An open-ended question about the appeal of anime is one of the oldest and most shop-worn trolls on Slashdot.
It's only slightly being asking, "I'm interested in anime, but don't know where to start. Can somebody recommend some good shows or movies for me?" and slightly ahead of "isn't anime mostly just giant robots and tentacle pr0n?"
Make no mistake, the Japanese -are- pissed because as far as they're concerned, fansubs devalue their product.
Says you.
1. I defy you to cite examples of Japanese anime houses (not US dub shops) objecting to the fansubs of unlicensed shows.
2. No US media company would ever have bought hard-to-categorize shows like Death Note, Nana or Prince of Tennis before the fansub community proved that there was a market for such shows among western viewers. Fansubs are basically free market research for the distributors.
3. The big money in US anime distribution comes from dubbing shows with English-speaking actors and putting it on cable TV. When a show is released to DVD as a subtitle-only set (such as season 2 of SuperGALS!, or the "Uncut" editions of Seasons 1 & 2 of Sailor Moon,) sales have been lackluster at best. Fansubs don't cut in to TV viewership numbers on Adult Swim. If anything, they boost ratings and DVD sales, because by the time, for example, Death Note hit cable TV last month, the show was one of the hottest word-of-mouth topics at anime conventions and on web forums for over a year. No amount of traditional marketing could have done for that show what a few dozen "L" and "Misa" cosplayers at each and every con last summer accomplished to get people curious about it.
Generality of the genre - it's like saying "there's a lot of people that watch sitcoms"
Actually, I'd say that it would be more like somebody saying, "lots of people are into stage plays", or "there sure are a lot of people who read books."
Bottom line: Anime is a medium for storytelling, not a genre.
There are certain types of stories which are popular on Japanese TV which haven't caught on nearly as much here ("mecha" sci-fi, early teen romance, ghost stories, etc.), but for every show like "RaXephon" (a giant-robot show with strictly nerd-only appeal), I can name a show like "Nana", which plays like a very typical romantic drama, or "Sailor Moon", which bears striking similarities to the US hit TV series, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
And what's wrong with something that appeals only to nerds, anyway? There are a LOT of nerds in the world.
The point is "suspension of disbelief". With text filtering out all the nuances, you can imagine the voice of the on-screen character, and see the chat as coming from Ragnar Wormtoter. Voice chat however comes from Jimmy, the kid behind the character, and can be incongruous with the visual of the hulking big bloke with a big hammer.
I will never buy another GM product after watching that video!
I will never buy another GM product either.
Not because I buy the tin-foil-hat nonsense of the "Who Killed the Electric Car?" documentary, but because GM cars really suck. They're almost as bad as Fords.
And don't give me that "buy American" crap. If I buy a Toyota, Nissan, Honda, BMW, or Volkswagon, the odds are high that it was built right here in the USA by American workers with American parts. The Ford Crown Vic I was driving for the past few years was built in Canada, and all of the "big three" US makers have (or will have) plants in places like Mexico making cars for the US market.
"What's that, T-Mobile won't let you talk to VOIP users? Come to OUR phone service. We don't cripple our phones. You can talk to anybody."
All it takes is a critical mass of users of these new phones, say 5 percent of poor teenagers who don't want expensive phone plans. Then it switches from "VOIP phones can't call T-Mobile users" to "T-Mobile phones can't work with VOIP users", which would pretty much spell the end of T-Mobile in the UK.
Technology is on the verge of surpassing the cell phone business model. All it will take is a few tiny third-world countries to take a small chunk of WFO money and build a nation-wide free Wi-Fi network, supporting VOIP phones for anybody who can afford one, and soon a lot of slightly bigger countries will see that proof-of-concept and start asking, "why not here?" Things could really snowball from there. In fact, were I a Rich Bastard trying to launch a service like that, I'd probably bankroll some infrastructure myself in a couple highly-visible small nations... say Dubai, South Korea, or the like. Let everybody see just how good we could all have it, and see what that sets in motion.
The only non-console game to matter at all in the last four years, and the biggest PC game of all time, to be certain, (the only PC game I've bothered with recently, and I know many who can say the same)... was released simultaneously for Macs and PCs. It plays fine on old G4 Macs as well as the newest systems.
Debate over. There is nothing wrong with the state of Mac gaming, in terms of keeping up with what's out there. Why should I care if this month's "Yet Another First-Person Shooter" game, using the same Quake or UT engine as everybody else, doesn't come out for the Mac?
For that matter, with Macs running on Intel, why should I care if ANY game comes out for OS X anymore? Just like every Linux user does (but doesn't admit to) I can reboot into Windows when I want to play games... If any PC-only game comes out that's worth the hassle. I don't see a lot of risk of that being the case.
It's not as if having 600 albums (or whatever) on your iPod makes it heavier than having 10.
With my whole library on my iPod, I never have to think about "what do I want to listen to today" before heading out the door. I grab the iPod, and I have it. My playlists can be made from my entire collection without thinking about what may or may not be available on a given day. I only need to sync when I add songs & albums. The advantages of convenience are enormous, and well worth the occasional hassle of a little extra scrolling.
Plus, with the ample space of the 80GB iPod, I can rip my CDs to Apple Lossless instead of lossy AAC or MP3 files. Not a huge deal in the car, but since my iTunes library is also hooked up to my home stereo (and my CD collection is boxed up in the back of a basement closet), it's nice to have everything ripped in the best-sounding format possible.
Well, it's about the size of a RAZR plus an iPod Nano, so if you've been toting both around already, it's not so bad, size-wise.
I wouldn't even mind the expensive data plan, if it was good enough that I could drop my DSL at home, and use bluetooth computer connections to the phone for all my at-home Internet needs.
But to pay another huge monthly wad of cash on top of what I'm already spending on broadband service, just so I can use Google Maps without pulling into a Panera Bread parking lot first to sponge off their Wi-Fi? No thanks.
But what I haven't yet been able to figure out is why anybody except the most extreme junkies is going to purchase this phone.
I don't see it as a phone with an iPod & Browser in it.
I see it as an at-long-last replacement for the old Newton, with a phone in it.
If, by "the most extreme junkies", you mean 1 percent of the current cell phone market, then Apple hits their sales target for this phone right there. Get a few casual and/or business users on board, and it becomes one of Apple's most successful product launches, ever.
But they'll be doing it without me, so long as it's locked into high-priced, low-performance, long-term contracts.
Now tell me, if you're dropping around $500 bucks on a cellphone, do you think you'll blink at having to pay an extra $9.99 dollars a month? Further, if you have the ability to drop $500 on a cell phone, chances are pretty good you're probably already have access to Edge (or it's equivilent with another provider) already.
I currently pay about $25 per month, total, for my phone service (by lumping into a T-Mobile "family" plan with some friends).
I don't want to pay $60+ per month for a new voice/data service.
However, I would be more than willing to buy a $600 phone/iPod/WiFi Internet device, if I could keep my current voice service provider and ignore the EDGE contract. It would sometimes save me from toting a separate iPod around, and occasionally even save me from toting a laptop around.
That kind of gadget is worth a few hundred bucks to me... It's just not worth locking in to over $2000 worth of services with a long-term voice/data provider contract.
I'm an Apple junkie going all the way back to the System 7 days. I currently use multiple Macs, have an Airport hub, and am on my second (probably not last) iPod. I have drunk deep of the Kool-ade, and asked for seconds. You will seldom find a bigger Apple zealot than me. OS X is justification for the very existence of Western Civilization. Steve Jobs is my hero. While I would not blow him, I would make arrangements for him to be blown at my own expense if he asked me to, merely out of gratitude for the ways in which his company has improved my life.
But there's no way in hell I'm buying into the at&t EDGE network plan to use this phone. If I could have just bought the phone and relied of free Wi-Fi hotspots for data use (and preferably drop my T-Mobile SIM into it and keep my current plan), I would have gladly dropped far more than the $600 price tag to snap one of these things up. OS X "Lite" on a hand-held? Are you kidding me? Even without the phone, I would want it.
The other shortcoming is that the "best iPod we ever made" as Steve calls it, lacks enough storage for my music collection, let alone video files.
But as it is... Screw it. I'll keep toting around my 5th Gen 80GB iPod and my RAZR. Get back to me with iPhone 2, and if there are fewer ties to a ridiculously expensive (for what it is) phone/data service, I'll consider it.
The record industry focused too much on beating AllOfMP3 via lawsuits, rather than realizing that AllOfMP3 is clear proof that you can base a business model on selling non-DRMed music
That's a bit like saying that somebody selling stolen car stereos out of the back of a van for $20 each is proof that you can base a business model on selling electronics without anti-shoplifting tags attached to the boxes.
I'm not Catholic, but you are mischaracterizing their dogma a little bit there.
According to Catholicism, you are saved by grace, just as with protestants. However, the Roman Church emphasizes the concept that "faith without works is dead."
Meaning that, if you're not going out of your way to help the needy and behave with compassion, etc., you're not really being faithful.
If you're a Christian, is it impossible to be altruistic? If you do good deeds, don't you ingratiate yourself witht he Lord, thereby increasing your chance of being admitted to heaven?
Nope.
It is axiomatic of Christianity that we've all "earned" nothing more than death, and it's only by divine grace that we are reunited with God. The religion is not about "getting in" to an afterlife paradise for being good (though many so-called believers behave that as if it is). It's about maintaining a loving relationship with your creator, both in this life and beyond.
Re:Who Reads Politician's Web Site to Get the Fact
on
Obama's MySpace Drama
·
· Score: 1
What could you possibly have learned about Obama at this point, beyond the fact that he's a good speaker and a relatively well-liked freshman Senator?
That's my whole point. He looks GREAT right now compared to anybody with experience because he's an empty slate.
Hilary Clinton is not exactly brimming over with experience, but she has cast votes on a lot of major policy decisions (and authored or co-authored some bills) which give you a record to judge her on (for good or bad.) Anybody with such experience is going to have a few "negatives" that a fresh face like Obama will not... but come debate season people like that tend to get a little exposed. That's why I'm not completely convinced he's as much of a threat to Clinton as people make him out to be. There are several Democrats which I would consider much more capable challengers, if they had Obama-like money behind them.
That's the other thing about Obama I find troubling. Much like Governor Bush back in 1999, he's The Anointed One. Regardless of experience or proven leadership, it's obvious (from the fact that he was made a keynote convention speaker when he was still a total nobody) that certain powers-behind-the-throne decided long ago that they were going to prop this guy up and make something of him. My opinion of the Bush Administration's performance is somewhat mixed, but I'm extremely wary of the prospect of 8 (or even 4) more years of a lightweight, pre-fab "leader" in the White House. Bush at least was a two-term governor. Obama is like getting a left-wing Bush with less (as in zero) executive experience.
Give me somebody who doesn't need to rely on his VP candidate to give the ticket "gravitas". Is that so much to ask?
You know that very few, if any, projects are ever really finished. You're a hacker who knows how to shoot from the hip to get a job done on deadline, even if it isn't "elegant". You know that "Done" usually only means "it works at the moment and when it breaks, we'll fix it".
And you say you're a toy-maker?
Remind me not to buy my niece's next swing-set from you.
What you are saying sounds good on paper, but in practical lab tests it has been discredited.
1. Set up a top-notch audio system, closed-circuit to actual live musicians (especially singers) in a pristine recording environment. 2. Put a high-pass filter in the system which can cut out all signals above what Nyquist called good enough. 3. Sit down some "golden ear" type audiophiles, and subject them to a double-blind test of the switch being turned on and off.
Every time it has been attempted that I've seen to date, the audiophiles were easily able to hear the difference of the lost information, not because any perceptible notes were missing, but because the listeners could hear the change in the tambre of the wave-forms.
That said, 90% of the audio problems people complained about with early CD players had more to do with poor D/A conversion and master tapes which were designed to compensate for the shortcomings of analog media, resulting in stuff sounding "too harsh" (or "too digital").
The difference between 16-bit and 24-bit audio can be heard, but it is nowhere near as drastic as somebody who has been exclusively listening to phonographs for the last 15 years or so might think it is. So you're not completely wrong, but neither are the folks you are disagreeing with.
A lossless media file off a 24-bit master certainly can sound better than a CD, and a lossy file made from that master can also sound better than a home-rip to lossy formats from the CD.
The difference would probably be rather subtle, however, and it doesn't seem likely to me that any lossy file could possibly sound as good as a lossless recording, even if the lossy came from 24-bit masters and the lossless one came from a 16-bit CD. Until I encounter listening tests to the contrary, the CD will be my preferred method of buying any music I care about.
(For the occasional "disposable" single, $1.30 for AAC-256 with no DRM is fine with me, and I'll happily take that option over $0.99 for DRM-laden AAC-128)
I guess then that laziness plays a big part in your national elections. Here voting is compulsory (and while there are strong arguments about it being voluntary, I think it's for the best).
Voluntary elections is one of the best things about American Democracy. Talk to a few non-voters about the issues of the day and you will quickly understand why.
I fully intend to be miserable on my deathbed about the fact that I'm dying, regardless of what I did or did not accomplish.
I'm also guessing that it will be a relatively short interval in my very long life, and an experience which I will not spend any time remembering.
I'm far more concerned about being as happy as possible for as much of my life as possible.
Re:Who Reads Politician's Web Site to Get the Fact
on
Obama's MySpace Drama
·
· Score: 1
If the vote wasn't for going to war, then voting for a budget with a timetable attached isn't really a vote to end the war. You can't have it both ways.
I never said it wasn't, in fact, I'll go on the record right now and say that it is.
So I'm not trying to have it both ways. Stop trying to change the subject.
I don't know if it is or is not a good test, but I don't see how Hillary's additional four years in the US Senate (plus her time as first lady) are so much more significant than his seven years in the state senate. State senate experience is experience. The question is "7 years in the state senate = ??? years in the US Senate". I don't see why you might think that legislative experience is fundamentally different at the federal level versus the state level.
Well, legislative experience is not a good litmus to begin with. It's impossible to be a good US Senator without some spirit of compromise, and it's very difficult to survive the nomination process without being able to show yourself as committed to the core principals of your party. That's why Republicans were so lukewarm about Bob Dole as a Presidential candidate even though he was one of the party's greatest champions when he was a leader in the Senate.
That said, state-level legislative experience, is worth even less.
Americans feel they already know who Senator Clinton is (for better or worse). Obama is an unknown, and furthermore he's an unknown with no executive experience and precious little legislative experience at the federal level.
It's very easy for Obama to say Iraq was a bad idea. He was never part of the decision-making process when it all started. Kucinich can show that he voted against PATRIOT and Iraq, and Hilary must explain to the left why she voted for them, but Obama was probably debating Midway & O'Hare airport noise-reduction plans or sewage-system bonding bills or what-not at the time. He doesn't have much of a record of tackling Big Issues to show off (or run away from.) That's my main point about him.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry to break the news to you, but "YHBT."
An open-ended question about the appeal of anime is one of the oldest and most shop-worn trolls on Slashdot.
It's only slightly being asking, "I'm interested in anime, but don't know where to start. Can somebody recommend some good shows or movies for me?" and slightly ahead of "isn't anime mostly just giant robots and tentacle pr0n?"
In conclusion: YHL, HAND
Make no mistake, the Japanese -are- pissed because as far as they're concerned, fansubs devalue their product.
Says you.
1. I defy you to cite examples of Japanese anime houses (not US dub shops) objecting to the fansubs of unlicensed shows.
2. No US media company would ever have bought hard-to-categorize shows like Death Note, Nana or Prince of Tennis before the fansub community proved that there was a market for such shows among western viewers. Fansubs are basically free market research for the distributors.
3. The big money in US anime distribution comes from dubbing shows with English-speaking actors and putting it on cable TV. When a show is released to DVD as a subtitle-only set (such as season 2 of SuperGALS!, or the "Uncut" editions of Seasons 1 & 2 of Sailor Moon,) sales have been lackluster at best. Fansubs don't cut in to TV viewership numbers on Adult Swim. If anything, they boost ratings and DVD sales, because by the time, for example, Death Note hit cable TV last month, the show was one of the hottest word-of-mouth topics at anime conventions and on web forums for over a year. No amount of traditional marketing could have done for that show what a few dozen "L" and "Misa" cosplayers at each and every con last summer accomplished to get people curious about it.
Generality of the genre - it's like saying "there's a lot of people that watch sitcoms"
Actually, I'd say that it would be more like somebody saying, "lots of people are into stage plays", or "there sure are a lot of people who read books."
Bottom line: Anime is a medium for storytelling, not a genre.
There are certain types of stories which are popular on Japanese TV which haven't caught on nearly as much here ("mecha" sci-fi, early teen romance, ghost stories, etc.), but for every show like "RaXephon" (a giant-robot show with strictly nerd-only appeal), I can name a show like "Nana", which plays like a very typical romantic drama, or "Sailor Moon", which bears striking similarities to the US hit TV series, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
And what's wrong with something that appeals only to nerds, anyway? There are a LOT of nerds in the world.
They might be built in the US, but where does the profit go?
Stockholders.
The point is "suspension of disbelief". With text filtering out all the nuances, you can imagine the voice of the on-screen character, and see the chat as coming from Ragnar Wormtoter. Voice chat however comes from Jimmy, the kid behind the character, and can be incongruous with the visual of the hulking big bloke with a big hammer.
To borrow a concept from Fark...
Thread over. Saint Fnordius wins.
I will never buy another GM product after watching that video!
I will never buy another GM product either.
Not because I buy the tin-foil-hat nonsense of the "Who Killed the Electric Car?" documentary, but because GM cars really suck. They're almost as bad as Fords.
And don't give me that "buy American" crap. If I buy a Toyota, Nissan, Honda, BMW, or Volkswagon, the odds are high that it was built right here in the USA by American workers with American parts. The Ford Crown Vic I was driving for the past few years was built in Canada, and all of the "big three" US makers have (or will have) plants in places like Mexico making cars for the US market.
Only if the other providers play ball.
"What's that, T-Mobile won't let you talk to VOIP users? Come to OUR phone service. We don't cripple our phones. You can talk to anybody."
All it takes is a critical mass of users of these new phones, say 5 percent of poor teenagers who don't want expensive phone plans. Then it switches from "VOIP phones can't call T-Mobile users" to "T-Mobile phones can't work with VOIP users", which would pretty much spell the end of T-Mobile in the UK.
Technology is on the verge of surpassing the cell phone business model. All it will take is a few tiny third-world countries to take a small chunk of WFO money and build a nation-wide free Wi-Fi network, supporting VOIP phones for anybody who can afford one, and soon a lot of slightly bigger countries will see that proof-of-concept and start asking, "why not here?" Things could really snowball from there. In fact, were I a Rich Bastard trying to launch a service like that, I'd probably bankroll some infrastructure myself in a couple highly-visible small nations... say Dubai, South Korea, or the like. Let everybody see just how good we could all have it, and see what that sets in motion.
The author is way more confused than that.
Three words:
World
of
Warcraft
The only non-console game to matter at all in the last four years, and the biggest PC game of all time, to be certain, (the only PC game I've bothered with recently, and I know many who can say the same)... was released simultaneously for Macs and PCs. It plays fine on old G4 Macs as well as the newest systems.
Debate over. There is nothing wrong with the state of Mac gaming, in terms of keeping up with what's out there. Why should I care if this month's "Yet Another First-Person Shooter" game, using the same Quake or UT engine as everybody else, doesn't come out for the Mac?
For that matter, with Macs running on Intel, why should I care if ANY game comes out for OS X anymore? Just like every Linux user does (but doesn't admit to) I can reboot into Windows when I want to play games... If any PC-only game comes out that's worth the hassle. I don't see a lot of risk of that being the case.
Yes. And I'm saying that's one of the drawbacks.
It's not as if having 600 albums (or whatever) on your iPod makes it heavier than having 10.
With my whole library on my iPod, I never have to think about "what do I want to listen to today" before heading out the door. I grab the iPod, and I have it. My playlists can be made from my entire collection without thinking about what may or may not be available on a given day. I only need to sync when I add songs & albums. The advantages of convenience are enormous, and well worth the occasional hassle of a little extra scrolling.
Plus, with the ample space of the 80GB iPod, I can rip my CDs to Apple Lossless instead of lossy AAC or MP3 files. Not a huge deal in the car, but since my iTunes library is also hooked up to my home stereo (and my CD collection is boxed up in the back of a basement closet), it's nice to have everything ripped in the best-sounding format possible.
Only if it's a subscription plan to a decent hotspot provider.
For that to happen, a "decent" subscription-based hotspot provider would need to exist.
Every one I've seen has less coverage than you get just by war-driving and/or googling for free hotspots in your area.
Well, it's about the size of a RAZR plus an iPod Nano, so if you've been toting both around already, it's not so bad, size-wise.
I wouldn't even mind the expensive data plan, if it was good enough that I could drop my DSL at home, and use bluetooth computer connections to the phone for all my at-home Internet needs.
But to pay another huge monthly wad of cash on top of what I'm already spending on broadband service, just so I can use Google Maps without pulling into a Panera Bread parking lot first to sponge off their Wi-Fi? No thanks.
But what I haven't yet been able to figure out is why anybody except the most extreme junkies is going to purchase this phone.
I don't see it as a phone with an iPod & Browser in it.
I see it as an at-long-last replacement for the old Newton, with a phone in it.
If, by "the most extreme junkies", you mean 1 percent of the current cell phone market, then Apple hits their sales target for this phone right there. Get a few casual and/or business users on board, and it becomes one of Apple's most successful product launches, ever.
But they'll be doing it without me, so long as it's locked into high-priced, low-performance, long-term contracts.
Now tell me, if you're dropping around $500 bucks on a cellphone, do you think you'll blink at having to pay an extra $9.99 dollars a month? Further, if you have the ability to drop $500 on a cell phone, chances are pretty good you're probably already have access to Edge (or it's equivilent with another provider) already.
I currently pay about $25 per month, total, for my phone service (by lumping into a T-Mobile "family" plan with some friends).
I don't want to pay $60+ per month for a new voice/data service.
However, I would be more than willing to buy a $600 phone/iPod/WiFi Internet device, if I could keep my current voice service provider and ignore the EDGE contract. It would sometimes save me from toting a separate iPod around, and occasionally even save me from toting a laptop around.
That kind of gadget is worth a few hundred bucks to me... It's just not worth locking in to over $2000 worth of services with a long-term voice/data provider contract.
I'm an Apple junkie going all the way back to the System 7 days. I currently use multiple Macs, have an Airport hub, and am on my second (probably not last) iPod. I have drunk deep of the Kool-ade, and asked for seconds. You will seldom find a bigger Apple zealot than me. OS X is justification for the very existence of Western Civilization. Steve Jobs is my hero. While I would not blow him, I would make arrangements for him to be blown at my own expense if he asked me to, merely out of gratitude for the ways in which his company has improved my life.
But there's no way in hell I'm buying into the at&t EDGE network plan to use this phone. If I could have just bought the phone and relied of free Wi-Fi hotspots for data use (and preferably drop my T-Mobile SIM into it and keep my current plan), I would have gladly dropped far more than the $600 price tag to snap one of these things up. OS X "Lite" on a hand-held? Are you kidding me? Even without the phone, I would want it.
The other shortcoming is that the "best iPod we ever made" as Steve calls it, lacks enough storage for my music collection, let alone video files.
But as it is... Screw it. I'll keep toting around my 5th Gen 80GB iPod and my RAZR. Get back to me with iPhone 2, and if there are fewer ties to a ridiculously expensive (for what it is) phone/data service, I'll consider it.
The record industry focused too much on beating AllOfMP3 via lawsuits, rather than realizing that AllOfMP3 is clear proof that you can base a business model on selling non-DRMed music
That's a bit like saying that somebody selling stolen car stereos out of the back of a van for $20 each is proof that you can base a business model on selling electronics without anti-shoplifting tags attached to the boxes.
I'm not Catholic, but you are mischaracterizing their dogma a little bit there.
According to Catholicism, you are saved by grace, just as with protestants. However, the Roman Church emphasizes the concept that "faith without works is dead."
Meaning that, if you're not going out of your way to help the needy and behave with compassion, etc., you're not really being faithful.
If you're a Christian, is it impossible to be altruistic? If you do good deeds, don't you ingratiate yourself witht he Lord, thereby increasing your chance of being admitted to heaven?
Nope.
It is axiomatic of Christianity that we've all "earned" nothing more than death, and it's only by divine grace that we are reunited with God. The religion is not about "getting in" to an afterlife paradise for being good (though many so-called believers behave that as if it is). It's about maintaining a loving relationship with your creator, both in this life and beyond.
What could you possibly have learned about Obama at this point, beyond the fact that he's a good speaker and a relatively well-liked freshman Senator?
That's my whole point. He looks GREAT right now compared to anybody with experience because he's an empty slate.
Hilary Clinton is not exactly brimming over with experience, but she has cast votes on a lot of major policy decisions (and authored or co-authored some bills) which give you a record to judge her on (for good or bad.) Anybody with such experience is going to have a few "negatives" that a fresh face like Obama will not... but come debate season people like that tend to get a little exposed. That's why I'm not completely convinced he's as much of a threat to Clinton as people make him out to be. There are several Democrats which I would consider much more capable challengers, if they had Obama-like money behind them.
That's the other thing about Obama I find troubling. Much like Governor Bush back in 1999, he's The Anointed One. Regardless of experience or proven leadership, it's obvious (from the fact that he was made a keynote convention speaker when he was still a total nobody) that certain powers-behind-the-throne decided long ago that they were going to prop this guy up and make something of him. My opinion of the Bush Administration's performance is somewhat mixed, but I'm extremely wary of the prospect of 8 (or even 4) more years of a lightweight, pre-fab "leader" in the White House. Bush at least was a two-term governor. Obama is like getting a left-wing Bush with less (as in zero) executive experience.
Give me somebody who doesn't need to rely on his VP candidate to give the ticket "gravitas". Is that so much to ask?
Being retired doesn't mean "never working again". It means "never needing to work again."
More specifically, it means "doing whatever the hell you want."
You know that very few, if any, projects are ever really finished. You're a hacker who knows how to shoot from the
hip to get a job done on deadline, even if it isn't "elegant". You know that "Done" usually only means "it works at the moment and when
it breaks, we'll fix it".
And you say you're a toy-maker?
Remind me not to buy my niece's next swing-set from you.
What you are saying sounds good on paper, but in practical lab tests it has been discredited.
1. Set up a top-notch audio system, closed-circuit to actual live musicians (especially singers) in a pristine recording environment.
2. Put a high-pass filter in the system which can cut out all signals above what Nyquist called good enough.
3. Sit down some "golden ear" type audiophiles, and subject them to a double-blind test of the switch being turned on and off.
Every time it has been attempted that I've seen to date, the audiophiles were easily able to hear the difference of the lost information, not because any perceptible notes were missing, but because the listeners could hear the change in the tambre of the wave-forms.
That said, 90% of the audio problems people complained about with early CD players had more to do with poor D/A conversion and master tapes which were designed to compensate for the shortcomings of analog media, resulting in stuff sounding "too harsh" (or "too digital").
The difference between 16-bit and 24-bit audio can be heard, but it is nowhere near as drastic as somebody who has been exclusively listening to phonographs for the last 15 years or so might think it is. So you're not completely wrong, but neither are the folks you are disagreeing with.
A lossless media file off a 24-bit master certainly can sound better than a CD, and a lossy file made from that master can also sound better than a home-rip to lossy formats from the CD.
The difference would probably be rather subtle, however, and it doesn't seem likely to me that any lossy file could possibly sound as good as a lossless recording, even if the lossy came from 24-bit masters and the lossless one came from a 16-bit CD. Until I encounter listening tests to the contrary, the CD will be my preferred method of buying any music I care about.
(For the occasional "disposable" single, $1.30 for AAC-256 with no DRM is fine with me, and I'll happily take that option over $0.99 for DRM-laden AAC-128)
I guess then that laziness plays a big part in your national elections. Here voting is compulsory (and while there are strong arguments about it being voluntary, I think it's for the best).
Voluntary elections is one of the best things about American Democracy. Talk to a few non-voters about the issues of the day and you will quickly understand why.
I fully intend to be miserable on my deathbed about the fact that I'm dying, regardless of what I did or did not accomplish.
I'm also guessing that it will be a relatively short interval in my very long life, and an experience which I will not spend any time remembering.
I'm far more concerned about being as happy as possible for as much of my life as possible.
If the vote wasn't for going to war, then voting for a budget with a timetable attached isn't really a vote to end the war. You can't have it both ways.
I never said it wasn't, in fact, I'll go on the record right now and say that it is.
So I'm not trying to have it both ways. Stop trying to change the subject.
I don't know if it is or is not a good test, but I don't see how Hillary's additional four years in the US Senate (plus her time as first lady) are so much more significant than his seven years in the state senate. State senate experience is experience. The question is "7 years in the state senate = ??? years in the US Senate". I don't see why you might think that legislative experience is fundamentally different at the federal level versus the state level.
Well, legislative experience is not a good litmus to begin with. It's impossible to be a good US Senator without some spirit of compromise, and it's very difficult to survive the nomination process without being able to show yourself as committed to the core principals of your party. That's why Republicans were so lukewarm about Bob Dole as a Presidential candidate even though he was one of the party's greatest champions when he was a leader in the Senate.
That said, state-level legislative experience, is worth even less.
Americans feel they already know who Senator Clinton is (for better or worse). Obama is an unknown, and furthermore he's an unknown with no executive experience and precious little legislative experience at the federal level.
It's very easy for Obama to say Iraq was a bad idea. He was never part of the decision-making process when it all started. Kucinich can show that he voted against PATRIOT and Iraq, and Hilary must explain to the left why she voted for them, but Obama was probably debating Midway & O'Hare airport noise-reduction plans or sewage-system bonding bills or what-not at the time. He doesn't have much of a record of tackling Big Issues to show off (or run away from.) That's my main point about him.