gryson

>I don't have any real evidence of this but my intuition is that Sony allowed their American arm more latitude and gave them more credibility with regard to designing the market strategy.

In reality, the exact opposite happened. Ken Kutaragi (creator of the PlayStation) and Norio Ohga (then-president of Sony) were outraged that the Sony executives in America were not following their instructions, and they fired the vast majority of them. This is discussed at length in the book Revolutions at Sony by Reiji Asakura. The American side wanted to make all kinds of changes - they hated the name PlayStation, they hated the grey color (they wanted it to be black), and they hated that Kutaragi would not let them include a pack-in title for free with each console. The Japanese side quickly responded, fired most of them, and took direct control.

This narrative has been pushed quite heavily by former Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske, but it leaves a lot out. Kalinske claims the Japanese president of Sega, Hayao Nakayama, forced him to launch the Saturn in NA before Kalinske was ready, and because of that, the Saturn failed and Kalinske resigned shortly after. As always, it's best to approach with caution when CEOs are assigning blame for company failures under their tenure.

The reality is far, far more complicated. Kalinske himself was against the Saturn going back to 1993, due to the predicted high cost of the console. This in turn led to the development of the 32X add-on for the Genesis as a low-cost entry into the 32-bit generation in NA, but the 32X failed spectacularly.

Most relevant, however, is that Sega failed to adequately compete against Sony in terms of garnering third-party support, both in Japan and NA. This is discussed at length in the excellent book Revolutionaries at Sony by Reiji Asakura (English translation available). The Saturn was difficult to develop for and Sega did not have good development tools early on.

Also worth reading is the recent account from former Sega president Hideki Sato, who was the head designer of the Saturn. He discusses many of the shortcomings of the console and Sega's strategy for it:

https://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?33506-Hideki-Sa...

One thing not directly touched on in the article concerning Sega:

Tetris initially reached widespread popularity in Japan through the arcade version made by Sega, which was released at the end of 1988. It was awarded "best arcade game of the year" by several Japanese magazines. This arcade version featured a 2-player mode and followed what came to be known as the "Sega rotation" ruleset due to restrictions on piece rotations.

The Sega version was ported to the newly-released Mega Drive (Genesis) console and was scheduled to be released in early 1989. It was to be the Mega Drive's killer title, but when the release day came, stores did not get any shipments in. It was later discovered that Nintendo had sued Atari over the rights to the game right before the release of the Mega Drive port in Japan (Atari had given the rights to its subsidiary Tengen, who had licensed them to Sega in Japan). Nintendo won, and Sega was left with a huge stock of games that were eventually repurposed or destroyed.

The Game Boy version wasn't released until mid-1989 in Japan, and the NES version after that. They became massive hits, but it is less commonly known that they were preceded in popularity by the Sega arcade version.

Eventually, the Mega Drive port showed up on a bootleg 2-in-1 cart from China, also featuring Rambo III. Somehow the bootleggers had gotten hold of the ROM. It turns out the Mega Drive port wasn't a very good one. Last year, in honor of this legacy, Sega released an updated port with the Mega Drive Mini.

In regards to the issue of selection bias, this is what the ad looked like:

https://twitter.com/foxjust/status/1251270848075440133

Quote from ad: "We are looking for participants to get tested for antibodies to COVID-19."

A quote from someone who participated in the study:

"I participated in the study because I had been sick the week before and was very curious. In the intake questionnaire they asked if I had recent symptoms. I'm unpleasantly surprised that they seem not to have made an effort to use that data to unbias the study."

https://twitter.com/mattmcnaughton/status/125132223548416819...

Another:

"I was part of this study and that is totally why I signed up! People I talked to who tried to sign up had similar reasons. Lots of subjects at the testing site wearing masks, more than you see at the grocery, more evidence that a lot of us were more conscious about transmission"

https://twitter.com/McSalter/status/1251511091294691328

It's very hard to deny that selection bias may have played a part here.

On the contrary - detecting selection bias of this sort can be very difficult. Do you measure it using a questionnaire? You might ask your subjects "Do you think you previously had COVID-19?" But what do you do with that response data? Exclude everyone that says yes? Then you're skewing one way. There's obviously no population data to match that response with like there is for general demographics such as race and age.

Many studies are only as good as their sampling methods. A good sampling method will alleviate concerns of selection bias.

What adjustments were made to account for selection bias of the sort described? It's not covered in the paper, and "well-established science" certainly doesn't answer the question.

"We recruited participants by placing targeted advertisements on Facebook aimed at residents of Santa Clara County..."

I wonder if these ads mentioned the purpose of the study, or if that information was only given out after initial contact (I don't know enough about IRB requirements here).

A concern is that this could cause a selection bias for people who suspected they had the virus. People may respond to such an ad out of curiosity ("I think I had the virus, so it would be good to know for sure") or obligation ("I'm pretty sure I had the virus, so I should help out with this study").

It wouldn't have to be a large selection bias, either. Of the 3,330 people they tested, they found only 50 who tested positive.

I would like to see a bit of a better method of sample selection before drawing any conclusions.

Is there research supporting that (specifically in reference to native literacy rates)? Would be curious to see it.

Why is it ridiculous? Why does it need to be cleaned up? I'm not sure what the problem is (I don't think I would classify you not finding it visually elegant as a problem).

If anything, the Japanese writing system is very elegant in terms of information flow. In a general sense, each script has its use: kanji for content (meaning), hiragana for function (grammar), katakana for foreign words and sounds. Of course, there are many exceptions to that, but the mix of scripts has benefits for parsing text.

Obviously, the Japanese writing system is not a single constructed system like Hangul, but I don't see any reason why it is inefficient (aside from, perhaps, the time required to learn kanji for school children).

>Nintendo had dial up modems and their own intranet in 37% of Japanese households in the mid 80s?

That Wikipedia link says that the Famicom (NES) was in 37% of households. Nintendo only shipped 130,000 modems, a tiny percentage of the total Famicom units sold.

> Can anyone explain why did they do this? Was it just to prove their hypothesis? I bet this guy had really high numeracy scores as well.

It's likely a predetermined exclusion criterion (although they should explicitly state that). An extreme outlier on the primary measure may suggest that the subject was not doing the task correctly (resulting in an extremely low score) or it may suggest that the subject misreported their lack of programming knowledge (resulting in an extremely high score).

Depending on what you're looking at, it can be standard procedure to exclude extreme outliers, but it should be announced as predetermined and be principled.

Heritage Auctions is having floor bidding on March 6, which is where the value will really be decided. But a copy of Super Mario Bros. sold for $100,000 last year. This thing is going to go for a lot more.

Just browse Twitter if you need sources for public opinion. Expectations are very high:

https://twitter.com/search?q=nintendo%20playstation&src=type...

The high bid is now at $200,000, 8 hours after your comment was made and 12 hours after the link was posted to HN (when the highest bid was ~$30,000).

This is expected by many to be the highest valued item ever sold at auction in the game collecting community.

Yes. The same is said about the Sega-Sony deal, which Sega is often criticized for not following up on. The accounts of former executives make it clear, however, that it was too risky to work with Sony due to their ultimate motives. Sony wanted to dominate the market from the beginning, and they wanted to use established companies as an entry point.

Also, the contract between Nintendo and Sony was signed in 1989, and Sony would have received all royalties from CD-ROM sales. This was at a time when it was still not clear that CD-ROMs would soon dominate the market. However, that had changed by 1991 when the Nintendo Play Station was revealed.

Then-president of Sony, Norio Ohga, said the following in his autobiography: “What we learned later was that Yamauchi’s son-in-law, then the head of Nintendo’s U.S. operations, had apparently nixed the deal. The son-in-law, Minoru Arakawa, had witnessed firsthand the stunning growth in U.S. sales of CD-ROM drives and disks. Arakawa knew that Sony had built a strong position in CD-ROM products. And he apparently feared that Sony would get the better of Nintendo in a collaboration.”

For more recently uncovered information about a possible deal between Sony and Sega, read:

https://mdshock.com/2019/03/18/sega-and-sony-new-insight-int...

That article also gives insight into why Kutaragi/Sony wanted to partner with Nintendo.

A quote by Kutaragi:

“I wanted to start up a business that would become a new major income source for the company in the future… [Sony executives] thought it would take too long to start a new business from scratch with venture capital. So the only way to initiate change was from the outside. We could join forces with the best-performing company in the field. We would sell them our technology, establish a track record, and use that as the springboard to future success. That was my reasoning.”

Also, from historian Reiji Asakura:

“Nintendo was concerned that its business would eventually be taken over by Sony if Sony continued to drive product development. Although Nintendo was dominant in the game-machine market, the company was fully aware that Sony had a superior research-and-development operation and thus had the potential to outstrip its competitors in the area of technological advancement.”

References are in the linked article.

I think that it's an acceptable use of the term. Even if people consumed it before that, if they weren't aware of it then its existence could still be discovered.

It's along the same line as "Isaac Newton discovered gravity."

I think much of the fear surrounding monosodium glutamate (MSG) simply comes down to its common name being a chemical. Imagine saying "pass the sodium chloride" at the dinner table.

Meanwhile, in Japan, MSG is commonly referred to by the brand name "Aji-no-moto", which means "essence of taste." It can be found in most households.

I imagine for something like a diploma mill (or not too far removed), where a dissertation may be required to get the degree but there is little genuine advising or research taking place.

I heard a story from an outraged faculty member at a legitimate university concerning the PhD process in the school of education at said university (not EdD, but PhD). Apparently, none or almost none of the education faculty had themselves received a PhD (most had M.S.Ed), yet they were awarding large numbers of PhDs to students each year. Furthermore, the students were apparently doing "group dissertations", which I'm still not sure of how to interpret (I trust the person who told me of this, and I don't think it was hearsay). The point of this anecdote is to suggest that even at good universities, there may be situations where students are able to get away with doing less than would typically be expected of a good PhD program.

You're saying that running an emulator on a PC violates UK copyright law? Even if the game is loaded into the emulator from the original media?

I'd be interested in a source for that.

That makes sense.

Hopefully it can be fixed, since geminates are one of the most difficult features of Japanese pronunciation for native English speakers to master. Erasing it from the orthography intended to aid beginners certainly doesn't help.

Most Japanese electronics stores including Yodobashi Camera have point-based discount systems. If you have a membership card, you get 10% of your purchase back in points, which can be used on the next purchase. Of course, prices can still be high.

And yes, you can often negotiate with salespeople, particularly on higher priced items. At a store like Yodobashi Camera, I think it's possible to negotiate for more points on your point card.

At smaller electronics stores, particularly out of the city, negotiating price is more common. I was once looking at a TV at a store (I think K's Denki) towards closing time and the salesman walked over with a calculator and gave me 20% off without me even initiating the negotiation.

In Japan, confessions are intended to work as you suggest:

>Article 38 of Japan's Constitution categorically requires that "no person shall be convicted or punished in cases where the only proof against a suspect is his/her own confession," In practice, this constitutional requirement takes a form of safeguarding known as the "revelation of secret" (Himitsu no Bakuro, lit. "outing of secret")...

>...for confession to be a valid evidence for conviction, the Japanese court requires confession to include revelation of verifiable factual matter that only the perpetrator of the crime could have known about, such as the location of an undiscovered body or the time and place the murder weapon was purchased, a fact about the crime scene, etc. Furthermore, to safeguard against the possibility that the interrogator has implanted such knowledge into the confession, the prosecutor must prove that such revelation of secret was unknown to the police until the point of confession.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_justice_system_of_Jap...

Taken from Wikipedia [1], citing the paper "Why Is the Japanese Conviction Rate So High?" by Ramseyer and Rasmusen.

>In the U.S., the federal government employs 27,985 lawyers and the states employ another 38,242 (of which 24,700 are state prosecutors). In Japan, with about a third of U.S. population, the entire government employs a mere 2,000. Despite Japan having a low crime rate, such numbers create a significant case overload for prosecutors. In the U.S., there are 480 arrests (96 serious cases) per year per state prosecutor. (The actual figure is lower as some are prosecuted in federal court). In Japan, the figure is 700 per year per prosecutor. In the U.S., a rough estimate is that 42% of arrests in felony cases result in prosecution - while in Japan, the figure is only 17.5%.

>In murder, U.S. police arrested 19,000 people for 26,000 murders, in which 75% were prosecuted and courts convicted 12,000 people. In Japan, 1,800 people were arrested for 1,300 murders, but prosecutors tried only 43%.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_justice_system_of_Jap...

Technically, the police have 23 days to charge someone before they must be released. In serious crimes, police can (and likely will) re-arrest the person on a different charge.

I very much doubt that the police have held someone for months for stealing a dumpling, though.

In addition, for everyone mentioning the 99% conviction rate, it's important to keep the other part of that in mind as well: Japanese prosecutors typically drop ~50% of cases.

Why is it a requirement in nations with strong rule of law that prosecutors make mistakes? This logic is baffling. Could it not simply be that prosecutors in Japan are very, very careful?

Of course, as others have said, the reality is that prosecutors only go to trial if they have what they view as a guaranteed conviction, and the evidence is typically a confession.

Yet in most states in the USA, recordings are not made.

Japan has taken steps to remedy confessions being forced under duress.

As of last year, all interrogations for serious crimes (i.e., trials that will have lay judges) must be audio and video recorded, as well as any interrogations of suspects that might have mental disabilities [1].

Of course, that doesn't address issues of lengthy imprisonment before charges are filed, but it's a step in the right direction.

[1] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/06/01/national/crime-...

Typically for business travel. If you have to send your passport off to get a visa from an embassy, you might still have to travel to another country while waiting to get it back, for example.

https://www.businesstraveller.com/features/apply-second-uk-p...

"Ghosn carried second French passport with him after release from jail: source" in the Japan Times

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/01/02/national/carlos...

As reported in the news, he had two French passports and was allowed to carry one of them in Japan in a locked case. Presumably he broke the lock and used it to enter Turkey and Lebanon.