mikeszekely

I think most famous people should keep their opinions to themselves. Sure, they're entitled to their opinions, but too many celebrities use their fame as a platform the voice their opinions, when many times they are not necessarily qualified to speak on the topics.

Arguing that your movie was better than other movies doesn't make it so. The general consensus is that House of the Dead is crap... and crap it is. Telling us about how you had to fight your way from poverty into the industry also doesn't make you movies good. Next time you see a movie, Mr. Dr. Boll, and think that you can make a better one, don't, because you are the only one who actually thinks that your movies are better. And stay the hell away from my videogames.

I think that would be pretty bad for the fansubbing community considering how they may get nasty lawsuits instead of a warm welcome. A slap to the face instead of a hand shake. Actually, I heard most of the big companies leave the fansubbers alone, as long as they stop distributing once the series is officially licensed. In fact, I heard that a lot of the companies actually use the fansubbers to see which series are generating the most interest as a way of deciding what to license.

Of Macross Zero? I could be dead before that happens.

I hear that. I swear, too, that everyone who says they loved it are just ashamed to admit that they didn't understand it. Meanwhile, no one understood it... it never made any sense at all. Terpfen... what you're basically saying is that we get most games here, but we're don't get a lot of the niche genres. But that's exactly my point. Companies don't think it's worth it to have a real US release, and they're probably right. But, there are still plenty of gamers who would like to play those niche games, myself included. That's why I figure they should just leave the region lockout out and allow for imports.

I forget which magazine.... might have been Game Informer... but a couple of months ago, I read that Uwe Boll picked up the rights to this and a few other games. And even more rights to games are being picked up by even more directors. Making game-based movies seems to be trendy these says, especially as a lot of games today already have strong stories and characters to work with. Problem is, for every one director who will put some effort into their movies and make an, at least, decent game-based movie (ala Resident Evil), there are people like Uwe Boll who seem to think that they can make a movie however cheap and crappy, and that the gamers will pay to see it. And they think that will make them a lot of money, because the videogame industry is enormous now.

Screw that. I'm probably the biggest Megaman fan around, and I'm sure as hell not importing Command Mission at probably $10 more than I'd pay for it here with English subs two months from now, just because they put a freakin' COLOR manual in it. And just because it's $10 less here, I don't see many Japanese importing the American ones that come out later, because they get it first over there, in their native language, and shipping is going to eat plenty of that price difference anyway. Again, I point to the GBA... no territorial lockout, no massive swarms of importing either way. Terpfen, there are a TON of games that still don't make it to the American market. Oddly enough, though, many of them DO make it to the European market... Actually, leaving out the lockouts might cut down on piracy. You mod your system, you can play imports and bootlegs. You have a unmodded system without a lockout, you can play the imports, but they can probably still allow for the system to tell if the disc isn't legit.

Yeah, but the problem is still, how do I get the subs out of the avi files? Keith... I have no idea what version of the HK DVDs you got, but the ones I have, especially volume 2, are damn near unintelligable. I actually printed out episode summaries from mahq.net just so I'd have some idea of what was actually going on. Many props have to out to the fansubbers (at least the ones that are cool about only distributing stuff that hasn't been licensed here yet), for investing their time to create subs of the calibur that they do. Companies like Bandai and what not should just pay the fansubbers and use their work when the license series here.

The whole region lockout thing is especially stupid in terms of videogames. They're priced relatively the same here and in Japan... just slightly more over there. The average American gamer isn't usually going to spend a bit more to import a game that's going to be out in English a few months later. I think the proof in that is that GBA's have no regional lockout... and you don't here companies whining that they're not making money because people are importing the Japanese versions, do you? Mostly, the games that get imported are the games that never come out here, like Macross and what not.

But see, from a retail point a view, $19.99 is the regular price, not the sale price. Rain checks are usually only given if it's a sale. And, if either are like Ames, the associates in the store really don't have any idea when something will be in. They don't know what comes in until they open the box and put it on the shelf. At Ames, I used to just tell customers when the next truck was scheduled to come in, and told them to call them, warning them that the truck might not have the item they wanted. The probelm with stores like that is they have corporate warehouses, and the merchandise is sent to the stores at corporate discretion, with little or no input from the actual stores.

One of the biggest things you have to understand is that, for everyone one person who's actually remotely knowledgeable about the products that they intend to buy, there are 10-20 idiots (or at least, this is my experience from four years at Ames and two years at Gamestop). If the customer really is always right, then tons of stores would go out of business and the whole economy would collapse. With that in mind, if you really have a problem with a store, write to corporate or simply stop going there. Complaining to the manager on duty makes you look like one of the idiots, whether you actually are or not, and nine times out of ten management will, at best, say something nice to you, get you to out of the store, then talk about what an ass your were, and at worse, tell you to your face that you're an ass. And, in the case of the original post, they should have just canceled their sale and left. Sure, they might not really have been swearing, but by refusing to leave (when, at that point, they most likely weren't going to buy whatever they wanted anyway), and even going so far as to call 911 when the LP came to remove them... that IS causing a scene. And if they were in my store, I'd have had them thrown out too. Anyway... getting back on topic... I picked Wal-Mart, just because they don't have jack in their entire electronics department. As far as Best Buy goes, I've mostly had good experiences. I've even gone so far as to compliment some employees to their managers. Yeah, I've had people ask me to buy the waranties on a lot of stuff, but at my Best Buy anyway, I tell them no once, and that's the end of it. My only real gripe is that if I go in and I want to buy something, everyone is busy, but if I go in to browse, 12 people will ask me if I need help finding anything. Wait... there was this one time... I needed a fiber optic cable for my Xbox. I'd already grabbed the high defintion pack from another store, and I just wanted the fiber optic cable. The sales guy points me to the Xbox stuff, and tries to get me to buy the Monster Cable. I'm trying to tell the guy, I already have the HD pack, I just need the fiber optic cable. Then the guy's like "The Xbox isn't in digital, you don't need that." Finally, I told him he had no clue what he was talking about, and asked him to shut the hell up and just tell me where they kept the damn fiber optic cables. That was fun.

Mods, I'm sincerly sorry if this is OT or in the wrong forum. Right now, I have two ways to watch Macross Zero. I can watch the avi files on my computer, wonderfully subbed by ANBU & AonE. I liked to do that, because I can understand what's going on. Or, I can pop the DVD into my DVD player... no subs at all with R2, or in my case, crappy subs that make little or no sense. But, the Dolby Digital on the DVDs sounds incredible on my DVD player, which I also like. What I really want to know then... is it possible to rip the DVDs, splice in new subtitles, then reburn the DVDs? If so, what do I need, where can I find it, and how do I use it?

Macross 7, like it or not, fits. The Evils that became the Protodeviln were the next step in the same project that created the Zentraedi, and keeps very much with things that are mentioned in SDF Macross. The VF-11 returns from Macross Plus, and the VF-19 and VF-22 are simply the production models of the prototypes from Macross Plus. The Macross Fleets are the evolution of the Megaroad fleets, and one of the ships (the Maizuru, if I remember right) that's the next evolution of the ARMD series. The Varauta are actually members of Megaroad-13. Getting magic powers from music, while certainly bizzare, is a way of emphasizing that there was more to Minmei than simply culture shock, and not outside of Macross continuity. Macross II, like it or not, does not fit. You might have been able to make weak excuses for it before the official sequels, but now, forget it. For starters, after 80 years, they've only been able to get up to the VF-2? Come on, we already had the VF-4, now we're moving backward. Not to mention that, after the official sequels, the VF-2 is really backward, and decidedly low-tech. Then there's the Macross. What was the point of refitting it in 2012, if they were going to spend the next 78 years letting it fall into disrepair again? Even more odd when conisdering that the military was still using the Macross as of 2040 in Macross Plus... without randomly shooting energy bolts into the air. Also, how'd it get in the middle of "Culture Park?" Last I checked, even in SDF Macross, they'd built a city around the Macross... a damn big one by Macross Plus. Finally, who the hell are the Marduk? What do they have to do with Protoculture? If the answer is "nothing," then where'd they get Zentraedi at? I try to enjoy anything Macross. I liked 7 okay, and I take II for what it's worth... an alternate universe retelling of DYRL.

Memory stick is no worse than the other half-dozen flash RAM form factors out there. Actually, I'd have to disagree on that. Memory Sticks are expensive, akwardly shaped, fragile, and relatively large. When you consider that you can get the same storage capacities from a postage stamp sized SD card, and for less money, MS loses a lot of its appeal. It was also doomed to failure simply due to being a proprietary format. I haven't found them to be any more fragile than any of the other formats. And as far as size, the regular ones are only slightly longer than a CF card, while being half the width. The newer Memory Stick Pro is half the length of the regular, and they come with the bridge to fit into regular Memory Stick slots. Personally, I wouldn't want then any smaller than that, because I really don't feel like losing them. I don't find them akwardly shaped at all, and I don't get why anyone else would. You hold it closer to the end that doesn't go into the device, then slide it in until it clicks. Push the button, and it pops right back out. What's so akward about that? As far as price, yeah, CF is the cheapest it gets. However, Memory Stick isn't really that much more, if you buy the Lexmark or Sandisk brands. I'm pretty sure that SD is more expensive. Only Sony's first party Memory Sticks are really over-priced... but then again, most Sony products are over priced. They haven't figured out that people just aren't willing to pay extra for the Sony name anymore. And as far as being proprietary... well, it is mostly Sony productst that use them, but almost all computers have built in readers for multiple formats, including Memory Stick, and so do many photo printers. Now I have a 4.0MP camera that uses Memory Stick, one desktop and a laptop that have built in Memory Stick readers, and one computer that has a removable USB Memory Stick Reader. All four of those devices read and write to the Memory Stick plenty fast enough.

Hey! I use Memory Stick!

Say what you want about Sony and the PS2, but it's pretty much a fact that the PS2's ability to play DVD movies was a huge boost to the DVD industry. At a press conference held by the Blu-Ray Disc Founders, Sony announced what everyone already knew: that the PS3 would use the Blu-Ray format. Now, I really don't care whatever special medium Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, or whoever want to use for their next-gen consoles. But where I see a problem is that Sony wants to use Blu-Ray for future home movie releases under Sony Pictures. They're hoping that the PS3 will do for Blu-Ray what the PS2 did for DVDs. Consoles come and consoles go, but the DVD format is only a few years old. Who really feels like buying a new, expensive player? What's more, it has NOT been confirmed that Blu-Ray players will play DVDs. Now sure, VHS was around for a long time, tapes were wearing, and people were ready for DVD. But who really wants to go out and buy their entire DVD collection over AGAIN on Blu-Ray? Do we really need a new format for movies? I think the 9GB on a standard dual-layer DVD is plenty for your average Hollywood movie. Even if it's not, HD-DVD is on the way, and a dual-layer HD-DVD is supposed to hold 30GB... and HD-DVD players WILL play the older DVDs.

Suppose the last song is the duet during the ending credits, is the song you seek the concert beginning with empty seats in an abandoned concert hall? Tenshi no Enogu Sung by Mari Iijima, but I also have an mp3 with the title and some name called Sakurai Tomo, it's a slightly different version, but also sung by Mari if my ears are not decieving me. The Sakurai Tomo (she's the speaking voice of Mylene, one of the Milky Dolls, and Canary Minmay) version of Tenshi no Enogu, if I'm not mistaken, is from the Macross Generations radio drama. In the Macross Universe, it's sung by Canary Minmay, a singer on the Macross 9 fleet who makes a living covering Minmay songs.

So... little boys try to get in girls' pants while plotting evil things?

Ugh. Quicktime... In any case, it goes back to what I said the first time. It's a Batman movie with a decent bat-suit, a potentially good plot with good atmosphere, and a Batmobile that looks like complete and utter ass.

This from the guy who just saw Anchorman? Me perosnally, I've always liked Trey and Matt's stuff, most especially South Park. They basically remind you not to take stuff too seriously.

Eric Bana is the new Bond. Apparently, Pierce Brosnan had it out with the producers, and he's officially out. Bana is tapped to be the new Bond, because apparently they wanted a younger, hipper Bond to compete against Spider-Man and Neo with the younger crowds. The negotiations haven't finished yet, but the producers are hopeful.

See? The action figure doesn't have man-boobs.

I saw it today, definately liked it. It definately wasn't scary at all. Signs was more tense. But it was still very enjoyable. Also, expecting a plot twist, Shyamalan still managed to pull one over on me. Oh, bonus points if you caught Shyamalan's cameo in the movie.

If you follow David's link, I'm really liking that blue and gray one on the bottom.

Aside from the man-boobs rolling over the gut. Maybe they should just get AgentOne to play Batman and be done with it.