Yoshihiko Tsukamoto's Web Log

Apple started a university service on the internet called iTune U last week. I remember what one of my colleagues who came from the Philippines told me 30 years ago. We were working for one of the major companies in Japan. He was good at English and I asked the reason why. He told me that people in Japan can study everything in Japanese, but that he didn’t have any specialized books in Tagalog, as they are written in English. Many other countries must be the same. Their well educated people can read and write in English because their knowledge sources are in English.
Today, we can access an incredible amount of knowledge sources through the internet and a big portion of them are in English, including the iTune U that I mentioned at the top. A person lives by the back country who is good at English and is a genius, and can compete with students of Harvard, because they can access the same knowledge. In fact, all intelligent people in the world who can read and hear English can become well educated through the internet. In the coming 20 years, a big portion of intelligent people will read and hear English well, including people in Japan.
It is already true that English is the default language at board meetings of world class Japanese corporations now. The internet is invading our cultures and languages in this way.

Yesterday, Shintaro Ishihara the governor of Tokyo said “Corporal punishment is necessary”. But, teachers of school are generally against it. Both of them are right. Even if they are a matter of degree, people love painting everything into simply black or white.

Michael J. Sandel a professor at Harvard University wrote a well known book called “Justice”. It is asking the reader if something is right or wrong. He is also a digital decision-maker. I think it’s wrong and dangerous idea. Nothing is black and nothing is white. Everything has analog values and actually they are gray.

The world now has a transmission speed of information among people which is very high. It makes these black or white philosophies a very risky way of choosing. For example, 40% here say this is right, this must be digitized “wrong”, and the rights of 40% are vaporized and vanish away. It is OK for a person, but not good for people. Because digital decisions expand very quickly among the people by the internet. From a statistical point of view, if there are 10 million people, 4 million must say right instead of wrong. But, the combination of these two digital ways blow us away to catastrophic ends. Because 10 million must say “wrong” in the digital world.

Now, we must start an analog way. Or something terrible will come and we will have to call someone to fix our problem such as John Connor but he will not come. Because the Terminator is busy with his illegitimate child issue.

The good aspect of the Internet world is that we can have a quick response.If I Place a reasonable price and a good advertisement today, results would fly out tomorrow.A small mistake causes a miserable end as if I broke an egg with one hand on a hot pan. Unfortunately my business is depending on the cyberspace, therefore I have been thinking about the new advertisements of my Internet shop all day long today.However I got nothing.I couldn’t come up with a new idea. If I were more talented, it would be a good day. I have to do the same thing tomorrow again.

The biggest news in the computer world this year must be the release of Windows 8.
It has new a interface called Metro. The interface is used in not only in Windows 8 but also on Windows Phones. Because Windows has the most popular operating system in the world, Windows Phone which has the same interface will increase their shares a lot. The Metro interface is so good and I also like it. I have a Windows Phone and it’s really fantastic. I believe people will love that interface more than iOS or Android. It’s sure that these things will be extremely common all over the world.

It looks good for people who use the internet, Microsoft Office, etc.. But it does not look good for developers and creators as me. I’ve been using development tools and most of Adobe software. I remember most of their shortcut key operations. Metro is based on the touch screen, it means the keyboard will be a legacy and have a hard-to-use interface.

There is another problem. Windows 8 targets low speed computers such as tablet and notebook computers. But creators need computing power to render their movies. People who need computing power and keyboards may leave from Metro and go back to a legacy interface such as Mac OSX or Linux. Dammit!

I have been purchasing the materials of my business from the same wholesaler for a longtime.We have some kind of friendship now.He was one of the most inexpensive wholesalers, but now his price is a little bit higher than others. Which should I choose, “price” or “friendship” ? Internet changed the supplier scheme.I used to buy materials from wholesale dealers, but now I can get anything direct from manufactures.Many manufactures have their own web sites, and set the order forms there.Probably I should buy from these web sites, otherwise I think I would lose my competitiveness.

Today’s news told me the 3G wireless data link is in short supply because of smart phones using 24 times more data than legacy phones in average. Mr. Song of Softbank said that this crisis is caused by a small percentage of users and they will be limiting these users by raising the price.

I think this consideration is completely wrong because these users are advanced and their way will soon be the norm. On the other hand, a theoretical limit of data transmission is defined by frequency. The frequency of wireless communication is in gigahertz and it is too low now. Fiber communication uses 100 terahertz. It can transmit a hundred thousand times more data availability than the wireless.

Data transmission of wired computers based on a fiber will not be given a limit. They can enjoy fine movies, two way visual communications etc. Unfortunately, wireless users will get two types of limit in the data transmission. One is a theoretical limit and the other is the artificial one. We are virtually confined by these two problems. We do not have a solution but the theoretical one is a little bit far fetched compared with the artificial limit at this moment. The news also said Docomo plans to do the same thing. I hope they will change their mind.

Today’s news is about one of the major beer companies called Asahi which is starting a free Wi-Fi service for their automatic vending machines. The total number of their free Wi-Fi machines will soon be 10,000.

People think the internet world is a lawless district. It isn’t true. Because everybody is identified by a unique address called an IP address. Criminals are found by their IP address. It is very difficult to hide oneself.

This kind of free Wi-Fi system makes users “anonymous”. People don’t need to say their name when they connect their computer to the vending machine. This is a big problem. It helps them to commit a crime in the internet world. Criminals won’t worry about the IP address any more.

We also have another problem with internet criminals. They are the borders of countries. Japan doesn’t have any legal defense from Chinese criminal access. Some months ago, my Apple ID was stolen by someone. I asked local police office about that. It was investigated quickly and the police office found that it was accessed from mainland China; the police office gave up the search.

I love the internet world. It is the time to consider them. We need a rule or a mechanism to protect the world from criminals.