mass murdur at Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan

A man of 25 drove his rental truck into pedestrians last Sunday. After stopping the truck, he ran into to people with survival knife of 13cm blade in his hand and started stabbing those hit, and others around. 7 died and 12 other injured. He was finally corned by policeman and arrested on the spot.
Upon investigation, he said that he had troubles at work and got tired of the world. Being lonely all the time, he wrote many posts to online blackboards, and even announced his plan, writing live reports about his preparation, road condition (on the way to Akihabara) and final goodbye message before the killing.

Attorney Weiss gets prison in kickback scheme

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Another fly in the ointment. Are all the lawyers , especially the big names, earning their big checks in more or less similar ways? This guy simply ruins the great efforts of every other serious lawyers (if there is any at all) in the states. Lawyers are to protect the law, not to make use of it for personal interests, only.

Attorney Weiss gets prison in kickback scheme

6/2/2008, 6:19 p.m. EDT By GREG RISLING The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Melvyn Weiss, the co-founder of a law firm known for securities class-action suits, was sentenced Monday to 30 months in prison for his role in a lucrative lawsuit kickback scheme targeting some of the largest corporations in the nation.

U.S. District Judge John F. Walter also ordered Weiss, 72, to pay $9.7 million in forfeitures and $250,000 in fines.

In a prepared, handwritten statement read before sentencing, Weiss apologized for his "wrongful conduct" and described the case as a fall from grace.

... ....

Popular vote

According to Newsweek, Clinton is claiming of having won popular vote. But, as quoted below, there are 6 (six!) different versions of counting "popular vote".

For Sunday's San Juan victory speech, Clinton's speechwriters found six (count 'em, six) different ways to claim a popular-vote victory.

The question for me is which count is more fair, but what democracy is supposed to be. It should not be a game of playing with figures. Neither a commercial war.

Google added news layer to Google Earth

According to the unofficial blog googlesystem.blogspot.com, Google added a news layer to its Google Earch. This is more like what I have been saying about the lack of geography oriented features in search engines, besides other aspects such as time, religion, culture etc.. The analysis of geographical or temporal meanings of any articles is indeed difficult, probably more than syntactic analysis. Let's see how well Google can do this time.

An even better way to present the world with Google Map API

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Official Google Maps API Blog: Introducing the Google Maps API for Flash

I have been enjoying Google Earth and Google Maps a lot, ever since it came out from the very beginning. As in my previous post, Google Maps is one of businesses that Google has rolled out to tremendously benefit the society, especially the GIS world. There had been online maps before Google Maps, but none of them covered as wide area and had as many contents has Google Maps. It is good that the income Google has earned through its other businesses can in turn contribute to the evolution of the society in this way.
Google Map API is also one of my favorite tools so far. It enables people to create contents they can never dreamed of, simply because the difficult of getting and handling map contents. My exercise on Yahoo! Japan Geocities is here. It is still very simple without any help messages, and takes time to figure out how to work. But it serves the purpose to show how easy writing a map application with Google Maps API can be.
The extension of Google Maps API to Flash support no doubt adds more flexibility and dimensions to application development. I will try it out soon and post the result again.

Sky dive from 25 miles above?

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What can I say about "20-Year Journey for 15-Minute Fall" reported by The New York Times? No matter what the motives are, and who says what, just keep my fingers crossed and pray for Michel Fournier's success of his Le Grand Saut (The Great Leap) . Fournier is retired and used to be a paratrooper, among other roles in the French army.
Here is a quick summary of the quest.

preparation time	20 years
expenses	20 million US dollars
gears	special space suit and a parachute
tool	gondola of the 650-foot balloon, sealed, pressurized and equipped with oxygen
height	130,000 feet (about 20 miles)
time up	2 hours
time down	15 minutes
highest speed	1,000 miles an hour (breaking the sound barrier)
parachute open height	around 5,000 feet
danger above 40,000 feet	not enough oxygen to breathe could experience a fatal embolism decompression sickness
danger above 12 miles	should his protective systems fail, his blood could begin to boil
previous trials	twice, with the last one failed from balloon rupture
preparation activities	more than 8,000 jumps, with the highest being more than 39,000 feet (French record) as compared to 12,000 to 13,000 feet for standard sky dive
competitor	Steve Truglia (45-year-old movie stuntman and a former member of the British Special Forces) planned a similar jump over the United States in July
previous record	in 1960 by Joe Kittinger (United States Air Force test pilot), from 102,800 feet and exceeded 600 miles per hour before opening his parachute at 18,000 feet, in less than 14 minutes down time.

Let's Face the Reality and Watch the Climate Change in our World

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Google LatLong: Climate change in our world

I like this concept, and the way Google expends their business. We need to be more environment aware. Even though there are still different theories about the climate change. There is no doubt that human being are using and spending too much of their share of our mother nature.
Google Earth and Google Maps are the most powerful extension of Google's business too. I have had many years of working experiences in mapping business, and know how painful it is to make money out of maps. Many organizations have made excellent maps, with huge funds, but without being properly utilized beyond their costs. While the resolution of maps and aerial images are still not of great resolutions for most of the places, it has greatly increased the popularity of maps (orthogonal aerial images can also be considered as raster map), and their added value.
To start with, people can start to post photos of bad pollutions, destruction of nature etc. to panoramio layer. It should help people see much better where the problems are, what can our earth turn into because of unthoughtful actions, and what terrible things we have done.

I have posted some photos on panoramio, but only for the purpose of sharing my views of places. Now I can use it to take part in more environment conscious ways.
The following is what I have tried by downing the KML from Earth Outreach KML: Climate Change In Our World. It shows that in another 12 years, the climate will change dramatically. I do pray the the projection were wrong, but what if they are right, and even very modest?

Year 2008

Year 2020

Beauty and the Beast

This is a typical "beauty" based advertisement.

How can a beauty so absorbed in smell a stinking shoe? What it actual trys to say is that even a beauty can become a captive of a lovely and smell-less shoe.
In Japan, 3B (Beauty, Beast, Baby) are considered the most effect weapon for advertisement.

By the way, I used Gimp to rectify the distortion of this picture, which was taken in a subway from an acute angle.

Baptist Minister Resigns Amid Sex Scandal

This is a typical type of "Fly in the oilment" (TaMaNiKiZu in Japanese) scenario.
I strongly believe that most of the ministers are working hard and sincerely for their beliefs, and helping the believers. But one or two "bad" people like this can great shaken people's beliefs, and lilieving in leaders of the religion and the organization itself.
The same thing happens to the peopl in Japanese police force, which is losing its credibilities from never ending scandals. One report this morning is about a policeman helping prostitution in his neighborhood. He one is excues was that he did not know the girl was under 18. But problem is that prostitution itself is illegal in Japan!
Similarly, foreigners in Japan are generally considered more "dangerous" than Japanese due to reported crimes by gaijin (foreigner).

Bender Forms Group to Promote OLPC's Sugar UI

According PC World,

Former One Laptop Per Child President of software and content Walter Bender has launched Sugar Labs, an organization that will promote the development of the open-source user interface originally developed for the XO laptop.

OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) is truly a great concept and I bet that many children should benefit from it if they are lucky enough get their hands on one of them.
On the other hand, I am not sure how many people have compared the priority of IT enlightment over poverty resolution. It is true that there are billions of people who can not afford a PC, but there are even more people who are living under extreme poverty (e.g. Living on One Dallar a Day) can't even afford a decent meal every day.

Nintendo Speeding up Production of Wii

According to halflifesource, Nintendo is going to increase the production of Wii console up to 2 million per month. Nintendo has been having the constant price for Wii since November 2006, whereas Sony and Microsoft have had to cut the price of their game console, even more than once, since their introduction.
Wii and DS (sold 30.3 million units this year, and expected to sell another 28 millions next year) are truly the dream of product of all companies. The other master piece is iPod from Apple.

Sen. Kennedy Awaits Tests After Seizure

Forgive my poor knowledge of politics, but I did not know at all that the character I read in the book (there are many books on J.F.K, and I have read one of them) actuall still lives and is still in active service. No matter how people talk about Kennedy family, it is truly God's blessing that he has had 76 years of life, much longer than a lot of his family members.

Obama Draws Huge Crowd in Oregon as Clinton Courts Kentucky

The crowd is truly impressive indeed(from The New York Times)

Plotics is going on, as usual, as much as the media's attentions need. Every candidate is blaming his or her opponets for wrong doings, silly policies or unwise moves. All claim that they themselves are the right person for the president, the person who can (promise) bring the most prosperity to the nation.
Some factors that I imagine can affect the result: how good the brains (script writings, policy consultant etc) are, how well the money spent on advertisement of all sorts, how badly the opponent performed, how badly the close members of the opponent can be found fault with.

Don't ever think of it!

The subject is no any insect or beatles, but the conquror of a lizard. She constantly kept her warning eyes on my when I took this picture. I felt sorry for her, as she was just about to settle down and enjoy her lunch.
But isn't it something rare in the cities now to see a cat catching any bait from the nature? There are always people feeding the wild cats nowadays. Just like how the pigeons are being fed in the parks.

Accident with Casualty - again!

This time, it happened some hours ago. Train shechedules becames chaotic. The time I reached the platform, it was full of people.

To my relief, the next train to departure came only a few minutes later. But the nightmare began after the train started. It ran extremely, stopped from time to time. The compartment became unbearably hot. Since it was over packed, it was very suffocating.
I had to endure the torture for about fifty minutes. Again, pepole around were patient, quietly waiting for the next stop. Two guy were standing and facing each other their faces were touching from time to time. Maby they had decided to changed their sexual orientation, out of the stress?
Why can't all of Japanese be more patient, to hold on to their life as long as life allows, and not at their random wills?!

Accident with Casualty

Jinshinjiko means accident with casualty, and mostly used in suisidal accidents on railroad.

Today, the train I commut with daily stopped suddenly right before a station. The crew member calmly announced: "Jinshinjiko".
There was a minor disturb among the passenger, the calm resumed. After a while, sirent could be heard. Soon a fire engine were visible.
Everybody waited patiently in the car, in silence. There were announcement of progress once or twice.
About eighteen mintes later(per the apology of 18m delay by the staff), the train started moving again.
Japanese are so used to suisids now. Stress is there daily company. Maby it is simply natual for them to see others to end stress and life all together this way. Amen.

Internationalization in Japan

Commuting in the train, the lady on my left is reading a book in Hangul, the old man on my right Arbic; another young man listening rap in English (audible from his earphone!)

This is something unimaginable 20 years ago. Anybody reading a book in foreign languages or speaking foreign languages will cause a lot of attentions. There were simply too few of gaijin then.
While most of Japanese are still saying that they are not good at English, and most of them start shaking once spoken to in English, most of Japanese actually know a lot more of English words than people in, say China. The only fundamental problem is that Japanese has too little phonetic sounds, resulting poor hearing and prunciation.
What makes things worse is their education system. Most of their studies are solely for the purpose of exam. Once the exams are over, things learned are quickly forgotten. English language is not an exception.

ECO product: wireless web camera powered by fluorenscent lights.

蛍光灯が電源になる無線ネットカメラ、NECが世界初

蛍光灯の電流による電磁誘導と、蛍光灯端子から取得した電力を合わせて給電する無線ネットワークカメラを、NECが開発した。

　NEC は11月29日、蛍光灯から電力を取得する無線LANネットワークカメラを世界で初めて開発したと発表した。同社が昨年2月に開発した「蛍 光灯給電技術」を応用。蛍光灯の電流による電磁誘導と、蛍光灯端子から取得した電力を合わせて給電する仕組みで、ケーブル工事不要で設置できる。

　蛍光灯にリング状の装置を取り付け、カメラに接続して給電する。インバータ型蛍光灯内の電流によって発生する磁界から電磁誘導で発電する技術と、ラピッドスタート型蛍光灯の端子から電力を分岐する技術を組み合わせた。

　取得電力に応じて撮影頻度を自動制御する機能も新開発。市販されている全てのインバータ用直管型蛍光灯で、最良画質で撮影・伝送が可能としている。

　オフィス内で社員の在席状況や会議スペースの空き状況を確認したり、スーパーやコンビニの客の行動を分析するといった用途を想定し、製品化に向けて開発を進める。

Suicide Rate Ranking

According to this new summary, countries born out of Soviet Union occupy 6 out of top 10 countries in the world, in suicide ratio.
Countries like USA must be very happy to lose enomies like Soviet Union, and be able to claim the victory of democracy over socialism. But nobody cares who the resulted "democratic" byproducts do. It is none of their business and concern. And democracy should be the cure of everything, including Iraq.
It reminds me of the article in no. 28 of Newsweek, on World Heritages certifided by UNESCO. Many people worked hard to get their beloved towns, environments registered. But the success only means a new fat cake for tourism developers. The interitages should be conserved for their recognized values. But on the contrary, the rush of tourists, construction of all kinds of facilities all add up disastrous effects to them.
We should spend more time, efforts and money for improving the quality of life, not for any ism, nor for making money out of other's pocket.

Burglary of Metals

Recently, there have been many cases of metal theft in Japan. This is something I have never heard after living in Japan for so many years. Is it because the differences between rich and poor is getting more prominent than ever? Or is it because more people can not make their end meet, due to layoffs?
The same kind of thefts also exist in China, but due to the high demand in the Olympic driven market.
People start doing similar thing when forced by life, wherever they are.