Re:What about fansubs killing the industy?
on
The Business of Anime
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I for one don't think you can hold fansubs responsible for "killing the industry." Even if you download fansubs for free, you don't even have the option of legally purchasing your favourite anime until it does in fact get exported. The money that production companies aren't making from fansubs doesn't constitute much loss of potential profit, because it's not a market that can buy the anime anyway - so it's not money that could be made to begin with.
Like Scott in the article, I'd like to think that I would buy series like Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien if they ever get released here - but the chances of that happening are slim to none as the series hasn't even been licensed and likely never will be. Plus, seeing as how I don't speak fluent Japanese, buying Region 2 DVD's and an all-region DVD player isn't much of an option for me. (I'm pretty sure I can do that in Candada - but isn't that illegal in the US?)
I agree. One of the things I like most about Gmail too is how they place their (limited) advertising in unobtrusive places (just like they do with their search engine) while Hotmail is riddled with pop-ups and flashy banner ads and irritating little organizational features...
After Gmail, I wonder if Google will take a shot at the Instant Messaging arena...
My apologies, but I didn't even notice the bottom half of the article. I saw the ad, and then jumped my attention to the comments, which at the time hadn't mentioned a thing about GIMPS. Of course, once all the replies came in I realized that there was more to the article than I originally saw... But then again, you're replying to a comment that was made about 3 days ago, amidst a sea of replies that are saying the same thing that you just said...
I agree completely. I've been getting a bunch of my friends to switch over to Gentoo and if they had problems installing (usually because they missed a step in the docs) I'd go over and do it myself. But one of the major advantages of installing Gentoo on your own is that you will learn a great deal about Linux simply from reading through the installation handbook.
On top, Portage just makes everything easy in the end. It's much easier to tell someone to type "emerge " instead of telling them to go get libraries x, y, and z, and then their package, and then compile it and hope it works.
Finally, Gentoo has some impeccable community support. Most people in the forums are receptive and helpful and a lot of potential headaches can be avoided by reading up on some of the posts there.
Re:Ugh...
on
A Worm's Worm
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· Score: 3, Interesting
That's something that really depends on the school. I remember my elementary school would have a class that consisted of Logo Writer / Microworlds that I took in the first grade...
My former high school offered a Visual Basic course in grade 10... but that's VB.
However, there's a lot one can learn by teaching themselves from a book, and I think that's where a lot of the talented young programmers get their starts. It may be that writing annoying viruses and worms are just some kid's way of testing and/or proving the knowledge s/he's gained. But I'd like to think that usually the smarter ones find more meaningful applications of their skills.
And interestingly enough, in April's issue of Wired there's an article about how battery capacity and power consumption need to be focuses in the future for American companies. I didn't expect to read about some attempts the very next on Slashdot... although granted, Hitachi is Japanese.
I very much disliked the series. There is very little that seems to happen in each episode, of course, they're only 5 minutes long. Plus, I'm not a big fan of the animation at all. While I love Samurai Jack, I don't think this particular style suits Star Wars at all, and it doesn't seem to do justice to the Star Wars legacy in my eyes. Then again, neither did Episodes I and II. And the more I watch Clone Wars, the less I like it... I'm starting to get disappointed with Star Wars. I know they can do better.
Do R2 DVD's really have English Subtitles on them? And do you suppose they're decent and legible? Maburaho is actually one series in particular for which I find the timing of licensing (before the fansubs were finished coming out) inconvenient. I'd rather not have to wait however many months waiting for the DVDs... Then again, I'm not certain on the legality of bypassing region codes in Canada. However, I for one, would be more satisfied with a Japanese DVD than just "hoarding fansubs".
While what you're saying is probably true, in many Otaku's defense I'd like to point out that most anime bit torrents out there are for fansub releases for series that are unlicensed in North America. These fansubbing groups obtain original Japanese versions of programs, write English subtitles themselves and release it to the community often with a message requesting that distribution be ceased when the title becomes licensed. This allows many anime fans around the world to appreciate and experience these shows almost as soon as they come out in Japan, as licensing can take quite some time. Furthermore, there are still many series that have never recieved licenses for any English format, and may never, and programs like Bit Torrent are may be the only way for the English speaking anime fan to enjoy a series without spending many years learning Japanese.
While many young people do indeed use Bit Torrent for piracy, I don't think it's fair to generalize that a lack of morality for intellectual property rights is at heart. But many of the arguments have already been presented by people far more eloquent than I am. My point is merely that Peer-To-Peer services like Bit Torrent have plenty of potential for good, and I think it's a great thing that Blizzard is demonstrating how it can be used legally and effectively. Peer to Peer file trading has been incorrectly stigmatized before it has been completely understood, it seems. Let's not forget the birth of the videocassette (and I know this has been mentioned countless times before). People still do use it for piracy, but I think the benefits that we've gotten out of it far outweigh the few bad seeds.
Ditto here, only in our first semester we studied NASM on Linux x86 architecture. It was my school's first attempt at using Linux from the start, and there we kinks in the program. One reason I liked using the x86 architecture, however, was that I could easily do all my assignments at home and it gave me the opportunity to mess with things outside school
Textbooks are just far too expensive and most of the time you're not really getting your money's worth out of them, at least that's how I feel. It appears as though my particular University has some deals with some publishers, such as Addison-Wesley, and get all their programming textbooks from them. As a result, Java Software Solutions is the standard book. Personally I found this particular book to be extremely useless... While other books like O'Reilly's Learning Java, and Head First Java books offered much more content, and were both CHEAPER in price. I've since opted to avoid buying the school's textbooks whenever possible.
The money spent on these textbooks could be used for much more worthwhile things.
I actually bought bootlegged photocopied textbooks this semester. Knowing full well that the content of these books (in terms of learning potential) is quite small, but needing to rely on them anyway for the sake of excersizes and problems that need to be done for assignments. Net savings: $165. Where did this money go? I attended an Undergraduate Software Engineering Conference where I learned lots of interesting things from such speakers as Joel Spolsky. The rest of the money when towards paying off my credit card for... you guessed it, more textbooks... and tuition.
There are Evangelion art books out there not to mention all the printed manga and the anime itself. The concept art that Weta Workshop is showing seems to be nothing more than some non-anime drawings of the same thing... which is exactly what they should be. Only I don't think they should bother since plenty of the art already exists....
However, I don't see why they have to go to such lengths to change the character names so drastically. I mean, granted they're not going to get Japanese actors for Misato, Rei, Asuka (who's supposed to be half-Japanese half-German anyway)... but changing such a detail would be akin to Lord of the Rings if Frodo were renamed to "Mike", Aragorn to "Steve" and Elrond to "Smith"... it's just wrong.
So why can't portable music players be able to play more than one form of digital music? Is it so impossible to have a player that can play both WMA and AAC? Why? Is it possible for companies to make a player that not only can play multiple audio formats but also have the ability to add a codec so you can play additional ones? That's something I'd like to see... by a player... and play any format...
One thing I really give credit to the LotR trilogy for is their casting. There are virtually no "big-name" actors in any of the movies. While there are the better known stars, Sir Ian McKellan, Elijah Wood, Hugo Weaving, Cate Blanchett and even Liv Tyler and Sean Bean, none of them overpower the other cast members to the point of obscurity.
Furthermore, they found some actors from relative obscurity (Merry and Pippin come to mind) who perform remarkably well. Every single character in the LotR series is acted out almost flawlessly, and I for one can clearly relate their on screen portrayals to those characters from the book. And that's certainly what makes the battle scenes that much more *real* and closer to home. Someone watching the movie can really get a feel for the characters and sympathize with them. No character gets lost behind the face of some huge actor and no one actor steals the show from any other.
As for the CGI effects, I had no trouble believing that those oliphaunts and huge armies of Orcs were real, they might as well have been. The graphics were more than convincing enough and the fact that the movie is indeed in a fantasy setting allows for what Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined the "willful suspension of belief." I had a harder time believing that Tom Cruise's character could take out four or five samurai before even getting any samurai training.... not to mention he somehow managed to hold them off with a flagpole of all things...
Now if only Teletoon and/or Space would catch on and start showing some more Anime! YTV has always been anime-friendly but they appear to be restricted to their Youth format and only show such things as Dragonball, Inuyasha, Cardcaptor Sakura, Beyblade, Pokemon, etc.
Space, on the other hand, has been claiming in their FAQ for the past 4 years that they've tried showing Anime before on a weekly basis but that it didn't make much of an impact in ratings. I think it's about time they reevalutated their stance, however. Spirited Away won an Oscar, and the Animatrix is awesome bridge between the (often overlapping) realms of Sci-Fi and Anime. Meanwhile, shows like Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star, and movies like Ghost In The Shell exist squarely within Space station's format and I for one think that they deserve a chance at proving themselves on Canadian cable television.
What you really have to realize is that, for your average desktop user, tweaking an OS to their liking isn't really something they care for. All they need is something that you pop in and run. The Operating System acts mostly like a black box to them and just does whatever it is they've learned how to do.
Linux, in it's current state (and in my very limited experience) is still not ready for the average desktop user who is baffled by tech jargon. While I have no problem downloading and compiling ALSA to get my sound card to work properly, most people probably wouldn't know how to do that. Actually, as a general statement, one simply can't expect an "average user" to compile anything. And it seems that much of the wonderful free/open source software that exists for windows does require SOME tinkering, the average user probably doesn't know or is afraid of tinkering with systems most likely beyond their understanding. Maybe some linux desktops zealots fail to realize that what may be mere child's play to them, is out of the question for normal people. The desktop is, after all, the realm of normal people. Linux has to be able to interface with all the readily available hardware devices right away, and without hitch before the masses of people start using it, and part of that problem is getting manufacturers to supply linux drivers or make their devices linux compatible. While there are ongoing improvements in this area, it's still not quite ready for the normal people....
That's a really good point. It's really nice to feel all special when you're a part of some small, underground, cultish phenomenon... It does kind of ruin it when it goes "mainstream" and suddenly you end up with people who are "fans" only because some billboard told them "you like this". It happens all the time and sometimes it feels like the art is being "cheapened"...
But in Japan, (correct me if I'm wrong, lots of my info comes from documentaris) it seems that anime and manga are indeed a mainstream and popular cultural element. Everyone reads manga in Japan from ages 6 to 60 (according to the "manga" feature on the Animatrix DVD). And most manga and anime cater to the Japanese market anyway. The American anime/manga "cult" is a fortunate side-effect. But the mainstream adoption and integration of manga/anime in Japanese culture certainly doesn't cheapen the art. It seems to actually inspire more of it to be made.
Would it be so inconceivable to think that widespread adoption in North America could lead to an artistic boom? Or would studios suck it up as a clever marketing gimmick and subsequently release "anime style" shows with little substance but lots of big explosions, just like action movies? I can't fathom that talented Japanese artists would suddenly start targeting only the American markets and just create whatever the studios want them to, or whatever's popular. I imagine they would retain their artistic integrity.
Slashdot Mirror
I for one don't think you can hold fansubs responsible for "killing the industry." Even if you download fansubs for free, you don't even have the option of legally purchasing your favourite anime until it does in fact get exported. The money that production companies aren't making from fansubs doesn't constitute much loss of potential profit, because it's not a market that can buy the anime anyway - so it's not money that could be made to begin with.
Like Scott in the article, I'd like to think that I would buy series like Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien if they ever get released here - but the chances of that happening are slim to none as the series hasn't even been licensed and likely never will be. Plus, seeing as how I don't speak fluent Japanese, buying Region 2 DVD's and an all-region DVD player isn't much of an option for me. (I'm pretty sure I can do that in Candada - but isn't that illegal in the US?)
Perhaps the Panthera Tigris should sue both Apple and Tiger Direct for hurting *their* search engine rankings.
I agree. One of the things I like most about Gmail too is how they place their (limited) advertising in unobtrusive places (just like they do with their search engine) while Hotmail is riddled with pop-ups and flashy banner ads and irritating little organizational features...
After Gmail, I wonder if Google will take a shot at the Instant Messaging arena...
By the same token, if you just don't use the default Firefox settings you'll be able to notice the differences.
My apologies, but I didn't even notice the bottom half of the article. I saw the ad, and then jumped my attention to the comments, which at the time hadn't mentioned a thing about GIMPS. Of course, once all the replies came in I realized that there was more to the article than I originally saw... But then again, you're replying to a comment that was made about 3 days ago, amidst a sea of replies that are saying the same thing that you just said...
Does anyone know if a distributed computing project exists for finding large prime numbers? That would be a pretty cool way to spend some CPU cylces.
I agree completely. I've been getting a bunch of my friends to switch over to Gentoo and if they had problems installing (usually because they missed a step in the docs) I'd go over and do it myself. But one of the major advantages of installing Gentoo on your own is that you will learn a great deal about Linux simply from reading through the installation handbook.
On top, Portage just makes everything easy in the end. It's much easier to tell someone to type "emerge " instead of telling them to go get libraries x, y, and z, and then their package, and then compile it and hope it works.
Finally, Gentoo has some impeccable community support. Most people in the forums are receptive and helpful and a lot of potential headaches can be avoided by reading up on some of the posts there.
That's something that really depends on the school. I remember my elementary school would have a class that consisted of Logo Writer / Microworlds that I took in the first grade...
My former high school offered a Visual Basic course in grade 10... but that's VB.
However, there's a lot one can learn by teaching themselves from a book, and I think that's where a lot of the talented young programmers get their starts. It may be that writing annoying viruses and worms are just some kid's way of testing and/or proving the knowledge s/he's gained. But I'd like to think that usually the smarter ones find more meaningful applications of their skills.
And interestingly enough, in April's issue of Wired there's an article about how battery capacity and power consumption need to be focuses in the future for American companies. I didn't expect to read about some attempts the very next on Slashdot... although granted, Hitachi is Japanese.
I very much disliked the series. There is very little that seems to happen in each episode, of course, they're only 5 minutes long. Plus, I'm not a big fan of the animation at all. While I love Samurai Jack, I don't think this particular style suits Star Wars at all, and it doesn't seem to do justice to the Star Wars legacy in my eyes. Then again, neither did Episodes I and II. And the more I watch Clone Wars, the less I like it... I'm starting to get disappointed with Star Wars. I know they can do better.
Do R2 DVD's really have English Subtitles on them? And do you suppose they're decent and legible? Maburaho is actually one series in particular for which I find the timing of licensing (before the fansubs were finished coming out) inconvenient. I'd rather not have to wait however many months waiting for the DVDs... Then again, I'm not certain on the legality of bypassing region codes in Canada. However, I for one, would be more satisfied with a Japanese DVD than just "hoarding fansubs".
While what you're saying is probably true, in many Otaku's defense I'd like to point out that most anime bit torrents out there are for fansub releases for series that are unlicensed in North America. These fansubbing groups obtain original Japanese versions of programs, write English subtitles themselves and release it to the community often with a message requesting that distribution be ceased when the title becomes licensed. This allows many anime fans around the world to appreciate and experience these shows almost as soon as they come out in Japan, as licensing can take quite some time. Furthermore, there are still many series that have never recieved licenses for any English format, and may never, and programs like Bit Torrent are may be the only way for the English speaking anime fan to enjoy a series without spending many years learning Japanese.
While many young people do indeed use Bit Torrent for piracy, I don't think it's fair to generalize that a lack of morality for intellectual property rights is at heart. But many of the arguments have already been presented by people far more eloquent than I am. My point is merely that Peer-To-Peer services like Bit Torrent have plenty of potential for good, and I think it's a great thing that Blizzard is demonstrating how it can be used legally and effectively. Peer to Peer file trading has been incorrectly stigmatized before it has been completely understood, it seems. Let's not forget the birth of the videocassette (and I know this has been mentioned countless times before). People still do use it for piracy, but I think the benefits that we've gotten out of it far outweigh the few bad seeds.
Ditto here, only in our first semester we studied NASM on Linux x86 architecture. It was my school's first attempt at using Linux from the start, and there we kinks in the program. One reason I liked using the x86 architecture, however, was that I could easily do all my assignments at home and it gave me the opportunity to mess with things outside school
Textbooks are just far too expensive and most of the time you're not really getting your money's worth out of them, at least that's how I feel. It appears as though my particular University has some deals with some publishers, such as Addison-Wesley, and get all their programming textbooks from them. As a result, Java Software Solutions is the standard book. Personally I found this particular book to be extremely useless... While other books like O'Reilly's Learning Java, and Head First Java books offered much more content, and were both CHEAPER in price. I've since opted to avoid buying the school's textbooks whenever possible.
The money spent on these textbooks could be used for much more worthwhile things.
I actually bought bootlegged photocopied textbooks this semester. Knowing full well that the content of these books (in terms of learning potential) is quite small, but needing to rely on them anyway for the sake of excersizes and problems that need to be done for assignments. Net savings: $165. Where did this money go? I attended an Undergraduate Software Engineering Conference where I learned lots of interesting things from such speakers as Joel Spolsky. The rest of the money when towards paying off my credit card for... you guessed it, more textbooks... and tuition.
There are Evangelion art books out there not to mention all the printed manga and the anime itself. The concept art that Weta Workshop is showing seems to be nothing more than some non-anime drawings of the same thing... which is exactly what they should be. Only I don't think they should bother since plenty of the art already exists.... However, I don't see why they have to go to such lengths to change the character names so drastically. I mean, granted they're not going to get Japanese actors for Misato, Rei, Asuka (who's supposed to be half-Japanese half-German anyway)... but changing such a detail would be akin to Lord of the Rings if Frodo were renamed to "Mike", Aragorn to "Steve" and Elrond to "Smith"... it's just wrong.
So why can't portable music players be able to play more than one form of digital music? Is it so impossible to have a player that can play both WMA and AAC? Why? Is it possible for companies to make a player that not only can play multiple audio formats but also have the ability to add a codec so you can play additional ones? That's something I'd like to see... by a player... and play any format...
That is the most incredible thing I've read about in a long time. Being an Otaku has polluted my brain.
One thing I really give credit to the LotR trilogy for is their casting. There are virtually no "big-name" actors in any of the movies. While there are the better known stars, Sir Ian McKellan, Elijah Wood, Hugo Weaving, Cate Blanchett and even Liv Tyler and Sean Bean, none of them overpower the other cast members to the point of obscurity.
Furthermore, they found some actors from relative obscurity (Merry and Pippin come to mind) who perform remarkably well. Every single character in the LotR series is acted out almost flawlessly, and I for one can clearly relate their on screen portrayals to those characters from the book. And that's certainly what makes the battle scenes that much more *real* and closer to home. Someone watching the movie can really get a feel for the characters and sympathize with them. No character gets lost behind the face of some huge actor and no one actor steals the show from any other.
As for the CGI effects, I had no trouble believing that those oliphaunts and huge armies of Orcs were real, they might as well have been. The graphics were more than convincing enough and the fact that the movie is indeed in a fantasy setting allows for what Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined the "willful suspension of belief." I had a harder time believing that Tom Cruise's character could take out four or five samurai before even getting any samurai training.... not to mention he somehow managed to hold them off with a flagpole of all things...
Right.. my bad... it's not actually powered by Java... so what's the point?
And you thought Windows was slow...
...towards a Natural Language Compiler?
Now if only Teletoon and/or Space would catch on and start showing some more Anime! YTV has always been anime-friendly but they appear to be restricted to their Youth format and only show such things as Dragonball, Inuyasha, Cardcaptor Sakura, Beyblade, Pokemon, etc.
Space, on the other hand, has been claiming in their FAQ for the past 4 years that they've tried showing Anime before on a weekly basis but that it didn't make much of an impact in ratings. I think it's about time they reevalutated their stance, however. Spirited Away won an Oscar, and the Animatrix is awesome bridge between the (often overlapping) realms of Sci-Fi and Anime. Meanwhile, shows like Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star, and movies like Ghost In The Shell exist squarely within Space station's format and I for one think that they deserve a chance at proving themselves on Canadian cable television.
I saw this show in Montreal this past summer during our annual "Fringe Festival". You HAVE to see his impression of an AT-AT getting killed!
What you really have to realize is that, for your average desktop user, tweaking an OS to their liking isn't really something they care for. All they need is something that you pop in and run. The Operating System acts mostly like a black box to them and just does whatever it is they've learned how to do.
Linux, in it's current state (and in my very limited experience) is still not ready for the average desktop user who is baffled by tech jargon. While I have no problem downloading and compiling ALSA to get my sound card to work properly, most people probably wouldn't know how to do that. Actually, as a general statement, one simply can't expect an "average user" to compile anything. And it seems that much of the wonderful free/open source software that exists for windows does require SOME tinkering, the average user probably doesn't know or is afraid of tinkering with systems most likely beyond their understanding. Maybe some linux desktops zealots fail to realize that what may be mere child's play to them, is out of the question for normal people. The desktop is, after all, the realm of normal people. Linux has to be able to interface with all the readily available hardware devices right away, and without hitch before the masses of people start using it, and part of that problem is getting manufacturers to supply linux drivers or make their devices linux compatible. While there are ongoing improvements in this area, it's still not quite ready for the normal people....
That's a really good point. It's really nice to feel all special when you're a part of some small, underground, cultish phenomenon... It does kind of ruin it when it goes "mainstream" and suddenly you end up with people who are "fans" only because some billboard told them "you like this". It happens all the time and sometimes it feels like the art is being "cheapened"...
But in Japan, (correct me if I'm wrong, lots of my info comes from documentaris) it seems that anime and manga are indeed a mainstream and popular cultural element. Everyone reads manga in Japan from ages 6 to 60 (according to the "manga" feature on the Animatrix DVD). And most manga and anime cater to the Japanese market anyway. The American anime/manga "cult" is a fortunate side-effect. But the mainstream adoption and integration of manga/anime in Japanese culture certainly doesn't cheapen the art. It seems to actually inspire more of it to be made.
Would it be so inconceivable to think that widespread adoption in North America could lead to an artistic boom? Or would studios suck it up as a clever marketing gimmick and subsequently release "anime style" shows with little substance but lots of big explosions, just like action movies? I can't fathom that talented Japanese artists would suddenly start targeting only the American markets and just create whatever the studios want them to, or whatever's popular. I imagine they would retain their artistic integrity.