Also I know that PCI Express is coming out, but I'm not interested in waiting another 6 months and then having early-adopter pains.
Actually, it seems to be out now on the Intel platform. Abit has a couple of nice MBs with 1 16x and 3 1x PCI Express + a couple of regular PCI slots. Lots of other nice features as well.
My gut feeling on the Athlon platform is to go with the 939 socket instead of the 754. We probably won't see PCI Express on AMD for a couple more months, so personally, I'll be holding off on an upgrade. I generally upgrade my processor once and my video card twice on a single MB, so I want PCI Express for when I upgrade my future mid-range 6800 to a future mid-range 7800:-)
I never played Morrowind much (not having Windows anymore), but its predecessor Daggerfall was one of the very few bits of software I actually bought. Are you implying they actually managed to make Morrowind more buggy?
While there are bugs in Morrowind, they pale in comparison to the buggy mess that was Daggerfall. For a Bethesda game, Morrowind is actually fairly bug-free. To be honest, I was shocked:-)
I know if I am working with Photoshop, 3DSMAX or playing a 3D game (all memory-intensive programs), I close my browser.
Hmmm... I leave Opera open under each of those circumstances along with a couple of Windows Explorer sessions and possibly an image browser like ACDSee (classic... can't stand the new version). It's nice to have an entire internet of references available while painting. Of course, I DO have a gig and a half of RAM... There's not a whole lot of excuses not to if you're doing serious PS and 3dsMax work.
Of course, if you'd stuck to just mentioning 3D games, then you'd have a good point;-)
If that's all they did, I wouldn't really care. Actually, the Slayer's translations haven't been half bad. Ditto for Mononoke Hime and quite a few others. The problem comes in when they change much, much more than that. Silent Mobious Movie changed the thing that unlocked Katsumi's power from a spell in the form of a song to "The power of my Mother's Love!" Yay! Sure, that's not going to make much of a difference. The story was struggling enough as it was, it didn't need that crap added into the mix to make it even worse. Really, only about half of what makes it over here has a decent translation and even fewer shows than that get the treatment of a real writer that can make the difference between completely lame dialog and something that's worth listening to.
CN would be better off showing more hilarious Romantic comedies where there is one guy and like 500 zillion girls all trying to force themselves into his pants yet he still NEVER GETS LAID EVER because he's too much of a retarded GOON.
Yes, of course, because in your little world, that's the only other type of anime show there is.
Pfft... Give me a break. I'm not talking about the piddly crap... I can live with that. I'm talking about stuff that changes the entire meaning of whole scenes. I'm talking about hand-holding crap like Faye screaming Ed's a girl. What's the point of that? The show was a lot more fun when you weren't sure. How seriously could you take the Harry Potter movie if they changed the word "wand" to "wood," eh? Means close to the same thing, right?
Of course, it helps to ignore that sort of mentality run amok, as with the interminably-long Dragon Ball Z. People who laud the superiority of serialized shows over episodic shows always seem to forget that that particular work (among others) exists.
Never said they didn't exist... I just said that American TV was *filled* with them almost to the exclusion of all else. To be honest, I'm not really all that fond of the DragonBall (/Z/GT) series on TV. In fact, shows like Naruto, InuYahsa and a few others seem to follow the same mentality: draw out the damn story and milk it for all its worth. Gee, I wonder why those are the ones that get picked for broadcast in America...?
Then you have Cowboy Bebop, which manages to have a better story than most anime despite only devoting a small portion of its time to the "main" storyarc.
Cowboy Bebop, while an okay story, is still just an action show with quite a bit of style. I don't expect much more from a show aimed at teenage boys. I did enjoy it, but I don't view it as anything more than what it is.
... IOW, being serialized or not has nothing to do with the story being good. It just means that the story will be longer
Let's take Harry Potter 3, for example. If, instead of around 2 hours to tell the story in that fricking massive book, what if the studio were able to successfully market a 13 episode series at the same quality as the movie? That's at least 5 hours or so to tell the story, more if you allow for 40-45 minute segments instead of 18-20. IOW, having more time to explore a story can be better than being forced to editorialize one.
If you want examples of shows that *are* good in anime, stop talking about the lowest common denominator stuff that happens to make it to Cartoon Network because its so similar to American TV. If you're looking for a good story, start with Plantes, Twin Spica (Futari no Spica), Ayatsuri Sakon, Kokoro Library, Hikaru no Go, Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, Monster, and the Touch movies, to name a few. There's even more that are a little lighter on story, but still quite good without pampering to the shounen audience.
[rant]
I'll also throw in one more little tidbit for you. The stuff that gets dubbed is often written by 2-bit writers at the sub companies. They take translations that are usually pretty rough around the edges, then write their own dialog to kind of match. Unfortunately, about half the time it turns out pretty piss poor. Even the subtitles on the commercial discs are often wrong, even from companies like Disney (Laputa, probably my favorite Miyaziki flick, was horribly butchered in the subtitles). Even Cowboy Bebop. In the original, Ed's gender is left pretty ambiguous for most of the show. In the dub, they get Faye screaming, "Ed's a Girl!?" right at the end of the episode in which Ed appears.
[/rant]
The only reason I can come up with is that even though you agree with it, you can't bring yourself to accept it. Thus I said that he couldn't stand the truth.
My apologies, I misunderstood your meaning.
That's why I was careful not to use the word "inherently." In fact, I used the word "currently."
Hmmm... interesting segue there. My point was that writing is writing despite the final medium. Your point seemed to be that because Anime was somehow new that it would be inferior to other forms of entertainment.
Yes, including the Japanese. The fact that they think that their children are capable of handling more mature subject matter than Americans believe their children can handle is irrelevant.
You forgot Otaku:-) Serously, Some, perhaps even a lot of, Japanese view anime as for kids, but I think the percentage is far larger in the US (though that has been changing with Cartoon Network's influence). However, the *REAL* point was that Anime gets many of it's stories from Manga. Manga is *NOT* viewed the same way as Anime and therefore attracts a large number of Manka-ka (Manga Artist/Writers), many of which are quite talented. How often do you know who *wrote* a TV show or even a movie? Who gets top billing? The writer? Hell no, the stars and director do. At least in Anime, the artist/writer is recognized. They even get to make a decent amount of money out of the deal.
Not sure something similar could be said of anime fans, seeing as how much of even supposedly serious anime has plenty of fanservice in it (Neon Genesis Evangelion being the most obvious example).
Sigh... Evangelion. The Gainax Cash Cow. Well, you can't say it didn't have an effect on the Japanese, though... How many anime shows do you know that generate 300 page 8.5 x 11 product catalogs? You could buy everything from Rei pillows to Laptop Computers with the Nerve logo on them. Quite silly, if you ask me. If you're looking for a more serious show, however, try "Hikaru no Go" or "Haibane Renmei." If you want to get away from the T&A, look no further than the prolific shoujou (young girl) anime genre. Sex and explosions sell in the US, so it's no surprise that those are the type of Anime shows being pushed on American audiences. Considering that barely even a fraction of Anime broadcast in Japan makes it over here, it's hardly fair to judge the entire genre on it. I still occasionally run into people who honestly believe Anime = tentacle rape.
But there are always exceptions to the rule, and right now the rule is that storytelling in anime isn't up to snuff. Before you think me biased, I would say the exact same thing about video gaming, and I'm the biggest gamer I know.
American TV is filled with shallow syndicated shows that wrap up a story every 30 minutes to an hour. Japanese TV still has the "Mini Series" both in Anime and regular TV. I really like the 13 and 26 episode format that doesn't have a damn reset switch at the end of each show. If Americans could learn to *END* their stories instead of dragging them out season after uninspired season, milking the show for all it's worth, I'd probably watch TV a lot more. Does that mean I hate every syndicated show? No, but it is frustrating when the only thing on American TV seems to be reality TV and sitcoms.
The problem most anime fans have is that they don't realize that the stories in most of their favorite animes are no better than those in the American shows they love to denounce.
The difference is as I stated above. Syndicated show VS 13 to 26 episode story that ends. It's hard to like a TV show that just keeps going and going and going... well, at least it is for me, anyway. So, yes, I do believe that the average story found in Japanese anime is far better than the average story found in American TV.
Hate to interject, here (okay, no I don't, but I was being polite;-)
Please feel free to point out where either of us was trying to force anyone to agree with our point of view.
Okay, I'll bite. How about:
Which is why "assholes" like us have to point out that anime isn't the end-all and be-all of storytelling. In fact, anime is currently inferior to literature and cinema for a number of reasons.
Generally the reason why people like you can't stand people like him is that people like you can't stand the truth.
Well, I guess you're not "forcing" us to agree with you, but you are making statements that basically say that "What I say is fact, you're wrong, end of story."
1. Age of the medium. Animation simply hasn't been around as long as literature or cinema. This is a pretty big disadvantage, as anime has had less time to mature. Not even cinema has been around nearly long enough to produce people like Homer or Shakespeare.
Animation has been around nearly as long as cinema. Ever hear of Steamboat Willy? The first ones were silent. Atom boy didn't start 'till the early 50's, but 50 years to develop a medium is quite a long time. Animation, Movies, and Books are neither inherently superior nor inferior to each other. All three are based on fundamental writing styles and rules honed through centuries of different authors.
2. The view that animation is "kiddie." This concept of being for kids tends to keep people from taking it seriously, which in turn tends to keep writers from doing serious work in it. Animation is starting to overcome this view, but it'll probably be a while before it is generally accepted as a legitimate adult artform.
So, I guess if Americans viewed books as "kiddie," Homer would somehow become less of a work. Japanese Animation isn't viewed by Japanese in quite the same way as by Americans. True, it's not taken quite as seriously as some Anime fans would like to believe, but that doesn't mean that it keeps serious writers out of the Animation business. Actually, many Anime series are adapted from Manga (or even books), a medium taken far more seriously than Anime with a breadth of topics that is simply amazing.
3. The fans. For every fan who wants to see animation grow into its potential, you have ten who just want to see pantyshots and explosions, and ten others who want to see pretentiousness disguised as depth. There's a reason why those things are known as "fanservice" in anime circles. And as long as the vast majority of fans don't care to see anything serious in animation, you're not going to see much seriousness in animation.
For every person who wants to see some serious or deep writing in American TV, there are a 1000 others who just want to watch something like Survivor or Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire. How may blockbuster "Blow Shit Up," movies have there been again?
You might live a happier life if you stop assuming that everyone who disagrees with you is out to convert you.
For me, I just hate seeing an uninformed opinion being passed off as fact. Somebody hearing your opinions may think that all anime/manga are the same crap and there isn't anything, nor will there ever be anything redeeming about it.
While there certainly is some truth to what you said, I don't think you're entirely right.
I, personally, like a show with a decent amount of story in it. Movies are okay, but it's hard to fit a good story in a short, two hour flick. Sometimes, I like to watch something a bit longer.
American TV doesn't really have this anymore. We used to have the "mini-series," but I haven't seen that in a long time. These days it's all about syndication. This means every "story" gets wrapped up in half to 1 hour increments with the occasional two parter during sweeps. Not to mention the reset switch at the end of each ep to make sure you can show the episodes in any order.
The great thing about Japanese TV (and I'm not talking just Anime either), is the half-season (11-13 episode) series. That's around 6 to 12 hours to tell a good story. Of course, there's a still a lot of crap, too, but you'll get that anywhere.
I'd watch a lot more American TV (and read more American comics) if they just knew how to *END* the damn things.
In fact, anime is currently inferior to literature and cinema for a number of reasons.
That's not a very good comparison... There are Anime shows in the Cinema (both in Japan and in the US) and there is also literature in Japan, some of which is tightly tied to Anime. And no, I'm not referring to Manga, but to honest-to-goodness novels.
Anyway, the myopia seems to be cutting both ways, here...
Whoa, sorry to interject here, but doesn't the Cartoon Network actually do a fairly decent job bringing over some outstanding anime? I mean, stuff like Cowboy Bebop, Ruroni Kenshin, Trigun--these series aren't exactly insignificant.
While good, they're also not particularly deep. If I were making an argument for an anime with a good story, I probably wouldn't pick any one of those. They're good action shows, however, and exactly the sort of show American TV Execs think the American public wants.
Admittedly, I use Opera on Windows and Redhat and not Firefox, but when I right-click to select a menu, I don't keep holding down on the right mouse button.
In other words:
Close gesture in opera = right-click-hold / move down and right / right-click-release
Menu selection = right-click and release / move down and right to menu item / left-click
I'd imagine that it would work the same in FireFox.
Come out with a superior product, and people will automatically aware of the "plusses" they have to offer.
Not always. There are a couple of players that are all-around better DAPs than the I-Pod, but don't have that Apple Stylin' look. Apple is still, however, viewed as the best in the market.
Heh, and now for my obligitory Slashdot remark: You don't have to look much further than Microsoft Windows to see that the better product doesn't always "win.":-P
And if I hadn't shoplifted this copy of The Economist from the newstands the other day, I would never have seen how good it was and subscribed to the magazine.
You mean, "And if I hadn't stood at the Newstand and read the Economist, then put it back on the shelf, I would never have seen how good it was and subscribed to the magazine."
I'm not going to advocate piracy, but if you're going to insist on using silly analogies to try to condemn (or support) it, at least put some effort into it.
Mod parent up.
Sony's scheme would reduce the effectiveness of the 4-color DLP projectors to some extent. Although this will work in general, there are some projectors that will not be fully compatible with this screen, specifically because it does not reflect much broad-spectrum white light.
Be aware of this if considering a DLP for home use.
Yes, because you'll really want a 6-segment DLP for home and not a Business DLP with a 4-segment color wheel.
4-color DLPs (with a white segment) are designed to boost lumen output for powerpoint presentations. They can really look like crap with movies.
6-color DLPs (RGBRGB) are better for home theaters because you get richer colors and a faster wheel (fewer rainbow artifacts).
Of course, the business projectors tend to be a bit cheaper so some people use them as home projectors, but generally, when tuned for movies, they have their brigtness turned way down and the white segment minimized or turned off.
MiniDisc had abysmal sound, with its 3-subband psychoacoustic model. i.e. it sucked for music.
Have you ever *used* MiniDisc? Do you know it's practically ubiquitous in Japan? Did you know that the compression format has changed several times since it came out around 10 years ago (before CD recorders became affordable).
True, Sony's NetMD kind of sucks because of the damned DRM crap they built into it and converting from 128k MP3 to ATRAC will cause all sorts of audio problems. Back in the day, though, I could record from a CD player to my MD player using an optical cable and get a recording that was hard to tell from the original. Plus they were practically skip free, smaller and lighter.
MiniDisc failed in the US, not because of it's sound, but because Sony US couldn't figure out how to market it before CD burners took over. MiniDisc was a very successfull product in Japan, however.
How...on the $1000 buck projectors...about how long is bulb life? How much per bulb?
...
Also, do any of these projectors come with a timer to turn themselves off?
As an example, the Infocus X1 @ ~$800 has a bulb that costs around $300 and a life of 2000-3000 hours. I think that Dell has one that's a bit better on the bulb price. Bulbs are only warranted for 90 days though, so there is the chance that a bulb will blow early and there won't be much you can do about it.
I've never heard of a projector with an auto-off circuit.
Now to tackle the *real* question. You probably shouldn't get a standart Home Theater projcetor. Standard Definition TV generally looks like crap when blown up to 100". Unless you watch a significant amount of DVD's or HDTV, you don't want to buy a projection TV. Also, you have to have a room with good light control. Bright living rooms are right out during the daytime:-)
Most people with Home Theaters use a regular TV when viewing standard off-the-air stuff and the projector when viewing movies off of DVD.
Right, like Sony is going to just ditch their whole Cell processor idea if they find out the specs on the Xbox are better than theirs. Sony is just as blind from arrogance as Microsoft, if not more so. They'll release another technically inferior product, but gamers will still flock to it based on brand recognition.
Normally I don't like to defend Sony, as I think the PS2 is a half-arsed product, but the whole idea around the cell processor allows them to up the specs of the system at any time, even via add-ons after the system has been released.
If you take their word at face value, the PS3 will come with x number of cell processors. If you plug the PS3 into your Sony stereo that also has x number of cell processors and your Sony TV that has x number of cell processors, the games will transpearantly use the extra processor power to render more polygons and/or more resolution.
So, X-box comes out and Sony sees that it's 50% faster than their PS3 using 4 cell processors, then they can do a MB redesign, add two more processors and get up to par with MS. Supposedly, the games the developers are creating would just use the extra power without requiring a rewrite to the code.
Of course, Sony could by talking out their ass, and it certainly wouldn't be the first time... I guess we'll find out in a couple of years:-)
The PS2's backwards compatibility WAS a fluke. It came about when they realized that one of the auxiliary chips being used (the memory controller chip, if I remember correctly) was virtually identical to the PSX's corresponding chip, and that with a MINIMUM of work and fuss they could make the thing backwards compatible.
It is the controller for the game pads, actually, and Sony quite deliberately did it this way.
If I remember correctly, when MS first announced the new development platform, they stated that it would include specifiations for controllers... on both PC and XBox(2).
So while the whole mouse-keyboard on PC -> console conversion may not work as well, joypad on console -> PC shouldn't be a problem at all.
Heh... I avoided Halo for over a year. My launch games were Project Gotham and DOA3. I didn't think Halo was going to be anything special so I didn't feel it was worth spending $50 on.
Then Best Buy had a $30 sale on it and I figured, why not? So I got it and was not dissapointed in the least. I enjoyed the SP experience more than I enjoyed the Half-Life experience (probably because of Half-Life's jumping puzzle ending). Is it the best thing since sliced Cacodaemons? Not really, but it's still one of the best FPS games I've played and I've been playing them since Wolf3d:-)
Albertson's, that requires me to pull out a stupid card each time I buy groceries so they can stick my name in a database with the purchases I made
I shop at Albertson's as well... I don't own a card. Sure, I could save a couple of bucks at the register, but what's a couple of bucks? I'm currently employed and $10 a month is hardly going to put me in bankruptcy.
I don't see how you can patent genes when they self-reproduce. Are you going to sue a farmer who has a monsanto corn plant growing in the corner of his yard that is from a seed that fell of a truck from his neighbor? It's like licensing a worm and then suing the people whose computers it infects: Lunacy.
Slashdot Mirror
My gut feeling on the Athlon platform is to go with the 939 socket instead of the 754. We probably won't see PCI Express on AMD for a couple more months, so personally, I'll be holding off on an upgrade. I generally upgrade my processor once and my video card twice on a single MB, so I want PCI Express for when I upgrade my future mid-range 6800 to a future mid-range 7800 :-)
Of course, if you'd stuck to just mentioning 3D games, then you'd have a good point ;-)
If you want examples of shows that *are* good in anime, stop talking about the lowest common denominator stuff that happens to make it to Cartoon Network because its so similar to American TV. If you're looking for a good story, start with Plantes, Twin Spica (Futari no Spica), Ayatsuri Sakon, Kokoro Library, Hikaru no Go, Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, Monster, and the Touch movies, to name a few. There's even more that are a little lighter on story, but still quite good without pampering to the shounen audience.
[rant]
I'll also throw in one more little tidbit for you. The stuff that gets dubbed is often written by 2-bit writers at the sub companies. They take translations that are usually pretty rough around the edges, then write their own dialog to kind of match. Unfortunately, about half the time it turns out pretty piss poor. Even the subtitles on the commercial discs are often wrong, even from companies like Disney (Laputa, probably my favorite Miyaziki flick, was horribly butchered in the subtitles). Even Cowboy Bebop. In the original, Ed's gender is left pretty ambiguous for most of the show. In the dub, they get Faye screaming, "Ed's a Girl!?" right at the end of the episode in which Ed appears.
[/rant]
I, personally, like a show with a decent amount of story in it. Movies are okay, but it's hard to fit a good story in a short, two hour flick. Sometimes, I like to watch something a bit longer.
American TV doesn't really have this anymore. We used to have the "mini-series," but I haven't seen that in a long time. These days it's all about syndication. This means every "story" gets wrapped up in half to 1 hour increments with the occasional two parter during sweeps. Not to mention the reset switch at the end of each ep to make sure you can show the episodes in any order.
The great thing about Japanese TV (and I'm not talking just Anime either), is the half-season (11-13 episode) series. That's around 6 to 12 hours to tell a good story. Of course, there's a still a lot of crap, too, but you'll get that anywhere.
I'd watch a lot more American TV (and read more American comics) if they just knew how to *END* the damn things.
That's not a very good comparison... There are Anime shows in the Cinema (both in Japan and in the US) and there is also literature in Japan, some of which is tightly tied to Anime. And no, I'm not referring to Manga, but to honest-to-goodness novels.Anyway, the myopia seems to be cutting both ways, here...
In other words:
Close gesture in opera = right-click-hold / move down and right / right-click-release
Menu selection = right-click and release / move down and right to menu item / left-click
I'd imagine that it would work the same in FireFox.
Heh, and now for my obligitory Slashdot remark: You don't have to look much further than Microsoft Windows to see that the better product doesn't always "win." :-P
You mean, "And if I hadn't stood at the Newstand and read the Economist, then put it back on the shelf, I would never have seen how good it was and subscribed to the magazine."
I'm not going to advocate piracy, but if you're going to insist on using silly analogies to try to condemn (or support) it, at least put some effort into it.
4-color DLPs (with a white segment) are designed to boost lumen output for powerpoint presentations. They can really look like crap with movies.
6-color DLPs (RGBRGB) are better for home theaters because you get richer colors and a faster wheel (fewer rainbow artifacts).
Of course, the business projectors tend to be a bit cheaper so some people use them as home projectors, but generally, when tuned for movies, they have their brigtness turned way down and the white segment minimized or turned off.
True, Sony's NetMD kind of sucks because of the damned DRM crap they built into it and converting from 128k MP3 to ATRAC will cause all sorts of audio problems. Back in the day, though, I could record from a CD player to my MD player using an optical cable and get a recording that was hard to tell from the original. Plus they were practically skip free, smaller and lighter.
MiniDisc failed in the US, not because of it's sound, but because Sony US couldn't figure out how to market it before CD burners took over. MiniDisc was a very successfull product in Japan, however.
I've never heard of a projector with an auto-off circuit.
Now to tackle the *real* question. You probably shouldn't get a standart Home Theater projcetor. Standard Definition TV generally looks like crap when blown up to 100". Unless you watch a significant amount of DVD's or HDTV, you don't want to buy a projection TV. Also, you have to have a room with good light control. Bright living rooms are right out during the daytime :-)
Most people with Home Theaters use a regular TV when viewing standard off-the-air stuff and the projector when viewing movies off of DVD.
If you take their word at face value, the PS3 will come with x number of cell processors. If you plug the PS3 into your Sony stereo that also has x number of cell processors and your Sony TV that has x number of cell processors, the games will transpearantly use the extra processor power to render more polygons and/or more resolution.
So, X-box comes out and Sony sees that it's 50% faster than their PS3 using 4 cell processors, then they can do a MB redesign, add two more processors and get up to par with MS. Supposedly, the games the developers are creating would just use the extra power without requiring a rewrite to the code.
Of course, Sony could by talking out their ass, and it certainly wouldn't be the first time... I guess we'll find out in a couple of years :-)
Cheaper production will however, allow smaller studios with smaller budgets and less mainstream stories enter the market.
So while the whole mouse-keyboard on PC -> console conversion may not work as well, joypad on console -> PC shouldn't be a problem at all.
Then Best Buy had a $30 sale on it and I figured, why not? So I got it and was not dissapointed in the least. I enjoyed the SP experience more than I enjoyed the Half-Life experience (probably because of Half-Life's jumping puzzle ending). Is it the best thing since sliced Cacodaemons? Not really, but it's still one of the best FPS games I've played and I've been playing them since Wolf3d :-)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/779265.s tm