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User: 2nd+Post!

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Comments · 3,535

  1. Umm on Amicus Brief For Napster -- From AT&T And Friends · · Score: 1

    Napster indexes copyrighted works which are illegally shared. That's a little different from indexing legal web-based content.

    Well, Napster indexes mp3s. Whether they are copyrighted or not is *independent of that*.

    Indexing mp3s is not illegal, any more than Altavista indexing books on Amazon or something.

    That there are copyrighted works is not arguable; they exist. That they are shared illegally, that is arguable. What's illegal about sharing a copyrighted work? Distributing it may be illegal, but not listening to it, not downloading it, etc. Fair use, and all, right?

    And about web based content? Assume *everything* on the web is copyrighted; pictures belong to people, text belong to writers, movies belong to creators. How is that different than mp3s?

    The nick is a joke! Really!

  2. Anime on Cartoon Network, Tenchi, Silverhawks, and DBZ · · Score: 1

    I *didn't* moderate it down!

    Anyway, to tell you the truth, the more popular Anime, like Ah My Goddess, does the following:

    Manga (for the literate)
    Video
    Music CDs from the Video
    Music CDs *based* on the Video
    Music CDs *sung* in character
    Music CDs from the Video sung in character
    Radio shows
    Radio shows on CD

    Anyway, just to let you know, that your point actually does happen. It isn't just cartoons, any more than the shows on TV are just sitcoms. There are the full gamut of productions, each one meant as entertainment and one escape from reality. That includes actors(real ones, not just He-man kind of actors), special effects, high quality animation, backgrounds, and character design.

    If it's just a cartoon to you, then there really isn't much more to talk about.

    But you did ask:

    why would you go cheap on Backgrounds and fight scenes and opt for better voice actors or such?

    Suspension of disbelief. Why would one bother with all the alien history, anatomy, research, and background, if you're never going to see it on a Sci-fi show? Why bother with the empires, timelines and histories of nations in said shows?

    The nick is a joke! Really!

  3. What have you been watching, then? on Cartoon Network, Tenchi, Silverhawks, and DBZ · · Score: 2

    Let's start with some cool ones then:
    Escaflowne(26 or so)
    Lain(13 or so)
    Evangelion(26 or so)
    El Hazard(8 or so)

    Do these count as worth talking about, or watching?

    Here's more:
    Perfect Blue
    Kenshin (95 or so)
    Cowboy Bebop (still going)
    Trigun (still going)
    Tenchi Muyo: RyoOhKi!
    Macross Plus (4 or so)

    Most of the above are much more than 'silly gags' and 'beaten to death cliches'. They run the gamut from serious to entertaining, to contemplative and depressing.

    Of course, this is just argument to keep Anime *on* Slashdot!

    The nick is a joke! Really!

  4. Re:Hey, cool! on Cartoon Network, Tenchi, Silverhawks, and DBZ · · Score: 1

    If you're smart and beautiful, what are you doing on Slashdot?

    The nick is a joke! Really!

  5. Re:Akira on Cartoon Network, Tenchi, Silverhawks, and DBZ · · Score: 2

    Can't comment intelligently about Akira.

    However, the problem with the previous poster is that you have to match him with some reasonable counterpart to Tom and Jerry...

    Unfortunately, that means he needs something of less depth and plot than Card Captors, Dragon Ball Z, or Akira. He needs something silly, episodic, stateless, and funny. Um, something like, uh, Pokemon?

    The nick is a joke! Really!

  6. Ick on Cartoon Network, Tenchi, Silverhawks, and DBZ · · Score: 1

    Your post sounds faintly racist, to me. Sorry if it wasn't intended that way!

    I'm not sure Japanimation is a kosher term; it's Anime, now, and Manga for the dead tree version. I mean, no other culture really does Anime, most of them just do 'cartoons', though Batman Beyond, Batman, Superman, Men in Black, come close to being Anime more than cartoons.

    I'm sorry if you're confused by the stills and the pans. They are commonly called 'animation cheats' and they save money and effort, so that we can get better animation quality, better story arcs, better character design, or better voice actors. It's a budget saving thing.

    Examples:
    Evangelion
    Rear shot of Rei's head in countless elevators
    Hair obscuring the eyes
    Gendo's hands always positioned in front of his face
    The *long* escalator scenes, zoomed out enough that we can't see the faces
    Face shots above the nose, in which the eyes don't blink.
    Long, still pans of the cityscape
    Reuse of fight animation, with different backgrounds

    Other anime does it too; if you're still interested in watching, watch for it. It's sorta fun to try to find animation cheats. Lain is *filled* with them...

    The nick is a joke! Really!

  7. Hey, cool! on Cartoon Network, Tenchi, Silverhawks, and DBZ · · Score: 1

    I don't disagree; I was thinking of the US hack/dub in which they started to edit the music and storyline a bit to make it, er, livlier, than the original.

    I was enthralled with Escaflowne, and I'm in my early 20s!

    But the fact that it's being shown on a Saturday Morning, and not a Thursday Evening, tells me it's still being targeted at younger kids, and not the older teens...


    The nick is a joke! Really!

  8. Um yeah. Wow on Cartoon Network, Tenchi, Silverhawks, and DBZ · · Score: 1

    Is this serious? Are you trying to lose karma?

    Well, I have to agree with some of your points, regardless.

    This *is* better than most cartoons *and* TV shows we had as kids, and to call them cartoons is to seriously minimize the coolness they have.

    As for the subtitling, that's a different debate *entirely* Subs are better for us when the voice acting and dubs detract from the experience. Dubs are better for us when the US cast and sound effects and music are of higher technical ability than the Japanese version.

    Macross Plus was a better dub than sub
    Evangelion was okay either way, though I do prefer the sub for Megumi Hayashibara.
    Escaflowne is okay either way, but again I prefer the sub for Ikuo Otane, the voice of Merle/Pikachu(!)
    Sailor Moon is pretty bad either way; the comic is much better ^^

    Of course, with DVD, we get our cake *and* eat it too...

    Of course, I try to avoid the tentacles, myself.

    The nick is a joke! Really!

  9. Anime Fetish? on Cartoon Network, Tenchi, Silverhawks, and DBZ · · Score: 1

    Well, for one thing, it's *generally* been filtered and is better than most stuff this side of the Pacific Ocean; WB and Fox being exceptional with Batman/Superman, Batman Beyond, Men in Black, etc. If you don't agree, that's fine, then just don't watch.

    DBZ and Sailor Moon tailor to the macho preteen male and the sensitive preteen female, much the same way Pokemon targets the young pre-pre-teens, and Escaflowne will target the older pre-teens, etc.

    So you're really only complaining about Sailor Moon and DBZ, which I don't disagree with, when you compare to Tom and Jerry. But I do think Card Captors and Escaflowne are at least as good as Tom and Jerry ^^

    The nick is a joke! Really!

  10. Analogies are useful: on More On Kaplan's Ruling Making Links Illegal · · Score: 1

    But it needs to be kept in mind that they are useful only in conveying similarities, and that non-similarites are to be ignored as they *break* the original point.

    So any anologies used to describe linking needs to talk about references, degrees of separation, information vs meta-information, and such. Analogies to this could be:
    Card catalogues in libraries ~= links
    Footnotes ~= links
    Instructions ~= links

    But they all break too, and that's important. Card catalogues are protected because *libraries* are protected under free speech and other such stuff. Well, at least until libraries start hosting mp3 libraries!

    Footnotes break because they don't actually *give* you the material, the user has to make the choice to look for and read it, whereas Internet wise a link is no different than the actual text you're link connects to for, insofar as clicking a link vs scrolling a bar. is difficult.

    Instructions break down because instructions have to, usually, be followed *correctly* whereas a link has no such difficulty. A similar difficult instruction to 'clicking the link' would be, perhaps, 'open the book', 'look around', 'remove the beaker', or 'turn on the oven'. So there is some amount of effort and difficulty involved.

    The nick is a joke! Really!

  11. Apologies to those who read the links... on Neil Stephenson on Batman Beyond Project? · · Score: 1

    I actually thought they were links to the *animated* movie; I didn't actually know they were links to the *live* movie.

    Oops.

    The nick is a joke! Really!

  12. Hold on here! on More On Kaplan's Ruling Making Links Illegal · · Score: 1

    The questioning over links to illegal material is not a new one. The biggest example that I can think of here would be the Napster cases. They are effectively in trouble because they are providing links to illegally copied material.

    I'm not sure this view is correct.

    Napster *is* linking to copyrighted material.
    If I own the CD it *is* legal to copy, archive, manipulate, etc, the CD. So it is not illegially copied.

    If I don't own the CD, but got it through Napster, the worst anyone has done is that the owner, who legally copied and MP3ed the CD, has *distributed* the material. The legality is up to copyright law, but linking to it is not illegal; downloading it may not be illegal, under fair use, if you aren't using it for profit or commercial use. *Distributing it again* may or may not be legal, if you don't own the material in question(probably not), but it will be a mix of fair use and copyright law.

    However, this does open the door for making mp3 encoders illegal, for the same reason that deCSS is illegal! All it is doing is taking one format and converting it to another, right? Or is the act of decrypting different than the act of encoding? Mathematically, they are very similar, I think...

    The nick is a joke! Really!

  13. Huh? on Neil Stephenson on Batman Beyond Project? · · Score: 2

    Why is it people are posting about this as it were a live movie?

    It's animated! People are writing and talking without background, without reading the links, without doing any follow through...

    So what else is new?

    Anyway, cut it out. It's just adding more noise, and I know most of you aren't intentionally trying to be clueless. But really, the series Batman Beyond is pretty good, it's animated, it's related to the Batman animated series, and it has nothing to do with the last 3 Batman movies, except maybe the animated one ^^

    The nick is a joke! Really!

  14. Oh cool... on Neil Stephenson on Batman Beyond Project? · · Score: 2

    This is as close as we have gotten, so far, to Anime on the big screen.

    Everything else was *import* and translated; Mononoke Hime and Ghost in the Shell.

    I would be very happy if the movie were as good as some of the better TV episodes.

    Anime is somehow edgier and cooler than anything else right now; like Matrix was to live action and Hong Kong martial arts, Batman Beyond could be to animation and Anime

    The nick is a joke! Really!

  15. This is where definitions of copyright, ownership on The Heavenly Jukebox, From Hell · · Score: 1

    come in.

    You own a CD; say it's a Beetles album. You rip it, mp3 it, and place it on Napster.

    Millions of people have taken copies in two weeks, yet:

    You still have the CD, which you own.

    The mp3 != the CD music, due to compression and artifacts

    The only thing you have violated is copyright distribution here. You aren't the owner of the copyright, only the copy, so you don't have the right to distribute the music. You *can* legally sell the CD; you can legally give away your CD. Can you legally give away *millions* of inferior copies of your CD?

    Another point:

    So if your friend had borrowed your lawn mower, made *infinite* number of copies and left them all over the city with a big "please take me" sign on them, then the analogy would be more accurate.

    The nick is a joke! Really!

  16. No! on The Heavenly Jukebox, From Hell · · Score: 2

    Using Napster to download MP3s *is* not illegal.

    I won't touch the moral question, and I'm not talking about Free Speech or IwtbF. I guess it's illegal to distribute music if you don't have permission to distribute it from the author/owner, so the persons placing music on Napster is doing something wrong. Downloading the music is not theft or property damage. You are not taking away something from someone else. It is not different than going to the library for a book.

    Here's a thought; if someone set up a music library, online, with the same intent and purposes as a RL library, would grabbing music from them be illegal? What difference would there be?

    Anyway, I take issue with the statement that people are 'stealing'. I think the definition of theft is old and unsuited for music, because it is *not* a limited resource, nor is it a rare or precious commodity. Someone who 'takes' a copy does not deny a copy to someone else. It is 'theft' in that the owner of the music is not getting reimbursed for the transaction. I agree that we have no right to take from them, but I disagree with the statement that it is theft, the same as taking a car or a shirt. We are guilty of violating contract and transaction protocols, the exchange of value for value, but not guilty of taking away value from owners.

    The nick is a joke! Really!

  17. =) Oh, that on On Microsoft Porting to Linux/Unix · · Score: 1

    The sig is *new* only after I found people kept trying to call me flamebait

    The nick is a joke! Really!

  18. Wah, a moderator doesn't like me! on On Microsoft Porting to Linux/Unix · · Score: 1

    I guess with a nick like this, it might be hard to judge fairly...

    The nick is a joke! Really!

  19. MSLinux on On Microsoft Porting to Linux/Unix · · Score: 1

    One wouldn't need to buy MSLinux!

    One buys MSOffice for Linux; it comes with 'libraries' which would supplant, modify, and mess with *any* Linux distro, in the name of 'compatibility'. In all fairness, M$ would be compelled to release the source, according to GNU license. But it doesn't have to be prompt. It doesn't have to be pretty. It doesn't have to be useful.

    So in the end, *all* Linux users who would use MSOffice would be liable for this 'virus'

    The nick is a joke! Really!

  20. What's this Lameness filter? on On Microsoft Porting to Linux/Unix · · Score: 1

    Did you know that a $600 Office suite makes more money than a $70 OS? Especially if it comes bundled with a PC? And that the costs of production, IE packaging and shrinkwrap, is about the same for both?
    <BR>
    <BR>M$, because it will have the source to Linux, will be able to make lots of money selling Office, as well as muck around with basic compatibility of MSLinux, and keep other people out with their 'open source' but proprietary changes. Nothing stops M$ from changing the Win32API every year!

    The nick is a joke! Really!

  21. Ha ha on On Microsoft Porting to Linux/Unix · · Score: 1

    MS can *easily* create modifications to the Linux source to 'better' support the aps. And they can make the source available, ala GNU, right out of ftp.microsoft.com and at www.microsoft.com/linux/downloads, and they don't have to provide *anything* else. They can create their own Win32GNU layer, obfuscated or whatever, they can change it as often as they wish, and they can muck with Linux *all* the time.

    M$ can release Office 2K+1 next year, on Linux, alongside the source and the Linux release; by the time people actually finish reading through the source for Win32GNU, 2K+2 is released, with Win32GNU2, and Win32GNULIB, etc.

    Nothing has to change from their current model, especially if they don't get broken up.

    They will have a stranglehold on *2* OS markets!

    The nick is a joke! Really!

  22. Slashdot is not software and circuitry on Lain Discussion Panel At Otakon · · Score: 1

    It is, and I quote: "News for nerds, stuff that matters"

    And that is a very irreverent thought as well. Everything on this site is meant to be fun, newsworthy, entertaining, illuminating, useful, interesting, whatever. At least, to the people who filter out the stories.

    If you want to run a site that is software and circuitry, grab slashcode and set it up yourself. I like the variety. Sometimes I want to see news about latest processors. Sometimes I want politics. Sometimes I want movies. Sometimes I want something new. Slashdot has done well, so far, in providing this. It isn't a politics page, a science page, a software page, a law page, a news page, or anything else.

    It does Linux and Legos, anime, IP rights, DVDs, toys and technology, science, whatever. And it works.

    The nick is a joke! Really!

  23. It's entertainment! on Lain Discussion Panel At Otakon · · Score: 1

    Some of the /. crew like it! It thus passes their coolness filter, and they post it.

    *I* like Lain. I think it's entertaining. I think it's deep. I think it's cool. So I read the posts, I write my own.

    *You* think it's crap. You think it's boring and derivative. Cluestick! *thwap* Don't read the submission, don't enter the thread, don't read the posts, and don't dilute the SN ratio with your presence please.

    The nick is a joke! Really!

  24. Re:cat shooter on Lego + Linux HOWTO · · Score: 1

    A couple of things; what's so special about the counter and the coffee maker that attracts cats? Reproduce that for them in their own play environment to keep them away from your living environment.

    Don't spray based solely on motion; you'd need two light sensors to do it; a person will simultaneously be on the floor as well as on the counter, due to height, where a cat will only be on one or the other. Use that discriminant to spray your cats!

    The nick is a joke! Really!

  25. Hah on English Language And Its Effect On Programming? · · Score: 1

    As if the US horny guys wouldn't do this either?

    ^^

    The nick is a joke! Really!