
Why Ricoh Used Ruby to Develop New Online Storage Service - peter123
http://ostatic.com/blog/why-ricoh-used-ruby-to-develop-new-online-storage-service
======
patio11
_Although open source appears to be gaining a little traction in Japan, the
country isn't typically associated with open source technology._

That tells you a lot about people doing the associating, but not necessarily
so much about Japan. For what its worth: its a big country, with all sorts of
big companies in it. (And small companies, too.) I work in Big Freaking
Enterprise Web Applications.

We use more OSS than you can shake a stick at.

~~~
rgrieselhuber
Totally. Japan has quite a friendly attitude towards OSS and I come across it
all the time in the companies that I work with.

~~~
stcredzero
As I understand it, there are two streams of Japanese cultural life. One comes
from the Samurai, the feudal system, and the Bushido code. The other comes
from village/farm life. The latter emphasizes cooperation and community. Open
Source seems to be an excellent fit for the second.

(Corporate hierarchy is a good fit for the former. Organized crime hierarchy
even more so.)

~~~
patio11
_As I understand it, there are two streams of Japanese cultural life._

Do me a favor: any time you hear a claim about Japanese culture, mentally
replace all occurrences of Japan with Britain. If the statement strikes you as
merely wrong now, this heuristic tells you nothing. If the statement strikes
you as sounding like it came from a blithering idiot, consider that it may not
be as profound as it sounds.

 _As I understand it, there are two streams of British cultural life._

Wait, big country with long history and over a hundred million very diverse
people in it, and I think I can encapsulate it in two sentences. My blithering
idiot light is blinking.

 _One comes from the... feudal system_

Wait a second, what relevance do knights in armor have to the London stock
exchanges? Nothing, or I'm a blithering idiot.

 _The other comes from village/farm life. The latter emphasizes cooperation
and community. Open Source seems to be an excellent fit for the second._

So the Brits are uniquely good at open source because, at one point, they had
_agriculture_? AGRICULTURE?! Every modern nation has agriculture! Well, I
suppose it is an indirect pre-requisite for Computers on the Civilization tech
tree WHAT UTTER TRIPE AM I SAYING.

 _(Corporate hierarchy is a good fit for the former. Organized crime hierarchy
even more so.)_

In addition to the London Stock Exchange, the knights also cause crime!

~~~
stcredzero
_Wait a second, what relevance do knights in armor have to the London stock
exchanges? Nothing, or I'm a blithering idiot._

The comparison between corporate hierarchy and feudal hierarchy has been
around for many decades. Incidentally, both of these are only indirectly
related to _markets_. No claim of analogy is being made to markets. Please
keep these things straight.

<http://tinyurl.com/yb5tkka>

 _So the Brits are uniquely good at open source because, at one point, they
had agriculture? AGRICULTURE?! Every modern nation has agriculture!_

Actually, there are particular practical aspects of rice agriculture which are
especially conducive of cooperation. Basically, the irrigation requirements
make pre-industrial revolution rice agriculture impractical without a much
greater level of cooperation than is required of, say, someone with a
subsistence potato patch. (The idea is not mine. It comes from western
anthropology of Japan.)

<http://www.publicanthropology.org/Archive/HO1991.htm>

Thanks for mistaking your lacking a few pieces of information for someone
else's poor thinking. So all "agriculture" is functionally equivalent? It's
all an undifferentiated token? I guess that would make sense from a strategy
game POV.

 _Every modern nation has agriculture! Well, I suppose it is an indirect pre-
requisite for Computers on the Civilization tech tree WHAT UTTER TRIPE AM I
SAYING._

So you get your ideas about history from strategy games, project the same toy
world view on everyone else, then accuse them of being misinformed? Your
adjectives are appropriate, but perhaps they're directed at the wrong party?

Actually, the history of technology is much better represented as a vast,
dense, directed acyclic graph, not a tree as in most games. This might help
you out. There's a TV show if you have too short an attention span.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series)>

If you have a _really_ short attention span, try just skipping to the 3rd
episode. You can relate that one to Left4Dead.

