Too Young To Be Old, Too Old To Be Young
I always thought it was funny when I would see a poll to vote to decide something on the Chinese internet.
China slaps curbs on talent shows
The curbs include a ban on public voting via the internet, telephone or by text messages.
Wouldn’t want the people getting any funny ideas about how to decide important things, like who gets to continue on the rip-off of Pop Idol, which is just the British rip-off of American Idol.
He [James Wolfensohn, former boss of the World Bank] predicted that China will grab the crown from the US as the world’s richest country by 2040, with India close behind.(source)
If trends continue, India’s economy may then surpass the US and be second only to China’s by mid-century, the report by investment bank Goldman Sachs says.(source)
When I was in elementary school I remember hearing about how Japan was going to take over the world. I remember being told that I was lazy because I only went to school 5 days a week, and how I was destined to fail at the hand of those crafty slanty eyed asians.
Then when I was High School, I was told how I must learn Spanish if I want to get a job in America. While that hasn’t changed, the reasoning has. Today they tell us we have to learn Spanish to speak with our friends, co-workers, employees; our neighbors and countrymen. When I was in High School, they told us we had to learn Spanish to please our soon to be Mexican overloads.
Don’t count your eggs before they’ve hatched.
What’s the point of all these predictions about IF things continue on this way for another 40 years; it’ll never happen. Nothing will continue for 40 years. You wouldn’t walk up to me as a 13 year old boy and say, “if you continue to grow like this for 40 years, you’ll be 800 feet tall”.
Sure these people aren’t wrong to state these ‘facts’. If things continue exactly like this China will overtake America because it’s growing at a faster rate. But what happens when China grows too much for it’s own good, and it’s labor is no longer dirt cheap — will China be able to make the transition for a labor to a management nation? I don’t know, but all I do know is that in 40 years when we ask these ‘experts’ why China didn’t take over America, they’ll have this to say for themselves: “I never said China/India would take over America, I just said that IF things continue this way they would. You’re the idiot that took it as a prediction.”
China and India are making great progress. However their progress is only possible because they’re so near the bottom — there is lots of room to grow. Doubling your GNP is not so hard when it’s 2,000USD. But the next time you do it, you’ve gotta go from 4,000 to 8,000. You’re not going to be able to double your GNP at the same right as you did when it was only 2,000 when it’s now 10,000. Things will slow down, they always do.
Hot on the heels of my recent First World Problems rant that over half of the people on this earth would kill to have the same problem, here is another privileged white man in a first world country rant.
The iPod Touch. When the iPhone came out, I was impressed. Not enough to get one for myself, because let’s be honest, this is Japan, I can do all that the iPhone can do AND MORE on my phone from 2 years ago… And don’t even get me started about my current phone. (I’ll just say this; remember that IBM commercial from maybe 10 years ago where they had someone walk up to a vending machine, pull out their cell phone, and buy something? Yea, I can do that.) But the iPhone is an amazing step, no jump, no leap forward for the American cell phone market, and the interface and usability is something that Japan does not have. Even though I can’t justify purchasing one just yet, or probably even when they come out in Japan, I can dream about the features that it has that I want. And the more I dream about it, I notice that what I really want is an Apple PDA/Tablet PC. And if that had wireless internet through a cell phone provider, that would be all the better. I could administer my websites from anywhere I can get a mobile signal. And when I’m indoors, I could do it all even faster with a wireless computer signal.
But really, the phone part of the iPhone is not what I want or need. And that’s why I was excited for the iPod Touch.
It was the Apple PDA that I figured out I really wanted. Basically an iPhone minus the phone. Perfect! So what if it only has 8 or 16GB memory. Sure it would be nice to put ALL my movies on their at once, but there will never be a 1TB iPod, so 8 or 16 is enough for me to put just my favorite music and whatever movie I’m watching at the moment on. It would be nice to have a cell phone signal so I could do whatever from wherever, but then it would just be an iPhone, and that’s not what I want. And besides, there is a lot of free wi-fi internet access in Japan. I could just go get a coffee and sit in a Starbucks or whatever and I do what I needed to do. No different than carrying my laptop around, except it weights next to nothing in comparison. And to top it off, it has all the features you need in a good PDA; phonebook and calendar.
Yea, so about the phonebook and calendar. My now tiny 30gb iPod has a phonebook and calendar already. But there is a problem; I can’t edit or create entries on the device itself. Which is understandable, I mean all there is is a scroll wheel. But the iPod touch is different, right? It’s got this revolutionary touch screen, the same revolutionary touch screen in the iPhone. Right Jobs? You said it was revolutionary right?
Well guess what, it’s not revolutionary.
Apple confirms: iPod touch cannot add calendar appointments
Late last night some eagle-eyed Engadget readers spotted some disparities in Apple’s international sites, with some claiming the iPod touch would be able add calendar appointments with its calendar app, and others omitting that language. We got in touch with our people down in Cupertino who just confirmed the (somewhat) bad news is real: “Like current iPods, the touch can only view calendar entries created on your computer”. In other words, no, you can’t make new calendar entries on the fly. Why Apple would want to remove this simple feature that’s already built into the mobile OS X calendar experience is really beyond us, but we guess they’re doing their damnedest to draw the line in the sand between iPod and iPhone. Still, makes you wonder what other minor, useful features Apple pulled from the touch.
Looks like no editing of calendar events for me.
Sure, I could just use Google calendar online (I’d have to do EMail that way too since the iPod Touch doesn’t have an email client either) and then have it synced with my iCal on my computer. But that will again only update on the local calendar software when I plug it in to my computer. And since the iPod Touch isn’t always online through a mobile signal like the iPhone, any changes I make at Starbucks wont be visible on the device once I leave the store until I get home.
I’m really bad at keeping my schedule in order. Combine that with me discovering that what I really want is a PDA, and I doubly want a PDA. I guess the iPod Touch just isn’t the PDA I want it to be, it really is nothing but an iPod with a touch interface and wireless to help Apple sell more music on the iTunes Music Store with Starbucks fitting the bill for the network in exchange for a chunk of the music sales (presumably).
Maybe version 2.0 of the iPod Touch will have fixed this grave wrongdoing or the traditional Apple customer, a series of backstabings to the true Apple customer, who has through and through dealt with the various platform switches, faulty first revisions, and lack of 3rd party software as a result of Apple’s new direction (no longer Apple Computers, but Apple INC). This iPhone deal caused delays in the latest version of Mac OS X, something the true Apple fans want almost as much as they want an Apple PDA and Apple Tablet PC, and now the iPod Touch, a chance for Apple to make it up to it’s customers in light of the iPhone caused Mac OS X delays, doesn’t really do anything special. Maybe the second generation iPod Touch will let me edit contacts and calendar events, write emails, as well as administer my server and WordPress installs.
But then again, maybe the iPhone will have all the features it needs to replace my current cell phone when it comes out in Japan. But in all honestly, I’m not holding my breath. Perhaps I’ll be making the switch from Apple to Open Source, just like I did from Microsoft to Apple a few years ago.
But in all reality, there are starving kids in Africa who can’t even imagine what it’s like to catch a cold from an Air Conditioner, and I’m complaining about a $400 gadget that can’t do everything under the sun. And it’s not like I have any money to buy one right now either.
Anyways, that’s my rant for now.
So a kid goes over on his time asking Kerry questions that really aren’t that legit.
The police try and make him shut up, but he doesn’t want to.
He squirms.
So they taser him!
They want to press charges on him for resisting arrest. Okay, that’s legit I guess, he was resisting getting arrested. But the question then becomes what does he get arrested for? Going over his one minute to ask a question. The original arrest was far from being legit. And he gets tasered.
So who do you call when the police are the criminals? I wonder how many police would show up if you call 911 and report 5 armed people are physically assulting a student on campus, have him pinned down, and are tasering him?
Personally I think these cops all need to be thrown in jail. That shouldn’t even be open for discussion. Going over on a one minute question does not warrent being tasered. Certainly the cops have the right to taser someone if in their judgement he was endagering anyone. And in this case all of these cops have terrible judgment and are not fit to be cops. Don’t tell me these cops are under a lot of stress either. Everytime they arrest a murder suspect in Japan the person instantly says they did it because of stress at work. That doesn’t get the guy who strangled his parents to death a get out of jail free card, and it shouldn’t give these cops one either.
They lack the judgment skills and stress managment skills that are required to be an officer of the law, and should at the very least have their badges removed and be put in front of a judge, and more importantly a jurry.
A while ago everyone at slashdot was up in arms because the one cable company that controls the entire cable internet market in the whole of the United States put a limit on the amount of data one could transfer a month, with the amount defined as ‘excessive’ a secret.
Actually not long ago my ISP did the same thing for me here, and I’m considering switching as a result. My ISP has put the limit at 15GB sending in a 24-hour period. At first that seems like a lot, but I have a wicked fast connection. For example last night I left a torrent open downloading some South Park videos. When I woke up, the download was done, and I had sent 13GB. Quickly I shut that down.
This is a problem for me not because of torrents (I rarely deal with that stuff) but because we do lots of video editing at school. I do lots of data transferring as a result. Sending things to my web server and then getting them at school.
Now Comcast has ‘clarified’ in not so clear terms what they mean by excessive. “A customer is exceeding their use limit if they: download the equivalent of 30,000 songs, 250,000 pictures or 13 million emails in a month.” It’s all your fault Apple. We want to know the amount of data measured in units of data, not something arbitrary like ’songs’. Well fortunately at least one person went to high school and passed algebra.
30000*songs = 250000*pictures = 13000000*emails 1 song = 3MB => 1 picure = 360KB => 1 email = 6.92KB
So we’re looking at a limit of about 90GB, a month. My limit is 15GB a day, or (multiply 30) 450GB. But note mine is for sending, I still get unlimited receiving (which makes sense because I probably receive at least 50GB a day with my TVoIP television system). Comcast gives you 90GB total.
My hosting provider, Media Temple, is pretty impressive too. For 20USD/Month, I get 1000GB of transfer a month. (Divided by 30) that comes out to about 33GB a day.
Everyone on Comcast, I recommend you don’t spend any time on YouTube, because it’s not like you can just find a new provider.
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