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Microsoft: No Xbox for You!
Markel writes "According this this story in the Sydney Morning Herald, Microsoft is very concerned about a man having been acquitted after allegedly selling [mod chips for a PlayStation]. So concerned in fact, that they are saying: change the law, or they will have to reconsider selling the Xbox in Australia. Not selling the Xbox is well within their rights, but putting it in a (I paraphrase slightly) "change the law or we'll .." context seems assuming a bit too much. I guess well see how many of our MPs are XBox gameheads."
The trial in question was actually about a man who sold PS2 mod chips to allow PS2s to play imported and copied games. Not some magical chip that allows the Xbox to play PS2 games.
:)
Excellent editing there.
The decision in the case (Kabushiki Kaisha Sony Computer Entertainment v Stevens [2002] FCA 906) is available here
This was the first attempted prosecution in Australia under the changes introduced in the Copyright Amendment (Digital Agenda) Act 2000, and Sony has vowed to appeal the above adverse decision to the full bench of the Federal Court.
The article is right, the summary on slashdot is wrong.
After all, who in their right mind would think you could make a modchip to make an Xbox play PS2 games? they're entirely different architectures. You might as well gut an XBox and a PS2 and put the whole innards into the XBox case.
Still, it would be cool... imagine how many final fantasy savegames you could fit onto that harddrive.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
They are only called Bruce by eachother, and only to keep things clear. Their real names are Eric.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Also, there are a number of other laws that contribute to this - reverse engineering is a legal right, so someone can build mod chips in Oz (where do you think the majority of Samba core developers are?). In addition, our local consumer & competition board are investigating the whole region locking thing. From the various news reports going around, it seems like they are about to make region locking illegal because it is classed as anti-competitive. If that does happen (probably >80% chance given previous actions of Prof Fels) then mod chips will most definitely be legal in Oz.
Life is complete only for brief intervals in between toys or projects -- John Dalton
Couple of items.
1) Now is a really, really bad time to be telling us what to do about our own laws. We are in a state of mourning over the Bali Terrorist attack. A foreign company telling us to change our laws will go down like a lead ballon. The desires of a company to sell products is right at the bottom of important things list.
2) The regional encoding is likely to illegal under the Trade Practices Act (similar to the US Anti-Trust law by wider ranging). Currrently the ACCC (the statutory authority assigned to oversea compliance with the TPA) is taking DVD producers to court over this very issue. If the ACCC wins then regional encoding of games will also be illegal.
That is possibly why the guy in australia got off. Their gov was doing an 'investigation' to decide whether sony was guilty of price fixing. Which they are; the whole idea is that people in different regions are willing/able to pay different amounts for a produce. They want their prices for each region to be as high as possible, without going over that region's consumer price limit.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
No, just the opposite -- publishers won't want to ship XBox games to a country where the console's no longer being sold, and consumers wouldn't want to buy a console that might have that happen. Besides that, if Microsoft would be making no effort to push the console there, even trying to hault it, wtf would be the reason for paying royalties to MS for whenever they sell a game in Australia?
Danish != nationality
funny i've been playing bf 1942 for a couple of weeks now online against real people on the pc, is microsoft going to have that gameplay avaiable in the xbox version
not very exclusive is it
So Sony's business model was "fucked up" too, eh? They're the ones who kicked the "sell console below cost and make it up in games" business model into high gear and now they're on top of the industry. Think before you rant.
A refugee is one who seeks refuge. Period. Illegal immigrants can be (and most are) refugees.
It was important for them to be shipped to other countries instead of Australia because, once they make it to Australia, they are able to make use of our legal system to stall their deportation, when found not to be legitimate refugess.
They are doing this anyway, and have so far stalled the legal systems of Australian and the islands they are being kept on, the islands are getting fed up and they will probably be shipped back to Australia soon. But of greater concern is Australia's policy of indefinite detention without charge for these people.
You make it sound like Australia is still repressing the Aboriginals. This is simply not true. Aboriginals infact are entitled to more government funded assistance than white Australians these days.
Just because the government throws a little more money at them than the average welfare cheque does not mean they are better off than white Australians. At the same time they continue to remove Aborigines from their land (remember the Wik Ten-point-plan?). Coincidence that about 90% of people in gaol in the northern territory are aboriginal? No oppresion any more?
We are not proud of our past, however I'm certain that nor are you of your country's past with slaves, but to suggest that we apologise for something that our ancestors have done is absurd.
If your friend's mother was to die, you would tell your friend `I'm Sorry'. This is in no way an admission that you killed his/her mother, but extending your compassion, and wishing to make your friend feel better. Or you could say `I didn't kill your mother, stop whining to me'. Socially acceptable?
This is a complicated issue, and will not be solved with simplistic attitudes like yours
But back to the topic...
Australia's Competition watchdog, the ACCC, recently said they were investigating the DVD zoning system on the grounds it was anti-competitive as it favoured the US movie industry unfairly at the expense of the Aussie move industry. Looks like Aussies have a bone to pick with American controlled uber-corporations telling us what to do.
"I think it would be a good idea" Gandhi, on Western Civilisation
from Dictionary.com
refugee Pronunciation Key (rfy-j)
n.
One who flees in search of refuge, as in times of war, political oppression, or religious persecution.
[French réfugié, from past participle of réfugier, to take refuge, from Old French, from refuge, refuge. See refuge.]
--
The term "refugee" is not determined by outsiders debating how valid someone's claim is. It is determined by the person's reason for leaving their home. Refugees flee war and persecution, so they may live where there is less potential harm. They don't even have to leave their country, if the fighting is very localized, but they are still rufugees from that violence. Generally they would like to return to their homes after the danger is over, but sometimes the danger is never over.
From Dictionary.com again, an immigrant is "A person who leaves one country to settle permanently in another." Immigrants don't intend to return to their homes. People who immigrated to the US from Europe often wanted to make a new life here, and knew they were going to stay. They intended to find someplace to live, work for money or develop a homestead on the frontier, and have a family in the US. Illegal immigrants follow some of the same thought, but they don't have the government's blessing to come into the country. However they are not fleeing war or persecution, they are going where the jobs are.
So, to summarize, if people from France moved to the UK for better jobs or living conditions, they would be immigrants. If they did so without the proper paperwork, they would be illigal immigrants. People who fled the genocides in Rwanda or Bosnia were refugees. They were refugees the moment they set foot on the road to leave home.
Not knocking you for turning away the refugees, simply setting the labels straight.
they have a policy of only releasing a game after translating it to the local language
Then why not simultaneously release in the United States and the United Kingdom?
They have to add all those U's.
.sig last updated Jan. 14, 2000
If it's anything like the UK market no-one would notice. My local store (one of a big chain) is now selling X-Boxen for £129 - about $200. That's down from £300 at launch. Furthermore it gives every indication that it's desperate to get rid of them. I even overheard two staff a few weeks ago desparing if they were ever going to shift *any* stock.
The shelf space allocated to X-Boxen games has been shrinking progressively in favour of the Gamecube and PS2. Even the demo consol in the shop is deserted - whenever I go in there's a big crowd around the PS2 and particularly Gamecube ones, but no-one ever seems to touch the X-Box.
Your milage may vary, but as far as the UK goes I'd say the X-Box is pretty much dead.
If you allow yourself to be bullied, you'll just be handing over your dinner money for the rest of time.
NTSC, PAL and SECAM don't have resolutions at all.
NTSC, PAL, and SECAM specify a number of scanlines for a signal, the timing used for each scanline, the bandwidth of the main carrier, and the bandwidth of a color subcarrier. The Nyquist theorem guarantees a sample frequency given bandwidth or vice versa, and multiplying that by the length of a scanline gives a pixel count per line. Thus, you have a HxV pixel count, which is what computer users typically call "resolution".
Will I retire or break 10K?