Hardy Heron notes

• Both Japanese IME (Microsoft) and Kanjipad (Linux) allow you to draw kanji on a graphic input area of the screen using the mouse. The big difference is, Microsoft recognizes your strokes immediately and accurately, while Kanjipad doesn't. Period. (Try entering 挑戦 — a challenge.)
  
  The difference between these two products is time and money. Open source software has neither in sufficient quantity to produce quality work without corporate sponsorship. I give Microsoft extremely high marks for their version.
  
  On the Mac side, Sergey Kurkin's JEDict graphical kanji input is just as good as Microsoft's. Linux is left swinging in the breeze, although there is some anecdotal evidence that Kanjipad works tolerably well with a $100 graphics pad (if that's ok with you.)


• It turns out that Ubuntu is a member of the Debian tribe, which means if you install Apache 2.2 you will find nothing in their accustomed locations. There's a README.Debian.gz file which some moron gzip'd, but which explains a lot, especially the empty httpd.conf file.


• Looking around this system after a few days of griping and late, latenight hours doing things I don't remember doing (I don't remember getting YouTube to work in Firefox, e.g., but it does), I find myself wondering where the killer app that makes me want to put Ubuntu on everybody's laptop might be. Mahjongg? Gjiten? Geany? If it's any good, it's already migrated to Vista or Leopard. Strange. Maybe it's just Ubuntu itself — absolutely secure, great handling and seaworthiness, but odd-looking, like a Chinese junk.