hire-and-fire temp workers, including the site "managers". These people have no decision competence and are scared to hell when they have to do something with the slightest prospect that their boss might not approve it. They will do what they are told to do and do that well. For anything beyond, job security is more important than customer satisfaction.
On the other hand, when you ask something special to a person which does have the power to decide by himself, they will go to any lengths to fulfil your wish. This is where Japanese service is unbeaten and the customer is treated like a god.
I don't agree with the conclusion of the article that the relative weakness of the Japanese service industry in the international arena is based on the way how they provide service. I rather think it is a result of the Japanese education system, where foreign language skills and cultural sensitivities are undervalued.
BTW, I'm surprised how most of you seem to frequent chain restaurants or fast food places. I tend to stay away from them whenever possible, in Japan and elsewhere. The gaijin better-safe-than-sorry syndrom?
Posted in: In Japan, the customer is not king
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gonemad
maxtheitpro, the breadmakers which I have seen so far only use a tiny fraction of the power of an oven. So even though they take longer time to bake the bread, they are more energy efficient. I don't see why it shouldn't be the same for this model.
Posted in: Sanyo breadmaker
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gonemad
Facebook is not the only, but certainly the worst privacy violator in the net. They collect personal data not only of those people who are stupid enough to sign-in, but as well of those who never use their service. On all machines which I have control over, at home and at work and including routers, Facebook is completely blocked.
Posted in: What do you think of Facebook?
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gonemad
It doesn't matter whether democracy is the best form of government or not. We would anyway have difficulties to define what "best" means for each of us. The benefit of democracy is that we can safely get rid of a government again when it fails. The latter is much more important.
Posted in: Do you think democracy is the best form of government?
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gonemad
The worst? Travel groups on cheap trips. No matter where they come from.
Posted in: In your experience, which country's tourists are the least well-behaved whenever you have seen them out and about?
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gonemad
I forgot to add: yes, please play the works of contemporary composers. That's definitely something which would make me go to a concert again.
Posted in: Japan’s orchestras battle to survive
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gonemad
I fully agree that the "classical" concert repertoire in Japan has become increasingly limited. It's not only that they always play the same few popular composers, but even among the works of those composers only a limited selection. The sad thing is that this restriction is not limited to the Japanese orchestras, but it's almost worse with the foreign orchestras which come to Japan - everybody just wants to cash in on what they think is the Japanese(?) mainstream taste. How static, how boring!
Posted in: Japan’s orchestras battle to survive
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gonemad
Just this language makes me forebode the worst. The leader of this tea party movement isn't by chance... Ahmadinejad??
Posted in: Beck, Palin: Help us restore traditional American values
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gonemad
Zenny, what I wanted to say is that you do not need and, even more, you do not want to make backups of the temporary data, so all the worries above about backup are unfounded.
I fully agree with you that temporary data is usually more in danger to get leaked. It's not immediately visible, so people take less care. That problem is addressed by the new HDs - at least partially. Any power-down of the HD will make the data unreadable. It removes one potential attack scenario. Of course you still have to take care of so many other scenarios, depending on your system...
Posted in: Toshiba announces Wipe Technology for self-encrypting disk drives
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gonemad
You guys get it completely wrong. Those HDs with the wipe feature are intended to store temporary data. You do not want to make back-ups of that data and you don't care about power outages. Think about swap files or other temporary files in systems which process confidential data. Think about temporary files in office copy-fax-printers. When you turn off the power, all you lose is the data of the running or pending jobs.
What these HDs prevent is that some e.g. service technician will exchange the HD in the system and get the confidential information by reading all the old temporary files which are left on the HD.
Klein2, you are right, the HD only forgets the key. If Toshiba have chosen state of the art encryption and done their job on the hardware implementation that's more than enough. There is absolutely no need to physically wipe the data. If you think you can generate a new key, have fun with it :-)
Posted in: Toshiba announces Wipe Technology for self-encrypting disk drives
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gonemad
And in which country do nursery teachers have masters degrees in education or psychology?
Posted in: Observing the education of small children overseas, I was struck by how different the education is from Japan. They take a scientific approach to child education. For example, how many nursery teachers in Japan have master's degrees in education or psychology?
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gonemad
I had a good laugh when reading this article. It sounds all so familiar. Heck, does that qualify me for PM in this country?
Posted in: Kan's wife criticizes him in new book
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gonemad
It's an urban myth that surveillance cameras deter crime. You may feel safer, but statistics from all over the world show in fact you are not.
Some heinous crimes have actually been stimulated by surveillance cameras because the criminals were counting on a large audience. While they may not be statistically relevant just as so many things reported by the mass media, what does that do to your safety feelings?
Posted in: Do surveillance cameras in buildings, stations and on streets make you feel safer?
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gonemad
It seems she has all the time and money. Why can't she find a doctor in Japan? She risks her children's health because she can't move a single step out of her closed circles?
Posted in: The expat summer
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gonemad
The cost of adding 3D to a TV is quickly going down to almost zero, so it's no surprise that 2/3 of the respondents said their next TV will be 3D-capable. Capable doesn't necessarily mean you use the feature and for sure doesn't mean that you buy the new set because of that feature. The interesting question about 3D is rather whether there will be any worthwhile content.
Posted in: 3D television: a new device, a new language