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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m5c32
The promulgation was not only about foreign media, but also about domestic product not conforming to the traditional arts and virtue. So, dating programs, soap-operas, reality-tv, etc. were all given notice.
More 'virtuous' stuff, less fluff and entertainment. Of course, the real reason is they believed things were getting too 'foreign' (i.e. not promoting the party and national stability).
Posted in: China tightens limits on imported shows on TV
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m5c32
That's not the point, is it?
The point is that western consumers want to avoid guilt. For various reasons, unlike people in the East, westerners have a guilt-complex. It has historical reasons, but that's not important at the moment. What is important is that westerners want to feel good about themselves, they want to feel as if they are not contributing to the exploitation of others --even if those others see the exploitation rather as an opportunity (an opportunity not to work on a backbreaking farm, an opportunity not to have an arranged marriage at 16, an opportunity not to be put into servitude in a village, etc.) Still, just because it may be seen as an opportunity, does not negate our moral obligation as fellow humans to seek fairness for others.
Now, the thing about Apple, is that while they know this will put price pressure on labor, they don't care. If it affects Apple, it will affect everyone. If they get at the avant guarde of this, it will only help. Other companies will look tarnished. If everybody follows, even better, Apple gets the credit but everyone (companies) pays for it --and the workers benefit.
Posted in: Apple chief says factory labor under scrutiny
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m5c32
tit-for-tat.
Listen, unless someone on these boards is an actual spy for one of the involved countries, all you are doing is speculating on things without any basis in fact. That being said, Occam's razor.
We speculate Israel was behind the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists (there is other speculation that it's internal agents), it's not unreasonable, given the information presented by the Thai gov't that this was retaliatory on part of Iran. We'll have to wait what India has to say about the other events.
Anything else is affiliation rather than fact seeking.
Posted in: Israel blames Iran for series of blasts
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m5c32
Tell me this. WHat is the difference between being once dead and ten times dead?
Maintenance, security and crew to man that many warheads is costly. If they get that thing they had in the sky a few months ago working, there really is no need for nuclear overkill.
Most wars are going to be local conflagrations with conventional weaponry. To counter such emergent phenomena, the US needs to counter with smart-neutralizing asymmetric technologuies. Drones, mechanized soldiers, miniaturized aircraft, etc. The days of crude bombs and weaponry by civilized nations is drawing to a close, save for rogue states --those are less predictable and don't operate with normal logic. Strongmen are apt to lash out, despite that being a suicidal choice.
Let's hope they can get the Indias, Chinas, Russias and the (western) Europeans (all of which have greater then 300 warheads) to follow suit and cut their stockpiles in kind.
Posted in: U.S. weighing steep nuclear arms cuts
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m5c32
In Japan, if you it's an unknown, you get to ignore it. As long as no-one conducts a study in Japan, there will be no ramifications to any findings elsewhere.
Posted in: Lab study raises questions over nano-particle impact
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m5c32
The love-Pad. Nice.
The funny thing is, if the stores aren't allowed to sell the devices, the people who want to buy them will force the issue. Middle class Chinese want cachet goods. The vast majority are not going to settle for a third-rate devices. That's not to say there isn't a market for such --just that there is a sizable amount of people in China who want genuine versions of things, rather than the knock-offs, as it allows them to impress or fit in with their peers.
Posted in: Chinese city seizes Apple iPads in name dispute
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m5c32
They both do things that if people knew they did it they would have some opinions about them. On the other hand, Apple isn't the one whose mantra is "Don't be evil". So, while both do evil, one of them is not being a hypocrite whereas the other one is.
That's just laughably incorrect. One might as well say that all voice input is a rip-off of Kurtzweil's work. The advantage of Siri is that besides the great filters it has (signal/noise) it learns from everyone who uses it and everyone benefits from that learning. Anyway, Siri came from a project being worked on at SRI (hence its name) funded by DARPA.
Posted in: Apple dethrones Google as company with most respected image in eyes of consumers
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m5c32
Out of curiosity, how many Smarphone handset buyers do you think want to mod their phone's OS? My guess is fewer than 1 percent would want to take the source, look at it, modify the code and run with it.
All that argument is is about unlikely possibilities. It's more or less theoretical. Well, what IF someone wanted to modify the OS? Sure, there are a few, but for the millions, it does not matter one bit. They want something useful and something they can buy cheaply (Android). If it's not cheap, then they want it to have cachet (Iphone). If they are into UX and design, they'll go for a Windows phone.
Their main targets at the time of development were WinMo and BlackBerry (the top smartphone OSes at the time). That's who they were aiming for --that's the template they were using. It was only after Apple revealed their iOS that Google turned the ship around. It also helped that the mole by the name of schmidt was on the board at Apple whilst GOOG's skunkworks were developing their newly acquired OS.
That demo with the capacitive screen still used BlackBerry metaphors for most things (including the audio feedback --ticks on actions). It was not at all like iOS. To claim it was so is tenuous at best. There was no typing on the screen, for example. It still used a BB-like input. There was no pinch-to-zoom --It used buttons on the side for that. Navigation was very MENU-driven. Very un-iOS.
Posted in: Which do you think is best: iPhone or Android?
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m5c32
Look at what Android UI looked like before the iPhone was announced vs. AFTER it was announced. Prior it looked like a BlackBerry UI, then, suddenly, it looked like the iphone.
See http://random.andrewwarner.com/what-googles-android-looked-like-before-and-after-the-launch-of-iphone/
It may look like that but it actually has more to do with battery/performance and a bit of what is Apple's MO --feature dribble.
Posted in: Which do you think is best: iPhone or Android?
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m5c32
It's great that they can make cute little robots --but it really does no good that you can make them when a disaster strikes and all you have to offer is a cute robot. Quit the cutesy stuff and step up and make hardened industrial robots or get out of the way.
Posted in: Incoming Sony CEO Hirai refuses to abandon TV business
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m5c32
iOS right now occupies the high end. Unfortunately, for Google, and the reason they picked up Moto, the great majority of Android phones are at the low end of the market. There is no rigor to the UI (MFGs can skin the eff out of it) and the Marketplace is full of knockoffs (you can clone an app modify it slightly and sell it, or clone it and add malware, etc.) and malware --there is the 100k-strong Android botnet (RootStrap).
WindowsPhone has a strong UI (different and non-derivative, based on simple UX principles) and very good HW requirements to run --but as of yet, there is slow uptake --this looks like it's about to change with Nokia's effort. Still, time will tell.
Android as an OS is catching up to iOS, but as of yet, it's more or less playing feature and UX catch-up. WindowsPhone Mango is a great OS but doesn't yet have the critical mass. It has a reasonably good chance at capturing a goodly percentage of the high-end Smartphone pie along with iOS and let Android and a few others (Symbian, WebOS, etc) take the low-end.
Posted in: Which do you think is best: iPhone or Android?
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m5c32
How does one reconcile pre-refrigeration, salt cured meats and health?
Posted in: 90% of Americans eat too much salt: study
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m5c32
Well, it's not so much they care about this disclosure but that people might demand more transparency everywhere. That's something bureaucrats cannot allow to happen --that's their house of cards.
Posted in: Azumi under fire for revealing forex intervention level
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m5c32
This is true. Yet, they have to know one cannot just throw one switch off and turn the other one on. It takes decades to shape an energy strategy.
Meanwhile the MOF and everyone else is still in an "Industrialization" mode, rather than post-industrial mode --meaning this, change in energy strategy, will not get serious funding.
Posted in: Thousands in Tokyo march against nuclear power
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m5c32
That's obvious. I'm surprised you seem unaware that the adjective and noun "terrorist" is relative. That's not to say that such labeling is unjustified. Usually the more powerful entity gets to do the labeling; yet, sometimes it's the ruling power which is doing the terrorising which results in guerrilla warfare which then gets labeled with terrorism because, they in fact are also engaging in terrorism. Simply put, both sides of a conflict may engage in terroristic activities to some end. Who is "right" is sometimes tough to say and one may have to wait some time to see who the more "just" people are. Power struggles are seldom clean. Most often they are very messy with degrees of good and bad.
Posted in: Syrian army general assassinated in Damascus
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m5c32
Was MJ the only drug they had in their systems when tested? I mean, it's possible it was, but I'm just curious if there weren't any other drugs in their systems which could have contributed to the results. Their wording is ambiguous.
Posted in: Marijuana users twice as likely to cause car crash, studies show
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m5c32
Actually, not true --no rooting necessary. Thanks to Goog's "security" implementation, all you need to do to reassign the PIN by deleting the wallet app's data from android prefs, then access the wallet. This is provided your lockcreen smudge is crackable, of which most are, if they're even set.
Posted in: Google users warned of threat to smartphone wallets
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m5c32
This is just an obvious opportunistic PR move on Argentin's part on the anniversary of their invasion attempt. No one really buys their reasoning. Sure some regional pact banded together to say they support Argentin's claim --but that's just some superficial "solidarity" nonsense. I mean, what, is Portugal going to go back to Brazil and say, hey you, guess what, you're ours! That's basically the logic they're using.
Posted in: Argentina says Britain has nuclear weapons in Falklands
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m5c32
They may have before. What would China get out of Japan by Invading it today? Nothing. Why would they ruin a symbiotic relationship (China gets technology, Japan gets labor). It would be pure madness. I don't mean it would throw the area into chaos --it would, but there would be no benefit from it. So what'd be the point?
What China wants is what most powerful countries want -influence. They like having the upper hand (in negotiations/treaties, etc.) That's all. It's not as if Japan were sitting on vast deposits of unobtainium and research universities were turning out technological miraculum.
Posted in: Japan 'should watch' China's naval reach: report
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m5c32
That is a misrepresentation of fact.
Corporations are a "legal person". This allows many things, amongst them, it allows one to sue the entity for liability and such. Try suing a tree.
Posted in: California court to decide if SeaWorld whales are illegal 'slaves'