Nothing Really Poignant - James in Taiwan

OK, OK, I am in Taiwan, but this doesn’t mean that the Writers Strike that is occuring in the US isn’t affecting me.  I do regurlary download episodes from iTunes and watch them on my iPhone or iPod, so yes I need to stay on top of this.

So what shows am I really into lately? Well honestly I can care less for Heroes.  For some reason I feel “tired” after watching those episodes (too many pointless plot twists), and iTunes stopped carrying season two anyway, so no big loss.  I am however watching Kyle XY, a show about a cloned boy who was brought out of the artificial womb at the age of 15, an subsequently has the emotional and mental abilities of Data on Star Trek.  I am also digging the newly released Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, but the problem is when will all the “good” shows stop airing?

Well I found a regurlarly updated page that is going to be your salvation.  Find out how many more episodes of your favorite show are left on  the page Effect of the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike on television.

Dominos Pizza Delivery Scooter

Steven and I tend to order pizzas allot when it is rainy and we don’t go out. When we order them, I don’t really think about how they get here, but it turns out that some poor guy needs to ride a scooter to deliver pizzas. At least there is a plastic compartment to keep the pizzas dry.

Taiwan still amazes me with lucky finds like these. This 5 foot tall stature was outside a small restaurant in a back alley near my home. For some reason the statue is partially clothed, but still showing his three breasts and his junk. He is ready to travel anywhere with his trusty walking stick and a bottle of booze. I therefore believe he is honoring the famous Monchichi Hobo God.

Somehow I think this is Japanese, it’s a bit too perverse for conservative Taiwanese to come up with.

These gel drinks are sold as healthy and refreshing, but seem like a bag of watered down sandwich jelly to me. These were originally popular in Japan, but they finally made it to 7-11 in Taiwan.

I haven’t tried one here, but I did try one when I was in Tokyo. They taste like room-temperature Jello made with too much water.If you are a vegan, I wouldn’t recommend you drink (or is it eat) these, since they are probably made with animal gelatin.

This is small sign posted on a chain link fence near in the high speed rail station. Unfortunately they place this above a metal hand-rail next to the curb where you wait for Taxis. Well at least they can claim that they warned you if you electrocute yourself trying to hold on to the hand rail.

I took this photo at a local 3C (Consumer Products Shop). They sell Apple Products, and fake Apple Products in the display case next to them. This fake iPhone or iPod Touch is about the size of an iPod Classic and is a steal at around ~68 USD.

About two months ago my apartment experienced water damage due to remodeling going on to the unit above me. Nothing really serious happened, but I did find a constant dripping into my old inkjet printer and about .25 liters in the printer chasis.

The very next day I contacted the remodelers and they apologised. They said we can get a new printer and they would pay for it. I wasnt looking for something expensive, just something that was like my old printer and I found the Epson C90, which even had Mac drivers.

We uppacked the printer, attached it to the Airport router, ran a test print on XP and went to install it on the Macs and low and behold I find out that there is a printing error. I go online and find out a lot of people are having problems with networked ink jet printers and I give up - until I find someone who uses Linux and see how they solved it.

Well many Linux users use CUPS printer drivers, and it just so happens Apple owns CUPS and licenses it to the opensource community. I found the driver in the most recent release of Gutenprint and select the driver, and printing is now A-OK.

I can’t really blame Apple for this problem, but I do blame Epson. You would think a printer company would QA the drivers properly before releasing them.

Everyone by now should know about the Gmail, the free web mail service with ~4.5 GB of storage offered by Google. The amazing thing is that they keep adding more and more customer oriented features to the service.

Just recently Google added IMAP support to Gmail. This allows easy email/folder/label syncing between multiple computers and Gmail.

When you have an IMAP account, you can leave messages on the server until you would like to delete it. Additionally, if you have multiple devices / computers accessing the same account, information such which emails you have read and sent mail are synced to the server. Lastly, unlike POP3 (another standard), IMAP only needs to download a portion of the complete email. For example, it will only download the subject, until you ask to read the full email at which point Gmail will stream the email to you. This is a much desired feature allowing users to keep all of their email on a managed server and have the user experience of a desktop mail client.

Yes, I have OS X Leopard Fever. For the past few weeks I have been waiting for it’s release, even counting down the hours. Why you ask? Well for one, I will be installing it on a newer notebook that I don’t use as often (and that machine will become my primary machine). Two, I will re-organize all of my files in the process and be able to back them up with Time Machine (a much neglected task). Three, it is a non-beta copy of boot camp that I am looking forward to.

Now if you noticed, I live in Taiwan. The good thing for Taiwan is that 6 PM on October 26th comes earlier than a majority of the world. This means that I could reasonably purchase it earlier. Also, I live right next door to an Apple Authorized Reseller, so theoretically I can just go home, swing buy the shop, hand over my credit card and go home happy.

Now there is a snag though. Apple’s launch plans in Taiwan are different from the US. Only one reseller, will receive stock on the 26th and the rest will receive stock on the 29th. Lastly, they will only have limited stock of the single license and they are not selling the family license.

Why do I care about the Family license when it is more expensive? Well, I have multiple Macs at home. I don’t want to buy too many copies, and I already have the family license for iLife 08 and iWork 08. I am willing to shell out for this, but they arn’t selling it. The thing that gets me is that this is just an OS. Sure, I have Leopard Fever, but I am looking for a quick, satisfactory business exchange, not a T-Shirt, not a single license. Is Apple hoping that people who REALLY want the product will buy the single license and then buy another family license later? Is it that expensive to print out the 3 page piece of paper that says the software can be used on 5 computers (thats the only difference). I guess I dont get it, this is just a DVD, there are no moving parts and there is no reason they can’t release the software in both license flavors (or have an online upgrade).

I’m not complaining about the higher cost of the family pack, instead I am complaining that I cannot buy it on the same day. Also, historically Apple has had troubles with piracy in Taiwan, you would think that they would bend over backwards to make it easy for paying customers to buy whatever they want.

Recently I was reading an article on C|Net news concerning a company that is developing a cryptographic chip to lock out companies from creating “compatible” ink cartridges for inkjet printers.  The idea is that by encrypting the controller chip on the inkjet cartridge no one can copy the cartridge.  Even if a company could decrypt the chips, doing so would be illegal under current laws in the US making the compatible cartridges illegal to sell and illegal to own.

One of the major printer companies, HP commented to C|Net on this and said the following: “There are other folks who want to avoid the (proper) process altogether and design a cartridge to work with an HP printer.”  HP considers that buying any printer cartridge that is not manufactured by HP is “illegal competition”.

Now what does the US legal system think about this?  Well a few years back Lexmark sued Static Control who created compatible printer chips for non-OEM print cartridges. Ultimately Lexmark lost the court battel even after attempting to appeal the case.  Now if Lexmark introduces encryption into the mix this will be a whole other matter.

Historically the Supreme Court has frowned upon suppliers marking up and selling consumable products, however they tend to take a strong enforcement stance when it comes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which “criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, even when there is no infringement of copyright.”