It was the guys from Nausicaa.net, they had an appointment to meet with BVUS. The stack of e-mails included multi-copy buyers (like me) and resellers like Anime Crash and some others. It was a big enough deal that they took it seriously for a change, and they'll be rewarded with our money. Well, mine anyway.
Nope. I was one of the petitioners. We threatened not to buy it at all, and I for one would have stuck to it. Now some of my friends and relatives will get it as a gift this Christmas. More $ for the Mouse.
I'm not suggesting they listened to me and my 5 copy order, but a lot of the people were store owners, who would not order as many for the store, and tell their customers to wait for the special edition. I'd just have rented it instead.
It's not really anime, sort of meta-toons for anime fans, but it's as American as the Ford Pinto. I like it well enough. In terms of production values, Miyazaki's films usually dwarf most others, though Ghost In The Shell (which is not his) holds up real well, given it's 5 or 6 years old.
The best voice overs in "dubbed" anime has to be Ranma 1/2, which I still find amusing, but you can't go by me, since I hate both Friends and Sienfeld... the music in it isn't half bad, as jpop goes.
The toughest thing to get over with this stuff is that what you see is years old. I recommended Ranma (TV vol 1) but it was on TV in Japan in the late 80's. Most of the time what we're seeing now from Disney was done by the Japanese years before (except Beauty and the Beast, which was actually pretty well done.) The most recent big-name stuff is Mononoke, Serial Experiments Lain, and like I said, GITS holds up.
Just wait til next year... fully rendered Final Fantasy. It already looks phenominal.
Okay. Looks like you got your wish on the Anime topic. Now for the other stuff:
The big post that seemed to start this anime stuff here on/. (though some of us always worked it into our posts...) was Essential Anime, an Ask Slashdot posted by Taco Hisself.
A bunch of people put lists up (as a few have done here) but rather than repost mine, I direct you to the one I posted there.
Note that there are other lists near mine with an equally large array of highly watchable, sometimes even great, fare. Most of us separate our favorites by genre (drama, comedy, scifi/mecha, fantasy) so you can pick and choose what's most likely to appeal to you.
Incidentally, I had a conversation with someone on anime's appeal under the Tenchi Story, our thread is right around here.
Incidentally, the editors of nausicaa.net should be given a great deal of credit (at least a link,/.!) as they contacted Disney, did all the legwork finding out about this issue, and organized the e-mail petition, which was ultimately effective in changing Disney's mind.
No need to send a message in now, we can all just wait for the official release to be reset, and buy a copy (or copies as gifts) to show our support for this, one of the few respectable decisions Disney's made.
Yeah, but now I'm screwed. Not only did I threaten them with a boycott I'm incapable of organizing, but I sort of promised to buy 5 copies if they put the Japanese language track in. I wonder if I have a copy of that e-mail...an object lesson in not letting your inner otaku take over...
How does osm wasting people's time benefit him? I'm not pissed that he did that, it's just...what a waste of energy. If you don't like what happens here, download the source or write your own and set it up elsewhere or just go the fuck away.
Seriously, they forgot something in this legislation. They need an opt-out list that everyone, individuals and ISPs, can sign up for. Just make it part of the law that those of us who don't want any UCE can drop our e-mails in there and be protected.
You wouldn't even have to raise taxes to do it, I bet AOL steps up and funds it just because it will save them so much money to be able to opt-out their whole network. Same with everyone else. That is the only way this law will be effective. You tell one person to stop sending you e-mail, he sets up another account and you have to tell him again. You have one central knock list, and spammers can just subtract it from their send list.
Plus, now that it's $500/e-mail, you could hit these little bastards with some huge fines...
Any way you group culture, 90% of it is garbage, and another 9% are only for the hardcore fan. What you have here is a board full of hardcore fans, and, well...you.
Seriously, if you have the time, read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. Not only is it a great read, it goes into what makes Japanese comics different than American ones, a difference that carries over into animation. The average work of anime is much more sophisticated visually than its average American counterpart. This includes works in all genres. They demand much more of the viewer's attention visually and slightly more plot-wise.
Most people who like anime are spoiled after watching great work like Vampire Princess Miyu (horror), Ranma 1/2 (comedy), Miyazaki, etc...
Many people who dislike anime are really thinking of the garbage we were exposed to as kids (though I always liked Star Blazers... nothing to compare it to at age 4). Artless, poorly translated, badly dubbed, hacked to pieces, how could anyone expect us to develop an appreciation for it?
It's amazing some of us did, and unlike the vicious and stupid way we tend to circle the wagons around linux, those of us who love anime like nothing better than sharing what we like.
The only real answer I can give your question is: Look at the early 90s Conan-era Simpsons, and understand that a lot of that was being done TEN YEARS EARLIER in Japan. The show Urusei Yatsura is still a tough sell to people who saw the original artist's somewhat more intricate later Ranma 1/2 series, but the interplay between both multiple joke "threads" and between those "threads" and the spoken/acted/background-derived punchlines was way ahead of its time in an otherwise innocuous sitcom. Certain aspects of modern anime remain ten years ahead of american productions, in the same way modern american film productions look ten years ahead of films from most other countries.
On top of all that, remember this: the anime we're sitting here talking about now (what's "new to us") was shown in Japan years ago. The modern american otaku (like me) has only the smallest awareness of what the real breadth of Japanese animation looks like today, so we lose both the stuff that's so bad it doesn't come across and some of the hidden gems, which we can only conjecture exists based on past experience with the exported art of other cultures. We see only the top 5% of what comes over, so everything looks good to us. Well, almost everything, DBZ kind of sucks, visually.
Right. Only Governments can censor. Since these corporations have control of Congress and the press, the corporate sector is a de facto government body, and its "editing" is really censorship. The fact that it has no constitutional basis is irrelevant.
And DBZ on DVD doesn't even include the original Japanese audio track! Thats low.
Speaking of low, The Mouse is doing the same thing with Mononoke Hime./. was kind enough to post a story about it, though it was the week AFTER the petition was sent in. Oh well, more money for Ranma DVDs...
1. Don't post anything bad about Linux. 2. Don't post anything not-bad about Microsoft. 2. Don't post anything bad about Open Source. 3. Don't post a first post.
Still using that first-gen pentium chip I see...;P
These are all true, with a condition on the M$ rule (Is that 2 or 2a?). I've found that when I sit and think about something before I post it, I generally get left alone or even modded up. If you moderate your own posts by supporting/clarifying/stating clear conditions under which your points are true, you tend to get treated well, even if you, like me, are not a true computer guru.
I have a very selfish reason for being a militant *nix geek at work. We're moving more and more towards having local application servers (our current SPARCs are taken care of off-site) and I want something I can fix. I already run a small linux server with a few services (samba, anon ftp, ps2pdf converter), and I'm looking to expand my own knowledge in this area. If we get NT servers for the new apps, I'll be stuck holding people's hands while they reboot 98SE and calling a contractor for the NT servers for the rest of my life. I don't need to be "indispensable," but I've been feeling a little underutilized...
My own fault ending up with this simple little job I realize, but I don't mind it as long as I've got something to keep me occupied and useful. A little Sun or even Linux server for this new image DB with web extensions should be just about right.
How many 'agreements' have you made where one party can change terms midstream?
Try every single credit card company I've ever dealt with. Incidentally, If any of you have/have had a Citibank card over the last two years, they owe you money. There's a class-action lawsuit, something about Citi charging people 1/8th of a day extra interest each month over the last two years. If you lost your card for being a day late or don't have one of theirs anymore, you can ask for a refund/credit report change.
What if you don't know anyone else who uses the product(s) you are considering? If this includes the people who work in your IS department, then you hire consultants. First question you ask them(before you sign anything): Which OS do you prefer? Favored response: Whichever is best for the situation.
What if you don't have time to fully evaluate every option? Then you're not doing your job. Get an assistant to foist the lesser half of your work onto so you can concentrate on "fully evaluating every option."
In the real world many business decisions are made on the basis of incomplete information and against tight deadlines. In the real world there's a difference between acting professional and being professional. Acting professional requires things like nice suits and witty meeting banter, see The Courtier for a more complete list. Being professional has only one requirement: pure fucking competence.
Therefore I would submit that Angry Badger's post is dead-on. If you're making IT decisions based on reading PC Magazine or whatever, there's a real problem. They should have no weight whatsoever in your decisions. If no one you work with knows about the different apps you're considering, you need to go with a third party, one who doesn't push a given package right up front.
You can trust me on this one, my stepfather wrote that magazine article shit when I was in high school, and he's a complete moron.
I still love that.sig. When I used it, I kept getting weird right wing militant SPAM (Use this training kit to teach your trailer trash children the true meaning of the Constitution!) Do you find that to be the case as well?
Yeah, we have an Ingres2 DB the size of China, but this was just basic accounting (she kept a numbered list of Purchase Orders). She's got so many, it needed to be either 1 written into Ingres or 2 moved to something new. I use Access for the PC inventorying (there's only 100, so it's okay) and my purchase requests, so it was simple to just copy the PR one and modify it to use her numbering system. If I was a real programmer I'd use one of the DBs they're talking about in this forum, but I'm not, so the users get Access.
My only issue with using it for something bigger is that people like me who aren't DBAs can forget that Access doesn't scale well. It gets tougher and tougher to justify using it as it grows in size and number of users. My using it for her is basically just a stopgap so the overworked DB progs can find a real solution.
I said something semi-positive about MS. Who the hell modded it up?
They're trying not to get spammed. The instinct to protect their privacy is a good one (I, as you can see above, don't give a shit), but it's unfortunate you have to suffer for it. Perhaps changing smtp to pipe all non-specifically addressed e-mails to/dev/null would be a good solution? Your "Swiss data protection commisioner" isn't going to be able to help you, I'm afraid. This is the sort of thing you have to take into your own hands and deal with.
OR...the/. kids have stock in Andover, who generates a profit from ads posted on/. Consequently, it behooves the/. kids to bring in as much traffic as they can, and no motivation is necessary over and above simple greed.
I always get the little bastards shut down. UUNET is very responsive if you send them the message and full headers. I figured I'd have a harder time dealing with folks overseas, but no, the ISP in the phillipines gave the guy one chance to stop, he sent me another, and they shut him down. Only one of the little ISPs in the US gave me problems, they said they couldn't shut anyone down unless I FAXed them a signed statement with the email and full headers. I went one up on them, bellsouth shut THEM down. I don't know if uce@ftc.gov helps, but I forward stuff there, too.
Weren't they considering putting bounties out for spammers? I've been seeing a lot of online marketing firms advertising UCE as a service...
But Access is pretty useful for a few of my users who I caught using spreadsheets like databases ("Help! my machine crashed in Quattro Pro!" "Jeez, how many lines did you fill in this?" "Four thousand"). It isn't great, and I know better than to use Access for real production, but one table and a few forms/reports later, they're ready to go. And they seem to like that it doesn't reorganize their data when they hit sort...
On the one hand, "sovereign nations" sign treaties, and in order to get into the G8 and the rest of the boyz clubs, the treaties they sign involve respecting each other's intellectual property laws.
On the other hand, China shows a consistent propensity for ignoring IP piracy. While I personally find this an admirable and enlightened way of dealing with media reproduction, M$' opinion differs. In fact, it differs to the point where MS said they'd jack up the price of their software in China to cover whatever they estimated mainland piracy was costing them.
End result: semi-UNIX L-words all around. Free software doesn't matter, because everyone copies everything anyway. They won't enforce the GPL either, but it will never be worth selling closed source software there, because China will never pay any attention to reverse engineering, either. They win vs. M$ because they hold all the cards in their country. The day one chinese person GPLs a useful program, the rest of us will win, too. Assuming we can read the documentation.
Some of the high-tech manufacturers who went in there years ago to set up shop tried to register their patents with the government. Within two years chinese factories opened right down the street(!) and were competing with them USING THEIR PATENTS. See what I'm getting at? China isn't just a sovereign nation, it's a whole different way of looking at things. It's not stealing to them, you can either keep your secret or you can't. Software isn't really the sort of secret you can keep.
Slashdot Mirror
It was the guys from Nausicaa.net, they had an appointment to meet with BVUS. The stack of e-mails included multi-copy buyers (like me) and resellers like Anime Crash and some others. It was a big enough deal that they took it seriously for a change, and they'll be rewarded with our money. Well, mine anyway.
-jpowers
Nope. I was one of the petitioners. We threatened not to buy it at all, and I for one would have stuck to it. Now some of my friends and relatives will get it as a gift this Christmas. More $ for the Mouse.
I'm not suggesting they listened to me and my 5 copy order, but a lot of the people were store owners, who would not order as many for the store, and tell their customers to wait for the special edition. I'd just have rented it instead.
-jpowers
It's not really anime, sort of meta-toons for anime fans, but it's as American as the Ford Pinto. I like it well enough. In terms of production values, Miyazaki's films usually dwarf most others, though Ghost In The Shell (which is not his) holds up real well, given it's 5 or 6 years old.
The best voice overs in "dubbed" anime has to be Ranma 1/2, which I still find amusing, but you can't go by me, since I hate both Friends and Sienfeld... the music in it isn't half bad, as jpop goes.
The toughest thing to get over with this stuff is that what you see is years old. I recommended Ranma (TV vol 1) but it was on TV in Japan in the late 80's. Most of the time what we're seeing now from Disney was done by the Japanese years before (except Beauty and the Beast, which was actually pretty well done.) The most recent big-name stuff is Mononoke, Serial Experiments Lain, and like I said, GITS holds up.
Just wait til next year... fully rendered Final Fantasy. It already looks phenominal.
-jpowers
Okay. Looks like you got your wish on the Anime topic. Now for the other stuff:
/. (though some of us always worked it into our posts...) was Essential Anime, an Ask Slashdot posted by Taco Hisself.
The big post that seemed to start this anime stuff here on
A bunch of people put lists up (as a few have done here) but rather than repost mine, I direct you to the one I posted there.
Note that there are other lists near mine with an equally large array of highly watchable, sometimes even great, fare. Most of us separate our favorites by genre (drama, comedy, scifi/mecha, fantasy) so you can pick and choose what's most likely to appeal to you.
Incidentally, I had a conversation with someone on anime's appeal under the Tenchi Story, our thread is right around here.
-jpowers
Incidentally, the editors of nausicaa.net should be given a great deal of credit (at least a link, /.!) as they contacted Disney, did all the legwork finding out about this issue, and organized the e-mail petition, which was ultimately effective in changing Disney's mind.
No need to send a message in now, we can all just wait for the official release to be reset, and buy a copy (or copies as gifts) to show our support for this, one of the few respectable decisions Disney's made.
-jpowers
Yeah, but now I'm screwed. Not only did I threaten them with a boycott I'm incapable of organizing, but I sort of promised to buy 5 copies if they put the Japanese language track in. I wonder if I have a copy of that e-mail...an object lesson in not letting your inner otaku take over...
-jpowers
How does osm wasting people's time benefit him? I'm not pissed that he did that, it's just...what a waste of energy. If you don't like what happens here, download the source or write your own and set it up elsewhere or just go the fuck away.
-jpowers
Seriously, they forgot something in this legislation. They need an opt-out list that everyone, individuals and ISPs, can sign up for. Just make it part of the law that those of us who don't want any UCE can drop our e-mails in there and be protected.
You wouldn't even have to raise taxes to do it, I bet AOL steps up and funds it just because it will save them so much money to be able to opt-out their whole network. Same with everyone else. That is the only way this law will be effective. You tell one person to stop sending you e-mail, he sets up another account and you have to tell him again. You have one central knock list, and spammers can just subtract it from their send list.
Plus, now that it's $500/e-mail, you could hit these little bastards with some huge fines...
-jpowers
Any way you group culture, 90% of it is garbage, and another 9% are only for the hardcore fan. What you have here is a board full of hardcore fans, and, well...you.
Seriously, if you have the time, read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. Not only is it a great read, it goes into what makes Japanese comics different than American ones, a difference that carries over into animation. The average work of anime is much more sophisticated visually than its average American counterpart. This includes works in all genres. They demand much more of the viewer's attention visually and slightly more plot-wise.
Most people who like anime are spoiled after watching great work like Vampire Princess Miyu (horror), Ranma 1/2 (comedy), Miyazaki, etc...
Many people who dislike anime are really thinking of the garbage we were exposed to as kids (though I always liked Star Blazers... nothing to compare it to at age 4). Artless, poorly translated, badly dubbed, hacked to pieces, how could anyone expect us to develop an appreciation for it?
It's amazing some of us did, and unlike the vicious and stupid way we tend to circle the wagons around linux, those of us who love anime like nothing better than sharing what we like.
The only real answer I can give your question is: Look at the early 90s Conan-era Simpsons, and understand that a lot of that was being done TEN YEARS EARLIER in Japan. The show Urusei Yatsura is still a tough sell to people who saw the original artist's somewhat more intricate later Ranma 1/2 series, but the interplay between both multiple joke "threads" and between those "threads" and the spoken/acted/background-derived punchlines was way ahead of its time in an otherwise innocuous sitcom. Certain aspects of modern anime remain ten years ahead of american productions, in the same way modern american film productions look ten years ahead of films from most other countries.
On top of all that, remember this: the anime we're sitting here talking about now (what's "new to us") was shown in Japan years ago. The modern american otaku (like me) has only the smallest awareness of what the real breadth of Japanese animation looks like today, so we lose both the stuff that's so bad it doesn't come across and some of the hidden gems, which we can only conjecture exists based on past experience with the exported art of other cultures. We see only the top 5% of what comes over, so everything looks good to us. Well, almost everything, DBZ kind of sucks, visually.
-jpowers
That last bit about Disney is utter bullshit.
Bust him!!!!!!!!!!!
Disney shows its ineptitude well enough with the anime they have, let's not give them any more.
-jpowers
Right. Only Governments can censor. Since these corporations have control of Congress and the press, the corporate sector is a de facto government body, and its "editing" is really censorship. The fact that it has no constitutional basis is irrelevant.
-jpowers
Now it's every night at 12 and saturday morning at 9(ish?).
SciFi shows them now and again, saturday/sunday afternoon.
The other day I saw Judge on IFC. Weird.
-jpowers
And DBZ on DVD doesn't even include the original Japanese audio track! Thats low.
/. was kind enough to post a story about it, though it was the week AFTER the petition was sent in. Oh well, more money for Ranma DVDs...
Speaking of low, The Mouse is doing the same thing with Mononoke Hime.
-jpowers
1. Don't post anything bad about Linux.
;P
2. Don't post anything not-bad about Microsoft.
2. Don't post anything bad about Open Source.
3. Don't post a first post.
Still using that first-gen pentium chip I see...
These are all true, with a condition on the M$ rule (Is that 2 or 2a?). I've found that when I sit and think about something before I post it, I generally get left alone or even modded up. If you moderate your own posts by supporting/clarifying/stating clear conditions under which your points are true, you tend to get treated well, even if you, like me, are not a true computer guru.
-jpowers
I have a very selfish reason for being a militant *nix geek at work. We're moving more and more towards having local application servers (our current SPARCs are taken care of off-site) and I want something I can fix. I already run a small linux server with a few services (samba, anon ftp, ps2pdf converter), and I'm looking to expand my own knowledge in this area. If we get NT servers for the new apps, I'll be stuck holding people's hands while they reboot 98SE and calling a contractor for the NT servers for the rest of my life. I don't need to be "indispensable," but I've been feeling a little underutilized...
My own fault ending up with this simple little job I realize, but I don't mind it as long as I've got something to keep me occupied and useful. A little Sun or even Linux server for this new image DB with web extensions should be just about right.
-jpowers
How many 'agreements' have you made where one party can change terms midstream?
Try every single credit card company I've ever dealt with. Incidentally, If any of you have/have had a Citibank card over the last two years, they owe you money. There's a class-action lawsuit, something about Citi charging people 1/8th of a day extra interest each month over the last two years. If you lost your card for being a day late or don't have one of theirs anymore, you can ask for a refund/credit report change.
-jpowers
What if you don't know anyone else who uses the product(s) you are considering?
If this includes the people who work in your IS department, then you hire consultants. First question you ask them(before you sign anything): Which OS do you prefer? Favored response: Whichever is best for the situation.
What if you don't have time to fully evaluate every option?
Then you're not doing your job. Get an assistant to foist the lesser half of your work onto so you can concentrate on "fully evaluating every option."
In the real world many business decisions are made on the basis of incomplete information and against tight deadlines.
In the real world there's a difference between acting professional and being professional. Acting professional requires things like nice suits and witty meeting banter, see The Courtier for a more complete list. Being professional has only one requirement: pure fucking competence.
Therefore I would submit that Angry Badger's post is dead-on. If you're making IT decisions based on reading PC Magazine or whatever, there's a real problem. They should have no weight whatsoever in your decisions. If no one you work with knows about the different apps you're considering, you need to go with a third party, one who doesn't push a given package right up front.
You can trust me on this one, my stepfather wrote that magazine article shit when I was in high school, and he's a complete moron.
-jpowers
I still love that .sig. When I used it, I kept getting weird right wing militant SPAM (Use this training kit to teach your trailer trash children the true meaning of the Constitution!) Do you find that to be the case as well?
-jpowers
Yeah, we have an Ingres2 DB the size of China, but this was just basic accounting (she kept a numbered list of Purchase Orders). She's got so many, it needed to be either 1 written into Ingres or 2 moved to something new. I use Access for the PC inventorying (there's only 100, so it's okay) and my purchase requests, so it was simple to just copy the PR one and modify it to use her numbering system. If I was a real programmer I'd use one of the DBs they're talking about in this forum, but I'm not, so the users get Access.
My only issue with using it for something bigger is that people like me who aren't DBAs can forget that Access doesn't scale well. It gets tougher and tougher to justify using it as it grows in size and number of users. My using it for her is basically just a stopgap so the overworked DB progs can find a real solution.
I said something semi-positive about MS. Who the hell modded it up?
-jpowers
They're trying not to get spammed. The instinct to protect their privacy is a good one (I, as you can see above, don't give a shit), but it's unfortunate you have to suffer for it. Perhaps changing smtp to pipe all non-specifically addressed e-mails to /dev/null would be a good solution? Your "Swiss data protection commisioner" isn't going to be able to help you, I'm afraid. This is the sort of thing you have to take into your own hands and deal with.
-jpowers
OR...the /. kids have stock in Andover, who generates a profit from ads posted on /. Consequently, it behooves the /. kids to bring in as much traffic as they can, and no motivation is necessary over and above simple greed.
OR not...
-jpowers
I always get the little bastards shut down. UUNET is very responsive if you send them the message and full headers. I figured I'd have a harder time dealing with folks overseas, but no, the ISP in the phillipines gave the guy one chance to stop, he sent me another, and they shut him down. Only one of the little ISPs in the US gave me problems, they said they couldn't shut anyone down unless I FAXed them a signed statement with the email and full headers. I went one up on them, bellsouth shut THEM down. I don't know if uce@ftc.gov helps, but I forward stuff there, too.
Weren't they considering putting bounties out for spammers? I've been seeing a lot of online marketing firms advertising UCE as a service...
-jpowers
But Access is pretty useful for a few of my users who I caught using spreadsheets like databases ("Help! my machine crashed in Quattro Pro!" "Jeez, how many lines did you fill in this?" "Four thousand"). It isn't great, and I know better than to use Access for real production, but one table and a few forms/reports later, they're ready to go. And they seem to like that it doesn't reorganize their data when they hit sort...
-jpowers
On the one hand, "sovereign nations" sign treaties, and in order to get into the G8 and the rest of the boyz clubs, the treaties they sign involve respecting each other's intellectual property laws.
On the other hand, China shows a consistent propensity for ignoring IP piracy. While I personally find this an admirable and enlightened way of dealing with media reproduction, M$' opinion differs. In fact, it differs to the point where MS said they'd jack up the price of their software in China to cover whatever they estimated mainland piracy was costing them.
End result: semi-UNIX L-words all around. Free software doesn't matter, because everyone copies everything anyway. They won't enforce the GPL either, but it will never be worth selling closed source software there, because China will never pay any attention to reverse engineering, either. They win vs. M$ because they hold all the cards in their country. The day one chinese person GPLs a useful program, the rest of us will win, too. Assuming we can read the documentation.
Some of the high-tech manufacturers who went in there years ago to set up shop tried to register their patents with the government. Within two years chinese factories opened right down the street(!) and were competing with them USING THEIR PATENTS. See what I'm getting at? China isn't just a sovereign nation, it's a whole different way of looking at things. It's not stealing to them, you can either keep your secret or you can't. Software isn't really the sort of secret you can keep.
-jpowers
I'm gonna need documentation for that one. Whoever you heard it from may have been exaggerating for effect...
And, um, what does "Do you really care that much about your thought" mean?
-jpowers