blog.mchiu.com

Response Roundup

Haven't done this for a while, but guess there haven't been a whole lot of responses either... he he he

The Death of the Zodiac

Me thinks u should hold an auction & sell them to needy female Japanese students. Of course, it will help if u preload the Japanese OS on there first..
May lead to a few dates...

Posted by: Wuman at August 1, 2005 12:16 PM

I think that's easier said than done... Getting a Japanese OS into the Zodiac seems like it would be difficult to do.

that's really a bad news. Founder seems to be a very nice guy although I only met him once...

Posted by: CK at August 4, 2005 07:44 AM

Yeah... I think Peng Lim is a pretty nice guy for a Singaporean Chinese... It's too bad the Zod didn't go as far as I had hoped for, but then again, having Sony piss on your party by announcing the PSP days after your launch made it more difficult to take the company seriously.

Getting Scammed... NOT!

Dude, its unbelievable how easy it is to get your hands on personal information in the US and then abusing it for scams / telemarketing. The US really needs to strengthen personal confidentiality laws. I'd hate to get tele-marketing calls every other hour...

Posted by: Gorilla at August 22, 2005 07:10 PM

That is true... Stupid me, I forgot to put my cell # on the National Do-Not-Call List, but not sure how effective that program has been either.

So i was randomly searching yahoo because I got the same call, and I entered in the number they were calling me from and your blog came up.

Posted by: Paul at August 22, 2005 06:36 PM

Welcome to the site Paul. Did you end up calling the police? Not sure how effective it would be to file a report to the local police, but maybe filing a report in conjunction with the FCC for fraud might work. It is now a month later, and today, I received yet another 2 calls from that same number... Grr.... I guess I should pick up the call, but always waiting for another drunken moment to piss them off...

HAHAHAHAHA. Not at the hassle, but I just love Mikio stories. When you mention the Verizon routine, I just get this very vivid memory of your broken Engrish "Haro?.....haro...." And after my SF visit, I can picture you equally well being half-lit, the goofy grin, talking into a cell phone and being the wise guy, trying not to laugh. Over here the only phone harassment I got was when the "wan-giri" scam was going on. With the Nigeria thing I commented on how amazing it was that there were so many rich individuals of the dead African persuasion that happened to have my Irish last name, but I'd open a new bank account if they wanted.

Posted by: Kevin F. Spacey at August 14, 2005 10:54 PM

Glad that my pain can provide amusement for others... ;-) I can't say that I have been subjected to any other scams other than telemarketers trying to get me to buy something from them though. If anything, I just end up getting a ton of phishing e-mails where I just fill them out with a lot of fake information, and miraculously, with my fake username and passwords and all, I am able to make it through! I feel sorry for Mr. Phuc Yu whose name, address, user id, and password I usually end up giving to these scammers.

Rude Awakening

Ah yes, the notorious farting co-worker is back from your maternity leave. Now wasn't that a quick little turn-around. Looking forward to more interesting stories from the daily interactions withe the gas woman.

Posted by: Gaylord Focker at August 22, 2005 07:13 PM

The farting co-worker is not back from *MY* maternity leave, but hers, actually. It was definitely a quick turn-around though. Not sure why she made it so short, considering that typically, it's a 3-months leave of absence, and hers was only 1.5 months. I remember that my boss just told her to do whatever she felt was the right way, but knowing how much of a kiss-ass my farting co-worker is, I figured that she took the absolute minimum to make herself look like a loyal, hard-working employee. When she was running around trying to figure out the procedures for filing for ther maternity leave, she asked me if I could put her in touch with Itochu (our next door neighbor in the building), and I was like, "Huh?" She sometimes sees me talking to a friend over there, and thought that my friend was working in HR over there. Not sure how she came to that conclusion, so I was a bit confused. I finally realized who she was talking about, and it was my friend Kay, who works in biz dev... not sure how she figured that Kay was in HR though... Unfortunately, not a whole lot of gas coming from the cube next to me these days... Nowadays, I just hear snoring coming from the other side.

The saga continues...

I can sense that she likes you man. Take it as a compliment.

Posted by: Jabba the Hut at September 5, 2005 12:01 PM

Interesting... I have always thought that Jabba the Hut was not trained in the Jedi arts to be able to sense these kinds of things.

Train Man

Densha Otoko is pretty hilarious. Sad to say that I can kind of relate to him which makes it more funny. However, no relation to the personality... that character is a serious goofball. Don't mind hanging out in Akihabara though. They got some cool stuff. Mikio, time to fly back to Tokyo.

Posted by: Gorilla at September 14, 2005 01:29 AM

I have now seen 4 episodes of the show. I guess what makes it popular is that we can all see a little of ourselves inside of him that it makes him a likeable character, and we end up like most of the people on the 2ch board that were rooting for him. KITA--------------!!!!!!!!!!!!! Although overly exaggerated, I stil find it an interesting enough of a show to watch. I now have downloaded 10 episodes, and I guess the last one comes out next week.

Rockstar's Revenge

Jack Thompson, the Miami lawyer most recently known for his attacks on video game industry, and most notably, towards Rockstar/Take-Two's GTA: San Andreas "Hot Coffee" mod, is in the news again... Only this time, instead of waiting for Jack to make an accusation, they decided to give him something to get upset about on the website for their upcoming PSP title, GTA: Liberty City.

Make sure to check out the link for the Citizens United Negating Technology (nice, CUNT) where they have a fake e-mail from JT@citizensunitednegatingtechnology.org:

"The Internet is an unambiguous evil," the email reads.

"The only things worse than the Internet are computer games and liberals."

"Only last week, I was using the Internet to look up some information for my 15 year old niece, who is a keen water skier and state wide sailor," it continues.

"Trust me when I say this - searching under the subject matter "Teenage girls water sports" is not for the faint hearted."

When you click on the link to the Citizens United Negating Technology website, it features testimonials by people who say their lives have been ruined by the Internet, along with advice to "Turn off now before you are sucked into a vortex of shame, drugs and pornography."

Soon after the site launched, apparently several media outlets, websites, the IRS, and the FCC were all treated to no less than *FIVE* e-mails from that asshole Thompson crying about being parodied on the Rockstar website. The following is excerpted from a recent entry on the gamepolitics blogsite:

---
Thompson's complaint, issued under the heading, "Rockstar Launches Web Site for Obscene Assault on Miami Lawyer Jack Thompson," concerns a series of fictional e-mails depicted on the game's promotional site, one of which is from "JT@citizensunitednegatingtechnology.org". GP leaves it for the reader to puzzle out the acronym of JT's fictional .org domain.

"When you click on the fake e-mail, banner headlined at the tope of the home page, from "JT," the Miami, Florida (Liberty City) anti-violent video game crusader, you will find that JT (Jack Thompson) likes to surf the Internet for pictures depicting deviant sex acts by teenage girls. Additionally, there is at the site an audio ad featuring a man whose name is "Jack" who is found naked by a mother in her son's room. Bisexual pedophile Jack Thompson is the combined message."

Thompson continues:

"Take-Two/Rockstar has created and paid for an actual Internet web site at www.citizensunitednegatingtechnology.org for the purpose of furthering the notion that its most abiding and most effective critic, Jack Thompson, is himself a sexual pervert. This is the oldest dodge used by the porn industry, first used on Jack Thompson by radio pornographers whom Thompson got fined by the FCC in 1989...Jack Thompson can assure the world that the only thing to which he is "addicted" is eating entertainment industry scofflaws for breakfast - and golf."
---

I don't know about the rest of you, but for me, when someone refers to themselves in the third party, I feel that there is something a bit odd about them.

Here's my take on the situation. This guy really dishes it out to the video game industry. In the past, he has cited several "studies" that link video game violence to real-world violence, especially to teenagers. For example, during the sniper attacks in Washington a few years ago, he made mention that maybe the two convicted gunmen were video game players, and lo and behold, it turns out that they were playing Halo, as he smugly concluded that a game like Halo "trained" the two to shoot people. With my limited experience in working with firearms, I can't say for sure that firing off a laser gun in Halo is the same as using a shotgun or rifle, but I sure can say that there is definitely a difference in the kick of aiming and firing a rifle versus aiming and firing a laser gun in Halo.

Anyway.... he has constantly come down on the video game industry, the ESA, ERSB, etc. for not keeping violent games out of the hands of children. He constantly lies about the content of the games, overly exaggerating the amount of sex and violence found in these games. And now, Rockstar, one of his favorite targets, decides to take a potshot at him, and he starts bawling. I hate people who just can't take a joke... moreover, the guy can dish it out to everyone, but if anyone dares to take a stand against him, they are the scum of the earth in his book.

On the other hand, reading up on him, I noticed that in addition to his recent remarks against Rockstar on their GTA: San Andreas game, he has also gone after the 2 Live Crew and Howard Stern. Instead of having people stop listening to these songs, radio broadcasts, or playing these games, it seems that it had the exact opposite effect as sales and listnership have gone through the roof after he speaks. In other words, I think Rockstar definitely has the right idea of trying to create a lot of controversy over their games, as the louder Jack Thompson's voice gets, the more money that goes into their pockets.

If I were to ever market a game, recording, etc., I would definitely learn from Rockstar and just create some kind of controversy that could get the attention of Jack Thompson.

Mmm... LocoMoco... Mmm... Saimin... Mmm...

So Gary looks like he is trying to gain weight, so he's been over in Hawaii eating plate lunches, and taking pictures of his eatings... Mmm.... Maybe he'll look like Akebono or Konishiki or Sam Choi or something soon... Keep on eating Gary!

Trackback and comment spam

So I have this plug-in for Movable Type that allows me to filter spam comments and trackbacks. On the trackbacks side, it automatically removes trackback spam that matches IP numbers from a database, but every once in a while, there's a trackback or two that can make it through. On the comments side, I have it set up to look for certain keywords, and if identified, it flags them for review.

It's pretty interesting... The pattern I have noticed for the comment spam is that they are always leaving the spam in the comments for the blog entry entitled "OW!!! I WANNA BE SEDATED!!!", and on the trackback side, for some reason, they are usually linking back to the "Frankie at ZaZang's" posting.

Sheesh... fucking spammers... they are getting to be too predictable now...

Train Man

So several weeks ago, Tomomi and I were having dinner at a Taiwanese restaurant in the Cupertino Village (and my car didn't get hit this time) and on the TV, they were showing channel 26. I guess the Chinese programming was over, and it had moved on to the Japanese TV programming time. She immediately reacted when a certain TV show came on, and told me that it was a popular TV drama in Japan called "Densha Otoko" (Train Man). Apparently, based on a true story, and turned into a best-selling book, it is about an otaku who was falling for a beautiful woman that he could never possibly get, but turned to the Internet BBS sites for help and advice on how to get together with her. I downloaded the first 9 episodes so far, but have only watched the first 2 episodes. Pretty funny show... Tomomi kept joking around saying that it is basically the true-life story about me while I was in Japan, but I had to remind her that I didn't go to the Akihabara electronics area everyday, but only every weekend... Moreover, I have never been into manga and anime, so that whole side doesn't apply to me. In fact, so far, other than using his computer to access the BBS site, the guy really doesn't look like a techie, which is why I went to Akihabara area in the first place. Well, I guess the only thing I really share in common with the guy is that I play with my PSP a lot I guess...

One thing that really got me into the show was that at the beginning of the first episode, they were playing the Styx song, "Mr. Roboto", which I recently have been making fun of a lot. Now that I have been watching this show, I guess I now feel an itch to visit Japan again... I need to get out to Akihabara... It's been nearly 2 years since I was last there... *sigh* one of these days I'll find the time to go out there...

eBay buys Skype

So every week at work, I send out a weekly newsletter that usually involves an interesting topic in the tech/finance world. Last week, I wrote one about rumors of eBay buying Skype. People were speculating that it would drive the pricetag up to $5B, and I guess they were a little off. Skype sold out to eBay at $4.1B.

This morning, as I was looking at Ken's blog site, I noticed that he mentions that eBay had bought Skype. Whoa! For reals? Looking on the web, it's splashed just about everywhere. The two guys who brought us Kazaa, have finally sold out and sold off Skype. Idiots! I thought to myself... but then again, if it were me, I'd probably be pretty happy too.

Last week, Skype's main investor, Draper-Fisher-Juvertson's Steve Draper commented that he would prefer Skype to IPO, and that was pretty much the standard sentiment of those in the Silicon Valley. I'm not sure what the eBay-Skype acquisition will accomplish for eBay, outside of the fact that Skype will just be another technology used within the online marketplace. eBay has already stated that they are not interested in becoming a portal, so speculation of competng with Google and Yahoo seem to be out the door for now. Now that the two founders have sold out, I guess it doesn't really matter to them what happens to Skype, but I hope they will continue to work on improving Skype, and more importantly, hopefully eBay will see the sense in keeping Skype up as a service, and to look into ways to open it up to more standard protocols such as SIP. With their level of critical mass, it is a shame to see that Skype is based on its own proprietary protocol, and therefore, cannot connect to other Internet phones based on the standards. It's kind of annoying these days that Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, and AOL cannot talk to one another, and it would be pretty bad if it's going to be the same way in voice over IP.

I also hope that they can find a way to get rid of the P2P aspect of Skype. It sounds like a good idea to share everyone's bandwidth together to pass VoIP calls, but in actuality, it's great for Skype because they don't need to spend a lot of money on data centers to run the service, and just depend more on other people's bandwidth, which just slows down everyone.

GameTap is now out!

So a while back, Jerry introduced me to a company called Infinium Labs, which was making a game console that would allow you to download games from the Internet to be played on the console. The console they demo'd on was *HUGE* and I have no idea how they would sell such a beast. It is basically a PC that is hermetically sealed to discourage hackers from hacking out the game from the HDD, and had some more encryption on it so if they did get to the HDD, it would be difficult to grab the games.

Now, GameTap has been released, and it is the similar concept to Infinium Labs' Phantom console, only minus the console. The network is just accessed by a regular broadband connection, and for now, they will give you the first month for free, and then $9.95/mo. for the first 3 months. I am downloading it as I write this entry, so I'll post a review on it later after playing a few games... :D

Access buying PalmSource

A very long time ago, when I was working in Japan, one of the companies that I had the opportunity to work together with was Access Corporation, which is famous for its NetFront web browser, which can be found in many cell phones and PDAs. As the PalmSource has been losing its major customers, it makes sense that it would be acquired or merge with another company. This BusinessWeek article describes the details of Access' purchase of PalmSource, buying up shares at $18.50/share, for a total $324M. I guess my 8 shares in the company (after several reverse splits) now are worth a litle more... :D

Omelettes anyone?

Among the few single friends left (that would be mainly me, Corey, Frankie, and kinda-sorta with Kuldip), we have this running joke about drinking until 2 or 3 in the morning, and arriving on the doorsteps of other friends in our group (primarily the married ones), banging on their door, while demanding omelettes. Not sure how or why we started to threaten them with this, but we haven't actually done it yet... probably because we end up going to places like Taco Bravo.

In any case, just to help out those friends who may fall victim to our 3 am munchies, this article explains how to make omelettes from a bag! :D Cool!

The saga continues...

So now with my farting co-worker back in the office, the saga of stupid stuff continues. Ok, now that she's no longer pregnant, the farting is not as frequent anymore. One thing that annoys me, and my farting co-worker is not the only person who is guilty of this, is when people ask me to help them solve a problem without really trying to figure it out themselves.

I am not an IT person, nor do I have the qualifications to be one, yet, I somehow get stuck with all the IT work in this office. By far, the farting co-worker is the one who assumes that I am the IT person the most. I guess that since she sits in the cubicle next to mine, it's just very convenient, and since the only other two people working in this office are the two partners, I am really the only person that she can go to. Just about everyday, she will ask me if the Internet is down, if there is a problem with the network, etc. I don't know... maybe it's just me... but when something on the computer doesn't work correctly, I just try doing it again 2 or 3 times before trying to find a solution. Most of the times that I have to walk over to her cube to investigate, there isn't a problem. I just do exactly what she was trying to do and it works. Thus, people in the office saying that I have the "magic touch". For the most part, I think it is because they made a mistake, or there was a small glitch with the computer at the exact moment they were doing something.

So yesterday, she asks me if the network drive is down. I look at it through my computer, and it's working fine. She asks me to come over and take a look. I go directly to the network drive, and have no problem accessing it. "Why did you think it was offline?" I ask. "Because there was a red X over the icon." was her reply. "Hmm... Did you try accessing it, and it gave you an error message?" Her reply? "Oh, since it had a red X, I didn't think it was working." I'm thinking to myself by this point, "... and you didn't even bother giving it a try? How idiotic can a person be?"

Today, she asks if the Internet is down, and I have no problems pinging yahoo.com. I ask her what site she is trying to access, but to also try it again. Five seconds later she tells me that she can go through now. *sigh* This kinda shit happens to me everyday... I wish she could just learn not to automatically ask the second something goes wrong. It was a nice 1.5 months when she was off for her maternity leave... Just wished that she had done the normal 3 months instead...

Let the games begin!

The battle of the next-gen consoles will commence on November 25th. According to this IGN article, Microsoft will begin this round by launching the Xbox 360 on November 25th. Originally slated for early November, and then a targeted November 22 date, Microsoft claims that they have pushed it back to this date due to the fact that they wanted to give the developers a little more time to finish and polish their titles. Personally, I believe that Microsoft, being the marketing machine that it is, has been hyping the product up a bit, and moved the date, coincidentally, to "Black Friday" aka "the day after Thanksgiving" aka "the busiest shopping day of the year".