Seeing a version of this Jefferson quote in Sullivan’s blog, I was moved to find the full text. This bit, on British hostility via their newspapers, resonates not a little with the operations of Fox News, quite functionally the propaganda arm of the Republican Party, after the loss of both Congress and the White House as a result of Republicans driving things into the ground–in effect, their own “loss of America” that somehow had to be justified.

The British government as you may naturally suppose have it much at heart to reconcile their nation to the loss of America. This is essential to the repose, perhaps even to the safety of the King & his ministers. The most effectual engines for this purpose are the public papers. You know well that that government always kept a kind of standing army of news writers who without any regard to truth, or to what should be like truth, invented & put into the papers whatever might serve the minister. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.

Some things do not change.

A show Sachi and I sometimes find on Japanese TV while flipping through channels is Otameshi ka, a kind of game show where a group of people collect at a family restaurant, a fast food joint, or a noodle-gyoza shop, and try to guess the ten best-selling menu items. In the past, we’ve seen them do Denny’s, First Kitchen, and KFC.

The catch is that they have to (as a group) eat every one they guess at, and there are usually more than a hundred items on the menu. Worse, they start after the place closes at night and don’t get to leave until they guess all of the top ten, which often results in a bunch of bloated guys with indigestion watching the sun come up through the restaurant windows.

In one sense, the show is a kind of huge advertisement for each restaurant, though I am not sure if the image of a bunch of sick people leaving the place at 7 am is the best publicity you want to have.

By this time, something like 4 am, they are literally praying that they get one of the remaining top menu items. But no, it’s #41.

Because I’ve heard that the iPhone 4’s “super-tough” glass, now on both sides of the device, may be somewhat prone to shattering when dropped on hard surfaces, I figured it was time to invest in a case. I bought a case for the 3G a few years ago, but immediately discarded it–it was one of those silicon jobs, rubbery to the touch. I hate those–it makes the phone catch on the material in your pockets and makes it a chore to shove the phone in and drag it out. You either have to be super careful, or else taking out your phone will turn your pocket inside out and spill everything else in it. I’d rather risk going without than deal with something that makes just taking out my phone an ordeal. Also, they tend to pick up lint. Seriously, I don’t know how people deal with those things. Another dislike is the massive kind of case, the ones that look like they increase the bulk of the phone by double or better.

I went in to Ikebukuro to see what I could find. I tried Labi first–despite the huge store, they had a paltry selection, and nothing really very good. I picked up what I figured would be a backup case, a “Rasta Banana” cover (image here) which is a compromise between soft silicon gel and harder plastic. I should have waited for Bic Camera, which had the same case but in more colors. I probably will wind up rarely using it, in any case (or maybe Sachi will want it when she gets her iPhone 4).

I forget where, but I recall someone mentioning that Bic has the best selection–and that’s the case, at least in Ikebukuro. They had every case that Labi had and more. Like Labi, however, they failed to have any samples out. That’s what I hate about these accessories–sellers rarely allow you to see what they look like on the device, making it next to impossible to judge well. But they did have a Tunewear “Carbon Look” case for about ¥2500, and though I couldn’t get at it, it looked like exactly the case I was looking for: slender, just a bit soft, but smooth enough on the outside that it won’t make it any harder to get the phone out of my pocket.

Better, it didn’t overwhelm: it covers the edges and enough of each side so that, if dropped, it will absorb what it will of the impact–but otherwise, it gets out of the way and doesn’t make it hard to press the buttons. The case grips the phone strongly, so there’s no worry about it falling out. Also, it’s form-fitting and thin, making any change in form hardly noticeable.

In fact, it even seems to make holding the phone better: the case is just soft enough to make the phone more comfortable in your hand, dulling the sharp edges as well. In fact, it helps me keep the phone straight: since the iPhone 4 has glass on both sides, it’s very hard to tell which side is the front of the phone just by feeling. Before I got the case, I kept pulling the phone out backwards, missing the power-on button which, by habit, I try to press without looking. While any case would probably resolve that problem, I still appreciate it.

In short, the Tunewear is just the right combination for me, and I highly recommend it. If you can find the brand sold near you and have criteria for cases similar to mine, pick one up.

I also got some screen-protection films. Although the films I tried for the iPad failed miserably, I have been using a film on my 3G for two years and it’s done a great job. Not being able to get the same film now, I knew that it would be a crap shoot buying a new one–without seeing a floor sample, it’s next to impossible to judge how the thing will look. I want one that will simply protect the screen and otherwise get out of the way. It should not be harder for your fingers to slide over than the original screen, nor should it pick up prints more. But what I will absolutely not abide is any film that degrades the image.

Knowing that I might get stuck with a loser, and not wanting to make an extra trip in to Ikebukuro, I decided to pick the two best-looking candidates. From Bic’s wide selection, those were the ASDEC screen-protection film (which claimed to be fingerprint-resistant), and the Buffalo “Super Smooth Touch” film, which promised a relatively frictionless surface. I tried the ASDEC first: it failed. It failed because it created that sparkly-grainy distortion I have seen a lot with matte films. I hated looking at it, so I just tore it off and set it aside. Then I tried the Buffalo product, and liked it well enough. It was easy enough to apply, and had only minimal distortion. As advertised, the surface is very dry and smooth, not rubbery so that it catches your finger; it’s even better than the iPhone’s screen in that respect. And it even resists fingerprints as well as the other film which advertised that out front, though the Buffalo film says nothing about it. It’s hard to notice any prints on it, and when you do (usually in just the right light when the screen is off), it’s a cinch to wipe clean. (I discovered later that the Tunewear case included a screen film; it would have been my third try had the Buffalo product not worked.)

(Not that you can see the protective film…)

As a side note, Bic also excelled in another way: the Ikebukuro mobile branch had rows and rows of iPad cases, with each case model and color having a sample dangling by it. Very nice. The problem: none seem very good. I couldn’t find any that would seem to work better than the case Apple makes. Still, kudos to Bic for making the effort.

Finding that fully dentist’s sign recently made me remember that I have a few similar images on file–though none can top the dentist, really. But here are a few honorable mentions.

I don’t think I want to know what or who “Chee” is in this case.

Not to be confused with fanny hair.

The actual name of a housing complex in Hibarigaoka. Don’t ask.

They sell cold showers, baseball imagery, and saltpeter, one can only assume.

Always good advice: you never know when something will fly right at your head, after all.

Why can’t I keep the other 12? And do I get to choose which twenty?

An actual dentist’s office near Hibarigaoka station. The slogan is supposed to mean, “Keep your teeth as healthy as a 20-year-old’s until you’re 80.”

I just downloaded Apple’s $5 iMovie app. While I’m not going to do a full review right now, I thought I might make a few notes for the benefit of anyone thinking of downloading the app.

First off, don’t expect a full-featured movie editing program. You may have heard about this app’s themes, titles, transitions, background music, and all the rest, and thought, “Wow! That sounds like it’s almost like iMovie on the Mac.” Well, it’s not. Most reviews of the app focus on what you can do, but it’s perhaps more important to focus on what it can’t do. Not as a way of putting down the app, but instead as a way to not get your hopes up too high.

For what it is, it’s excellent: a way to take videos you shot on your iPhone and piece them together with a few nifty effects before you shoot it off to YouTube or email them to friends. Had I had this last year when we went to Europe, I no doubt would have done a mini-movie for the day and sent it off to family. One can imagine all kinds of cool ways to use this app.

However, one should not get too excited about its abilities to make full-featured movies; it is definitely not good for that.

Yes, there are themes–five of them. Probably none are exactly what you’d like. You don’t have the option to choose no theme–but if you avoid any titles or theme-specific transitions, the theme won’t even show up.

Yes, you can put titles–but only three different kinds, and probably not the kind you wanted. You can’t center titles, for example, nor can you change size, font, or color. You can only use one of three variants determined by the theme, mostly titles along the bottom with graphic splashes along the theme’s style. But nothing else, not even simple stuff–only pre-packaged glitz. For example, I wanted to put a nice, plain centered title over a close-up of a fabric texture. Nope.

Yes, you can add transitions–but only one of two: a cross-fade or the transition determined by the single theme used for a single movie. You can set the length, from 0.5 to 2.0 seconds. And you can’t add a transition, like a fade-out, to the end (a strange omission by Apple, it’s a no-brainer, really).

Yes, you can add music–but only one track; try to add another and it just replaces the previous one. There is no looping, so when the music is over, it’s over–this is not an app for long movies. And you can’t trim the song or make it start at a certain point. There is built-in music for each theme, but each only runs about a minute long.

Also, you can’t import video clips (unless there’s some special work-around I haven’t heard of yet); you’re limited to what you shoot and have available on the phone. Nor can you import movies made previously with iMovie as clips in a larger movie–which actually would be a simple way to get past many of the app’s limitations. [Edit: I seem to be mistaken on that–although it did not show up at first, eventually a video I made did appear in the import window. This will allow for mixing of themes and, I would suppose, multiple soundtracks.] Nor can you export projects from the iPhone into iMovie on the Mac, you can only export finished movies.

You get the idea: it’s great for a quick edit-and-send, but far too limited for any serious or considered project. But for what it is, it’s nice, easy to use, and pretty spiffy. Swipe back and forth along the timeline for easy review, tap-and-drag to extend or trim individual clips. Add still photos, and you can stretch them out to longer times and even add the Ken Burns Effect. Drag and drop items, flip through iPhone menus, etc.–it’s all pretty intuitive and easy to figure out. You will probably have to refer to the instructions to understand how to use it fully or at least not take five minutes to puzzle out how to do certain things.

One more note: iMovie seems primed for expansion. I can easily imagine Apple adding features, themes, transitions, and the like, especially as future iPhone models come out and have better processing power. But Apple also has a tendency to keep things simple. I don’t think iMovie for the iPhone will ever be too powerful.

I got to shoot the phone in daylight this morning, and had time to do a few more comparisons between the 3G and the new phone. Then Sachi and I went to Iruma and I tested it in taking movies and photos.

Even if I had not read about it the previous night, I would have quickly noticed a flaw with the iPhone 4’s camera: under certain indoor lighting conditions, the 4’s camera (in movies as well as stills) shows a strong yellow tint, very distracting. Hopefully, Apple can fix this with an OS update.

On the brighter side, I was relieved to find that I will not be nearly as limited in taking movies as I thought. The movies taken by the iPhone 4, despite being a high-def 1280 x 720 and 30 fps, only take up 80 MB per minute–less than I expected. That means you could take 12.5 minutes of video per GB, and if you have 10 GB free (which I currently have on the 16 GB device), you could shoot up to 2 hours of video on this thing without saving it to a computer. I was worried that the 16GB model might not have space enough to take more than five or ten minutes of video; I worried needlessly. Images, at the 5 MP resolution of 2592 x 1936, take up anywhere between 1 to 2.5 MB.

My observations, thoughts and impressions of the Camera capabilities of the iPhone 4 are below the fold. I’m putting it all there because the post is pretty long and has a lot of images. Read more…

Michael Steele, Republican Party Village Idiot:

“Keep in mind again, federal candidates, [Afghanistan] was a war of Obama’s choosing. This is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in. … It was the president who was trying to be cute by half by flipping a script demonizing Iraq, while saying the battle really should be in Afghanistan. Well, if he’s such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? All right, because everyone who has tried, over a thousand years of history, has failed.”

Umm… if Obama is the one who chose to start the war in Afghanistan, then pray tell, what the bejeezus were we doing there for the previous seven years? And what would Steele have done differently, so that had Obama done it, Steele and the entire right wing would not eviscerate him for it?

The denial is staggering.

Seriously, I am beginning to think that Steele is there to make Boehner and the other Republicans look brilliant by comparison.

So, after getting the call from SoftBank this morning, I quickly finished my morning routine and went down to their local branch to pick up the phone. It takes a while; there’s a lot of paper signing and computer data entry and so forth. But at the end, I walked out with the new phone.

Your first impression is that it’s somewhat more like a slab than before. Not “slab” in a bad way, just descriptive of the basic shape and feel to it. It feels heavier, and while it is, it’s just by 4 grams, not enough to account for the apparent difference. The heavy feeling probably comes from the same weight being in a smaller package.

You get the feeling that it’s taller than previous models, but actually it’s a shade shorter–but it is slimmer, by 1/10th of an inch (or 3.5 mm), so it just seems taller. and you will notice the lack of a curved back, losing about 25% of the phone’s depth. It makes you much more aware of the hard edges, but also makes it feel slimmer.

Another immediate impression: the screen shows better blacks even when turned off. When inactive, the 3G’s screen is noticeably lighter than the black frame; not so with the iPhone 4. And the increased contrast shows just as much when the screen is turned on.

The screen’s resolution is all that people have been saying, but here’s an odd thing that I noticed immediately: you don’t see the difference so much when looking at the phone casually. Without the two side-by-side, you might sometimes forget that it’s higher resolution. But when you do look, the differences pop out significantly. The images on the screen are much richer, finer, and more detailed. Text is not at all pixellated. If you look closely at the 3G’s screen, you can notice the screen-door effect of the pixel grid, especially in light areas; the iPhone 4 looks more like a seamless image, as if printed on glassy paper in sharp relief. Whatever the technical aspects of human vision may be, I’m certainly never gonna be able to discern pixels on the 4’s screen.

The difference is quite visible on the Calendar icon. First, here’s an image I shot with a DSLR camera, showing the same icon on both phones, shot at the same distance and under the same conditions:

Not hard to see the difference, is it? Here’s a different view of the same thing–a screen shot of the icon from each camera, with the 3G’s icon artificially expanded to match the 4’s icon size:

Nor is it surprising: the 4’s screen is essentially 4 times as many pixels. This stands out when you lay a screen shot of the 3G’s whole screen on top of a screen shot from the iPhone 4; the image below is reduced, but you can click on it to see a full-sized version:

Having just come from the 3G, I love the camera. It may be less impressive coming from a 3GS, but I have been stuck for two years with a lousy 2 MP camera which can’t focus closer than 8 inches away and can’t take videos at all. To be able to tap to focus, to take sharp photos of things just a few inches from the camera, to be able to take videos in 720 (and the video is very sharp, excellent quality) and switch between front and back camera… it’s all light-years ahead of what I’m used to.

Of course, the processor is fast, faster than the 3G was even before I upgraded to iOS4. While the startup (after shut down) times may not seem much faster if you’re not paying attention, they certainly are different–my 3G takes a full minute and a half to start up, while the iPhone 4 took just 30 seconds. Google Maps is almost as fast as it is on the iPad (which is really fast). Most notably, there’s no lag anywhere any more. For example, on the 3G, there was always a long lag when starting to type in Japanese. Most often you would see it by typing the first letter and having the typed key-tab freeze on the screen for 10 or 15 seconds; you could type more and have it show up later, but it would always freeze at the start. Not a split-second of hesitation on the iPhone 4.

My device has none of the “major” problems or issues so many people are reporting. No yellow spots or streaks, and no reception loss. Really, I have tried everything I could think of, and I can’t get the reception to drop. I have watched the online videos where they show how you hold it and how the reception drops–I couldn’t make it happen. When bars did drop, it was normal variation that would happen whether I held it or not. I even tried moistening my palms and fingers a bit before gripping the frame in many places, waiting the requisite ten or more seconds for the bars to drop–nothing.

So, so far, so good. It’s hardly a life-changing upgrade, but it is very nifty, and nice relief to finally lose many of the frustrating problems the 3G has always had since day one.

Just got the call from SoftBank–eight days after the initial release, they finally got it in. Hopefully I’ll have enbough time to go in and get it this morning…

I found this story in the NYTimes via Google News yesterday:

After the math department at the University of Texas noticed some of its Dell computers failing, Dell examined the machines. The company came up with an unusual reason for the computers’ demise: the school had overtaxed the machines by making them perform difficult math calculations.

Dell, however, had actually sent the university, in Austin, desktop PCs riddled with faulty electrical components that were leaking chemicals and causing the malfunctions. Dell sold millions of these computers from 2003 to 2005 to major companies like Wal-Mart and Wells Fargo, institutions like the Mayo Clinic and small businesses.

“The funny thing was that every one of them went bad at the same time,” said Greg Barry, the president of PointSolve, a technology services company near Philadelphia that had bought dozens. “It’s unheard-of, but Dell didn’t seem to recognize this as a problem at the time.” …

A study by Dell found that OptiPlex computers affected by the bad capacitors were expected to cause problems up to 97 percent of the time over a three-year period, according to the lawsuit.

Gee whiz, that sounds familiar.

At that time, we had a computer lab full of Dells at my school. And just after their 3-year warranty expired, the majority of computers in the lab failed, within a 2-month period. It was significantly evident that something was going wrong; we had 18 computers in the lab, and every week two or three different computers would fail in the exact same way. You turn on the PC and the fan goes into hurricane-force mode, the PC is frozen, and you cannot shut down short of unplugging the thing.

I asked our IT guy about it yesterday, but he just shook his head and said, “sho ga nai,” Japanese for “c’est la vie.” He didn’t think we could make anything of it. If it were me, I’d be calling Dell and saying, “hey, I just read this article and recalled all those computers you sold us which all failed at the same time in the same way.”

But then, in the U.S., they’re having to sue Dell over this, so Dell would not be likely to comp us anything willingly. Plus, this is Japan, so good luck suing anybody.

It would surprise no one reading this blog that I would long ago have switched our school to Macs had that been in any way my choice. But it’s not my choice, and to my dismay, the school is still, to this day, buying Dells. Not the smartest purchasing strategy, dude.

Jon Stewart, as usual, has the goods. In short: Fox castigates the Obama administration for bringing up things that happened under Bush when explaining their reaction to the oil spill. Fox & Friends was livid that David Axelrod “blamed” the Bush administration for the oil spill. (Their “interpretation” of his comments. In fact, Axelrod mentioned the economy and the wars in the Middle East as distractions, and at least at that point in time did not lay blame for the spill directly on Bush.) This interpretation of an indirect comment by Axelrod was what set them off. According to Fox and Republicans & other right-wingers, you can’t “keep blaming Bush.”

Stewart points out that not only did right-wingers blame Clinton for things that happened during the entirety of the Bush administration, but just two weeks earlier, F&F blamed Clinton for the oil spill. So, after a year and a half, it’s “weak” and “unserious” to (by their interpretation) blame Bush for stuff he was, um, directly responsible for, but it’s OK to go back nine and a half years and more and somehow find a way to blame Clinton for the oil spill.

Whilst this level of hypocrisy is more or less SOP at F&F, it still has to be seen to be fully appreciated, and nobody takes us there like Stewart. Enjoy.

One of the key new features in Microsoft’s next OS: an App Store!

Sure is nice to see that Microsoft has stopped copying Apple.

Well, they are doing some innovating: project Natal, now known as “Kinect,” may be integrated. The feature: you get logged in automatically when you sit down, and the computer goes to sleep when you walk away. Hopefully, all that tech will be used for more than just that. Sure, such a feature would be useful in some circumstances, but most people wouldn’t care much.

It’s definitely more for an office environment. But in the end, all it really does is save you a few keystrokes a day, maybe a minute or two over the whole workday, if (a) you are in a multi-user environment, (b) you want to maintain privacy, and (c) you leave and come back to your computer several times a day. Even at that, it’s a small benefit at best. Seems like a waste of tech to me.

The “near instantaneous” startup feature sounds best–but one has to wonder what the details are. Unless they’re talking about non-volatile RAM, then it’s probably simply a matter of making “sleep” the default option instead of “shut down,” and then improving on wake-from-sleep times. Me, I don’t have any problems with waking from sleep on my Macs. It’s already nearly instantaneous on my iMac (less than a second), and only about two seconds on my MacBook Pro. I hardly even notice it.

So, all these new features sound like they wouldn’t be much use at all to me. I already have the first and the third, and don’t care about the second one. Some businesses may make use of the facial recognition, but to me it comes across as one of those cool-but-specialized features most people like to show off but then never really use, like the fingerprint scanners on laptops and such.

Presumably, Microsoft has more than this under their belt.

First, of course, there were the huge lines for the pre-order, and of course the computer systems having trouble keeping up with the load. Then SoftBank had to stop taking orders. Then the huge lines again the day the phone came out. All these were pretty big indications of a blow-out sale.

Yesterday, a smaller indication: I saw the first iPhone 4 in the hands of a user, on the Seibu-Ikebukuro line–where I still haven’t seen a single iPad yet. I’ve seen iPads on the subway and Yamanote lines, but the Seibu Ikebukuro seems to be a bit more conservative. Even despite large releases, it does take time before you start seeing new devices popping up randomly in public here and there. Still, it could just have been a coincidence.

Another small indicator which annoys me is that I still haven’t gotten my iPhone 4 yet–despite having pre-ordered one from SoftBank the second day of pre-ordering. Considering that the first “day” of pre-orders was just three hours long, and that I was first in line the second day, the phone must be selling out pretty thoroughly. It could be that supply is really short, or my branch is not getting hardly any supply, of course.

But the site that tracks sales now has figures that include the iPhone 4, and the iPhone takes up three of the top 5 slots: the iPhone 4 32 GB is #1, the 3GS 16GB is #4, and the 16GB iPhone 4 is at #5. What is most remarkable about this is the fact that the numbers do not track pre-orders, but rather actual delivered products (the iPhone 4 was not on the lists at all last week), and the week covered only includes 4 days of iPhone 4 sales. I expect that next week, the iPhone will show even better–and considering backlog, will probably maintain that for a while.

I was in Akihabara with a school club group checking out computer parts stores when I came across an interesting find: an iPad dock/stand. Apple sells this for ¥2,980 ($29), but this one–a cheap knock-off made in China–cost just ¥1,280, or about thirteen bucks. I figured, what the heck. I’d like one but I don’t want to spend thirty bucks on what is essentially a hunk of molded plastic with a small iPod cable embedded in it. You can buy iPod cables for a buck at the 100 yen shops, so you know the device itself must cost chump change to make; even $13 probably includes a healthy profit margin.

So I figured I’d get one, hoping that it wasn’t going to simply refuse to function when I got home. I chose a white one because the black ones have this horrendous “MADE IN CHINA” sticker on the front, god knows why. So I paid my money, took it home, and it works. Not with just any cable, mind you–some of the 100 yen cables don’t work so well in terms of connecting to the computer, even directly–but one of my cheapo cables, in addition to the original Apple cable, worked fine. There’s even an audio-out port on the back in case you want to add speakers.

So this will work nicely as a charging stand/picture frame holder. Sometimes you can find some really nice stuff in the small shops in Akihabara, for good prices. You just have to look around to see if you’re really getting the best price. In this case, the shop I found it at was the only one selling this–I found one other store selling an iPad stand, but they were charging $30 for it. This one will do nicely. Even my iPhone 3G will dock on it, though just barely. (Makes a good stand for taking timed photos, though.) Wonder how he iPhone 4 will do. I dunno–I’m still waiting on it, damn SoftBank.

Two major issues seemed to come up about the iPhone 4, and then became just as quickly resolved. First, many users were noticing screen discoloration–uh oh, the iMac 27“ fiasco all over again? No, it turns out the iPhones were simply too fresh–the coloration was a bonding agent in the glass that shows while the agent is not fully dry; the coloration disappears within a few days.

Then there were reports of signal loss when holding the iPhone in a certain way. And while this was found to be true enough, it turns out that it’s simply the way many cell phones are, not just the iPhone, and can be solved either by using a bumper case or not holding the iPhone in a particular way.

Hooray for Zoidberg!

Futurama, is back! Again! This time on Comedy Central, in its original half-hour format. Let’s hope that it stays on for a good long stretch this time!

As of late, there has been some debate over how multi-touch computers will evolve. Microsoft has built multi-touch into their Windows 7 OS, but it is as if they don’t really know what to do with it from there. As has often been pointed out, a touch screen on a traditional computer is not really feasible. You simply won’t want to hold your arms out to touch a computer screen for any length of time, and will quickly revert to the keyboard and either a mouse or a trackpad. You hands want to touch the table, not a wall.

But it seems like everyone is missing a key element here: we do not need to keep the current form factor of PCs. Right now, there are a variety, but all consist of a screen which is more or less vertical, perpendicular to the desktop. Even the laptop form is not perfect for multitouch, yet we expect that will persist as well.

Why?

The advantages of a touch-screen interface are fairly clear, or should be. So the question becomes, why stay married to form factors which are not consistent with the new technology? Why not simply change the way a computer looks and operates, if that form will function much better? Up until now, the proposals have not been ideal. Jobs and Apple have come up with the best short-term (or small-format) form: the iPad, which you can place in whatever position suits you best.

For a larger computer, however, say a touchscreen more than 20“ large, the tablet form will not work; it needs to be planted on a desk somehow. Microsoft has their ”Big Ass Table“ concept (which they call ”Surface,“ but I like ”Big Ass Table“ much more), but that’s a nonstarter. Aside from being horrendously big and expensive, you won’t want your workspace to be flat like that. Instead, you’re going to want a computer which lays down at an angle,easy to both view and touch or even rest your hands on.

This form factor presents itself naturally. Imagine buying a computer in, say, 2013–a 30” screen which is more or less presented to you just as that, a large visual surface which constitutes your work area. The guts of the computer (if they will not fully fit in the screen) will be in the base, which acts as a pedestal. No physical keyboard, no mouse, nothing visible but this slab of a screen, tilted gently up in front of you. You turn it on (it awakens instantly, no boot-up), and it’s just there. The interface is minimal, giving you all you need to work and nothing more, getting out of the way as much as possible. Perhaps the screen could, if you so wanted, detach from the base unit in which the computer itself is housed (wireless video connection) and you could lean back with the screen on your lap, big as it might be.

Look at the video of Jeff Han at TED in 2006 giving the world a sneak preview of multi-touch, only a year later to be used by Steve Jobs in the iPhone. Note how he has the computer set up: that’s the way computers will probably be.

So, what does this look like to you? Apple comes out with two hit devices within a few months. Apple posts record profits and sales. Throngs line up to buy new Apple products. Analysts–again–hike up Apple’s stock price target, this time to $375, a full $100 above current value. Apple has never been stronger, and is just getting stronger and stronger still.

So what have we seen the past few days? Apple’s stock taking steep, sudden, unexplained dives. Most notably right this moment, having fallen about $7 or nearly 2.5% in less than half an hour.

Can anyone say “stock price manipulation”? Nothing but criminally dishonest traders beating down the price of an undervalued stock, knowing that it will inevitably get back up again and gain them tons of profits by betting against it and then for it.

Where the hell is the SEC when crap like this is going on? Or is this completely legal and/or just overlooked?

There is a new ad campaign out in Japan for Winston cigarettes. You get so used to the cigarette vending machines being everywhere that you actually forget they’re there–but nowadays they stand out like a sore thumb. Their ad themes are usually pretty offensive–young, fit, healthy people doing active things, while smoking, as if smoking were part of a physically fit and adventurous lifestyle.

The thing is, in Japan, ads often have a way of being “off” if you’re not Japanese. It’s hard to quantify, but many campaigns will simply look ridiculous to you. Sometimes it’s language–like Coca Cola’s “I Feel Coke” campaign some years ago, or Japan Railways’ “Traing” (“train” and “-ing” combined to denote active train use) ad series. But a lot of the time, it’s just the images or the main thrust of the ad that make you wonder, “What the hell are they thinking?” And then, “Must be a Japanese thing.”

But the latest Winston ad campaign, pasted all over town, beyond the obvious offensive elements, is at least somewhat mystifyingly hilarious. It features a bodybuilder striking a pose while looking dreamily upwards, with a lit cigarette in his mouth. Check it out:

That’s not the only thing, though: in some ads, you get the whole body shot:

Now, looking at these ads, what’s the first thing that comes to mind–after the disconnect between bodybuilding and smoking? I know I’m not the only one, I’ve talked to other foreigners and everyone got the same, very strong impression. If the makeup and dreamy expression and the way he’s holding the cigarette don’t do the job, then the pants put it way over the top.

Now, I thought, maybe it looks different to Japanese eyes; maybe he just looks like a tough guy. And maybe so–one group of students I asked only said that it looked like Bruce Willis, but nothing more than that. But another group said, “No, he looks gay.”

So I am left wondering: was it intentional? Is the fact that he’s a white guy part of it somehow? Or was it simply older managers setting up the ad and not seeing it? I really do not know. Any ideas?