the white drew carey

I don't think the graphics suck. I think the movies look back simply because of the encryption or whatever you call it... I noticed two things: 1) In movie #6 where Graham had mentioned the flying Regults- If you'll notice, the curvature of the Earth is very pronounced, as well as the blue sky starts fading to black quickly. This could mean that this stage takes place in the uppermost levels of the atmosphere and that the Regults jump jets are strong enough to propel them in normal flight as they do in space. Just an idea. 2) In movie #8, which is basically a rehash of #1, we see what appears to be a VF taking off in space, but is it? If you'll notice, the VF seems to be taking off from the deck of the Prometheus (it don't look like an ARMD to me), which could indicate either A.) There's a night time mission on Earth (possibly vs. the Anti-UN forces [hope, hope ]), or B.) That the Prometheus and Daedalus play larger roles in this game... Hmmm...

Quality and detail issues aside (which are not subject whatsoever to the material, but to the production), David Hingtgen has hit it right on the head.

Or put a message in your sig at the bottom?

Ummm, Wrylac... The part you circled clearly has ECONOMIC RIGHTS coming off of the AUTHOR'S RIGHTS, which you've circled and marked with BW's right. ???

I understand your anger, but until the rules of the forum are altered to allow off topic threads like that, you should be fully aware that posting an O/T thread has the possibility of being locked/deleted at any moment. BTW- Congrats.

No offense, NERV, but I know you've been around long enough to know that this type of question belongs in Feedback/Questions for the Mods. Sadly, I wrote a lengthy reply listing bands and labels I'd recommend, but I don't have a back up.

Frankly, things are still a tad unclear and everyone is basing their opinions on the matter as to how they interpret the whole situation. As of yet, to my knowledge, no challenge and, hence, no ruling has been made as to ownership of the whole franchise. One could safely assume that the ultimate goal of the legal wrangling in Japan is BigWest's attempt to discern whether or not Tatsunoko had the ability to transfer the rights to everything Macross over to HG, and whether or not HG's claim of blanket ownership is hot air, or if they have a leg to stand on. Only the future will tell as to the final status of this conlict. As quoted in Game Informer, for Bandai to publicly state that they are considering releasing the new Macross game in the states might mean that some sort of impass may have been cleared, or that maybe they're just saying that simply for the hell of it.

Gaaahhh!!! I'm an ass. What can I say?

Maybe because Tatsunoko knows that BigWest is completely in their rights to do whatever they want with the sequels they've created. Remember, HG is the one who suddenly, out of the blue, made a stink about anything Macross being released outside of Japan. Tatsunoko probably never would've been involved (or cared) if BigWest didn't suddenly feel the need to clarify, in the courts, who owns what. Without seeing any market projections, I think this statement is a little premature. I'm sure none of us have seen how much money was earned by whom with the releases of DYRL, MacII and Mac+. There is money in toys, but there is also money in film licensing.

Private usually means with people you know. P2P on Kazaa or Napster is with a bunch of unknown people. You have no idea who the person is you are dealing with. PRIVATE: True. I think the point he was actually getting at was that P2P is not private, since anyone with can browse through the files you've made available. There is no selection process with a P2P and you cannot refuse service to an individual person without, ultimately, refusing service to the whole P2P community. Privacy, in the long run, means that not everyone is or can be privy to whatever it is that's being held private. P2P is not private.

I thought it had been determined that Tatsunoko only owns the animation. IIRC, Abombz! had located info stating that ownership of animation simply means ownership of animation, meaning the actual, physical animation. I may be mis-remembrin' this, though. I'll have to dig through the info I've got to see if this is correct. But why should BigWest have to divulge information? They have history on their side. They've been actively producing, distrbuting and licensing Macross productions for the past 15 years with no involvement and nary a peep from Tatsunoko or (until 2000) HG, whom had suddenly decided, or realised, they own everything Macross only a couple of years ago. So when the feces hit the fan, BigWest and Tatsunoko went to court to figure out the specifics. Meanwhile, HG made claims that, once challenged, they refused to back up with proof. Although possible, I'd say it's highly improbable. If the rights granted were to everything Maaaross, Tatsunoko could've been standing to make a LOT more money on their initial investment. If what HG is saying is true, Tatsunoko, regardless of whether or not they were involved in subsequent Macross productions, would've had full jurisdiction over international licensing of said productions, including the profit to be made by granting those licenses. I don't think cultural attitude would've had any bearing on a company neglecting what is the closest thing to a free-ride they can get. Besides some sort of involvement in DYRL, Tatsunoko, as a corporate entity, has not been involved in anything Macross-related since. Yet, for HG to own the rights to all Macross outside of Japan, Tatsunoko would have to hold those rights as well. Which means that DYRL, macII and Mac+ were all licensed without the consent of the very company which, supposedly retains those rights. I strongly doubt Tatsunoko would let opportunities for profit such as that slip by. edit- this time I left out whole sections of words!!!

A good point. An interesting and extremely possible scenario is that the original contract between BigWest/Nue and Tatsunoko doesn't make any mention at all about future projects. That leaves a possible opening for one side to say, that the contract simply meant EVERYTHING Macross, whereas another interpretation could mean ONLY SDF: Macross, the TV Series. This, and this alone, could be the basis for HG's claims. But part of the problem is that HG has been unclear (either intentionally or unintentionally) regarding their claims and at other times have significantly altered what they claim their rights to be, occasionally from one convention to the next. Another point (and I KNOW I've brought this up before ) is Tatsunoko's inability or unwillingness to call out BigWest for licensing out other Macross productions by themselves. If the original memorandum granted Tatsunoko the Macross rights outside of Japan, why haven't they said anything? Some people say it's because HG owns Macross outside of Japan, and not Tatsunoko. But I think that's not true. In everything RT that I see it clearly says ©1985, 20xx Harmony Gold USA/Tatsunoko. That leads me to believe that Tatsunoko is in part ownership and HG didn't completely buy out the rights. HG has said a lot of things and, sadly enough, they've been caught before. If not by outright lying, at least by bending the truth quite a bit (the infamous "No one was minding the store" excuse is a good one). Also, there really isn't any proof that HG actually has talked to Bandai or Yamato. IIRC, Graham asked the guys from Yamato once if this was true and they had no idea what he was talking about. I could possibly think it was true of Bandai, but not very possible. I mean, until the chunky monkey re-issues, Bandai had only done certain VF's from Mac7. Why would HG want to bring those over when there's not a large market or a production to correlate with? And by the time the re-ishes were announced, the whole legal fiasco had begun and even if HG did talk to Bandai by then, I think Bandai would've said the same thing they've always said: "We're gonna wait until things clear up a bit." My allergies are killing me right now. edit:yeah, yeah, yeah... I spell bad. Agent One... strike me down!!!

My buddies and I had a band in high school called The Regal Beagle Boys... maybe we should think of having a reunion gig in honor of Jack.

There's a new article on CNN about how ticked college students are: http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/09/10/la...reut/index.html My personal favorite is: Sure... and I think gasoline is overpriced*, so I guess I'll just start stealing that, huh? But this one's the runner-up: Any person who refers to themselves as "technologically savvy" should... well, you figure it out. The last part of the article gets me as well. Now, I don't know where most people buy their music, but I've never spent more than $13 (before tax) on a CD before in my life, unless it was a double set. Maybe people should actually shop around instead of going to FYE, Tower or Best Buy. There's a lot of places that sell CDs for less than the big boys. *seriously. OPEC and the oil companies are much bigger villains than the RIAA. isn't it amazing how the UN bombing in Iraq was such a precursor to further terrorist activity that they just HAD to raise the gas prices... just in case. lucky for them the price-hike came just in time for Labor Day weekend! isn't it more amazing that after labor day weekend, the threat must've gone away, because gas prices dropped?

Pat Payne- Nah. As long as Wrylac and I keep it civil and keep it here, we're allowed to sound like broken records as much as we want. Don't worry... one day I'll turn him over to the light side of the force!!!

Two things I'm curious about that makes this kind of iffy- 1) The article states that this tax is paid to RIAA companies. Would that mean that congress has decided only to give this money to certain record companies, and yet make ALL music available under this law? I think that would be kind of ripping off the hundreds, if not thousands of other record companies, both large and small, that are not part of the RIAA. 2) While I haven't perused the links themselves, it seems there's more behind the law than just what Slashdot has decided to report. Already the words "private noncommercial use" bring up questions as to what the intent of that statement. It could possibly be argued that "private noncommercial use" and "home taping" were not intended to endorse making said audio recordings publicly available. Maybe this is the loophole everyone is looking for. Maybe it's not the skeleton key after all. Time will tell, but it does make things a bit more interesting.

Billie Holliday didn't sneer as much as Billie Idol does.

I've noticed that many MWers, myself included, like to illustrate different aspects of our point via A), B), C), etc. But, as you can see, the B part turns into B). Is there anyway that smiley can be changed... or do we have to start numbering our points as 1), 2), 3), etc.?

The media INDUSTRIES... yes. But I don't buy their music. Most labels which would be considered part of the "industry" are part of the mainstream radio set. Labels that uber-promote their artist and create a "superstar". That's an aspect of the major-label's system which creates a self-perpetuating machine that needs to make lots of money off of CD's simply to promote their next big thing. What's sad is when bands like Green Day or Blink 182 sign to a major label. These bands were doing just fine on smaller labels but felt the need to be bigger and hence, signed on to become part of the machine. The problem is that for every already-successful band that makes it big after signing to the majors, there is 10 other already-successful bands that signed to the majors and fell through simply because they weren't marketed and/or marketable to the mainstream radio set (ie- Samiam, Jawbreaker, Face to Face). Most of the music (about 99%) are band son smaller labels who make an adequate living and want to stay that way. They're not making total bank, but are living comfortably with what they do make and are actually having fun doing it, instead of bruning out likfe most products of the "industry" do. But the problem with file swapping is that 10,000 people can download Metallica's new album and Metallica won't even feel it. But if 10,000 people download Chixdiggit!'s new album (when it ever comes out), that's about half of the total pressing for that band, and Chixdiggit! will feel it in their wallets. The point being that Chixdiggit! probably makes about $3-4 per CD sold, whereas Metallica probably makes about $.50. So the argument that fileswapping doesn't hurt the artist isn't true at all. It probably doesn't hurt artists on major labels, but smaller bands who make a higher percentage from each CD will get slaughtered.

As long as cheapskate file-swappers (who would probably steal from a small, independent label who doesn't charge a lot for their CD's and pays their bands lotsa yen as unashamedly as they'd steal from any RIAA-participating label) will simply admit that what they are doing IS technically illegal, I'll be happy with that. But it seems no one will actually do that. Then I'll wait for them to bitch and moan when their favorite band can't put out albums as much as they used to because they had to get a 9-5 job in order to make money. I'm just sick and tired of the FIGHT THE EVIL RECORDING EMPIRE attempt at justification when, frankly, you just don't want to pay for things. Ech... I'm just sick of arguing the point. People's battle lines are already drawn and that's that.

NEW ICON SETS!!! PM me if you'd like these sent to you as well.

STOP!!! IF YOU WANT ICONS SENT TO YOU: Pick which sets you want from the list below and PM me your e-mail address with the set numbers. IF I'VE SENT ICONS TO YOU: I've fixed the problem where several icons have black boxes around them when not being used in the dock. PM me if you'd like the updated icon files.

Yellowlightman- I forgot Eming- Please PM me your e-mail address. Combined Arms- Kick ass avatar. My favorite plane in the whole wide world. I'm currently trying to fix up several icons. For some reason, when they are not used in the dock specifically, the background is black instead of clear. Let me see if I can fix them and then I'll e-mail them off to you.

Here's another one that's just personal taste, but certain elements of the VF-19A seem a tad pixelated. I took the image and threw a single blur filter on it to kind of smoot things out. Original on the left, blurred on the right.

I would think the RIAA did nothing because each and everyone of those points could essentially be proven in court as a tool for benign purposes.