Have you listened to the re-dub that was released recentally? It's a lot better with regards to translation and voice acting, although I miss the growling general's immortal "Men, we're going to the olympics!":)
I know all too well that in the past English dubbing of anime suffered from a horrid lack of voice talent, but it's getting better now. Especially when you listen to the English tracks from Big O or Cowboy Bebop.
Actually, none of the only lyrics, per se, in the whole sound track are the names of the characters, "Kaneda", "Kei", "Tetsuo", etc.
Otherwise, the voices in the background are various chants based on Japanese Noh (a form of opera.)
The liner notes in the soundtrack, as well as the interviews with the DVD explain this.
Though, your comment about the Backstreet Boys is probably on-target for this "adaptation." Lord knows us 'Mericans don't like music unless it's got words sung by some pretty faces in it.
I mean, who *can't* see Baha Boys' "Who let the dogs out?" playing during the initial scenes with Kaneda and his gang riding through the city?
I often hear that about Akira, but to be honest, I really don't understand why so many had problems with this movie.
The first time I watched this movie, it had subtitles. I'd only heard that it "looked really cool", but hadn't read any sort of synopsis or anything.
Yeah, the story isn't laid out in a particularly linear fashion - there's lots of stuff going on in the background that isn't explained until later on.
Still, I had no problem understanding the story after seeing the movie.
I'm rather afraid what they're going to do Akira to make it more "palateable" to Americans... I have images of Keanu Reaves playing Tetsuo, while hitting on Kei, played by Britney Spears (oh yeah - like I'd believe *her* as a political activist/rebel...)
As for Mimi o Sumaseba or Tanuki Wars (Ponpoko?) Can you imagine what would happen to these if they were "Americanized"??
Unfortunatly, when buying things online, I have to give them some personal information, otherwise, I won't get my stuff.:)
Maybe if the Post Office offered an anonymous redirection service, so they could accept packages headed for "Customer #xxxxxxx" but wouldn't actually know where in the US (world) I physically resided.
Etoys.com (remember them?) clearly violated their privacy agreement by "lending" their customer database to an outside party for a survey.
I wrote to both Etoys.com and TrustE saying as much, provided links to Etoys' violated privacy policy, and followed the convulted reporting method listed on TrustE's website.
Two weeks went by. Nothing from TrustE. So, I wrote them back and said "What about my complaint?" to which they said "What complaint?"
EToys, meanwhile, had apologized to me, and was trying to buy back my business with a measely $5 gift e-certificate.
Whatever.
I've had other companies go against their policies and my settings. They get a nice (handwritten) letter stating I'll no longer do business with them.
While I agree this thing isn't targetted at/. geeks, who exactly IS it targetted at?
Joe-six pack is NOT going to spend $600 on what is essentially a DVD player that can play music and sorta surf the web.
Audiophiles are NOT going to spend $600 on an MP3 player.
A/Vphiles are NOT going to spend $600 on a DVD player that doesn't even support component output, to say nothing of progressive scan, VGA-output, coax-audio out, etc.
So, who exactly is supposed to buy this thing?
Drop the price to $300.
At that point, you'll start getting sales from Joe-sixpack interested in a multi-purpose box, as well/. geeks looking for a quick & cheap way to add MP3s to their stereo setup.
This thing was horribly overpriced and mis-marketted when/. ran this story the first time, and nothing has changed. The price drop moreorless reflects the general decrease in PC components since it was announced.
So, in other words, you value your time at $0/hour...
Tell me, do you wash your car? Change your car's oil? Paint your house? Cook all your meals? Make your own clothes?
What do you mean you don't? It's much cheaper to do it yourself instead of paying someone a lot of money to do it instead. All it takes is some materials, and TIME.
Oh, I see, you'd rather do something else with your time?
You'd rather pay more for the convience?
Then guess what, your time isn't worth $0.
Just because you're not getting paid on the weekends doesn't mean your time suddenly becomes worthless.
Backwards compatibility, like the DVD player feature, are like those extras you see in infomercials: "But wait...there's more! The PS2 plays all your PS1 games *and* DVD movies! Now, how much would you pay?!? Buy now, and all this can be yours for the low, low price of $300!"
In my case, it was these extras that sold me on a PS2. I was originally going to buy one so I could play a bunch of PS1 games, and have a low-end standalone DVD player (my laptop may have a nice screen, but 15" vs. 27"...)
Re:Medicine needs to be more callous
on
Hospital Robots
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· Score: 1
LOL.
It's also interesting to note that this thing can't climb stairs... I guess that's for version 2.0:)
Sure, you start in a garage, then when you get more people and can't get find a larger office, then what?
Remember, this was during the "high times" in 1999 and 2000. There was very little (if any) office space available.
Also, how do you expect to attract new employees when you don't even have space to put them? Do you really thing folks are going to be excited to hear "Welcome aboard, you'll be working out of Bob's garage, and remember, it's BYOT - bring your own table."
Finally, moving your company around is a very disruptive process, and something you really don't want to do every 3-6 months... Better to find a place where you can stay for a year or more - even if that means buying something "too large." If done right, you could always sub-let the extra space to another company, until yours was large enough to need it.
True enough, it's a gamble, and in this case, the gamble didn't pay off. Oh well, such is the risk of doing business.
A $40k office for 10 people may be excessive, but not if they were planning on growing the number of employees.
My last company only had 5 employees, but we had room for about 30. Unfortunatly, we never got a chance to use that space before the company was dissolved. Ah, well.
Gnucleus also incredibly flakey - and I'm being kind here.
Even for files that list 3+ hosts, it only downloads from a single source at sub 1kbps speeds, then the download drops altogether, leaving me with yet-another-worthless-partial-download that's queued, but never resumes.
After awhile, there's so much stuff in my queue that's waiting a turn at the remote node that my connection to Gnutella's network drops entirely and refuses to reconnect unless I physically reboot my computer. (yes, I tried quitting and restarting Gnucleus - it never gets a connection.)
Furthermore, no one was ever able to successfully grab a file from me. It'd always abort a few seconds after the connection was established. (probably had the same problems I had grabbing stuff...)
Really wonderful product, there.:p
On an expendable PC, I installed Kazaa and fiddled around a bit with it. I think I've disabled (neutered) most of the spyware stuff (don't know about this stuff from Brilliant though...) and I disabled the ads completely.
Within minutes, I'd gotten a few files, and had a number of uploads going along smoothly.
So long as Brilliant sticks to their promise that their stuff is *voluntary*, then there shouldn't be a problem with it - after all, no one made me (or everyone else) click that "Accept" button, right?
I'll admit Gnucleus is a lot better than the early clients I tried when Gnutella was fairly new, but Kazaa still blows them away with regards to usability, searchability, speed, connection reliability, etc.
I do hope they keep trying - after all, competition is a good thing.
Eh? TMNT came from a (far superior) comic book series, which then spawned an very-toned down cartoon, which then spawned the successful arcade game and its SNES(?) port.
Another counterpoint to your "law" is that the first Mortal Kombat movie wasn't bad. It wasn't a great work of cinema, but it was a good fun movie. Unfortunatly the subsequent MK movies were awful.
If you pick a console wisely, the cost of the hardware will be nothing compared to the cost of the software.
Personally, I wouldn't buy a console unless there are at least 3 or 4 "good games" (for whatever value you use for "good game") available for it.
I bought a PS2 last year and have gotten my money's worth out of the platform so far. GameCube looks like it could be very promising. It doesn't have enough "good games" by my definition yet, but its upcoming schedule looks intriguing...
At any rate, game hardware only drops in price as time goes on. The PS2 is rumored to drop $50-100 by this summer, and there are even rumors about the XBox doing the same. Also don't forget most games will get marked down as well, so if you don't want to pay $50 for a new game, wait awhile, and get it for $20-30 when it hits the bargin bin. Nothing wrong being "behind the curve." Cheaper, too.
Basically, I can't see using this thing like "LoJack For Kids". I can, however, see using this for more facsist parents to enforce various grounding-type punishments. They would be able to make sure the kid DID really come right home from school, and didn't go to Billy's house for instance.
In a kidnapping/abduction situation, once this thing is removed from the kid, it's useless.
Even having it send out an emergency signal for tracking is useless (See any number of Star Trek episodes where a crew member removes his badge to become "invsible" on the Enterprise.) Even an shrieking siren isn't going to do any good. Do you react at all when a car alarm goes off? No.
Once this thing is off, just flush it down the toilet, feed it to a rat, or smash it with a sledgehammer (I doubt it'll survive that.) The authorities will probably never find the kid, but at least the parents can get their watch back. How nice.:p
Slashdot Mirror
I think he meant to say "officially announced", not "released."
You'd think that a geek would know the product lifecycle...
Have you listened to the re-dub that was released recentally? It's a lot better with regards to translation and voice acting, although I miss the growling general's immortal "Men, we're going to the olympics!" :)
I know all too well that in the past English dubbing of anime suffered from a horrid lack of voice talent, but it's getting better now. Especially when you listen to the English tracks from Big O or Cowboy Bebop.
I'll throw in Wings Of Honneamise.
:(
Unfortunatly, the US DVD release is just awful
There's been rumors of a re-release done right, but I'm not holding my breath...
Easily one of the best films I've seen, period.
Actually, none of the only lyrics, per se, in the whole sound track are the names of the characters, "Kaneda", "Kei", "Tetsuo", etc.
Otherwise, the voices in the background are various chants based on Japanese Noh (a form of opera.)
The liner notes in the soundtrack, as well as the interviews with the DVD explain this.
Though, your comment about the Backstreet Boys is probably on-target for this "adaptation." Lord knows us 'Mericans don't like music unless it's got words sung by some pretty faces in it.
I mean, who *can't* see Baha Boys' "Who let the dogs out?" playing during the initial scenes with Kaneda and his gang riding through the city?
I often hear that about Akira, but to be honest, I really don't understand why so many had problems with this movie.
The first time I watched this movie, it had subtitles. I'd only heard that it "looked really cool", but hadn't read any sort of synopsis or anything.
Yeah, the story isn't laid out in a particularly linear fashion - there's lots of stuff going on in the background that isn't explained until later on.
Still, I had no problem understanding the story after seeing the movie.
I'm rather afraid what they're going to do Akira to make it more "palateable" to Americans... I have images of Keanu Reaves playing Tetsuo, while hitting on Kei, played by Britney Spears (oh yeah - like I'd believe *her* as a political activist/rebel...)
As for Mimi o Sumaseba or Tanuki Wars (Ponpoko?) Can you imagine what would happen to these if they were "Americanized"??
I'm shuddering as I type this.
Bah, just read lots of comics.
:)
This will do two things:
1: vastly improve your reading abilities.
2: cause your sensei to massively freak out.
Of course, some comics are easier to read than others, due to level of language, kanji, vocabulary.
You weren't supposed to SELL the Elerium - it was a required component to enable you to go to Mars and win the game...
Whenever possible, I do this too.
:)
Unfortunatly, when buying things online, I have to give them some personal information, otherwise, I won't get my stuff.
Maybe if the Post Office offered an anonymous redirection service, so they could accept packages headed for "Customer #xxxxxxx" but wouldn't actually know where in the US (world) I physically resided.
TrustE is a nothing but a con anyways.
Etoys.com (remember them?) clearly violated their privacy agreement by "lending" their customer database to an outside party for a survey.
I wrote to both Etoys.com and TrustE saying as much, provided links to Etoys' violated privacy policy, and followed the convulted reporting method listed on TrustE's website.
Two weeks went by. Nothing from TrustE. So, I wrote them back and said "What about my complaint?" to which they said "What complaint?"
EToys, meanwhile, had apologized to me, and was trying to buy back my business with a measely $5 gift e-certificate.
Whatever.
I've had other companies go against their policies and my settings. They get a nice (handwritten) letter stating I'll no longer do business with them.
As a DVD playback device, this thing is already useless.
It didn't support component, much less, progressive, output when it was reviewed, and still doesn't.
I've seen players as low as $120 that have component output. $200 for players with progressive scan.. What's this thing's excuse at $600?
Even the PS2, which can be considered a multi-function box, has component out.
Heck, if Sony ever releases the HD/network card combo for the PS2 (~$100?) the PS2 will be able to do *MORE* than this thing for *HALF* the price.
This goes for XBox as well.
While I agree this thing isn't targetted at /. geeks, who exactly IS it targetted at?
/. geeks looking for a quick & cheap way to add MP3s to their stereo setup.
/. ran this story the first time, and nothing has changed. The price drop moreorless reflects the general decrease in PC components since it was announced.
Joe-six pack is NOT going to spend $600 on what is essentially a DVD player that can play music and sorta surf the web.
Audiophiles are NOT going to spend $600 on an MP3 player.
A/Vphiles are NOT going to spend $600 on a DVD player that doesn't even support component output, to say nothing of progressive scan, VGA-output, coax-audio out, etc.
So, who exactly is supposed to buy this thing?
Drop the price to $300.
At that point, you'll start getting sales from Joe-sixpack interested in a multi-purpose box, as well
This thing was horribly overpriced and mis-marketted when
So, in other words, you value your time at $0/hour...
Tell me, do you wash your car? Change your car's oil? Paint your house? Cook all your meals? Make your own clothes?
What do you mean you don't? It's much cheaper to do it yourself instead of paying someone a lot of money to do it instead. All it takes is some materials, and TIME.
Oh, I see, you'd rather do something else with your time?
You'd rather pay more for the convience?
Then guess what, your time isn't worth $0.
Just because you're not getting paid on the weekends doesn't mean your time suddenly becomes worthless.
Backwards compatibility, like the DVD player feature, are like those extras you see in infomercials: "But wait...there's more! The PS2 plays all your PS1 games *and* DVD movies! Now, how much would you pay?!? Buy now, and all this can be yours for the low, low price of $300!"
In my case, it was these extras that sold me on a PS2. I was originally going to buy one so I could play a bunch of PS1 games, and have a low-end standalone DVD player (my laptop may have a nice screen, but 15" vs. 27"...)
LOL.
:)
It's also interesting to note that this thing can't climb stairs... I guess that's for version 2.0
Sure, you start in a garage, then when you get more people and can't get find a larger office, then what?
Remember, this was during the "high times" in 1999 and 2000. There was very little (if any) office space available.
Also, how do you expect to attract new employees when you don't even have space to put them? Do you really thing folks are going to be excited to hear "Welcome aboard, you'll be working out of Bob's garage, and remember, it's BYOT - bring your own table."
Finally, moving your company around is a very disruptive process, and something you really don't want to do every 3-6 months... Better to find a place where you can stay for a year or more - even if that means buying something "too large." If done right, you could always sub-let the extra space to another company, until yours was large enough to need it.
True enough, it's a gamble, and in this case, the gamble didn't pay off. Oh well, such is the risk of doing business.
Part of planning is trying to accomadate growth.
A $40k office for 10 people may be excessive, but not if they were planning on growing the number of employees.
My last company only had 5 employees, but we had room for about 30. Unfortunatly, we never got a chance to use that space before the company was dissolved. Ah, well.
Gnucleus also incredibly flakey - and I'm being kind here.
:p
Even for files that list 3+ hosts, it only downloads from a single source at sub 1kbps speeds, then the download drops altogether, leaving me with yet-another-worthless-partial-download that's queued, but never resumes.
After awhile, there's so much stuff in my queue that's waiting a turn at the remote node that my connection to Gnutella's network drops entirely and refuses to reconnect unless I physically reboot my computer. (yes, I tried quitting and restarting Gnucleus - it never gets a connection.)
Furthermore, no one was ever able to successfully grab a file from me. It'd always abort a few seconds after the connection was established. (probably had the same problems I had grabbing stuff...)
Really wonderful product, there.
On an expendable PC, I installed Kazaa and fiddled around a bit with it. I think I've disabled (neutered) most of the spyware stuff (don't know about this stuff from Brilliant though...) and I disabled the ads completely.
Within minutes, I'd gotten a few files, and had a number of uploads going along smoothly.
So long as Brilliant sticks to their promise that their stuff is *voluntary*, then there shouldn't be a problem with it - after all, no one made me (or everyone else) click that "Accept" button, right?
I'll admit Gnucleus is a lot better than the early clients I tried when Gnutella was fairly new, but Kazaa still blows them away with regards to usability, searchability, speed, connection reliability, etc.
I do hope they keep trying - after all, competition is a good thing.
Yes, but this is a bit like Zim selling candy bars that contain the disclaimer "Warning: contains nothing but sawdust."
It looks like a CD, the company calls it a CD, I should be able to stick it into my computer, which can read CDs, and have it work.
If I came across something like this, I'd take it back to the store and tell them they're selling defective equipment.
BTW...what does Philips think of all this? Weren't they the ones throwing a hissy fit about CDs that weren't CDs?
Eh? TMNT came from a (far superior) comic book series, which then spawned an very-toned down cartoon, which then spawned the successful arcade game and its SNES(?) port.
Another counterpoint to your "law" is that the first Mortal Kombat movie wasn't bad. It wasn't a great work of cinema, but it was a good fun movie. Unfortunatly the subsequent MK movies were awful.
This already happens.
The stations pool their monies together to be able to buy programming.
Some programming they are required to carry, like Seasame Street, Nova, and so on.
But after that, they're able to make local decisions on what programs to purchase and run based on what their contributors say.
This is why one station might carry Red Dwarf, but another one will carry Antiques Road Show.
News.com has been news.com.com for awhile now. Apparentally they seem to think that they're "News.com".com
Yes, this means that CNet acutally bought "Com.com", so in reality they're "News".com.com.
Somehow this doesn't make me put much faith in them as a source of tech news...
If you pick a console wisely, the cost of the hardware will be nothing compared to the cost of the software.
Personally, I wouldn't buy a console unless there are at least 3 or 4 "good games" (for whatever value you use for "good game") available for it.
I bought a PS2 last year and have gotten my money's worth out of the platform so far. GameCube looks like it could be very promising. It doesn't have enough "good games" by my definition yet, but its upcoming schedule looks intriguing...
At any rate, game hardware only drops in price as time goes on. The PS2 is rumored to drop $50-100 by this summer, and there are even rumors about the XBox doing the same. Also don't forget most games will get marked down as well, so if you don't want to pay $50 for a new game, wait awhile, and get it for $20-30 when it hits the bargin bin. Nothing wrong being "behind the curve." Cheaper, too.
Basically, I can't see using this thing like "LoJack For Kids". I can, however, see using this for more facsist parents to enforce various grounding-type punishments. They would be able to make sure the kid DID really come right home from school, and didn't go to Billy's house for instance.
:p
In a kidnapping/abduction situation, once this thing is removed from the kid, it's useless.
Even having it send out an emergency signal for tracking is useless (See any number of Star Trek episodes where a crew member removes his badge to become "invsible" on the Enterprise.) Even an shrieking siren isn't going to do any good. Do you react at all when a car alarm goes off? No.
Once this thing is off, just flush it down the toilet, feed it to a rat, or smash it with a sledgehammer (I doubt it'll survive that.) The authorities will probably never find the kid, but at least the parents can get their watch back. How nice.
Not surprising...
While I doubt most universities have a "no spamming" policy, most of them DO have a "no using University property for personal economic gain" policy.
So, spamming everyone in your school using your school's computer would be a no-no.
At least you learned your lesson, unlike this jerk who *still* sees nothing wrong with spamming even after losing his law liscense.
That's why snail mail ads aren't spam.
Annoying, yes. Spam, no.
No if someone sent you advertising postage due, then I'd call it spam.