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Here are two more I found. http://www.teletranslator.com:8060/ http://www.tranexp.com/win/itserver.htm Couldn't get it started, possibly due to a browser/OS incompatibility.

Shawn, maybe you should pin this topic or put a summary of the results in a pinned topic. I prefer the amikai-based translators. Excite, posted above by Shawn, is one of them. Others are at http://www.nifty.com/globalgate/ Amikai-based, gives you a choice of cut & paste text or URL translation. The latter is similar to Excite's, but it shows the original Japanese "interleaved" with the English tranlation. http://ocn.amikai.com/amitext/indexUTF8.jsp Another cut & paste Amikai-based translator. Non-amikai-based: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/cgiw.../jwb/wwwjdic?9T Not really a translator--it breaks the material up into pieces and then gives you dictionary definitions of the words in each piece. Useful if you want to isolate a particular word or if you want to see multiple alternate meanings. http://www.worldlingo.com/products_service...translator.html URL and Cut & Paste translator. For the quoted passage, it produced http://www.t-mail.com/cgi-bin/tsail I can only get the URL-based portion of this to work. And for some reason it's not working that URL for me. Someone else should give it a try and post the results.

To get a VF-1 to fly, you'll also have to overcome the fact that it lacks a horizontal stabilizer/elevator. This thread has some discussion of how the VF-1 would control pitch/roll. General agreement is that you'd need to use thrust vectoring for pitch--i.e., the engines on your model would need to swivel up and down.

Again, if this is so, the "atmospheric-escape booster system" wouldn't be needed. Probably, although the Valkyrie has unlimited energy, if it tried to hover into orbit it would reach a point where the atmosphere is so thin that it can't supply the reaction mass needed to supply a greater than 1:1 thrust:weight ratio, and the Valk's own internal stores of reaction mass can't make up for the deficiency.

No, but Kawamori says they can, so for the sake of the story, I accept it. Kawamori also says that FAST packs are for space only, so I accept that, too. Where does he say it? Well, first, it's strongly suggested by all the animation. Second, the entry for the VF-1 in the Compendium refers to the FAST pack system as a "FAST Pack space booster". Granted, an advanced VTOL aircraft with unlimited energy (fusion engines) could in theory hover with unlimited range, pretty much regardless of its streamlining. But its speed would be limited. If it converted to to normal flight, it would run into aerodynamic problems, and all indications are that SOP is to jettison FAST packs when entering an atmosphere. Considering how much they probably cost to manufacture, I don't think that would be done without a good reason.

Correction to my earlier reply: the plate on the Q-Rau/N-Ger diorama says "The Germ of Culture". Sprout, germ, culture...sounds like a health food store. But the idea is nice.

The Q-Rau and N-Ger pilots shaking hands is titled "The Sprout of Culture". Also, there's a "report" as follows (translated through excite.co.jp with slight editing): I think it's cool because it gives some perspective on how the pilots fit into the mecha.

Okay, not fuel, reaction mass.

Graham mentioned over in the toys section that if he had some enemy mecha, he'd paint his floor with hexagons and stage a giant wargame...which reminded me that there are actually several official Macross board wargames. There are the three mentioned here, plus one more by Tsukuda Hobbies called "City Fight", and one by Bandai called "Love is Passing Away". Has anyone played any of these, or has any information on them beyond what's posted on MW and boargamegeek? Are there English translations of the rules available anywhere?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but in DYRL, it's Skull Team, not Squadron, consisting only of Roy and our three boys. In SDF Macross, Hikaru is still part of Skull Squadron once Max & Kakizaki are assigned to him, right? I.e., it's Vermilion Team within Skull Squadron, correct?

White skull & crossbones on a black background makes sense since it's an hommage to the Jolly Rogers squadron and of course a reference to the Jolly Roger skull & crossbones pirate flag. Graphically, it makes more sense than a yellow background, since the white skull & bones wouldn't show up well. I suppose you could make the skull & crossbones black or give them a black outline, but I don't think it would look very good. The same arguments can be made against the red & blue backgrounds, but I don't think they're as bad graphically, as long as a reasonably dark shade of red/blue is used. And apparently some pirate flags did have a red background--such flags often signified that the pirate was particularly pissed off with the ship he was attacking, and would give no quarter.

I voted for the second to last. Although I only really fly them around (with sound effects) to make my wife laugh; I don't think I'd do it without an audience. BTW, how do we define "staging mock battles"? Is it just posing several toys to create an impromptu diorama? If so, I plead guilty. I got a Matchbox Glaug shortly after watching "Longest Birthday", where there's a standoff between Kamujin and Hikaru, and I immediately wanted to see how it would look facing off against a Yammie 1J. (It looks nice.) OTOH, if "staging mock battles" means actually acting out battles, nope, I haven't done that.

Or you could use Mozilla NOW. Not so sure about Mozilla, but I do keep Netscape 7.x around on OS 9 for certain CSS and Java-particular sites. Just don't like the sluggish performance or interface very much. :-) In my experience, Netscape 7.02 is faster than IE or Netscape 4.x in OS 9. (Some aspects may be slower--like launching, but page rendering is much faster.) Netscape 7.02 also gives you tabbed browsing, something to look forward to with NS 7.1 or Safari. Surprisingly, Netscape 7.1 is faster than Safari under OS X, again in my experience. I haven't had very good luck with Mozilla; Chimera seems to work but for some reason I keep going back to Netscape. As for systems. Home: SuperMac S900 upgraded with a G3/400, 368 megs of RAM, a couple of 2 gig hard drives, a Voodoo 2 card, and a USB card for use with cheap peripherals like my scanner, printer, and no-name mouse. Works fine under 9.1 for general computing and web browsing and older games. (Oni runs well on it, and it's great for Hornet, not sure about Falcon as I haven't really tried that piece of &$%@ since my last hardware upgrade). Framerate on big videos isn't so great but smaller mpegs/avi/shockwave are fine. I'm tempted to try to upgrade this one to "current" standards but I think it will be more economical to just run it into the ground and buy a new Mac at some point Work: G4/733 with OS X 10.2.6. Took a deep breath and jumped into X shortly after I set it up on my desk. 10.1 wasn't quite worth the trouble, but after 10.2 I've never looked back.

Sounds like your info is more up to date than mine. Any more detail or sources on that last sentence?

Those commercials fill me with an awesome feeling of joy! Thanks, Shawn! While watching them, I thought, "Why aren't modern American commercials as cool as 1980's Japanese commercials?" Then it hit me: if they showed those commercials in the U.S., the toy companies would probably be sued because the toys don't actually taxi and fly by themselves. (Well, that and the nipple thing.) If anyone is having trouble watching the clips, you might have a look at the pinned imacross topic, which has links to a number of codec sources for Mac and Windows. (With several third-party codecs installed, they run fine under Quicktime Player 6 and Mac OS 9.1. I used ZipIt to unzip them...not that Stuffit Expander shouldn't work, but I didn't have any naming/filetype/extension problems with ZipIt.)

Kinda pixel-y but looks pretty nice to me.

I find it amusing that of all the colors available, they chose "vermilion" to name a squadron. (That is a translation of the original Macross, not a RT thing, right?) How many of us know for sure what "vermilion" is--no web searches! Is there a Chartreuse Squadron? Ecru? Mauve? Burnt Sienna? Raw Umber? Edit: P.S., yes, I'm aware they outdid themselves with the Pink Peckers...

I didn't know that Fokker continued to make combat planes after WWI, but this discussion should at least include mention of their civilian aircraft, from the famous Fokker Trimotor to the modern F50.

Although Naoko made a few minor mistakes, her translation is actually an excellent guide to making sense of the machine translations, not only of the 2003.01.20 decision, but of the others as well. The same goes for the other translation (whoever did it). I'm glad that you posted both of them. (I'm also glad that WDC posted the other translation, even though I remain puzzled as to what exactly it is.) Also, I agree with your point about TP gaining copyright of SDF Macross by Article 29 Section 1. But I have some other points to raise in objection to your conclusion that the most recent judgments effectively give TP control of the whole Macross franchise. Hopefully I'll be able to get them organized in the next few days.

Well, you can say it's okay to want to look at pretty ladies, but not to want to look like them. Then buy him a doll and tell yourself it's an "action figure".

He sounds kind of Rumanian. I hope that makes you feel better. Oh yeah, I think it's really funny.

How old is your son? Isn't there a psychological theory that there's an age before which children are basically "genderless"? IOW, probably no big deal, and it'll probably go away pretty soon. Has Tuxedo Mask shown up yet? A top hat and cape may not be much of an improvement, but it would be something...

Wrylac, Additional errors and omissions in the translations you've posted. 1. Naoko's translation of the 2003.01.20 ruling: "And Mainichi paid 5,500,00 yen as a cost of making the animation movie per episode to the defendant from the above cost." This should read "plaintiff" instead of "defendant". The plaintiff in the case was Tatsunoko Productions. If you search on the figure "5,500,000" both in the 2003.1.20 ruling and in the 2002.2.25 ruling (using either the translations you posted or machine translations from the original), it is clear that the payment was to Tatsunoko. Also in this translation, Naoko has: "On latter parts there is only the name of defendant, Studio Nue, as the expression of copyright." I believe this should read "Big West", not "Studio Nue". 2. The translation which you posted of the 2002.02.25 ruling is substantially abbreviated compared to the original text. It is missing large portions of the judgment, notably the portion of the Finding of Fact which gives the court's opinion on the sequence of events in the creation of SDF Macross, who did what portion of the work, and the history of copyright display on Macross materials and other publications. (However, much of this is reiterated in the 2003.1.20 ruling and Naoko's translation of it.) Also, the opinion at the beginning of the translation doesn't quite match the original, while the translation completely lacks the conclusion of the original. The translation has: The original has (translation "cleaned up" from the Amikai-based machine translation): Note that the defendant is not prohibited by the court "from creating movies using the drawings and from allowing third parties from creating the same." Why? The conclusion of the original says (raw translation from Amikai): My interpretation of the first two sentences is that the court notes that BW/Nue's copyright of the patterns has been effectively admitted by Tatsunoko in copyright displays from 1982 onwards (as shown in the findings of fact). However, the court agrees to officially confirm the copyright on the basis of the case brought by BW/Nue. In the third sentence, the court however declines to prohibit TP from creating movies using the patterns (either by itself or through a third party), because there is no possibility that TP will ever do so. To understand this, we may suppose, along with Scott Hards, that there is already a legal reason that TP cannot produce Macross derivatives. But while Scott Hard's interpretation is attractive to partisans of BW/Nue, his translation ("there is no reason to grant the request as we determine there is no risk of the defendant creating new Macross movies or licensing third parties to do so") is faulty. In the end, the court may simply be saying that copyright on the designs is enough to prevent TP from using them without BW/Nue's permission. This basically agrees with what cwbrown wrote on Oct 31 2003, 01:52 PM and what wrylac wrote on Oct 31 2003, 11:31 AM.

A couple comments: 1) I remember reading that in the movie, it's not Skull Squadron but Skull Team. I.e., Roy has been demoted to leader of just the Three Amigos. 2) Again, in the movie it seems that Hikaru never outranks Max like he did in the series. Even if he hadn't gone missing, I'd expect Max to get the promotion since Max is a Genius and Hikaru is viewed as a bit of a screwup by Misa. When Hikaru comes back, there's really no good reason to promote him to team commander instead of leaving him with Skull under Max. 3) I don't think Kakizaki is shown to be quite as bad of a pilot in DYRL as he is the TV show. (Actually, I think--hope--he grows a bit in SDF Macross before he finally snuffs it, but he was awful at first.) So I don't think Max should have felt too bad about being responsible for him. And although he dies while goofing off in a vidscreen conversation, I don't think it's really his "fault"--Millia just came out of nowhere, and it was Kakizaki's luck that he was the one singled out. (Conversely, someone posted pics of Max's fight with Millia which show how damn lucky he was, as Millia's hits on his Valk just straddled the cockpit. This was in a debate over the color of Max's heat shield cover.)

Is the Kyosho the same as the Dragon micro armor? I remember seeing one of the latter, a Tiger I, and drooling over it for a while before deciding to do some internet research. Needless to say, I found it for a lot less online than at the hobby shop, but I also found that the turret doesn't turn via remote control. For the price, without that capability it somehow didn't seem worth it to me. More recently I've seen some little RC tanks on eBay and even at Wal-mart. I don't know who makes the various ones, but all were in the under-$15 range. For that price I could give up on the rotating turret but I'd still want real treads. I don't think any of them were authentic models of anything real, but some of the vehicles at Walgreens looked plausible. Some of the ones on eBay claimed to have a "laser tag" kind of operation, so you could duel. I haven't bought any yet, though. Would like to hear more from anyone who has.