Mahoromatic was pretty good, though it was based on a manga. Of course the second season had a horrible ending because the manga hasn't concluded and they had to make something up, but other than that it was a good series.
His and Her Circumstances was also well done. The lack of an ending in that series was due to the manga being incredibly long, but even with it basically just stopping, it's an excellent series.
Puchi Puri Yuushi, which is unlikely to ever be released in English, actually had a good ending and was entirely original. It was based on Gainax's own characters from the Princess Maker series of computer games.
These were all done after Eva. Gainax has lost massive amounts of talent over the years to other studios like Xebec, but they're not just sitting idle and releasing Eva crap. People still buy the Eva crap though and if it gets me another series like Puchi Puri Yuushi then I'm not going to complain.
Unless Mazda has done something really drastic with the design of the apex seals, the Renesis engine still will have to inject oil into the combustion chamber like the 13B (RX-7) did. So they really are a lot like 2 strokes in that they burn oil as part of the design. It's not nearly as much as a 2 stroke, but they do burn it.
Wankels are good for one thing: power to weight. The 1.3L 13B weighs only about 350lbs with it's accesories. That's about half what your standard aluminium block V6 weighs. With the help of a turbo, it's capable of 300hp without over-stressing it. But even the NA versions of the 13B have horrible gas miliage for a 1.3L engine.
Personally I think the answer is in turbo diesel hybrids. Toyota has the technology to do this, they're one of the leading technology companies in the small diesel market and easily the leading company in hybrid technology.
Copyrights apply only to forms of speech (expressions). Otherwise books and movies couldn't be copyrighted, they're considered speech.
In fact, what this judge just did was invalidate the copyrights on every videogame ever made. If they're not speech, you can't copyright them. You certainly can't copyright toys.
Ultimately this will be struck down on appeal because the judge arbitrarily decided what consitutes speech. That makes it too easy to have the courts just call whatever they don't like not speech and ban it.
It deffinitely has caffeine in North America. They even sell a caffeine-free version. Most sodas have some caffeine in them. Some, like Jolt, advertise for having rediculously large amounts of caffeine in them.
I've been playing DAoC since beta 4 and it's so refreshingly different from Eq. Sure, you still level forever, but there's so else you can do if you want. Take up crafting and make weapons/armor, or get a party together for some realm vs realm combat. There's actually a reason to keep playing once you hit the level cap. In Eq you hit the level cap and then sell your character on Ebay.
Plus Mythic doesn't seem to absolutely loathe their customers like Verant does. Everquest is like an abusive family that won't ever let you leave.
The scary thing is, with the new "media type filtering" on the new routers mentioned a couple days ago, I could see the MPAA and RIAA suing to have all MP3s and DivX movies filtered out at the router level.
I remeber maybe a year ago a Sony exec hinting at exactly this. It's certainly their plan; to bring the entire Internet to heel.
This isn't another case of an open-source clone of the Mac GUI, this is Apple shutting down a group wanting to make a theme editor for MacOS. The themes the program generates are only/for/ MacOS. And the editor merely allows the end user to change their own theme, the program itself is not a theme.
About all Apple has to stand on here is the reverse-engineering clause in the EULA. I don't think stopping reverse-engineering for personal use is such a great idea. Nor do I agree with the shady nature of EULAs in the first place. Apple will gain nothing from this except a lot of venom from OSS/FS advocates. Letting end-users change their themes doesn't seem like a horrible loss of revenue for Apple. So bashing enthusiasts over the head with legal threats is probably a pretty bone-headed thing to do.
Consoles have never been made out of entirely custom chips. That's way too expensive, even for Sony.
NES, Genesis and SNES all had off-the-shelf CPU designs. They all also featured custom graphics chips. The reason SNES was "better" was because it was nearly three years younger than Genesis. Saturn used off-the-shelf CPUs (SH-2s) and three custom graphics chips. N64 used a MIPS R4000 CPU (old SGI design) and custom graphics (also by SGI), PSX used an R3000 (even older SGI design) and custom graphics. PS2 uses a R5000 (reletively dated SGI design) as the CPU. Gamecube is using a PowerPC.
Dreamcast fits this too. There was a PC version of the 3D tech used in DC, but make no mistake, the DC version of the PowerVR2 was the first. Considering the cost of the machine, Dreamcast still outclases PS2. There isn't a PS2 game out there that looks better than DC's best. They may come, but Dreamcast's hardware was never part of the equation. The hardware, and the tools to use it, are the best out there in terms of price and performance.
Why do you think the machine has become a hacker's favorite toy?
This is the sort of thing that raises the hackles of the ACLU here in the US. Religious orginizations are given some leeway in their hiring practices, but not like this. If you're a janitor at a muslim community center, for instance, they can't require that you convert because your faith has nothing to do with the function of the job.
Generally speaking though, they get away with some descrimination because people don't know better when asked "what's you're religion" during an interview. Just asking that question is, in most cases, illegal. But this goes on at regular businesses too (where there's no gray area to hide in).
Of course, this is in the US, but I imagine similar situations exist in a lot of other countries.
I'm all for anonymous, lawful communication, but not at the expense of having no way to trace drug sales and child porn back to the source.
Think about it, how many of you don't use the phone because the call is going to be logged. Where you doing somthing illegal at the time?
That's the scariest sentiment that comes out of things like this. That suveyliance is fine because ordinary, law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear, right? That's just the naive reaction these "security" agencies want. It leads to unjust harrasment and imprisonment of law-abiding citizens. "Sir, our logs show you have been sharing DeCSS...you'll have to come with us," which leads to "We show that you've been associating with dissidents, we have some questions we'd like to ask..."
Rest assured, you will be imprisoned for the sites you visit, the emails you write and the company you keep. And it'll be possible because "they" know all about you.
I can't stop myself from replying to lists. Call it a compulsion...
Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore, published and developed by Tecmo
I liked this game better when I played it on Dreamcast six months ago. And it even had better, less jagged graphics then. New costumes though...
Eternal Ring, published by Agetec and developed by From Software
Evergrace, published by Agetec and developed by From Software
FantaVisionÔ , published by SCEAM I have a really hard time even telling these games apart. Fantavision is such a yawn-fest that some places are requiring you buy the game to get the system.
Gun Griffon Blaze, published by Working Designs and developed by Game Arts Wow, a 2D shooter with 3D graphics. Where have I seen this before?
Kessen, published by Electronic Arts and developed by Koei
It's Romance of the Three Kingdoms with graphics ripped out of Shogun. Neat idea, but Americans hate these kinds of games. Myself included.
Ridge Racer V, published and developed by Namco I think I played this game a couple years ago, when it was called R4. Nice shiney, jagged, plastic cars though. Think I'll go back to F355, a superior game in every imaginable way.
Street Fighter® EX3, published and developed by Capcom I think it's been pretty much established that this game is crap. It was ported from a PSX-based arcade machine. And 3D street fighter was a bad idea to begin with...
Summoner, published by THQ and developed by Volition, Inc Wow, they fixed the jaggies...to bad about the game itself though...
Tekken Tag Tournament, published and developed by Namco I think when this game was called Tekken 3 it...oh fudge it...
Unreal Tournament, published by Infogrames and developed by Epic Games Very nice tech demo. Really shows off what the machine can do with a one year old PC game. The lack of a modem means you'll be playing with yourself though... Kinda guts the whole concept of this game.
I'll stop there, it's getting silly. My point is, the games just aren't worth the $400 (system, game, memory card, retailer gouging, etc) price of entry. Especially when Dreamcast is keeping me more than busy enough.
You must be thinking of the CPS series, which Capcom hasn't been using for quite some time. Since Marvel vs Capcom 2 they've been using NAOMI, which is about as cutting-edge as arcade hardware gets right now (at least until NAOMI 2).
It's good enough to power F355 Challenge, which is probably the most impressive game in any arcade at the moment. You're not going to be emulating this thing any time soon.
...Are not backed up by force of law. A minor can watch NC-17 movies all day if he or she wants to (and they aren't covered under local pornography ordinances). The system is completely voluntary, the trick is that theaters or movie rental chains that break the rules can be cut off from their supply of movies by MPAA members.
My understanding is that the system would be unconstitutional were it legally enforced. Since movies are regularly cut down to make the R rating (or else face basically no market for an NC-17) the government would essentially be saying "censor your movies, or we'll not let you have a market for it", which seems like a pretty blatant violation of the First Amendment. It would be blocking speech between adults.
This ordinance though... The "harmful to minors" part is probably the week link. Can the city prove violent games harm minors? No, years of psychological research has still registered a big "inconclusive" on that. For any study the city commissions, the plaintiffs could cite 10 more that say the opposite. The likening of violence to pornography is the culprit here. It's pretty obvious that porn isn't nessesarily healthy for five year olds, but violence? Besides, even the most realistic arcade game is stil protraying something not quite realistic...and still something a kid could see far more of on television.
The ordinance itself is aimed at removing the machines, making them uneconomical to operate, not nessesarily keeping them from minors.
The wording of the ruling is also frightening. The judge comes very close to saying that video games aren't speech, or at least not protected speech. Does this mean that, in the future, if the government wants to censor something all they have to do is rule that it isn't protected by the First Amendment?
You'd think these politicians would be a little afraid. I mean, gamers are all trained snipers that have an insatiable appetite for blood, right?
This is Fox News, aka "News for Fundies, stuff no one cares about". I'm surprised so few people notice their subtle fundamentalist bias. But you notice there's no mention that these titles will still be subject to the MPAA as well as classified as adults only in most places. The one person they actually quote is from a fundamentalist anti-porn (read: really, majorly sexually repressed) organization. Pretty damned obvious what their stance will be.
Fox news needs to stop this kind of thing. It's just plain wrong to bias every story like this and then try to present it as completely secular.
It's at least theoretically possible to view PS2 games on a VGA monitor, but it takes a line-doubler since it outputs 640x240 (640x480 interlaced) rather than Dreamcast's usual 640x480 (progressive when using the VGA box, downsampled for TVs, hence the lack of "jaggies" in DC games). Line doubling = expensive. I don't know of any specific models of PS2 VGA adapters being sold, but I've heard of hacks to build one. Even if you had one though, it probably wouldn't help DVDs. I'm not even sure PS2 is equipped to display DVDs in progressive mode. The resolution is always 704x480 for 1.33:1 releases, so there's no help there either.
I'm amazed no one has mentioned a broadband connection (DSL or Cable, not optical terabit) as part of their wishlist for coming holidy. Sure, if its available in your area you already have it (probably), but most people just wish Verizon, Bell South or whomever would just hurry up and make broadband connections available in their area.
When legitimate digital music is distributed online, not only will Hell look rather like Canada in January, but whatever piss-poor encryption they use will be cracked instantly so people can do what they like with the music. SDMI is not convenient, it is cumbersome. Consumers won't like it at all except maybe as a new source of rippable music.
RIAA would have an even harder time getting rid of "DeSDMI" than the MPAA is having getting rid of DeCSS (my cat has a DeCSS mirror...). People have a geniune want as well as a utilitarian need to rip music into MP3 form. That doesn't quite exist with DVDs. Everyone will have a copy of DeSDMI and they'll actually/use/ it.
While the MPAA is starting to see that they're fighting a hopeless battle, RIAA are running around with their heads chopped off, not realizing they're already dead.
Personally, I cant even watch Tenchi on cartoon network because I know they have carved the storyline to pieces so that they can insert 8 min of commercials and translated ineffectively so that the voice "talent" can speak on queue.
You're thinking of Fox (home of Digimon and Escaflowne) and the WB (Pokemon and "Cardcaptors"). They do horrible, unspeakable things to anime. Cartoon Network does not.
Sure, cuts are made, but they aren't drastic ones. People still die, they still have meaningful things to say, they just don't bleed (much) and they don't curse (cept the stray "damnit" in Tenchi once...). There's no cutting done for time, rather they remove the OP sequence to compensate for the extra commercials (there aren't, however, any more commercial breaks than the Japanese broadcast). Translations and dubbing are done by professionals, not hacks and in the case of both Gundam Wing and Tenchi there are some vocal roles that sound/better/ in the dub than in Japanese. Blasphemy you say? Try watching them sometime, you obviously haven't.
Gundam Wing singlehandedly set a new standard for how a conversion to US TV should work. The artistic quality of the show is completely intact and censoring is kept to a very bare minimum. This is why so many fans were outraged at the chopping of Cardcaptors (Card Captor Sakura) and Escaflowne. These shows have been dumbed down, rewritten and had entire episodes removed and condensed. Compared to what Fox and the WB (who both seem to employ Carl Macek) do, Cartoon Network shows remarkable respect for anime in it's original form.
I find that a lot of the people who bash Shin Tenchi Muyo/Tenchi is Tokyo are people who never really gave the show a chance. It doesn't get its act together until after 5 or 6 episodes and for that reason I think a lot of people simply stopped watching and wrote the show off.
It's certainly a change from the OAVs or Tenchi Universe, but Tenchi Universe was a pretty big change from the OAVs. Personally I think that, take on its own merits, Tenchi in Tokyo is a more solid show than Tenchi Universe overall. Universe makes up for being totally bland and lacking in substance most of the time by having a really solid ending.
But neither are as good as the OAVs. The only problems with the OAVs are A) Fusing Ryo-Ohki with the Masu (resulting in a dumb tranformation into some mutant toddler that isn't nearly as cute as cabbit form) and B) The horrible, evil, sadistic, life-threatening lack of an conclusion.
Actually, Lain was a late-night TV show. Really good production values, so its easy to mistake it for an OAV (like people often do with Eva)
NGEvangelion = 26 eps + 2 (3, 2 combines into 1) movies
Bit more complex than that. There are essentially two movies, but the second one has two acts and has been split up too many ways to list. There are also two alternate ending episodes that are sort of part of one of the movies. See, it isn't just the show's content that is complex, keeping track of the show itself can be hard to do. But neither of the movies are available in the US officially yet.
EH = dunno. There are OVA's & possibly a movie as well, at least.
El Hazard kinda works like Tenchi in a way. There are multiple universes. It works out like this: OAV1 (OAV universe), The Wanderers (26ep TV show, its own universe), OAV2 (screwed up mix of OAV and TV universes) and the most recent one, Return to El Hazard (26ep TV series, new universe).
Network news programs tend to be completely sensational in their coverage. Lately I hear no end of coverage on the two major political parties (neither of which I'm wasting a vote on) with the only coverage of a third-party being a story on fights breaking out at the Reform Party convention. Or I hear about some poor saps in SUVs having their tires explode (I don't feel much pity for them, what with all the SUVs killing people in normal cars) or how tragically pathetic the Russian military is with their brand new subs that can sink themselves. Worst of the worst is "entertainment news" where we hear about famous people's boring "real life".
At least with the Daily Show all of the stuff I hate about the news is parodied. If I can't be informed about issues I do care about, at least I can be entertained with satire of stories I don't care about.
I don't know of EULA clauses like this really being tested in a court, but I can't imagine that MS, or anyone for that matter, could exert control over software they've sold after it's been sold.
About the only rights left to MS after they've sold somone a copy of Windows is the right to exclusive distribution. That is, you can' buy a copy of Windows and then sell copies of that copy (but you can sell your copy). The same thing applies to books and all other copyrighted works. You buy a book and you can read it, burn it, rip out the pages and make paper animals out of them or you can use it to prop up a rickety old chair. The publisher can't take your copy, they can't bar you from reselling it and they have no grounds to sue you over what they might deem "innapropriate uses".
Software companies seem to think they have a right to special protections so they use EULAs (and spend millions in lawyers) and try to circumvent fair use, but I doubt any court would see what is obviously a copyright issue as a contractural one. UCITA would change that, which is why it is such a huge concern. But UCITA is a state law and isn't even in effect anywhere because of all the heat it's getting from consumer groups.
As I understand it, RIAA speaks on behalf of its members. They'd have to have the legal right to or else they couldn't have brought the charges in the first place. They'd have had no copyrights to defend.
Slashdot Mirror
His and Her Circumstances was also well done. The lack of an ending in that series was due to the manga being incredibly long, but even with it basically just stopping, it's an excellent series.
Puchi Puri Yuushi, which is unlikely to ever be released in English, actually had a good ending and was entirely original. It was based on Gainax's own characters from the Princess Maker series of computer games.
These were all done after Eva. Gainax has lost massive amounts of talent over the years to other studios like Xebec, but they're not just sitting idle and releasing Eva crap. People still buy the Eva crap though and if it gets me another series like Puchi Puri Yuushi then I'm not going to complain.
Wankels are good for one thing: power to weight. The 1.3L 13B weighs only about 350lbs with it's accesories. That's about half what your standard aluminium block V6 weighs. With the help of a turbo, it's capable of 300hp without over-stressing it. But even the NA versions of the 13B have horrible gas miliage for a 1.3L engine.
Personally I think the answer is in turbo diesel hybrids. Toyota has the technology to do this, they're one of the leading technology companies in the small diesel market and easily the leading company in hybrid technology.
Copyrights apply only to forms of speech (expressions). Otherwise books and movies couldn't be copyrighted, they're considered speech.
In fact, what this judge just did was invalidate the copyrights on every videogame ever made. If they're not speech, you can't copyright them. You certainly can't copyright toys.
Ultimately this will be struck down on appeal because the judge arbitrarily decided what consitutes speech. That makes it too easy to have the courts just call whatever they don't like not speech and ban it.
It deffinitely has caffeine in North America. They even sell a caffeine-free version. Most sodas have some caffeine in them. Some, like Jolt, advertise for having rediculously large amounts of caffeine in them.
I've been playing DAoC since beta 4 and it's so refreshingly different from Eq. Sure, you still level forever, but there's so else you can do if you want. Take up crafting and make weapons/armor, or get a party together for some realm vs realm combat. There's actually a reason to keep playing once you hit the level cap. In Eq you hit the level cap and then sell your character on Ebay.
Plus Mythic doesn't seem to absolutely loathe their customers like Verant does. Everquest is like an abusive family that won't ever let you leave.
I remeber maybe a year ago a Sony exec hinting at exactly this. It's certainly their plan; to bring the entire Internet to heel.
And it was released well before November.
About all Apple has to stand on here is the reverse-engineering clause in the EULA. I don't think stopping reverse-engineering for personal use is such a great idea. Nor do I agree with the shady nature of EULAs in the first place. Apple will gain nothing from this except a lot of venom from OSS/FS advocates. Letting end-users change their themes doesn't seem like a horrible loss of revenue for Apple. So bashing enthusiasts over the head with legal threats is probably a pretty bone-headed thing to do.
Consoles have never been made out of entirely custom chips. That's way too expensive, even for Sony.
NES, Genesis and SNES all had off-the-shelf CPU designs. They all also featured custom graphics chips. The reason SNES was "better" was because it was nearly three years younger than Genesis. Saturn used off-the-shelf CPUs (SH-2s) and three custom graphics chips. N64 used a MIPS R4000 CPU (old SGI design) and custom graphics (also by SGI), PSX used an R3000 (even older SGI design) and custom graphics. PS2 uses a R5000 (reletively dated SGI design) as the CPU. Gamecube is using a PowerPC.
Dreamcast fits this too. There was a PC version of the 3D tech used in DC, but make no mistake, the DC version of the PowerVR2 was the first. Considering the cost of the machine, Dreamcast still outclases PS2. There isn't a PS2 game out there that looks better than DC's best. They may come, but Dreamcast's hardware was never part of the equation. The hardware, and the tools to use it, are the best out there in terms of price and performance.
Why do you think the machine has become a hacker's favorite toy?
Generally speaking though, they get away with some descrimination because people don't know better when asked "what's you're religion" during an interview. Just asking that question is, in most cases, illegal. But this goes on at regular businesses too (where there's no gray area to hide in).
Of course, this is in the US, but I imagine similar situations exist in a lot of other countries.
Think about it, how many of you don't use the phone because the call is going to be logged. Where you doing somthing illegal at the time?
That's the scariest sentiment that comes out of things like this. That suveyliance is fine because ordinary, law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear, right? That's just the naive reaction these "security" agencies want. It leads to unjust harrasment and imprisonment of law-abiding citizens. "Sir, our logs show you have been sharing DeCSS...you'll have to come with us," which leads to "We show that you've been associating with dissidents, we have some questions we'd like to ask..."
Rest assured, you will be imprisoned for the sites you visit, the emails you write and the company you keep. And it'll be possible because "they" know all about you.
Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore, published and developed by Tecmo
I liked this game better when I played it on Dreamcast six months ago. And it even had better, less jagged graphics then. New costumes though...
Eternal Ring, published by Agetec and developed by From Software
Evergrace, published by Agetec and developed by From Software
FantaVisionÔ , published by SCEAM
I have a really hard time even telling these games apart. Fantavision is such a yawn-fest that some places are requiring you buy the game to get the system.
Gun Griffon Blaze, published by Working Designs and developed by Game Arts
Wow, a 2D shooter with 3D graphics. Where have I seen this before?
Kessen, published by Electronic Arts and developed by Koei
It's Romance of the Three Kingdoms with graphics ripped out of Shogun. Neat idea, but Americans hate these kinds of games. Myself included.
Ridge Racer V, published and developed by Namco
I think I played this game a couple years ago, when it was called R4. Nice shiney, jagged, plastic cars though. Think I'll go back to F355, a superior game in every imaginable way.
Street Fighter® EX3, published and developed by Capcom
I think it's been pretty much established that this game is crap. It was ported from a PSX-based arcade machine. And 3D street fighter was a bad idea to begin with...
Summoner, published by THQ and developed by Volition, Inc
Wow, they fixed the jaggies...to bad about the game itself though...
Tekken Tag Tournament, published and developed by Namco
I think when this game was called Tekken 3 it...oh fudge it...
Unreal Tournament, published by Infogrames and developed by Epic Games
Very nice tech demo. Really shows off what the machine can do with a one year old PC game. The lack of a modem means you'll be playing with yourself though... Kinda guts the whole concept of this game.
I'll stop there, it's getting silly. My point is, the games just aren't worth the $400 (system, game, memory card, retailer gouging, etc) price of entry. Especially when Dreamcast is keeping me more than busy enough.
It's good enough to power F355 Challenge, which is probably the most impressive game in any arcade at the moment. You're not going to be emulating this thing any time soon.
My understanding is that the system would be unconstitutional were it legally enforced. Since movies are regularly cut down to make the R rating (or else face basically no market for an NC-17) the government would essentially be saying "censor your movies, or we'll not let you have a market for it", which seems like a pretty blatant violation of the First Amendment. It would be blocking speech between adults.
This ordinance though... The "harmful to minors" part is probably the week link. Can the city prove violent games harm minors? No, years of psychological research has still registered a big "inconclusive" on that. For any study the city commissions, the plaintiffs could cite 10 more that say the opposite. The likening of violence to pornography is the culprit here. It's pretty obvious that porn isn't nessesarily healthy for five year olds, but violence? Besides, even the most realistic arcade game is stil protraying something not quite realistic...and still something a kid could see far more of on television.
The ordinance itself is aimed at removing the machines, making them uneconomical to operate, not nessesarily keeping them from minors.
The wording of the ruling is also frightening. The judge comes very close to saying that video games aren't speech, or at least not protected speech. Does this mean that, in the future, if the government wants to censor something all they have to do is rule that it isn't protected by the First Amendment?
You'd think these politicians would be a little afraid. I mean, gamers are all trained snipers that have an insatiable appetite for blood, right?
Fox news needs to stop this kind of thing. It's just plain wrong to bias every story like this and then try to present it as completely secular.
It's at least theoretically possible to view PS2 games on a VGA monitor, but it takes a line-doubler since it outputs 640x240 (640x480 interlaced) rather than Dreamcast's usual 640x480 (progressive when using the VGA box, downsampled for TVs, hence the lack of "jaggies" in DC games). Line doubling = expensive. I don't know of any specific models of PS2 VGA adapters being sold, but I've heard of hacks to build one. Even if you had one though, it probably wouldn't help DVDs. I'm not even sure PS2 is equipped to display DVDs in progressive mode. The resolution is always 704x480 for 1.33:1 releases, so there's no help there either.
RIAA would have an even harder time getting rid of "DeSDMI" than the MPAA is having getting rid of DeCSS (my cat has a DeCSS mirror...). People have a geniune want as well as a utilitarian need to rip music into MP3 form. That doesn't quite exist with DVDs. Everyone will have a copy of DeSDMI and they'll actually /use/ it.
While the MPAA is starting to see that they're fighting a hopeless battle, RIAA are running around with their heads chopped off, not realizing they're already dead.
You're thinking of Fox (home of Digimon and Escaflowne) and the WB (Pokemon and "Cardcaptors"). They do horrible, unspeakable things to anime. Cartoon Network does not.
Sure, cuts are made, but they aren't drastic ones. People still die, they still have meaningful things to say, they just don't bleed (much) and they don't curse (cept the stray "damnit" in Tenchi once...). There's no cutting done for time, rather they remove the OP sequence to compensate for the extra commercials (there aren't, however, any more commercial breaks than the Japanese broadcast). Translations and dubbing are done by professionals, not hacks and in the case of both Gundam Wing and Tenchi there are some vocal roles that sound /better/ in the dub than in Japanese. Blasphemy you say? Try watching them sometime, you obviously haven't.
Gundam Wing singlehandedly set a new standard for how a conversion to US TV should work. The artistic quality of the show is completely intact and censoring is kept to a very bare minimum. This is why so many fans were outraged at the chopping of Cardcaptors (Card Captor Sakura) and Escaflowne. These shows have been dumbed down, rewritten and had entire episodes removed and condensed. Compared to what Fox and the WB (who both seem to employ Carl Macek) do, Cartoon Network shows remarkable respect for anime in it's original form.
It's certainly a change from the OAVs or Tenchi Universe, but Tenchi Universe was a pretty big change from the OAVs. Personally I think that, take on its own merits, Tenchi in Tokyo is a more solid show than Tenchi Universe overall. Universe makes up for being totally bland and lacking in substance most of the time by having a really solid ending.
But neither are as good as the OAVs. The only problems with the OAVs are A) Fusing Ryo-Ohki with the Masu (resulting in a dumb tranformation into some mutant toddler that isn't nearly as cute as cabbit form) and B) The horrible, evil, sadistic, life-threatening lack of an conclusion.
Actually, Lain was a late-night TV show. Really good production values, so its easy to mistake it for an OAV (like people often do with Eva)
Bit more complex than that. There are essentially two movies, but the second one has two acts and has been split up too many ways to list. There are also two alternate ending episodes that are sort of part of one of the movies. See, it isn't just the show's content that is complex, keeping track of the show itself can be hard to do. But neither of the movies are available in the US officially yet.
El Hazard kinda works like Tenchi in a way. There are multiple universes. It works out like this: OAV1 (OAV universe), The Wanderers (26ep TV show, its own universe), OAV2 (screwed up mix of OAV and TV universes) and the most recent one, Return to El Hazard (26ep TV series, new universe).
Network news programs tend to be completely sensational in their coverage. Lately I hear no end of coverage on the two major political parties (neither of which I'm wasting a vote on) with the only coverage of a third-party being a story on fights breaking out at the Reform Party convention. Or I hear about some poor saps in SUVs having their tires explode (I don't feel much pity for them, what with all the SUVs killing people in normal cars) or how tragically pathetic the Russian military is with their brand new subs that can sink themselves. Worst of the worst is "entertainment news" where we hear about famous people's boring "real life".
At least with the Daily Show all of the stuff I hate about the news is parodied. If I can't be informed about issues I do care about, at least I can be entertained with satire of stories I don't care about.
About the only rights left to MS after they've sold somone a copy of Windows is the right to exclusive distribution. That is, you can' buy a copy of Windows and then sell copies of that copy (but you can sell your copy). The same thing applies to books and all other copyrighted works. You buy a book and you can read it, burn it, rip out the pages and make paper animals out of them or you can use it to prop up a rickety old chair. The publisher can't take your copy, they can't bar you from reselling it and they have no grounds to sue you over what they might deem "innapropriate uses".
Software companies seem to think they have a right to special protections so they use EULAs (and spend millions in lawyers) and try to circumvent fair use, but I doubt any court would see what is obviously a copyright issue as a contractural one. UCITA would change that, which is why it is such a huge concern. But UCITA is a state law and isn't even in effect anywhere because of all the heat it's getting from consumer groups.
But, IANAL.