On Vox: Blackout in Silicon Valley

We were out in Mexico for a few days for New Years Vacation, and came back to find out that we had a blackout in our house.

It turned out that our area was the hardest hit in the area, and as of now, which is supposedly after more than 30 hours after the blackout tarted, the power still is not back on.

We have the backup circuits and UPS and everything, but nothing is of use.  The Net is out, and I cannot do any work done.  I don't have any radio anymore, other than Pandora, and of course it does not work.  I cannot charge the cell phone. 

It is such an irony.  The only way savior is the car.  I can recharge my cell battery, run to our friend's house who has the power to connect to the net.  The car has the heat and light.  As long as the car runs, I am OK.

I have stock up with canned soup and instant ramen, firewood and battery to survive for one more night without power.  Hope it will come back on tomorrow.

Originally posted on enotech.vox.com

Rationing economy of mobile - deep division between web world and mobile

I was at a speech event held by DoCoMo Labs USA in Palo Alto earlier today.  There, Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia, Jonathan Zittrain of Oxford University and Peter Hirshberg of Technorati talked about their insights about Net and Web, and the whole thing was quite enlightening and exciting for me.

Once they started their panel discussion among them, however, trying to address some implications to mobile communication for the organizer, it started boring me.  Their discussion went into the same old accusation that mobile carriers are evil who try to control their closed universe, which I have been hearing in numerous occasions in the mobile world.  While they do have a point and the mobile network has started to open a little bit, I don't think such accusations will work to open the mobile network.

In my younger days back in Japan, there was a thing called "rice purchase certificate".  It is hard to believe now, but 50 years ago, Japan was a poor country and had to ration its staple food, namely rice, and my parents had to show this certificate at a store to buy rice.  Amazingly, the system remained active until 1981, according to Japanese Wikipedia.

Mobile network, by laws of physics, is a rationing economy.  There is a limited bandwidth of radiowave, and the technology still has certain limits of number of users within that bandwidth.  There is a very limited supply of data bandwidth to start with.

People also find more value in mobility and voice quality than the bandwith, unfortunately, for cell phones.  Even if you can use quasi-DSL speed with your 3G phone, if the simple voice coverage area is limited, very few people would buy it.  Coverage area, which is supplied by carriers' towers, is still limited to more populated areas and wherever the zoning is somewhat favorable (which often contradict each other).  Landline broadband doesn't have to deal with this matter.

Jimbo Wales said, with more competition, a more open carrier will win over incumbent closed carriers, but that is not the reality.  T-mobile and Sprint are generally more "open" to a certain degree, but people still buy AT&T and Verizon because they have better coverage.  Because Verizon has lots of customers particularly in crowded cities, they always have to be careful not to deteriorate their voice quality, and as a result, they have to ration their bandwith very carefully.  As a result, the more closed carrier have better voice quality and they actually win more customers.  It works totally different way, at least for now.  And if the service is based on this rationing economy, carriers have to be in strong control.  It is sellers' market, where demand exceeds supply.

Some day in the future, maybe a revolutionary technology will be developed to free us from this laws of physics somehow.  Until that time, we have to live with this rationing economy.  PC-based web culture people often don't understand this reality.

Apple agitates against Japanese government - or did it?

A couple of weeks ago, Japanese blogosphere boiled up with the unusually harsh comment that Apple Japan inc. made on the issue of "personal recording tax" and copyrights policy in general to Agency of Cultural Affairs, a part of Japanese government, basically telling them to "go to hxxx".

The comment attacks this tax applied to digital recording devices sold in Japan to compensate for possible damages done by users recording and copying contents illegally since 1992.  It is not applied to iPod, but is currently discussed to be applied and naturally Apple is firmly opposing it, and attacking the rights holder organizations who are pushing it.  That part is quite understandable, but the point here is that the tone of the comment is unheard of in official documents in Japan.

It goes like "the criticism against the digital devices (as the source of all the bad things) is totally groundless," "the rights holder organizations are self-contradicting and arrogant," then go on to say "the Agency knowingly appointed two scholars in the personal recording issue committee who wrongly claim that other major countries have similar tax and those (with specific names) who appointed them should not escape the responsibility".  And at the end, they dare to say "Agency of Cultural Affairs has shut out Apple from the committees and deciding thing in absent trial ... Agency is closed minded and not capable of managing the copyrights issues, therefore we strongly hope that the issue will be transferred to another governmental agency."

Since it was known on the Net on June 2, as you might expect, Japanese bloggers hailed this Apple statement, and added zillions of even harsher comments against the Agency and JASRAC, Japanese version of RIAA.

However, the tone in the original Japanese document is so agitating that many people started to doubt if it really came from Apple Inc., a major corporation in the world and certainly in Japan as well.  The document itself is on Prime Minister's Office webpage and is definitely legit, but Engadget Japan puts up some questionable points on June 7.

It says that the Agency received this comment from someone who claims to be from Apple Japan, but they did not take any further confirmation action, and that Apple has not made any official statement whether it is truly from Apple or not.

As of today, I have not read any follow up info, and the source of the agitating comment is still a mystery.

Did Apple actually did this, or was this the act of a ninja, again??