Rights holders claim that without DRM they'd lose sales. My claim is you lose at least as many because of it. Actually, you don't "win" any sales with DRM, or rather, compared to the sales you lose because of DRM, your gain is minuscle.
I can provide a personal example of lost sales due to DRM. I basically passed on buying music on-line due to DRM, regardless of the price. Basically, it was only until this year, when I could get DRM-free music from iTunes and Amazon.com, that I started buying music on-line (mostly music that I could not locally find on CD or was too expensive on CD).
Now, I've purchased quite a bit of music on-line. But if DRM was still in place, those sales would not have happened.
No, what ruined the immersion was bad voice acting.
Does the fact that Chief Wiggum, Moe, Principal Skinner, Apu and Professor Frink all have the same voice actor ruin The Simpsons? No, because Hank Azaria is a talented actor who gives each character his own voice. Hell, Eeyore and Optimus Prime have the same voice. Nobody cares because they sound different.
I think that is the key ("Nobody cares because they sound different"). Each character should have a distinctive voice, and one that is appropriate to the character. That is the problem with using famous actors as voice actors, the real them tends to overpower the character they are playing.
Returning to the anime series Bleach, there is a voice actor named Kyle Hebert who provides the voice of both Ganju Shiiba and Sosuke Aizen. The performance he gives as each character is so completely different that it was complete surprise to find out that the same voice actor performs both characters.
[In a non-Pokemon related work,] They had used the same voice actor as the one who did Misty in the Dutch translated version of the Pokemon tv show.
Yeah, that totally didn't ruin any immersion..
Did it also ruin immersion when Tim Allen played Tim Taylor in Home Improvement, Santa Claus in The Santa Clause trilogy, and Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story?
Sometimes using the same voice actor for different roles can be a little distracting. I'm a fan of the series Bleach and many of the voice actors from that series do many different characters. For example, a check of the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) shows that Wendee Lee, Megan Hollingshead, Kate Higgins, and Stephanie Sheh both do at least two regular voice actor roles in the series. But they often alter their voices so that they sound significantly different in different roles.
Also, many of the voice actors from Bleach have appeared in many other series over the years. As an example, a check of the IMDB (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0283253/) shows that Wendee Lee alone has over 290 voice actor credits.
Meryl Streep's character in Doubt had it absolutely right. Ball-point pens are to blame. People in my parent's generation who learned to write with fountain pens always seemed to have better handwriting than me. I always struggled with cursive in school: my writing was very slow and messy.
A few years ago I bought my first fountain pen, and now, writing is a pleasure. I still don't write terribly neatly; it seems whatever pen you learn to write with determines your handwriting for life. But I can write in cursive much faster and my penmanship has improved a bit. If you have never tried a fountain pen, I urge you to. I never thought writing cursive could be a pleasure.
I agree that fountain pens are terrific to write with. I used to use them in high school because they gave better writing quality that ball point pens. With recent pens, the ones that come closest to the writing quality of fountain pens are the rollerball pens (the kind of pen I use now) and the gel writer pens.
Returning to the topic of the thread, I think the major factor that has led to cursive writing falling into disuse is that people are no longer required to use it. For myself, outside of grade school I've never been required to write in cursive. Now, I no longer have the ability to write in cursive.
I think another factor in the decline in cursive handwriting is that so much of our writing no longer remains in a fixed place. What I mean by this is, before the advent of electronic communication our writing basically stayed on a piece of paper. The only way the writing could travel is if it was sent or handcarried to someone.
Now, much of what we write travels in a non-physical form. Rather that writing letters on paper, we write e-mails and text messsages where the text only exists in an electronic form. Also, much of what is handwritten ends up being retyped into an electronic format at a later time.
An earlier poster had it right: batteries are bombs. Want a lot of power in a small space? Then you're going to have to put up with the occasional case of China Syndrome. Sorry, that's how it works.
From what I understand (please correct me if I'm wrong), it is in the nature of lithium batteries to go out of control. Much of the engineering of lithium batteries is to (1) prevent them from following their nature (ensure they don't go out of control) and (2) ensure they fail safely when it does occur.
I think the last point is the key. If the battery in a device fails, it should fail in a way that doesn't put the user in danger (even if it destroys the device).
I have. A good solid series, and the type of story that it would be difficult to tell in any other medium (except, possibly, as a textual book) without a large number of changes to the story.
Anonymous sperm donation is pretty much the only way to get out of child support. In every other case the court has ruled "in favor of the child" which means the man has to pay child support even if he was raped. In contrast to much of society, reproductive rights are an area where the women have the men by the balls.
I think the only way an anonymous sperm donor can be safe from being required to pay child support is if it is truly anonymous, meaning there is completely impossible identify the donor. If a single record exists that can be used to identify the donor, then I would not be surprised if that could be used to require child support payments.
Also, there have been cases where it is later proven that a man is not the child's father but he is required to pay child support. If he fails to raise an objection in a timely manner, he can be forced to pay child support for a child that is not his.
If a woman gets your blood, then she can bear your children? Wow! This will be a great argument for deadbeat dads! Now they can truthfully say "I never had sexual relations with that woman."
Black markets for the blood of rich men . ..
Personal IP rights in your personal blood composition . ..
Wow, the world got more interesting on 7/08/2009!!!!
This could be a serious legal problem for men in the future. I'm not a lawyer, but based on what I've read the general guide is that if male reproductive material is used to produce a child, the biological father is liable for child support no matter what the specific circumstances are.
In the scenario mentioned by MarkvWI in his first quoted paragraph above, I don't think it is out of the realm of possibility that the man the blood was taken from could be held liable for child support.
So this is where I'm going to throw my two cents in and get declared a heretic. This is exactly why my favorite Trek is DS9. Captain Sisko was a good mix of action and diplomacy. They had a lot of different races that were major characters, and most importantly to me the characters changed. They were completely different people at the end of the show.
I, too, enjoyed DS9 on the whole. One of the main reasons was Captain Sisko. Much as has been made about Kirk breaking the rules, but Sisko pushed it even further at points.
Two cases come to mind (I don't remember the names of the episodes). In one, he made a planet uninhabitable for humans in order to force Eddington (his former security chief) to turn himself in and he was prepared to do it to planet after planet until Eddington turned himself in. Sisko view was that Eddington was a threat to the Federation, and Sisko would remove that threat.
In another case, he allowed the death of a Romulan representative in order to bring the Romulans into the war against the Dominion. Despite the fact that his actions would lead to more deaths, Sisko could live with it.
But I think it's a shame that Abrams decided just to throw something together based on the Trek franchise, film it in a spectacular way and profit, ignoring the existing trek history when it got in his way.
Umm, that's kind of what "reboots" are all about.
If you restrict yourself to working completely within the pre-existing material, it's not a reboot at all. It's a sequel (or prequel). A reboot of a franchise typically occurs when the property owners reallize that irreconcialable mistakes have been made, and the only way to fix things is to start over and pretend the earlier material doesn't exist. They'll typically reuse a great deal of it, but anything and everything is subject to change, to suit the revised story.
An example of this is in the comic series "Legion Of Super-Heroes." In 1994 the creative team completely wiped out the entire continuity and started over again. The reason was that its continuity had been so damaged by recent events (such as Superman having never been a Superboy, and then the complete deletion of Superboy and Supergirl from continuity, and inserting new characters to take their place) that the writers were spending a massive amount of time trying to fix the continuity rather than moving the series forward. I've compared what was done with the Legion to the writers of Star Trek suddenly being told by the powers that be that "James T. Kirk never existed, deal with it" and yet being required to revise many of the old stories and replace Kirk with another similar character.
Worse, every time the writers did fix something, something else would happen in another comic series that the Legion writers would have to work around. Every fix lead to more problems which had to be fixed, which led to more problems. In the end, there was little choice but to wipe it all out and then start again. This turned out to be a good thing because the writers were able to focus on telling good stories.
This is why I think rebooting Star Trek is a good thing. Each new movie can focus on telling a great story, one that is planned to be built upon and used in the future, while not having work with a massive already-existing continuity. But the writers do need to ensure that each movie in the new series is kept consistent with the previous ones.
I agree. This is, after all, a REBOOT. That means a lot of the cruft from about thirty years of post-ToS development is being dispensed with, and that's fine by me. This is meant to rejuvenate a series that had pretty much become one monstrous cliche of itself. If there's one thing ToS had that, over time, the later series lacked, it was solid, straightforward storytelling. Everything was burdened down by the vast edifice of Everything-That-Had-Come-Before. The last two attempts, the dull Voyager and the increasingly-pathetic Enterprise, showed just how uninteresting it had all become.
The Trouble With Tribbles was just fine with Klingons speaking English, thank you very much. In fact, and so will this.
I think that starting over is the key. From what I've picked up, this movie is starting from scratch and nothing we've seen previously will count. This gives the new team the freedom to take the series in a new direction, without being bogged down with having to deal any of the already-existing stories.
One thing I that has been overlooked is that when the Original Series was done, I doubt much thought was given to the possibility that writers would have to live with these stories over 40 years later. Added to the fact that the limitations of television further prevented the writers from doing stories they'd like to do. Although I was doubtful about the new movie when I first heard about it, I find that I'm looking forward to it.
I think one of the biggest mistakes that the new Star Trek could make is to simply tell the same stories over again. Unlike the Original Series (which had much already established even if we hadn't yet seen it), it appears that this movie will start at the beginning. It is possible that the reason the Klingons don't appear in the new movie is that the Federation hasn't encountered them (yet). It could be that the first time we see the Klingons is during a full-out war with the Federation (how that happened, now there's a story).
In the previous three DHs, every other word was either "fuck" or "shit" (or "fucking shit! Motherfucker!"). I can't for the life of me understand why it's OK to show a bloody murder, but uttering "shit" gives you an R rating.
I didn't fully realize just how much cussing Bruce Willis did until I saw DH1 & 2 on TV. They replaced the words with a voiceover with milder language, and the vocieover didn't even sound like willis. It was more jarring to me than the language was. And "Yippie Kayay, Mr. Falcon"? Barf!
Reminds me when I saw "Smokie and the Bandit" on network TV. They replaced Sheriff Justice's (played by Jackie Gleason) cuss words, and the voice replacement sounded like the same man who was also doing the voice of Fred Flintstone at the time. The voice was close, but it was still a bit jarring because of the Fred Flintstone connection.
99BottlesOfBeerInMyF wrote and included with a post:
Does someone want to tell me what's wrong with plain text?
No graphics for one. Do you really think the state doesn't make any documents that include graphs or maps or charts? Aside from that, it's nice to be able to do some formatting, you know like including page numbers on longer documents and cross references that you don't have to spend hours updating every time you add a page to the middle of a document. Then there's the issue of color. It's awfully nice to be able to add some large, red text and a hazard symbol when said document is providing important information to the reader's health, like "Warning, don't open the valve until the green light comes on or sewage will fill the tunnel killing you!"
From what I've seen, it seems like everyone focuses on there being only one format and trying to make it work for all documents. Rather than trying to use a single format, why not offer documents in multiple formats?
As a minimum, I would support all government documents being available in four formats:
Plain Text: To preserve the actual text of the document. For graphics, placeholder notes are placed in the text file and graphics are available as separate files.
HTML: To allow formatting and the insertion of graphics.
PDF - Small: Formatted for small-screen devices like on PDAs, phones, and e-book readers
PDF - Large: Formatted for large-screen devices and for printing on letter-sized paper.
Although the above would take more storage space, it would ensure that government documents are easily accessible and available to everyone.
whilst it's always good to see genuinely open formats in use, isn't there already an ISO standard document format? If there is, is it better to use the ISO standard or an open standard?
ODF is an ISO standard, as is Microsoft's OOXML format. However ODF is an open standard whereas OOXML is proprietary. As the Star-Telegram article says "If the Constitution was in WordPerfect 5.1 format, it would probably be difficult to read right now", substitute any of MS's formats and it would still be true.
Falcon
I'm not sure if it would be that difficult to read a document in the WordPerfect 5.1 format right now since the current version of WordPerfect and both OpenOffice.org and StarOffice will open the file.
You should never take chances. It's safer that way.
If you're so sensitive that watching a bad movie will actually damage your love for a different movie, and this is actually painful for you... Then yeah. You should probably not take many chances in life, due to insufficient stomach for the most pathetic of consequences.
There is nothing Blade Runner 2 can do that will reduce my enjoyment of Blade Runner. I pity anyone who can't say that.
There is also the chance that the sequel might be better than the previous movie. Compare Star Trek - The Motion Picture to Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan, for me the sequel was much better than its predecessor. It is much the same with the rest of even-numbered Star Trek movies.
I think that one reason sequels are sometimes not good is they rehash much of what they thought made the original work, rather than making the new story work on its own merits. For me, I will take a chance of a sequel and hope that it is at least good. If its bad, I can hope that its so bad its good.
LIES!!! This is an ugly rumor started by people who believe extra-terrestrial reptilian humanoids really run the world. There was no Highlander 2 or 3, or anything else. Really. There wasn't! [sobs uncontrollably]
Sounds like part of the plot of Martian Successor Nadesico (where Earth is at war with an enemy called "the Jovian Lizards").
Nightmare on Elm Street
Karate Kid
Candyman
GI Joe
Pink Panther
Street Fighter (not that there was much of a franchise to begin with)
Tron (this project has waffled between reboot and sequel, but is now being called Tr2n)
Terminator Salvation (technically a sequel, but one that isn't recognizing T3 as canon, and recast everyone to start a new franchise)
Land of the Lost
Fame
The Stepfather
Astro Boy
Sherlock Holmes
Hellraiser
Superman
Catwoman (a failed reboot, but a reboot none the less)
Sadly, I'm probably forgetting more reboots.
With TRON, I think it is more likely to be a reboot instead of a sequel since there have been two sequels already. The first, called TRON 2.0 was a video game that was a direct sequel to the movie. Recently, there was a comic book series called TRON that was a sequel to both the movie and the video game and continued the story.
With Astro Boy, the 1980s series was more of a retelling of the story from the 1960s series (which was based on the original manga), rather than a sequel or a reboot and allowed for better animation than the original series. The 2000s series, on the other hand, was a reboot of the story with vastly improved animation and with large changes from the original animated series (such as Dr. Tenma now being an actual villain unlike in the previous series). With the move to the large screen I think the movie version of Astro Boy will be another reboot (to make allowances for the limited screen time).
Well the first two or three would go out and buy new TVs. Then they'd get to talking and (hopefully) notice that ALL their tvs were black and white. Although hopefully you would think with an average of 3 tvs per household, they would notice that all their tvs went B&W at the same time.
Since we are so close to the original transition date, I doubt that any analog TVs are still available for sale. At this point there would be little reason to still sell them.
Rewrite history much? The 8-track died because the damn things jammed and broke at each and every opportunity, and because of a little thing called the WalkMan, which let people take their music with them everywhere, not just when they were in their car.
In addition to the above, I think other factors in the demise of the 8-track format were: (1) the lack of a fast-forward and rewind function, (2) their size (you could fit four cassettes [in their cases] in the space of one 8-track tape), (3) their sound quality, especially after better tape formulations were introduced, (4) albums had to be re-orded to accomodate the 8-track format with songs being split over two tracks and (5) the ability to easily record cassettes at home.
Have you actually tasted commercially packaged, pre-sliced bread? It is terrible. Go to a good baker, now, and get a fresh whole loaf. No, don't go to the supermarket, a real baker! If you're fast, it might still be nice, warm, and crispy.
Also, per Aaron Brown of "Good Eats" when you are going to make a sandwich, only choose a bread that tastes good enough to eat by itself.
Have you actually tasted commercially packaged, pre-sliced bread? It is terrible. Go to a good baker, now, and get a fresh whole loaf. No, don't go to the supermarket, a real baker! If you're fast, it might still be nice, warm, and crispy.
Also, per Aaron Brown of "Good Eats" when you are going to make a sandwich, only choose a bread that tastes good enough to eat by itself.
You're right. American cinema is much better. A love story always must be present, no matter how badly forced. The good guy will always win. Moral choices are seldom ambiguous. It doesn't matter how it happens but that car WILL explode. Can I be xenophobic too? Or would it be anthrophobic?
This points out one of the things that I enjoy most about anime. Characters often do not fall into the neat good-guy/bad-guy template, but often fall in between the two, or even flip to the other side. This even applies to the stories themselves, where the tone of the story can completely change.
In "Cowboy Bebop" we see this in many of the characters and in the story itself. In fact, the first episode of the series gives you little idea of what the series is actually going to be like.
In one series (I won't reveal the name to avoid spoiling anything), at a certain point in the series a completely shocking and unexpected event happens that completely upends your perceptions of everything in the series from the first episode. The revelation of Darth Vader's true identity in Episode Five of "Star Wars" was a minor surprise by comparison.
Although in many anime series the characters tend to remain a bit static, there are many where the characters develop over the course of the series. Among these are: Robotech, Figure 17, Key The Metal Idol, and Video Girl Ai. Even in the Dragonball Epic (Dragonball, Dragonball Z, and Dragonball GT), most of the characters (most notably Gohan) do evolve over the course of the series.
In U.S. animation for the most part the characters tend to remain static over the course of a series, although this has changed in recent years (Gargoyles, and the entire Animated DCU [see below] come to mind). Still, characters like Scooby Doo and The Flintstones remain pretty much as they were (with minor variations) when they debuted.
I can't be the only one who has no idea what Cowboy Bebop is.
Cowboy Bebop is a 26-episode anime series that was release in Japan in 1998. Later it had a very successful run on Cartoon Network and it still is regularly rerun as part of Adult Swim (it is currently run once a week on Sunday Morning at 4am PST).
Brief Overview: "Cowboy Bebop" is a sci-fi anime series that is set in the late 21st Century and focuses on a group of bounty hunters. The name of the series comes from bounty hunters (called cowboys) and the name of their ship (called the "Bebop"). Although it is set in the future, much of man's current conditions still exist at that time, only the tech has advanced a bit. According to Wikipedia, it is considered one of the best anime series of all time.
If you decide to watch the series, it is important to watch it in order and from the beginning, since each episode builds on the previous ones. Last weekend Adult Swim ran episode #10.
Slashdot Mirror
Opportunist wrote as part of a post:
I can provide a personal example of lost sales due to DRM. I basically passed on buying music on-line due to DRM, regardless of the price. Basically, it was only until this year, when I could get DRM-free music from iTunes and Amazon.com, that I started buying music on-line (mostly music that I could not locally find on CD or was too expensive on CD).
Now, I've purchased quite a bit of music on-line. But if DRM was still in place, those sales would not have happened.
91degrees wrote and included with a post:
I think that is the key ("Nobody cares because they sound different"). Each character should have a distinctive voice, and one that is appropriate to the character. That is the problem with using famous actors as voice actors, the real them tends to overpower the character they are playing.
Returning to the anime series Bleach, there is a voice actor named Kyle Hebert who provides the voice of both Ganju Shiiba and Sosuke Aizen. The performance he gives as each character is so completely different that it was complete surprise to find out that the same voice actor performs both characters.
tepples wrote and included with a post:
Sometimes using the same voice actor for different roles can be a little distracting. I'm a fan of the series Bleach and many of the voice actors from that series do many different characters. For example, a check of the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) shows that Wendee Lee, Megan Hollingshead, Kate Higgins, and Stephanie Sheh both do at least two regular voice actor roles in the series. But they often alter their voices so that they sound significantly different in different roles.
Also, many of the voice actors from Bleach have appeared in many other series over the years. As an example, a check of the IMDB (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0283253/) shows that Wendee Lee alone has over 290 voice actor credits.
BitterOak wrote:
I agree that fountain pens are terrific to write with. I used to use them in high school because they gave better writing quality that ball point pens. With recent pens, the ones that come closest to the writing quality of fountain pens are the rollerball pens (the kind of pen I use now) and the gel writer pens.
Returning to the topic of the thread, I think the major factor that has led to cursive writing falling into disuse is that people are no longer required to use it. For myself, outside of grade school I've never been required to write in cursive. Now, I no longer have the ability to write in cursive.
I think another factor in the decline in cursive handwriting is that so much of our writing no longer remains in a fixed place. What I mean by this is, before the advent of electronic communication our writing basically stayed on a piece of paper. The only way the writing could travel is if it was sent or handcarried to someone.
Now, much of what we write travels in a non-physical form. Rather that writing letters on paper, we write e-mails and text messsages where the text only exists in an electronic form. Also, much of what is handwritten ends up being retyped into an electronic format at a later time.
Man On Pink Corner wrote as part of a post:
From what I understand (please correct me if I'm wrong), it is in the nature of lithium batteries to go out of control. Much of the engineering of lithium batteries is to (1) prevent them from following their nature (ensure they don't go out of control) and (2) ensure they fail safely when it does occur.
I think the last point is the key. If the battery in a device fails, it should fail in a way that doesn't put the user in danger (even if it destroys the device).
Mattman723 wrote:
I have. A good solid series, and the type of story that it would be difficult to tell in any other medium (except, possibly, as a textual book) without a large number of changes to the story.
Kesch wrote:
I think the only way an anonymous sperm donor can be safe from being required to pay child support is if it is truly anonymous, meaning there is completely impossible identify the donor. If a single record exists that can be used to identify the donor, then I would not be surprised if that could be used to require child support payments.
Also, there have been cases where it is later proven that a man is not the child's father but he is required to pay child support. If he fails to raise an objection in a timely manner, he can be forced to pay child support for a child that is not his.
MarkvW wrote:
This could be a serious legal problem for men in the future. I'm not a lawyer, but based on what I've read the general guide is that if male reproductive material is used to produce a child, the biological father is liable for child support no matter what the specific circumstances are.
In the scenario mentioned by MarkvWI in his first quoted paragraph above, I don't think it is out of the realm of possibility that the man the blood was taken from could be held liable for child support.
techess wrote as part of a post:
I, too, enjoyed DS9 on the whole. One of the main reasons was Captain Sisko. Much as has been made about Kirk breaking the rules, but Sisko pushed it even further at points.
Two cases come to mind (I don't remember the names of the episodes). In one, he made a planet uninhabitable for humans in order to force Eddington (his former security chief) to turn himself in and he was prepared to do it to planet after planet until Eddington turned himself in. Sisko view was that Eddington was a threat to the Federation, and Sisko would remove that threat.
In another case, he allowed the death of a Romulan representative in order to bring the Romulans into the war against the Dominion. Despite the fact that his actions would lead to more deaths, Sisko could live with it.
RoboRay wrote:
An example of this is in the comic series "Legion Of Super-Heroes." In 1994 the creative team completely wiped out the entire continuity and started over again. The reason was that its continuity had been so damaged by recent events (such as Superman having never been a Superboy, and then the complete deletion of Superboy and Supergirl from continuity, and inserting new characters to take their place) that the writers were spending a massive amount of time trying to fix the continuity rather than moving the series forward. I've compared what was done with the Legion to the writers of Star Trek suddenly being told by the powers that be that "James T. Kirk never existed, deal with it" and yet being required to revise many of the old stories and replace Kirk with another similar character.
Worse, every time the writers did fix something, something else would happen in another comic series that the Legion writers would have to work around. Every fix lead to more problems which had to be fixed, which led to more problems. In the end, there was little choice but to wipe it all out and then start again. This turned out to be a good thing because the writers were able to focus on telling good stories.
This is why I think rebooting Star Trek is a good thing. Each new movie can focus on telling a great story, one that is planned to be built upon and used in the future, while not having work with a massive already-existing continuity. But the writers do need to ensure that each movie in the new series is kept consistent with the previous ones.
MightyMartian wrote:
I think that starting over is the key. From what I've picked up, this movie is starting from scratch and nothing we've seen previously will count. This gives the new team the freedom to take the series in a new direction, without being bogged down with having to deal any of the already-existing stories.
One thing I that has been overlooked is that when the Original Series was done, I doubt much thought was given to the possibility that writers would have to live with these stories over 40 years later. Added to the fact that the limitations of television further prevented the writers from doing stories they'd like to do. Although I was doubtful about the new movie when I first heard about it, I find that I'm looking forward to it.
I think one of the biggest mistakes that the new Star Trek could make is to simply tell the same stories over again. Unlike the Original Series (which had much already established even if we hadn't yet seen it), it appears that this movie will start at the beginning. It is possible that the reason the Klingons don't appear in the new movie is that the Federation hasn't encountered them (yet). It could be that the first time we see the Klingons is during a full-out war with the Federation (how that happened, now there's a story).
pentalive wrote:
That sounds more appropriate for a Ferengi than for a Klingon.
A few years ago Wizard ran a list of the 100 greatest villains. Included is Hannibal Lechter. The following is a link to the Wikipedia page: ahref=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Anakinjmt/Wizard's_100_Greatest_Villains_Listrel=url2html-29842http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Anakinjmt/Wizard's_100_Greatest_Villains_List>
Cro Magnon wrote and included with a post:
Reminds me when I saw "Smokie and the Bandit" on network TV. They replaced Sheriff Justice's (played by Jackie Gleason) cuss words, and the voice replacement sounded like the same man who was also doing the voice of Fred Flintstone at the time. The voice was close, but it was still a bit jarring because of the Fred Flintstone connection.
99BottlesOfBeerInMyF wrote and included with a post:
From what I've seen, it seems like everyone focuses on there being only one format and trying to make it work for all documents. Rather than trying to use a single format, why not offer documents in multiple formats?
As a minimum, I would support all government documents being available in four formats:
Although the above would take more storage space, it would ensure that government documents are easily accessible and available to everyone.
falconwolf wrote:
I'm not sure if it would be that difficult to read a document in the WordPerfect 5.1 format right now since the current version of WordPerfect and both OpenOffice.org and StarOffice will open the file.
Chris Burke wrote and included with a post:
There is also the chance that the sequel might be better than the previous movie. Compare Star Trek - The Motion Picture to Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan, for me the sequel was much better than its predecessor. It is much the same with the rest of even-numbered Star Trek movies.
I think that one reason sequels are sometimes not good is they rehash much of what they thought made the original work, rather than making the new story work on its own merits. For me, I will take a chance of a sequel and hope that it is at least good. If its bad, I can hope that its so bad its good.
Foobar of Borg wrote and included with a post:
Sounds like part of the plot of Martian Successor Nadesico (where Earth is at war with an enemy called "the Jovian Lizards").
Enderandrew wrote:
With TRON, I think it is more likely to be a reboot instead of a sequel since there have been two sequels already. The first, called TRON 2.0 was a video game that was a direct sequel to the movie. Recently, there was a comic book series called TRON that was a sequel to both the movie and the video game and continued the story.
With Astro Boy, the 1980s series was more of a retelling of the story from the 1960s series (which was based on the original manga), rather than a sequel or a reboot and allowed for better animation than the original series. The 2000s series, on the other hand, was a reboot of the story with vastly improved animation and with large changes from the original animated series (such as Dr. Tenma now being an actual villain unlike in the previous series). With the move to the large screen I think the movie version of Astro Boy will be another reboot (to make allowances for the limited screen time).
Hadlock wrote:
Since we are so close to the original transition date, I doubt that any analog TVs are still available for sale. At this point there would be little reason to still sell them.
shmlco wrote:
In addition to the above, I think other factors in the demise of the 8-track format were: (1) the lack of a fast-forward and rewind function, (2) their size (you could fit four cassettes [in their cases] in the space of one 8-track tape), (3) their sound quality, especially after better tape formulations were introduced, (4) albums had to be re-orded to accomodate the 8-track format with songs being split over two tracks and (5) the ability to easily record cassettes at home.
Steve001 wrote and included with a post:
Correction: That should have been Alton Brown.
GiMP wrote:
Also, per Aaron Brown of "Good Eats" when you are going to make a sandwich, only choose a bread that tastes good enough to eat by itself.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Kayden wrote:
This points out one of the things that I enjoy most about anime. Characters often do not fall into the neat good-guy/bad-guy template, but often fall in between the two, or even flip to the other side. This even applies to the stories themselves, where the tone of the story can completely change.
In "Cowboy Bebop" we see this in many of the characters and in the story itself. In fact, the first episode of the series gives you little idea of what the series is actually going to be like.
In one series (I won't reveal the name to avoid spoiling anything), at a certain point in the series a completely shocking and unexpected event happens that completely upends your perceptions of everything in the series from the first episode. The revelation of Darth Vader's true identity in Episode Five of "Star Wars" was a minor surprise by comparison.
Although in many anime series the characters tend to remain a bit static, there are many where the characters develop over the course of the series. Among these are: Robotech, Figure 17, Key The Metal Idol, and Video Girl Ai. Even in the Dragonball Epic (Dragonball, Dragonball Z, and Dragonball GT), most of the characters (most notably Gohan) do evolve over the course of the series.
In U.S. animation for the most part the characters tend to remain static over the course of a series, although this has changed in recent years (Gargoyles, and the entire Animated DCU [see below] come to mind). Still, characters like Scooby Doo and The Flintstones remain pretty much as they were (with minor variations) when they debuted.
Animated DCU consists of:
Ragzouken wrote:
Cowboy Bebop is a 26-episode anime series that was release in Japan in 1998. Later it had a very successful run on Cartoon Network and it still is regularly rerun as part of Adult Swim (it is currently run once a week on Sunday Morning at 4am PST).
Brief Overview: "Cowboy Bebop" is a sci-fi anime series that is set in the late 21st Century and focuses on a group of bounty hunters. The name of the series comes from bounty hunters (called cowboys) and the name of their ship (called the "Bebop"). Although it is set in the future, much of man's current conditions still exist at that time, only the tech has advanced a bit. According to Wikipedia, it is considered one of the best anime series of all time.
If you decide to watch the series, it is important to watch it in order and from the beginning, since each episode builds on the previous ones. Last weekend Adult Swim ran episode #10.
The following is a link to the Wikipedia page on Cowboy Bebop (Note - This page contains many series spoilers): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy_Bebop.