Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake • Hacker News Board

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#111

Post by angus77 » Tue, Mar 15, 2011, 12:19 AM UTC

Umofomia wrote: post #85

angus77 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you follow the link to 颱 from the wikipedia page to the wiktionary entry, you'll find that: a) 台 is the simplified version of 颱 in modern Chinese b) there is nothing in the entry that suggests it means "great" or "big", and that, in fact, the one character translates as "typhoon" Also, if you check out the Japanese wikipedia page for 台風, you'll find that the Japanese spelled it 颱風 up until 1956. There's also a rat…

I only disputed that 颱 was related to the meanings of "stand" or "platform". As for the meanings of "great" or "big", the OED and etymonline entries actually refer to a different character, 大, from the Cantonese pronunciation of 大風 (IPA: taːifʊŋ). The Japanese and Chinese etymology of 颱風 is as convoluted as the English one that _delirium mentions above in a previous comment. It may have originated as a Western borrow…

Well, to be fair, I was only disputing the assertion that the first character in "taihuu" meant "big" (I'm assuming the author of the post assumed it was 「大」, a natural assumption to make). Giving a translation of the character at all was a side point. It's not like I said that "taihuu" meant "platform wind" or anything, only that the character in question meant something other than "big".

Further, you asserted that 「台」 was adopted into Japanese as a simplification of 「颱」, which I've shown to be false (it was adopted into Japanese as-is and wasn't simplified until 1956, and was also simplified in the same way in Chinese), yet people continue to upvote your incorrect assertion and downvote mine. Not that I hold that against you; you seem reasonable enough. But it does make me wonder what people's motivations would be.

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#112

Post by robryan » Tue, Mar 15, 2011, 1:34 AM UTC

megaduck wrote: post #97

robryan wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wondering roughly what kind of cents per kilowatt hour they pay for electricity over there, I know nuclear is a lot more efficient energy generation but have no idea how this translates for the end consumer.

I'm a Tepco (Tokyo) customer. Looking at my most recent electric bill we're paying about 22 yen a kWh, or around 27 cents. That'll probably go up with Fukushima out of commission.

Ah okay so it's not exactly the silver bullet for electricity costs, I saw that the uranium price had doubled in the past year or 2, might have something to do with it. For comparison here in Melbourne Australia we are at about 20cents per kwh, with a grid based mostly on coal fired power plants. That has jumped a great deal in recent years though, I was paying 17 a couple of years ago and just before that when I was living at home I think it was under 15.

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#113

Post by 6ren » Tue, Mar 15, 2011, 9:12 AM UTC

tghnjtghn wrote: post #108

6ren wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a nice line, btw is it literally true? It fits with Deming, quality and six-sigma. I ask, because Christensen claims that Japan success a few decades ago was because all their successful firms (Toyota, Sony, etc etc) began with disruptive innovations, that needed to be improved, with sustaining innovations. Aiming at quality works really well for this. He then says their recent hard times are because those disru…

I think the difference is that Japanese disruptive firms can engineer things like planes, ships, cars - US disruptive firms enable you to play games about birds on your cell phone.

Based on surface news, it can look that way; but honestly it sounds like you're trolling.

US was first with mass-produced cars (Ford); Japan with games (Nintendo). Both these past innovations were disruptive.

Today, the US is pioneering consumer DNA testing (eg. 23andme), portable computers (iPhone/iPad - industrial uses are appearing, it's not just games);

The suggested case is that Japan doesn't seem to be innovating disruptively (although Nintendo has been working great at some disruptive stuff: wii and a 3D handheld). Disruptive innovation is possible in cars etc, such as the smartcar, and hybrids. Note that the all-electric car, Tesla, is from the US - and it's not clear that it will succeed. That's a big part of the disruptive game.

If anything, I'm pro-Japan, but mostly I'm a fan of disruptive innovations, and I sincerely hope that Japan will find a way to become disruptive again. Maybe it's harder because they have an aging population now... yet this could be a plus, because they could lead the world in innovations to cope with that, that the rest of the world will adopt when they catch up.

Can you give examples of Japanese disruptive innovation in planes, ships, cars? (I see your account is 14 hours old, and your comment history is a mix of intelligent discussion and reddit-style quips - I urge you to favour the former on HN).

EDIT if you are interested in constructive argument here, I'll offer some of Christensen's thoughts on disruption: it is lower-cost and/or targets non-consumers of an established product (e.g. as wii expanded the userbase of "game-players"), but it's not good enough for high-end consumers (e.g. hard-core gamers); over time it improves and replaces the established product when it does become good enough (unless the innovation is "co-opted", as Kinect is trying to do with wii).

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#114

Post by pieter » Tue, Mar 15, 2011, 12:08 PM UTC

robryan wrote: post #112

megaduck wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a Tepco (Tokyo) customer. Looking at my most recent electric bill we're paying about 22 yen a kWh, or around 27 cents. That'll probably go up with Fukushima out of commission.

Ah okay so it's not exactly the silver bullet for electricity costs, I saw that the uranium price had doubled in the past year or 2, might have something to do with it. For comparison here in Melbourne Australia we are at about 20cents per kwh, with a grid based mostly on coal fired power plants. That has jumped a great deal in recent years though, I was paying 17 a couple of years ago and just before that when I was…

Not really. Uranium price has very little, if any, effect on operational costs at a power plant.