Via Engadget: a hilarious “24” spoof from College Humor. It purports to be the “original” pilot for 24, using 1994 technology, complete with Windows 3.1, AOL chat rooms, dot matrix printers, the works. For those of you who remember hi-tech back then, it’s frakking hilarious.

Ouch. Apple’s stock has has two $10-a-day drops, after an initial $5 drop, going from $191 per share to $165 in just three days–a 13% drop. The good news is, it isn’t a reaction to anything related to Apple, it’s just that tech stocks in general are falling, and when the market drops, Apple usually drops as well.

No problem, though; Apple itself is strong and has a highly promising holiday sales season ahead of it. This drop will simply give Apple a bit more room to grow, for those who might have been worried about too big a market cap. That’s the best reason that I can think of as to why Apple didn’t issue a stock split when its price got pretty high–they don’t want the stock to inflate too fast.

Still, it’s not very fun watching it drop like that!

Paul just blogged on painting the walls of your house, and as I read it, I thought about whether or not this would ever apply to me. And then it struck me: I have never seen painted walls in Japan. At least not that I can recall. Every apartment, house, and office where I took notice, wallpaper was used. Usually it’s plain, textured wallpaper. A few times I have seen walls that look like a texture was sprayed on. But I do not recall ever having seen a painted wall. As much to the point, I have never seen much of a house-paint display in any “home center” store in Japan.

Sachi confirms this: painted walls in a house are a special thing in Japan. They exist, but are not common at all.

Hmm.

This statement by Bush has been getting a lot of press lately, for good reason:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. My question is on Iraq. Mr. President, this morning you talked at length about Afghanistan, Iran, but not Iraq. And I wanted to ask both of you, is France reconciled with the United States, the United States is reconciled with France? So what about Iraq? Can France, for instance, help to get out of the Iraqi quagmire? And President Bush, where do you stand on Iraq and your domestic debate on Iraq? Do you have a timetable for withdrawing troops?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I don’t — you know, “quagmire” is an interesting word. If you lived in Iraq and had lived under a tyranny, you’d be saying, god, I love freedom — because that’s what’s happened.

Now, you could defend Bush by pointing out that millions of Iraqis who are not better off today than they were under Hussein are not “living in Iraq.” A few million have fled Iraq because of the threat of being tortured and murdered in sectarian violence. And then there are the hundreds of thousands–if not a million, by this time–who are simply not living at all anymore.

But I suppose that things might be different for a member of the Mahdi Army, who has killed a few hundred of his neighbors after torturing them and cutting off their limbs, and then abandoning their bodies in trash heaps in the street. Such a man might take delight in the fact that he has planted dozens of IEDs in the streets so that when American soldiers, driving in unarmored vehicles and without sufficient body armor, come close to the device, get blown apart and ripped to shreds by the explosion.

I expect that Bush is exactly right about such a person, who might just this moment be uttering, “Allahu Akbar, I love freedom!!”

Heckuva job, Bushie!

Former Disney studio head Michael Eisner says that writers are stupid to strike against the industry and to ask for a cut of digital sales:

The problem, Eisner said, is that the Writer’s Guild is lobbying for a bigger cut of the profits from digital distribution–and according to the former Disney chief, those profits simply aren’t there.

Gee whiz, where have we heard that before? It’s practically a mantra with the studios. This was portrayed pretty well on last weekend’s SNL, on Weekend Update, where a “Studio Head” talked about an end to studio profits:

Studio Head: DVDs and the Internet have put an end to all that. You know what it costs to make a DVD? Sixty cents. You know how much we charge? Twenty-nine dollars. And the writers want a bigger piece of the profit. What profit??? You know, we asked our accountants to figure out what twenty-nine dollars minus sixty cents is, and you know what they came up with?

Amy: Twenty-eight forty?

Studio Head: Negative thirteen dollars.

If that sounds like exaggeration, just take a look at Forrest Gump. Winston Groom wrote the novel, and made a deal with the studios to get 3% of the net profit. Not the gross, which is everything the film takes in, but the net, which is what’s left over after costs have been deducted. Tom Hanks and Robert Zemeckis got cuts of the gross, and made something like $40 million apiece.

The budget was estimated at about $55 million. It made $330 million domestically, and had worldwide ticket sales of $661 million. That’s before even DVD sales. And yet at that point, Paramount claimed that the movie was $60 million in the red. Somehow costs of $55 million became costs of $720 million. The studios, however, graciously admitted that “someday” the film would show a profit, and so “advanced” Groom a quarter of a million dollars to show their good will. This is commonly known as “Hollywood accounting”; many more examples can be found here.

So what is the new pitch? How come the movie studios aren’t making anything new off of Internet sales of TV and movies?

Blame Steve Jobs. According to Eisner, he’s the baddie:

Eisner, a well-known critic of Apple (whose CEO, Steve Jobs, is a powerful member of Disney’s board of directors), suggested that the profits may be getting sucked up elsewhere. The studios “make deals with Steve Jobs, who takes them to the cleaners. They make all these kinds of things, and who’s making money? Apple! They should get a piece of Apple. If I was a union, I’d be striking up wherever he is.”

Okay, two things. First of all, Apple makes most of its profits from sales of hardware like the iPod. I seriously doubt that they get much more a cut of retail sales than any distributor. And second, what Eisner is effectively saying here is that writers should be angry at Jobs for being a smart businessman, and not at the studio heads who bargained away all of their profits. Somehow that makes the writers “stupid” and the studio heads blameless–assuming that again, Eisner isn’t lying his ass off.

But that’s the problem with Eisner or anyone else who represents the studios. They are well known for being habitual, if not obsessive liars when it comes to profits. You do that, it may get you more money in the short run, but in the end, no one believes a word you’re saying, and simply assumes that everything coming out of your mouth is a self-serving lie.

Which it probably is.

I am installing Leopard on my 1.67 GHz G4 PowerBook tonight. The install took a bit more than half an hour, but went smoothly–you just get it started, and it does it in one take. None of this Windows bull where you have to sit there and attend the install process for an hour, waiting for the installer to stop and ask you to type in the 25-character code, or tell it to do this or that. Whenever I had to install XP, I could never leave it alone, because at any given time it might stop and ask something; you’d come back after 30 minutes to find the install process stalled near the beginning, waiting for you to set something.

Even better: no registration at all is necessary with the Mac–no registration codes, no activation. Apple trusts you. Well, mostly. There is one annoyance with the process if you are wiping the hard disk and installing everything from scratch: Apple tries to make you register whether you want to or not, requiring to fill in your name, address, etc. etc., with no readily apparent way of getting out of it. But there is a way: just do a Command-Q. The setup assistant will ask you if you want to skip registration and go straight to setting up the main user account. Say yes, and all you have to do is select a user name and password, and you’re up and running.

Despite running a 2-year-old computer, with a pre-Intel CPU, the install went smoothly and the result seems just fine. I got started late, so I only had a half hour to play with it before going to bed–so first impressions will have to wait. But pre-first impressions are good. Except that, for the sake of cleanliness, I decided to do the full wipe-and-install, so that means a lot of app installs and preference-setting tomorrow. But I tested out some basic apps and everything runs smooth and great, despite the age of the computer.

There is a guy out there who grabbed some tech-media attention out there when he got a Zune tattoo. The clear consensus was that he had serious issues if he (a) was going to tattoo a corporate logo permanently onto his body, and (b) seriously, dude, a Zune?? Headlines like “Area Man Gets More Tattoos, Fewer Dates” started popping up as the guy added a second, and then a third Zune tattoo (“Welcome to the Social,” pictured at right), likely fueled on by the attention.

Back in June, it was reported that Microsoft had found out about the guy and had decided to fly him out to Redmond for the “star treatment.” However, as far as I can tell, the only source of that info was the tattoo guy himself; at the end of the discussion board thread where he announced it, there was a note that the trip had been “delayed,” and no other information that I can find exists about any such event. Which suggests that either Microsoft sent out a feeler but then cancelled when they realized how bad it all looked, or the tattoo guy just made the whole thing up.

Well, apparently he needs more attention (though who wants attention when 99% of it is saying how big a loser you are?), as he now claims that he intends to legally change his name to “Microsoft Zune.”

There really isn’t that much to say beyond, (a) this guy needs attention from professionally trained people, and/or (b) he needs to have his Internet connection disabled before he hurts himself or those around him. There are limits to fanboy-ism. Not to mention bad taste.

From a press conference at the White House on Pakistan’s emergency rule:

Q: Is it ever reasonable to restrict constitutional freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism?

MS. PERINO: In our opinion, no.

Oh, Really?

Japanese people remove their shoes when entering a home, that much most everybody knows. But this one took even me by surprise, even after all these years in Japan: Japanese people remove their shoes before committing suicide.

This afternoon, less than a mile from where Sachi and I live, a woman committed suicide by jumping off the roof of a department store. Even more unfortunately, she landed on a man on the sidewalk below–not surprising, as it’s a busy sidewalk. The woman died, and the man was knocked unconscious and is in serious condition at a hospital.

They knew fairly quickly it was a suicide, however, because they found the woman’s shoes on the roof from which she fell.

I asked Sachi about that, and she was unsurprised by the shoe thing–it appears to be common knowledge. But Sachi could not explain why it is considered normal or appropriate to take off one’s shoes in a case like that. Is it traditional? Is it ritualistic? Is it representative of something? Or is it plain old fastidiousness? Do only jumpers do this? What about people who suffocate themselves in cars, do they remove their shoes first?

Anyone who knows about this, let me know.

As much as I like Stephen Colbert, I think it is wholly appropriate and right for the South Carolina Democrats to keep him off of their ballot. If we have anything from the last two elections, it is that you don’t fuck with the ballots. A candidate who throws off your party’s vote, whether it be Stephen Colbert for laughs or Ralph Nader for the futile feel-good alternate vote, is just not a good idea. Allowing even one state to slip through your fingers for the sake of seeing something interesting happen is the dumbest possible screw-up that you could possibly imagine. The last two elections were critical, and we blew them. This next one will mean life or death for a lot of people, and so the Democratic ballot in any state is most decidedly not a laughing matter–even the primary ballots.

In fact, I am kind of shocked that three of the sixteen people on the council actually approved of Colbert on the ballot.

Well, the video was a big hit; people seemed to enjoy it a lot. As before, the live house we’re using has a WiFi connection, allowing me to connect and blog directly from the festival site.

One of our students graced us with a wonderful demonstration of “Iai,” a kendo-like art of sword-drawing. This after the Martial Arts Club gave a demonstration complete with sparring and wood-plank-breaking.

So far, it’s been a great display and a lot of fun!

I’ve been a bit light on blogging today, for a good reason: it’s Arts Day Video time. Tomorrow, Monday, is the festival, and today was the deadline for getting everything done. And that’s what I got done: everything. The final video is a few seconds under 19 minutes long, and features bits on every performance group except one (I can’t edit in what my students don’t videotape….).

I’m very happy with this one. The opening parody bits came out better than I had hoped, and the opening and ending music pieces fell into place better than I thought they would. The pace of the whole piece is better than we’ve accomplished before; it flows pretty easily, and at the end, you don’t feel like 19 minutes has passed.

That said, as with past videos, if you’re not familiar with the school, some of the gags will pass right over your head. Nevertheless, I plan to post this video–and the past two years’ videos–on YouTube as soon as I find the time, probably by mid-this-week. My only concern is that they utilize copyrighted music pieces in some parts. I figure that if I password-protect the videos, as YouTube allows, that may keep that element from being a problem. I can make all non-copyrighted portions available generally.

But for now, with only hours to go before the festival begins, I have the video backed up enough. The original iMovie project, a raw Digital-Video version (as a QuickTime file), a disk image of the DVD, and three hard copies of the DVD, all ready to go.

My only worry: without the software having been re-installed in one and a half years, playback on my laptop is choppy at best. Should I risk installing Leopard on it tomorrow morning?

I’m too tired out from tonight’s effort to decide.

In case you have not been keeping up with your daily or weekly dose of Engrish, you should at least see this one:

Sachi tells me that the dish is abalone, in case you were wondering. That’s the “Bao” of the sentence. All other words are a literal, character-by-character translation of the individual meaning of each kanji in the name. Clearly, in this case, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

In their most recent episode, Boston Legal has touched upon a subject that has concerned me for some time. It is the topic of how we treat people convicted of sex crimes. Sex crimes are obviously among of the touchiest, for several reasons. Nothing tends to upset us more than sex does–society reacts far more violently to the sight of a bare breast than we do to scenes of unmitigated gore and death. Whatever the cause or rightness of this fixation, it is something we respond to viscerally. And the thought of wrongness done to us sexually strikes as much or even more fear into our hearts as does wrongness done to us through violence. And so when it comes to crimes involving sex, we react far more strongly than when we do to other crimes.

What makes it worse is the factor of recidivism. Not necessarily actual recidivism, but the perception of it. Even the Boston Legal episode brought up that idea unopposed–but recent studies have suggested that, in fact, persons who commit sex crimes have a much lower rate of recidivism than those who commit other crimes, and the rate is even lower for those who receive treatment. This could be mitigated by lower rates of reporting of sex-related crimes, or the possibility that more severe punishment acts more effectively as a deterrent. But it does not change our perception, that a person who commits a sex crime is a greater danger to us than any other kind of criminal.

There are several reasons why this is a troubling issue. How we treat convicted sex offenders is, to say the least, controversial. Registration of sex offenders and their subsequent treatment by society are fraught with complications. The principle we hold in our society is that double jeopardy shall not apply; that a person receives one punishment for an offense, and then has paid their debt to society. Of course, we do not always hold to this principle. On the legal side, in many states, convicted felons who have completed their sentences are still not allowed to vote, to cite one example. On the social side, we treat anyone who is a former felon with overt suspicion. There is the tendency to believe that anyone who has committed a serious crime is a person of bad character, and will be more prone to commit such a crime again. Thus, we continue to punish people even after their “debt” has been “paid.” We have the principle of paid debts, but we violate it regularly.

But what concerns me and many others much more is the fear of what happens to the innocent person convicted of a crime. Some simply don’t care enough; either they care but feel that the need to keep society as a whole safer outweighs such individual concerns, or they simply don’t give a damn because they don’t think the issue will affect them personally, and don’t mind inflicting such treatment on others. Either way, many believe such lack of concern to be wrong. This is often quoted as, “better a hundred guilty men go free than to allow one innocent man to suffer.” I would suggest that anyone who does not allow this concern to affect them either has not considered the possibility, or has convinced themselves that such a situation will never apply to them personally. Or, perhaps, like so many people today, they simply feel that authoritarian over-zealousness in the prosecution of crime is more important than personal liberties. Or, as Patrick Henry said, “Screw liberty! I’m scared to death!”

The concern over such issues intensifies when one considers the instability of prosecutions concerning sexual crimes. I do not think it is unreasonable to presume that juries will be far more likely to presume guilt when it comes to such crimes, and for courts to inflict more serious penalties upon conviction.

And then there is the likelihood of false accusations. The scenario in Boston Legal is frightening: a woman accuses a black man of rape not because there was rape, but because she was caught having sex with a black man in a community which condemns such an action. Or consider the accusations of child molestation by paranoid parents who misinterpret a child’s answers to leading questions. I have no evidence of how likely such instances are, but considering their nature, such evidence is not likely to be found whether it exists or not.

With our knee-jerk reaction to issues concerning sex, and our ever-increasing paranoia concerning crime, it is not likely that things will improve in this area. And with the seriousness of actual crimes of a sexual nature regarding children, it is incredibly easy to dismiss any other concerns and simply decide to play it safe. I won’t pretend to offer a solution here, except for the simple common sense approach: that each and every instance of such crimes and such punishments should be dealt with as cautiously, as gravely, and as objectively as is humanly possible, for the sake of both the innocent who are among the victims as well as those who are among the accused.

Paul Tibbets, the man who piloted the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, died at age 92 today. There has always been controversy surrounding this, something that I have covered on this blog before. Extremists on both sides see it in black-and-white. On one side, Tibbets was a man who at the very least killed tens of thousands of people. On the other side, he was a hero who helped stop a murderous dictatorship and made unnecessary the deaths of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and millions of Japanese troops and civilians.

The thing is, as I figure it, the man was a pilot sent on a mission to drop ordnance. I just don’t see Tibbets himself as being that central to the issue. You might as well make a big deal over the man who drove Kennedy’s limo when he was shot, or the captain of the ship that brought missiles to Cuba. These people did not decide anything, they were not vital or irreplaceable. Tibbets was not much more than a lightning rod for a military decision made by the president of the United States.

That said, one thing did cross my mind in all this. Let’s say that Tibbets is buried at Arlington. What would Japan’s reaction be if Bush and several successive U.S. presidents made official visits each year to his grave site? It would be interesting to see what Japanese officials would make of such a spectacle.

There are some accepted standards in politics which are pretty reprehensible. One is that politicians accept bribes; we all know it, but we do nothing more than shake our heads and accept it. A somewhat lesser evil is that politicians don’t answer tough questions–they either answer a question other than the one asked, or they don’t accept interviews with reporters that ask tough questions. Both the press and the people have accepted this as well.

But with the Bush presidency, there seems to be a new standard: openly lying. We’ve seen it many times, especially with Dick Cheney. The idea is that even with the truth readily available and solidly known, the administration nevertheless continues to spout the lie. Iraq is the nexus of the war on terror. Global climate change isn’t proven. Drugs from Canada are not trustworthy. Waterboarding is not torture.

This practice is not new, of course. It has also been established by corporations, like the tobacco companies claiming that smoking doesn’t cause cancer; we are already used to corporate America spreading such obvious lies in the face of existing evidence to the contrary.

And certainly we are used to politicians lying. So what’s new?

What’s new is politicians continuing to spread proven lies combined with the element of new press/media paradigm of not calling attention to the lies (else we would be playing into the terrorists’ hands!). With the media safely neutered, politicians feel secure enough in propagating those lies.

Latest example: Rudy Giuliani claimed that socialized medicine is bad, and as proof claimed that he would have been twice as likely to die from prostate cancer under the United Kingdom’s socialized health care system. Well, that claim was shown up as absolutely false. So did Giuliani retract it? Nope. In fact, he’s going to continue saying it:

Asked if Mr. Giuliani would continue to repeat the statistic, and if the advertisement would continue to run, [Giuliani spokeswoman Maria] Comella responded by e-mail: “Yes. We will.”

And the press is not really showing that they care much about it. The New York Times, for example, simply reports that the number is “disputed.” The article does show the actual facts in the case, but never calls what Giuliani said a “lie” or even “untrue.” You come away from it feeling that there is perhaps some uncertainty about whether or not Giuliani’s number is incorrect. And this is not Giuliani’s first lie; he has lied repeatedly over the past several months, often reciting huge whoppers, few if any of which are noted in press coverage. Giuliani remains the Republican front-runner.

This one lie won’t sink the system. But it is an example of the new low standard to which we hold public officials, as well as the press: that a lie can be told, that it can be shown up as a lie, and that it can then continue to be told with virtually no repercussions to the lying party. Such lies got us into the Iraq War, such lies destroyed our surplus and sank us back into disastrous debt. Such lies are helping to dismantle the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

And thus, our system sinks deeper into systemized corruption and failure.

MacDailyNews reports on a news release from a security company called “Intego” about a new trojan horse aimed at Mac users. The Trojan, dubbed “OSX.RSPlug.A” (a variation of “Zlob”) is malware, and is real. So, has the Mac’s famed security failed? Well, not quite. Trojans are the easiest form of malware to produce, because they don’t as much defeat a computer’s security as they circumvent it by having you open the door and usher them in. There’s no static security system in the world that can protect against a user personally installing the malware. If you think that you might fall for such ploys, then perhaps it is time for antivirus software on your Mac. Nevertheless, the risk is exceedingly low.

In order to get stung, you have to visit a porn site and try to see a porn movie–only to be told that your version of QuickTime doesn’t have the right codec. The user must then accept a download (“ULTRACODEC4313.dmg”), run the installer, and give the administrator password. The worst that can be said is that at no time does the Mac OS say, “Hey! You’re about to install a trojan!” As MacDailyNews puts it:

Of course, Intego says that “the best way” to protect against this exploit is to purchase and run Intego VirusBarrier X4 with up-to-date virus definitions, but we suggest that an even better way to protect against such trojans is to use your head and not download, authorize, and install software from porn sites.

And that’s what it really comes down to: common sense.

If installed, the trojan will not erase files or send your private information anywhere, nor will it use your address book to propagate–it only propagates by having users download and install it. However, it will hijack your Mac’s DNS settings so as to lead you to bogus web sites. Web searches or clicked links may be redirected to porn or phishing sites. This could be bad if you try to go to the real eBay or your bank site and are redirected to a phishing site that pretends to be eBay or your bank. However, the chances are that by the time you would want to visit such a site, you would have already noticed that your browser is being hijacked to all those porn sites.

So far, there is only one reported case of the trojan hijacking someone’s system, though admittedly there may be lots more who simply don’t want to advertise that (a) they visit porn sites and (b) were dumb enough to fall for this particular trojan.

Rob Griffiths at MacWorld explains everything, including how to remove the trojan without having to buy antivirus software.

Apple announced that they sold two million copies of Leopard in the first two days. Blackfriars’ Marketing describes it this way:

I tried to find similar statistics for the Microsoft Vista launch, but the best I could come up with was that Vista sold 20 million copies in the first month (February), resulting in an average sales rate of 714,000 a day. Both numbers reflect pre-orders and machine installs, not just upgrades. So at least for now, Leopard is running neck and neck with the Windows Vista install rate.

I beg to differ: Leopard is not running neck and neck with Vista. Windows has ten times the market share, at least ten times the number of computers to service. Which means that if Leopard is selling the same number of copies, then Leopard is outselling Vista ten to one. Unlike Vista, Leopard is getting excellent reviews, and you can bet that no one is going to an Apple dealer and asking for Tiger instead of Leopard on their brand-new Mac. Nor does Apple have to skew the numbers to make it look like it’s doing better than the last OS release; Tiger took a month to sell 2 million copies. True, Apple has sold a lot more Macs since then, but not that many.

Oh yes, and let’s not forget that Leopard pre-orders only began a week before release, while Vista’s began months early–and included all Windows PC sales of XP in that 3-month period because they included coupons for Vista.

I’m beginning to think that Meiji Boulevard, one of the major inner-city traffic arteries, is an official parade route. A few weeks ago, at 7:00 pm–typically a rush time–some major festival occupied half the entire boulevard for at least a two-mile stretch. One would think that a matsuri, which after all depends on foot traffic, could survive on smaller streets instead of completely stopping traffic on major thoroughfares.

Tonight there was another one. At school, we could faintly hear chanting and singing pass by. A half hour later, on my way home, I encountered the cause: a parade, again taking up half of Meiji Boulevard, again at 7:00, causing a major traffic snarl. This parade was complete with a marching band and huge flag banners, and by that time, had traffic snarled up for a good mile behind it. While waiting for a large part of the procession to cross the street at an intersection where traffic lights were diverted for the parade’s passing, another biker told me that it was probably Waseda University celebrating some baseball victory. Swell–thanks Waseda, we are overjoyed with your victory and your decision to celebrate it by causing a major traffic jam.

My question is, why don’t the police–who in both cases were present in large numbers for crowd and traffic control–make these people celebrate in a place that cause far less disruption? And why do revelers want to tie up the only viable route of traffic in an area for thousands of people during rush hour? Especially for the baseball parade, which was not like a normal parade where people expect it and line the sides of the street to enjoy (a planned event for the benefit of the townspeople, with traffic warned and effectively diverted around it); it was instead, essentially, the celebrators by themselves, strutting down Main Street for their own pleasure. No warning, no signs suggesting detour, no reason for drivers to seek out side streets or back roads before they get mired in the traffic jam. Lovely.

This from Reuters:

A Bush administration official whose department had government workers pose as journalists in a news conference has been dropped from a planned new job as media chief for the top U.S. spy agency.

What got him canned was probably not using fake reporters–that’s been SOP in the Bush administration for years. What probably put him in the doghouse was getting caught at it.