sketchley

Looks to me like Super Parts/FAST packs for the YF-29. So... I don't think they're thermonuclear turbine engines per se, but a more "traditional" rocket booster to compensate for the extra mass of the Super Parts themselves. It's unclear if they have built in armaments, but it's nice to see more atmospheric-use Super Parts.

(Agreed)

Not the Pinyin transliteration of 李. Anyhow, with a bit more research, Lee would be someone from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore or as a Hebrew name. Ergo, not automatically Chinese.

Technically that'd make Ozuma's family either Korean, or Hebrew. If it was Chinese, it would've been Li.

The VF-1 isn't up on FRAME OUT's website yet. I expect it to be up there in about 2 to 2.5 weeks. However, there are some alternative views, and works in progress for the 3 existing kits: http://frameout.blog67.fc2.com/blog-entry-308.html http://frameout.blog67.fc2.com/blog-entry-311.html http://frameout.blog67.fc2.com/blog-entry-320.html And this is their MtR main page: http://frameout.blog67.fc2.com/blog-category-46.html

Sweet. I think this might just be one design that Yamato picks up.

This is pretty much guaranteed, as both the VF-1 and VF-19 books have spent multiple pages on their immediate predecessors and development (so, expect something on the YF-25, too). It would be nice, but I'm considering it a joke publication. I think something on the VF-17/171 or VF-11 is more likely. No. Canonically, the Macross F fleet is the only one that fields the Messiah (SMS is testing it in combat for eventual adoption by MF's NUNS). That said, I've translated/read somewhere that if an Emigrant Fleet or Planet comes up with a working design, they have to transmit the plans to the rest (Monkey Model or otherwise). Macross Galaxy has gotten around this by not officially announcing the existence of the VF-27, claiming it's an in-development YF-27; and as the plans for YF craft don't need to be transmitted, you can start to appreciate why the VF-25 was at a major disadvantage when facing the VF-27.

LOL. OK, how many of us members guessed correctly that this would be the next in the series?

Ah, OK. It sucks about the contracts. I'm glad they did away with them in Japan (in the sense that you have the option to purchase the handset outright, and aren't locked into a 1 or 2 year contract to offset the cost of the handset as the provider gave it to you at no charge). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operators_of_the_Asia_Pacific_region http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operators_of_Europe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operators_of_the_Americas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operators_of_the_Middle_East_and_Africa I think no one is denying that the more urbanized areas of any country have greater breadth of coverage. I guess you could say that my main beef with the North American market is that I come from a more mountainous region and service is lousy to bad in the semi-urbanized areas. Agreed. I don't think anyone herein has asserted otherwise. Understandable, but it's disappointing that no one has asked "do you have any experiences in any countries other than Japan and those in North America?" To which the answer is "yes." Ghost Train did. <Nods in agreement> I think if things hadn't gone off on argumentative tangents with Ghost Train, things would've been much clearly then their muddy state. <Nods in agreement> I think that's where the two markets currently differ the most. "Smart Phones" are still relatively new to the Japanese market, and it's unclear how much market penetration they will have after a few years. "Dumb Phones", on the other hand, are still the dominant handset in the market, and are not likely to be knocked from that position - the articles I provided the links to earlier give some insight into why. Over the past week, I've been asking my adult students, and though only a few are interested in "Smart Phones", they aren't rushing to get them. The others are more than satisfied with their "Dumb Phones", as those handsets more than meet their needs (that's including surfing the internet and participating in message boards such as Mixi), and they don't consider their phones to be "old" or "broken" (said phones are 1 to 2 years old.)

You do realize that proof by assertion is a logical fallacy, right? EDIT: last post in this tangent. Nothing more to say at this time.

So you're congratulating me for the ownage because I was the one that introduced the other party to the article? Let's not forget that the dude being quoted is obviously biased against non-smart phones. On top of that, he's completely ignorant about Japanese phones being usable outside of Japan. I know this because the phone I had from Japan worked overseas in 2004.12. That's a good 5+ years before that dude's article. On top of that, even without a signal, the phone's inherent functions still work; eg camera, address book. Hunk of metal? Maybe only for a biased user who use a different handset as their primary phone. Lastly, the dude's a douche-bag because he's forgotten that the TV works by radio signal. So, too does the talking and internet data connection parts. So, of course when ANY phone is underground in the subway, NOTHING's going to work. Dumb Phone, Smart Phone, TV, whatever.

Completed the Cheyenne II.

? All the phones I've been using in Japan since 2003 have had either a dedicated contacts/address book button or pressing one of the directions on the big round button accesses the address book. That's 1 button push. Now, I can appreciate the difficulty of navigating the address book if you've switched your Japanese mobile phone to English, as there were many pre-2008 models that didn't organize the address book list when the phone was set to English, but requiring more than one button push? Isn't that classified as a user-misunderstanding?

Plenty was never in disagreement. The question is: does the North American market offer as much variety in any given year? "Almost all Japanese manufacturers make two generations of phones in ONE year ". This is pretty consistent across the majority of East Asian markets. Can the same be said of the North America market? If yes, then the potential hardware options are similar, and the only limiting factor would be how many different mobile phones any one provider offers. Infrastructure and number of providers. Why Japan? The most high-tech in the Asian market would be South Korea (the mobile-phone-as-electronic-wallet was introduced in 2000, 5 or more years earlier than Japan). I can't say with authority about the other non-North American markets, but Germany is usually a fairly safe bet. I'm puzzled why some of the respondents are assuming that North America = the USA (when it doesn't. Last I checked, Canada and Mexico haven't given up their sovereignty) and that the unspoken comparative in my initial post means Japan (it has always meant the rest of the World, sans North America). I'm also puzzled by those who are continuing to try and polarize this discussion into USA vs Japan, or the illogical comparisons of "Smart Phone" vs "mobile phone" technologies. In fact, I could care less about which market is "superior". I'm happy with what I have, others are happy with what they have. Moving along.

No, I said:

It's a bit more complicated than that, though I agree that there is an odd perception in the USA about technology in Japan (in short, though new technology is adopted more quickly in Japan and it's presence is more perceptible in everyday life, the exact same stuff has been exported for sale overseas. So it's more a mythical technological gap than an actual one; pervasiveness aside.)

I recommend reading David Williams' "japan: beyond the end of history". It'll help one to appreciate some of the fundamental similarities and differences between the major world economies, and why such measures as the Plaza Accord and SII were doomed to failure even before negotiations started. (It's also one of the main reference points in my preceding posts about the effects of Political Economy on the market situation). Technically we weren't disagreeing about the topic of "Smart Phone" technology being equitably distributed in the major world markets and that the total service package (mobile device, provider service and service rates) are more customer oriented in Japan...

Great Mechanics.DX 04 says that it's a Suzuki B-king: http://www.google.co.jp/search?hl=ja&q=suzuki+b+king&um=1&biw=1236&bih=734&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=iw I'm guessing it's one of the earliest examples of the B-king, as the article says the bike was released in 2007.07, and the magazine was printed 2008.04.15. Given a 3-month lead-time-to-printer... (funny, I didn't notice that the section updating progress on this project in GM.DX had disappeared in the past year or so...)

Just revisited Tenjin's website, and the page dedicated to this book's announcement has a quicktime video. Not sure if it was there before or not, but in Firefox it only plays once, and I can't seem to get it to play again, despite reloads. It appears just above the cover image. Anyhow, the video shows the content of the book. The vast majority of images (in the portion that I caught) are art from the model kits (yamato, bandai, wave), along with game art (the PSP games), and a couple of images from Macross Chronicle. I'm actually not surprised that Macross Chronicle isn't making that much of a presence in this publication (again, based on the portion of the video I saw), because the artwork has already been published in a book-like format; coupled with the general lack of backgrounds to the images.

EDITED: see last post in this tangent

Finished the first page of the first issue. It's not 100% clearly said (ie using a plural form), but it is very strongly implied that Vanquish Races exist in pretty much every Emigrant Fleet, and similar variants on Emigrant Planets.

EDITED: see last post in this tangent

Agreed. Especially to calm the nerves, eh?

Ah, but that doesn't mean that Puffy weren't using it correctly. Nor does my statement mean that nice buddy isn't also a valid use of the term. Context trumps all in the end. Hmmm... me thinks I should've written short /o/ above, too. Short /o/ and short /u/ tend to be rendered as ア.

http://linear.mv.com/cgi-bin/j-e/sjis/dosearch?sDict=on&H=PS&L=J&T=%83i%83C%83X%83o%83f%83B+&WC=none It's consistent with the tendency of Japanese to render the short /u/ as a short /a/. Eg: bus := バス.