technology

--- Warning! ---

The following departs from the usual topics of my blog and is probably only of interest if you use Ubuntu or you hate Ubuntu and would like a good reason to diss it.

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Recently as a result of having to move out of our place while it was being done up, I was deprived of internet access while not at work. So, I went down to Bic Camera and bought me one of these flash new cellular data cards. Actually it's not so much a card as a USB device. The Emobile D02HW claims a maximum data throughput of 7.2Mbits/s and the service provides more or less nationwide coverage through a roaming agreement with NTT DoCoMo.

Getting it going in Ubuntu was quite a mission - but I did it! As is usual with these types of things, Japanese language forums have quite a bit more info than is available in English.

So here is my set-up and how I did it. (no guarantees for you!)

Environment:
Sharp PC-CS30H lap top running Ubuntu Linux 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)

Getting it going!
1. Plug in the modem BEFORE you switch on your computer. I can't get it to recongnise the modem if I plug it in after I've started up Ubuntu.
2. Do not use gnome-ppp as recommended in other forums. I absolutely could not get this to work.
3. Open a terminal and type 'sudo pppconfig'
4. From the pppconfig utility that pops up, select 'create a connection'. Call it emobile-ppp and hit <enter>
5. Change the settings to those shown in the image below.



6. Save the emobile-ppp profile and quit pppconfig

Now here is where it gets a bit weird - perhaps this is just my set-up, but it works for me.

7. Change (still in terminal) to the /etc/ppp/ directory
8. Type 'sudo pon emobile-ppp'

This will not connect you to the internet, it should but it doesn't!

9. After a few seconds type sudo poff
10. Type 'sudo pon emobile-ppp' again.

Within a few seconds you should be connected. For some reason running 'pon' and then 'poff' seems to reset the modem so you can connect when you run 'pon' for a second time.

11. To diconnect from emobile type 'sudo poff'.

This took two weeks of trial and error! Speed is OK, but I'm getting nothing like 7.2Mbits/s. The best I've seen is about 2.5Mbit/s. It often drops down to about 600Kbit/s - presumably when it's roaming on the DoCoMo network.

Although my experience could be seen as negative, the fact is, despite not being supported by E-Mobile, this is running on Ubuntu. If you hack around enough, you can do ANYTHING on this OS. Check out ubuntu.com for the latest lovely flavour of Ubuntu - version 8.04.

The latest issue of a magazine called Japan Spotlight put out by the Japanese Economic Foundation suggests that energy efficient appliances may be about as effective at cutting energy consumption as 'lite' foods are at countering obesity. An article entitled 'In Quest of Sustainable Lifestyle' (overly long subtitle omitted) wonders why despite the huge advances in producing energy efficient appliances and stagnant population growth, the greenhouse gas emissions of the average Japanese household rose by 37% between 1990 and 2005.

It turns out that as in the case of the obesity epidemic that consumerism is to blame. One of the main reasons for the marked increase is simply that households are using more and more appliances. It doesn't matter how energy efficient your appliances are - if you buy an extra air conditioner, a clothes drier and a fridge that is twice as big as your previous one, you are going to be using a lot more energy than before.

This just goes to show that there are no immediate technological solutions to cutting greenhouse gas emissions. In the short to medium term, significant gains will only be made by changes in behaviour with the guiding hand of government regulation.

The article goes on to talk about Matsushita Electric's (better known by their Panasonic and National brands) 'Factor X' environmental efficiency measure. A high Factor X score is considered good while a low score is bad. Unfortunately, this measure seems to be seriously flawed. It doesn't just look at energy usage, it considers the improvement in 'quality of life'. So, if the number of things you can do with the appliances (this is quality of life apparently) goes up 100% but your energy usage only goes up 50% then your Factor X score goes up. Yay! Hang on? How the hell is that good for the environment?

It certainly doesn't hinder Matsushita's goal of selling more and more stuff though!

For many years I have expressed my dislike of Microsoft to anyone who would listen - but all the while I continued to use MS Windows. Two weeks ago, on a whim, I decided to completely dump the Windows OS from my laptop. In its place, I installed the Ubuntu 7.04 GNU/Linux distribution - codename 'Feisty Fawn'.

Now that I finally have most of the problems ironed out, the overall 'experience' is much like it was before. Before switching, I was almost exclusively using open source software anyway - Firefox & Thunderbird for web and email, OpenOffice for my spreadsheets and word processing and The Gimp and Inkscape for image creation and manipulation. So now I'm using exactly the same applications except on Linux instead of Windows. There have inevitably been a few ups and downs in the experience.

Here is a quick summary:

The Positives
- Ubuntu's ease of access to and navigation of the file system is far superior to that of Windows.
- The organisation of the three menus on the taskbar - Applications, Places & Administration is exceedingly easy to get to grips with
- It has pretty icons (better than XP anyway)
- Installing Apache, MySQL and PHP (my web development environment) took 5 minutes using the Synaptic package manager (this sometimes took hours in Windows)

The Negatives
- Ubuntu didn't have drivers for my display, so I had to search forums, download the driver, compile and install it.
- Japanese input took sometime to set-up. It still doesn't seem to be working 100% - when typing in thunderbird, I am unable to enter some characters
- Wireless still isn't working. Although common in Japan, Buffalo wireless cards seem to be a bit rarer elsewhere
- Some of the shortcut keystrokes in Firefox/Thunderbird don't work. For example, I often use ++ to increase the size of text on a web page. Strangely, this doesn't work but +- (which reduces the size
of the text) does!
- The Linux version of Skype (The only piece of proprietary software I use regularly) is a couple of generations behind the PC and Mac versions. It won't even support video until the 2.0 release scheduled for sometime later this year.

For someone without a bit of technical nous (or a spare computer to check the internet forums), the jump from Windows to Feisty might be a jump too far. The best test is to download the live installation CD and try it out. Ubuntu can boot from the installation CD and run GNU/Linux without installing anything on your hard drive or messing with your current Windows installation. If everything works fine (display/wireless etc.) straight from the live CD then you probably won't have any problems with an install to your hard drive. If it doesn't, be prepared for some fixing after you install it to your hard drive before you can use your computer properly.

A Tsukuba University affiliated company called Cyberdyne has developed a robotic suit that has been dubbed HAL - 5 for Hybrid Assistive Limb. Professor Sankai, the developer, is obviously not a fan of 2001: A Space Odyssey. If they're planning to sell it outside of Japan, they might have to come up with a new moniker.

For the record, the unit weighs 23KG, can operate for 2 hours and 40 minutes before it needs a recharge and can be rented for between 70,000 to 170,000yen per month. Apparently it is mainly used at present for rehabilitation According to Sankai, they currently have orders for 600 units and in the long term they are aiming for a retail price of around 500,000yen.

After nervous encounters with automated toilets, speeding through the rice paddies at 300kp/h on the Shinkansen and being talked at by various inanimate objects, visitors to Japan often comment that "it's like living in the future". For those of us who live here, we know it's a mix of the futuristic and the archaic - ever noticed an abacus behind the counter at the bank?

An interesting article in the Guardian - Whatever happened to the future? is an amusing and enlightening read. The article looks at the imprecise science of predicting future technology and trends. While far fetched predictions of jet cars and holidays on the moon abounded, amazingly, of the 135 future technologies predicted by Japan's Science and Technology Agency (in 1960) to be in existence by the year 2010, 40% have become reality. Among the technologies that the agency predicted were mobile phones, microwave ovens, artificial insemination, permanent preservation of sperm, desalination and a voice-activated typewriter able to turn speech into text.

Here are some of my predictions for technology in the year 2017.

1. Complete operating systems and perhaps hundreds of GB of data stored on a chip that may be implanted under the skin of your finger. Computers (and other devices like phones) will be more like terminals. When we want to use one, we will touch our chip to the machine, your personal settings and data protection firewall will be activated and then you can use the device as you wish. Your chip may also check for email messages on wireless networks and give you a neural signal to indicate who it is from. To check the message, you must still go to a terminal or use your mobile phone.

2. Augmented Virtual Reality. Anyone with web-cam software has probably seen the software that you can use to add digital glasses to a face or add a silly wig. With this twist on virtual reality you may be able to visit a game space where players are physically there, but they are rendered to others as their favourite gaming character. Kind of like high-tech cosplay - it'll be huge!

3. Skin recycling bacteria. You will be able to apply them as a cream. The genetically engineered 'friendly' bacteria will remove all hardened, damaged or flaking skin as well as small lesions.

Another prediction - if these technologies come to fruition, they won't be invented in Japan.