We'll have geeks with too much time on their hands posting binaries on the net, saying "run this, and your Civic will turn into a Ferrari!"
I'm just waiting for the first r00t kit! Who needs remote control toy cars when you can p0wned a real car and send it and it's occupants on a ride from hell. Hmm, sounds like something the
They are also immune to electromagnetic pulse should a nuclear bomb go off.
Personally, I look for gas milage, reliability and comfort, but each to their own....
Hey, once the nuke's wiped out everyone in your town, the remaining gas can be used for free! So it's the ultimate in gas mileage. It'll be a lot more comfortable afterwards too since it'll run and the others won't...
If you're a nineteen year old slashdot reader eyeballing a fourteen year old and wishing she was sixteen is maybe only a little funny. I'm old enough to *have* a nineteen year old and its definitely not OK:-)
To you that is, to the grandparent it's not a problem. If he's not acting on it, it's a thought, nothing more. Surely you wouldn't encourage making thoughts illegal?
In any case what you say is a subset of a much larger problem. People think that just because they find something distasteful it should be that way for everyone. What you find tasteful another will find distasteful, that's pretty much a guarantee in life. One of other areas you see this in is people's reactions to homosexuality. A lot of people who just find it sickening think it should be illegal, but try telling that to someone who can't help how they feel towards members of their same sex, I'm sure they'll disagree quite a bit.
So please don't fall into that trap, as long as no one is being harmed it's not a big deal. Thoughts don't hurt people, acting on those thoughts does. (And we have plenty of laws to cover doing things to others without their consent.)
This is why I think civil commitment is a good thing - someone argues that this is very 'Soviet', but taking up residence in a civil commitment facility is much more pleasant than remaining in a prison.
Sounds like "civil commitment facility" is another word for prison however, so I'm sure they're not very popular, even among the ones who know they need help. People generally won't pursue a form of help that involves loss of freedoms not associated with their problem.
So the question is, if a child is being held as a sex slave, would they really care if their rights are being trampled while being rescued?
Not to dismiss the usefullness of what has been done with the photos released, but you're asking the wrong question here. The right question is: do we want to release those photos to the mass public so the girl's forever recognized as the victim of a sex crime? If she's been abused as a sex slave we want to rescue her and give her a normal life, not one where she knows she can never go out in public because she'll be recognized and humiliated because of her past.
It would be of better use then to either allow the scope to burn up re-entry or let it sit up there unused.
Good idea, but eventually it'll fail without a service mission. It's already to the point if more than one gyroscope fails it'll no longer be able to orient itself. It's be nice to allow it to be used like you suggest until the end however.:)
If it were me, I'd say something like: You're not happy that your trademarked words can result in your competitors' pages coming back in the search results or adsense? No problem, well make it so that someone entering your trademark as a search term brings up a message that says "The following words are protected trademarks and were not included in your search: $TRADEMARK". Hope you're happy now, asshat.
I'd prefer to see them take a different, better attitude towards this. What you're suggesting is exactly how Microsoft responded to the last antitrust lawsuits -- arrogance, haughtiness, refusal to cooperate, attempts to force any "remedy" to break the OS completely, etc. Remember how well that attitude helped them out? Even the general public started getting a bit pissed hearing how MS was acting in court. If Google tried the same Slashdotters would be declaring them an Evil Company (tm) right away.
Not just sashimi, even cooked fish shouldn't have that "fishy" taste most people associate with fish. I used to think I hated fish (thanks to school cafeteria fish having that horrid taste) until I was convinced to try some smoked salmon a friend had made himself. It tasted nothing like fish, it was just this wonderfully declious taste with a hint of smokiness that practically melted in your mouth. Since then I've found I actually like most fish, just not the cheap crap that tastes "fishy". I especially love good sushi and sashimi. (I don't mind sushi rolls unlike a lot of sushi/sashimi fans though, which is good since that's about all I can get decent where I live. That and it's cheaper.)
If you're squeamish about eating raw fish, try ordering some salmon from a higher scale resteraunt sometime. You'll find out that fish doesn't have to taste "fishy".:)
...does it still spit discs? Does the square button still get stuck? Does it suck batteries like a vampire? And, most importantly: does it run Linux?
I'm all for promoting Linux, but unless you're just joking you have strange priorities. Since the PSP's a gaming/mobile multimedia device first and foremost, the first three issues are going to be far more important. Hell, even if it did run Linux, it splitting discs and running through gobs of batteries would still win the day. Not much you can do with a Linux-running device that has no power and/or breaks its media regularly.
The only one that doesn't, the Gamecube, has no piracy problem.
It's just a matter of time, even now there is a Gamecube warez scene, it's just not as easy so less people bother. Don't forget that the Dreamcast also had a non-standard media type (GD-ROM) and it was hacked so bad it helped kill off the machine. You can find nearly every game every made for the Dreamcast online for free and you don't even need a modded Dreamcast to play them.
Basically if Sony is relying solely on non-standard media to stop piracy, they're going to get burned. It's like security through obscurity, we all know how well that works.
Actually if gender changing is a big issue, why is Ranma 1/2 a big hit? It has not just gender changing, but species changing as well! Shampoo or Ryoga, anyone?
It's a bit different than Ranma 1/2's, in Ranma it's treated as just a comedy device for the most part. Also as the AC pointed out, even Cartoon Network won't air Ranma. The gender changing in Sailor Stars is different, the Sailor Stars are guys normally, but when they transform they're girls. There are some issues with the main girls getting crushes on their guy forms which I'm sure any potential licensor worries about. Additionally the main character, Usagi, spends most of the last two episodes naked. It's not gratuitous or anything, and fits the story, but it's there.
The main problem is even releasing it on DVD is risky because the rest of the series has been associated as kid friendly in the market. Even labeling this properly wouldn't help, some dumbass parent wouldn't read the ratings/warnings, would buy it for their kids, then see some of the above and sue. Frankly I can't really blame the companies for not wanting to touch Sailor Stars for US release, we're far too sue happy. (And if you don't think the above issues would cause concern, don't forget that recently some anti-gay advocacy group went nuts and claimed Spongebob Squarepants is gay and promotes homosexuality as acceptable (their words there, not mine, had to paraphrase since I don't have the article handy). Imagine how those idiots would react to characters who change from male to female and have females in love with them in male form. It'd get ugly fast.)
Add a third reason, this happened over a month ago and is old news in the anime world. I'm quite surprised that Cnet's doing an article on it now, although I wouldn't have been surprised if they'd done it when, or soon after, it happened. Basically, by now this is no longer a concern. Various groups made their decisions, and nothing else has happened. It appeared that Media Factory was concerned about the distribution of just a few titles, mostly Kimi ga Nozomu Eien and Akane Maniax (an OVA offshoot from KimiNozu, both based off an H game.) I suppose it's a really slow news day at Cnet HQ so they decided to write up a story going on two months old that's been resolved. Either that or they're trying to hype a new angle on the "MPAA/RIAA sue _______" stories. Also the article conveniently overlooks the fact that many companies are slowly putting out their back catalogs on DVD. Many people who already have VHS or LD versions won't bother to upgrade to DVDs.
Frankly I'm not surprised that anime DVD sales are remaining flat. I know that there is far more put out now that I want than I'll ever be able to afford. For many series I wait for a box release so I can get it cheaper, I'm sure other fans do the same. As they're seeing only the most popular titles will sell well in that scenario. Average popularity titles will sell less, but box set sales will probably be higher than for higher popularity titles.
Basically I think the real problem for US anime distributers is they've been too successful and pushed the market too fast. Right now the market hasn't caught up with the output.
In many ways, this is even better than the usual translation job, as it keeps the right-to-left scheme intact (ever run into one of those mangas where the characters are all left-handed? That's sloppy page-flipping for you) as well as preserving the original background art where there's writing.
I take it you're not really big into manga nowadays? A few years back, Tokyopop started a change in the industry with their "100% Authentic Manga" line. All titles remain unflipped, no names are changed, and honorifics are kept in most cases. Since then pretty much the entire US manga industry has followed suit. Even Viz threw in the towel and is now reissuing titles in an unflipped format, and at a new size, that matches the Tokyopop size. (Which, coincedentally, is pretty much the same size as most Japanese manga releases.) Doubleday books entere the Manga market last year and they have also kept the unflipped format. They also include extensive translation notes (although they oddly fail to include notes about some things you'd think they would) and explanations of honorifics. They even leave sound effect text intact, placing the English translations of them close by the Japanese characters.
As to scanslations vs. commercial releases, some companies are starting to make the fan scanslations look better by cutting corners. Viz is the one example I can really give of this, check out February's edition of Shonen Jump Magazine which is put out by them. They've stopped being careful with text bubbles, now you can see they've placed white boxes over the old bubbles with the English text in them. Frankly most fan scanslations do better work than this. That I actually paid for the magazine and found such shoddy work in it is really annoying. It's even more annoying that until this issue they actually did a g ood job with the editing, now they've apparently stopped. Translations also seem worse this time, with many things Americanized that there was no reason for. We're talking about things that seem horribly out of place, not changing obscure cultural references to something Americans can more easily understand.
Nope. That's actually an easy argument: The company WILL someday soon sell its DVDs in the USA, so distributing fansubs earlier will cut into their future sales.
Not necessarily, I can tell you of about 10 series I'm waiting for a US release of so I can buy them and own a high quality copy as well as the DVD extras. I've already seen them fansubbed, but I'm still planning to buy. In fact it's unlikely I would have bought these if I hadn't seen them first. Anime DVDs are still too expensive for just impulse buys ($30 a DVD is still pretty common for new releases.)
Some anime, like Big-O, has been renewed for new episodes solely on the strength of USA viewership)
Big O's a unique example, it was much more popular in the US than in Japan. The popularity of it here in the US finally led to more of it being produced, but it was produced mainly for the US market. The small group of fans of the show in Japan got an unexpected bonus thanks to the US fans in that case. These type of things are also quite rare. Big O's the only one I know of where more episodes were made because of popularity in the US. ADV has helped pay for the production of some series, but they did that without fan input.
But for many things that get fansubbed today, neither of those excuses works. Prehaps the strongest example is "Ghost In The Shell", an expensive scifi action series that's still being broadcast in Japan, and which already has DVD and televised releases in the USA. Even back in pre-production 3 years ago, this was a tremendously famous series, and it was obvious there would be a major world-wide market. Yet fansubbers went ahead, set their VCRs, and FTPed raws and subs around the world.
Ghost in the Shell's another quirky one, the original movie was much more popular outside of Japan than in it. (Not just US, but worldwide.) You're either confused or misunderstanding the TV series here as well. There are two TV series based on Ghost in the Shell. The first, called Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, originally aired starting in 2002 and has long since completed it's 26 episode run. A second TV series called Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig started airing in January of 2004, it appears to be finishing up it's 26 episode run this month. As of now, only three volumes of the original TV series have been released in the US. The second series has had no release. Of the two movies, both have been released in the US, the first by Manga Entertainment several years ago, and the second by Dreamworks in 2004 (I believe it was 2004, not sure on the exact date of that.)
Knowing it would eventually be released is a silly condemnation of those who fansubbed it. Even though it's insanely popular here, there was no guarantee it would indeed be released. It very well could have been the case that the Japanese owner would want more for the rights to it than any company would feel it was worth. This has happened in the past with other series in fact (For example, the Ah! Megami-sama/Oh My Goddess! movie rights came with the stipulation that the mini-goddess TV series, which is not very well liked, had to go with it and be released. Fans had to wait several years before a company felt it was worth it to take the license). Beyond that, we can see from this one series, one that is in fact quite popular in the US, that it took 2 years for the TV series to start being released in the US. This is a big reason why fansubs take place as well. It also does help sales, not that that makes it legal, but it is true.
For some kinds of show, that isn't true: there are genres whose international appeal is to tiny to support a translated release, and there are also high-profit kids' shows (like Pokemon*) where the audience won't be interested in reading subtitles (especially on TV).
This kind of argument hurts fans of these series. First you assume only children would be interested in Pokemon. Secondly
What's even more interesting is that a source (of unknown reliability) at a television studio told me that when Sailor Moon was licensed for broadcast in the U.S., the "translator" didn't speak a word of Japanese. Therefore the entire first season was "translated" simply by watching the visuals and trying to come up with a storyline to match.
I'm pretty sure that's not the actual case, as some elements of the story that aren't totally obvious just from visuals managed to make it into the dub. However, Sailor Moon (dubbed by DiC) had the dubious distinction of being considered the worst dubbing butchery of an anime series for many years. For the first season alone they took the two parter finale episodes and trimmed them down into one. They cut out all references to the sacrifices of the Sailor Senshi (Scouts in the dub) as well, making it appear no one died. (Everyone died in the original version.) The result was a butchery like you wouldn't believe, a two part finale that was incredibly touching and moving was cheap and hammy. Fans were royally outraged.
Sailor Moon lost the title for worst butchered dub when WB and Nelvana put out Card Captors (based off of Card Captor Sakura). Character personalities were changed, episode order was rearranged to try to make the male character appear to be the main character (he's not, the original title gives it away, Sakura always was the main character) and the new OP theme, well, it almost makes the ears bleed. It took dub butchery to new lows and was (rightfully) lambasted for the implicit sexism of trying to make the main character no longer be female. The dub did not do well. To be fair, the changes were apparently all demanded by WB. Nelvana gave in to fan pressure and put out an uncut, subtitle-only (no dub) version on DVD as well. It was actually well done, so that appeased most fans and it sold (and still sells) well.
Incidentally, Sailor Moon never got an uncut release until many years later. DiC had nothing to do with it though, ADV got the rights and put it out. They also got the rights to the 3rd & 4th seasons and had them dubbed as well. They were aired on Cartoon Network. The 5th and final season still has not been licensed and released in the US and likely never will be.
It's not a matter of "before". Many shows and movies are never translated. There is no legal way to aquire them, and "learn Japanese" isn't an answer and you know it.
Very true, and for some shows they're such a niche product that there's not even a Japanese release, leaving fansubs about the only way to find them. Take for instance the show Mizuiro Jidai (called Blue-Green Years by The Technogirls who fansub it). Until 2002 there was no release of the show at all. At that point finally a DVD box set was released in Japan. Prior to that there was no VHS, no LD, nothing. If you wanted to see the show in the US it was fansubs or nothing at all. (Sadly the release's video quality is so bad the fansubs look better, but that's another issue.)
I can learn Japanese all I want, in fact I'm working on it and I watch most of the new anime series raw as they come out in Japan. I still have to download raw encodes of them since I have no way to get a legit copy of them here in the US. For some of these shows I'm quite positive I'll never see an US release.
Hell, although ADV has licensed and released most of Sailor Moon, there's an entire season of the show that's still not licensed, and due to some potential controversial issues (gender changing characters for one) it's likely it never will be. Those Sailor Moon fans wanting to see the final season (Sailor Stars) have no choice but to find fansubs of it. Frankly I'm not sure you can buy copies of it in Japan since it's an older series and releases have a much shorter shelf life in Japan.
Those espousing "learn Japanese so you can stay legit" are either clueless as to the realities of the anime world, or it makes them feel somehow morally superior to spout this stuff off.
Frankly, he's been on the front lines with Microsoft and was more so in the past, and despite all the MS bashing, he did make it into a monopoly, which surprisingly was his true miscalculation and the success was used against him.
Let's be fair here, if you want to bash anti-Gates bashers, you have to be objective as well. Gates' main problem was not that he made Microsoft into a monopoly. It was that he abused that monopoly position to leverage into other markets, in violation of anti-trust laws. Agreements with OEMs demanding a copy of Windows had to be sold with every machine, even if it shipped without one for example. Illegally tying IE into the OS (upheld by the appeals court, only the recommended remedy was overturned) is another. In Europe it's illegally tying Media Player into the OS, and now Microsoft, despite claiming it was impossible is going to sell a version of Windows in the EU that doesn't have Media Player in it. Wow, imagine that.
Gates is guilty of having his company break laws, whether he personally was the one having it done or not is debatable, but it is his company that he built up (as you so kindly reminded us) so by association the company's crimes are his. This is how people work, we blame the person in charge of the company.
And let's not forget Gates' personal response, and MS's company response to the Antitrust suit. It was basically "ahh fuck off, we can do whatever we damn well please". That attitude cost them, the whole case may have ended a lot sooner otherwise. Apparently MS hasn't learned either, witness them being called on missing E-mails in another case (is that the Burst one?). It doesn't take a lawyer to realize that 20+ people don't spontaneously, without consulting each other, delete the exact same time span of E-mail from their old mail.
So why does/. bash Gates and MS? Because they've earned it the old fashioned way. You treat people, and the courts like you think you're better than them and people are going to hate you and bash you at every opportunity. Gates should be smart enough to realize this, that he hasn't speaks volumes about his ego. He's getting exactly what he deserves.
I really have the feeling that it was a boneheaded mistake rather than any malicious intent to mislead. I mean, really. What is gained by it when the information is included in a package that consists of both versions of the movie? (as several of the movies listed are/were sold that way)
I would agree, but in at least some cases MGM switched the copy from widescreen to full screen and didn't change the packaging or UPC. (Or vice versa on the switch.) That's beyond a simple goof, that's either being cheap and/or lazy ("oh we can't afford to change those packages, keep them as is" or "oh who cares, leave the packages as is, we can't be bothered to change them"), or willfull misleading.
though every game that requires a cd check (every game iv played for quite some time) with a central server to play online (the only reason to even buy games) would suffer from the exact same problem should the company crumble along with said central server.
That's essentially what the problem is with Steam and those affected by this now. We're talking about offline play though, while you may think online play is the only reason to buy games, there's a lot of people who prefer to never play online at all. Those games (the offline portion, or offline only games) certainly should not be affected by a company going out of business or an authentication server going down later on.
Just one example, the Madden games on PS2 have online play but that play is only good for (at most) a year. After that you're stuck with an offline only copy, but it still plays just fine offline as it should.
A 'logon once a week' scheme would probably ease these troubles, but otherwise I don't see how any of my rights are being squished.
Simple, if Valve goes out of business tomorrow and the login servers go down, all your games you paid for stop working permanently. With discs and CD Keys, you can hunt them down and reinstall, even if the company's gone out of business and your CDs are in storage.
It figures I'd get flamebait/troll moderation for showing a dissenting opinion... No, I'm not new here, just willing to step out of line and speak up.
What do you expect, if you had seen this post before you posted yours you'd have known that it isn't a minor issue, it is something affecting a large subset of users. Even failing that, the article says "Some people seem to be able to log on fine while others, like me:(, cannot connect at all. The steam forums were filling up with invective when I was last able to get on. The forums now seem to have imploded under the strain of complaints."
Given that, your post comes across as nothing but a troll or flamebait. Speaking up with a dissenting view is fine, but it really helps to read the facts first. When a fact countering your argument is in the article summary and not some linked article, you're not speaking up, you're just spouting off.
Steam stats put an average 2.5M unique users are on Steam servers, so all 2.5M users are lucky and how many are not?
Who knows, but the number who can't is irrelevant. If the copy was bought and paid for and the person's only trying to play offline, then even a single user not being able to play the game offline because of this is unacceptable. If it was an online game this would make some sense, but if it's offline, paid for, previously authenticated as legit, why should they be denied play?
If it was you this was happening to I'm sure you'd be livid as well.
(For the record I don't own any Valve games, nor do I have any interest in any of their games, I just think this is a perfect example of how DRM is abused by companies.)
Enter the offline patch. A hacked.exe of HL2 that will let you play without ever connecting to Steam.
Sorry, but if I purchase a game for my personal machine and the game that I choose to play has no need for the Internet then that is the way it should be.
While I agree with you, the sad part is you are probably risking your Steam account being deactivated if you happen to connect and it notices the hacked.exe. That just makes the whole thing even more stupid though.
While I know you were trying to be funny, there's a serious point here as well. Ignoring the quality of the movies (which is subjective, one man's trash is another man's treasure) how can the studios complain about piracy when they willfully defraud customers like this?
I wonder how MGM will spin this to make it look like the losses are due to piracy though. They seem to manage to do that for everything, no matter what the loss's true causes were.
Slashdot Mirror
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If you're a nineteen year old slashdot reader eyeballing a fourteen year old and wishing she was sixteen is maybe only a little funny. I'm old enough to *have* a nineteen year old and its definitely not OK
:-)
To you that is, to the grandparent it's not a problem. If he's not acting on it, it's a thought, nothing more. Surely you wouldn't encourage making thoughts illegal?In any case what you say is a subset of a much larger problem. People think that just because they find something distasteful it should be that way for everyone. What you find tasteful another will find distasteful, that's pretty much a guarantee in life. One of other areas you see this in is people's reactions to homosexuality. A lot of people who just find it sickening think it should be illegal, but try telling that to someone who can't help how they feel towards members of their same sex, I'm sure they'll disagree quite a bit.
So please don't fall into that trap, as long as no one is being harmed it's not a big deal. Thoughts don't hurt people, acting on those thoughts does. (And we have plenty of laws to cover doing things to others without their consent.)
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This is why I think civil commitment is a good thing - someone argues that this is very 'Soviet', but taking up residence in a civil commitment facility is much more pleasant than remaining in a prison.
Sounds like "civil commitment facility" is another word for prison however, so I'm sure they're not very popular, even among the ones who know they need help. People generally won't pursue a form of help that involves loss of freedoms not associated with their problem.-
So the question is, if a child is being held as a sex slave, would they really care if their rights are being trampled while being rescued?
Not to dismiss the usefullness of what has been done with the photos released, but you're asking the wrong question here. The right question is: do we want to release those photos to the mass public so the girl's forever recognized as the victim of a sex crime? If she's been abused as a sex slave we want to rescue her and give her a normal life, not one where she knows she can never go out in public because she'll be recognized and humiliated because of her past.-
It would be of better use then to either allow the scope to burn up re-entry or let it sit up there unused.
Good idea, but eventually it'll fail without a service mission. It's already to the point if more than one gyroscope fails it'll no longer be able to orient itself. It's be nice to allow it to be used like you suggest until the end however.-
If it were me, I'd say something like: You're not happy that your trademarked words can result in your competitors' pages coming back in the search results or adsense? No problem, well make it so that someone entering your trademark as a search term brings up a message that says "The following words are protected trademarks and were not included in your search: $TRADEMARK". Hope you're happy now, asshat.
I'd prefer to see them take a different, better attitude towards this. What you're suggesting is exactly how Microsoft responded to the last antitrust lawsuits -- arrogance, haughtiness, refusal to cooperate, attempts to force any "remedy" to break the OS completely, etc. Remember how well that attitude helped them out? Even the general public started getting a bit pissed hearing how MS was acting in court. If Google tried the same Slashdotters would be declaring them an Evil Company (tm) right away.If you're squeamish about eating raw fish, try ordering some salmon from a higher scale resteraunt sometime. You'll find out that fish doesn't have to taste "fishy". :)
...does it still spit discs? Does the square button still get stuck? Does it suck batteries like a vampire? And, most importantly: does it run Linux?
I'm all for promoting Linux, but unless you're just joking you have strange priorities. Since the PSP's a gaming/mobile multimedia device first and foremost, the first three issues are going to be far more important. Hell, even if it did run Linux, it splitting discs and running through gobs of batteries would still win the day. Not much you can do with a Linux-running device that has no power and/or breaks its media regularly.-
The only one that doesn't, the Gamecube, has no piracy problem.
It's just a matter of time, even now there is a Gamecube warez scene, it's just not as easy so less people bother. Don't forget that the Dreamcast also had a non-standard media type (GD-ROM) and it was hacked so bad it helped kill off the machine. You can find nearly every game every made for the Dreamcast online for free and you don't even need a modded Dreamcast to play them.Basically if Sony is relying solely on non-standard media to stop piracy, they're going to get burned. It's like security through obscurity, we all know how well that works.
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Actually if gender changing is a big issue, why is Ranma 1/2 a big hit? It has not just gender changing, but species changing as well! Shampoo or Ryoga, anyone?
It's a bit different than Ranma 1/2's, in Ranma it's treated as just a comedy device for the most part. Also as the AC pointed out, even Cartoon Network won't air Ranma. The gender changing in Sailor Stars is different, the Sailor Stars are guys normally, but when they transform they're girls. There are some issues with the main girls getting crushes on their guy forms which I'm sure any potential licensor worries about. Additionally the main character, Usagi, spends most of the last two episodes naked. It's not gratuitous or anything, and fits the story, but it's there.The main problem is even releasing it on DVD is risky because the rest of the series has been associated as kid friendly in the market. Even labeling this properly wouldn't help, some dumbass parent wouldn't read the ratings/warnings, would buy it for their kids, then see some of the above and sue. Frankly I can't really blame the companies for not wanting to touch Sailor Stars for US release, we're far too sue happy. (And if you don't think the above issues would cause concern, don't forget that recently some anti-gay advocacy group went nuts and claimed Spongebob Squarepants is gay and promotes homosexuality as acceptable (their words there, not mine, had to paraphrase since I don't have the article handy). Imagine how those idiots would react to characters who change from male to female and have females in love with them in male form. It'd get ugly fast.)
Frankly I'm not surprised that anime DVD sales are remaining flat. I know that there is far more put out now that I want than I'll ever be able to afford. For many series I wait for a box release so I can get it cheaper, I'm sure other fans do the same. As they're seeing only the most popular titles will sell well in that scenario. Average popularity titles will sell less, but box set sales will probably be higher than for higher popularity titles.
Basically I think the real problem for US anime distributers is they've been too successful and pushed the market too fast. Right now the market hasn't caught up with the output.
They were apparently replying to this post
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In many ways, this is even better than the usual translation job, as it keeps the right-to-left scheme intact (ever run into one of those mangas where the characters are all left-handed? That's sloppy page-flipping for you) as well as preserving the original background art where there's writing.
I take it you're not really big into manga nowadays? A few years back, Tokyopop started a change in the industry with their "100% Authentic Manga" line. All titles remain unflipped, no names are changed, and honorifics are kept in most cases. Since then pretty much the entire US manga industry has followed suit. Even Viz threw in the towel and is now reissuing titles in an unflipped format, and at a new size, that matches the Tokyopop size. (Which, coincedentally, is pretty much the same size as most Japanese manga releases.) Doubleday books entere the Manga market last year and they have also kept the unflipped format. They also include extensive translation notes (although they oddly fail to include notes about some things you'd think they would) and explanations of honorifics. They even leave sound effect text intact, placing the English translations of them close by the Japanese characters.As to scanslations vs. commercial releases, some companies are starting to make the fan scanslations look better by cutting corners. Viz is the one example I can really give of this, check out February's edition of Shonen Jump Magazine which is put out by them. They've stopped being careful with text bubbles, now you can see they've placed white boxes over the old bubbles with the English text in them. Frankly most fan scanslations do better work than this. That I actually paid for the magazine and found such shoddy work in it is really annoying. It's even more annoying that until this issue they actually did a g ood job with the editing, now they've apparently stopped. Translations also seem worse this time, with many things Americanized that there was no reason for. We're talking about things that seem horribly out of place, not changing obscure cultural references to something Americans can more easily understand.
Not necessarily, I can tell you of about 10 series I'm waiting for a US release of so I can buy them and own a high quality copy as well as the DVD extras. I've already seen them fansubbed, but I'm still planning to buy. In fact it's unlikely I would have bought these if I hadn't seen them first. Anime DVDs are still too expensive for just impulse buys ($30 a DVD is still pretty common for new releases.)
Big O's a unique example, it was much more popular in the US than in Japan. The popularity of it here in the US finally led to more of it being produced, but it was produced mainly for the US market. The small group of fans of the show in Japan got an unexpected bonus thanks to the US fans in that case. These type of things are also quite rare. Big O's the only one I know of where more episodes were made because of popularity in the US. ADV has helped pay for the production of some series, but they did that without fan input.
Ghost in the Shell's another quirky one, the original movie was much more popular outside of Japan than in it. (Not just US, but worldwide.) You're either confused or misunderstanding the TV series here as well. There are two TV series based on Ghost in the Shell. The first, called Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, originally aired starting in 2002 and has long since completed it's 26 episode run. A second TV series called Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig started airing in January of 2004, it appears to be finishing up it's 26 episode run this month. As of now, only three volumes of the original TV series have been released in the US. The second series has had no release. Of the two movies, both have been released in the US, the first by Manga Entertainment several years ago, and the second by Dreamworks in 2004 (I believe it was 2004, not sure on the exact date of that.)
Knowing it would eventually be released is a silly condemnation of those who fansubbed it. Even though it's insanely popular here, there was no guarantee it would indeed be released. It very well could have been the case that the Japanese owner would want more for the rights to it than any company would feel it was worth. This has happened in the past with other series in fact (For example, the Ah! Megami-sama/Oh My Goddess! movie rights came with the stipulation that the mini-goddess TV series, which is not very well liked, had to go with it and be released. Fans had to wait several years before a company felt it was worth it to take the license). Beyond that, we can see from this one series, one that is in fact quite popular in the US, that it took 2 years for the TV series to start being released in the US. This is a big reason why fansubs take place as well. It also does help sales, not that that makes it legal, but it is true.
This kind of argument hurts fans of these series. First you assume only children would be interested in Pokemon. Secondly
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What's even more interesting is that a source (of unknown reliability) at a television studio told me that when Sailor Moon was licensed for broadcast in the U.S., the "translator" didn't speak a word of Japanese. Therefore the entire first season was "translated" simply by watching the visuals and trying to come up with a storyline to match.
I'm pretty sure that's not the actual case, as some elements of the story that aren't totally obvious just from visuals managed to make it into the dub. However, Sailor Moon (dubbed by DiC) had the dubious distinction of being considered the worst dubbing butchery of an anime series for many years. For the first season alone they took the two parter finale episodes and trimmed them down into one. They cut out all references to the sacrifices of the Sailor Senshi (Scouts in the dub) as well, making it appear no one died. (Everyone died in the original version.) The result was a butchery like you wouldn't believe, a two part finale that was incredibly touching and moving was cheap and hammy. Fans were royally outraged.Sailor Moon lost the title for worst butchered dub when WB and Nelvana put out Card Captors (based off of Card Captor Sakura). Character personalities were changed, episode order was rearranged to try to make the male character appear to be the main character (he's not, the original title gives it away, Sakura always was the main character) and the new OP theme, well, it almost makes the ears bleed. It took dub butchery to new lows and was (rightfully) lambasted for the implicit sexism of trying to make the main character no longer be female. The dub did not do well. To be fair, the changes were apparently all demanded by WB. Nelvana gave in to fan pressure and put out an uncut, subtitle-only (no dub) version on DVD as well. It was actually well done, so that appeased most fans and it sold (and still sells) well.
Incidentally, Sailor Moon never got an uncut release until many years later. DiC had nothing to do with it though, ADV got the rights and put it out. They also got the rights to the 3rd & 4th seasons and had them dubbed as well. They were aired on Cartoon Network. The 5th and final season still has not been licensed and released in the US and likely never will be.
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It's not a matter of "before". Many shows and movies are never translated. There is no legal way to aquire them, and "learn Japanese" isn't an answer and you know it.
Very true, and for some shows they're such a niche product that there's not even a Japanese release, leaving fansubs about the only way to find them. Take for instance the show Mizuiro Jidai (called Blue-Green Years by The Technogirls who fansub it). Until 2002 there was no release of the show at all. At that point finally a DVD box set was released in Japan. Prior to that there was no VHS, no LD, nothing. If you wanted to see the show in the US it was fansubs or nothing at all. (Sadly the release's video quality is so bad the fansubs look better, but that's another issue.)I can learn Japanese all I want, in fact I'm working on it and I watch most of the new anime series raw as they come out in Japan. I still have to download raw encodes of them since I have no way to get a legit copy of them here in the US. For some of these shows I'm quite positive I'll never see an US release.
Hell, although ADV has licensed and released most of Sailor Moon, there's an entire season of the show that's still not licensed, and due to some potential controversial issues (gender changing characters for one) it's likely it never will be. Those Sailor Moon fans wanting to see the final season (Sailor Stars) have no choice but to find fansubs of it. Frankly I'm not sure you can buy copies of it in Japan since it's an older series and releases have a much shorter shelf life in Japan.
Those espousing "learn Japanese so you can stay legit" are either clueless as to the realities of the anime world, or it makes them feel somehow morally superior to spout this stuff off.
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Frankly, he's been on the front lines with Microsoft and was more so in the past, and despite all the MS bashing, he did make it into a monopoly, which surprisingly was his true miscalculation and the success was used against him.
Let's be fair here, if you want to bash anti-Gates bashers, you have to be objective as well. Gates' main problem was not that he made Microsoft into a monopoly. It was that he abused that monopoly position to leverage into other markets, in violation of anti-trust laws. Agreements with OEMs demanding a copy of Windows had to be sold with every machine, even if it shipped without one for example. Illegally tying IE into the OS (upheld by the appeals court, only the recommended remedy was overturned) is another. In Europe it's illegally tying Media Player into the OS, and now Microsoft, despite claiming it was impossible is going to sell a version of Windows in the EU that doesn't have Media Player in it. Wow, imagine that.Gates is guilty of having his company break laws, whether he personally was the one having it done or not is debatable, but it is his company that he built up (as you so kindly reminded us) so by association the company's crimes are his. This is how people work, we blame the person in charge of the company.
And let's not forget Gates' personal response, and MS's company response to the Antitrust suit. It was basically "ahh fuck off, we can do whatever we damn well please". That attitude cost them, the whole case may have ended a lot sooner otherwise. Apparently MS hasn't learned either, witness them being called on missing E-mails in another case (is that the Burst one?). It doesn't take a lawyer to realize that 20+ people don't spontaneously, without consulting each other, delete the exact same time span of E-mail from their old mail.
So why does /. bash Gates and MS? Because they've earned it the old fashioned way. You treat people, and the courts like you think you're better than them and people are going to hate you and bash you at every opportunity. Gates should be smart enough to realize this, that he hasn't speaks volumes about his ego. He's getting exactly what he deserves.
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I really have the feeling that it was a boneheaded mistake rather than any malicious intent to mislead. I mean, really. What is gained by it when the information is included in a package that consists of both versions of the movie? (as several of the movies listed are/were sold that way)
I would agree, but in at least some cases MGM switched the copy from widescreen to full screen and didn't change the packaging or UPC. (Or vice versa on the switch.) That's beyond a simple goof, that's either being cheap and/or lazy ("oh we can't afford to change those packages, keep them as is" or "oh who cares, leave the packages as is, we can't be bothered to change them"), or willfull misleading.-
though every game that requires a cd check (every game iv played for quite some time) with a central server to play online (the only reason to even buy games) would suffer from the exact same problem should the company crumble along with said central server.
That's essentially what the problem is with Steam and those affected by this now. We're talking about offline play though, while you may think online play is the only reason to buy games, there's a lot of people who prefer to never play online at all. Those games (the offline portion, or offline only games) certainly should not be affected by a company going out of business or an authentication server going down later on.Just one example, the Madden games on PS2 have online play but that play is only good for (at most) a year. After that you're stuck with an offline only copy, but it still plays just fine offline as it should.
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A 'logon once a week' scheme would probably ease these troubles, but otherwise I don't see how any of my rights are being squished.
Simple, if Valve goes out of business tomorrow and the login servers go down, all your games you paid for stop working permanently. With discs and CD Keys, you can hunt them down and reinstall, even if the company's gone out of business and your CDs are in storage.-
It figures I'd get flamebait/troll moderation for showing a dissenting opinion... No, I'm not new here, just willing to step out of line and speak up.
What do you expect, if you had seen this post before you posted yours you'd have known that it isn't a minor issue, it is something affecting a large subset of users. Even failing that, the article says "Some people seem to be able to log on fine while others, like meGiven that, your post comes across as nothing but a troll or flamebait. Speaking up with a dissenting view is fine, but it really helps to read the facts first. When a fact countering your argument is in the article summary and not some linked article, you're not speaking up, you're just spouting off.
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Steam stats put an average 2.5M unique users are on Steam servers, so all 2.5M users are lucky and how many are not?
Who knows, but the number who can't is irrelevant. If the copy was bought and paid for and the person's only trying to play offline, then even a single user not being able to play the game offline because of this is unacceptable. If it was an online game this would make some sense, but if it's offline, paid for, previously authenticated as legit, why should they be denied play?If it was you this was happening to I'm sure you'd be livid as well.
(For the record I don't own any Valve games, nor do I have any interest in any of their games, I just think this is a perfect example of how DRM is abused by companies.)
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Enter the offline patch. A hacked
.exe of HL2 that will let you play without ever connecting to Steam.
While I agree with you, the sad part is you are probably risking your Steam account being deactivated if you happen to connect and it notices the hackedSorry, but if I purchase a game for my personal machine and the game that I choose to play has no need for the Internet then that is the way it should be.
I wonder how MGM will spin this to make it look like the losses are due to piracy though. They seem to manage to do that for everything, no matter what the loss's true causes were.