Messages

Today I agree entirely with PyronIkari (damn you and your many names, mikey!). He is 100% correct. Do not disregard cautions from your health departments. This is a virulent and dangerous virus, with the potential to be very bad, if it gets into major population centers in the US.

The last major flu pandemic was only in 1968. That one, the Hong Kong Flu, killed about a million people worldwide. It's even the same type of flu as the Spanish Flu of 1918, also an H1N1 strain. That one killed 20-100 million people worldwide, including a third of Europe.

Just be smart about what you do and you should have little to worry about. Wash your hands more often, stay away from people who seem ill.

Oh god. he listed saaya irie. the girl whose main claim to fame is that she had HUGE BREASTS at age 12. At least he got Nakama Yukie in the list, at least she's an actress and not a gravure model making some cash on the side. Shibasaki Kou and Sawajiri Erika are real actresses too. The rest, not so much, if at all. Sure, they're pretty. But watching them act is like watching a bunch of 8 year olds try to play doctor. A bunch of naked and nothing really happens.

I'm going to have to disagree with you here.

Mutual Masturbation (e.g., you pleasuring yourself along with someone else doing the same to themselves), is nothing more than a time killer with a friend. Sure, it feels good, but in the end, it's not nearly as fulfilling or stimulating as a cooperative sex act. If the other person is doing the act on you, while you're doing it to them, then it IS a sex act, even if it's at the lower end of the scale. Sex certainly does not require penetration, as the real measure of it is being intimate with another person(s).

Narita's airport tax got repealed back in the 90s. Even then, it was only 3000円. Annoying, because you had to change money to yen before you got there so you didn't get raped at the ONE pre-immigration currency window.

The state constitution of CA requires equal protection under the law. That said, any right that has been granted to ONE group, cannot be restricted from another person, except by a 2/3 vote of the legislature.

So basically, that means if anyone can get married, you can't stop another group via a ballot referendum.

Sometimes though, people need a smack with the Board of Education (2x6). That comes later, in case someone decides to tell me that what I've said is somehow wrong. (and if they do, i will at least investigate their allegation before flying off the handle).

Point taken, Crack is a good friend of mine, so he won't care if I bust his balls a little. I think misinformed is a kind word to use. I don't mean it out of ill will, but when people spread misinformation as fact, it's bad for everyone.

[tranches]

Ok, ok. both you and crack are very very misinformed. Let me try to explain things here.

The basis of the current economic problems are quite simple. People got greedy, and stayed greedy. How we actually GOT there, is quite complex, and involves a ton of derivative financial instruments, each of which increased the risk of failure, without making it apparent to the end investor. Many of these instruments were based around Mortgage-backed Securities (MBS), which when the real estate market entered its cyclical downturn, and interest rates spiked along with a spike in foreclosures based on that, many of these MBS suddenly failed to generate income, catching a lot of pension and hedge funds out in the cold.

Here's how the greed works:
a: you want to buy a house, so you shop around and get the best mortgage you can find. People expected homes to appreciate in value over a short period (~5 years), and planning on that, got ARM loans and interest-only loans in order to buy the best house they could manage.

b: mortgage brokers sell the leads on the loan to partner banks, who make the mortgage, and pay the broker a fee for finding the borrower. The bank loads fees on top of the loan at the front-end, in order to make some quick money, then loans the money to the borrower.

c: the bank sells the loan to a larger bank or to FNMA / FHLMC, and gets it off their books, so they can make another loan and make more fees on top of that loan. The entire goal of their lending process was to make the upfront points/fees, not to hold the loan for interest income... so they didn't care if the borrower was able to pay.

d: FNMA/FHLMC/large banks pool and package these loans into a big pile of securitized debt, and sell tranches (slices) to investors, who expect income based on the investment, risk, and rating of the debt. This is fine, too. even if you have some foreclosures, it still works ok. The best rated tranches get paid first, and it trickles down the pyramid to the worst rated mortgages, but in general, everyone gets paid.

e: here comes the nail in the coffin. Brokerages, large banks, and some other orgs take these tranches that they've purchased, and sell securities BASED ON THEM. So now you have a double pyramid, and when people stop paying for their loans, suddenly these secondary pyramids of risk begin to default on payment to investors, getting them quickly down-rated by the ratings analysts.

f: AIG and other large insurance companies have been taking money to insure investors against this risk, but these secondary tranches aren't well understood and are rated far less risky than they should. This insurance is called a Credit Default Swap. These securities start failing, and AIG(for example) suddenly has to pay out huge insurance policies to investors... which depletes their capital and makes them insolvent... then the bailouts start.

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Now the 'gold standard'. The US's currency hasn't been backed by precious metals since 1933. This is the difference between 'hard' and 'fiat' currency. As long as the nation's credit and reputation remains pristine, this fiat currency is as good as hard currency. In order to maintain 'hard' currency, we needed a stable price on gold, so that fluctuations in the precious metals market didn't massively devalue or overvalue the dollar. This brings on the gold standard, in which we stockpiled massive amount of gold (Fort Knox), and used our reserves to stabilize the price of gold WORLDWIDE. In 1971, President Nixon took us out of that business, and let the world gold market drive itself, which it's done since then. This was when we left the 'gold standard', even though our currency hadn't been backed by gold for almost 40 years.


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Why do we give people a tax deduction on their home mortgage interest? That's simple. We do that to encourage people to buy and own a home, which builds wealth and increases fiscal security, so long as they do it in such a way as they can pay for their home and retain it.


Ok, this is enough finance / economics / history lesson for now. If you want to know more, ask. I'll detail it out for you.

The person running the panel needs to be VERY VERY VERY VERY informed and the information has to be legit and correct, otherwise it could cause more harm than help in the end.

Yes. Absolutely. The person running the panel will need to get the right people on the panel and get a moderator that can add insight and then let the experts show and tell. With the right panelists, a solid moderator and audience participation -- I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be a great panel.

Regarding a fan-sub forum, I'd like to take a stab at a list of the types of panelist that should attend:
*Distributors - like Viz (based in SF), Funimation, etc.
*fan sub networks - AnimeSuki, Subwire, Crunchyroll, (2/3 are local) etc.
*torrent clients - BitTorrent, Azureus (both local)
*well known fan-subbers? (perhaps ones that practice a tight ethical code)
*Notable industry journalists

A diverse panel would be nothing if not interesting -- and hopefully civil and professional. I also wouldn't want the panelists representing the industry to feel that it wasn't balanced -- the moderator would have to be extremely knowledgeable and professional.

Why not invite some cops too, so you get everyone that should probably never meet each other in person. Maybe invite the president of ODEX, too!

[SOME]

Now go quickly write up a budget on how much they will save by not using physical media, but how much it will cost for servers and bandwidth usage, and then do a comparison of how much people will have to buy/how many people would need to subscribe vs. how much they download, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

See, throwing out ideas sound good, but without the reasonable amount of background and thought put into it and how it'll work, it's virtually useless.

There's a "lame duck" period when a show is licensed before it comes out on DVD.  Right now, companies send cease-and-desist notes to the fansubbers, the material gets taken off the trackers, and the series basically goes black.  The "gray" people who are more likely to spend money on the series end up in a drought, and the series loses its fansub publicity with those people.  Instead, only the "black" people remember the series because they keep downloading it.

This is called production time. It takes time to re-encode, author, and develop a DVD, as well as translate, script and subtitle it. Then you have to design packaging, contract for distribution, advertise, market it, and get it to market. Oh, and you have to spend time and money dubbing it as well. Oh, and they have to wait for the masters from the Japanese licensor. That often does not happen until AFTER the domestic market's DVD run is at least partially complete.

Instead of issuing a cease-and-desist, why not capitalize on the lame duck period?  Ask the fansubbers to link to publicity for the series while it is being subbed and dubbed.  Put up early sneak-peek omake on iTunes or Amazon Unbox or some other hoster that will charge people some small amount of money for them.  Maybe ask fansubbers to splice commercials for these omake or merchandise or soundtracks into the middle of the fansubs (in between the two eye catches in the middle of the show) in return for allowing them to continue distributing during the lame duck time.  Instead of making a series go black, maybe try using the lame duck period to generate even more hype and maybe some amount of revenue.  Somehow, these fansubbers are giving away BitTorrent tracker and seeder bandwidth and hosting some amount of series information for free.  Why shouldn't there be a way for an American anime company to capitalize on those freely donated resources during the period when they're currently unable to make any money on a license they've purchased?

The simple answer? The US licensors don't have the rights to give away the property to sublicensors to sell bits of. They also don't have the right to give it to fansubbers to 'splice into' their pirate releases. By doing this, you would implicitly PROMOTE these activities. No lawyer would even let you CONSIDER this. It opens the licensing company to massive possible liability. However, let's look at things. Bandai did do this to some extent with Haruhi, with good results. We might be seeing a bit of a change.

Even if it isn't good now, it can at least be made better.  Right now, the fansubbers are raising awareness and holding a bit of a line against some people turning to outright pirates.  Many people rip and pirate American DVDs right now.  I think the average fansub downloader has more respect and goodwill towards the American anime companies than most rippers have for the American Big Media companies because the fansub groups teaching downloaders about licensing.  Even if some groups are only paying lip service, I think even lip service helps prevent some number of people from crossing the line into outright piracy.  If fansubbing were fully suppressed, I imagine a rather large percent would just turn full pirate and torrent rips after they're released instead of respecting cease-and-desist requests. 

In general, this is a fallacy. SOME fansubbing groups have ethics and do what they can to follow the 'rules'. MOST, however, do not, and could care less about licensing. They release it as fast as they can for ego, regardless of licensing. There are also sites DEVOTED to cataloguing entire series releases as torrents. Entire groups DEVOTED to ripping the US dvds for torrenting. The AVERAGE downloader just wants stuff cheap/free.

Sorry, this all ended up inside a quotebox somehow. Quotes internal to the box are from Nyxyin. everything else is my text.

How many people who tolerate it dubbed would prefer to watch it subbed?  Outside of the big Cartoon Network series, how many of the people who actually pay for smaller, less popular titles want it subbed vs dubbed?  I don't think anybody knows.  I'm saying there are ways for the American anime industry to cut costs for bringing titles over.

Here's a tidbit that you might not consider. Anime in the US is not marketed to adults, generally. It's marketed to teenagers. Teenagers can't always read quite as fast as subtitles require. Therefore they identify and choose dubbed anime as preferable. Hell, I know a number of adults that can't read fast enough to keep up with subtitles.

The simple fact is, WITH ANIME, DUBS SELL THE PRODUCT. Be it in Japan or the US. You can't sell the anime without a matching dub. Also, the Japanese licensors often REQUIRE that the product be dubbed. Partly because they fear reverse-importation, and secondarily because they know it SELLS BETTER.

snip 20/80 comparison

No, but if getting rid of the dub studios means that they'll end up making $8/dvd instead of $2/dvd, then that'd be something.  Also, how many of the dubbed watchers are completely unwilling to buy sub-only DVDs?  And, I don't think it's a good assumption that watchers translate to buyers.  How many additional customers will they gain if they can drop their prices by not dubbing the DVDs?  Maybe it'd be enough to make up for any lost dub buyers.

They'd have to increase sales by a factor of 10 to be able to drop prices significantly. Considering they'd lose at least 50% of their market by failing to do a dub for a show, it would massively INCREASE prices.

For $20, I can have the whole story of latest American blockbuster with deleted scenes, commentary, and extras, but I need to pay $25 for the first five episodes of a 13 episode anime series, and I'm not even sure they'll even tell me what the opening and ending and on-screen text say.

The reason anime is more expensive is because of the economy of the market. You can't make a product massively cheaper until you're printing/selling a whole hell of a lot more of it. That's what feature films do, they sell generally a factor of 10 or greater MORE units than anime does. Ergo, it can be priced down because of lower total cost of manufacturing and distribution. Anime is produced by relatively small companies as a 'niche' product. ADV does its own distributing and does save money this way. They also distribute for Funimation as well, since the companies are geographically nearby and it works well for them. Other anime companies tend to distribute through things like comic book distributors and the like. They do what they have to do to get their product out. Each distribution link in the system takes its own bite out of the price, and you pay for that.

Legally, stealing technically includes the intent to deprive the original owner of the original object.  Therefore, copyright infringement is technically not stealing, although big media and software companies have done a very good job of convincing everybody that it is.

Ah, the old and hoary internet fallacy! "IT'S NOT REALLY STEALING I DIDN'T TAKE NOTHING FROM THEM OK" Sorry. you have. You have appropriated something for yourself, and failed to pay the manufacturer for it. It can even easily be valued, and as such can be considered larceny. Stop trying to justify your own actions by rationalizing them into something that's not bad. Accept the fact that you steal. Try to make yourself better.

So, we're down to morality.  However, the morality question gets huge and very complicated because I question the morality of capitalism in general.  You see, a whole lot of people would love to sit around and draw anime and manga all day.  Some of them are actually very good at it.  But, they didn't get lucky in applying at the right time or to the right company, or they live in the wrong city and never got the opportunity to put their work in front of the right people, and they're stuck having to do something else to survive instead.

When you want to do a job, you do what it takes to get it. Whining about how "I DIDN'T LIVE IN THE RIGHT CITY!" or "I DIDN'T GET LUCKY!!" is bullshit. You make sacrifices to do what it takes to get where you have to be. This is why you find a hell of a lot of people in LA / Hollywood working low-end jobs to get by while they try to get their acting careers off the ground. If you have talent, you show it off. If other people (who matter, not just fans) think you do as well, then you'll be a success.

Ok. I'm done savaging the poster. Your turn Mikey.