gonemad comments

Unless the operator can present evidence that reverses the current analysis, Tohoku Electric would have to re-evaluate the seismic impact and reinforce the facility before it could reopen, a process that could take years.

According to my technical understanding, this upgrade is impossible for an existing plant. You have to consider it before you build the plant. It is not a small change, as we are talking about at least 10~100x higher acceleration factors.

So authorities can't tell the number of missing children yet they claim to know how many people have been abducted by North Korea?

How do you see a tail of black smoke during night time?

You can't have your cake and eat it too, it's extremely fair for Youtube to say "here is the deal, take it or leave it, it is upto you", if they don't like it then they don't need their content on Youtube then.

As long as you stay within the limits of antitrust law, which is not so clear in this case.

“The very principle of democracy is that local citizens should make decisions,” Inamine told AFP.

This is not true for public infrastructure projects. But there has to be a reasonable share of the burden for all citizens.

@driftnet, and next time you want to enter the US you will be denied entry because you lied about your criminal record...

Like always with these questions, the "case by case" answer is missing...

There is no tax at all, whatsoever, on any Japanese car sold in America, period.

There are import tariffs ranging from 2.5% to 12.5% depending on the type of car.

But, all imported cars are subject to individual inspection

This is only the case when the car does not have a Japanese type approval. Any maker can obtain a type approval of his cars. This is exactly the same as when you import a car to the US, just that Japan allows some exemptions while the US does not. The US would like to have Japan accept the US type approval so that the makers don't have to do double qualifications. Fine, but it should also go the other way around.

and are distributed by third parties which have financial ties to Japanese domestic manufacturers

Any maker can freely set up his own distribution network in Japan. Nobody is forced to sell his competitor's cars. This is called a free market.

There are just too many ignorant comments

Well, for the sake of not getting my comment removed, I will refrain from writing a sarcastic reply here...

No one is "forcing" Japan to buy rice. They are requesting that Japan offer the same access to foreign rice that other countries offer Japan. Why should Japan get what they want but not give anything back in return?

Will the US drop their agricultural subsidies in exchange? We could have a much better and wider free trade agreement already if it weren't for the US and EU to block all progress in the WTO.

They are simply requesting that Japan stop taxing and putting prohibitively high tariffs automatically on every car that is imported into Japan.

Look, it is the US which is taxing imported cars. In Japan the rate is zero. It is the US industry who doesn't want to open the domestic market and they're coming up with all kind of nonsense to get political support.

Have you ever seen the cars Ford produces with Opel in Europe?

You are aware that Opel/Vauxhall have been in deep trouble since many years? Nonetheless, I think Ford and GM would be much more successful in Japan if they stopped their self-defeating strategy to prioritize US-made cars and would focus on selling cars made by their European and Korean subsidiaries.

BTW, Opel is a subsidiary of GM, not Ford.

Ok, let's see. In the Oklahoma trial the jury came to the - not unreasonable - conclusion that the car's software could be the culprit. On the other hand, Toyota has made no further recalls regarding the unintended acceleration issue and thus the old problems should still persist. Yet we haven't heard of any new unintended acceleration case since then. The hype is gone, the accidents are gone... But what will happen to Toyota when any other driver who has an accident will come up with claims of unintended acceleration? It doesn't matter whether right- or wrongfully, it will put Toyota in a terrible situation.

Cellphone towers on earth are not designed to connect to phones in the sky. Rather, antennas are optimized that as little energy as possible is wasted to unintended directions. Even if the phones could still catch a signal at cruising altitude, the phones are too weak to transmit a signal back to the tower. What makes it even more difficult is that the body of the plane is a good shield for radiofrequency signals.

Passengers can only use satellite phones on board and when that is turned off, whether by intention or caused by technical difficulties, then there is no way for the passengers to communicate to the outside world. Some planes, but not this one, are equipped with a micro base station as relay. Still, that connection is routed through a satellite link.

Even during 9/11 according to my knowledge, most calls from the plane were made through the in-plane satellite phones. Some direct mobile phone connections were possible because the planes were flying at very low altitudes. Compared to 13 years ago, today's mobile standards (3G, LTE) have significantly smaller ranges of coverage for the base stations and more optimized antenna designs, making connections outside the intended areas on ground even more difficult.

So, as a summary, the fact that there were no mobile communications from the passengers indicates that the plane didn't fly low enough over any inhabited areas, that the passengers didn't notice anything special was going on or that they were dead before they could use their phones.

The WashPost reports that one of the most eerie rumors came after a few relatives said they were able to call the cellphones of their loved ones or find them on a Chinese instant messenger service called QQ that indicated that their phones were still somehow online.

This is normal behaviour of mobile networks. The roaming information is only updated when someone tries to establish a new connection. During the time the network tries to locate the phone, which can be quite long, a normal ring tone is provided to the caller as initial response so that he doesn't think the network is dead. This is exactly what happened here, nothing eerie at all.

More than 80% of parents believe that schools should require Internet companies to set clear polices to protect personal information.

And how about at home? I have serious doubts that more than an extremely tiny fraction of the parents understand how the tracking works and how to protect themselves, let alone their children.

There is a gap between the northern and southern corridors, which only makes sense when you can be sure that you have searched the area in between sufficiently. Has this really been the case? Has Indonesia confirmed that there are no unidentified radar traces in any area on the west coast? In an extreme scenario, the pilot could have taken the same route back which he took to fly out west. Have Malaysian authorities checked the radar traces at the later times of the morning? Why don't they disclose the locations of the satellite signals received between 1 a.m. and 8 a.m.? Although we would just get a few more rings, they could still give hints about speed and direction of the plane to at least some extent.

Last but not least a question to the aviation experts: could the B777 pass undetected by passive radar when flying at very low altitudes when e.g. passing Java or more southern parts of Indonesia or when flying over the Java Sea?

It looks like whoever flew the plane had precise ideas of where he wanted to go and was willing to take unconventional steps to stay undetected. Hence we shouldn't exclude any possibilities prematurely...

The latest recall of nearly 1.8 million vehicles linked to three new problems comes as a result of an internal probe into why it took the largest US automaker so long to acknowledge a deadly ignition defect.

Simple answer: they were just happily bashing Toyota, so it would have been a bad time to come out with own issues...

China has been criticizing Malaysia's response, yet these pictures that were taken on sunday are just being released on Wednesday. By now, the ocean currents could have taken them anywhere!

Somebody has to analyze the pictures and find the debris. Do you think this happens in zero time?

No, freedom of speech is more important than historical correctness or the feelings of the survivors. On the other hand, hate speech should be a crime and typically both go hand in hand...

Sure, Japan has to make concessions in the agricultural area. But what are Abe's plans on restructuring the farming sector?

Furthermore, abolishing tariffs is one thing, but there won't be an even playing field when subsidies are not taken into account. The US, among with the EU, is the country with the highest agricultural subsidies worldwide and both have consistently blocked any progress in WTO free trade negotiations. How come we never hear about agricultural subsidies in context with TPP negotiations?

In the case of countries like China, it is almost 100% certain that coal will provide the bulk of the energy, meaning electric vehicles will be more polluting than their oil based hybrid cousins, and more polluting than even some conventional cars.

True, but even under these conditions electric cars could be a useful means to reduce pollution in the urban centers.

The systems will have to be standardized in order to be accepted in the market.

Why not? Everything in your list are things Japan does, or has done in the past (BTW, all food items sold in America DO list all of the ingredients contained in them).

@sangetsu03: just because Japan lacks control of it's food laws, that makes it an example of how things should become for everyone?

TPP means that food labeling will be reduced to the lowest common denominator. TPP is not the US imposing it's rules to the others, but large corporations trying to shake off any legal limits. TPP could have some benefits, but only when the negotiations are supervised by the public. Congress must not give up democratic control if they do not want to create a disaster for every country involved, including the US.

Collusion? In Japan? When both public and private entities are involved? Who would have thought...

This is the result of decades of botch and corruption. The blame goes 100% to the operators of the plants.

What does this thing make "business-oriented"? Certainly not the fact that it uses a CPU which is phased out by it's maker. For this reason it is delivered with an already outdated version of Android and you can be certain you will never receive any update.

The reason is that Japan hasn't honestly apologized. People like Hashimoto prove it daily.

Sounds more like a praise for ABC...

Consumer electronics makers are usually terrible at writing software. They should embrace open standards which allow users to install the OS and apps of their choice.

While I'm not really in favor of revising article 9, this is by far not the worst thing. Remember that while Abe always talks about article 9, he first plans to revise many more articles in the constitution, which will take away fundamental civil rights and possibly make Japan a totalitarian state again. You can find the proposed changes in the net.

Abe is now stirring up tensions with Japan's neighbors so that people blindly follow his proposals because they are made to think that Japan needs a stronger military to cope with the threats. And then the trap snaps shut...

@toshiko: the 570 million are just a fraction of the damage. How do you think they get enough money? The fact that the investors can claim 15.7 billion doesn't mean they will ever see the money.

TPP is a trojan horse to enact legislation pushed by the Obama administration which would never pass congress by itself. The US representatives for TPP do not negotiate on behalf of the American people. If Congress does not put a strict control on the negotiations they can just as well abolish themselves.

The people who lost money will be awarded back money plus more acording to law. Victims will sue to get money back.

@toshiko: where should that money come from?