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Compilers, emulators, flash cartridges, and sample code are real as well.

Congress could repeal the copyright laws tomorrow, if you could get enough votes to do so.

Actually, repealing huge chunks of Title 17, United States Code, would take two years and about 10 months, as that's how long it would take to cycle out a majority of representatives and senators in the Congress. Those who have held their offices since 1997 or before have showed by their unanimous consent to the Bono Act and the DMCA that many of them are so bought-and-paid-for that they won't listen to letters from those who care about the rights of users of works.

more Americans use peer-to-peer networks than voted for George Bush.

I'll vote based on my research of the issues from a broad spectrum of sources. However, too many people vote based mostly on what they see on news networks owned by the movie studios, who have an economic interest in stifling discussion about rolling back the scope and duration of copyright. In addition, both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party seem bought and paid for; not enough people have considered a third party to be able to get even four-tenths of the vote in any given House district.

ranging from speaking out

Such as handing out leaflets in support of a boycott of The Walt Disney Company?

to practicing civil disobedience.

What about this civil disobedience?

For the record, I do think anyone who sells ROM CDs and/or emulators they did not develop, is nothing but scum.

Two emulators that I use for testing my own GPL'd homebrew ROMs are themselves GPL'd, and I have every right to sell CDs containing the emulator source code, its binary, my homebrew ROM source code, and its binary. Am I scum or an exception?

For the record, I do think anyone who sells ROM CDs and/or emulators they did not develop, is nothing but scum.

Two emulators that I use for testing my own GPL'd homebrew ROMs are themselves GPL'd, and I have every right to sell CDs containing the emulator source code, its binary, my homebrew ROM source code, and its binary. Am I scum or an exception?

Now, there's likely was that a multi-platform emulator can step around this limitation, like requiring the user to declare which emulation mode is to be used

Two words: Filename extension. On my computer, I have .nes set to launch FCE Ultra, .bin set to launch a DGen, and .gba set to launch VisualBoyAdvance.

I don't think there are any freeware Game Boy Advance games in circulation yet.

You think wrong. In fact, I myself have made some and have run them on hardware.

You can legally copy your cartriges to your computer (if you can) to make a backup copy that could later be used to restore a lost or damaged cartrige

I can also make copies and adaptations necessary to run a program on a given computer (17 USC 117).

The moral justifiation that you can download from the internet what you legally have another copy of is not a legal one.

The defense of owning a lawful copy (that is, an original Game Pak) does shift the burden of proof to the copyright owner to prove that the alleged infringer was not capable of making the copy, which raises a question of fact that can preclude summary judgment. The seventh amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that civil suits where at least $20 is at stake will go before a jury, which brings into the picture jury nullification of copyright technicalities such as the DMCA.

Of course, nothing you read on Slashdot is legal advice; only your attorney can provide that.

Just because Hollywood got started by violating Edison's patent rights does not mean ... that because their business began by defrauding Edison, you have the right to infringe on their rights.

There does exist the unclean hands doctrine. I acknowledge that it probably does not apply to the legal technicalities of infringing copyrights of an industry built on infringing patents, but it likely applies to their moral aspects. Likewise, the fact that the major corporate sponsor of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act could not have published Pinocchio in the early 1940s or The Jungle Book in the 1960s if the Bono Act were in effect at those times argues against the moral legitimacy of the Bono Act.

Civil disobedience - eat that Mr. Eisner.

Well, that's partly because Tetris Worlds is the only Tetris game for the GCN

It appears you have never heard of the Game Boy Player. I know of at least Tetris, Tetris Flash (aka Tetris 2), Bombliss (aka Tetris Blast), Panel de Pon (which was published in the USA as Tetris Attack though it has nothing to do with Tetris except in name), and Tetris DX. ObXbox: With a modchip, you can emulate Game Boy games on your Xbox.

and it's a steaming pile of crap.

Full agreement. Even Tetramino, a homebrew Tetris clone for NES, is more fun that Tetris Worlds. ObXbox: With a modchip, you can emulate NES games on your Xbox.

As far as I'm concerned, The New Tetris for the N64 is currently the pinnacle of Tetris games.

If you liked The New Tetris, you'll love Tetanus On Drugs for GBA. Same scoring system, same gold and silver squares, and now with screen distortions. ObXbox: I almost wish the Xbox had a tetramino game that good.

Well, that's partly because Tetris Worlds is the only Tetris game for the GCN

It appears you have never heard of the Game Boy Player. I know of at least Tetris, Tetris Flash (aka Tetris 2), Bombliss (aka Tetris Blast), Panel de Pon (which was published in the USA as Tetris Attack though it has nothing to do with Tetris except in name), and Tetris DX. ObXbox: With a modchip, you can emulate Game Boy games on your Xbox.

and it's a steaming pile of crap.

Full agreement. Even Tetramino, a homebrew Tetris clone for NES, is more fun that Tetris Worlds. ObXbox: With a modchip, you can emulate NES games on your Xbox.

As far as I'm concerned, The New Tetris for the N64 is currently the pinnacle of Tetris games.

If you liked The New Tetris, you'll love Tetanus On Drugs for GBA. Same scoring system, same gold and silver squares, and now with screen distortions. ObXbox: I almost wish the Xbox had a tetramino game that good.

Nemo: Where'd that stupid monkey go?

Which Nemo are you talking about? Top one's from LXG; middle one appeared in Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland; bottom one's a fish and can't talk to above-grounders except in Dr. Seuss world.

Sarge: I shot him.

Where did 3DO come into this?

I was thinking more along the lines of Dr. Mario, which you can play online in a Java applet or download for your GBA emulator.

You can "save the address for later use" once you get a reply back. Still, I can see how having no immediate way to archive all outgoing form mail would pose a problem. Should I modify my form-mail script (online demo; source code not yet published) to bcc the sender?

If you want to get in shape, you're supposed to play StepMania, not Tetanus On Drugs.

That's far worse than eternal damnation, it's eternal copyright!

TI doesn't have Mode 7.

Without Mode 7, you can't play Tetanus On Drugs.

Begun, the flame wars have.

Bingo.

I think the inclusion of one [major free X11 desktop environment] over the other should NOT be made primarily on Religious/political grounds, but on Technical ones.

Issues that some might characterize as "Religious/political" may more precisely be "economic." Perens would have one believe that it's less expensive to build and deploy an in-house GTK+ app than an in-house Qt app. If an app contains trade secrets, then GTK+'s weaker copyleft lets the app stay in-house, whereas Qt Proprietary costs four figures per developer per version, and Qt Free gives your employees the right to leak anything produced using it. In addition, even for apps that don't bear trade secrets, GTK+ is ported natively to a particular immensely popular proprietary operating system, whereas Qt Free needs the heavyweight Cygwin layer.

Tetanus on Drugs

In a nutshell, we move bandwidth and space-consuming model and texture data from RAM and disc media, where it is time-consuming to load, to super-fast ROM, contained within the GPU itself.

The Intellivision console actually tried storing 3/4 of its textures in ROM, which is why so many of the games for InTV look the same. I originally thought this was true of the NES as well, what with the uppercase Latin font being identical across so many early NES games and with early Game Boy games having a different font altogether, but the first time I went ROM hacking, I realized this wasn't true.

Speaking of ROM hacking, if you really did work at Nintendo, I'd be sued by now.

Specifically, we're embedding data for Mario, Luigi, Donkey Kong, the Princess, and Link into ROM.

Wouldn't the Bowser model be more detailed than the Mario model, requiring more of a load time and becoming more of a candidate for on-console caching?

Another objection: ROM is slow and expensive; hard disk drives, as used in the Xbox console, are much cheaper and still faster than typical DVD-ROM. Couldn't the game keep the models on the disc and then cache them on the HD, possibly sharing models between a pre-installed Smash Bros. 3 and many of Nintendo's other flagship titles?

Or like saying Tetanus On Drugs is "heavily inspired" by actual experiences with hallucinogens.

I've found Tetris to be a head-to-head favorite

Better yet: Tetanus On Drugs. You'll feel like you're drunk and/or high, even when you're sober.

so the only work you can do is in computers?

That's where my degree is, a B.S. in computer science. I've been advised by my employment counselor not to consider minimum-wage jobs such as flipping burgers or being a cashier because such jobs wouldn't make ends meet anyway.

You seem to have time to play games.

I'm between having graduated and finding my first job. What else can I do to keep my body in good physical shape while waiting for a decent job lead?

Can you program in VB or VC++?

I could probably work with Microsoft Visual C++, but not VB. And it has to be in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Here's my resume. Know of any good leads?

Also, did you ever hear of a thing called telecommuting?

I'm not familiar with the logistics of telecommuting. Would an employer pay for the upgrade from residential broadband to business broadband, required by the local cable company's AUP for all telecommuters? And wouldn't I have to be flown out to headquarters for training?

There are plenty of programs out there that will capture your computer's audio output.

They won't work with Windows Media Player, whose Secure Audio Path requires audio output drivers to 1. be signed by Microsoft WHQL and 2. turn off cleartext digital outputs. Read more

Tuit taken; get freepuzzlearena

I wrote an NES ROM for Nibbles because Windows 2000 and XP likes FCE Ultra better than it likes QBasic.

Hollywood only writes the copyright laws, they don't actually obey them themselves!

Darn right. Had the copyright terms established by the Bono Act been in effect when Disney was making its classic films, we definitely wouldn't have Disney's Pinocchio or Disney's The Jungle Book in the form that we know them. The original authors' estates would have demanded artistic control over the works (as seen in Disney's licensed films such as The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and Tarzan) and a hefty cut of the gross box office income.

You feed them enough food to be able to eat them.

Disclaimer: I am a GBA programmer.

GCC, VisualBoy Advance, (checks wallet) = Free.

GBA flash card = easy to obtain ($112 incl shipping), but not free(beer). GBA multiboot slave cable = also easy to obtain ($26 incl shipping) or build, but not free(beer)

[The difficulty of distribution of your program on a Game Pak] is only a problem if you live in the fantasy world of making money off of your video games.

Otherwise, how would a game programmer eat?

My own web site is prior art to claim 25 of this patent. Here's how access to a web site running on Apache HTTP Server goes:

25. A method for asset management using the World Wide Web, comprising: accessing the World Wide Web through a series of computer-related hardware devices connected to a network;

People visit the web site, looking for a recently released open-source NES game.

transferring information regarding each computer-related hardware device in said series of computer-related hardware devices to a remote storage medium;

Web browsers send User-agent: HTTP headers to the web site whenever pulling a file.

compiling information related to said series of computer-related hardware devices derived from said information residing on said remote storage medium;

Apache collects User-agent: information in a log file.

and preparing and disseminating reports compiled from said information.

The web site uses Webalizer to produce reports from the server logs, and the webmaster digests the reports into posts on the site's news page.

My own web site is prior art to claim 25 of this patent. Here's how access to a web site running on Apache HTTP Server goes:

25. A method for asset management using the World Wide Web, comprising: accessing the World Wide Web through a series of computer-related hardware devices connected to a network;

People visit the web site, looking for a recently released open-source NES game.

transferring information regarding each computer-related hardware device in said series of computer-related hardware devices to a remote storage medium;

Web browsers send User-agent: HTTP headers to the web site whenever pulling a file.

compiling information related to said series of computer-related hardware devices derived from said information residing on said remote storage medium;

Apache collects User-agent: information in a log file.

and preparing and disseminating reports compiled from said information.

The web site uses Webalizer to produce reports from the server logs, and the webmaster digests the reports into posts on the site's news page.

The results were very Tetris-like. Anyone know what I did wrong?

You forgot to do drugs.

...Nemo?

Windows Media Audio with digital restrictions management encoding is encrypted, and it's decrypted, decompressed, and output through a Secure Audio Path (explanation). But because these services do in fact allow recording audio to a CD-RW disc, the limitation of no direct transcoding to MP3 is only a minor hurdle.

Correct. IAAGBASD[1], and the Flash2Advance carts are currently the way to go for almost anything you'd want to use a flash cart for.

[1] I am a Game Boy Advance software developer.

And, just what hardware can you buy at $99 that grants you the ability to play every PS2 game?

Not even a PS2 can play every PS2 game. Unlike PCs, PS2 consoles have region lockout. One would need either three PS2 consoles (one each for Europe, USA, and Japan) or non-US citizenship to defeat this region lockout.

Look into the underground GBA development market sometime. You may be surprised at what you find.

Yes, I'm part of the thriving GBA scene, but you seem to forget grandparent's "1. Graphics are inferior" complaint. PC graphics even on a laptop beat GBA graphics because the GBA is a 2D system and does all 3D in software at 120x80 pixels. In addition, it costs an extra $100 for a flash cartridge to be able to run full-size homebrew programs on the GBA.

Look at what came of the Dreamcast.

I'd get into Dreamcast development, but the amateur development kit for the Dreamcast (KOS) isn't well documented. Neither is OpenXDK.

Neither consoles nor PCs are the best thing since sliced bread.

those rights work very differently from other property rights. For example, they expire. You should think of them more as a temporary contract

Temporary? Trademarks registered in the USPTO don't expire as long as the holder keeps filling the meter, and neither do trade secrets. Copyrights will not expire in the United States as long as The Walt Disney Company continues to use proceeds from home video sales to pay off legislators. In other words, only patents expire.

If the sound out port was turned off you couldn't listen to your encrypted song. How do you think the audio signal gets to your speakers? through the sound out port.

The audio signal gets to your speakers through the signed driver and the sound out port. A signed driver will disable all cleartext digital audio outputs when the Secure Audio Path is open, and if an app can't find a signed driver, it will display an alert box and not play the restricted recording.

Disney made the Bono Act and bribed the U.S. Congress into rubber-stamping it. Disney helped in lobbying for the DMCA. I don't want to support Michael Eisner any more than I have to.

In other words: I'll wait for the video and rent it, just as I am doing with Finding Nemo , and I encourage anybody who respects the public domain to do the same.

An example of such a form can be found on my web site. It's a lot more likely than a picture of an e-mail address to conform to section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.

However, for people on ad-supported web accounts without a solid form mail script, what solution do you suggest?

The following law citations refer to laws in effect in the United States. Your jurisdiction may or may not have laws of similar effect. Nothing you read on Slashdot is legal advice.

he suggests something quite sensible about graphical email addresses on web sites

How is this "sensible" under section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act? Users behind non-graphical user agents, such as users with vision disabilities, cannot turn a picture of an e-mail address into an e-mail address.

I, on the other hand, open first contact through a web form that spambots looking for @-signs can't pick up but which remains accessible to anybody whose non-graphical web browser supports HTML forms.

and that piglet game, well, it's piglet!

Problem: Piglet's current owner is pro Bono.

You meant delete all e-mail containing HTML tags.

You're right about one thing. Almost all spam I get is HTML e-mail, and almost all HTML e-mail I get is spam. Trouble is, I can't just block HTML e-mail because people who are first contacting me about one of my web sites may have not changed Outlook Express's compose settings, which default to "rich text" (HTML). What would be a good way for me to deal with this?

American culture is incredibly rich and rewarding ... George Gerswhin

So now you're approving of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act? Next to The Walt Disney Company, the Gershwin estate was one of the biggest forces in lobbying for the Bono Act.

Each and every firewall/nat box I have worked with supports reverse port mapping, DMZ, or uPnP.

This doesn't help when your ISP doesn't provide an affordable Internet access plan that forwards incoming connections to your network. Switching ISPs is not generally an affordable option either unless you're willing to take a 25-fold reduction in download throughput.

Dialup + dedicated phone line: $40 [...]
Last internet bill: $46

DSL setup fee: $200,000

You have to watch nearly the entire movie

30 MB at 16 MB per hour? I watched it (and liked it) because I'm lucky enough to live in an area that offers high-speed Internet access, but some people don't have either nearly two hours to sit and wait for a movie to download or $200,000 for the broadband setup fee.

You're forgetting the network adaptor, it's relativley simple to get the PS2 to access shares on another computer.

Which means you have to own another computer and either 1. put it in the game room or 2. drill holes in the wall to pull CAT5 through.

You also have the internet availiable.

At 4.5 KBytes/s down and 2.5 KBytes/s up? Please. And no, not everybody has $200,000 to spare.

You conveniently left out, via the "...", the part where it says "for a limited time".

So did Congress and the Supreme Court. Point?

You admit that a $200,000 setup fee isn't "a few bucks more." Thank you; most people miss this.

But what about people who are so mobile that they need to be able to jack in and access the Internet from any of several locations, and they can't afford the price of a broadband subscription for each location? I was in just that situation for four years. Dial-up has the advantage of a last mile in almost every home in the States, brought to you by the Universal Service Tax, meaning that no matter whose house I was visiting, I could always plug my laptop into the wall and dial my Verizon Online account.

Please don't advertise The Walt Disney Company on a web site that advocates free speech and copyright reform. Disney has horrible track record concerning ethics.

ObTopic: Yogurt does a body good.

I'm going to display civil disobedience by commiting an act of copyright infringement.

I already have.

The only way I can listen to it via mp3 is to, yup, download an 'illegal' mp3!

Or do what I do: reproduce it over analog. The noise added by .ogg encoding overwhelms the ADC noise floor. The RIAA will never succeed in copy-protecting audio.