Don't get me wrong; I like Mononoke quite a lot. But it's Miyazaki's darkest film, made for a teenaged set, not a kiddie set like Spirited Away, the movie for which he won an Oscar. Add to this that the rerelease is in a foreign language, with subtitles (which is usually the kiss of death for theatrical showings)...why are they even bothering? It'll probably show on about three screens and about six people will see it, and Disney will end up another $10 million in the hole. That's not going to do a lot of good for Miyazaki's reputation.
In all fairness, the only thing that really sucks about it is the lack of letterboxing. The dub itself is an outstanding one...probably the best dub that Carl Macek has ever made. (They probably had to stand over him with a bullwhip to force him to do it. "No!" *whipcrack* "You do *NOT* dub in random dialogue to match mouth movements!" *whipcrack* "You do *NOT* dub in random dialogue when people's heads are turned!" *whipcrack* "You do *NOT* take liberties with the translation!")
The lack of original-language/subtitles is mildly annoying, but given that the target audience for Totoro is kids who can't read yet anyway, I don't feel bad about getting it for my nieces' enjoyment. It was cheap enough anyway.
The reason anime lips don't often sync to the Japanese dialogue is that, in many to most cases, animation over in Japan is dubbed exactly the opposite of how it is over here. In America, the voice track is recorded first, so that the animation can be perfectly synced to the mouth movements. In Japan, the movie is animated first, leaving about what they think is enough mouth movements for the dialogue, then the actors have to match their words to the movements as best they can (and most Japanese directors aren't terribly finicky about this. For an example, watch the Japanese making-of documentary on disc 2 of Spirited Away...there's a bit that covers the voice recording--and it's done in a movie theater style auditorium, with the actors matching their movements to the animated images on a big screen!
Well, you can read up pretty easily by just googling on "Harlan Ellison copyright binaries". The short form is that Ellison discovered some of his works were being posted to an alt.binaries group and got ticked off in his own uniquely Ellisonian ranting, raving, frothing-at-the-mouth way. AOL requested and received a summary judgment because, "Hey, we're complying with the DMCA, therefore we're not liable."
This appeal decision is basically a higher court saying, "Oh, no you're not in full compliance...not only did you change the email address without telling anyone, someone had already told you about it when your email address worked. Let's send this through that lower court one more time."
...or at least in one of the old compilation paperback books of MAD gags. It was a piece on telephones of the future, and there was this phone with all these pushbuttons to add various sound effects like "coughing" "office" "dentist" and so on.
When I was working at Kmart, I helped a fellow out like that. He was setting off the alarm, though I knew he'd paid for everything. On a hunch, I glanced down at his feet, saw a brand of leather shoe we carry, and said, "This is going to sound weird, but can I borrow your left shoe?" Ran it across my demagnetizing pad, it beeped and deactivated. That particular brand of shoe (I can't remember the name now) had a security tag built into the shoe itself as part of the manufacturing process.
1) Even if the money was designed to set off anti-theft systems (which would be dumb, for the reason I parenthetically enumerated above) it could only deliver one bit of data: on or off, yes or no, it was or was not tagged with a theft prevention device.
2) Even being able to track money at all is not new. Why d'ya think mobsters need to launder it?
First off, having worked at a Kmart for several years, I have a pretty good idea how the antitheft systems currently in place in most stores and libraries work, and they don't yet use RFID tags; they use some sort of magnetized strip that is then demagnetized by a magnetic pulse or a powerful magnet at the counter (thus the warning not to set credit cards on or near the demagnetizers, lest they be demagnetized too). In fact, RFID tags as the retailers are thinking of using them are partially intended to replace such a system (and partially to replace bar code scanners). Given that RFID tags are barely even starting to be used by distributors, you're not going to convince me that a truck stop of all places is at the head of the technology curve using this expensive equipment that almost no manufacturers even support anyway. Thus, even if an RFID tag was embedded in the money, that shouldn't set off a magnetic antitheft system at all, because the system is looking for something entirely different altogether.
Second, these magnetic antitheft systems are capable of being set off by odd things, such as items of personal electronics or odd bits of metal. (Heck, I even remember seeing one recent news story about a kid who sets off those scanners just by walking through them without anything in his pockets at all, just because his body happens to generate the precise frequency of electromagnetic energy they're keyed to.)
Third, RFID tag or not, those new bills do happen to have a strip of metal foil running through them, right at about the point of Jefferson's left eye...to make counterfeiting harder, you see. And when you subject metallic material to microwave energy, it heats up quickly...that's just basic physics.
So I'm willing to believe that the bills set off ordinary electromagnetic anti-theft detectors just by reflecting the microwaves in some funky way. (Or heck, maybe they even are magnetized in a way that anti-theft detectors can pick up...or at least can become so magnetized, since I doubt that they're all that way...if everybody shopping with new twenties was setting off anti-theft systems, we'd be hearing about that on the news, and the anti-theft system manufacturers would be making hasty adjustments or going out of business.) I'm even willing to believe that those foil strips will cause the money to scorch in the microwave. But it's one heck of a leap to conclude that this is because of Evil RFID Tags That The Nasty Gum'mint Is Sneaking Into Our Money.
I'd like to see some of the Baen fantasy works adapted. The Bahzell books by David Weber, the SERRAted Edge urban fantasy series by Mercedes Lackey, the Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon.
(Incidentally, all five thus far of the Baen bound-in freebie CDs' ISOs--the ones with explicit permission to copy and share noncommercially--are now being distributed via BitTorrent at oberon.zlynx.org: that's one each from David Weber, David Drake, and Mercedes Lackey, and two from John Ringo. Get 'em while they're well-seeded and don't forget to stay connected until you've uploaded at least as much as you downloaded!)
They were also only the third multiple-category-nominated movie to sweep every one, following "Gigi" and "The Last Emperor," which both went nine-for-nine. And, with eleven awards, also the biggest ever sweep.
Interesting that this story comes up so soon after I read Cory Doctorow's latest book, Eastern Standard Tribe. (Go to boingboing for the free ebook link.) The protagonist in that book is a user interface designer, because, as he explains in a conversation during the book, engineers know how to make stuff, but they don't tend to have a good understanding of how people actually use it.
Anyone remember that series of childrens' paperback books that were popular in the eighties, which were written in the third person and had the reader being a kid secret agent who carried around a disguised micro-micro computer and saved the day by writing a few well-placed BASIC programs?
That was the first thing I thought of when I saw this paperback-book-sized computer...finally technology has caught up to fiction.:)
Semi-topical perhaps, but if you're looking to find out about legit work-at-home jobs--not those envelope-stuffing or pyramid marketing scams--check out wahm.com, the "Work-At-Home Moms" (but the information's good for anyone with a work-at-home interest, Mom or not) website. They've got message boards, informational links, and debunkment of the most common scams. I've been looking for a resource like this for a long time.
The thing that probably motivated Blizzard to take action on this wasn't the copyright violation per se...it was the fact that someone had leaked the beta of Warcraft III, and someone had forked the bnetd project to allow unauthorized folks (non-beta-testers) to play it over their version of bnetd. (And to a lesser extent, it would also allow use of pirated copies of already-released Battlenet games that would be serial-number-checked by Battlenet.)
And so they bring out the copyright guns to shut it down...
OK, I was misremembering his function...but the point stands that he's still an EFF functionary. Not saying anything against him in this, though...more a comment about whoever posted or edited the post, given how careful/. is every time they link something from some other OSDN site to indicate that they're both members of the OSDN.:)
I went out and tried this tonight after work, and ended up purchasing eight bottles that are all winners. (Oddly enough, most of the bottles in one of the cooler weren't...I went through a dozen and only found two. But when I moved to another cooler, every single yellow-capped bottle I checked was.)
But it's not as easy as the article makes it look. Due to the ribbing around the neck of the bottle, the view can be pretty easily distorted and reflections from overhead light can get in the way, especially if there's condensation or fingerprint smears on the bottle already. I suspect that carrying a small penlight to shine through would improve visibility.
Imagine that...a weblog run by one of the leaders of the EFF, Cory Doctorow, praising the EFF's side in a court case. Isn't that just amazing?
(I'm not saying anything about the relative merits of the case here...just the amusement inherent in citing BoingBoing's opinion on an EFF affair as authoritative.)
Note that if you have an AT&T Wireless store in your area, you can get largely the same customer service there. In fact, in some instances (perticularly if you bought your phone there) you'll get better service there.
When I bought my phone, I was told that all usage of the data-network features for the first month was free. I asked very specifically about that, and they said so. So I didn't bother adding a data plan; they told me I could see how much usage I needed and then add that.
Subsequently, I got hit with $65 in charges for data usage. And when I called the CS dept, they told me that the most they could credit me was half, but perhaps the sales rep I spoke to at the store (who would know what was going on) could credit more.
So I went down to the store, and she did say she'd credit it...but for some reason it took another visit a month later to get the credit to appear.
I'm curious whether current AT&T customers (such as myself) will get the benefit of Cingular's plans (like, unlimited minutes to talk to other Cingular customers). My brother has a Cingular plan and is very happy with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't get me wrong; I like Mononoke quite a lot. But it's Miyazaki's darkest film, made for a teenaged set, not a kiddie set like Spirited Away, the movie for which he won an Oscar. Add to this that the rerelease is in a foreign language, with subtitles (which is usually the kiss of death for theatrical showings)...why are they even bothering? It'll probably show on about three screens and about six people will see it, and Disney will end up another $10 million in the hole. That's not going to do a lot of good for Miyazaki's reputation.
In all fairness, the only thing that really sucks about it is the lack of letterboxing. The dub itself is an outstanding one...probably the best dub that Carl Macek has ever made. (They probably had to stand over him with a bullwhip to force him to do it. "No!" *whipcrack* "You do *NOT* dub in random dialogue to match mouth movements!" *whipcrack* "You do *NOT* dub in random dialogue when people's heads are turned!" *whipcrack* "You do *NOT* take liberties with the translation!")
The lack of original-language/subtitles is mildly annoying, but given that the target audience for Totoro is kids who can't read yet anyway, I don't feel bad about getting it for my nieces' enjoyment. It was cheap enough anyway.
The reason anime lips don't often sync to the Japanese dialogue is that, in many to most cases, animation over in Japan is dubbed exactly the opposite of how it is over here. In America, the voice track is recorded first, so that the animation can be perfectly synced to the mouth movements. In Japan, the movie is animated first, leaving about what they think is enough mouth movements for the dialogue, then the actors have to match their words to the movements as best they can (and most Japanese directors aren't terribly finicky about this. For an example, watch the Japanese making-of documentary on disc 2 of Spirited Away...there's a bit that covers the voice recording--and it's done in a movie theater style auditorium, with the actors matching their movements to the animated images on a big screen!
Well, you can read up pretty easily by just googling on "Harlan Ellison copyright binaries". The short form is that Ellison discovered some of his works were being posted to an alt.binaries group and got ticked off in his own uniquely Ellisonian ranting, raving, frothing-at-the-mouth way. AOL requested and received a summary judgment because, "Hey, we're complying with the DMCA, therefore we're not liable."
This appeal decision is basically a higher court saying, "Oh, no you're not in full compliance...not only did you change the email address without telling anyone, someone had already told you about it when your email address worked. Let's send this through that lower court one more time."
IANAL and all that, of course.
...or at least in one of the old compilation paperback books of MAD gags. It was a piece on telephones of the future, and there was this phone with all these pushbuttons to add various sound effects like "coughing" "office" "dentist" and so on.
Once again, life imitates art.
When I was working at Kmart, I helped a fellow out like that. He was setting off the alarm, though I knew he'd paid for everything. On a hunch, I glanced down at his feet, saw a brand of leather shoe we carry, and said, "This is going to sound weird, but can I borrow your left shoe?" Ran it across my demagnetizing pad, it beeped and deactivated. That particular brand of shoe (I can't remember the name now) had a security tag built into the shoe itself as part of the manufacturing process.
Mia culpa. And it was also the right eye, not the left one. (Well, his right, our left.)
A couple more quick points I just thought of:
1) Even if the money was designed to set off anti-theft systems (which would be dumb, for the reason I parenthetically enumerated above) it could only deliver one bit of data: on or off, yes or no, it was or was not tagged with a theft prevention device.
2) Even being able to track money at all is not new. Why d'ya think mobsters need to launder it?
First off, having worked at a Kmart for several years, I have a pretty good idea how the antitheft systems currently in place in most stores and libraries work, and they don't yet use RFID tags; they use some sort of magnetized strip that is then demagnetized by a magnetic pulse or a powerful magnet at the counter (thus the warning not to set credit cards on or near the demagnetizers, lest they be demagnetized too). In fact, RFID tags as the retailers are thinking of using them are partially intended to replace such a system (and partially to replace bar code scanners). Given that RFID tags are barely even starting to be used by distributors, you're not going to convince me that a truck stop of all places is at the head of the technology curve using this expensive equipment that almost no manufacturers even support anyway. Thus, even if an RFID tag was embedded in the money, that shouldn't set off a magnetic antitheft system at all, because the system is looking for something entirely different altogether.
Second, these magnetic antitheft systems are capable of being set off by odd things, such as items of personal electronics or odd bits of metal. (Heck, I even remember seeing one recent news story about a kid who sets off those scanners just by walking through them without anything in his pockets at all, just because his body happens to generate the precise frequency of electromagnetic energy they're keyed to.)
Third, RFID tag or not, those new bills do happen to have a strip of metal foil running through them, right at about the point of Jefferson's left eye...to make counterfeiting harder, you see. And when you subject metallic material to microwave energy, it heats up quickly...that's just basic physics.
So I'm willing to believe that the bills set off ordinary electromagnetic anti-theft detectors just by reflecting the microwaves in some funky way. (Or heck, maybe they even are magnetized in a way that anti-theft detectors can pick up...or at least can become so magnetized, since I doubt that they're all that way...if everybody shopping with new twenties was setting off anti-theft systems, we'd be hearing about that on the news, and the anti-theft system manufacturers would be making hasty adjustments or going out of business.) I'm even willing to believe that those foil strips will cause the money to scorch in the microwave. But it's one heck of a leap to conclude that this is because of Evil RFID Tags That The Nasty Gum'mint Is Sneaking Into Our Money.
...that if you change one latter and swap two others, "WordPerfect" becomes "FordPrefect".
I'd like to see some of the Baen fantasy works adapted. The Bahzell books by David Weber, the SERRAted Edge urban fantasy series by Mercedes Lackey, the Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon.
(Incidentally, all five thus far of the Baen bound-in freebie CDs' ISOs--the ones with explicit permission to copy and share noncommercially--are now being distributed via BitTorrent at oberon.zlynx.org: that's one each from David Weber, David Drake, and Mercedes Lackey, and two from John Ringo. Get 'em while they're well-seeded and don't forget to stay connected until you've uploaded at least as much as you downloaded!)
They were also only the third multiple-category-nominated movie to sweep every one, following "Gigi" and "The Last Emperor," which both went nine-for-nine. And, with eleven awards, also the biggest ever sweep.
Interesting that this story comes up so soon after I read Cory Doctorow's latest book, Eastern Standard Tribe. (Go to boingboing for the free ebook link.) The protagonist in that book is a user interface designer, because, as he explains in a conversation during the book, engineers know how to make stuff, but they don't tend to have a good understanding of how people actually use it.
Anyone remember that series of childrens' paperback books that were popular in the eighties, which were written in the third person and had the reader being a kid secret agent who carried around a disguised micro-micro computer and saved the day by writing a few well-placed BASIC programs?
:)
That was the first thing I thought of when I saw this paperback-book-sized computer...finally technology has caught up to fiction.
...but I want to know when we get a forum with anime fanfic writer Stephen Gagne. :)
Semi-topical perhaps, but if you're looking to find out about legit work-at-home jobs--not those envelope-stuffing or pyramid marketing scams--check out wahm.com, the "Work-At-Home Moms" (but the information's good for anyone with a work-at-home interest, Mom or not) website. They've got message boards, informational links, and debunkment of the most common scams. I've been looking for a resource like this for a long time.
The thing that probably motivated Blizzard to take action on this wasn't the copyright violation per se...it was the fact that someone had leaked the beta of Warcraft III, and someone had forked the bnetd project to allow unauthorized folks (non-beta-testers) to play it over their version of bnetd. (And to a lesser extent, it would also allow use of pirated copies of already-released Battlenet games that would be serial-number-checked by Battlenet.)
And so they bring out the copyright guns to shut it down...
OK, I was misremembering his function...but the point stands that he's still an EFF functionary. Not saying anything against him in this, though...more a comment about whoever posted or edited the post, given how careful /. is every time they link something from some other OSDN site to indicate that they're both members of the OSDN. :)
The sad thing is, if I hadn't seen that article, I wouldn't have thought of trying that. :P
I went out and tried this tonight after work, and ended up purchasing eight bottles that are all winners. (Oddly enough, most of the bottles in one of the cooler weren't...I went through a dozen and only found two. But when I moved to another cooler, every single yellow-capped bottle I checked was.)
But it's not as easy as the article makes it look. Due to the ribbing around the neck of the bottle, the view can be pretty easily distorted and reflections from overhead light can get in the way, especially if there's condensation or fingerprint smears on the bottle already. I suspect that carrying a small penlight to shine through would improve visibility.
Actually, it's not the reflection that's being used. It's looking through the actual bottle.
Imagine that...a weblog run by one of the leaders of the EFF, Cory Doctorow, praising the EFF's side in a court case. Isn't that just amazing?
(I'm not saying anything about the relative merits of the case here...just the amusement inherent in citing BoingBoing's opinion on an EFF affair as authoritative.)
Note that if you have an AT&T Wireless store in your area, you can get largely the same customer service there. In fact, in some instances (perticularly if you bought your phone there) you'll get better service there.
When I bought my phone, I was told that all usage of the data-network features for the first month was free. I asked very specifically about that, and they said so. So I didn't bother adding a data plan; they told me I could see how much usage I needed and then add that.
Subsequently, I got hit with $65 in charges for data usage. And when I called the CS dept, they told me that the most they could credit me was half, but perhaps the sales rep I spoke to at the store (who would know what was going on) could credit more.
So I went down to the store, and she did say she'd credit it...but for some reason it took another visit a month later to get the credit to appear.
I'm curious whether current AT&T customers (such as myself) will get the benefit of Cingular's plans (like, unlimited minutes to talk to other Cingular customers). My brother has a Cingular plan and is very happy with it.
Not less carriers, fewer carriers. "Fewer" is used for quantities, "less" is used for measurements. "Add less flour, make fewer cookies."
(Grumble grumble pet peeve etc.)