Decades since Korea was liberated from Japanese rule, there still is an extreme and very wide-spread anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea. As a Korean myself, I do have strong feelings regarding Korea-Japan relations, but usually try not to voice my opinions too loudly as it usually ends up as a flame war with Japan apologists. However, the 1000th Wednesday Protest in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul and the unveiling of a statue to commemorate the Comfort Women (which took place a month ago), got me to thinking, “what do North Americans think about this issue” when so much of Japanese culture is so widespread whereas Korea is more or less relatively unknown. After some searching, I came across a great article online in English that rebuts many of the Japan apologists’ claims that I’m about to share with everyone here.

1. Japan already apologized for Comfort Women.

This statement is only technically true, in a sense that the Japanese government mouthed the words of apology. For example, in 1993, in Kono Statement, Japanese government acknowledged that Imperial Japanese military was directly and indirectly involved in recruiting Comfort Women through coercion and trickery. There are several other cases in which Japanese Prime Ministers issued an apology regarding Comfort Women.

However, the point of an apology is to show a genuine change of heart and contrition. An apology is not a license for one to turn around and spit in the face of the person to whom the apology was just issued. An apology is not a credit in the moral bank account, so that one can later make a withdrawal and commit more immoral deeds. Simply mouthing the words and going through the motions are clearly inadequate for anyone with a functional moral compass. In that sense, there are several of reasons to consider the Japanese apologies to be inadequate:

a. Each apology was carefully worded to avoid any legal liability

If you did something bad, you should be ready to accept all consequences, moral and legal. You have to say the right thing and do the right thing also. If you say the right things but fail to do the right things, the words are meaningless and hollow. That is how each one of Japan’s apologies on Comfort Women has been structured. Reading carefully, most of the apologies usually say: “We are sorry this bad thing happened to you,” without discussing that it was the Imperial Japan that caused that bad thing. Each one of Japan’s apologies regarding Comfort Women was designed for Japan to evade legal responsibility while attempting to absolve its moral responsibility. But morality does not work that way. Even a child would know this.

b. Subsequent Japanese administrations sought to whitewash the Comfort Women issue

Japan’s apologies — particularly those made in the 1990s, which had greater specificity about its direct responsibility — was not a result of a nationwide reflection and contrition by Japan. It was issued by an unusually liberal Japanese government, which had a tenuous hold on power. When the conservative block of the Liberal Democratic Party came back in power, the Japanese government quickly displayed the insincerity of its stance on the Comfort Women issue.

In 2007, a group of 120 LDP members sought to water down Kono Statement. Nakayama Nariaki, the leader of that group, said: “Some say it is useful to compare the brothels to college cafeterias run by private companies, who recruit their own staff, procure foodstuffs and set prices.”

Also in 2007, LDP Prime Minister Abe Shinzo (a grandson of a man suspected to be a class-A war criminal, Kishi Nobusuke,) denied that the Imperial Japanese military recruited Comfort Women. Abe only backed off after a stern warning from the U.S. ambassador. Another former Prime Minister, Nakasone Yasuhiro, also denied that the Comfort Women were forcibly recruited. Further, former education minister Nariaki Nakayama declared he was proud that the LDP had succeeded in getting references to “wartime sex slaves” struck from most authorized history texts for junior high schools. Nakayama further said: “It could be said that the occupation was something they could have pride in, given their existence soothed distraught feelings of men in the battlefield and provided a certain respite and order.”

(Take a break here, let that last statement sink in for a bit, and appreciate the level of depravity required to make that statement.)

Again, back to the overriding point: an apology is meaningless when it is mere words mouthed as a formality. Because the subsequent leaders of the Japanese government were ready to go back on its stance on Comfort Women just as soon as the administration changed, there are real reasons to doubt the sincerity of Japan’s contrition over Comfort Women.

For full article, click here

The guys at Web Pro News have attempted to make your tablet buying decision a little easier by creating this infographic, comparing some of the hottest Tablet PCs of 2011.

After upgrading compatible iDevices to iOS 5, many have been asking what it exactly means when an app is “cleaning…” itself. If you don’t know what it looks like, here is a screenshot of my iPad that I took today: 

Simply put, iOS 5 is clearing the contents of the Caches and tmp directory. Every iOS app has its own home directory where it stores files. Every file that an app puts there gets backed up when you sync your device, with the exception of anything inside the Caches and tmp directory. With iCloud backup in mind, Apple designed iOS 5 to keep an eye on apps that store too many files in any backed-up directory and to delete any non-crucial, non-user-generated files that may have found its way into the said home directory.

Many developers have recently received emails from Apple like this:

In recent testing it appears that [your app] stores a fair amount of data in its Documents folder.

Since iCloud backups are performed daily over Wi-Fi for each user’s iOS device, it’s important to ensure the best possible user experience by minimizing the amount of data being stored by your app.

In addition to purchased music, apps, books, Camera roll, and device settings, everything in your app’s home directory, including its Documents folder, is backed up to iCloud.

Data stored in the application bundle itself, the caches directory, and the temp directory is not backed up to iCloud. Your app should store data in these locations according to the iCloud Data Storage Guidelines on <http://developer.apple.com/icloud/documentation/data-storage/>.

Please review these guidelines, make any required changes to your app, and submit an update to the App Store.

While this originally posed serious problems for apps that relied on their home directories to provide contents offline (that is, contents saved for offline viewing getting deleted by iOS), many have already issued updates to resolve this problem.

“Cleaning…” simply means that your iOS 5 device is clearing out temporary files to recover storage space from greedy and/or poorly designed apps, and really is nothing to worry about in terms of your iOS device working as it should.

No explanation required: 

No explanation required: 

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I reinstalled Windows 7 on my laptop recently. I also did a clean install of Google Chrome. Then I ran into the most random problem that I have never seen when I set out to create some application shortcuts within Chrome. Everytime I opened the application shortcuts, the window was always in a form that wasn’t convenient for me. So I could easily fix this by dragging it around the sides to resize it the way I want and it should stick, right? Wrong. Every single time I relaunched the shortcuts, it reset itself to the same size that it wanted to be in. Now, this wasn’t a problem before now, so what caused it? 

I did some searching on the Internets and found out that it was an issue on both Chrome 13 and 14, and only affected those that were clean installed, as opposed to having been upgraded from version 12. Huh. Did Google just go out of its way to remove a no brainer feature? 

Anyways, until Google fixes this (hopefully in the next Chrome update), here is one way to manually *fix* this, even if it’s not perfect. 

Step 1: Create Application Shortcuts the way you normally would. In my case, this was Facebook. 

Step 2: Create an intermediary HTML file on your local disk.

Copy and paste the following code to notepad, and edit it the way you want the window to be:

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With the release of Windows 8 Developer Preview and other goodies at BUILD, it has been a very exciting couple of days. Because I’m in full time studies and all, I didn’t really have any time to write a post about Windows 8 itself, but I did end up making the following video.

Simply put, once I set my computer to dual boot Windows 7 and Windows 8, the Windows 7 log-in process gets glitched up. I was actually locked out of my own Windows 7 profile for a while because it would not accept my password, until I found my Winodws 7 DVD and ran a system restore. Once I was able to log in, I created a new profile which I named “backup,” just in case I get locked out of my main account again. Anyways, without further ado, here is a short video that show just how random and mind boggling this glitch is: 

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As my next option, I tried to use the direct links to the app pages instead of having to rely on search. I went on and googled “Google+ iPhone” and voila! The very first result showed me the direct link to the Google+ app page! 

Excitedly, I tapped on the link and to my horror received the dreaded “Your request could not be completed” error. 

KSkfjl:kfjs:kjvl:kjl:kjL:KDJFL:jvk:ja:klhd:OIEYOFHDS:JFV:JSLKVJKLSHF:KLJSDJF:IWEYFKJXVL:KJ<MXNKHKJHSFDKJSJL:JSDLFJS:FFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFU

Somehow, I managed to calm down, and turned my computer on as the last resort and opened up the desktop iTunes client. And on my computer, Google+ was so easy to find, so easy to download.

At this point, this post may seem like I’m writing about Pro-PC and criticizing just how incapable mobile devices can be. But I’m not. Wait until you see this video:

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So no. I still don’t have Google+ app installed on my iDevices. It’s not that I don’t want it, but that I literally cannot install it. And after all this, I’ve already lost my interest. Google+ app has been out for hours now, and I’m no longer an early adopter now anyways. Screw you, Apple or Google, whoever may have screwed this over for me. 

[Update]

Apparently, Google released this app specifically for iPhones, and not general iOS. It is currently only available exclusively for the iPhone, with no way to install on the iPod touch and the iPad. 

As my next option, I tried to use the direct links to the app pages instead of having to rely on search. I went on and googled “Google+ iPhone” and voila! The very first result showed me the direct link to the Google+ app page! 

Excitedly, I tapped on the link and to my horror received the dreaded “Your request could not be completed” error. 

KSkfjl:kfjs:kjvl:kjl:kjL:KDJFL:jvk:ja:klhd:OIEYOFHDS:JFV:JSLKVJKLSHF:KLJSDJF:IWEYFKJXVL:KJ<MXNKHKJHSFDKJSJL:JSDLFJS:FFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFU

Somehow, I managed to calm down, and turned my computer on as the last resort and opened up the desktop iTunes client. And on my computer, Google+ was so easy to find, so easy to download. At this point, this post may seem like I’m writing about Pro-PC and criticizing just how incapable mobile devices can be. But I’m not. Wait until you see this video:

WTF_Google_Plus.wmv Watch on Posterous

So no. I still don’t have Google+ app installed on my iDevices. It’s not that I don’t want it, but that I literally cannot install it. And after all this, I’ve already lost my interest. Google+ app has been out for hours now, and I’m no longer an early adopter now anyways. Screw you, Apple or Google, whoever may have screwed this over for me. 

Update with iPad screenshots coming soon.