JsARCLIGHT

Gaah! My Gazzoline! (Puts on football pads and runs after Bsu) Oh and I agree with you WDC, I'm just being an ass as always!

What about those of us who fight the evil empire by not buying any music that has been recorded after 1990? Seriously though, you have to admit that the media industries in the US have a severe stick stuck up their pooper... and this whole situation may bring it all to a head. (JsARCLIGHT closes fallout shelter door, puts a mag in the M16 and waits...)

Music is not a drug. Music is all about control: the control on when and what you listen to. They "give music away for free" all the time on the radio... but much like television it is programming, meaning you have to listen to what someone else wants you to listen to. Recorded music on the other hand is about your choice of what you listen to and when you do. In a sense you are paying for that privelage, the freedom to decide what you listen to and when you listen to it. The heart of the music/TV/movie industry is that they have your "Freedom" under their thumb. They "give away" the things they want you to see and charge you for the things you want to see. Pay for Play. All entertainment in today's world is based on money, someone has to make money off of it. Entertainment has lost it's soul, meaning the soul of free expression and artistic liberation. It's all about the benjamins... and the industry sees people taking their freedom back for free and they want to stifle it. The US Legal System will uphold any motions about copywrite and domain for one obvious reason: how can the government tax something that is free? That is the harsh truth of the modern world we live in. As Masamune Shirow once said: Man is a strange creature, wild at heart yet we build cages to trap ourselves in and then we pign for freedom.

I'm not a trans fan but I might buy Prime just to have it. He looks badass with change to spare.

I wholeheartedly agree. I put her quote in bold because I started laughing about that point. You have to admit though that the story about the grandkids getting grandpa in dutch is just stupid though...

I was just under the impression that all this litigation was an effort to "crush the theives" and "make examples" out the most flagrant offenders... but the first settlement might give everyone an out so to speak. I know if I where a music swapper it would give me the impression that the worst that can happen is they make me pay for the stuff I "stole". Big woop. I was expecting thousands in fines, fees and settlements... you know, some ammount that makes people say "shhheeeeeee-it! I ain't doin' THAT no more!". You know, something akin to a file swapper death penalty. Of course 2 grand to a college student might as well be 2 billion...

So basically she settled for $2,000... and according to the article they estimated that at $2 per song she traded. That leads me to believe that she DL'ed 1,000 songs, right? 1,000 songs divided by an average of 10 songs per normal CD equals the equivelant of 100 CDs. She paid $2,000 to settle which means she paid about $20 for each approximate "CD's" worth of songs... which by my math is about the going market rate for CD's at the mall with sales tax ($18 x 7% sales tax = $19.26 each). I'm getting the feeling that RIAA is out to get their money's worth and not "make examples" of people. The sour grapes of these lawsuits has become nothing more than a greedy grab for money in mind now.

Wasn't this a cosplay thread?

Sheesh. Quit worshiping blindly at the Macross trough. Macross Zero is weak so far. Yes it is incomplete but it has not grabbed me and it has not grabbed a lot of other people either. Don't try to defend poor scriptwriting by saying "it's only an OAV". Look at Macross Plus. By the time It's second episode was over we had a great story going with excellent character development, backgrounds, an emerging villain and at least you could say the people knew what the freaking story was about. With the third installment in Zero the darn thing is more than half over and that means we should have half of the story... and in my book we only have one tenth of it. Try as they might this is not Apocalypse Now or The Usual Suspects and their ham-fisted treatment of the story is not building suspense or adding drama. Yes, a lot of people have baseless complaints and want something that resembles the original. I just want the original. I could care less if they make any more Macross shows as the only ones I've liked so far have been SDF TV and DYRL. Most likely the only reasons I like those are because the patina of youth still clouds their weaker aspects in my mind. I have grown up and my tastes have grown as well. I'm now a professional in a production office and I have come to expect only the best from the best... and in my opinion Macross Zero is weak. If you ask me people need to stop taking it personally when someone disagrees with them on this board. Some people are going to have opposing viewpoints from time to time and if you don't like them, don't read them. FOR THE RECORD: I myself never give blind praise. I never thought this series would be better than DYRL or the original TV show because it is impossible to recapture the wonder and awe of seeing something for the first time. Face it, Macross has run it's course and Macross Zero is just more of the same. Satisfaction is not unreachable. I just want my toys and an R1 release of DYRL and I will shut up and move on to something different.

I should have phrased my angry response better... Babylon 5 did not "play the game" like Star Trek is doing right now. They never did and aparently have not been given another chance. They are popular on DVD because that is about all their fans can get right now. When it comes to things made for and broadcast on network and cable TV in this day and age they have to fit a certain market to even get a green light for a pilot. Notice how much trek has changed over the years. The last preview I saw for Enterprise was more about the vulcan chick getting naked than about the story. Trek has fallen victim to sensationalism because they know they have to do that to gather the viewers as their sad stories are all refurbished hand me downs from the other incarnations of itself. A sad token fanbase of viewers is not going to keep a show on the air, shows need to put up "the numbers", the "demos" and prove to their backers that they are money in the bank. That is what makes television nowadays. In your own direction of reasoning: Trek needs to take a page from the Babylon 5 playbook. Write their show from day one with the end in sight (or at least make it seem that way) and then rest on their laurels by releasing several direct to video movies. My point however remains the same, Sci-fi on broadcast TV or cable is a very weak market in the US and there is no room for "special" shows or "unique" shows any more. Heads of broadcasting companies are not willing to risk the bucks on a "substance" show any more, it all has to be tits and guns, death and cussing, fast cars and faster women. Trek needs to die for right now and figure out what to do in a few years when the market changes again. And if the market continues the way it is going when Trek comes back it will be a porno on a network channel.

Thanks for pointing that out. You just saved me the trouble and expense of buying and watching the rest of the set.

I found this quite enlightening (it was on my hourly news feed): Take special note of the things in bold that caught my eye on this...

We all are, the only problem is we are dealing with an internet message board and not the burning of the Reichstag here. I think it is imperetive that we all do our part to catch the crooks in the act rather than remove features of the board. ... and if catching crooks in the act doesn't work then hell, remove the edit button.

I like the way you think! I'm gonna go do that this weekend and use that excuse... then at my trial I'll claim that I played this video game called Grand Theft Auto and it made me go out and steal cars. Excuses are like azzholes, everyone has one. Getting that excuse to get your bacon out of a lawsuit is what counts. Let's hope all those poor guys have good ones. On another note (this is something that has been interesting me this whole time): What are the age groups most responsable for online/internet property "theft" (games, songs, etc.)? I and some guys at the office had a little talk about this subject months ago and one topic that kept coming up was that almost everything online requires a credit card... and kids don't have credit cards. The inability to legitimately purchase things online might spur a lot of people into "theft"... has anyone ever thought of that?

You know me, I'll follow you to the gates of hell... (before saying "screw this" and running away )... but you have to remember that I'm pretty sure we heard from either Shawn or Graham last time telling us in no uncertain words that the edit button stays. On a related note, if everyone remembers right Agent noticed that edited posts did not show themselves as being edited when the new MW went into effect and Shawn quickly changed it so they did. Perhaps this argument may find purchase this time around.

If you look reeeeeeeally close at Hikaru's Strike VF-1S after he blows up Badolza you'll see that he only has a few UMM missles left... and they make tic-tac-toe patterns!

I ooriginoly feelt the eadit bootun's elemination wuld make us spel baad. Now I aagree with Agant One. This argument is of course going to fall on deaf ears as it has been broached before my good friends. Let us simply walk tall in our honesty and straightforwardness and try to catch the evildoers with quotes.

Yes you are right. The RMS-1 "Angel of Death" Reaction Weapons are the only wing pylon mounted weapons in both shows. The AMM triple missle racks are in the TV show only and the UMM multiwarhead pods are in DYRL only. Now we need to find out why toy companies like Yamato keep giving their valks mixtures of the two missle types in their photos... logically DYRL units should only come with DYRL weaponry and vice versa for the TV units. Then again units like Toy Focker's VF-1S are almost unchanged between the TV and DYRL so I guess that logic goes out the window...

OK, That answers my question. Zoids never struck me as a big-time popular anime that, outside of a trade show for the toys, would warrant an expensive mock-up like that.

Whenever a new lock is made, someone makes a skeleton key for it within the week. Proprietary copy-protection never seems to work in the long term. The best ideas I've heard have been the "On Demand" services solution and the self-destructing CDs... two ways that allow the consumer to get something very cheap and easily but then limit their options on how they use it from there. I know here in the midwest the Video On Demand thing on Digital Cable and Satelite is starting to give the rental places a run for their money.

Then perhaps the flawed nature of big music biz has met it's match: the cheapskate with better tech. The more and more "connected" and open the world becomes, the lines between what people can and cannot "have for free" are starting to be erased. Sure it is illegal and "unethical"... but when the music biz took off back in the 40's and 50's they where selling their records resting confident in the knoweldge that people had to pay for their product as there was no way for them to "Steal" it yet... but now in 2003 there are more ways to "Steal" the music than there are ways to buy the music legitimately. That should tell everyone something, especially the music biz.

If the music is being DL'ed for free, as in ripped off, then yes you are 100% correct... but if the studios get on the digital tomorrow bandwagon and charge for those DL's then I would think that they would still be making enough money to "hunt new tallent". No argument here, that is a strong point. Why buy the cow when you get the milk for free? They do that now. Most "success stories" are manufactured by the music industry lately. They want a hot new band? Bing! They assemble one from the leftover parts of another passe band. At it's base that is semi-flawed logic. If anything the music biz would want to hunt down as much "low overhead" tallent that they could muster so they could lower their overall CD price in an attempt to make themselves compeditive again. Honestly, "musician" should not be one of the world's highest paid professions... only in the last 50 years have musicians and the "music industry" become the bloated, overpaid and top heavy beast they are. I'm not trying to start a fight, defend "theives" or jump your shist here... I'm just saying that the Music biz needs to go back into the war room and come out fighting with what they do best: music. Litigation is almost a pathetic crybaby solution to a problem that will persist no matter how this turns out. They need to fix the world their problem is in, not attack the problem.

I will admit that the drawn out release schedule is definately hurting the show in my eyes... but then again so is it's hurky-jerky nebulous plot, it just feels like it was written by someone with ADD. Their plot choices are far too ambitious for a simple 5 episode OAV and you can already see signs of "rush rush" character introduction and development. I will most likely reserve my final verdict until I see the whole thing but to be honest I'm not really "into" what I'm seeing... it has just failed to "grab" me like the original did in the first episode, or like the first episodes of Cowboy Bebop, FLCL, Inu Yasha or others. Macross Zero is just lacking that "something"... we'll see if it gains it in the next three parts...

Is anyone else totally losing interest in Macross Zero? I find that after watching episode one I was left saying "It will get better with the next episode". Now after seeing episode two I'm left saying the same thing, "Maybee it will get better in episode three"... The only thing keeping me watching M0 are to see the new designs that may become toys. All in all I find it to be a very poorly executed show. I would really like Kawamori to prove me wrong with future episodes because IMHO Macross has not had a "great" show since DYRL, everything since has been lukewarm at best.

Everybody "got it" that Starship Poopers was a farce... that's about the only kind of movie Verhoeven can make. The major issue with Poopers is that Verhoeven directed it... if it had been a better director with an actual sense of tact, timing and talent it would have been a much better movie rather than the over the top comic travesty it was. The movie blows. BACK ON TOPIC: Can someone tell me why they made a 1/1 scale Zoid? What was it for?