Want a nice font based on your own handwriting? Maybe make your own dingbat font? Or try to craft a more interesting font?

Font Capture gives you a way to do this–for free. But you might need to do it soon: other similar free handwriting-font sites have appeared in the past, and have turned to charging for the service. Font Capture describes itself as being in “beta,” meaning it could go out of beta and start charging people.

You will need to have a decent writing pen and a way to scan a piece of paper to a computer. But if you can do that, you can make a very nice font.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Download the blank form form from the web site (PDF file link). You will need a PDF reader like Adobe Acrobat Reader or Foxit to read it (Mac Users can use the “Preview” app included with OS X).

2. Print out the form.

3. Fill in the form. Write all the characters as described above each square:

Remember, you can write anything you want in any square! You’ll probably want A-Z, a-z, 0-9, and most punctuation, but it’s easy to add little drawings or pictures in the other squares.

4. Scan the form (above 200 dpi is best). You will need a scanner to do this; taking a photograph will not work well. If you need help, ask Mr. Poza and he will scan it for you!

5. Save the scan as a JPG or PNG; the site says PNG is best.

6. Upload the scanned file here. You can give it a name there, too.

7. Submit the font. After a minute, the site will show you a sample of the font. You can write test sentences and they will display in your font.

8. If the font looks good, you can download it and then install it on your computer.

I made a font earlier this evening. The first attempt didn’t work out–too many letters were too high or too low, making it look strange. Using a lined template underneath the form to guide my writing helped the second time, and I got a serviceable font. I may try again with styled variants.

When Obama was nominated as the Democratic candidate more than a year ago, conservative bloggers started there and then to unload Bush’s economic mess on Obama. After the fact, more conservatives reached back to Obama’s nomination to claim that everything after that date was his fault.

When Obama won the presidency–more than two months before he could take office and actually do anything–most of the right wing immediately termed the economy the “Obama Recession.”

Shortly after Obama took office, when the stock market continued the fall that had started under Bush, conservatives blamed it all on Obama.

So I think it’s pretty firmly established: according to conservatives, Bush no longer controlled the economy. Everything was going down the tubes, so it must be all, completely, 200% Obama’s fault. he owns this economy, irrevocably, irreversibly.

Obama passed his stimulus law back in February. Almost instantly, things started turning around. Job losses decreased dramatically. Within a few weeks, the stock market plummet halted and reversed itself. People started to see signs of recover. And today, the Dow hit 10,000.

So naturally, Fox News has now branded this “The Bush Recovery.”

Wow. Even for conservatives, that is fantastically hypocritical. And that is saying a lot.

One ongoing vein of outrageous hypocrisy on the Republican side of things is the gall they have to act like complete weasels when in power, but now that they are out of power, they warn Democrats that they better not even think of doing the stuff that Republicans did as if it were their god-given right. The latest example comes with the GOP’s last-gasp attempts to shoot down Net Neutrality:

Now out of power, the Republican party is preaching the virtues of bipartisanship. A new letter from 18 Republican senators to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski opens with a line of congratulations but moves quickly to the real business at hand: telling Genachowski that he had better not plan on moving forward with his ambitious net neutrality agenda unless he has bipartisan support.

“Such a major policy shift should be contemplated only with all of the FCC Commissioners involved,” says the letter. “To do it with just one party reduces the confidence the public and the Congress has in the proposal.”

Yep, the whole “you MUST be bipartisan” crap. When the GOP ruled the roost, they had zero interest in acting bipartisan; they steamrolled through anything and almost everything they wanted, and went into nuclear hissyfits if the Democrats even hinted at disagreeing.

But now that Democrats have the majority, Republicans are insisting on bipartisanship, even within regulatory bodies like the FCC–a stance you can be absolutely certain will completely disappear three seconds after they regain a majority again.

Even after making the same appalling, preposterous displays again and again and again, the brazen, utter gall of the GOP never fails to astonish.

This Daily Show segment was hilarious–and spot-on. An excellent showcase on how the TV “news” networks have completely given up on calling out any political lies at all, simply giving open mics to politicians and letting lay every stupid thing they say. They could fact-check, but no–that would mean politicians would be unwilling to appear on their shows. So instead, they only fact-check stuff like… well, watch it. If you haven’t seen this already, you probably wouldn’t believe me anyway.

We’ll have to leave it there.

It’s no secret that many right-wingers have mostly lost their senses as of late. That helps explain this protest outside an elementary school. A bunch of Wingnuts, outraged that other people’s kids were taught to sing a song which said nice things about Barack Obama, showed up Monday morning outside the school with picket signs, claiming they were there “for the kids.” Of course, if any of the kids saw them out there–likely, as it was a school day–they would much more likely have been intimidated.

Which appears to have been the idea. After all, had they not wanted to risk frightening the children (“Teacher, why are those angry people screaming at us?”), they would have either protested on a day when school was not in session, or else would have protested at another location, like outside city hall or a school board meeting. Nope, they insisted on doing it right in front of the kids, despite pleas from local school officials.

All of this stemmed from a song a small group of kids learned to sing last February, during Black History Month, in which “Barack Hussein Obama” (I’d have thought the wingnuts would have liked the song just because it included his middle name) was praised. Really, it was a silly little song, like most silly songs kids are taught to sing, don’t understand a word of, and then completely forget about. The lyrics were sent home to parents, and no one objected. None of the parents pulled their kids out of school, and from what I can tell, none protested this weekend.

But an unimaginable crime had been committed: somewhere in the United States of America, about a dozen and a half children had been taught to sing a song that said good things about the president of the United States. We can’t allow that to happen without hundreds of viral videos, protests in front of the school, lots of newspaper editorials, hundreds if not thousands of angry blog posts, and the unrelenting, scathing criticism of an entire TV network (which broadcasted a video of the kids, without pixelating their faces–nice touch). All in correct proportion, of course. If we allowed this to happen with, say, another twenty kids, we’d soon be on our way to an Atheistic Socialist Worker’s Revolution with Little Red Books and Re-education Camps. Seriously, the protesters called this a “trend” of politicizing schoolkids. A trend requires at least two data points, preferably at least three. Don’t know what the other points could have been.

Of course, had the entire state forced its kids to sing in praise of Ronald Reagan, that would have been perfectly fine with these people.

Here’s the interesting thing: these protesters thought that a little ditty about the president was virtually child abuse, but they had no trouble protesting in front of the school in a way that could disturb, unnerve, or even frighten the children.

Kind of highlights what their actual priorities are and are not.

On to wrap up the post about CEATEC. I was only there for most of one day, so I did not get to see everything; also, the fact that most everything was in Japanese only hampered my ability to fully understand everything I saw.

Nonetheless, there was some interesting stuff; though much was pre-existing tech, a lot was still fun to see and play with.

For example, this electronic whiteboard:

The projector they had was at waist-level, so it was hard to write without blocking the area you were writing on; this setup is intended to be used with a ceiling-mounted projector (which would not solve all of the problems, but would help). It’s not the sexiest system–having a projector behind the screen, or making the whiteboard itself a display would be far better. But for $1000, it’s a relatively cheap setup–and I can imagine doing a lot with this in my computer class. The whiteboard software can call up any image or file on a computer and make it interactive with what the lecturer is doing. It can also call up saved screens with prepared content. There is a LOT I could do with this thing in my computer class.

Strangely, I had never seen an OLED in person before this. They do seem very nice–high contrast, rich colors. I hear they’re weak outdoors, though.

One guy was pitching “the world’s smallest keyboard.” Um, maybe, if you mean one that’s a remote keyboard–I am pretty sure that smaller ones exist on portable devices. And I’m not really sure how he verified that no smaller remote keyboards exist, but OK. This device looks kinda fun, until you start trying to think of situations where you really need it. Like a lot of other tech at the show, this was more along the lines of “it looks cool but adds minimal functionality.”

Here’s another example of that ‘limited functionality’ thing: wireless upload of images from a digital camera to the computer. This was at Sony’s booth. Just place the camera on the pad, and presto! The photos download and display. Except that when it was displayed, it suffered from glitches (didn’t connect a few times; the rep had to fiddle with it), and was kind of slow uploading. Plus, there’s been an easier way to do this for a while: the Eye-Fi Wireless SD card, an SD memory card which will automatically upload your photos to a WiFi network as you take them, or when you come in range of a network. It was also at the show, looking for a distributor.

TDK had several tech items on display, including these 320 GB optical disks. Promises, promises. There have been tons of “coming soon” super-high-capacity media promised over the years, with very few actually making it to market.

This is cool: flexible solar panels. I am sure that they are useful somewhere.

Terminator-Vision!! No, actually, it was facial recognition software Sony was showing off.

This was more for industrial use, but was very interesting to see in action. As you can see, it tagged me as being 90% male, 100% adult, and definitely not a baby or a senior. It figured that I probably had both eyes open and had a hint of a smile, but didn’t see my glasses too well.

The use of this became apparent when the rep explained it to me: a camera would accompany a digital advertising display which would alter its content based upon who was looking at it. If mostly women were looking at the ad space, it would display ads aimed at women; same with different age groups. Presumably the smiling would help gauge the effectiveness of ads. One can imagine other uses for this as well.

Finally, there was the panel discussion on personal computing undergoing a transformation, which was, as I mentioned in the last post, mostly just PR pitches by the execs. I wish they had discussed advances in multi-touch and non-volatile RAM, the possible development of quantum computing, the implementation of facial and body recognition in UI development, specific timetables for adoption of wireless standards, and other stuff I hadn’t even heard of yet. But no, it was mostly about stuff they were actually currently doing, tame stuff like using cloud connectivity (heck, I use that now), with lots of references to how cool Windows 7 is going to be.

One thing that Fujitsu showed actually did seem pretty neat:

I think the name comes from the fact that the displays cover the entire surface of the devices, with no frames–and the devices communicate wirelessly to connect and make larger displays. The exec pulled out a non-functioning sample to show a netbook and a cell phone which both had the exact same depth, so that when you put the cell phone next to the side of the netbook, you essentially extend the netbook display by a few inches.

Then you could add any number of such devices to continue to increase the size of the display.

Pretty nifty concept. Once you think about actually using it, though, its value becomes less striking–maybe adding a few inches to one side could be nice, but when would you really get more than two devices together in a situation where joining them to make a larger display would be viable and useful? Hard to see that happening much.

But still, it’s cool. That’s the main point!

Unfortunately, the end of my visit to CEATEC was marred by NHK, something I should have seen coming when I approached their booth. NHK is Japan’s public TV network–more like the BBC than PBS in that it’s driven by ‘required’ payments by everyone, and their door-to-door collectors are more or less universally disliked. Most people in Japan refuse to pay when the collectors come–technically, you’re supposed to, but I believe there are no penalties for not paying. NHK is kind of like a state-run, state-friendly behemoth which many see as outdated and unnecessary.

The only thing I really wanted to know about was their progress on the next level of HDTV. Pre-HDTV sets had a resolution of 480 (or 525, depending on how you count them) vertical lines; HDTV goes up to 1080 lines. The next generation quadruples that, going up to 4320 lines of resolution. Imagine taking 16 HDTV screens in a 4 x 4 grid–that’s the same resolution you’d get with one single “Super-Hi-Vision” TV.

I came to the NHK booth to ask for info on that, and the guy there said they had one on display, urging me to enter their booth and see it for myself. OK, cool, I though, momentarily forgetting who I was speaking to. So I joined the queue, and waited for 20 minutes, using up the last half-hour of my time at CEATEC. Finally, I got in, and walked past lame displays of this-is-what-a-living-room-looked-like-in-the-60’s, and past a mini-theater showing what 5.1 Surround sound was like. I kept asking, “Where’s the Super-Hi-Vision?” and people kept saying, oh, it’s right over down that way, check it out!

So naturally, when I finally got there, they were shutting it down. Unapologetically, the NHK rep had a “too bad” attitude, and was even a bit condescending about it, as if it was perfectly natural to urge people to wait in line for something and then refuse to extend a display for two minutes to show them what was promised. What kind of idiot are you?

That sour end note aside, CEATEC was a fun event and I did get some fairly useful intel from it. Not as much as I expected, but I learned some stuff–in part, what to expect from such shows, and how I might better approach the show when it comes again next year.

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, April 30, 2007:

There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get.

And now? A recent news story about global smartphone market share:

The latest smart-phone numbers from Canalys show that Apple’s gaining share like a bat out of hell.

The company has gone from 2% global share to 14% share in a year.

And Apple is just beginning to make deals in China. In the U.S., the iPhone’s market share has rocketed from 7% to 23%, nearly a quarter of the entire market. Microsoft’s smartphone market share shrank globally from 14% to 9%, most of that being eaten up by Apple. Looks like Ballmer’s not getting the 80% he thought he’d get.

Here in Japan (where everyone is supposed to hate the iPhone), I don’t know what the numbers are, but the iPhone is definitely taking off. You can see them everywhere now–more and more, I keep seeing people tapping away at them. Not so much in school, where students are married to cheap plans which allow for low-cost cross-carrier calls, but among the general population, it’s evidently very popular. The iPhone has consistently been in the top 10 in smartphone sales, and the 32GB 3GS has held on to the #2 spot since September, with its 16GB sister unit bring up the rear between #9 and #5. As much as people claim this is only because SoftBank offers the 8GB 3G for free, both of Apple’s top-selling models are not free–the free unit held the #14 spot for the last two months. In short, the iPhone don’t need no free deal to make it big.

Meanwhile, Microsoft got a hell of a black eye this week when it revealed that it failed to back up data on its Sidekick cloud network. When the servers failed last week, the data went bye-bye. That means that many of the million or so people depending on Microsoft just lost all their contact, calendar, and photo data, permanently. Microsoft has been running the service for about a year now–presumably enough time that they can’t blame someone else for the failure.

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For full disclosure: I own Apple stock, and not Microsoft stock, fortunately.

I could become a Spanish citizen.

Under a law passed in 2007 designed to make amends for so many of the wrongs committed in the Franco era, the Spanish government has opened the gates for as many as half a million people (as much as 1% of the total population of Spain) around the world to claim Spanish citizenship. Anyone who was forced out under the Franco regime for political or economic reasons between 1936 and 1955, or their descendants for two generations, are eligible. Because my grandfather was forced out, as was my father when he was 2 years old, that means I am eligible. The Spanish citizenship would not require me to forego being American, so I could have dual citizenship. Those who wish to apply have until December 2010 to do so. Reportedly, the Spanish embassies and consulates in many countries are swamped with applications.

It would be an interesting option–at the very least, it couldn’t hurt (though I do want to check out tax laws to see there are any obligations there, and what they might be). It would make travel to Spain to see family, and to Europe in general much easier, and could potentially open up a possible venue for retirement in the future.

At the very least, simply the idea of dual citizenship is in itself somewhat of a draw. Gives me another reason to start studying Spanish at some point.

So I visited CEATEC Japan last Friday. I thought that maybe I could get a look at some of the upcoming technology and bring back the goods to my Introduction to Computers class. But while there was some fun stuff, it didn’t really knock my socks off–there was lots of stuff I know is in the works which was not shown, a lot of the in-development stuff they did show was pretty tame, and most of the stuff was just current for-sale technology that people were trying to sell. Well, it’s a trade show, so that’s par for the course; I just thought there would be more ground-breaking stuff to be found.

I attended a panel discussion during the afternoon which I thought looked promising: titled “Personal Computing Will Undergo a Transformation!” it included high-level executives from Intel, NEC, Sony, Panasonic, Fujitsu, and Microsoft. It sounded like they were really going to get into a lot of the cool stuff coming up, maybe discuss how the user experience will dramatically change in the next five to ten years. Well, not so much. Each panel member took about 10 minutes to essentially present an infomercial for their company, then there were a few rather plain-vanilla questions (“How will that spiffy new Windows 7 change things?”), and not much else. There were very quick mentions of stuff like 3-D interactivity–but most of it was about stuff that’s pretty pedestrian, like cloud connectivity. Overall, a pretty disappointing show. I’m not sure if I even benefitted by the simultaneous translation–without it, I might have thought it was much cooler.

Anyway, here are some of the photos I took of a few of the more interesting things to see.

This is an as-yet uncompleted project KDDI was showing off–a mini-robot pod which acts as a moving, motion-sensitive stand for your cell phone. It has built-in speakers, automatically closes or opens up (triggered by what I didn’t find out), and can roll about and do turns, presumably to face and be accessible to the user. It is also supposed to be able to interface with your TV or LCD, showing the cell phone’s data on whatever display you choose. Cool concept.

Nearby, they were demo’ing a cell phone with virtual overlays of data on what the phone’s camera displayed; in this case, when they pointed the phone (presumably outfitted with an electronic compass) in a certain direction, it would tell you what interesting stuff exists in that direction, with images of each point appearing in frames. Not revolutionary–this kind of stuff is being played around with on iPhone and Android phones–but still an interesting concept which will undoubtedly be smoothed out and will be quite useful in the future.

Some stuff was simply for show, like themed notebook cases (this was at the Intel booth, for some reason). Below are a netbook with a reversible monitor, and a smartphone with full-face display.

They had a lot of touchscreens there, but nothing knocked my socks off. The only ones I found were not multi-touch–it was nothing more than a trackpad could do, and not all that impressive.

One thing that surprised me: Tokyo has WiMAX, and has since July. I guess I didn’t get the memo. If you don’t know what WiMAX is, it’s a new-ish wireless Internet service. It’s kind of like WiFi, except it’s wide-area; the entire city is a hotspot. Think of it like 3G, except it’s a lot faster. Effectively, it’s an Internet connection that follows you wherever you go. Instead of getting broadband just at home, you get it everywhere you take your computer–except, presumably, in basement coffee shops or other areas where cell phone reception might also be spotty.

Tokyo’s service boasts 40 Mbps download, 10 Mbps upload, though such claims are always over-rated–I’m supposed to have 100 Mbps fiber-optic at home, but have never gotten anywhere near that speed. So figure that Tokyo’s WiMAX is at least a fair-speed broadband connection.

The catch: it’s expensive. They charge 4,480 yen (about $50) per month to subscribe; that’s not too bad, I pay about that much for fiber. The problem is, they don’t give you the reception devices for free. If your laptop does not have built-in WiMAX (few do), then each laptop will have to have a $140 USB dongle. For home networks, a reception base that will distribute the connection to home devices costs about $170. To set Sachi and myself up with this, we’d have to shell out $450. No thanks on that; I’m OK as-is. They do have a free 15-day trial they offer, and I may take them up on that just to test out the system.

This was a nice little gadget: a video phone which doubles as a photo frame. Probably has features I didn’t sniff out while there.

The first of three large halls at Makuhari was dedicated mostly to the big home electronics firms, and it seems that every one of them had a 3-D HDTV system. They also had most of their good stuff inside the booths, all of which had long lines. I didn’t have enough time–the lines looked like they were about an hour long each. I figured I’d simply take their word for it.

This was a neat little gadget: a hand-held laser projector, which will take lots of inputs, including the iPhone shown here. For $500, this iPhone-sized dealio will project an image onto any surface you point it at–great for impromptu slide shows, when a TV or other projector is not available. The image was a bit weak, best in dark rooms or close-up. The American guys pitching it said that in a dark room, it was possible to use it as a “100-inch TV screen.” Uh, maybe. They said they can’t sell it in Japan yet, because the government made laser projectors illegal after some bad laser pointer incidents years back, and haven’t updated the legislation yet. This looks like a nice toy, but I couldn’t possibly justify buying one. Still, this is something I expect will shrink in size and price over the years and may eventually become a standard feature in hand-held devices.

Before I finish for today’s post, one more–this gadget being one that I frankly pray to god will never become popular. I show it here as a screen shot from the manufacturer’s web site: a wearable speaker vest.

Yes, that’s right. If you think it’s bad when a-holes outfit their cars with giant speaker systems so the entire county can be massively annoyed by their poor taste in music, then you’ll love this. The user just plugs in their digital audio device, and the music gets blasted out of speakers on the shoulders. And it’s loud, too–they guy demonstrated it for me. It is designed for joggers, bicyclists, and motorcyclists–yes, it is intended to be loud enough to be heard clearly when wearing a full-head helmet, over engine noise. He said it was for people who could be endangered by using headsets because they can’t hear traffic coming. So instead, they blast the music for everyone in the area to hear–and they still can’t hear traffic coming. But now everybody is getting pissed off to boot. Whee!

The rest tomorrow.

Windows 7 is coming out soon, and it looks like it will be what a lot of people have been calling it for a while: finally, a good OS to upgrade from. 7 will finally put Microsoft’s Vista debacle behind it. Many have called 7 “Vista Service Pack 3,” in reference to the fact that 7 is what Vista should have been. It is quite likely that Microsoft indeed simply released an OS that was far too unfinished because it was panicked about Apple grabbing its market share (Apple rose from less than 3% to 10 or even 12% over the past six years in the U.S.) and needed to put something out there. As a result, however, Vista simply accomplished what Apple was trying to do: prove that the Windows OS was inferior. Windows 7, almost a decade after the last acceptable OS, is incredibly late in coming, but finally will be something that a Windows user can be proud of.

Walter Mossberg, noted WSJ tech columnist, says that 7 is finally up to matching Mac OS X–but not quite. He still gives OS X the edge, but claims that 7 makes it almost a tie:

In recent years, I, like many other reviewers, have argued that Apple’s Mac OS X operating system is much better than Windows. That’s no longer true. I still give the Mac OS a slight edge because it has a much easier and cheaper upgrade path; more built-in software programs; and far less vulnerability to viruses and other malicious software, which are overwhelmingly built to run on Windows.

Now, however, it’s much more of a toss-up between the two rivals. Windows 7 beats the Mac OS in some areas, such as better previews and navigation right from the taskbar, easier organization of open windows on the desktop and touch-screen capabilities. So Apple will have to scramble now that the gift of a flawed Vista has been replaced with a reliable, elegant version of Windows.

He forgot about superior language switching and several other key advantages, but hey. He does, however, make the case for how this will suck big-time for XP users:

The system for upgrading is complicated, but Vista owners can upgrade to the exactly comparable edition of Windows 7 while keeping all files, settings and programs in place.

Unfortunately, XP owners, the biggest body of Windows users, won’t be able to do that. They’ll have to wipe out their hard disks after backing up their files elsewhere, then install Windows 7, then restore their personal files, then re-install all their programs from the original CDs or downloaded installer files. Then, they have to install all the patches and upgrades to those programs from over the years.

Microsoft includes an Easy Transfer wizard to help with this, but it moves only personal files, not programs. This painful XP upgrade process is one of the worst things about Windows 7 and will likely drive many XP owners to either stick with what they’ve got or wait and buy a new one.

Me, I will reserve judgment until I actually use the end product. Of course, you can count on my Mac bias (not to mention my Apple stock ownership) to color my own judgment here. I very much doubt I’ll become a reverse-switcher. But at least I’ll be able to tell my school (alas, ardently insisting on sticking with Windows because “everyone uses it”) that they can finally upgrade the OS on school machines.

First of all, you may recall that yesterday, I predicted that conservatives would quickly begin to call Obama’s Nobel Peace Price the result of Affirmative Action, and they did not disappoint. Almost immediately after (or perhaps just before, depending on time zones) I hit the “post” button, they started doing exactly that. Thanks to reader “Kitty” for bringing to my attention the first right-winger to make that claim–and surprisingly it wasn’t Rush Limbaugh. It was Erick Erickson of Redstate.org. Congratulations, Eric, you win the Limbaugh Prize for Gasbag Racism! Just an hour or so behind him was the “we’re not white supremacists” VDare Blog and an Aussie columnist, followed later by a columnist for the Naples (Florida) News, and, more predictably, Michelle Malkin on Fox.

But there have been questions from all sides about the legitimacy of the prize. I would like to make a clearer statement as to why I think the prize is deserved, in unconventional.

Obama has taken the world’s strongest superpower and has changed it’s considerable momentum in substantial ways. Has he changed it’s arrogant stance to one of humility; he has changed its belligerent mindset to a conciliatory one. In contrast to the prior administration, which broke international nuclear treaties from the start and waged a dangerous game of nuclear supremacy, Obama reversed course, reconnecting with the international community, ending the Star Wars farce, and coming forth as an advocate of nuclear disarmament. Granted, he hasn’t done everything we’d like to see him do. But he has changed the most powerful nation on Earth from a frighteningly aggressive bully back to the Nation of Hope that much of the world very much appreciated and missed. I think too many people simply take that for granted.

As much as this may be contrastive with the previous president, as much as it may have been achieved by winning an election and beginning to implement a political agenda, it is nonetheless a powerfully significant action that means a great deal to the hopes for peace in the world. In real terms, Obama has already made a bigger difference in the course of history than many past winners of the award.

And when it comes down to it, aren’t most of the great figures in history exactly this: people who took unreasonably violent and aggressive environments and turned them toward peace and sanity? Does it matter that Obama didn’t suffer as much to achieve it?

I guess if he had spent years in jail as a political prisoner before being allowed to bring this change, it would have seemed like a more worthy accomplishment. But the net effect is the same.

Just got my Macbook Pro back from the Ginza Apple store. There was an intermittent screen flicker, so I took it in. A month before the warranty runs out, so it’s covered–they replaced the entire logic board and the monitor. And they did it in half the time they told me it would take. (Dropped it off Thursday night, it was ready for pickup by noon Saturday.) Cool.

Along with the iMac being repaired last month, my computers are now fully serviced–both just shortly before the warrantees run out. Hopefully that’ll last them for the next few years until each is ready to be replaced.

My only gripe about the general process: Apple has been a bit too successful in helping people with Genius Bar service–so much so that they’re completely booked for 3 days in advance. Still, you can get the service–just not on the same day you decide to use it. It used to be faster, but Apple’s getting more popular now, and there’s just the two Apple Stores in all of Tokyo.

Of course, give me that over anyone else’s tech/customer support any day. I know, I’ve dealt with others, such as Toshiba’s–it’s hell on Earth. Interminable phone calls, indecipherable menus, obfuscatory politeness acting as a smokescreen against actual service, getting transferred and handed off to different departments any number of times, shipping the machine out for a few weeks, the whole nine yards–a 3-day wait to drop off the computer at the Genius bar so it’ll take 2 days for them to replace the innards, that’s far better than anything else out there I’ve heard of.

Interesting: the last two Democrats elected president have been awarded Nobel Peace Prizes. Three of the last four, in fact, Clinton being the exception.

I haven’t even looked yet, but I bet the right-wing blogosphere and media operations must be going utterly berserk right about now. What a letdown for America to have its leader win such an esteemed award, especially after the sweet, gleeful news that American had lost its bid to host the 2016 Olympics. Damn the Nobel Committee!

Of course, the predictable complaint will be that Obama hasn’t done anything yet. That’s true in one way, but not in another. (Many have already guessed that the prize is for beating McCain and replacing Bush–which might be true in a small, contrastive way.) No, he hasn’t brokered peace treaties or any of the usual things that people do to get the prize. However, he has stood as a rather potent symbol to the world, bringing hope to more than are usually noted in the right-wing U.S. media (they’re too busy covering tea-baggers, death panels, and the Michael Jackson saga to pay much attention to what fer’ners think and feel). Like it or not, he has had a terrific impact on international diplomacy and cooperation. And the committee made it clear that part of this prize is to lend him whatever legitimacy and stature they can add to the pile to help him achieve goals such as nuclear disarmament:

Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.

Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.

For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world’s leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama’s appeal that “Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.”

The only real question is, how long will it take for which right-wing pundit to insinuate that Obama’s Nobel Prize is nothing but Affirmative Action, that he got it for being black. My bet is on Rush Limbaugh, and it should happen six seconds after he goes on the air next.

Three… two….

The GOP attempts a weak, last-gasp shoot-down of Net Neutrality:

The Republican Party has ramped up its opposition to Federal Communications Commission proposals to enact tough net neutrality rules with a call for the agency to conduct a “market analysis” of the broadband landscape before going any further. Representative Cliff Stearns of Florida, who asked for the study on Monday, was not shy about telling the FCC what he thinks it should conclude. “At first glance, net neutrality regulations may appear reasonable and harmless, but, a deeper examination reveals that net neutrality is neither reasonable nor harmless,” he warned. “These mandates would harm consumers, reduce competition, and discourage new investment and innovation at a time of tremendous technological growth.”

That seems to be the new Republican SOP: wait and study and see while we take the time to spread so many lies and smears that the subject becomes toxic. This is another area where Republicans are completely bought and sold by industry interests.

The Internet grew–exploded, in fact–and has thrived under Net Neutrality. The FCC is not going to change things, it’s going to keep them from changing. The whole cock-and-bull story about Net Neutrality “adding regulations” which will inhibit free-market growth and deny investors their due is utter BS–a lie cooked up by the telecoms who want to get private ownership of the Internet handed to them on a silver platter for free. Current rules ensure a free-market environment, something the telecoms want to end.

If Net Neutrality is not reconfirmed and made official, if the telecoms get their way and do away with the policy, you will pay more for Internet connections and services, and will get worse service for it. The telecoms, which already charge everyone for bandwidth, will divide the Internet pathways into slow and fast, and will add surcharges for the fast connections–and you’ll start paying for it. On top of that, the telecoms are asking for the power to tell you what apps you can and cannot use on the Internet. Had there been no policy of neutrality from the start, the telecoms would by now have decided for you which browsers, telephony apps, and email clients you would be allowed to use. A variety of apps and web sites would be blocked or banned, and your service would be slower and more expensive.

Hopefully, this is just impotent chest-beating on the part of Congressional Republicans, and the FCC will simply go right ahead and ignore the pipsqueaks.

Sandra Day O’Connor is now critical of the new Roberts court, saying that they are “dismantling” some of the precedents that she helped to establish.

You don’t say? Sorry, Sandra, but you get no sympathy from me.

Seriously: you decided to retire under to most ardently conservative president in living history, somebody you knew would appoint a very young, hardcore, right-wing strict constructionist to replace you. Resigning while Bush was in office assured that this would happen. You made that decision, now you own it.

That O’Connor is complaining about this now demonstrates either a remarkable naivete on her part, else a desire to distance herself from the decision that she was ultimately responsible for. All she had to do was wait two more years, and she could have preserved her legacy. Maybe she had no choice (though she seems to have no trouble attending panels, at least), but she had in her hands to power to shape the future of Constitutional law for decades after she left–and she knowingly put that power into the hands of George W. Bush.

In short, she blew it, big time. Great going, Sandra.

Stuff you buy in Japan is more expensive than it is in the U.S. I know that’s old news, and what everyone expects, but it’s something which has both changed and stayed the same over the years.

People got the impression of Japan being expensive back in the 80’s, when Japan was flush. Back then, it was simply over-reported. You had all those stories about $50 musk melons: foreign journalists, wanting to show the greatest contrast possible, went to the priciest shops and found the most outstanding un-bargain they could find. As true as it was that Japan was more expensive, it wasn’t that much more expensive. Most people here didn’t go around buying $50 musk melons.

But things were expensive, and one reason was that people could afford it–and Japan had its own market pretty much tied up. I recall back in 1989, when I lived in Tachikawa, I saw something very new at a discount supermarket called “Topos”: Budweiser and Heineken beers went on sale at a price lower than native beers. After a week, the prices were back up. I asked the manager, and he was surprisingly frank: he told me that the domestic distributors had complained, and so he had to jack up prices of foreign beers again. There was a lot of that kind of thing in Japan at the time.

In the 90’s, however, things changed. The bubble burst, people became less able to spend so much money, and trade deals began knocking down more and more of the walls that had insulated Japan. 100-yen shops began popping up; I do not recall having seen these in Japan previously, but they caught on and today there are two or three in almost every city neighborhood. Prices have dropped, and a lot more foreign goods have made it into the Japanese market. Not nearly as many as you see in other countries, perhaps, but a lot more than there were in Japan twenty years ago.

But one thing has remained true: prices are higher in Japan than they are in the U.S., pretty much as a general rule. And that includes products made in Japan.

I became aware of this back in the early 80’s, when I first visited Japan. I was eager to buy a Nikon camera, and had priced them in the U.S. However, I held off buying one, as I expected they’d be cheaper in Japan. Not so: the same camera, made in Japan, cost more in Tokyo than it did Stateside.

And it is still true today. Price the Canon VIXIA HF200 HD video recorder, for example: at Amazon.com in the U.S., it’s $593. Same camera in Japan at Amazon.co.jp: $872. At Yodobashi Camera, a popular discount camera retailer, the equivalent model is $1,150.

People Stateside bemoan movie ticket prices that exceed $10. In Japan, the standard price at the door is $20. But if you are smart, you’ll buy an advanced ticket for the bargain price of $14.50, and if your budget is really tight, you’ll go to a first-day-of-the-month bargain show for just $11.10 (but those shows tend to be very crowded). Ironically, popcorn does cost less in the theater, but it’s a rare exception to the price rule–movie theater concessions in the U.S. are horrifically over-priced.

Another cost for movies which is higher in Japan: DVDs. The 2-Disc DVD for Star Trek (2009) in the U.S. is $23; in Japan, it’s $33. The fourth season of Bones costs $38.50 in the U.S.; in Japan, it’s $163–more than four times as much.

Why did this come up for me? Because I just bought airline tickets home for Christmas. Called the local travel agency, No. 1 Travel (which has eaten up most of its competitors in this town), and was told that my regular airline, United (frequent flier miles do kind of lock you in) did not have any open seats coming back to Japan for the whole last two weeks of December. And even if they did, the ticket price would be ¥75,000 ($833). But they didn’t, because they said that such a low price for tickets on United were a “special” fare and thus were very limited; I could only fly United if I paid more than a thousand dollars per ticket. So instead I asked them to hold for me the next best thing, tickets on Northwest, also priced at ¥75,000, thinking that I would not find a better price.

So then I went on Sidestep.com, a web site recommended by a co-worker, and typed in the same flight I had asked for. The cheapest fare came up: United, for $760–you could buy direct from their site. Hmm. No problem with the return flight, plenty of seats. I called up United in Japan, figuring that I could just buy from them here. They said, sure; again, no problem with seats on the return flight–but the price is ¥75,000. I told them about the price listed on the site, and they said that that was the U.S. dollar price, and they could not charge me that from within Japan. OK. So I went back online and bought the tickets with my U.S.-based credit card. For tickets for me and Sachi, I saved $146. I even saved myself a few trips to the local travel agency shop.

The DVD and airplane tickets are excellent examples of how the prices should be no different: neither represent much difference in actual production costs. The airline tickets should have been exactly the same.

Instead, it appears that people in Japan still pay a tax for being in Japan; the practice of over-pricing persists. Why is a different question. I’m no economist, so I can only guess. Japan has suffered from a bad economy for a long time, so affluence can’t be the reason. Taxes are a possibility, but if it were, then the over-pricing should be consistent. This is not so: some cameras cost only 10 or 20% more than the U.S. price, while some cost much, much more than American counterparts. Macs, for instance, are usually 10 ~ 20% more expensive here, on a consistent basis, while other electronic items, like video cameras, cost a great deal more. Because the over-pricing is neither universal nor consistent, it seems unlikely that taxes alone account for all of the differential.

If I had to guess, I would say that in some cases, the products are overpriced simply because they can be–the sellers simply believe that people here will pay a higher price. It may also be that the practice of subsidizing cheaper prices overseas by over-charging in Japan continues in some places.

If anyone out there has a clearer understanding of this, I’d love to hear about it.

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As a side note, I remember when my airline ticket purchase would have been a no-go: back in the 80’s, you were required to buy airline tickets from within Japan, where they were more than just $70 more expensive at the time. The common end-run around that was a ticket called yobiyose (Japanese for “to summon”), where you bought a ticket which went from, say, Hong Kong to Tokyo to S.F. and then back to Tokyo. Because the ticket started outside Japan, you could avoid the massive Japan tax, and you just discarded the first leg. That was, of course, frowned upon by the airlines. At some point the market relaxed and this is no longer a problem.

One more side note: I bought most of my DVDs from the U.S. because of the significant price difference, but now have a problem: Sachi is not as satisfied watching them without Japanese subtitles. Oops. And I have to have a region-free DVD player to watch them to boot.

Interestingly, Blu-ray regions are arranged so that U.S. and Japan are in the same region–but, of course, the Blu-rays sold in the U.S. never have Japanese subtitles. Spanish, French, even Arabic are common, but never Japanese. Gee, I wonder why.

Microsoft is urging people to throw house parties to celebrate the release of Windows 7.

It’s hard to think of what else to post, simply because all the relevant comments and opinions will naturally pop into your mind unbidden, and anything else I write about it will be kind of redundant.

When Microsoft launched this idea about a month ago, I decided not to blog on it because I figured that it would simply die a quick, silent death. But Microsoft seemed oblivious to the utter dorkiness of the idea, and just a week or so ago, released a how-to-hold-a-Windows-7-party video showing a truly bizarre cast of characters acting as if this were really a cool house party idea. Yeah, grandma’s all excited about Windows 7! Even then, it was almost too easy pickings. But now, Microsoft has taken it a bit further: people who are accepted as official house party hosts get a free copy of Windows 7… Steve Ballmer Edition!!! OK, it’s just the Ultimate version (they can’t, after all, trust the party hosts to blow $220 on an Ultimate edition upgrade themselves to show off all the features) and probably the only thing different is Steve Ballmer’s signature on it. But it’s Steve Ballmer’s signature!

I thought Steve Jobs was supposed to be the egomaniac. Seriously, are there people out there who were on the fence about this, but were finally convinced to hold a party when Ballmer’s signature was added to the equation? Was anyone who already decided to host such a party really even interested in the fact that there would be a Ballmer edition? I mean, really, what the?

I seriously doubt that Microsoft will win anything but rolled eyeballs from this idea. Windows 7 will be a big seller, but not because of house parties–simply because everyone who now has Vista will want to escape the problems they are having, and 7 may solve many of those problems. Add to them the people who are still using XP but finally see an alternative becoming available. Even for the stubborn, 8 years is a long time without an OS upgrade.

That aside, something tells me that the lion’s share of the ‘parties’ will be people faking it for the free OS.

Japan is ready to rock!

After spending a week attacking Obama and shouting to the world that Chicago is a horrific place to hold an Olympics, Conservatives are now squealing with glee that America has lost its bid, seeing this as a way to paint Obama as an abject failure and possibly a prelude to greater failures to come. Glenn Beck crowed, “Oh, it’s so sweet! Enjoy this — savor this moment!” Rush Limbaugh said that he was “gleeful” and “happy.” Pretty much every conservative blogger and pundit took the opportunity to revel in America’s defeat.

What a pretty sight.

I can honestly say, without any reservations whatsoever, that had Bush tried to get the Olympics for Texas, liberals would have been behind him on it. We hated the man, we detested his policies, but we actually love America, and an Olympics would have been about that, and not about Bush. We criticized him for the economic bad news, we decried the numbers of soldiers killed, but we never expressed happiness for these things. The right-wingers accused us of that, of course, but it was never true. But here they are, admitting their joy at America’s failure for all to see. If there is anything about America that I find shameful, it is these people and this attitude.

We are supposed to be standing together when it’s America’s interests at stake. Remember how we all stood together on 9/11 and the days after, Democrats and Republicans united? How Bush had a 90% approval rating, showing that we had joined behind the presidency as a unified nation? Later on, we started to wonder: if the same thing had happened with Gore or some other Democrat as president, would the conservatives have rallied around the president and shown a country united?

I think we can guess what the answer to that would be. The right-wing exultation at losing the Olympics truly shows the real colors of the conservative movement today. “Country First”? Ha! What a sick joke. These people don’t give a rat’s ass about America. If Gore had been president on 9/11 and the attacks had not been prevented, they would not have stood by him and shown unity, they would have torn him to pieces. They would have gone to their soapboxes and smugly cheered about how the liberal was a failure. Their focus is not on love of country but rather on the love of party. Had Bush rallied for a Chicago Olympics, the conservatives would have said it was a great thing–and it would not have been for Chicago’s sake, or for America’s sake.

This is the poverty of conservative “patriotism”: it’s not love of country, it’s love of partisanship. They love America only when it is painted red. Any other color, and they despise it and wish for its downfall.

Addenda:

Joe Scarborough, of all people, is making a great deal of sense:

Chicago is a beautiful city that would have made a perfect backdrop for the Olympics. The President was right to fly to Copenhagen to try to land the games, not for the sake of his city, but for the good of his country. The fact President Obama failed makes me respect him more for taking the chance, and the fact many right-wing figures opposed the President’s mission shows just how narrow-minded partisanship makes us all. […]

And it just occurred to me: Republicans are now cheering the decision of foreigners snubbing the United States. How about that.

Also, I have found mention that Bush rallied to hold the 2012 Olympics in New York. No liberals campaigned against it, no left-wingers rejoiced when he failed. The only way I would criticize Bush on this would be if he failed to campaign enough.

In the case of Kentucky census worker Bill Sparkman’s death, what is really puzzling are the things police claim to be puzzled by.

Police, for example, claim that they cannot rule out suicide or accidental death.

Bill Sparkman was found hung by his neck against a tree, duct tape all over him, his ID taped to his shoulder, naked except for socks, the word “FED” scrawled across his chest; he died of asphyxiation, but his feet were on the ground.

So, exactly what about that hints at “suicide” or “accidental death”? I think pretty much anyone would find either suggestion extraordinarily ludicrous. And yet, local police actually told the press that the death might have been the result of auto-erotic asphyxiation, akin to what they think David Carradine died of.

There’s denial, and then there’s being stupid.

Police say they can’t figure out why, if Sparkman had been hanged, his feet were on the ground when they found him. Really? Several possible reasons immediately come to mind. Maybe they wanted to check if he was dead. Maybe they wanted to do something to the body they didn’t do before he died, like write “FED” on his chest or duct-tape his ID to his shoulder. Maybe they wanted to take photos of themselves with the dead body as a gruesome souvenir. I could go on, but you get the picture: it’s not a mystery that it happened, but rather only a question of which of the many reasons they had for doing it.

One begins to get the feeling that the local police involved are not the sharpest of investigators. One can only hope that either they are intentionally playing stupid for some reason, or that the FBI is really running the show and the local police are just mouthing off or something. If neither is the case, there is fear that they could be badly bungling this case.

Alan Grayson is making waves with his chart labeled, “If you get sick America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly.” Republicans are outraged at this, and are calling for censure and so forth, comparing it to Joe Wilson’s broach of protocol on the floor.

Seriously, the hypocrisy is blinding.

Yes, Grayson is being an ass. But he is bringing up the rear behind a majority of Republicans. Obviously, Republicans don’t want you to “die quickly.” But neither are there “death panels,” a concept which (a) is pretty much equivalent to the nutballery that Grayson is pushing, and (b) which the majority of Republicans have been pushing, agreeing with, and/or condoning for the past few months.

In short, Grayson has just barely caught up with the majority of Republicans in being, to use the technical terminology, a dick.

For Republicans to call for his censure is as idiotic as it is hypocritical. Censure was called for in Joe Wilson’s case because he went way too far, shouting a terrible insult at the office of the president during an event of the highest order. What Grayson is doing now is simply what many high-level Republicans have been doing for quite some time now: lying on the floor of Congress about how the other party wants Americans to die. When Republicans do this, it draws criticism, but as far as I know, no calls for censure.

Who knows, maybe Grayson was aiming for just this: to use the same stupid lies against Republicans that Republicans have been hurling at Democrats, so that Republicans would become outraged and would be tricked into ironically decrying their own tactics.