In the late 80's - early 90's Apple sold black and white portrait displays which were the size of a portrait-oriented 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper.
You didn't have to scroll. And because black and white monitors use a continuous coat of phosphor, rather than small but discrete rgb phosphors, it's easier on the eyes.
Wish I had one - perfect for long stretches of typing and some composition. (21" b&w for better composition of course;)
Certainly it's annoying as hell to have anything obscuring the animation. BUT, I read ultra-fast. This is a blessing and a curse. I don't lose time reading subtitles on anime, b/c I glance at them and comprehension goes right to my brain. It makes me really susceptible to advertising though, that's the downside.
My problem is that with very rare exceptions, dubs are bad.
The fx are bad.
Songs either remain in Japanese or are translated to English, usually with dismal results (the Bubblegum Crisis dubs had to be buried in a salt mine for 10,000 years).
Voice actors don't usually convey the subtleties of the script, although I attribute this to there not being much demand for that domestically. Japanese production companies scrimp on animation, which is why there is such an emphasis on the cheaper audio side of any given anime. Certain episodes of Escaflowne and Evangelion have absolutely ZERO movement for a couple minutes at times. But it's carried by the vocal performances, and unless you have an eye for it, it doesn't bother you. Additionally, and this might seem kind of pretentious here, but I really do feel that the Japanese language uses a lot of nuance to get things across, conveying an additional bonus that we relatively brash Americans don't have.
Badly done dubs are the worst, no question. But I'd rather have a sub to fall back on than ignore the anime altogether. DVDs are turning out to be great for anime because they can carry multiple soundtracks and run the subs as closed captioning (which can thus be turned off if you so desire).
Ghost in the Shell, to me, had a crappy dub. Mokoto had no emotion in her voice at all, and was very flat. I have not seen the subbed version, but based on the manga, I have trouble believing that she'd speak like that. Batou was also usually pretty boring. One of these days I'll hear it in Japanese though, and be able to make a better comparison.
Haven't seen the Kiki dub at all. (Besides, Porco Rosso was the balls;)
Basically, I just think that, barring my learning Japanese, the most faithful version of an anime will be the subbed one. I want to hear every little thing, and if I want to see the full animation, I'll watch it again w/o the subs but with the Japanese soundtrack. That's more important to me - the quality that I know is in the original - than losing a little convenience.
But, to each his own.
(Ever hear some of the voices on Sailor Moon? It makes me shudder even more than watching the original Japanese Sailor Moon;)
Boy have we diverged from the original subject or what?
Um, I'm a big fan of Apple and the Mac, but I have to step in and correct you here.
The mouse was developed a long, long time ago. Jef Raskin, IIRC brought it and most of the GUI stuff to Apple (wish I had my copy of Infinite Loop handy) and managed to get Steve happy with it. After Steve's baby, the Apple III died. And then after Steve's next baby the Lisa (computer) died. Then Steve kicked Raskin out. He's not a pleasant guy. A couple IBM PC programs used mice before the Mac came along as well, but were never popular.
Steve and most of Apple fought the Laser Printer tooth and nail. It _barely_ got approved, along with support for Aldus PageMaker and Adobe Postscript, which turned out to save the Mac from certain death in the 85-88 timeframe. DTP is still the strongest Mac market. I know. I do DTP.
Expansion slots were used on a bunch of different computers before the Apple II. (see someone else's post for details)
He had nothing to do with 24bit video on Macs (first started appearing after the MacII came along, first on the mb when the Quadras appeared both of which happened after he was gone). Steve liked black and white, and the NeXT didn't go color for a really long time because of this.
Steve is not really a visionary at all. All of this stuff was either pushed on him, approved by other people in spite of him, or had absolutely nothing to do with Steve.
(in fact, there's a really funny story about the 3.5" floppy drive in the early Mac days)
What Steve's good at is taking credit and marketing well. He is dangerous to a company in other capacities. Read "The NeXT Big Thing" and be amazed that NeXT did not spontaneously combust under his leadership, and lack therof. He's been good for Apple this time around, but I'd be wary of relying on him too much.
Well, Mononoke-hime is not the greatest example, because it's a Japanese film which has been brought over. Of course, it's one of the greatest anime around, and Disney was wise to get into an agreement with Studio Ghibli, but it's not truly an American movie.
The best animated movies we've had over here recently are probably the various Pixar films, Prince of Egypt (would have been better without the singing and dancing), and the Iron Giant. Which are all somewhat targeted at kids (PoE being the most adult). For real adult animation, I'd say to check out TV. Simpsons, Futurama & Family Guy all work out quite well there.
Spawn, btw, is IMHO a horrible horrible comic, and an even worse cartoon (was it drawn on eights or something? sheesh). All it proved was that cartoonists are capable of drawing nekkid women. Oh boy. (think the Spawn comic is the cat's pajamas? Go read "Thieves and Kings" and then apologize, fanboy)
If you're in the mood for a really good Japanese anime, try some of these: Wings of Honneamise, Grave of the Fireflies, Vision of Escaflowne, Patlabor Movie 2, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Macross Plus. Those are good starting points. You'll do better to watch them subtitled, btw. Dubs are usually pretty bad.
You're right of course. The best movies in general are story driven. We witnessed this May how a movie with overwhelming effects, music and marketing can be shot down by a crappy story. The problem with American animation is simply that studios believe that only children's stories are worth telling; not universally appealing, or adult stories. Adult doesn't mean sex, btw. Can include it, doesn't rely on it.
The exception, although it's properly classified as an art film, is one of my favorites, Fantasia. (and the upcoming sequel, which I have fallen in love with) While there's a story in the segments, the point is mostly to watch the animation and listen to the music, and maybe use a few controlled substances to help things along. But this is not what all animations should aspire to be.
Pardon if I'm carrying on too long, but I'm a big animation enthusiast.
Do a search on Disney's page for Fantasia, or check out Ain't It Cool News and Dark Horizons. There are actually four QTs I know of: A section on the Firebird, a section on the Carnival of the Animals, one that I haven't seen, and the trailer. Collect 'em all! Amaze your friends!
Well, I'm looking forward to it, and I think it'll be pretty good. But what I really want to see right now is Disney's Fantasia 2000. DL'ed the trailer yesterday and even though the stupid QT movie is the size of a wheat thin, it looks amazing. Now I really have to hope there's no Y2K crisis - release date is 1/1/2000
obApple: They're actually doing really well, despite the G4 not shipping in the quantities they need it to. (Personally I couldn't care less about bugs that only appear over the rated speed. There's nothing new about chips running into problems over the rated speed...) The new iMacs are going to sell amazingly well, and iBooks and G4s are getting into the channels. Jobs is not an especially great guy, in fact he's a creep. The difference between Steve and Bill is merely that Steve is an egomaniac and Bill's a megalomaniac. I wonder if they've ever been seen together irl... hm...
But it's undeniable that Steve has been doing good stuff for Apple for the past couple years. This doesn't necessarily translate as good stuff for the consumers, esp those of us who had clones and/or used Linux or BeOS. But even then there's still a need for a strong Apple as a foundation. So I'm cool with Steve running the show. He just can't slack off, with his helicopter and handicapped parking spot.
Just wait until you see the intricate mechanisms used to get the crew from the preparation building to the ship's cabin. Lots of hydraulics, whirring around on cables, that kind of thing.;)
(the whole space program would get a lot easier if they'd just hire Captain Scarlet)
Of course, if the Hubble looked near the Earth, Moon or Sun the optics would rapidly burn out. Other spy sats (e.g. Keyhole series) are probably not as sensitive as far as brightness goes.
Two last week. Of course, it was my annual vacation to Monster Island, so that might have had something to do with it. Sure, it's not the safest Disneyfied vacation spot, but it is the cheapest Pacific island you can find. Just bring a super economy size can of Monster-B-Gone
Did Microsoft produce it? Last I heard, a company called Spyglass contributed most of the original IE code.
Well, the story I've heard goes something like this:
MS: We need a web browser, quick. We've never rapidly developed anything as good as flakey software on our own before, so we'd better buy it. Let's go buy Spyglass to obtain their Spyglass Mosaic browser.
Spyglass: No way are you going to buy us. We know what happens to people who get bought out by MS. Forget it.
MS: Well shoot, I guess we can't fool you. What about a licensing agreement.
Spyglass: Wellll... what kind of agreement did you have in mind?
MS: Tell you what, we'll give you guys 50% of the gross. Now that's a good deal.
Spyglass: Say, that is a good deal. No tricks?
MS: Would we lie?
Spyglass: It's a deal!
MS: Great. Did we mention that we're going to give it away for free, which means you get nothing at all?
Spyglass:;_;
The moral is, don't deal with the Devil^H^H^H^H^H Microsoft.
Competent people lack the necessary expertise in areas such as these. Due to a strange quirk in science, breakthroughs with dangerously unstable AI's are done only by eccentric but brilliant solitary researchers.
However, consider what would happen if you really could create a black hole. The Army would immediately take it, hide it away and use it as a new weapon of mass destruction.
According to an article on this subject in Wired (which, btw, I submitted last week to/. pout pout) the guys running Jam Echelon may have identified it as a threat to our freedom, but that doesn't prevent them from also being kind of kooky. Read the linked article.
I'd give Jefferson's good friend (and semi-protoge) Madison more credit for the Constitution. At the time the Constitution was being drafted, Jefferson was in France. He did establish a lot of the basic ideas though, and single-handedly wrote the Declaration of Independence (Franklin and Adams kind of foisted a lot of it on to him;)
No, I disagree. Dvorak is the Rush Limbaugh of the computing world. Cringley is no better, but he just doesn't evoke the warm fuzzies when I imagine him getting hit by an anvil or something.
(oh they're welcome to their opinions, they're just both annoying as hell)
You've just discovered the market for un-real-time clocks for computers. Make the machine think that time is standing still, or that it's moving very slowly, and you could make a mint.
Lacking the tech skills to capitalize on this, I will stick to my trade as a graphic designer, and make a mint the old fashioned way, with very delicate engraving;)
But it makes sense. If teachers change the criteria for a passing grade to the criteria in some software - which can be inferred by analyising its behavior, or REing the program - than students don't have to learn anything. Just successfully spoof the program. Or learn only what the program needs them to know, and nothing more. (so if it tests on 1st, 16th and current presidents, who cares about 2-15, 16-the last guy)
It wasn't so bad when the students just had to spoof the teacher. At least crappy teachers (a good teacher's going to use this? schwa, right) were generally crappy in different ways.
I fondly remember my HS math teacher who didn't teach me a thing except that my vision had deteriorated to the point when I needed to get glasses to see the board. Taught myself the whole thing in summer school, got an A and bitched her out. Ah, the memories....
Sadly, there will be some problems, and they're the same sort of homogenization problems that are evident in computing. MS will practically cut off your arms to make sure that one size fits all. Now we'll be penalizing creativity because it doesn't match a statistical model of the ideal paper.
In the old system of course, bad teachers are just as bad as this software, and good teachers way better. There was a chance, at least, that you'd get the good teacher. Now there will be only one teacher - the program. Monocultures strike again....
Well, NBC is working on a new show called "The Crawling Man" and if it's successful, they'll probably bring out "The Walking Man" about 3-5 years after.
I think it depends on the species of monkey. I have 10,000 monkeys chained to 10,000 vterms (cheaper than typewriters these days). So far they've written Hamlet and Love's Labors Lost. But they keep attributing them to "Edward deVere" for some reason.
btw, it's a good idea to find a monkey chow wholeseller before you go out and get 10,000 monkeys. Take it from me, you do not want to screw around with 10,000 hungry monkies. That Peter Tork's really vicious!
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In the late 80's - early 90's Apple sold black and white portrait displays which were the size of a portrait-oriented 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper.
;)
You didn't have to scroll. And because black and white monitors use a continuous coat of phosphor, rather than small but discrete rgb phosphors, it's easier on the eyes.
Wish I had one - perfect for long stretches of typing and some composition. (21" b&w for better composition of course
HACKMAN: The city's in peril! Quickly L33tl4d, to the Hackcave!
L33TL4D: You mean your basement?
HACKMAN: ... Yes.
o/~ da da da da da da da da Hackman! o/~
(log on next week as Hackman battles the mp3ster)
Certainly it's annoying as hell to have anything obscuring the animation. BUT, I read ultra-fast. This is a blessing and a curse. I don't lose time reading subtitles on anime, b/c I glance at them and comprehension goes right to my brain. It makes me really susceptible to advertising though, that's the downside.
;)
;)
My problem is that with very rare exceptions, dubs are bad.
The fx are bad.
Songs either remain in Japanese or are translated to English, usually with dismal results (the Bubblegum Crisis dubs had to be buried in a salt mine for 10,000 years).
Voice actors don't usually convey the subtleties of the script, although I attribute this to there not being much demand for that domestically. Japanese production companies scrimp on animation, which is why there is such an emphasis on the cheaper audio side of any given anime. Certain episodes of Escaflowne and Evangelion have absolutely ZERO movement for a couple minutes at times. But it's carried by the vocal performances, and unless you have an eye for it, it doesn't bother you. Additionally, and this might seem kind of pretentious here, but I really do feel that the Japanese language uses a lot of nuance to get things across, conveying an additional bonus that we relatively brash Americans don't have.
Badly done dubs are the worst, no question. But I'd rather have a sub to fall back on than ignore the anime altogether. DVDs are turning out to be great for anime because they can carry multiple soundtracks and run the subs as closed captioning (which can thus be turned off if you so desire).
Ghost in the Shell, to me, had a crappy dub. Mokoto had no emotion in her voice at all, and was very flat. I have not seen the subbed version, but based on the manga, I have trouble believing that she'd speak like that. Batou was also usually pretty boring. One of these days I'll hear it in Japanese though, and be able to make a better comparison.
Haven't seen the Kiki dub at all. (Besides, Porco Rosso was the balls
Basically, I just think that, barring my learning Japanese, the most faithful version of an anime will be the subbed one. I want to hear every little thing, and if I want to see the full animation, I'll watch it again w/o the subs but with the Japanese soundtrack. That's more important to me - the quality that I know is in the original - than losing a little convenience.
But, to each his own.
(Ever hear some of the voices on Sailor Moon? It makes me shudder even more than watching the original Japanese Sailor Moon
Boy have we diverged from the original subject or what?
Um, I'm a big fan of Apple and the Mac, but I have to step in and correct you here.
The mouse was developed a long, long time ago. Jef Raskin, IIRC brought it and most of the GUI stuff to Apple (wish I had my copy of Infinite Loop handy) and managed to get Steve happy with it. After Steve's baby, the Apple III died. And then after Steve's next baby the Lisa (computer) died. Then Steve kicked Raskin out. He's not a pleasant guy. A couple IBM PC programs used mice before the Mac came along as well, but were never popular.
Steve and most of Apple fought the Laser Printer tooth and nail. It _barely_ got approved, along with support for Aldus PageMaker and Adobe Postscript, which turned out to save the Mac from certain death in the 85-88 timeframe. DTP is still the strongest Mac market. I know. I do DTP.
Expansion slots were used on a bunch of different computers before the Apple II. (see someone else's post for details)
He had nothing to do with 24bit video on Macs (first started appearing after the MacII came along, first on the mb when the Quadras appeared both of which happened after he was gone). Steve liked black and white, and the NeXT didn't go color for a really long time because of this.
Steve is not really a visionary at all. All of this stuff was either pushed on him, approved by other people in spite of him, or had absolutely nothing to do with Steve.
(in fact, there's a really funny story about the 3.5" floppy drive in the early Mac days)
What Steve's good at is taking credit and marketing well. He is dangerous to a company in other capacities. Read "The NeXT Big Thing" and be amazed that NeXT did not spontaneously combust under his leadership, and lack therof. He's been good for Apple this time around, but I'd be wary of relying on him too much.
Well, Mononoke-hime is not the greatest example, because it's a Japanese film which has been brought over. Of course, it's one of the greatest anime around, and Disney was wise to get into an agreement with Studio Ghibli, but it's not truly an American movie.
The best animated movies we've had over here recently are probably the various Pixar films, Prince of Egypt (would have been better without the singing and dancing), and the Iron Giant. Which are all somewhat targeted at kids (PoE being the most adult). For real adult animation, I'd say to check out TV. Simpsons, Futurama & Family Guy all work out quite well there.
Spawn, btw, is IMHO a horrible horrible comic, and an even worse cartoon (was it drawn on eights or something? sheesh). All it proved was that cartoonists are capable of drawing nekkid women. Oh boy. (think the Spawn comic is the cat's pajamas? Go read "Thieves and Kings" and then apologize, fanboy)
If you're in the mood for a really good Japanese anime, try some of these: Wings of Honneamise, Grave of the Fireflies, Vision of Escaflowne, Patlabor Movie 2, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Macross Plus. Those are good starting points. You'll do better to watch them subtitled, btw. Dubs are usually pretty bad.
You're right of course. The best movies in general are story driven. We witnessed this May how a movie with overwhelming effects, music and marketing can be shot down by a crappy story. The problem with American animation is simply that studios believe that only children's stories are worth telling; not universally appealing, or adult stories. Adult doesn't mean sex, btw. Can include it, doesn't rely on it.
The exception, although it's properly classified as an art film, is one of my favorites, Fantasia. (and the upcoming sequel, which I have fallen in love with) While there's a story in the segments, the point is mostly to watch the animation and listen to the music, and maybe use a few controlled substances to help things along. But this is not what all animations should aspire to be.
Pardon if I'm carrying on too long, but I'm a big animation enthusiast.
Do a search on Disney's page for Fantasia, or check out Ain't It Cool News and Dark Horizons. There are actually four QTs I know of: A section on the Firebird, a section on the Carnival of the Animals, one that I haven't seen, and the trailer. Collect 'em all! Amaze your friends!
obApple: They're actually doing really well, despite the G4 not shipping in the quantities they need it to. (Personally I couldn't care less about bugs that only appear over the rated speed. There's nothing new about chips running into problems over the rated speed...) The new iMacs are going to sell amazingly well, and iBooks and G4s are getting into the channels. Jobs is not an especially great guy, in fact he's a creep. The difference between Steve and Bill is merely that Steve is an egomaniac and Bill's a megalomaniac. I wonder if they've ever been seen together irl... hm...
But it's undeniable that Steve has been doing good stuff for Apple for the past couple years. This doesn't necessarily translate as good stuff for the consumers, esp those of us who had clones and/or used Linux or BeOS. But even then there's still a need for a strong Apple as a foundation. So I'm cool with Steve running the show. He just can't slack off, with his helicopter and handicapped parking spot.
Yeah, but my Catepillar can get 6.4 Tb on a single backhoe. Maybe more, if they put em all in the same conduit. Better'n pingfloods ;)
Ultimately, yes. But before it becomes a problem, we tell Chris Reeves to ignore Marlon Brando and circle the Earth really quickly.
Just wait until you see the intricate mechanisms used to get the crew from the preparation building to the ship's cabin. Lots of hydraulics, whirring around on cables, that kind of thing. ;)
(the whole space program would get a lot easier if they'd just hire Captain Scarlet)
Of course, if the Hubble looked near the Earth, Moon or Sun the optics would rapidly burn out. Other spy sats (e.g. Keyhole series) are probably not as sensitive as far as brightness goes.
Two last week. Of course, it was my annual vacation to Monster Island, so that might have had something to do with it. Sure, it's not the safest Disneyfied vacation spot, but it is the cheapest Pacific island you can find. Just bring a super economy size can of Monster-B-Gone
Well, the story I've heard goes something like this:
MS: We need a web browser, quick. We've never rapidly developed anything as good as flakey software on our own before, so we'd better buy it. Let's go buy Spyglass to obtain their Spyglass Mosaic browser.
Spyglass: No way are you going to buy us. We know what happens to people who get bought out by MS. Forget it.
MS: Well shoot, I guess we can't fool you. What about a licensing agreement.
Spyglass: Wellll... what kind of agreement did you have in mind?
MS: Tell you what, we'll give you guys 50% of the gross. Now that's a good deal.
Spyglass: Say, that is a good deal. No tricks?
MS: Would we lie?
Spyglass: It's a deal!
MS: Great. Did we mention that we're going to give it away for free, which means you get nothing at all?
Spyglass: ;_;
The moral is, don't deal with the Devil^H^H^H^H^H Microsoft.
You can destroy mass? I'd love to know how...
According to an article on this subject in Wired (which, btw, I submitted last week to /. pout pout) the guys running Jam Echelon may have identified it as a threat to our freedom, but that doesn't prevent them from also being kind of kooky. Read the linked article.
I'd give Jefferson's good friend (and semi-protoge) Madison more credit for the Constitution. At the time the Constitution was being drafted, Jefferson was in France. He did establish a lot of the basic ideas though, and single-handedly wrote the Declaration of Independence (Franklin and Adams kind of foisted a lot of it on to him ;)
You sound a bit like a Cartesian. Truly a thorny corner to get out of.
No, I disagree. Dvorak is the Rush Limbaugh of the computing world. Cringley is no better, but he just doesn't evoke the warm fuzzies when I imagine him getting hit by an anvil or something.
(oh they're welcome to their opinions, they're just both annoying as hell)
You've just discovered the market for un-real-time clocks for computers. Make the machine think that time is standing still, or that it's moving very slowly, and you could make a mint.
;)
Lacking the tech skills to capitalize on this, I will stick to my trade as a graphic designer, and make a mint the old fashioned way, with very delicate engraving
Well, except in Kansas.
But it makes sense. If teachers change the criteria for a passing grade to the criteria in some software - which can be inferred by analyising its behavior, or REing the program - than students don't have to learn anything. Just successfully spoof the program. Or learn only what the program needs them to know, and nothing more. (so if it tests on 1st, 16th and current presidents, who cares about 2-15, 16-the last guy)
It wasn't so bad when the students just had to spoof the teacher. At least crappy teachers (a good teacher's going to use this? schwa, right) were generally crappy in different ways.
I fondly remember my HS math teacher who didn't teach me a thing except that my vision had deteriorated to the point when I needed to get glasses to see the board. Taught myself the whole thing in summer school, got an A and bitched her out. Ah, the memories....
Sadly, there will be some problems, and they're the same sort of homogenization problems that are evident in computing. MS will practically cut off your arms to make sure that one size fits all. Now we'll be penalizing creativity because it doesn't match a statistical model of the ideal paper.
In the old system of course, bad teachers are just as bad as this software, and good teachers way better. There was a chance, at least, that you'd get the good teacher. Now there will be only one teacher - the program. Monocultures strike again....
Well, NBC is working on a new show called "The Crawling Man" and if it's successful, they'll probably bring out "The Walking Man" about 3-5 years after.
I'd be taking my Swiss Army Shirt (it's translucent!)...
I think it depends on the species of monkey. I have 10,000 monkeys chained to 10,000 vterms (cheaper than typewriters these days). So far they've written Hamlet and Love's Labors Lost. But they keep attributing them to "Edward deVere" for some reason.
btw, it's a good idea to find a monkey chow wholeseller before you go out and get 10,000 monkeys. Take it from me, you do not want to screw around with 10,000 hungry monkies. That Peter Tork's really vicious!
Well I call dibs on the bionic arm with the little twiddly silver thing on the end. I don't know what it does, but it must be good.