This approach has been used before in Japan: PHS ("handy phone") cells were placed on vending machines when the system was rolled out. I (mis)remember that the partner was a couple of Coca Cola franchises, which of course have thousands of vending machines dotted around. The benefits are ubiquity, guaranteed good power to the machine, no hassles about getting space on utility poles, etc. and regular visits from someone who can check the blinkenlights are blinken.

If Mr/Ms Anonymous wishes to contact me, I can check the gutter etc for him/her. I've checked out friends' places in Chiba and elsewhere. Immediately after Fukushima, prices on detectors rocketed past $1200; now they're back down around $300 and in plentifu supply. The cheapest sensible devices available in Japan at the moment are probably one of the Soeks range. This is a detector, not dosimeter. It doesn't log data, and there's no PC connectivity, for example.It only runs 10 hours on a battery, though. For dosimeter, the DosRAE2 is readily available and, again, reasonably priced. It runs 400 hours between recharges and is designed to be worn as a badge. Lots of alarms. The PC software for logging data and managine multiple DosRAE2 badges is laughably bad, though. If you really want one of these things, I'd definitely go for the simple geiger counter (i.e. Soeks), because you get a very visual idea of what's going on around you. Many of the people using these things around Japan aren't capable of interpreting the results. Hotspots within Tokyo: not seen anything comparable to yer average granite lobby, and nothing anywhere near, say, Colorado.

Japan-manufactured phones have had to support this feature since 2007. The way each carrier supports it differs slightly. Basically, Japan's EEW/EWS triggers a broadcast cell broadcast (SMS-CB) in the affected areas. Most European carriers also support the SMS-CB feature. Consumer-grade EEW is also broadcast over the air and internet: compatible radios and TVs will retune when the alert is received, and turn on if necessary. As far as I'm aware, somewhat oddly the internet service is not free. Similar warning systems are used to cut power to shinkansen, and to trigger equipment shutdowns in various industries such as semiconductor manufacturing. Apple's late to the game here, but on the other hand Softbank only got the Android app out a month or so ago (Apple's a Softbank exclusive).

"Namiki" is Pilot. In other markets, the pens are Pilot-branded and cheaper.

For those who don't know, Happy Hacking is a Fujitsu company. The range of PFU keyboards is way larger outside the USA.

Many years ago I did a real-time military radar simulation using a flavor of Fortran. At the next job, I helped build a stratigraphic wellhole analysis package using Fortran. At the third job the team built a package that predicted thermal, radiation and other propagations through hardware, wetware and urbanware. At no time was there more than 4 people in the development team. Fortran has done serious work over the years, and people forget there's more to life than the GUI.

It's a Chinese-made phone available in China and Hong Kong. Submitter should comprehend what s/he reads. CNET reporting CNET Japan reporting on a Chinese product does not make it a Japanese product or a Japanese launch.

Dunno why the parent is marked as a troll. They're not being paid to humanise the face of Gates, they're being paid to remind the world that Gates Sr exists, because Gates Sr has a book published next week.

iPhone is popular in Japan, but the market works against it: It's carried by Softbank, the #3 player in the market after Docomo and au. Softbank's market share means that the #1-selling phone on the Softbank network for any particular month is around #25 among all phones in Japan. For most new phones, the peak sales period is the first 6 weeks after release. After that, the numbers plummet. In contrast, iPhone has been Softbank's best-selling phone month after month. So, among the people who are in a position to buy it, it's popular. SB's got around 18 million subscribers. Because of the way phone contracts are written, people keep their phones for just over 2 years. So each month, iPhone's maximum potential market is only 720,000 people.

Softbank uses SMS.

iPhone is popular in Japan, but the market works against it: It's carried by Softbank, the #3 player in the market after Docomo and au. Softbank's market share means that the #1-selling phone on the Softbank network for any particular month is around #25 among all phones in Japan. For most new phones, the peak sales period is the first 6 weeks after release. After that, the numbers plummet. In contrast, iPhone has been Softbank's best-selling phone month after month. The only product I've identified with a similar sales profile is Softbank's 815T, a Toshiba product with replaceable covers that has been selling in reasonable numbers for around a year. Therefore, in terms of the market available to it (i.e. Softbank subscribers), the iPhone is a very successful product. It does miss many features Japanese take for granted, such as 1seg, but it succeeds despite that. In Japan, form over function can win through.

The difference between 480p and 1080i is not as large as you think it is. Hint: the "p" and "i" are important qualifiers.