http://blog.greggman.com Entries from Greggman.com About opinions en-us http://greggman.com/pageparts/rss_banners/banner-022.jpg http://blog.greggman.com http://blog.greggman.com/edit/editheadlines/2009-07-01.htm This might be obvious and maybe others have posted this but it's clear to me radio will be struggling to stay alive within 10 years just like newspaper is today. It's already dead for me. Why? Because I bought an iPhone last year. Since that time, on the way to and from work I listen almost exclusively to either podcasts (This American Life, Radiolab, Dan Carlin's Hardcore History) or streaming music (Pandora, Shoutcast). I get a good enough connection that I can stream all the way to and from work. http://blog.greggman.com/edit/editheadlines/2008-09-25.htm I'm sure this is going to come off to many as something to do about nothing and it certainly didn't offend me personally but.... I was at a food court the other day. Different sections of the food court had labels. There was the "Green" section which was the salad area, there was a "Drinks" section and a "Vegetarian" section for vegetarian friendly prepared foods. There was one area labeled "Home Cooking" and another labeled "International". The "home cooking" area had various chicken and beef dishes and things like string beans, zucchini, mashed potatoes. The international section had Chinese and Indian foods. http://blog.greggman.com/edit/editheadlines/2008-03-16.htm Just hoping to get some other points of view. The Slashdot crowd and similar people like to call IP Imaginary Property to try to point out that there is no such thing and therefore it shouldn't be treated like property. They like to point out that copying some music or a movie or software isn't like stealing because the person who it was copied from has not lost their original Well, playing devil's advocate... Money is effectively a fiction. It's just a number in a computer database. When your employer pays you they don't send physical money to the bank. They just tell the bank to subtract from their account number and add to your account number. It's all virtual. http://blog.greggman.com/edit/editheadlines/2008-01-22.htm I started reading a new book, the Mind of the Market, and so far I've only read the first chapter but during that time the parable of the talents came up. http://blog.greggman.com/edit/editheadlines/2007-02-15.htm Coming back to the USA there are some serious cultural differences between the USA and Japan. Some are arguably good. People in the USA are generally more individual. I think that's good. On the other hand, something I really hate about the USA (and many other western countries) is there is this attitude that I can only some up as "It's fun to laugh at other's expense" or maybe "It feels good to piss on other people". http://blog.greggman.com/edit/editheadlines/2006-12-27.htm I know I'm going to get flamed but damit, I don't get the love for gmail. I've been using the new Yahoo for a year or so now and I didn't see the point to gmail but........gmail has one thing which it does that Yahoo currently doesn't AKAIK. Gmail has the option to correctly send Japanese mail in a Japanese encoding (ISO-2022-JP) instead of Unicode (UTF-8). This means to many Japanese friends, if I send Japanese email from Yahoo they get garbage were as if I do it from gmail it works. So,........yesterday I tried switching to Gmail and so far.....YUCK!!!! http://blog.greggman.com/edit/editheadlines/2006-12-11.htm Just some random thoughts here but I was visiting the USA early last month and I noticed some issues with the places I stayed. Maybe because I've been reading so many software design articles they stuck out as poor design. http://blog.greggman.com/edit/editheadlines/2006-09-30.htm This is just a rant but damit, why are the prices for notebooks so varied? I've been wanting a notebook computer lately and have been looking and it's so frustrating because there are so many tradeoffs. Go for lightweight and then settle for a small screen? Go for cheap and therefore no power? Decide I just want to browse the net and read email and therefore don't need the graphic speed or decide I might want to program at a cafe and therefore need the graphic acceleration. And so it goes back and forth, back and forth. http://blog.greggman.com/edit/editheadlines/2006-08-15.htm in Japanese only http://blog.greggman.com/edit/editheadlines/2006-07-17.htm Google maps seems pretty cool. Certainly the interface is interesting. Not everything is perfect but dragging the map around is nicer than clicking "scroll left" like most map systems. On top of that, it has an API letting you easily integrate it into your website which is a great idea. Unfortunately though, in acutally use here in Japan it sucks. For example, lets say you wanted to go to a some restaurant, you type in the address in Google and this comes up. http://blog.greggman.com/edit/editheadlines/2006-06-03.htm I know Google seems to be everyone's favorite company especially with their supposed "do no evil" written into their mission statement and yet they seem to be doing the exact same things that when Microsoft does them are considered evil. http://blog.greggman.com/edit/editheadlines/2006-05-17.htm I watched a BBC Documentary, Century of the Self It certainly brought up tons of interesting things. The series talks about the development of modern PR up to and including it's influence into politics in the 90s. Just A couple of highlights that stood out for me. http://blog.greggman.com/edit/editheadlines/2006-04-11.htm I was talking to my Japanese teacher this morning about the idea that eventually cell phones will go flat rate. The idea being that a modern cell phone is basically a computer connected wirelessly to the net. There is no reason you shouldn't be able to browse the net, use skype for unlimited phone calls, download music, tv movies, etc, all for a flat fee. The only thing preventing this from happening currently is the cell phone companies themselves. While it is in their individual interest to keep fees high, all it will take is one competitor to start the flat fee service and users will start switching in droves forcing the other companies to follow suit. http://blog.greggman.com/edit/editheadlines/2005-11-01.htm I don't know what it's like for women but I imagine it's not nearly as bad. For some reason, men are assholes when it comes to using a public restroom. Go into any men's public restroom and the odds that the toilet seat is covered in pee are probably greater than 50% http://blog.greggman.com/edit/editheadlines/2005-10-13.htm I'm fed up with sick people in Japan.I get sick, I stay home and try not to get others sick. My co-workers though come in to work sick therefore getting me sick. 2 days ago I brought back omiyage from Osaka. I put it on the team table. One of my sick co-workers comes over and coughs his sick all over the table. So much for eating the omiyageToday I go to Subway Sandwich (one of the few places near my work). As the guy is making my sandwich I notice he's sick, sweating with a fever and coughing AS HE'S F*CKING MAKING MY SANDWICH!!! Rather than chew the guy out I just threw the sandwich away. http://blog.greggman.com/edit/editheadlines/2005-08-07.htm Paul Graham recently posted an article entitled "What Business Can Learn from Open Source". I usually like to read what Paul Graham has to say but this time I think he really missed it completely.He claims that amateurs in the form of open source developers and bloggers are showing that businesses and pros are not the right way to make stuff. He goes on to mention Firefox as one example. The problem is Firefox is not made by amateurs, it's made by paid employees, it just happens to be open source. So is Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl, CVS, Subversion, Open Office and probably most other high profile open source projects. Maybe the gimp is made by amateurs? http://blog.greggman.com/edit/editheadlines/2005-07-24.htm I doubt many people know this story but back in the mid to late 80s there was compression program called ARC. It functioned similar to WinZip or WinRAR by taking a bunch of files, compressing them and bundling them up into a single file which made it easier to send across a modem and also take less time and therefore less money. It was THE standard. Everywhere you'd go there would be .ARC files. http://blog.greggman.com/edit/editheadlines/2005-07-11.htm I read somewhere on the net that Firefly was a really good new SciFi series so I checked it out. http://blog.greggman.com/edit/moblogposts/2005-07-01moblog.htm Today Eric S. Raymond was interviewed on "Why we don't need the GPL anymore" so Let me just add this to the discussion. http://blog.greggman.com/edit/editheadlines/2005-06-30.htm I've been reading Steve Pavlina's self help site recently trying to figure myself out. His latest post is about Star Trek: The Next Generation as examples of they types of people to aspire to be.It's an interesting universe and it would be nice to aspire to the but it only takes a little thought to realize it would never work.No money? Then how do you decide who gets to live in the penthouse or beach front property and who gets a 1st floor apartment in downtown Detroit? You can't replicate those.