get a story! This is my perpetual frustration with anime and manga as genres--they're boring/confusing as hell. Japanese animators are brilliant with the visuals, simply brilliant, but they can't write their way out of a paper bag. And I say this as someone who's studied and lived in Japan for years, and understand the cultural motives behind what they're doing, ie. ambiguity preferred to clarity, moral complexity that defies the Western good vs. evil scheme, but it still makes for a crappy story. If Akira Kurosawa can make great film after great film, why can't the anime crowd? Why can't they take a page from the book of the folks who did 'Hotaru no Haka'--"Grave of the Fireflies" (the finest anime ever made, but one which is never mentioned on/.)?
And I keep going back to see the newest anime because I keep hoping that some day the stories will measure up to the incredible animation, but I'm disappointed every time. Princess Mononoke was good up to the point where they got to Iron Town, and then it all went downhill. Metropolis was stunning, but once again the writers lost their way pretty early in that one. Ghost in the Shell was probably the best of the bunch, but still slack.
The most perplexing thing of all to me is all the people on this page who will savage Peter Jackson for the most minor and petty of pacing mistakes or story omissions will turn around and slavishly gibber and drool with excitement at the newest piece of desultory anime drivel. It just doesn't add up. As far as I can see, the current best use for anime is as a TV in the background, with the sound off, playing the part of a beautiful picture that moves.
Gen-X will be the most Compassionate Generation
on
Generation Wrecked
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
We've had a front row seat to the excesses and extremes of the Baby Boomers and feel jaded as a group. But we're not slackers or cry-babies. Sure there were excesses during the dot-com era, but from what I could see it was the salespeople and their ilk doing most of the excessing; the coders, sysadmins, designers, and project managers worked 80 hour weeks. Hardly a bunch of spoiled children living in a fantasy land.
Yet expectations were generally unrealistic and this patch we're going through now, though rough, will in the long run turn out to be a very positive time of soul-searching and learning what is truly important in life. Family, good friends, and helping your fellow human beings are the truest source of happiness. It makes me happy to know that a much greater share of my peers will realize that than otherwise would have, and it makes me quite optimistic that our descendants will recognize us as the most compassionate generation. Our finest years are just ahead of us, and no other generation will be as able to clean up the god-awful mess the boomers mean to bequeath to us.
That said, from many of the posts here I actually hope that the tech slump deepens so all of you calling the unemployed among us losers can share in the experience of having your professional world crumble around you despite being a brilliant programmer/sysadmin/designer/whatever and busting your butt 90 hours a week to make someone else money. You did not make the right choices, you did not out-code anybody, you did not brilliantly and with prescient foresight save while your silly peers played the day away, and you sure as shootin' don't enjoy a greater share of common sense than anyone else. You are not superior in any way to any of the/.'ers here without jobs. You're just lucky. Luck is the only reason you're not suffering right now, and I hope you get the chance to learn that before the economy picks up again and preserves you in your delusions.
So to you all, I say can it until you reach retirement age without ever once having been laid off because you're so brilliant. Chances are astronomically good you'll never make it.
To the rest of my downtrodden brothers and sisters, lay low, husband your resources, and wait for the day this turns around because we're gonna take the world by storm.
I rather think the age of the dinosaurs is drawing to an end, not entering its golden age. I agree with J. Katz that the old nation-state system is controlled body and soul by corporations. The DMCA, RIAA lawsuit against Napster, the U.S. Patent Office's patent giveaway, the mega-mergers, and on and on prove it. But it seems more like the death throws of a dying system than immanent victory. How relevant are their victories in the face of things like FreeNet? They haven't got a prayer. An editorial by Friedman in the NY Times a couple days ago put it--surprisingly--rather well: technological innovation is proceeding so rapidly now that the old systems can't even pretend to keep up. And whenever you have a period of rapid technological change like this revolution never fails to ensue. The rapid technological change--well folks, that's us, our doing. We don't have to subscribe to 'individualism' or 'anti-corporatism' or any 'ism' to usher out the monopoles. We just have to keep on keepin' on. We finally got the ball, guys, let's just keep running with it and let them all tumble in our wake.
Metallica Mail In Campaign
on
An MP3 Update
·
· Score: 1
When the Exxon Valdez spilled people sent all sorts of creative things to their PR office like oil smeared stuffed animals. So what could we send Metallica to let them know how reviled they are? Nazi flags? Demo tapes with titles like "Lars Sucks Ass?"
Slashdot Mirror
get a story! This is my perpetual frustration with anime and manga as genres--they're boring/confusing as hell. Japanese animators are brilliant with the visuals, simply brilliant, but they can't write their way out of a paper bag. And I say this as someone who's studied and lived in Japan for years, and understand the cultural motives behind what they're doing, ie. ambiguity preferred to clarity, moral complexity that defies the Western good vs. evil scheme, but it still makes for a crappy story. If Akira Kurosawa can make great film after great film, why can't the anime crowd? Why can't they take a page from the book of the folks who did 'Hotaru no Haka'--"Grave of the Fireflies" (the finest anime ever made, but one which is never mentioned on /.)?
And I keep going back to see the newest anime because I keep hoping that some day the stories will measure up to the incredible animation, but I'm disappointed every time. Princess Mononoke was good up to the point where they got to Iron Town, and then it all went downhill. Metropolis was stunning, but once again the writers lost their way pretty early in that one. Ghost in the Shell was probably the best of the bunch, but still slack.
The most perplexing thing of all to me is all the people on this page who will savage Peter Jackson for the most minor and petty of pacing mistakes or story omissions will turn around and slavishly gibber and drool with excitement at the newest piece of desultory anime drivel. It just doesn't add up. As far as I can see, the current best use for anime is as a TV in the background, with the sound off, playing the part of a beautiful picture that moves.
We've had a front row seat to the excesses and extremes of the Baby Boomers and feel jaded as a group. But we're not slackers or cry-babies. Sure there were excesses during the dot-com era, but from what I could see it was the salespeople and their ilk doing most of the excessing; the coders, sysadmins, designers, and project managers worked 80 hour weeks. Hardly a bunch of spoiled children living in a fantasy land.
/.'ers here without jobs. You're just lucky. Luck is the only reason you're not suffering right now, and I hope you get the chance to learn that before the economy picks up again and preserves you in your delusions.
Yet expectations were generally unrealistic and this patch we're going through now, though rough, will in the long run turn out to be a very positive time of soul-searching and learning what is truly important in life. Family, good friends, and helping your fellow human beings are the truest source of happiness. It makes me happy to know that a much greater share of my peers will realize that than otherwise would have, and it makes me quite optimistic that our descendants will recognize us as the most compassionate generation. Our finest years are just ahead of us, and no other generation will be as able to clean up the god-awful mess the boomers mean to bequeath to us.
That said, from many of the posts here I actually hope that the tech slump deepens so all of you calling the unemployed among us losers can share in the experience of having your professional world crumble around you despite being a brilliant programmer/sysadmin/designer/whatever and busting your butt 90 hours a week to make someone else money. You did not make the right choices, you did not out-code anybody, you did not brilliantly and with prescient foresight save while your silly peers played the day away, and you sure as shootin' don't enjoy a greater share of common sense than anyone else. You are not superior in any way to any of the
So to you all, I say can it until you reach retirement age without ever once having been laid off because you're so brilliant. Chances are astronomically good you'll never make it.
To the rest of my downtrodden brothers and sisters, lay low, husband your resources, and wait for the day this turns around because we're gonna take the world by storm.
I rather think the age of the dinosaurs is drawing to an end, not entering its golden age. I agree with J. Katz that the old nation-state system is controlled body and soul by corporations. The DMCA, RIAA lawsuit against Napster, the U.S. Patent Office's patent giveaway, the mega-mergers, and on and on prove it. But it seems more like the death throws of a dying system than immanent victory. How relevant are their victories in the face of things like FreeNet? They haven't got a prayer. An editorial by Friedman in the NY Times a couple days ago put it--surprisingly--rather well: technological innovation is proceeding so rapidly now that the old systems can't even pretend to keep up. And whenever you have a period of rapid technological change like this revolution never fails to ensue. The rapid technological change--well folks, that's us, our doing. We don't have to subscribe to 'individualism' or 'anti-corporatism' or any 'ism' to usher out the monopoles. We just have to keep on keepin' on. We finally got the ball, guys, let's just keep running with it and let them all tumble in our wake.
When the Exxon Valdez spilled people sent all sorts of creative things to their PR office like oil smeared stuffed animals. So what could we send Metallica to let them know how reviled they are? Nazi flags? Demo tapes with titles like "Lars Sucks Ass?"