Archive for the 'Pan Asia News' Category

Japan has either huge closets or tiny homeless people

 
Japanese Closet
I wouldn’t mind living in there…
 
From the ‘only in Japan’ file……If I were a 58-year-old homeless Japanese woman, where would I take up residence? I have no idea, but one lady in Japan moved into someone’s closet. According to the article, she slipped inside a man’s house and took up residence in his closet’s top cubby area one day when he left the house unlocked. Apparently the guy never uses that part of his closet because he didn’t notice anything suspicious until food began mysteriously disappearing. Eventually, he set up cameras in his house and had the images transmitted to his cell phone. The lady showed up on camera, the police were called, and she was nabbed and charged with trespassing, which is a lot lighter a charge than she would probably get in America. The article also says that she “moved a small mattress into the closet space.” How gigantic must the closet be to fit a mattress inside it?! Or how small is the mattress (and thus the lady)?! Either way, that’s crazy. Another cool ‘only in Japan’ note on the article: She took showers at the guy’s house and was described by a police spokesman as “neat and clean.” Hmmm…that sounds familiar.
 
Link to article
 

Magibon explains why she makes Youtube videos

 
I swear I need to start a Magibon category. This is the third or fourth post about her. I really didn’t plan on making any more posts about her, but in the interests of answering the biggest question about Magibon (WHY?!?!), and because I’m way too busy lately to look for anything else interesting to post about, I’m posting these two videos. They’re the entire interview from her debut on Japanese TV, complete with awesome Engrish subtitles.
 
She she talks more in this short appearance on Japanese TV than she does in all of her Youtube videos combined, I think. And that’s great! And she finally explains why she started Youtubing in the first place: just to see what she looked like on her new web cam. Things just kind of took off from there. Here it straight from her. Two vids below:
 

 

 
My heart goes out to her for being so worried about showing her teeth on camera. She’s a very pretty girl otherwise. Hopefully she’ll get some braces out of this whole thing at the very least so that she’ll feel better about herself. Although I suspect there’s a lot more to her lack of self esteem than just her teeth. Poor girl…Here’s the link to the GyaO news page about Magibon that’s referenced in the second video.
 

The world’s smallest girl lives in India

 
World's smallest girl
 
Wow, I didn’t know people could get this small. The world’s smallest girl hails from India and is only 1 ft. 11 in. tall at 15 years old. Amazing! She seems to have a positive attitude about the whole thing, though, saying, “I am proud of being small. I love the attention I get.” Good for her.
 
Link to article

In the future, Internet crime will come mostly from Asia…oh, and Mexico

 
F-Secure.com just published the resulting maps from their study of the shifts in Internet crime trends since 1986. The results are pretty interesting. The map below illustrates that up to the year 2003, criminals from the United States and Europe have been the creators of most malware. According to F-Secure, the time period covered by this map was characterized by “opportunistic ‘hobbyists’ learning their craft” and “old-school virus writers operating from areas in Europe, United States, Australia and India.”
 
map
 
And then in the “recent history” (is 1986 considered ancient history now?! Am I that old?!), people apparently started getting bored of just playing around and writing viruses and things just to wreak havoc; they wanted to make money or achieve some other goal, so “professional, targeted attacks” started to rise. Here’s how F-Secure describes the characteristics of malware creation in this period:
Malware creation hotspots growing in the former Soviet countries (such as Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Latvia). Other major areas of criminal activity are Brazil and China, which have large numbers of individuals with sophisticated computing skills but without the job opportunities to make a living for themselves in the IT sector. Online crime often presents a more lucrative path to raising living standards for people like these.

I’m not sure these maps are totally accurate. It seems kind of fishy that at least graphically they’ve pinned ALL of the world’s virus-writing guilt on Brazil, Russia, and China. C’mon, guys…Americans aren’t that lazy that they’re gonna let other countries make all the illegal money. I mean, the US pretty much invented the Internet and Internet crime; they’re not going out like chumps.

 
map
 
Moving on…the folks at F-Secure now don their prophet caps and look to the future, predicting that in the future, malware will come mostly from Asia with generous helpings coming from Africa and Mexico. Their site makes the following two points:

  • “Internet usage is growing fastest in Asia, followed by Africa. IT job growth will be lacking behind, creating a breeding ground for online criminals.”
  • “In many countries there will be a delay before the legal system catches up with developments in the IT sector. Computer criminals may also be able to escape the law more easily in countries which are undergoing serious political and security problems.”

It makes perfect sense to me. If the citizens of a country are poor and the government of that country is too busy with its own growing pains or internal struggle to pass and enforce Internet-related laws, naturally people there are gonna take advantage of the situation. Often, in terms of what people will and won’t do, hunger > laws > ethics. So when the chips are down, most people will do whatever they need to put food on the table regardless of ethics or laws, and if there’s no law to telling them they can’t do something, they’re even more likely to give it a shot. Anyway, below is their map of the future of Internet crime.

 
map
 
So it looks like we all get to look forward to more virus-laden e-mails trying to trick us into doing the same old things with the same old consequences, only now with even worse English than in the past, probably confusing Rs and Ls throughout. Ah, grobarization!
 
Link to F-Secure study
 

South Korea once again proves that the US is WAY behind in technology

Korean USB credit card
 
America tries to act like the leader in technology sometimes, but it’s really slow on the uptake. You know those cool credit cards that are starting to pop up more and more, the kind that you can wave in front of the gas pump instead of actually having to go through the usual “insert card and remove quickly” routine? Those may be all the rage in America (or not: I don’t know many people who actually have one), but they’re old news. All the cool kids (who live in Korea) have USB credit cards now. They don’t have to enter information to make purchases online; all they have to do is plug their credit card into their USB port to pay for stuff online. Take that, third-world country America!
 
Link to article
 

Roman alphabet to internet: “Et tu, Brute?”

Chinese URL
This’ll be interesting…
 
The Internet (or, internets if you’re some people - it’s a series of tubes) is great because no matter what language you speak or where you live, as long as you have a connection to it, you can benefit from the collective knowledge of the world’s Internet-using population. That’s really incredible when you think about it, being able to call upon the collective knowledge of the whole world to find out pretty much whatever you want to know. But in spite of the fact that people from all over the world who speak different languages can contribute to the Internet in any language they wish, it has always been kind of unfair in a way. Up to this point, if you wanted to have a web site, your domain name had to be in English. That’s great for native speakers of English, but not-so-good for people who don’t speak English. So a supposedly universal tool has always catered to a certain group. Lame!
 
But it looks like English is finally about to lose its stranglehold on domain names. ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - the guys who run the Internet’s names and addresses) announced last Thursday that they will be registering (on a test basis) domain names in Arabic, Persian, Russian, Hindi, Greek, Korean, Hebrew, Japanese, Tamil, and both styles of written Chinese (simplified and traditional). This is huge, probably the biggest change to the internet since Al Gore “created” it. It’s just a test for now, though, so if you register a domain name in a language other than English, it will have to have a .test suffix added to it (instead of .com, .org, .net, etc.), and you’ll be directed to a wiki page instead of being able to make your own website.
 
The Yahoo! article I pulled this information from doesn’t say specifically what the testing criteria is (and I’m too lazy to find out), but it says, “The results of the test will determine whether ICANN sanctions using languages written in alphabets other than English for complete domain names.” So if it goes well, the internet may get a whole lot bigger. The Internet World Statistics website says that about 37 percent of the world’s Internet users live in Asia and another couple percent are in the Middle East (North American users make up about 19 percent of the Internet’s users, and Europeans make up about 27 percent). Those numbers mean that if things aren’t done correctly, the internet could conceivably see some performance issues from the new traffic created by new websites popping up in all these different languages. That fear is apparently the reason this wasn’t done a long time ago, according to ICCAN’s first chief executive, Mike Roberts. He said, “The engineers thought that trying to do the non-Roman alphabet thing with all this growth would destabilize the Internet and cause crashes.” I’m assuming they have things worked out now so that won’t happen, but we’ll see.
 
Link to article.
 

Coolest. Concept. Cars. Ever.

 
It looks like Nissan is going to totally beast the 2007 Tokyo Motor Show with their three new concept cars, the ROUND BOX, the NV200, and the INTIMA.
 
First up is the ROUND BOX, which looks on the outside like a tough, futuristic cross between a Chrysler PT Cruiser and a Honda Element. The cockpit, though, is completely Star Trek or Minority Report. It’s one of the most incredible-looking things I’ve ever seen that isn’t completely science fiction (although how much of it is actually functional isn’t clear). If I were to drive one, I’d probably be so busy staring at all the cool things on the dashboard that I’d probably end up in a serious accident, but it’d almost be worth it just to have something this cool.
 

 
The NV200 makes vans look awesome! It’s like a cargo van that transforms into a bus/office. When its back side isn’t fully extended, it seems like it’d only be a two-seater because I don’t see how you could possibly have room for more than 2 people with all that stuff shoved in the back (computer, storage bins, a place to hang clothes). But when it is fully extended, it looks like something you’d see on Star Trek. Very impressive! I want one of these in a big way.
 

 
Ok, so what about sedans? The Nissan INTIMA (is that like the opposite of an Altima, like an innie bellybutton versus an outie?) seems pretty cool, too. It’s got a computer with some cool-looking features (address book, points of interest, phone book, themes for something or other) built right into the dash, and a nice looking radio console. I’d have to say that it’s not as cool or futuristic looking as the other two concept cars, but it’s still pretty nice.
 

 
Nice, eh? Too bad these are just concept cars and not available to the public yet. Who knows when they will be, either? Until then, I’ll just dream…
 

Asian teams are out of the World Cup

Germany's team celebrating
Germany’s team celebrating a goal in their win against N. Korea
 
I’ve now lost all interest in this year’s World Cup since both North Korea and China have been eliminated from competition. North Korea was shut out 3-0 by Germany and China lost 1-0 to Norway this weekend. Bum deal.
 
But now that any teams I like are out of the competition, I can make my prediction for who’s going to win. I think it’ll be Germany and Brazil in the finals, and Brazil will win by one goal. What do I base this on? Absolutely nothing, but that’s my prediction. Miss Cleo gave it to me.
 

Freaky Japanese face-mimicking robots

Freaky face robot
 
Those robot-obsessed Japanese scientists are at it again! Japan’s Takanishi Labs has developed a face-mimicking robot that can switch between 2 different faces in a matter of seconds. It works by using servos and microcontrollers to change the shape of a “face mask,” and it’s a strange mix of of impressive and scary. Watch the video below to see how it shape-shifts into 2 different faces:
 

 
OK, the basic robot itself is kind of cool, but when you see it with a human face projected over top of the robot, it becomes eerily realistic, like in the video below:
 

 
Freaky, eh? It’s only a matter of time before the technology becomes smaller and smaller to the point that it won’t need the giant box behind it to make those faces, which would make much more realistic applications possible. Amazing! Cheaper Chinese rip-off technology in 5…4…3…2…
 
If you’re a big enough geek to care, here’s more information on it.
 

Worst escape attempt ever.

Dig Dug
 
I’ve heard of some pretty lame attempts by people to smuggle themselves or others to different places, but this one has to be the worst. A 19-year-old guy (maybe that’s the problem right there) in Russia was recently caught trying to dig a tunnel from Belarus to Poland. That’s not so bad, right? You’re probably thinking, “Lots of people have done that kind of thing before.” Yeah, but this guy tried it using a metal cup. A metal cup to dig a 1 kilometer-long tunnel. Does this guy subsist on a diet of nothing but vodka? It’s obvious that it wasn’t something he just decided to try on the spur of the moment, because when he was caught, he also had army rations, camouflage, maps, and a textbook on survival. So he apparently put a lot of thought into the execution of this little plan…but the best digging device he could come up with was a metal cup?! Not a shovel or even a bucket?
 

You…

 
Link to article
 

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