A long awaited release in Japan is the spectacular music video On Your Mark, which will be included in a Ghibli compilation DVD this fall:

Nausicaa.net:

A R2 DVD which contains various shorts film by Studio Ghibli will be released this fall in Japan. The exact date has not been decided.

"Ghibli ga Ippai Special Short Short" will include:

On Your Mark

Sorairo no Tane

Portable Airport

Space Station No.5

Various commercials

The short films for Studio Ghibli Museum are not included.

It'd be worth importing On Your Mark alone, but this should certainly warrant the price for Studio Ghibli fans.

Also, on the subject of music, the first soundtrack to Tenshi ni Narumon has been reissued under Animex 1200 by Columbia Music, along with many other out of print CDs. No real booklet, but it's the music that counts: CDJapan

--Leif

"Design your small business site with Firefox in mind!" advises Bytestart.

If you have a website, you should also make sure that your site displays correctly in Firefox, as a quick browse through some of our favourite small business sites suggests that many webmasters have yet to do this!

This is good advice, but it's not about people designing with Firefox in mind. In principle, that's as bad as people who design solely for Internet Explorer.

World Wide Web Consortium exists for a reason: To specify universal standards. The problem is simply that all the browsers do not conform strictly to these standards. Firefox/Mozilla/Netscape and Opera do fairly well, but Internet Explorer is chocked full of rendering bugs, even if you were designing just for it.

It's ironic that article suggests that a lot of sites don't look well in Firefox, which while it might be true—I've witnessed only a handful in my nearly 2 years of Firefox usage—a good site will almost always look better in Firefox. Partly because of simple things like border rendering. Their Site uses a dotted border around the main content area. If you use IE, it looks like short dashes, Firefox uses actual square dots, which is much more pleasing to the eye.

Of course, rather like many other pretenders over the past few years, Firefox may not have a long lifespan if Microsoft upgrades and improves Internet Explorer to include many of the features Firefox is so good at.

Certainly possible, but Internet Explorer would have to improve far more than version 7 has, and Microsoft would have to recommit to providing regular improvements. Microsoft won't be winning back many users by playing catch-up, it's only a matter of slowing the migration. In this case, laziness is Microsoft's best friend. And the web designer's enemy.

--Leif

Digital Rights Management is the RIAA's, and now the MPAA's savior to stop piracy.

AP:

"Burned" CDs accounted for 29 percent of all recorded music obtained by fans in 2004, compared to 16 percent attributed to downloads from online file-sharing networks, said Mitch Bainwol, chief executive for the Recording Industry Association of America.

Judging from personal observation, that's very likely close to reality, if a little skewed. The RIAA might have made online sharing unsavory to a lot of people, with threats of lawsuits, but burned CD sharing not only leap-frogs that danger, it also provides maximum audio quality from the source, not crackle-and-pop 128KB MP3s.

But DRM cannot stop this, with the determined.

TechNewsWorld:

The simple truth of the matter is: DRM is a loser from the word "go." Anything which can be seen or heard can be copied by one digital or analog means or another, and it will always be so.

As p2pnet reader Iain Elder once suggested, "Everyone can beat DRM, and you don't even need to be a hacker Latest News about hacker. If you have a personal CD player, and a line-feed cable (with the small jack plugs), then you can rip the CD analogally.

Or simply use a black sharpy, as was popular when these CDs first started appearing.

They can't win stricter enforcement, and technology boundries. CD protections can be easily circumvented. New HiDef DVD protections threaten to alienate honest consumers in several different ways, while still, no doubt, not being fool-proof against the determined.

Even in Hi-Res Audio, where digital transports cannot be used because of piracy concerns, multi-channel dubbing of the analog output is still very possible, even easy with the right sound card.

--Leif

In the face of a new format war between the competing high-definition DVD formats—Sony's Blu-ray and Toshiba's HD-DVD—the VSDA has put out some guidelines to assist the disc developers in achieving consumer acceptance. Most of them quite sensible, and already accounted for by both formats.

They also call for a resolution in the oncoming struggle:

"Both sides consider their own format superior," he said. "The launch of a single high-definition DVD format is unquestionably preferable to a 'format war' that could cause consumer confusion and lead to a reluctance to embrace either format."

Undeniable. But they won't combine them. The question is, will either one win? Or will we end up with a mutual dud, like the DVD-Audio/SA-CD formats. Granted, the consumer's desire for enhanced video and television outweighs the audiophile element, but people really don't like to choose between different studios for a costly expenditure. It's not 'Which is better?' it's 'Star Wars or Batman?'. This has hurt the HiRes audio formats, besides not having enough popular content, what there is is split between the two.

I could easily the HD-DVD and Blu-ray sections in BestBuy as small and segregated as the HiRes audio formats are.

That's where video games come into the mix: Much like how DVD was spurred forward in Japan by Sony's Playstation 2 in 2000, Blu-ray and HD-DVD's success may depend on the two game systems that will play them. Even the HiRes audio formats may experience a surge due to PS3's support of SA-CD.

As much as I like dedicated devices, these will give people who may not be able to justify a stand-alone HiDef Player the ability to play the new mediums.

Even without that though, Blu-ray is looking to be the dominant force. With the caddy system dispensed of, and more studios taking the BD side—Fox just recently—for once a superior Sony format might kill the competition.

--Leif

It's been a long time coming, and I honestly thought it never would, but over a year ago FUNimation finally announced that Kodomo no Omocha, or Kodocha, would be released in North America, with the associated translations.

The first volume of which comes out next week! 1 of 6, which will presumably be followed by another 6 volumes for the second season of the show.

A pretty decent job on the cover too:

Certainly, being unaltered completely is always preferable, but this is the next best thing, with keeping the plastic hammer for the logo. Although I still despise volume titles that don't reflect an original episode title. What's wrong with just a number?

The problem is with copyright laws. They've bit us with logo restrictions before, but this time it's actual show content. This isn't FUNi's fault, but the Japanese side. So the first opening song for the show is completely unavailable, to be replaced by the second one. This is very disappointing, especially considering, if I'm not mistaken, that OBANA Miho—Kodocha's author—actually helped write the thing. But it's the performance that counts. Due to the same restriction some references and a cameo by one of the performers had to be edited somewhat (only in audio apparently).

But problems notwithstanding, this is a highly anticipated release, and we're lucky to have it at all.

--Leif

PhysOrg:

Two researchers will spend one week in the controlled ecosystem at Rokkasho in the northern prefecture of Aomori, growing plants such as rice, breeding goats and recycling their water, oxygen and excreta.

Unknown whether or not Pauly Shore will be invited for one of the future week long experiments, but chances are low for the obvious reasons.

Also, the institute hasn't yet issued a statement on if cameras will be placed inside the structure, and the feed possibly aired on NipponTV. Although this seems unlikely as well, much to the disappointment of the ever growing voyeur element.

Perhaps the Discovery Channel could work something out?

--Leif

Space Shuttle that is. And great video feed of the launch this morning too.

The sensor glitch proved untroubling as the aging Discovery had a perfect launch. Those [cell-life] that have been waiting in the ISS for the last 2.5 years were very glad at this; supplies were naturally running very low, and the various space-grown cultures and tissues were getting quite lonely, which apparently do not, unfortunately, speak much Russian.

Even so, the space shuttle is extremely old, and with replacements still years away, NASA might be better off transitioning to a private affair. SpaceShipOne is certainly closer to routine flight than the CEV, at least for ISS missions.

And with all the UFO parts that're just gathering dust in A51, you'd think they could come up with something by themselves. Obviously due to poor inter-agency cooperation policies.

--Leif

Another update: Firefox 1.0.6

--Leif

It's been a while since I've had to post an obit, but today James Doohan — Scotty — died, at the age of 85. From complications from Alzheimer's disease, but he passed in the company of his wife.

Not before saving the starship Enterprise countless times, permanently affecting pop-culture, and getting a Star at the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

--Leif

Firefox 1.0.5 is out! Days ago, true, but Security and Bug fixes, so get it before something else gets you.

--Leif