SoftBank called. They won’t have the iPhone ready for me on the release day–nor would they promise it any time soon. The waiting begins….
A contrast from my prior experience–I got an iPhone 3G the very first day they came out. Of course, the iPhone is way more popular here now.
Apple just sold 3 million iPads in 80 days. It is estimated that, even on the lowest-priced model, Apple gets a bit over $200 in profit. If that’s the case, Apple just made over $600 million in less than three months on one product.
Not too shabby.
In the next few days, the iPhone 4 is coming out, and Apple makes maybe $300 a pop for each one of those. And Apple seems to estimate that for the first quarter, it will move an average of 3 million of those per month. Reviews are now out, and all rave, calling the iPhone 4 the best smartphone on the market (Mossberg • Pogue • USAToday • Engadget).
Hey, here’s a blast from the past:
“The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. In terms of its impact on the industry, the iPhone is less relevant. […] Apple will sell a few to its fans, but the iPhone won’t make a long-term mark on the industry.”
–Matthew Lynn, Bloomberg, Jan 13, 2007
He wasn’t the only one. Ah, it brings back the memories from the days when people were predicting Apple’s imminent demise every other week, or so it seemed. Here’s a prognostication from May 2003–this after the iPod was a success and the Mac market share was on the rise:
“Is Apple doomed to fail? If I had to bet on it I would say they absolutely are. No one at Apple has the guts to correct the mistakes of Steve Jobs. Apple is a toy for Steve, and a way to massage his ego. Right now no PC company makes hardware that looks as good as Macs, and no OS looks as good as OS X. That can, and will, change very soon. The PC world has gotten the message, and they’ll soon drive the final nail into the Apple coffin.”
–John Manzione, MacNet, May 08, 2003
Gee whiz, kinda sounds like what they’re saying about iPads now, doesn’t it? It’s cool, but just wait, all those other manufacturers are coming out with much better stuff real soon!
And from just a few days later:
“Many close observers of the legendary Silicon Valley company believe shareholders shouldn’t be selling the stock. They should be buying it, they say, in order to press the 48-year-old Jobs to split Apple into two separate companies built around its hardware and software lines of businesses, or get new management that will. ‘Given what their valuation currently is, I think this is something they will eventually have to do,’ argues Rob Enderle, a research fellow at Giga, a research unit of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Forrester Research Inc. ‘They have to dig themselves out of the going-out-of-business cycle they are currently in.’”
–Joshua Jaffe , TheDeal.com, May 12, 2003
Needless to say, Apple didn’t split into pieces.
On May 9, 2003, Apple’s stock price was at $9, up from about $7 a week before. But let’s say you bought it at $9 at that time, and invested $10,000. Taking into account the stock split in 2005, you’d have over $600,000 in Apple stock right now.
Me, I waited way too long. I started thinking about it back in ’03, but chickened out, and have seen what I got only triple in value. Coulda shoulda woulda.
Apple released iOS4 this monring. Even though I have less than a week before my iPhone 4 comes in, I decided, what the heck, and updated my iPhone 3G this morning.
My first piece of advice to others who want to do this: don’t expect too much. Two of the most-anticipated features, multitasking and wallpapers, don’t work with the 3G. Among the smaller features, screen rotation lock and bluetooth keyboard syncing won’t work either. This leaves folders and Mail’s consolidated inbox as the top features you’ll enjoy, with a few other small features thrown in that you’ll stumble over in time, like playlist creation in iTunes, or digital zoom for your camera (not worth it).
My second piece of advice: don’t panic. That is, don’t panic when iTunes tells you you have to “restore” the phone; iOS4 on the 3G has to do that–just back up as best you can. And don’t panic when it takes an hour, or more (some people say it took 3 hours)–that’s also normal. Most of all, don’t panic when the 3G seems to freeze or go glacial after your update–it does that, but after a few minutes, it settles down and starts zooming along as quickly as ever.
At least it did with mine. But I had a bit of worry there at first. Right after the restore, the start/unlock screen sat there, frozen, then the phone crashed. Restart: the unlock screen comes up, and the shimmer animation for the unlock slider is maybe 1 frame per 2 seconds, and it doesn’t work. Restart again, and it works, but its incredibly slow–but at least it works, and I can jerkily go from slide to slide. Two minutes later, it has slowly smoothed out and everything works fine. So just give it time.
A warning: after restoring and upgrading to iOS4, before you sync your iPhone for the first time, check the settings–I forgot to do so. All of your music and videos and other stuff are kept through the update and restore, but iTunes then forgets these settings, erasing most of your data upon first sync. It took me an extra hour or so just to put the stuff back on.
I have to say, the folders feature alone is worth it. I hate scrolling across nine screens. I made the first screen mostly my main apps with one folder for important stuff I don’t use every day; all of my games on the second page, the 4 most-played at top and the other more than 30 in categorized folders; the third page with good but not-often-used apps not in folders, and then the fourth page nothing but folders. And then the crap after that. I am finding this makes it a hell of a lot easier to organize things the way you want to, and access a wide variety of apps with ease.
The unified inbox and mail threads seem nice, but I think that’s something I’ll get used to over time. There are other things–the photo app now recognizes faces and places, but I don’t use those usually. When emailing a photo, you get to choose the size now. Stuff like that.
Oh yeah, and it looks like the international store issue is still open–I am able to access the U.S. store from my iPhone just like I am from my iPad, both of which were not possible before May.
So, Republicans have been going on and on about how the Deepwater Horizon disaster is Obama’s fault, calling it “Obama’s Katrina” and “Obama’s 9/11” and so on. They have been carping at every element of his reaction, real or imagined.
But to appreciate the situation better, ask this question: how would the situation have been different if it had happened 4 years ago, during the Bush administration? What would Bush have done differently? Even more to the point, 4 years ago, Republicans controlled both houses of Congress as well.
There would probably be zero difference in actually dealing with the spill; Bush, at that point, would not have dawdled like he did with Katrina, not again. Not that he would have in the first place–he let New Orleans drown because he didn’t really see them as a constituency, not really. But an oil issue? That’s something he would not hesitate to recognize. As much as it resonates that Bush screwed everything up, the actual technical response to the spill would probably be the same–the good and the bad. Someone correct me if I’m wrong here.
No, the main difference would be in the political response. If Congress had hearings, they certainly would have been much more forgiving and tolerant of BP than Congress is today; they might even had tried to make them closed-door, or otherwise shield BP from too much bad exposure. And do you really believe that Bush would have pressured BP to make $20 billion available? Nope. The U.S. taxpayer would be footing the whole bill, you betcha. Barton’s apology to BP would be closer to the federal government’s approach in general, instead of now being the pariah’s view.
Helps to put things in perspective.
Oh, and before a right-winger tries to bring up the “Jones Act” BS that Fox News is trying to push as an Obama debacle, read this:
46 USC 55113 – Use of foreign documented oil spill response vessels
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, an oil spill response vessel documented under the laws of a foreign country may operate in waters of the United States on an emergency and temporary basis, for the purpose of recovering, transporting, and unloading in a United States port oil discharged as a result of an oil spill in or near those waters, if
(1) an adequate number and type of oil spill response vessels documented under the laws of the United States cannot be engaged to recover oil from an oil spill in or near those waters in a timely manner, as determined by the Federal On-Scene Coordinator for a discharge or threat of a discharge of oil; and
(2) the foreign country has by its laws accorded to vessels of the United States the same privileges accorded to vessels of the foreign country under this section.
When Office 2007 was announced, there was a feature I was really excited about: References. A whole tab on the ribbon is dedicated to them, allowing you to choose your style and insert and manage citations. I was very happy at this news, because one of the things we try to get students to do in our program is make MLA references–but we have all kinds of problems. Chiefly, the students are not used to making citations (they don’t learn it here like we do in the U.S.), and MLA citations can be very difficult and complex, depending on the source. I imagined that MS Word 2007 would have an editor that would allow you to choose your citation type (e.g., book, periodical, etc.) from an exhaustive list taken directly from the MLA listing, and then prompt you for all the relevant data, and then automatically insert your in-text citations and the Works Cited list, all formatted to MLA standards.
Boy, was I ever disappointed.
First, the list of MLA citations in in MS Word’s dialog box comes up in one of those incurably idiotic miniature scroll windows that show only six lines at a time, and should have been done away with 10 years ago. Second, the list of citations is incomplete; for example, our students rely heavily on electronic sources, particularly from library database subscriptions. Word’s MLA list does not allow for these. Third, the citations are not inserted intuitively; since one is citing a stretch of text, you would expect that you would select the cited text and insert–but that just deletes the text you selected and replaces it with the citation. Fourth, the Works Cited list is not automatically added at the end–you have to insert it, and even though it is required to start on a new page at the end of the document, Word will not create that area, instead putting it wherever your cursor is set. Fifth, the Works Cited list is not formatted right–the title should be centered, the list double spaced, everything 12 point text–it’s not. Worse, Word does stuff like make certain text styled, like bold and blue, where it should not be. Dates are not expressed correctly, web page article titles not included, etc. etc. Sixth, the whole thing is done in a field, which makes it extremely difficult to edit and keep straight when you must make the necessary modifications that Word did wrong. Seventh… well, the list goes on, and on. You get the idea.
In short, it’s a failure, a mess, a complete disaster which only makes adding correct citations harder to do, not easier. Disappointed, I had to steer my students away from it.
But there was hope: maybe Microsoft would improve it with the next version of Office. Certainly I could not be the only one to notice how awful it was, and Microsoft would get off their butts and make the next iteration much better.
Nope.
I found that my college’s Citrix account had upgraded to Office 2010, so I went in and checked it out. Not only has it not improved even the tiniest bit, it didn’t even upgrade to the 7th edition of MLA, which made major changes in how citations are written. True, the 7th edition came out only about a year and a half ago, but certainly they could have done something. But nope–not only does Word’s Reference feature still suck, it now sucks and is out of date.
Right-wingers are agreed: political correctness is crap, and should be snubbed and never observed. People should be able to say whatever they want, call others what they prefer. Some right-wingers claim it is a Communist plot (I’m not kidding). Many insist it is a form of Orwellian mind control. It is evil, evil, evil.
Once you get past the hysterical bits, Conservapedia’s basic definition of “political correctness” is “the alteration of ones choice of words in order to avoid either offending a group of people or reinforcing a stereotype considered to be disadvantageous to the group.” This offends them–they don’t like to be told what they can refer to other people as, and hate having to “clean up” their speech and use terms others insist on, or avoid subjects others are touchy about. They want the freedom to say anything they like without constantly being nagged about how it makes others feel.
The emphasis on “they want the freedom.” Not others. They hate political correctness–except, of course, when they don’t like what others are saying. Like, if you want to say that you don’t believe in God, we don’t like that so you’d better be sensitive to how we feel and shut the hell up. If an atheist group puts up a billboard or an ad on a bus simply saying “Don’t believe in God? You’re Not Alone” then that is completely unacceptable. If a man wants a vanity plate that reads “ISNOGOD,” that’s offensive and shouldn’t be allowed. And just see what happens when a store puts out an ad saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”–you’ll see right-wingers demand others be not just PC, but hyper-sensitively PC.
Or calling teabaggers “teabaggers” despite the fact that they themselves coined the term just months earlier, that’s not cool either. It upsets their gentle sensibilities. Now, intentionally subverting the adjectival “Democratic” to a pejorative “Democrat” because they can make commercials emphasizing the “RAT” at the end, that’s OK. But calling us tea-baggers, we don’t like that and you’re being an ass for using it.
Or talking about things America has done wrong, you can’t do that, either, or we’ll be miffed, so shut your yap. Sure, identifying one’s own country’s wrongs is the adult, responsible, and educated thing to do, garners the respect of others around the world, and helps prevent future wrongdoing–but I don’t like the sound of it, so you better stop “apologizing for America,” because it offends me.
No, the right-wingers don’t hate political correctness–they demand it, but in true conservative form: only when it’s to their advantage. When someone says something that offends us, it’s “disrespectful,” and you’d better change your tune right quick. But when we say something you don’t like and you’re offended–well, tough luck, you whiny liberal–when you’re offended and want us to stop, that’s political correctness. And that’s Communist.
Franken began by noting he’s not a lawyer, and was one of the few non-lawyers on the Senate confirmation hearings for Sotomayor; but what he says brings to mind an important truth: being a lawyer means that you studied the law, but not that you’re right about it, and vice-versa.
Here’s an excerpt from the address. You can read the entire speech on Franken’s site.
Justice Souter once said: “The first lesson, simple as it is, is that whatever court we’re in, whatever we are doing, at the end of our task some human being is going to be affected.”
Conservatives would like us to forget this lesson.
They’ve distorted our constitutional discourse to make it sound like the Court’s rulings don’t matter to ordinary people, but only to the undeserving riff-raff at the margins of society.
So unless you want to get a late-term abortion, burn a flag in the town square, or get federal funding for your pornographic artwork, you really don’t need to worry about what the Supreme Court is up to.
The ACLU has a long and proud history of defending the First Amendment, and while I haven’t seen polling on this, I’d bet that most Americans are fairly pro-First Amendment. But, thanks to a generation of conservative activism, the ACLU is now best known as “those guys who hate Christmas.”
By defining the terms of constitutional debate such that it doesn’t involve the lives of ordinary people, conservatives have disconnected Americans from their legal system. And that leaves room for lots of shenanigans.
By controlling the conversation, the Federalist Society has moved the Supreme Court sharply to the right.
“Including myself,” Justice Stevens said in an interview with the New York Times, “every judge who’s been appointed to the court since Lewis Powell has been more conservative than his or her predecessor. Except maybe Justice Ginsburg. That’s bound to have an effect on the court.”
And, indeed, the Roberts Court has overturned two principles I believe are deeply ingrained in our Constitution, in our legal tradition, and in our American values.
First: Judicial restraint.
As I have noted repeatedly – and in an increasingly exasperated tone of voice – over the last few years, Justice Thomas has voted to overturn federal laws more often than Justice Stevens and Justice Breyer combined.
They haven’t just been activists in their decisions, but also in their process.
In both Citizens United and Gross, the Court answered questions it wasn’t asked, reaching beyond the scope of what they accepted for appeal to overturn federal laws the conservative wing didn’t like.
I mean, I don’t speak Latin. But unless stare decisis means “overturn stuff,” then maybe it’s time for conservatives to stop calling other people “dangerous radicals.”
Second, and more importantly: They’ve overturned the principle that the law should be a place where ordinary people can turn for relief when wronged by the powerful.
At the front entrance to the Supreme Court building here in Washington, beneath the words “EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW,” there’s a set of 1,300-pound bronze doors.
Countless Americans have flowed through those doors to see the place where that principle is protected.
Now those doors have been locked to the public. Things have changed.
To add the words of another non-expert non-lawyer:
…strict constructionism is more than just a litmus test. It is rapidly becoming a way to help disassemble the Constitution of the United States and render meaningless many if not most of the rights and liberties guaranteed under it. Strict constructionism is a tool being used in the current conservative quest to place as much power as possible into the hands of government, and to weaken the power, rights, and capabilities of the American people, so as to make possible the imposition of a specific social and moral structure which, by nature, is unconstitutional. Since revolution and amending the Constitution can be difficult and messy, it is much easier simply to reinterpret the standing law under a new paradigm–ironically, in part by claiming that one should not be allowed to interpret anything.
Or, in the unguarded words of an expert:
“A judge who is a ‘strict constructionist’ in constitutional matters will generally not be favorably inclined toward claims of either criminal defendants or civil rights plaintiffs—the latter two groups having been the principal beneficiaries of the Supreme Court’s ‘broad constructionist’ reading of the Constitution.”
–William Rehnquist, late Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, while serving as assistant attorney general under Richard Nixon, in an analysis of the rulings of Clement F. Haynsworth, Jr. to determine a nominee to replace Justice Abe Fortas
So says The Japan Times. Apparently they hit a limit or something. Softbank will not say when one can expect your pre-ordered iPhone (if you got your reservation in before they stopped taking them) will get to you–they just say that they’ll call you when it’s ready. In the U.S., they were putting deliver dates of mid-July on orders taken most recently. I got my order in first thing Wednesday morning, after SoftBank had taken just 3 hours of orders the previous night.
Wow. Talk about slick. When Republicans slapped Barton’s wrist for saying aloud what they all felt, Boehner and the GOP leadership slipped in some pretty telling language. To quote a commenter from the previous post, “Behold”:
“The oil spill in the Gulf is this nation’s largest natural disaster and stopping the leak and cleaning up the region is our top priority,” said the leaders. “Congressman Barton’s statements this morning were wrong. BP itself has acknowledged that responsibility for the economic damages lies with them and has offered an initial pledge of $20 billion dollars for that purpose.”
First, note that BP is painted as a responsible business: they are taking “responsibility” and “offered” and “pledged” to pay for economic damages. Nothing about Obama making them do this–no, it’s as if BP always intended to pay this much, and would naturally have done it without any outside pressure at all.
But look closer, and you’ll see something slicker than snot: the oil spill was a “natural disaster.” Got that? BP is not responsible for the disaster; no, they “acknowledged that responsibility for the economic damages lies with them,” a significant difference in wording.
In a few short sentences, Boehner managed to (1) distance himself from Barton’s gaffe, (2) make it seem like he is attacking BP by castigating a party member for apologizing to them, therefore gaining props from the public, (3) take credit for trying to stop the leak, saying it was “our” top priority, (4) remove all credit from Obama for getting BP to pay when clearly BP was doing all it could to avoid that, (5) make BP seem like a beneficent good guy, a responsible business which pledged and offered and took responsibility when in fact nothing of the sort is true, and (6) remove all feeling of actual responsibility from BP by qualifying the nature of their responsibility (economic, not actual; volunteered, not legal or actual) and painting the spill as an act of god, a “natural disaster,” as if BP wasn’t to blame and was instead somehow the victim of it all.
That’s pretty breathtaking.
So much for high-level Republicans “not taking BP’s side” in this.
Seriously, if Obama were to announce a plan to fight serial killers who target nuns and orphans, Republicans would take the side of the serial killers, just out of reflex.
Obama scored a coup with the $20 billion escrow fund (who knows how much of that will actually be paid, or if it’ll be enough to pay for what can be paid for, but hey, we can hope). Several prominent Republicans immediately took the side of BP. Palin, Limbaugh, Bachmann and others on the right were opposed to BP paying for the oil spill.
Wow. How knee-jerkingly tone deaf can you be? I mean it, seriously. And it’s not just that: they actually got upset that Obama mention God so much.
The only down side: they probably won’t pay a political price for this. Most people in America are too comfortable with the whole “It’s OK If You’re A Republican” bit. Really, a right-winger would have to sexually molest an infant on live TV to cross the line these days, and maybe not even then.
Not that I’m complaining: anything right-wingers can do to screw up the midterms for themselves is OK with me. But after Republicans succeeding by acting like hysterically demented idiots for the past year and a half, I’m not holding my breath or anything.
You’ve probably heard this already, especially Jon Stewart’s take on it. Still, this is the quality of news analysis on Fox:
CARLSON: You have this country, that is in the middle of a huge war, BUT… there’s money to be found there, so who is going to now suddenly want to take over Afghanistan? What about the Taliban? What about China?
DOOCY: Sure. Because China is not too far away, and it’s a great big country that needs a whole bunch of stuff.
A great big country. They need a whole bunch of stuff. My god–he’s channeling the Pakleds. “China is not far. China is big. China needs a bunch of stuff to make them go.”
Had one been walking through a graveyard populated by the late greats of journalism just at the moment Doocy said that, one would have heard the muffled, collective slap of foreheads directly through six feet of soil.
Then the other guy in the interview gets in almost as dumb a statement:
KILMEADE: They can be transformed into the mining center of the world. So there you go. All right, now they can pay for the war, perhaps.
Wow. You just have to stand in awe of the arrogance of that statement. “Everything they have is ours, we can just take it.” Then, when you recover from that, the sheer stupidity strikes you. Seriously, remember when Republicans were all like, “hey, the war in Iraq will pay for itself because the oil is there”? Same thing here: if anyone gets the goodies, it’ll be the business interests. Not one cent will go back to the U.S. taxpayer. But hey, whatever helps put our troops in the line of fire so profits can be made, right?
Can Fox News be any more dumb? (Note: yes, I am aware of the answer to that question. It’s just simply hard to believe sometimes.)
Uh oh…
Well, ordering started in Tokyo today. It was a pain–they were on sale for three hours only, as sign-ups started at 5pm and ended at 8pm. As it happened, I had a school activity that started at 6pm and ended after 7, right smack in that window. I tried to stop by a Shinjuku SoftBank store on the way home, but they were packed–the shop was filled up and people were waiting out on the street, despite moderate rainfall. I took express trains back to my local station but could not get to the shop before closing time–still, they let me in and gave me a slip of paper to sign, and told me to come back the next morning at 10 am.
Looks like there were lines all over Tokyo. The iPhone 4 will not only bring in lots of new customers, but tons of old ones like me–especially since SoftBank is essentially giving away the 16 GB phone for free. People with 3G contracts will have no reason not to get an upgrade, unless they need to leave SoftBank for some reason.
The Shinjuku person who told me the day before that there would be a 300 yen surcharge for keeping the same number appeared to be mistaken–the Hibarigaoka shop sales person had never heard of that, and I am hearing reports from others that they did not have the surcharge applied. Strange.
Reports are from all over the world that iPhone 4 pre-ordering is huge. Lines everywhere, servers crashing from the overload. SoftBank computers went down as well yesterday. Looks like Apple has a hit with this phone.
The lines, continue, by the way–I stopped by two SoftBank stores tonight to see if I could ask whether my 3G could still be used as a second phone on the same account (no, it can’t–I found out later by phone), but both offices were filled with people waiting to sign up for the iPhone 4.
I went to SoftBank to check out whether or not I should get an iPhone 4, and surprisingly, it looks like I will. My two-year contract & obligation to pay off the iPhone 3G has 4 months left to it, and I figured that I would have to wait until that was out before I could think of getting the next one, and maybe have to pay extra for it as I was not a new customer. However, it would appear that SoftBank is making it easier for existing customers to upgrade than I thought. If I understood what the clerk was saying, I can get an iPhone 4 now, and simply start paying for it subsequent to the previous contract running out.
In fact, the new iPhone will be even cheaper; two years ago, the iPhone 3G (the first iPhone to be released in Japan) was going for ¥960 ($10.50) per month for 24 months, for a total of ¥23,040 ($250) for the low-end 8GB model. This time, the low end iPhone 4 (16GB) is free with the 2-year contract if you get a new number with it.
Sounds great, but there are caveats. As I expected, existing customers do get hit, though not very much: if you continue to use the same phone number as before (as most existing customers will no doubt want), you have to pay ¥300 ($3.25) a month for the 16 GB iPhone, for a grand total of ¥7200 ($78.50) over two years. (As if it costs them that much to not change your phone number!) Still, less than eighty bucks for a new iPhone–not bad at all. A pretty good deal in fact–I did not expect SoftBank to run with such a low price immediately upon release.
Another caveat: SoftBank is offering two plans for the iPhone 4, the “Basic” and “Value” plans. For both plans, you get the whole package, but the Value plan gives you only the flat rate of ¥4410 ($48) per month for your data plan (the price seems a bit inflated mostly due to the current strong yen). In the Basic plan, you have a sliding scale where the data plan could cost as low as ¥1029 ($11.20) per month, and you max out at ¥4410 if you use too much data. In exchange, you have to add ¥480 a month, or about $125 over two years, to the price of the iPhone. The Basic plan sounds good–if you try, you can cut down your data usage to the minimum and save as much as $900 over two years, right?
Wrong. The Basic plan sounds cheaper, but SoftBank conveniently hides the relevant data. They do tell you that if you use no more than 12,250 packets, you just pay the eleven bucks a month for data. Cool! 12,250 is a lot! Um, actually not. You won’t find it on the same page which describes this plan, but SoftBank defines a “packet” as 128 bytes. 12,250 packets is a measly 1.6 MB–less than a single digital camera photo at full size. You reach the maximum rate of ¥4410 by using 52,500 packets, or 6.72 MB–something you will certainly do if you do normal stuff like check email and use the Maps app while out and about. Especially if you browse web pages–six megabytes can be used up pretty quick. Just as an example, in May, according to my SoftBank bill, I used over 750,000 packets. No way in hell I could go below the 52,000 limit, save for turning off data use under 3G except in emergencies.
In short, don’t fall for the “cheaper” Basic plan: you’ll only wind up paying an extra $125 over two years.
So, going for the “Value” plan makes sense, and for Japan, the whole schmeer is pretty reasonable–especially the iPhone 4 for just eighty bucks plus what you’d pay normally anyway. At first, I thought that SoftBank would sock it to people they already had on contract, making them pay full price or pay a penalty for early adoption, but it seems not. Again, unless my Japanese led me to misunderstand the clerk; I will be checking up tomorrow, seeing what is or isn’t possible. The SoftBank stores in Omote-Sando and Shibuya have English-speaking staff, and the iPhone 4 reservations begin at 5pm. One drawback: they’ll only have the model in black if you get it right away. That’s OK with me, the new phone looks goofy in white.
If I do get the new phone, then my 3G will be off the phone grid. In other words: Jailbreak time!
About 20 minutes ago, there was a 6.1-magnitude quake about 60km off the cost of Fukushima, about 120 km away from Fukushima City. Sachi and I felt it pretty distinctly, despite being 270 km distant; it shook the building, swaying some furniture.
On the Japanese seismic intensity scale (a scale based on the effect a quake has on the ground rather than simple energy measurements), it measured a lower “5,” which means that some books and dishes might fall onto the floor, some damage could occur to buildings, and people might find it hard to move during the quake.
I got a free app for the iPad, Earthquake Lite, which does a pretty good job of showing quake info worldwide. It took about 5 minutes for this quake to show up on their list. When you get the info, it lays it out like this:
In this case, Tenki.jp (where the image at top came from) got the notice up immediately; Bosai, strangely, didn’t get it until much later.
One of the things that is annoying about living overseas is that when you surf the web, many sites “helpfully” detect your location, and switch you over to a version of the web site native to the country you’re in. For me, that’s Japan. For example, if I go to “http://www.youtube.com,” it’s all in Japanese. I can set the language to English, but for some reason, it won’t allow me to use America as a location–I have to say I am in the UK to get close to the focus on English videos that I want. And that setting will time out, so every week or two I have to re-set the language. Skype is the same way–whenever I visit their site, it’s in Japanese, and I have to reset the language there as well.
While this is all an annoyance (as are most attempts by programmers to be aggressively “helpful”), at least it is correctable–you can always find a way to steer back to a version of the site in your language.
Unless you are at Gizmodo, that is. In the past, they implemented the “we’re going to help you by redirecting you to our Japanese site” protocol, but put little flags at the top of the page that would allow you to navigate back. That worked for a while. But for the past 3-4 days, the flags don’t work. I even directly type in “http://us.gizmodo.com,” and it still steers me to the Japanese site. Apparently, no one outside the U.S. (or in Japan, at least) is allowed to see what’s on their U.S. site.
The solution is simple: I’m removing them from my bookmarks.
Thanks for being so helpful, Gizmodo!
Imagine this scenario: you work at a non-union company, doesn’t matter which one or what you do, except that you are low in the ranks. There is someone who manages the security department, who understands the technical aspects of security really well, whereas you don’t know much about it at all. This person is high-ranking, very well-off, and has the resources of his entire department at his disposal. Additionally, this person is in tight with upper management, and is even allowed to write company policy.
Now, it appears that some people who work for the company have been stealing this person’s lunch from a refrigerator at work. Because of certain laws concerning workplace surveillance, video cameras were not an option to catch the perpetrators. Instead, the security guy claims to have acquired forensic evidence from the refrigerator and the trash, and claims that it points to dozens of people at the company–including you–as having stolen his lunches.
In retaliation, he demands that you and every other offender he identified pay the equivalent of the cost of lunch for him at a nice restaurant every day for two months–quite a hefty sum–on the accusation that you may have taken his lunch one day. If you don’t, then he will file a formal complaint against you, using the forensic evidence he claims to have collected. If the claim is successful, you will be fined, fired from your job, and have a stain on your employment record that will follow you for some time.
You may defend yourself, but you will have to hire experts in security and other people to help you make your defense, without which you don’t stand a chance–but they will cost a great deal more than paying the demanded “settlement.” And even with the hired team, you still might lose the challenge and pay the penalties anyway, in addition to the cost of the defense.
Disregarding the unlikelihood of this scenario, what would your assessment be? Is the manager abusing his power and influence? As he is in fact being robbed, is he justified in his response? Or would you simply consider him to be a petty, arrogant ass?
I see this as being roughly the equivalent of what innocent defendants face in the P2P mass-extortion nuisance lawsuit business (in which lawyers for movie producers are suing thousands of John-Doe defendants for downloading their bad movies). Even the ones who are guilty are being abused in the form of apallingly excessive fines. You don’t threaten to fine someone $100,000 for allegedly littering, or even for catching them doing it red-handed. And when a person’s guilt is ambiguous at best, extorting money from them is completely inexcusable.
Take this case of a elderly couple, both 69 years of age, accused by studio lawyers of having illegally downloaded, via BitTorrent, a schlocky violent-action film based on a first-person-shooter video game:
“My wife and I are both 69 years of age and the only occupants of this location,” wrote Wright. “Charter personnel installed the high speed equipment for our internet connection and we have made no modifications to it. If it had any features that made it vulnerable to ‘hacking,’ we had no knowledge of that. The technology is way above our abilities to deal with.”
In short, the couple’s WiFi signal was likely hijacked by a neighbor who downloaded the movie, and the couple had no way of knowing about this or preventing it. Rather than realize that a near-septuagenarian couple would not know how to download movies illegally and would never watch their crap movie in the first place, and rather than figure that continuing to attempt to extort them would result in bad press and make them look like complete schmucks, they instead smugly used legal maneuvering to essentially call the elderly couple idiots and persisted in their attempt to extort $1500 from the folks. It seems that in an attempt to give the court detailed information in their request to squash the lawyers’ subpoena, the couple accidentally invalidated their own motion–something a lawyer would know how to avoid, but the old folks wouldn’t.
The analogy I laid out at the top of this post holds true. A powerful entity–the entertainment industry–has bought off the government with bribes and essentially written the law themselves, in which they allow themselves huge rewards for what are in relative terms piffling offenses. They then use these laws in addition to the legal machinery at their disposal to extort exorbitant amounts from tens of thousands of people who may or may not be guilty of the offense and who mostly cannot afford to take the chance to defend themselves. True, offenses were committed; the lunches were indeed stolen. But the manner and method of the response is outrageously out of proportion (even for those in fact guilty), and in its scattershot attempt to nab offenders who cannot definitively be identified, they know that they are demanding huge amounts from people who are innocent and cannot afford to pay.
Read the Ars Technica article which details several cases of people who are likely innocent but fell victim either to IP address misidentification or WiFi leeching by neighbors, and are now facing the prospect of (a) paying dearly for an offense they did not commit, (b) paying more dearly to defend themselves, or (c) paying obscene amounts if their defense is unsuccessful. Worse, these people, often people who can’t afford much at all, are being forced to defend themselves in a court all the way across the country. Frankly, I think the judge should lay down these rules: that (1) the plaintiffs must sue each person individually in their district, (2) they must prove that the person in fact downloaded it and did not have their WiFi hijacked, and (3) if they fail, they must pay for the defense of the defendant.
So the question might become, how does the entertainment industry deal with piracy reasonably? Ideally, they should come clean and admit that piracy is in fact not costing them nearly as much as they claim, and that turning so viciously against the public is gaining them no sympathy from anyone. If they can truly make a case that they are losing some money from this–not the ridiculously inflated claims they publicly release–then do what most industries do in response to common cases of widespread theft: catch and punish those you can prove without doubt, otherwise just hike your prices a modest amount to compensate (something the industry is probably already doing, come to think of it). If they must take legal action, then stop with the “settlement offers,” which are little more than legal extortion–or else make the offers much more reasonable, like demanding the offender pay for the full retail value of the item, low enough that people would pay without much more than grousing.
As for the laws making the accused liable for penalties in the amount of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars for downloading a $10-$20 piece of crap, they are unspeakable obscenities that do not belong on the law books, and should be stricken–and would be, if the politicians who write our laws actually worked for the people, like they’re supposed to, instead of being bought off by corporations.
I am consistently surprised by the level of interest and often sheer enthusiasm for the iPad in Japan. The iPhone received some good attention after it was released, but with the iPad, things are almost at the crazy level. I have people coming up to me all the time asking to see it, and showing an even more positive reaction to it than people did with the iPhone when it was first released here. Just yesterday, a teacher asked me to come in and demo it for his class, which all eagerly gathered around and made a lot of noise every time something new was done. In short, they loved it. 
I am getting similar reactions on trains, with people making comments to each other, often stealing glances and sometimes asking questions. I thought the interest would subside soon after the release of the iPad in Japan, but if anything, it has only gotten stronger.
On another Apple mobile device front, my students are getting the iPhone in droves. Initially, they wanted it but stayed away since SoftBank’s plans didn’t allow for cheap calling of their friends, who mostly had non-SoftBank contracts. But then SoftBank initiated a special student plan, and now the students are buying them in droves. Sadly, many bought in with a recently discount plan–not knowing that iPhone 4 was just a few weeks away. I told a few of my students who just got iPhones about this until I noted I was just disappointing them, then I shut up.
Still, SoftBank and Apple mobile products are just getting stronger and stronger in Japan, building on both brand recognition and new devices and features.
The judge in one of the mass-extortion P2P blind-lawsuit cases (from the same lawyers trying the same thing with Hurt Locker downloaders) has told the plaintiffs to do a good job of rationalizing their asinine behavior, or file individual lawsuits instead of mass lawsuits.
A man in Fargo, North Dakota, applied for a vanity plate which reads “ISNOGOD.” The NDDOT (North Dakota Department of Transportation) rejected his application. Not because it was taken, but because they didn’t like the message–it “might offend people,” they said. They had already approved religious plates, such as “ILOVGOD,” and so apparently they only care about offending religious people, not non-religious people. This was the first vanity plate turned down in the state in three years.
Now the NDDOT has reversed its decision, but does not seem to be doing so willingly. Instead of apologizing for what amounts to blatant discrimination, they simply noted that their attorneys have “advised” them that “under the law” the man is “entitled” to the plate has asked for. The reversal was only “due a broader legal review.” In short, they would have liked to tell the guy that his religious views won’t be tolerated, but their lawyer informed them that their bias didn’t have a legal leg to stand on and a court would rule against them in an embarrassing and perhaps expensive manner.
No doubt the guy will have his car keyed or something after getting the plates.