Actually, it wasn't killed sooner because several companies had sprung up, selling DGPS (differential GPS) services that got around SA and gave more accurate results. Said companies lobbied congress to continue SA because turning it off would basically remove their reason for existing.
For the record, industrial-quality GPS ($1,500-$5,000) is accurate to about a meter, with maybe 3m of drift over time. I work in the precision agriculture industry, and one thing that we do is map yield performance based on GPS data. Handheld units are less accurate only because the antennas on the units are smaller.
I signed up for service at my old place. They came to install, found the wiring in the old building too poor, so I couldn't get service.
4 months later, I move in with a friend into a new house, and have my phone number follow me. He signs up for internet service with ATT since they are having a free install special.
ATT does not bill him, they bill me. They also bill me $100 for install. After calls every month (when I get the credit card bill, I call them), and get assured "OK, we've fixed the problem now.", I begin to get annoyed.
After the 4th one of these, they sort of get it right--They bill him. But they keep billing me too! 8 months of BOTH of us getting billed for the same account!
I still haven't gotten it straightened out. They acknowledge that they owe me like $500, but I have yet to see it. I am so far beyond pissed, it's not funny. So, I haven't signed up for cable, internet, or long distance at my new place. I will not pay ATT one nickel until the mess gets straightened out.
I recommend to ANYONE out there using ATT@home: don't give them your credit card number. EVER! Have them bill you monthly. Otherwise they will screw you again and again.
Judging by the number of replies to Slashdot topics on anime (even after filtering out the "anime is stupid, get rid of this crap" ones), it would appear a fair number of the readers of Slashdot are anime fans. I count myself in that number.
Apparently there are many of us anime fans in the geek world. Some anime fan engineer at Motorola managed to get them to name a uP "DragonBall" fercrissakes! Team Anime Expo (convention in LA) is ranked 73rd on SETI@Home (6 spots higher than Team Slashdot). Hell, the first User Friendly animated short had an anime reference in it.
WE ARE EVERYWHERE. And it's just a matter of time until we come for your children.
Dave - who just helped run OTAKON, where about 7500 anime geeks descended on Baltimore for a 3-day party.
Anime is incredibly expensive to air (much more than normal content)
Why? hmm.. greed?:) and the fact that most anime is bought by Disney (yes, another dark secret they don't tell you) and then licensed to the anime companies.
That last bit about Disney is utter bullshit. Disney does own the rights to most of Studio Ghibli's titles (Nausicaa, Mononoke, Kiki's Delivery Service), but nothing else. The anime companies get their licenses direct from the producers in Japan. Hell, some of the companies now distributing anime are nothing more than US arms of the Japanese companies (Pioneer, Bandai), while others have gone so far as to co-produce anime with the Japanese (ADV Films, Manga Entertainment).
I have to wonder where you people come up with this stuff sometimes. ^_^
I watch a lot of animation, and I thought Titan AE was really, REALLY spotty. Some shots were excellent, and showed a lot of care and attention. The scenes in the ice rings were very nice, with great care taken in setting up good reflections, etc. Another effect I liked was in the dredge prison--not the electrical stuff, but the slowly moving concentric circles on the walls. Nice effect--elegant, simple.
Then came the bad parts. There were quite a few scenes where the computer animation looked choppy--VERY choppy--as ships went flit-flit-flit across the screen. It looked like they skimped in some spots and only rendered every two frames of film (an animation cheat).
Another problem I had was with the integration of rendered and traditional (cel) animation. As a concept, I think it has potential, but if it is poorly executed, the effect is jarring. Some anime titles have had great success integrating computer animation (Macross Plus, Cowboy Bebop), and others have failed (Blue Submarine No. 6). In fact, Titan AE reminded me a LOT of Blue Sub No. 6--the cel animation looked so out of place with the rendered bits, totally mismatched.
Finally, in typical American and Don Bluth fashion, every frame must have movement. We see our hero laying on a bed, we have to pan around it and draw each frame--poorly. Waste of budget that could be better spent.
Dave
LUPIN III: CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO
on
Essential Anime
·
· Score: 1
...is the best anime film of all time, though almost anything by Hayao MIyazaki/Studio Ghibli is excellent. I would also recommend:
Macross Plus BubbleGum Crisis Tenchi Muyo! Kodomo no Omocha (aka Child's Toy) Neon Genesis Evangelion Kareshi Kanojo no Jijoo (aka KareKano, aka His and Her Circumstances) Vision of Escaflowne Maison Ikkoku
If you really like lain, I'd suggest you go to OTAKON (an anime convention in Baltimore, MD). The creator of lain and also the character designer will be attending as guests, as will the British Band that did the opening theme..
JVC released a DVHS VCR over a year ago that did the same thing. It had a built-in DiSH Network receiver, and would record the MPEG-2 digital video stream to the tape. I don't know if it had a digital input, however.
Star Office may be free, but It isn't half the application MS Office is. I had high hopes this past fall, of converting the office PCs to Linux and using Star Office instead of Office 97, but Sun has a long way to go if they want to make it a serious contender.
While it is functionally equivalent to MS Office, Star Office has two primary problems -- speed and stability. Star Office crashes often on the two systems I have run it on (Mandrake 6.0 / GNOME / Enlightenment), and tends to take the window manager down with it. Add to that, it is at least 5 times slower than MS in many cases. I have used both to create a graph in Excel/StarCalc with 13,000 points. Excel takes about 2 seconds to create the graph, Star Office, 30 seconds or more. Or it crashes.
Star Office may be free, but it's not an Office-killer yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it wasn't killed sooner because several companies had sprung up, selling DGPS (differential GPS) services that got around SA and gave more accurate results. Said companies lobbied congress to continue SA because turning it off would basically remove their reason for existing.
For the record, industrial-quality GPS ($1,500-$5,000) is accurate to about a meter, with maybe 3m of drift over time. I work in the precision agriculture industry, and one thing that we do is map yield performance based on GPS data. Handheld units are less accurate only because the antennas on the units are smaller.
--
Dave
That's an older model that came out over a year ago (replacing the DVR-S101 which was $17,000 SRP). I have not seen a price for this new DVD-R/RW yet.
4 months later, I move in with a friend into a new house, and have my phone number follow me. He signs up for internet service with ATT since they are having a free install special.
ATT does not bill him, they bill me. They also bill me $100 for install. After calls every month (when I get the credit card bill, I call them), and get assured "OK, we've fixed the problem now.", I begin to get annoyed.
After the 4th one of these, they sort of get it right--They bill him. But they keep billing me too! 8 months of BOTH of us getting billed for the same account!
I still haven't gotten it straightened out. They acknowledge that they owe me like $500, but I have yet to see it. I am so far beyond pissed, it's not funny. So, I haven't signed up for cable, internet, or long distance at my new place. I will not pay ATT one nickel until the mess gets straightened out.
I recommend to ANYONE out there using ATT@home: don't give them your credit card number. EVER! Have them bill you monthly. Otherwise they will screw you again and again.
--
Dave
Apparently there are many of us anime fans in the geek world. Some anime fan engineer at Motorola managed to get them to name a uP "DragonBall" fercrissakes! Team Anime Expo (convention in LA) is ranked 73rd on SETI@Home (6 spots higher than Team Slashdot). Hell, the first User Friendly animated short had an anime reference in it.
WE ARE EVERYWHERE. And it's just a matter of time until we come for your children.
Dave
- who just helped run OTAKON, where about 7500 anime geeks descended on Baltimore for a 3-day party.
Why? hmm.. greed? :) and the fact that most anime is bought by Disney (yes, another dark secret they don't tell you) and then licensed to the anime companies.
That last bit about Disney is utter bullshit. Disney does own the rights to most of Studio Ghibli's titles (Nausicaa, Mononoke, Kiki's Delivery Service), but nothing else. The anime companies get their licenses direct from the producers in Japan. Hell, some of the companies now distributing anime are nothing more than US arms of the Japanese companies (Pioneer, Bandai), while others have gone so far as to co-produce anime with the Japanese (ADV Films, Manga Entertainment).
I have to wonder where you people come up with this stuff sometimes. ^_^
--
David Christopher Asher
OTAKON 2000: Convention of Otaku Generation
August 4-5-6, 2000 at the Baltimore Convention Center, Baltimore, MD
I watch a lot of animation, and I thought Titan AE was really, REALLY spotty. Some shots were excellent, and showed a lot of care and attention. The scenes in the ice rings were very nice, with great care taken in setting up good reflections, etc. Another effect I liked was in the dredge prison--not the electrical stuff, but the slowly moving concentric circles on the walls. Nice effect--elegant, simple.
Then came the bad parts. There were quite a few scenes where the computer animation looked choppy--VERY choppy--as ships went flit-flit-flit across the screen. It looked like they skimped in some spots and only rendered every two frames of film (an animation cheat).
Another problem I had was with the integration of rendered and traditional (cel) animation. As a concept, I think it has potential, but if it is poorly executed, the effect is jarring. Some anime titles have had great success integrating computer animation (Macross Plus, Cowboy Bebop), and others have failed (Blue Submarine No. 6). In fact, Titan AE reminded me a LOT of Blue Sub No. 6--the cel animation looked so out of place with the rendered bits, totally mismatched.
Finally, in typical American and Don Bluth fashion, every frame must have movement. We see our hero laying on a bed, we have to pan around it and draw each frame--poorly. Waste of budget that could be better spent.
Dave
If you really like lain, I'd suggest you go to OTAKON (an anime convention in Baltimore, MD). The creator of lain and also the character designer will be attending as guests, as will the British Band that did the opening theme..
--
Dave
JVC released a DVHS VCR over a year ago that did the same thing. It had a built-in DiSH Network receiver, and would record the MPEG-2 digital video stream to the tape. I don't know if it had a digital input, however.
While it is functionally equivalent to MS Office, Star Office has two primary problems -- speed and stability. Star Office crashes often on the two systems I have run it on (Mandrake 6.0 / GNOME / Enlightenment), and tends to take the window manager down with it. Add to that, it is at least 5 times slower than MS in many cases. I have used both to create a graph in Excel/StarCalc with 13,000 points. Excel takes about 2 seconds to create the graph, Star Office, 30 seconds or more. Or it crashes.
Star Office may be free, but it's not an Office-killer yet.
Dave