Temporal Paralysis

Apart from the Geneon disaster (actually, they no longer go into this DVD distribution anymore, now any Tom, Dick and Harry can make a crappy Geneon-owned releases to their whims), FUNimation has declared a C&D on one of the animé series, Romeo×Juliet. To me, this is a much better response to a halt in fansubs rather than Odex’s threatening criminal ligitations. (Which reinforces me that a typical Singaporean is an slit-eyed, money-grabbing opportunistic person. For a better description, see this video.)

In my opinion, the whole argument where “wholesale watching of said series is left to only journalists and authorized film critics” is bulls***. I don’t practically agree that people will have to fork out, and in the process, get screwed, money for something that’s ongoing, and the direction of the storyline is not static. Case in point, series that “jumped the shark.”

We, as an informed consumer, would not be willing to be part of a “scam” where art direction, as it is, goes down like Titanic. To pay for something that is not really worth my bucks: hmmph.

My main gripe is with the distributors, not the original content creators. So the onus is on the latter to make sure they make good shows, not lousy shows. If they still want to use the distributors, that is.

Oh well, that ends my rant.

First, it was the legal threats. Then it was the summoning of both BayTSP former hacker and three-Japanese-distributors-plus-one-copyright-holders, now they make use of a certain fansub’s works?

Seriously, I’m very, very lethargic with all the damn talk about how Japan is proposing to tighten their copyright laws, the whole IP concept and various instances of idiocy related to this saga.

At least TPB is doing a good job suing MediaDefender and other affiliated organisations. Unfortunately, the Internet’s reach is only as far as the computer.

So what’s left?

I think the whole saga is one big mess. The whole copyright scene is, to put it crudely, f*cked up. So many grey areas, so many things, it kinds of reminds me of how cattle traders “set prices on future calves very highly because of the genetic mix, regardless of whether the calves actually made it to adulthood.” Or, in other words, playing the stock market.

Oh, I’m going to sleep already.

Taken from an Ars Technica article, this time, however, it’s about the revolution brought about by the Internet.

I am all supportive of the elimination for the middleman. I believed that between content creators and the consumers, it is best when both parties are brought together on a more intimate level. As highlighted on the article, musicians no longer need to be “full-time artists” in order to make a living. With the advent of the Internet, it’s possible to actually gain that fandom “sweet spot” that musicians crave, without having to contractually “sell” themselves to labels.

I like this turn of events. This might scream “socialism!” to the capitalists, but given that the Internet has given a great leverage on content creators (in this case, muscicians) to create their works at a reasonable cost, it also gave them the impetus to create better and innovative works, and everybody loves an artist that works “with blood, sweat and tears.”

I’m sorry, Chris. Conflicts of interests. That’s all I have to say. [Source: The Straits Times]

Sometimes, what they teach me in polytechnic, sometimes needs to be put to the test.

After visiting Zer0′s post, I had the similar impression that, at least in the Orient bloc (referring to Sino-centric locations like Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan & South Korea, not forgetting 中国), the amount of ridicule that otaku are receiving has gotten them into action. I mean, in Akihabara last July, there was a massive demonstration by otaku, to raise awareness of respecting a person’s hobby; here in my motherland, police were sent to monitor what is actually “a photoshoot of figurines protesting;” then in Taiwan…

Probably it’s just me, but I’m looking at the big picture. I’m thinking, “so, are we looking at the global societal historic patterns?”

Researchers in IBM Switzerland has produced a method of printing, based on the gravure printing process, that allows for more complex and detailed printing (of up to 100,000 dots per inches [dpi]). [Source: Ars Technica]

On the subject of gravure, if this process becomes commercially viable, imagine the crisp and very detailed posters of gravure idols. Ahh, I can microscope the poster, and still looks as beautiful as the real person.

In other news, the concept of P2P has been translated onto the mobile space. Basically, it’s a high-tech version of walkie-talkie, except that instead of going through cell towers (the ones that transmit and receive signals to and from mobile phones), a cell phone will detect, within a 2-kilometre radius, other cell phones, hook up with them, and in turn makes them relay messages that the original cell phone wishes to convey to. It all looks promising. [Source: Ars Technica]

The only problem is: how will this affects the battery lifespan of the cell phone, with all that transmitting and receiving?

On a more upbeating news, Shinzou Abe (安倍晋三) is to step down as Prime Minister, paving way for the Internet-famed Tarou Asou to take over his position. Tarou, who was previously documented as a fan of anime and manga, is scheduled to take the post as soon as September 19, where his party, the Liberal Democratic Party, is to vote on the successor.

This is a refresher, after all pointers in the past two to three weeks lead to Abe’s resignation. The writing’s on the wall already, so now it’s Asou’s turn to clean up the scandals, remove the (perceived) corruption in the Diet, and once all the nitty and gritty scum are dealed with, take over the world with moé and RAGING HEART!

In an unrelated news, prices of stocks of animé companies rose with the news of Asou’s incoming post. [Source: Anime News Network]

16/09 Edit: I’ve just been informed that Yasuo Fukuda has been trumped as the forerunner for the Japanese prime ministerial post. And since he’s a much less controversial leader than Tarou Asou, I expect his incoming to be more accepted by other count

Last year, I used Ubuntu on my old Toshiba Satellite A10 laptop because, being an IT student, I was keen on toying with open-source/alternative software.

I was introduced to open-source movement during my 2nd year studying Operating Systems. At that time, Red Hat Linux “Shrike” was used for the lesson. And I was absolutely intrigued by the robustness of the filesystem, and how it could handle as an alternative OS, for free. Just for bragging rights, I made my computer run on Red Hat, download a Lord of The Rings wallpaper (I was inherently obsessed with the movie trilogy at that time) and personalize bits here and there, to prove to my peers that it’s possible to run Linux for personal uses.

Of course, I was beaten down when they asked about games.

So, come to present day. I had already graduated. I still had my old laptop, which was broken because of hard disk problems. I was contemplating on fixing it, but since it’s now coming to its fifth year of existence, I figured, what the heck. I might as well trade it for a low-end, but still-useful, laptop.

Now, I had owned an Acer T180 (yes, I heard, people, Acer products are just not “up there”~!), and I was thinking of making a dual-boot system. Then I realized how I broke my old laptop.

I was beginning to suspect that the reason why my Satellite A10 no longer function as per normal, was due to something in the hard disk that made it failed. I had to admit that I initiated a forced shutdown 1 too many times, so probably that last forced shutdown was the key to its failure. But it could be that since I had experimented my laptop with other distros, it has come to a point that after many times of trial and error (which is sometimes accompanied by a forced shutdown), my laptop failed.

Another thing to note: my laptop’s DVD drive also decided to die on me. So now, I have an unworking laptop that refused to load, because my hard disk failed, and my DVD drive will not respond to any Linux DVDs I inserted into.

So now, as I contemplate, I wished there was some advice to go on.

The news might be already old, and there are already many people who still heatedly debate on the legitimacy of Odex’s actions. I wished to impart my view on the whole saga instead. The full story of it can be found in this Wikipedia article. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a very temporary blog, because I’m intending to do the following things to get started:

1. Get a web hosting service for my blog. Maybe buy a domain registrar or two.
2. Use a better blogging platform — one that has more control of what I want to feature.
3. Maybe buy one more web hosting service just for fun.

OK, so I’ll introduce myself again. (This has been updated on 24 Dec 2008). Read the rest of this entry »