1 This sounds like a job for Tagon's Toughs (with predictable results).

2 I love the way that everyone is so distracted by Gruelle that they fail to question the fact that she has met Marika's dad face-to-face and trusts him as someone to run away to; when did that happen, hmmm?

(and definitely Gruelle rather than Gruier, especially with a little sister named Grunhilde)

-j

3 Regarding Marika's father: Isn't it strange that we (and Marika) have never seen any picture of him? Her mom came up when she did her net search on pirates, and so did Chiaki's dad, but no picture of Marika's father, at all? None on the ship, none in any research, no picture of him in her home.

All I can conclude from that is that he's going to show up again sometime and we (and Marika) are not supposed to recognize him when it happens.

Anyway, this ep adds to the mystery about him.

4 So the short one with the ponytail is a younger sister? I had convinced myself it was a younger brother.

5 Misa also had a strange reaction when ...the Princess commented that she'd like to wear the Captain's uniform.  Any chance that Marika's father had an affair in Serenity after breaking up with her mom?

6

Now that is an interesting thought...

7 Marika herself suddenly turned a bit snity when the Princess suggested she'd like to wear her uniform. I thought that's what the reaction was to.  A bit of insecurity there, I was thinking.

8 Not insecurity. It's an inappropriate request. It's like asking to sit in the captain's seat. It's something you have to earn.

9 Yes, it was an inappropriate request, but her response was too immediate and too emotional.  Too visceral.  I feel there was something more to it than that, especially given the emotional tone of a moment before.

10 What is that that Mami says to Marika after they agree on Take out?  It's translated as Got it, but its a longer phrase I've not heard (though, admittedly, my japanese is *extremely* basic)

11

I can't tell for sure, having listened to it five times, but I think she's using a conjugation of the verb makaseru which means "to rely  on". The last thing that Marika says is "makaseta" which is also that verb and means "I'm relying on you". I think Mami is saying "You can rely on me" or something to that effect.

But I could be wrong about that.

12 If anyone wants to help, it's at about 12:30 in episode 8.

13 Just noticed your question. Mami's sing-song word is "makasarete", roughly "leave it to me". (te-form of the passive conjugation of makasu; makaseru is usually listed as a separate verb, but it's also the potential form of makasu)

-j

14 Thank you both!

1 Huh, I didn't know Mote got a sequel.  Does it avoid the potential-aesop the end of Mote had ( "All civilization is Malthusianly doomed!" )?

2 It's nothing like that. The only other thing I'll say about it is that the main (human) characters are Kevin Renner and Horace Bury. Which is the main reason I liked it more: Renner is a lot more interesting character than Rod Blaine.

3 The sequel isn't as good as the original, but several of the original supporting cast get fleshed out in fun ways.

As for the missing Moon, I suspect the most recent dead-tree contract included an ebook clause that conflicts with getting it on the Kindle.

-j

4 It really is interesting what is or is not available in the Kindle store, how much it costs, etc.  Some things I've seen really do drive home the odd thinking that must be going on in the publishing industry.

I have a hard copy library of thousands of books, mostly hardcovers.  When I started heavily reading on my tablet, and using the kindle app for PC, I more or less stopped buying dead tree books.  Some publishers, notably Baen, are fully willing to support this, you can get the ebook the day of release, or in many cases an advance copy months before the paper release, in either case for less than the cost of the hardcover.  Pretty much the entire Baen catalog is available in ebook format.

Other publishers either don't release the ebook until months after the publish date, or want to charge the same price as the dead tree hardcover version.  I'm sorry, that's not happening.

And then you get to how they handle the back catalog.  There are certain series that I have in dead tree that I'd be perfectly happy to buy again in electronic version so I have access on the tablet, away from home, etc.   But for most of my stuff, unless it's from Baen the odds are that either it's entirely unavailable, or only the most recent book in the series is available, and in either case it's going to cost more than a good quality used paperback at Powells.

Some publishers get the concept: take the old manuscript, spend a little effort putting it into a simple electronic format, scan in the cover art, charge a few dollars, easy money.  But most of them simply can't grasp that.  I just want to bang my head on the desk when I see something like Tor spending the time and effort to do a complete re-release of the Wheel of Time series with new cover art specific for the e-books, taking a couple of years to work through the whole series, and then not having the e-book available on day of release for the latest editions.

So here I am, a good customer, with money in hand and willing to spend it, and they don't seem to be interested.  And yet they are upset and flailing around pointing fingers everywhere at their collapsing profit margins...

5 King David's Spaceship and Outies are also not on Kindle. How are those compared to Mote and Hand?

6 King David's Spaceship isn't in the Kindle store, but you can get it direct from Baen and either email it to your kindle or do a file copy.

http://www.baenebooks.com/p-575-king-davids-spaceship.aspx

And Outies is in the Kindle store:
http://www.amazon.com/Outies-Mote-Gods-Eye-ebook/dp/B004FGMURG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1330125174&sr=8-2

7 I was not terribly impressed with King David's Spaceship.  I haven't read Outies.

8 Dream Park had at least a couple of sequels, no idea if they are available on Kindle. Not as good as the original but still a fair bit of enjoyment value in them.

9 I didn't really care for the Dream Park sequels. But the original book was a masterpiece, and I will eventually buy it.

10 Steven, if you want a dead-tree copy of Moon, let me know... I've got three.

11 Thanks, but I think I'm OK. (I can't really read books any more because of my eyes.)

12 How would the Kindle be for reading manga?

13

Well mostly it would be about like reading one of those shrunken manga that are the size of a DVD case. The screen is even smaller than that.

But if it was created right, you could zoom in, and manually pan, and then it might be better.

14

I was going to try to show you how it looks. When the Kindle is connected to my PC via USB, I can access the file structure. There's a directory called "Pictures", and I copied one page of the Negima scanlation into it.

But having done that, I can't figure out how to access it from the Kindle GUI. I wonder if that directory is an artifact of the basic Android system, and isn't used in the Kindle.

15 OK, found it. You go into "Apps" and choose "Gallery".

16

The Negima PNG I used as an example is 1119x1600. The top example shows the whole page, and it is definitely readable. The bottom shows what it looks like if you zoom in by hitting the magnifying glass icon twice.

You can get variable zoom by using two fingertips and moving them apart, so it's possible to get zoom levels in between those two. If there's a way to say "100%", I haven't found it yet.

17 That might be an acceptable way to read manga then.  I have a problem with Akamatsu's work even on computer screens.  He tends to put a lot of very small text next to background characters.  The upper left panel has examples of this. I find it impossible to read in printed manga, and very difficult on a monitor -- I often have to load it into MS paint and zoom.

18 Does double-tap on the image do what you want?

19 It does the same thing as the magnifying-glass icon, which is to say it doubles the size irrespective of the true resolution.

20 My understanding of the Kindle publishing model, at least for big publishers, is that when the files got over a certain size, as they would in anything graphics-heavy, they start having data transmission costs, to the point where it would not be a cost-effective substitute for say, Comic Books.  Although it was a few years ago when i read this, and it may have changed.

1 I'm sorry, I'd have more to say, but I keep locking up from cognitive dissonance every time I put the words "Canada" and "culture" together in the same sentence. I've made it to "export" twice, but suffered 501 errors both times.

2 If we can't make fun of short people, fat people, and Canadians, then what good are they?

3 Well, I am an American living and working in Canada for the past 8 years -- close enough? And I'm pretty hefty around the middle, too, if that helps.

I was not aware of the Canadian angle to Harlequin romances. My mom went through those things by the dozen every month. After she passed away, we packed her collection up to give to one of her friends who also loved the things. We filled a good-sized rental truck completely, and still had a few hundred left over. Literally thousands upon thousands of the things. No idea how she could stand to read them.

1 I wonder if you'll be able to run YOU ARE HERE on 'em.

2 Why terrified? Location-tracking? Cyber-ghosts? "Must-buy-shiny-new-gadget" impulse?

3 Minority Report has something that will show you what this will likely to entail.  Whatever you're looking at, you'll have commercial specifically generated to just you.  

4 While I hardly want to be bombarded with advertisements everywhere, advertisements specifically targeted would be a nice improvement.  Certainly better than walking past a speaker and having it blare out something like "David, buy our medicines and you can have.....".  Of course, "David, new videos for you!  Nekomimi ninja robot maids in their panties!" wouldn't be much better....

5 Actually, in the movie, I believe those ads were personal-only, using multiple directional emitters and interference waves to basically spot-beam both video and audio straight into the victim's eyes and ears with minimal disruption to passers-by, who were receiving their own "treatment".

That said, you can do the same thing a lot more easily if you can get people to put on a pair of glasses with earbuds and displays built in.

6 I can kind of see a use for this for things like navigation, shopping (make my list at home, then check off items as I look at the bar codes when I put them in my cart,  etc.  Hoever, I'll only consider this if they fit over my prescription glasses, and I have TOTAL control over what appears on the heads display.  If there's even one pop-up or ad, I will never buy them.

7

Well, as they say, if you get a service for free then you are the product being sold.

If it acted the way you describe, then you'd have to pay a subscription for the service.

1 It is indeed a very formal apology.
http://rut.org/cgi-bin/j-e/dosearch?sDict=on&H=PS&L=J&T=moshiwakearimasen&WC=none&FG=r&BG=b&S=26
"Wake" is a nebulous word that sort of means "situation", "circumstance", "what we're talking about". Also seen in phrases like "Sono wake ja nai!" ("that's not right/the case at all!"), frequently shouted by embarrassed haremettes.

2 申し訳する ("moushiwake suru") means "say apologies". So, "moushiwake ga arimasen" means "there are no words of apology" literally, but actually means that there are no adequate words of apology for such an eggregious fault.

3 Thanks! I missed that the first syllable was long. With that knowledge, I found it in the dictionary.

4 Odd that the dictionary uses it with Arimasen, instead of the more formal Gozaimasen.

What's next?  Moshiwake ja nai, yo!

1 Not sure if your questions are rhetorical.

Oracle bought Sun primarily for Java. In the same transaction they also snatched Solaris, MySQL, and OpenOffice. They wanted Solaris in order to provide an integrated OS stack under their database and application suite, which was completely proprietary. This was especially acute for them as their clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux was a dramatic failure. MySQL was also hurting them badly.

IBM spun off a lot of their hardware business after the "rebirth". Not just little known divisious like hard drives. I am writing this on a Lenovo T400. I don't think anyone is going to buy the rest any time soon though. On the contrary, they are likely to buy what's left of HP.

2 During the height of Microsoft's power, when everybody and their dog was accusing them of being an unstoppable monopoly, Bill Gates said something to the effect that no company had ever held the top spot through two revolutionary sea-changes in the same industry, and that if MS worked very hard, and was very lucky, they *might* become the first.

They didn't.  In fact, their play into the ultrabook/tablet market this fall may be their last chance to recover that position.  Sure, they may have the most PC OS sales for decades to come, but if the PC market shrinks and fades away in a transition to convergence devices, what good does that do them?

I do give Wintel a pretty decent chance of pulling off a comeback, but MS cannot afford another Vista (or worse, ME), or there'll be another big-name brand on your list in our lifetimes.  Intel, I think, has a stronger hand on their side, and may surprise the ARM market in a few years.

3

Microsoft has spent the last ten years desperately trying to diversify, and pretty much entirely failed. They've been trying to get into pocket computers and/or phones for most of that time -- remember WinCE? They tried to challenge for the game console business, and while XBox is competitive it hasn't taken over the business. And then there was MSNBC. And they tried to challenge for the portable music player market. They also tried to compete with AOL, and they continue to this day to try to compete with Google.

The desktop PC isn't going anywhere any time soon, so Microsoft isn't facing extinction, but it's hard to see what they bring to any other table. About the best they've ever done in any of those was to turn into a stable also-ran. They're #2 behind Google with Bing. They're #2 behind Sony with XBox. They're probably #3 behind Apple with their MP3 player, whatever it was called. WinPhone is losing to Android. And so on.

As to HP, that company doesn't deserve that name. The HP I know (and that I competed against when I worked at Tektronix) is now called Agilent, and it really should have gotten the HP name, leaving the other part to be called Compaq, because that's what was left. No thank you, Carly Fiorina.

4 Wait.. Somebody named a product that wasn't pepper spray WinCE?

Bing...Bing...Bing...Oh.

5 The potential transition of everything to phone/tablets/etc has huge potential for impact on my industry, so we've been watching it and trying to figure out our strategy of what platform to support, how strongly, when, etc.  It's interesting to see that pretty much everyone agrees that from an OS perspective, Windows7 phone is far superior to the Android or iOS systems, and yet there is little to no market penetration.  The previews of Windows 8 indicate that it's going to be quite amazing, but lots of people are unsure if the hardware pipeline is going to drag Microsoft down to failure again.  As much as many of us techies have despised the closed Apple platform, it does help them in circumstances like this.  And I suspect that's the driver behind Google looking at Motorola, the Motorola phones are already more or less the 'official' droids, and it makes a certain amount of sense to tighten that up even further.

I have to disagree with your statement that MS is behind Sony with the XBox.  They're ahead in worldwide sales, and the developers and buzz all seem to on the XBox side, and have been for some time.  Only in Japan does the PS/3 still dominate, and the trend even there is that the XBox360 is finally being taken seriously and is selling in large numbers.  And the WII actually blows them both away in terms of worldwide and Japanese sales numbers.

6 XBox Kinect was revolutionary in expanding the market, in ways Wii Fit only dreamt about. What they lack is a gaming portable.

7 The interesting parts of Motorola were mostly already spun off into Freescale; Google are buying Motorola Mobility, just the cell phone division.  And I expect that's mostly for the patent portfolio, given the way lawsuits have been flying around recently.

8

Microsoft has hooked up with Nokia, which has announced that all its phones will use WinPhone from now on. Nokia has fallen on hard times recently. Time was when they were the brand to beat in the phone business, but it ain't like that now, and Android is a lot of the reason why.

So maybe that partnership will be a win for both companies.

But with WinPhone, Microsoft's big problem is that Google is giving Android away for free. WinPhone can't be, else there would be no point in Microsoft even bothering to do it.

Google's business strategy is to try to make internet access as common, as cheap, and as easy as possible. They're trying to make internet access devices into commodities, because the more people who are online, the more money Google makes from advertising.

So it actually makes sense for them to invest in Motorola's phone business, including picking up their patent portfolio. It doesn't make sense for them to use those patents to squeeze competitors, and I don't expect they will.

That's why they developed Android and then gave it away.

9 Google apparently did buy Motorolay Mobility at least partially for the patents--this gives them a chance at fighting some of Apple's ridiculous patents with some of their own.
Interestingly, apparently some of the Android phone makers, HTC at least, have licensed some Microsoft patents, and there's a theory out there that MS may actually be making more money on each individual Android phone than on each Windows Phone phone, at least from HTC.

10

I can believe that Google wants to use Motorola's patents as a wedge to get MS and Apple to loosen up the licensing  on their respective portfolios of relevant patents.

That would make perfect sense.

11 Supplementary reading: this post by Joel Spolsky explains Google's business strategy. (Though it doesn't mention Google.)

12  Microsoft's video gaming division has been a very big success. The only reason why Sony is ahead in the gaming console market in general is the huge sales of the Playstation 2 before the launch of the original XBox.

Microsoft is Number 2 in the current game console generation behind Nintendo. Sony lags behind both. That Sony has any large share of the video game market came despite their efforts, not because of them. With the exception of the price cuts for the PS3 and PSP (Which came far too late in the game.), every move Sony has made in its gaming division of this generation has required at least one failed attempt before they made the right decision. Meanwhile Microsoft has taken the lead in online gaming for consoles, which is not an insignificant achievement. Outside of Japan, Sony's share in the gaming industry is a distinctly underwhelming third.

If anything, it is easier to argue Microsoft is mostly where it wants to be in the console market.

13

I guess my knowledge of that market was out of date.

I do know that the primary goal of the PS3 for Sony was to get Bluray players in as many hands as possible. Anything they may have lost in the gaming industry, they've more than made up by killing off the HD-DVD format and making Bluray the new standard for video discs.

14 Nintendo may have the sales lead in the console market right now, but they have also backed themselves into a corner somewhat.  The Wii has sold such numbers in part by hitting the new "casual" market hard.  This has made them money, certainly, especially since they sold the Wii at above cost from day one.  However, they have more or less saturated the market, and its not at all clear whether they can actually sell a successor console to the people who bought the Wii to play Wii Sports or such.

As for Sony. . . I suspect your right, and they placed winning the format war above all else.  However, they screwed themselves when they decided to drop backward compatibility from the PS3.  Everyone else learned the lesson of the PS2, but Sony either didn't, or felt they had no choice.

15

The touting of the PS3 being used to push Blu-Ray always struck me as a case of Sony using the success of a lesser goal for the PS3 to divert attention from the failure of the console system at beating the XBox 360.  Given Sony's (continual) confusion in its remarks about whether the PS3, as well as the PSP, are gaming systems or entertainment units...I tend to be skeptical of what Sony actually wanted to achieve.

And we have not even gotten into the mistakes Sony apparently has not learned from yet, like PS2 backwards compatibility...

 

16 Sony certainly seemed to mis-step somewhere with Blu-Ray.  It has completely failed to stamp out DVDs, the way that DVDs wiped out VHS and laserdisc.  With up-converting DVD players, and the rise of streaming or mobile video, people just aren't willing to shell out extra for 10x the capacity... and Hollywood's tomfoolery seems to have killed the blank BR market, allowing HD and flash to dominate.

I don't know that Kinect will make MS a fortune (probably depends on the patents), but it certainly stands to make *some* folks working in garages a pile of money, especially when it comes out for PCs with a full dev kit.  Forget Google's "nod and tilt" GUI--imagine a pair of glasses where you see transparent 3D buttons in front of you, and you put your finger on one to select it--or use Kinect-based voice recognition, which I hear isn't far behind Siri, if at all.  Or a projector filling a way with an interactive display, a la MS Surface.

Minority Report?  Where we're going, we don't need gloves.

1 You might also want to double check with someone else who uses the Kindle.  That way you could distinguish targeted price increases from simply variable prices.

2 At first glance, it looks like mostly batch pricing set the day they uploaded each group of his books, with a few individually priced ones that the publisher thought stood out one way or another.

So, of the 9 books uploaded on July 9, 2010, Fer-de-Lance is 6.99,  Too Many Cooks and Please Pass the Guilt are 11.99, and the rest are 7.99.

-j

3

For what it's worth, I'm seeing the same pricing on those books, and I also see the "pricing set by the publisher" notice, which I guess means it's not Amazon jerking you around (that disclaimer isn't on every book).  No idea why the prices would be so different (for a shorter book, no less).  

I think Amazon used to have standardized pricing on all Kindle books, but the publishers threw a fit a while back and now they get to charge more (or less)...

4 Ran across this earlier today, and this post reminded me of it:

http://carlos.bueno.org/2012/02/bots-seized-control.html

One self-published author's adventures in robotic arbitrage.

1 Do they measure boys also?

2 Yes, they measure the boys as well; it just shows up less in the sort of anime we watch. Search for å­¦æ ¡ä¿å¥çµ±è¨ˆèª¿æŸ» (School Health Examination Survey), and you can find some of the data, such as this spreadsheet breaking down height and weight by grade over 1995-2010.

-j

3  Yeah, they do.

1 I'd really like to see a show that has an accidental compromising situation — except the girl doesn't freak out, and the boy doesn't melt in embarrassment.

I'm not even sure how I want that to work. I dunno, something like...these?

Both surprised, but... "I kinda like this. We should do more of it." "Maybe in private?"

Surprised and embarrassed at first, but bystander leering goads them both into honest smooching?

Girl enjoys the situation, but boy maintains his own dignity and the girl's because he actually does respect her, maybe? "Girl, if I ever grope you, you'll be awake, you'll be facing me, and you won't be carrying so many groceries you can't see where you're going."

It could be a fun setup, but it gets wasted time and time again. In exactly the same way. Boring.

2 There's an accidental compromising situation in the second episode of Nanoha StrikerS featuring Caro and Erio. It doesn't proceed like you were thinking; Caro just ignores it and treats it like the accident it was.

3 Sengoku Otome was fairly good.  Again, better than it had any right to be.  I liked the relationship between Mitsuhide and Nobunaga a lot.

4 "There's an accidental compromising situation in the second episode of Nanoha StrikerS featuring Caro and Erio. ...Caro just ignores it and treats it like the accident it was."

That doesn't sound like any fun; why did they bother?

5 They were attempting to establish that Caro is not your average anime bratty little girl.

6 I think it was precisely to underline that they weren't telling that kind of story. Virtually every character in the show is a complete innocent when it comes to romance (even to the point of implausibility when it comes to Nanoha and Fate.)

7 How about Kodaka from Haganai? Gets out of a couple of exposed-girl situations by steadfastly refusing to admit he saw anything...

8

I think it was precisely to underline that they weren't telling that kind of story. Virtually every character in the show is a complete innocent when it comes to romance (even to the point of implausibility when it comes to Nanoha and Fate.)

Except for the scene where Subaru molests Tia.

9 (delete this comment after reading, Steven)
FWIW, the font size in the piece changed almost per line in the second half of the post... at least for me.  I'm using Firefoxy and XP, and don't usually have difficulty with your formatting.

10 Wonderduck, should be fixed now.

11 When this happened in Princess Lover, the girl was mostly amused. Yuuko in the upcoming Tasogare Otome x Amnesia isn't fazed by anything involving her ghost body, but freaks out when her bones are seen.

1

This episode just wasn't as good as the last couple. But being the beginning of a plot arc, I suppose it really couldn't be. And the next episode certainly will be interesting.

I bet the stowaway is that blonde princess.

2 There were other things in this episode I didn't like. That hallway full of boxes, for example. In a warship, a major route like that should always be kept clear.

And I really, really didn't like the makup. For one thing, it seems like she's trying to imitate her mother.

3 We've secretly replaced their quality translation with Folgers Crystals. Let's see if anyone notices: "Bicentenary", "tokay", "Kat Marika", "shocker", ouch, ouch, ouch.

As for Marika, the makeup, speech-pattern change, and trigger-happy behavior are obviously a deliberate imitation of Mom (even adopting the "kaizoku no jikan!" line); she didn't take Schnitzer's advice, and IMHO she's going to have it rubbed in her face Real Soon Now. This ties in neatly with the chat between Mami and Chiaki.

And the condition of the ship? The crowded hallway that should be clear, the casual reaction to "bad shooting" and unexpected behavior by the escorts, etc, are giant flashing signs reading "complacency". The Bentenmaru has gotten fat and lazy on easy peacetime targets, and, as they say, "shit's about to get real".

-j

4 ...or maybe it's a trap for the fansub groups that just rip from Crunchyroll without even looking at the results.

-j

5

Re complacency: Another thing was discipline on the bridge during the attack. Everyone did what they felt like without asking Marika first, and they all seemed rather cocky.

6 Your complaint has been passed on, and a version 2 has been sent in.  And yes, it's more or less what you think it was. 

7 As a side note, I did like the makeup.  I can guarantee you it wasn't something she put on herself; that was heavy, noticeable blush intended to stand out at a distance.  It was something the crew did to make their pirate captain more attractive, and thus to make the piracy experience more enjoyable for their clients.

What bugs me is that the whole piracy thing is basically just one giant insurance fraud scam.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if 10% of those stolen valuables wound up back in the hands of the clients.

8 So maybe they are going to get attacked by warships paid for by the insurance companies? And anyway, I am skeptical that a large-scale insurance fraud can remain practical, because the danger of piracy surely drives the premiums through the roof.

9 My guess is that almost all of them do. The pirates effectively ransom all of it back to the insurance company.

10

As a side note, I did like the makeup. I can guarantee you it wasn't something she put on herself; that was heavy, noticeable blush intended to stand out at a distance.

Clearly it was stage makeup. But I don't think she needs it. Bentenmaru's schtick now is that their captain is a fresh young joshikousei. That makeup made her look like a hooker, which works against the schtick.

11 Are we really sure about this whole insurance fraud thing?  As business-like and coordinated as this whole arrangement is presented as being, it's hard to believe the insurance companies wouldn't know exactly what was going on.  The logical thing for them to do would be to simply charge higher premiums for the luxury liners that were likely to contract for the extra "pirate" service.  That would just be figured into the premium fees paid for by the rich passengers.  And it's not like they're absconding with tons of gold bullion, or something.  We're basically talking pocket change here.  Maybe with more information this'll make more sense, but right now...it just doesn't to me.

12 We're using that term rather loosely. It doesn't seem to be "fraud" specifically, since the insurance companies seem to be in on it.

But I think we'll learn more about it all later in the series.

13 Right.  That makes sense.  Another thought:  Doesn't it seem likely that the whole point of this "last-minute" high fee contract was to facilitate the transfer (escape?) of the stowaway?  Might also explain why the escort ships didn't surrender as quickly as they were supposed to, if their people were used to "guarding" this particular individual.

14 It's too soon to tell.

15 From the reactions of the passengers, I wouldn't be surprised if the they were forewarned to bring only valuables they were willing to part with.

16 Space piracy as theme park?

17 After watching the episode again the behavior of the bridge crew during the attack didn't bother me as much.  There was some small element of real danger involved, and that had to be the experienced crew's first concern.  In addition, Marika herself seemed to be taking the situation with a bit of complacency, and Misa may have thought it important to make that point, not only by commenting on it,  but also by showing how the situation should be dealt with.  Marika seemed to get the message, and stepped back up to the plate by the end.

18 Good points in #2.  The thing that bothered me the most out of it all was after the stowaway showed up, the dialog went something like this:

"An expert hacked our sensors to sneak on board."
"Are there any explosives?"
"No, the sensors don't report any."

I see a flaw in your logic there, Bentenmaru...

19 I've rewatched episodes 4, 5 and 6 lots of times, maybe as many as 10 each. Oddly enough I'm finding that I have no urge at all to watch ep 7 again.

20 I'm assuming that the "insurance company" consists of a cruise line employee who returns all the valuables at the end of the cruise, explaining that the fictitious "company" ransomed them back from the pirates. All part of the 'Pirates of the Caribbean in Space' experience.

21 Pixy, what just happened to that comment?

22 My guess would be that he did a copy-paste on your spoiler instructions and got the font formatting you put in them.