Hey ya all! I just bought this korean movie "fighter in the wind" and boy it was awesome. Its like watching a live action anime with a mix of romance and drama in it. The movie is filled with martial arts action and Im sure all you fighting nuts out there will be impressed by this one. Pick up a copy and you'll see what Im talking about!
This is probably the funniest flash I have ever seen. It has a large load time for dial up but it is sidesplitting. http://www.goyk.com/flash.asp?path=530
Survivors emerge on to shattered streets of Fallujah
From James Hider in Fallujah
OVER the rubble-strewn streets of Fallujah the voice from the loudspeaker on the minaret is no longer a call to jihad, destruction or death.
As the fighting tapers off to isolated pockets in the southern fringes of the city, the broadcast is an offer of help by the Iraqi Army to the traumatised people of this former rebel bastion.
Few are heeding the call. Only a tiny number of people have ventured out of their houses since the massive air, artillery and ground assault was launched by the American military to wrest the city from insurgents a week ago. Without electricity, television or radio, some may not even know that the assault is almost over.
Yesterday, however, a handful of dazed people did stumble out of their homes, where they have been running low on food and water, to see what the new order would bring. After seven months in guerrilla hands, the United States took back the city on the Euphrates in just seven days ? but at a cost. Scores of houses have been bombed flat, the roads are churned up by tank tracks and most buildings show some evidence of the raging battle ? bullet holes, smashed windows, walls ploughed down by armoured vehicles. Several mosques used by insurgents as bases or weapons stashes have been reduced to rubble.
Other areas have emerged relatively unscathed, although these, too, appear to be devoid of inhabitants. As stories of terrorist atrocities emerge, it is becoming clear that the people of Fallujah have long become accustomed to keeping their heads down.
Never a particularly presentable city, it is sometimes hard to tell what has been damaged by war and what has simply fallen down. Yet it was always a bustling place, with a busy market, and a traffic hub, its main street forever choked with cars and lorries heading in from Jordan.
Now the only traffic is the huge olive and khaki monsters of the US Marines and US Army, with the occasional white pick-up used by the Iraqi Army. The Iraqi soldiers are trying to lure out the residents to allow their medical staff to treat the sick and wounded.
Most of the civilians who stayed behind were the city?s heads of families, trying to prevent their homes from being looted. Under the strict rules of the military, all men of fighting age are being detained and vetted. Some Iraqi army units have picked up as many as 500 men, some of whom recount how guerrilla snipers shot any people who tried to leave their home once the fight was on.
Even those who had been hurt in the attack appeared to be happy to see the American troops. One half-naked elderly man in underwear stained with blood from wounds inflicted by a US shell cursed the insurgents as he greeted advancing Marines. ?I wish the Americans had come here the very first day and not waited eight months,? he said.
Another old man, who had been imprisoned by the rebels and was then petrified by the US assault, praised the American troops for driving out the gunmen. ?We were happy you did what you did because Fallujah had been suffocated by the Mujahidin,? he said, recalling arbitrary killings of anyone who failed to adhere to the strict doctrine of the Wahhabi hardliners. ?Anyone considered suspicious would be slaughtered. We would see unknown corpses around the city all the time.?
As American bulldozers began to clear the streets yesterday and the first of the army?s civil affairs teams headed in to assess reconstruction needs, one officer judged that for the people of Fallujah, the old Vietnam War adage ? ?To save the village we had to destroy it? ? may hold true.
£108 earmarked for reconstruction
The US military and the Iraqi Government have prepared a $200 million (£108 million) reconstruction plan for Fallujah and Ramadi, another insurgent stronghold in Anbar province (Richard Beeston writes).
Military and civilian experts have plans to repair and restock hospitals, reopen schools and government buildings and restore amenities. The aim is to have the city operating again in time for elections in January.
We didn't carpet bomb, we did it smart. We lost some guys (18) but we liberated a city WITHOUT trashing the homes and hospitals and schools. The terrorists are running again, no place to hide. Won't see news like this on 60 minutes.
It is out and again this week i cant get it no money and not enough memory to play it either Damn you RAM ! when i finally move i will try and save to get money and get this game i want to play counter strike source that comes with the game i want to play that more then the half-life 2 game. my friend told me that halo 2 was good but half-life 2 takes the cake its so much better and will be the game of the year. i want to play it even more now and wish it had come out on the box of X at the same time so i can actualy play it there but then no counter strike with it ahhhhhhh.
well any of you lucy enough to get this game and lay your luck hands on it ?
is it fun?
how is the new CS ?
Sitting here watching episode 12 of Gad Guard on G4Tech Tv and its a pretty good anime title from Gonzo. its great the story and the animation. i was watching ep. 11 a bit ago and i thought it was only 13 eps and i was thinking it was to weird to stop the series here but it is a 26 episode sereis. anyone else seen this title on dvd or on TV ?
was on Gamespot.com and well saw this interesting article on the fight for blu-ray for the next slew of next gen systems. they are trying to get blu-ray as the format for the game systems and well to replace dvds as you all might now. mostly to put out high Defenition dvds that cant be put out on regular DVD's.
There are few who contest the fact that the acceptance of CD-ROM and then DVD-ROM standards for video game software led to new opportunities for the interactive entertainment industry. Disc-based software made massive worlds and high-end graphics a cheap and easy-to-produce reality that would have been hard to imagine on cartridges. But now, a potential conflict over the successor to DVD storage may help shape the next battle for console and home-entertainment supremacy.
Electronics and entertainment companies have been throwing their support behind various high-density disc specifications for months in the hope that theirs will become the widely accepted standard for everything--from games to high-definition movies and home video recording. Two dominant camps have emerged: the HD-DVD Association, which has the support of the standard-setting DVD Forum, and the Blu-ray Disc Founders Association, which has the support of many international computing and entertainment behemoths, including Sony.
"This is a macro-level battle between the consumer electronics industry and the PC industry, as both Sony and Microsoft try to fill the home networks with standards they prefer," said American Technology Research analyst P.J. McNealy.
Both the Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats use a narrower blue laser--compared with the standard red laser--to allow more data to be squeezed onto a CD-sized disc. Whereas standard DVDs can hold about 5GB of data, Blu-ray discs (BD) can hold roughly 23GB to a layer, while HD-DVD discs can hold about 15GB. These numbers can be increased through the use of dual-sided and/or dual-layered discs, which are currently in development by both high-density camps. Both discs come in rewritable and read-only (ROM) formats and are projected to be widely available in the US by late 2005 or early 2006, according to each format's representative organization.
The format skirmish officially entered the video game realm in August, when Sony declared in an interview with Kyodo News that the PlayStation 3 will support the BD-ROM format, in addition to standard DVDs and CDs. Sony chief operating officer Ken Kutagari later confirmed this at September's Tokyo Game Show. "On the computer applications front, including video games, the importance of a medium with the capability of storing huge amounts of data and programs is becoming greater than ever," Sony said in a press release accompanying Kutagari's announcement.
Speculation increased in early October when NEC and Toshiba, the main companies behind the HD-DVD format, publicly announced that they were trying to convince Microsoft to accept their standard in the next Xbox. "Of course we'd like [Microsoft] to use it," Toshiba president Tadashi Okumura said in media reports from the Japanese SEATEC conference. Microsoft offered a strict "no comment" on the issue.
While Microsoft has previously shown public support for the HD-DVD, it's still far from certain whether its next console will support the format. Indeed, Microsoft may decide to follow Sony's lead and jump on the Blu-ray bandwagon, a move Sony might welcome.
"It is my understanding that Blu-ray Disc will be open to any company that wishes to use the technology," said Ingemar Henriksson, webmaster of the fan site Blu-ray.com. "Sony has invested a great deal into Blu-ray, so anything that helps it become more popular is a good thing for them." Sony did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
The DVD Forum also left the door open for Forum-member Microsoft to support the rival Blu-ray format if it chooses. "The DVD Forum charter states that members shall not be required to support Forum-approved formats to the exclusion of other formats," a spokesperson for the Forum said. Still, such a move could possibly alienate Microsoft from the nebulous 220-member body, which, incidentally, also includes Sony.
Regardless of what format Microsoft chooses, game developers will have to make good use of the extra storage space if either standard is to succeed. Julien Merseron, worldwide technical director for Ubisoft, said that a developer could use the extra space for everything from more-detailed textures and sound files to faster-loading redundant data. "It is not really the additional space that will lead to new gameplay experiences," Merseron said, "but [it] will allow us to add more details and objects into the levels, and that can lead to a better immersion." Merseron added that, while he "would tend to think that HD-DVD has a brighter future," both standards are equally viable from a technical and business standpoint.
Besides storage capacity, one factor will likely determine whether gamers accept either new format: the price. Sony would not speak on the record about how the integration of Blu-ray technology would affect hardware and software prices for its next system. A Sony Blu-ray recorder currently goes for 224,000 yen ($2,049) in Japan, and blank Blu-ray discs run about 2,700 yen ($25), according to Blu-ray.com.
Henricksson is quick to downplay the potential effects such high costs might have on developing Blu-ray-enabled video game hardware. "The major cost factor of Blu-ray players/recorders are the blue-laser diodes, so the prices of Blu-ray-based products won't come down until they begin mass production of blue-laser components. Sony hopes to drive up the production volumes with sales of the PS3 in the same way they did when they adopted DVD for the PS2."
As for the discs themselves, a PowerPoint presentation released by the Blu-ray Disc Founders Association estimates production costs for BD-ROMs at roughly 110 percent of current DVD production costs. The increase comes from a slight jump in material costs, while estimated costs for manufacture and distribution of BD-ROMs remain consistent with those for DVDs.
Concrete data for potential HD-DVD costs is harder to come by, but Bill Hunt, editor of technology Web site The Digital Bits and a proponent of unified DVD standards, said any cost difference would be minimal in the long run. "Current DVD/CD production lines would have to be modified more for Blu-ray Disc than HD-DVD, but as economies of scale come into play, the difference will quickly evaporate."
And what of Nintendo? The always-secretive system maker (which didn't respond to requests for comment) bucked the industry trend by supporting a proprietary 1.5GB minidisc format for the GameCube. McNealy feels that Nintendo may make a similar move in the next generation of consoles. "Nintendo likes to make hardware that is not too expensive in order to keep the pricing down," he said. "Further, Nintendo's traditional strengths have been in software development, not hardware development, so cutting-edge hardware is not likely compared with Microsoft and Sony."
The standards each company chooses for its next console could have implications outside the video game realm as well. Just as the huge installed base of PS2 users partially drove the success of DVDs, the next dominant system might break the stalemate for high-definition movie formats. "The PS3 will obviously sell a huge number of units, and you can bet the [movie] studios aren't going to ignore that built-in market," Hunt said. Merseron pointed out that Sony's potential acquisition of MGM's movie lineup would also help push the Blu-ray standard in that market.
In the end, McNealy said, it might be a previous format war that provides the best template for the current one. "Go back to the days of VHS and Betamax," he said. "Why didn't all the companies involved choose just one standard? The market decided."
Whether it's Blu-ray, HD-DVD, or some other standard, what the market will decide this time around is still very much up in the air.
Whoever wants this set, pm me and I'll look at your list. I want to get rid of this set as fast as possible so please hurry and offer. I'll take mostly any offer that is reasonable. If ya wanna buy it, then the price will be 20 dollars. ^_^. But other dvds are fine ^^
wow, i remember when fansubs.net was the hotspot for all anime collectors of vhs to hang out in. I even remember my first fansub was "end of evangelion" from mokkori anime (who was called something else) and was always so busy fulfilling orders that you were on queue for about a month before you got your tapes. Innocent days..........
Specifically, what are the best US based sites to buy R1 DVDs. Price, service, shipping cost and times, did any packages get stopped by customs?
I usually use amazon.ca and their prices are OK (service could be better though) but since the US/Canadian dollar exchange rate is so low I want to buy from the US directly cause it will be much cheaper.
