Environment World

I keep forgetting today in Thanksgiving Day in the States. This is my favorite holiday of the year. Those marketers haven’t managed to ruin it it. Another reason I enjoy this holiday over the others is getting together with family and friends and enjoying a day in the warm hearth of caring and (do I dare say it?) love (damn it slipped). For really no reason except to say thank you. Here in Japan it’s just another day but I usually try to have a small gathering to enjoy food (nabe is my favorite) and conversation. This year there will be no nabe party for Thanksgiving (so sad).

I wish you all have a great Thanksgiving Day and give a hug to the family for me.

Have you seen the movie “Spirited Away” (or Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi) from the director Hayao Miyazaki? No, not surprising considering the poor job Disney has done in making it available to the American audience. Some writers have seen it and are wondering about Disney’s intensions with this movie. I live in Japan and have my own copy of the DVD for the movie. The DVD was released with an auxiliary English subtitle, unusual for a Japanese film. This movie has peaked the attention of an international audience. Going as far as picking up a Golden Bear in the Berlin film festival. My two cents, this movie is great, maybe the best I’ve seen this year. Go to Amazon.com and get on the list to be notified of the DVD release and maybe word will get out that people want to see this movie. If you have kids or you are a kid (like me) find a movie theater and go see this movie.

VoIP or Voice over IP is a great way to make cheap phone calls. I’ve wrote about this before and my views have not changed. I live in Japan and calling the US before was prohibitively expense. Expensive to the point that I only called on the major holidays (or if I wanted something). My family would rarely call me, those cheap *^&%^%&*. But they are family for better or worse and I being the great son found that I could make phone calls over the Internet for next to nothing. Now I can bother them at any time of the night. I don’t have to worry about this being in Japan and calling the US butn certain countries are getting upset over this. They can’t tax an Internet call so they’re blocking those calls with a countrywide firewall. Sounds like the peoples best interests are not being looked at.

Changes in India are helping India. The quaint system that used to considered a road system are being updated to accommodate the increasing needs of business. I took a trip from Delhi to Agra and spent nearly 4 hours having my liver beaten to a pulp. Very interesting trip to be sure with cows and other forms a wildlife running about and generally creating a traffic menace. All of that to be replaced with ’super highways’. Good and bad in my honest opinion, sometime you need to stop and smell the cow manure.

I saw this a few days ago and now I’m finally going to report something on it. I’m not going to report anything new or impart any gleaned information. The news is that Japan is considering an alternative to M$. It’s a good move for the reason that a homogenous networks of computers is vulnerable to computer security weaknesses (which are abundant in windows). I still get the feeling that the Japanese government is looking for handouts from M$, the kind that India was recently awarded from M$. India recieved $100 million for the fight against AIDS and $400 million for the fight against Linux. Ok, I’ll take $500.1 million and not a penny less.

Where do you go if you’re in a leadership role in the most powerful country the world has ever known. If you need to ponder the destruction of a weaker country. If you need to hide from the market forces that seem to try to drag you down. Take this advise to get ready for what the world brings you. You’ll be glad you did.

I have written entries about technical matters before and the feedback (OK, one person) has not been positive. I’m a techie and these issues affect me and my livelihood so I’ll remark on them. I cant’ help it, sorry.

Just finished this interesting article over at OS Opinion that makes me a bit angry. It’s about Microsoft of course and some new information that’s been made available from the SEC. After Enron there are a few new rules that corporations must follow, the rules involve public disclosure of profits and costs. I’m not a money guy so the rules are a bit over my head but Microsoft had to disclose it’s financial dealing in a way it hasn’t before. Microsoft loses money on just about every product it releases except operating systems and Office. Those product earn over 85% profit, monopolies are good for earnings. They sit on $40bn in reserves and don’t pay any profits to shareholders. The economy and especially the tech side is in the dumps right now, the US and Japan are my prime concerns. Couldn’t that money do more good in the economy rather than a bank? I know that money in a bank gives banks freedom to invest. I don’t consider just giving the money away, I believe in a free economy. Microsoft has been gauging costumers so long that those customers don’t know better any more. These customers could be using the money to stop laying of personnel, or to invest in new technologies. Until this article I never had anything personal against M$ even with it’s inferior products and the marketing machine that made it the monopoly it is today. Now I’m convinced that Bill Gates in the Great Satan.

More crime in the news. Read a report at Reuters about the rising crime rate and fewer solved crimes in Japan. In the old days many criminals gave themselves up to police out of guilt. I don’t think that is happening with the same frequency. I am sure that there are many in Japan that are blaming the rising rate on the greater influence the west is having in Japan. You know, I’m not sure they’re wrong.

Terrorism is an evil that we must all be vigilant over where ever we are. It doesn’t matter if you’re American or not and the threats are not solely from Bin Laden’s cronies. An American base located near Tokyo had a good scare last night. There were two explosion outside of Camp Zama. No one was injured and there are two suspects in Japanese custody. Pretty scary.

Relations between North Korea and Japan are going to be very strained in the coming months. Those relations have not been the best but will probably more so than usual. Besides the admission to a nuclear program in NK that has everyone upset. The US and Japan have agreed to stop sending fuel to NK because of that nuclear breach. Japanese officials have gone over some old missing person cases and have decided that 70-80 are worthy of investigation of possible NK abductions. Still more, Japan has also told NK that there will be no talks between the countries until the adbuctees, presently in Japan, are reunited with their children in NK.