You're right it is Cameron... I don't know why I said Bay... I got my names mixed...
And you're right that 2 episodes is all they were planning for the OVA that was released. But there also an animated series and additional OVAs that were under talks and got canned when the rights were purchased. They also barred them from producing/selling further copies of the 2 episode OVA that did actually get made.
Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think the problem most people have with this is the transition from 2D to 3D, the series and the second movie were already done mostly in 3D as it is..
The concern I have, and I think most other fans of the franchise as well. Is that they'll offload the writing task to some cheap American action-film writer as opposed to the original writers in Japan who made the series the deep and mind boggling sci-fi drama that it is.
Not only that but once Hollywood gets their hands on a franchise they almost never sell the rights back to anyone. To me this means that now that they've got GiTS we'll probably never see another film or tv season out of Japan, and if the new owners never get around to making the film... it's already dead.
Case and Point... Battle Angel Alita was a well popular Manga series in Japan, they started making an animated series and it was so popular it grabbed the attention of Michael Bay who wanted to make a Live action movie. This effectively canceled the production of any future episodes of the animated series since they no longer have licensing to do so. It's now 15 years later Bay still owns the rights and fans are still left out in the cold.
solar cars don't work all the time, because the sun isn't out all the time. cars that run on some form of fuel source have no problem running no matter what the lighting conditions are.... IMO that's a good enough reason to not allow solar cars into the mix... they also don't help with the experimentation as to how to utilize energy more efficiently.
you kid but it's right on the money for me... I can't stand GIMP's interface (the old one at least) and it's the only reason I use paint.net instead of GIMP for quick and dirty photo manipulation. Of course I still prefer genuine Photoshop to both of them...
maybe the new interface will bring me back to GIMP... I'll have to download an find out.
"I cut my hand bad while wood working...", "I broke my leg while roller blading...", "I got smashed at a bar picked a fight and was bludgeoned to sh*t...", "I fell through some ice while snowmobiling and got hypothermia..."
How are any of those being taken care of by the ER and "billed to society" any different than "I used too many drugs and became ill..." aside from the fact that you believe it to be a poor personal choice?
Actually, on my setup I have a 720p LCD HDTV with a native resolution of 1366x768, and an OPPO upconverting DVD player. I find that the image actually looks better with the player upconverting to 1080i, then having the TV scale the image down to 1366x768. I believe that may be because at 720p, the image must still be stretched to fit the native resolution of the screen. The image winds up looking better being squeezed down from 1080i to fit 1366x768. Just my two cents.
Actually your scenario is not uncommon. The problem is that a lot of "720p" HDTVs aren't really 720p as that would imply that they have a native resolution 1280x720... instead they use some weird bastardized resolution CLOSE to 720p but not quite. The problem ends up that unless your using VGA or some flavor of DVI (that includes HDMI) you can't send 1366x768 over a video cable since it's not a standard signal in A/V world.
This means that you have two options 1. Knowingly scale your image twice, once with the source device to get CLOSE to your native resolution, and then again when your TV converts actual 720p or 1080i/p to 1366x768... or 2. don't do any conversion in the player and let your TV do all of the scaling.
IMO this is a bad situation to be in since you're always at the mercy of your TV's scaler, and the reason I personally avoid, and encourage others to avoid purchasing an HDTV with a non-standard native-resolution.
The best thing to do here is to simply try all of the output resolutions at your disposal and see which one looks best to you. Theoretically setting your DVD player to output 480i or 480p over HDMI would produce the best quality image, but it really comes down to how well your TV's scaler handles it since there is no good way to bypass it.
You are right "compressed" is not the proper word but essentially the video signal is modified for transit and that can often result in varying degrees of data loss depending on what you're using for a video connection.
"Compressed" was the best word I could think of to explain the concept simply to someone who isn't a home theater fanatic. Perhaps it was a poor choice considering the meaning to those computer fanatics here on/.
Does the upconverting really make any difference? I've never seen the output of an upconverting player, but I don't understand how upconverting in the player can look much better than upconverting in the TV.
Technically it doesn't matter where it gets up converted but the general thinking is that up conversion in the player is of a higher quality since it is performed before the signal is compressed to fit over the video cables.
Also players typically offer a higher quality of up conversion since they're designed to work specifically with the kind of content found on DVDs while TV upconverters are designed to be more generic (jack of all trades, master of none... or some such).
Really it comes down to which device has the better scaling equipment. No matter what you should set it up to only scale the image once. ie: having your player scale from 480i to 720p then your TV from 720p to 1080p is a no-no.
What you should be doing is setting your player to scale to the native resolution of your display, and see how that looks, then set your player to output at the native resolution of the original content, thus letting your display do all the scaling, and see how that looks.
The problem is most people have their player set to upscale something stupid like 1080i (because it's the "biggest") when their display has a native resolution like 1366x768 and the results generally look like garbage in comparison to what they COULD look like.
As for myself, personally I have a projector with a native resolution of 1280x768, and I have an Oppo upscaling DVD player set to scale the dvds to 720p (1280x720), my projector is set to just center the signal and leave some black bars on the top and bottom (often called "just scan" mode) thus completely bypassing the scaler in the projector. Both the player and projector have identical scaler chips (Faroudja DCDi) so the player is the better place to scale since it's done before converting the signal for travel over the cable. The scaling is only done once and the picture looks fantastic.
Even if we were to make the jump that the professor's idea's are copywriteable then I'd have to ask the question of what exactly you're paying for when you pay your tuition?
Theoretically aren't your paying for the transmittal and indefinite future use of the ideas discussed in the class? If not then what exactly are your tuition bills paying for?
Not to mention being able to do it for hundreds of thousands of people, some of whom might be spaced out all over the world, with no appreciable lag... Oh, and having many separate strong AIs all running on the same hardware...
You forgot to mention the part about powering this system by harvesting the energy from humans.
Honestly the RIAA should just stop all this and invest in the Tubes and maybe charge in this way. Artist would then distribute through some RIAA developer method which would not take a cut. Then the RIAA could then just charge for the bandwidth.
Thats a better idea than the mods are giving you credit for (currently 0). If they took a page from Google's book developed an online site where artists could upload their own music, which is then sold for $1 a song or $10 an album. People can sample it before they buy, Music wold get ranked by downloads and algorithms to determine what you might like based on what other people with similar tastes liked etc...
...
Oh wait...
That's iTunes...
Maybe the disappointment isn't so much about the political process having "degraded into mudslinging" but the fact that, after centuries, we've failed to progress beyond that.
The issue of Carbon is the cost, scalability, accuracy, and timeliness/speed of nanotube production. Not the resource itself.
What's that quote? "Necessity is the mother of Invention." or something along those lines.
Silicone was expensive to refine and manufacture at one point too. Like all new technologies the REAL cost is the in manufacturing and the cost goes down once we've manufactured enough of it to refine the process until we know the cheapest and quickest ways to do it.
For the nay-sayers who think PC gaming is dead...
Maybe I'm missing the picture here but given the inner workings of both the XBox and the PS3, their PC-like peripherals (sans mouse), their network-ability and the mod-ability of both into Linux systems, I would argue that console gaming is dead. The only problem with that argument is that the Wii (as the only real console left) is doing pretty damned well.
That all depends on how you define "console" and "PC". the most liberal sense of terms even the old NES was a personal computer...
Personally I define a console as a complete kit purpose built by the manufacturer for gaming in a TV room atmosphere, from the input device to the operating system. Another aspect that separates a "console" from a "PC" is that the hardware is strictly standardized with little to no room for customization or upgradability.
Maybe your definition differs from mine. But if you want to go by the layout of the hardware or the types of processors used then "consoles" technically died decades ago...
Wow... Funny enough I've lived in 3 states and all three required an annual safety inspection. It wasn't until a couple of years ago that I realized there were states that DONT require them, and this is only because I was buying a car from a college student from out of state and he looked at me puzzled when I asked when it had it's last safety inspection.
Since you don't know... basically the safety inspection checks your tires, lights, brakes, exhaust, suspension, as well as the frame and body (rusted through panels will fail). Newer cars even get their engine computer hooked up to a test machine to ensure it's not throwing any codes that would violate emissions standards.
In NH and Maine we get a sticker on the windshield mounted directly below the rear-view mirror on the inside with the color denoting the year it was issued and a number denoting the month, the back of the sticker has the license plate number of the car as well as the shop that performed the inspection to ensure people don't swap stickers and that they know which shop is responsible for passing a car that shouldn't have passed. Criteria and identification changes from state to state but they're all pretty similar from what I've seen.
I'm in the Lakes Region, the "lick and stick" places have pretty much dried up, or gone legit over the last 5 years because they've been cracking down. Basically if a cop pulls you over and your in clear violation, and it's apparent that were in violation when the sticker was issued they'll go after the inspection station.
Like most waves of change in the state it probably started a the southern border and is working its way up through the state. I noticed this trend of strictness in Manchester first, then Concord, then Tilton, before Laconia was even effected. They're even doing emissions testing on 1996 and newer vehicles now (albeit only a computer test).
The problem is that you're trying to pay for fixed expenses with dynamic income.
While it can be argued that the artists should be rewarded based on how well their music sells, do you really think that the costs incurred at the recording studio should be directly tied to how well the music sells?
Also retail overhead seems completely bogus as well. Think about it, in general retail overhead is mostly dealing with shelf space, which directly correlates to how much it costs to x amount of square feet of store. CDs are no larger than a $2 bag of candy... are going to tell me that it costs Walmart nearly $4 in overhead to sell that bag of candy? Plus nearly $1 for the manufacturer to ship it? plus nearly $3 in marketing that candy... etc.
And before you start talking about how they likely sell candy in much larger quantities than music consider that all CDs are essentially the same product, a circular piece of plastic inside of a square piece of plasitc with a couple sheets of printed paper, in terms of manufacturing, shipping, and overhead all CDs might as well be the same product.
If policemen had some trivial method to check that someone's entire car could handle higher speeds safely, I'd be more inclined to push for higher speed limits.
Theoretically this check is already performed at the annual safety inspection that most states require before you're allowed to drive on the roads.
I know in my home state of NH they're particularly strict about it because poor tires in the winter months is bad news for all involved.
...(Besides with the supposed "global warming" coming along, New Hampshire may soon be like Maryland or Jersey - not too hot; not too col; just right.);-)
You'd think that but NH just had one of our coldest and snowiest winters in recorded history... I can't tell you how many times I heard the phrase "gee I wish we were seeing some of that global warming around here!"
Seriously though, I still have over 3ft of snow on my lawn, it's still below freezing, and the forecast is calling for more snow tonight.
I don't really think the time and effort put into a painting have any bearing on it's quality?
IMO the difference between conventional art and modern art is that with conventional art, the artist has a vision and creates something to convey that vision to others. With modern art they just do something that's quirky or entertaining, and leave it to critics to dream up the vision for them.
I'm not an artist, but my mother owns an art studio, and that's the impression I've got from dozens of artists I've met on both sides of the conventional/modern art divide.
Nobody is ever going to support a product from a direct competitor (or backed by a direct competitor).
I disagree, I think companies will support (or not support) whatever they feel will make them the most money, both long term and short term.
MS isn't NOT supporting Blu-Ray because Sony makes it, MS is NOT supporting Blu-Ray because they they see Blu-Ray support as damaging to their own Xbox Live Marketplace digital download sales. And on a long time-line they see the profits from supporting Blu-Ray as less than not supporting and pushing their download service instead.
There are of course exceptions where sometimes companies do something out of spite or honor, but MS has been, and continues to be, about the bottom dollar, and they typically look at that ultimate value from a long term perspective.
I wish states would step up and grow a pair more often. It's about time the states remembered their place in our system of checks and balances.
Whenever someone goes on about giving more power to the federal government I politely remind them that this is the UNITED STATES of America... not the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT of America.
I live in NH and a co-worker was complaining about NH was not adopting RealID and that they would have to suffer additional search and seizure at the Airports and borders because of it. After explaining what Real ID entails, they agreed with me that it's good to be a NH citizen, where on many an occasion we thumb our noses at invasive federal programs that do more harm than good.
There's a reason NH was chosen for the Free State Project, as much as I hate the winter months here, IMO, it's politically the best state to live in (tax wise it's the 2nd best state to live in too, and that's only because Alaskans get oil kickbacks).
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You're right it is Cameron... I don't know why I said Bay... I got my names mixed...
And you're right that 2 episodes is all they were planning for the OVA that was released. But there also an animated series and additional OVAs that were under talks and got canned when the rights were purchased. They also barred them from producing/selling further copies of the 2 episode OVA that did actually get made.
Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think the problem most people have with this is the transition from 2D to 3D, the series and the second movie were already done mostly in 3D as it is..
The concern I have, and I think most other fans of the franchise as well. Is that they'll offload the writing task to some cheap American action-film writer as opposed to the original writers in Japan who made the series the deep and mind boggling sci-fi drama that it is.
Not only that but once Hollywood gets their hands on a franchise they almost never sell the rights back to anyone. To me this means that now that they've got GiTS we'll probably never see another film or tv season out of Japan, and if the new owners never get around to making the film... it's already dead.
Case and Point... Battle Angel Alita was a well popular Manga series in Japan, they started making an animated series and it was so popular it grabbed the attention of Michael Bay who wanted to make a Live action movie. This effectively canceled the production of any future episodes of the animated series since they no longer have licensing to do so. It's now 15 years later Bay still owns the rights and fans are still left out in the cold.
I do have dual monitors... but that does nothing to solve the GIMPs interface problems...
solar cars don't work all the time, because the sun isn't out all the time. cars that run on some form of fuel source have no problem running no matter what the lighting conditions are.... IMO that's a good enough reason to not allow solar cars into the mix... they also don't help with the experimentation as to how to utilize energy more efficiently.
you kid but it's right on the money for me... I can't stand GIMP's interface (the old one at least) and it's the only reason I use paint.net instead of GIMP for quick and dirty photo manipulation. Of course I still prefer genuine Photoshop to both of them...
maybe the new interface will bring me back to GIMP... I'll have to download an find out.
"I cut my hand bad while wood working...", "I broke my leg while roller blading...", "I got smashed at a bar picked a fight and was bludgeoned to sh*t...", "I fell through some ice while snowmobiling and got hypothermia..."
How are any of those being taken care of by the ER and "billed to society" any different than "I used too many drugs and became ill..." aside from the fact that you believe it to be a poor personal choice?
I've never heard of such a plugin but I would definitly install it if I knew of one.
If I had mod points you'd be earning them...
This means that you have two options 1. Knowingly scale your image twice, once with the source device to get CLOSE to your native resolution, and then again when your TV converts actual 720p or 1080i/p to 1366x768... or 2. don't do any conversion in the player and let your TV do all of the scaling.
IMO this is a bad situation to be in since you're always at the mercy of your TV's scaler, and the reason I personally avoid, and encourage others to avoid purchasing an HDTV with a non-standard native-resolution.
The best thing to do here is to simply try all of the output resolutions at your disposal and see which one looks best to you. Theoretically setting your DVD player to output 480i or 480p over HDMI would produce the best quality image, but it really comes down to how well your TV's scaler handles it since there is no good way to bypass it.
You are right "compressed" is not the proper word but essentially the video signal is modified for transit and that can often result in varying degrees of data loss depending on what you're using for a video connection.
/.
"Compressed" was the best word I could think of to explain the concept simply to someone who isn't a home theater fanatic. Perhaps it was a poor choice considering the meaning to those computer fanatics here on
Also players typically offer a higher quality of up conversion since they're designed to work specifically with the kind of content found on DVDs while TV upconverters are designed to be more generic (jack of all trades, master of none... or some such).
Really it comes down to which device has the better scaling equipment. No matter what you should set it up to only scale the image once. ie: having your player scale from 480i to 720p then your TV from 720p to 1080p is a no-no.
What you should be doing is setting your player to scale to the native resolution of your display, and see how that looks, then set your player to output at the native resolution of the original content, thus letting your display do all the scaling, and see how that looks.
The problem is most people have their player set to upscale something stupid like 1080i (because it's the "biggest") when their display has a native resolution like 1366x768 and the results generally look like garbage in comparison to what they COULD look like.
As for myself, personally I have a projector with a native resolution of 1280x768, and I have an Oppo upscaling DVD player set to scale the dvds to 720p (1280x720), my projector is set to just center the signal and leave some black bars on the top and bottom (often called "just scan" mode) thus completely bypassing the scaler in the projector. Both the player and projector have identical scaler chips (Faroudja DCDi) so the player is the better place to scale since it's done before converting the signal for travel over the cable. The scaling is only done once and the picture looks fantastic.
Even if we were to make the jump that the professor's idea's are copywriteable then I'd have to ask the question of what exactly you're paying for when you pay your tuition?
Theoretically aren't your paying for the transmittal and indefinite future use of the ideas discussed in the class? If not then what exactly are your tuition bills paying for?
That would be the greatest feat of all IMO.
...
Oh wait...
That's iTunes...
Maybe the disappointment isn't so much about the political process having "degraded into mudslinging" but the fact that, after centuries, we've failed to progress beyond that.
Silicone was expensive to refine and manufacture at one point too. Like all new technologies the REAL cost is the in manufacturing and the cost goes down once we've manufactured enough of it to refine the process until we know the cheapest and quickest ways to do it.
Personally I define a console as a complete kit purpose built by the manufacturer for gaming in a TV room atmosphere, from the input device to the operating system. Another aspect that separates a "console" from a "PC" is that the hardware is strictly standardized with little to no room for customization or upgradability.
Maybe your definition differs from mine. But if you want to go by the layout of the hardware or the types of processors used then "consoles" technically died decades ago...
Wow... Funny enough I've lived in 3 states and all three required an annual safety inspection. It wasn't until a couple of years ago that I realized there were states that DONT require them, and this is only because I was buying a car from a college student from out of state and he looked at me puzzled when I asked when it had it's last safety inspection.
Since you don't know... basically the safety inspection checks your tires, lights, brakes, exhaust, suspension, as well as the frame and body (rusted through panels will fail). Newer cars even get their engine computer hooked up to a test machine to ensure it's not throwing any codes that would violate emissions standards.
In NH and Maine we get a sticker on the windshield mounted directly below the rear-view mirror on the inside with the color denoting the year it was issued and a number denoting the month, the back of the sticker has the license plate number of the car as well as the shop that performed the inspection to ensure people don't swap stickers and that they know which shop is responsible for passing a car that shouldn't have passed. Criteria and identification changes from state to state but they're all pretty similar from what I've seen.
I'm in the Lakes Region, the "lick and stick" places have pretty much dried up, or gone legit over the last 5 years because they've been cracking down. Basically if a cop pulls you over and your in clear violation, and it's apparent that were in violation when the sticker was issued they'll go after the inspection station.
Like most waves of change in the state it probably started a the southern border and is working its way up through the state. I noticed this trend of strictness in Manchester first, then Concord, then Tilton, before Laconia was even effected. They're even doing emissions testing on 1996 and newer vehicles now (albeit only a computer test).
The problem is that you're trying to pay for fixed expenses with dynamic income.
While it can be argued that the artists should be rewarded based on how well their music sells, do you really think that the costs incurred at the recording studio should be directly tied to how well the music sells?
Also retail overhead seems completely bogus as well. Think about it, in general retail overhead is mostly dealing with shelf space, which directly correlates to how much it costs to x amount of square feet of store. CDs are no larger than a $2 bag of candy... are going to tell me that it costs Walmart nearly $4 in overhead to sell that bag of candy? Plus nearly $1 for the manufacturer to ship it? plus nearly $3 in marketing that candy... etc.
And before you start talking about how they likely sell candy in much larger quantities than music consider that all CDs are essentially the same product, a circular piece of plastic inside of a square piece of plasitc with a couple sheets of printed paper, in terms of manufacturing, shipping, and overhead all CDs might as well be the same product.
I know in my home state of NH they're particularly strict about it because poor tires in the winter months is bad news for all involved.
Seriously though, I still have over 3ft of snow on my lawn, it's still below freezing, and the forecast is calling for more snow tonight.
I don't really think the time and effort put into a painting have any bearing on it's quality?
IMO the difference between conventional art and modern art is that with conventional art, the artist has a vision and creates something to convey that vision to others. With modern art they just do something that's quirky or entertaining, and leave it to critics to dream up the vision for them.
I'm not an artist, but my mother owns an art studio, and that's the impression I've got from dozens of artists I've met on both sides of the conventional/modern art divide.
MS isn't NOT supporting Blu-Ray because Sony makes it, MS is NOT supporting Blu-Ray because they they see Blu-Ray support as damaging to their own Xbox Live Marketplace digital download sales. And on a long time-line they see the profits from supporting Blu-Ray as less than not supporting and pushing their download service instead.
There are of course exceptions where sometimes companies do something out of spite or honor, but MS has been, and continues to be, about the bottom dollar, and they typically look at that ultimate value from a long term perspective.
I live in NH and a co-worker was complaining about NH was not adopting RealID and that they would have to suffer additional search and seizure at the Airports and borders because of it. After explaining what Real ID entails, they agreed with me that it's good to be a NH citizen, where on many an occasion we thumb our noses at invasive federal programs that do more harm than good.
There's a reason NH was chosen for the Free State Project, as much as I hate the winter months here, IMO, it's politically the best state to live in (tax wise it's the 2nd best state to live in too, and that's only because Alaskans get oil kickbacks).