Even before the NES, there was an Acclaim vs Atari lawsuit that ended in a settlement. At the time it pretty much opened the doors for third-party, unlicensed games on a system.
However, I've learned that in recent years console makers have been using digital signatures in order to validate their licensed games. The game won't run without the signature, and forging the signature is a violation of the DMCA. That leaves unlicensed developers without any real options for releasing their game.
Any game that you can save that didn't use a password, really. Zelda, Final Fantasy, etc. They all had batteries inside to keep the save data alive.
The SNES carts have screws? I tried opening one of my NES carts after the battery died, but there were no screws, so it was pretty much broken beyond repair when I split it in half. I gave up trying to get it back together.
They're just standard AA batteries. But I think the point was that we shouldn't expect Apple to replace iPhone batteries for free any more than we should expect Nintendo to buy us new AAs for our Wii, because batteries aren't intended to last forever.
Since you mention SNES though, I actually have a question... do you have any games with battery backups, and does the battery still work for saving games? I got rid of my NES a few years ago, and at that time the Dragon Warrior games I still had with it no longer saved data.
Although, I have a musical birthday card that I got more than 20 years ago, and it still (very weakly) plays, so I guess those little batteries can last a lot longer than you might expect.
Re:Countdown until AoMP3 reappears in China/Brasil
on
Allofmp3 Shut Down, Again
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· Score: 4, Informative
FWIW, you can't pay by credit card at MP3Sparks either. Why do you say that? It seems that they take all credit cards except AmEx, Cirrus, and Union Card.
Here's an article that tells about how they sent law enforcement to a music festival in Tennessee, not to stop drug use, but specifically to collect the taxes that are due on those drugs.
after all they're there to do something I was thinking the same thing... if there's malware on your system that is 100% undetectable, then it can't really be doing much of anything, can it? so in that case is it really malware?
if it's phoning home or sending data anywhere, surely that must be detectable, right?
It also doesn't help in the only two instances when I still visit an ATM:
those increasingly rare times when I actually need cash
when I have a paper check that I want to deposit right away
If I could "scan" my check with my cellphone and have the funds deposited into my account, or if I could hook it up to a printer and print out some bar-coded "cash" (like you can do with postage stamps!), now that would be impressive.
As others have noted, there are a lot of words here without really saying much, but there were a couple in particular that made me go "hmmmm":
As to your question about income tax, because our typical seller is earning roughly enough to pay for his WoW subscription, we see selling on Sparter as analogous to selling on eBay, putting on a garage sale, or running a great lemonade stand. So...? Strictly speaking, all three of those enterprises are subject to income tax. Just because you're only making enough to pay for your subscription doesn't make you exempt. Does that mean the IRS is going to come knocking on your door for failing to report your gold selling or your lemonade stand? Probably not, but the interviewee seems to be implying that you will be immune from taxation, which isn't really true.
Here's how we see it: publishers do not have the right to tell gamers that they can't accept money from someone outside of the game. But they do have that right. They have the "right" to make any rules they want. They have the "right" to kick you out of their game for breaking their rules. Whether that's "smart" or "good" or "fair" is irrelevant. You're playing their game, you've agreed to their terms, and they certainly have the right to hold you to those terms or cancel your participation with their game.
I'm looking forward to Carnival Games, which looks like it will be of the "lots of fun mini-games" variety. It was due at the end of August last I heard.
Didn't Atari v. Activision in 1982 decide that you didn't need a manufacturer's permission to publish a game for their system?
Maybe I misunderstood the results of that lawsuit, but I thought it required the publishers to pay royalties, but the console maker couldn't stop you from releasing your game.
I'd like to see a breakdown of who those murder victims are.
What percentage are people like you, innocent people minding their own business, and what percentage are criminals themselves, murdered during the course of being a criminal? Those numbers may well indicate the chances of you having your head blown off are significantly lower than it seems. Maybe still greater than in the UK, but perhaps not 27 times greater.
On the other hand, what percentage of robberies are committed against "innocent" people? I'd bet that the overwhelming majority are, especially the ones that actually get reported to the police.
As I've said before, it's ingrained in American culture to be self-reliant and capable of defending yourself. Being robbed is more than just a matter of having your possessions stolen; it's an affront to your dignity and security as a human being, and many Americans would consider submitting to such an assault without even the opportunity of self-defense a fate worse than death.
So we accept an overall increase in gun crimes because we value our sense of self-reliance more than we value life. We would rather go down fighting than be helpless and victimized.
The point is: that you can't protect people from themselves, but I am very much in favour of protecting the rest of the population from the nutcases. I think the cultural difference here is that more Americans are in favor of protecting themselves from the nutcases instead of deferring that responsibility to the state. That's where the "Nanny" in "Nanny State" comes from. You're relinquishing the right to defend yourself in the hopes that the state will take care of you.
Maybe it's just that Americans have a lot less faith in the government, or maybe it's the idea that once you rely on another person or entity to protect you, you have subjugated yourself to that entity.
Self-reliance has always been a huge part of the American psyche, and you can argue forever over whether crime rates and murder rates would go down with stricter gun control, but frankly it's a tradeoff many Americans are not willing to make. They would much rather maintain that modicum of self-reliance, regardless of the consequences, because that self-reliance is held in higher value. It's the essence of the saying "give me liberty or give me death".
Because you need the right to anonymously post lies in order to maintain the right to anonymously post the truth. Unfortunately there's no easy way to separate the two, but I think as a whole we'd be much worse off without the right to sometimes stay anonymous.
Sometimes the truth has to be posted, and sometimes "they" can't know who's posting it. If that means a few people get slandered in the process and don't have much recourse, that's an unfortunate price we pay. It's fine to feel sorry for the victims, but understand that the system is set up that way for a reason.
Anyway, if I understand correctly, the SONG itself may be public domain, which means you don't have to pay anyone to perform it or record it, but the particular recording on this record could still be copyrighted. That may or may not be the case in this instance (since the recording is so old), but if so, you still wouldn't be allowed to copy the recording, even if the song itself was in the public domain. For copyright purposes, the two are separate works.
I really don't disagree with your main argument, in spite of your calling me a dumbass. One of your other posts made your point a little more succinctly, when you said:
These things must be done systematically. It must be a sea-change that affects everyone. I will support that sea change and participate in it willingly, but I'm not opening myself up all alone and being the target of our societies most corrupt elements, those who have the most to lose from what I'm proposing. My point was basically the same; at this point in time, there are people who will take your information and your thoughts and use it against you. They will see the things you've done and the thoughts you've had, and they will "turn you out".
You're right, if there was a 100% complete sea-change in the attitudes of everyone in the world, privacy wouldn't be so important. But that's never going to happen so I say again, I would rather have a little privacy than let someone else decide whether my life violates some laws or morals that they hold dear.
Don't forget either... in 1984, Big Brother didn't spy on you. Big Brother didn't exist. Your neighbors spied on you. Your employer spied on you. Your wife and children spied on you.
...or you're sitting there imagining horrors that aren't real to fill in the gaps of your ignorance and fear, and we need to get that sorted out right away before you do something stupid. This line of thought seems like exactly the reason privacy is important. Because apparently there are people who think that "imagining horrors" is something that needs to be "sorted out" by some higher authority.
Ok, so say I'm imagining some horrors. What then? What do you propose should be done to me, to "sort me out"? You're assuming that I'm going to "do something stupid" so are you suggesting that my "ignorance and fear" should be corrected preemptively?
If I'm prone to imagining horrors, should I be submitted to some kind of corrective therapy, against my will, just to be sure that my ignorance and fear don't get the better of me? Even if I never really would do "something stupid" about it? What's wrong with letting me have my ignorance and fear? Who are you to tell me what I should or shouldn't think or imagine?
Frankly, I think a world where privacy is unneeded would be great, but in such a world everyone would have to mind their own business. As long as there are people who believe in thoughtcrime, and people who want to "sort you out" before you "do something stupid", I think maybe privacy is something we should hang onto for just a bit longer.
I agree... I also have an HDTV, and regular DVDs look great on it. I mean, I like the way HD looks, but it's just not a big deal to me so I can't picture myself making a major purchase based on it. (In fact, even for my TV I'd say the screen size and small footprint were the biggest attractions, as opposed to the HD picture quality.)
I think I'll be satisfied with regular DVD quality until my DVD player breaks and I can't get a new one. There's just no incentive for me otherwise, unlike making the astronomical leap from VHS to DVD.
Even if we lived in a universe where cannibalism was generally accepted, I don't think industrialized cannibalism would be very practical. Humans wouldn't just stand idly by and allow themselves to be raised for food, so the human-farmers would have to constantly deal with insurrection and rebellion among the livestock.
Maybe we could go the "soylent green" route, and recycle people who are already dead or dying, but even in that case the people being led to slaughter would probably put up a fight. When there are plenty more docile animals to be eaten, breeding humans for food on an industrial scale just doesn't make economic sense.
And based on your reply to my earlier question in which you referenced BMG v. Gonzales (thank you, by the way), it sounds like they took the cheap and easy way out on that as well.
If I understand correctly, they originally brought action against Gonzales for "making available" the 30 songs in question, but once she admitted to downloading them in the first place they stopped pursuing the "making available" claim and moved for summary judgment on the downloading since it was a sure thing.
No need to follow through with the original claim I guess, when they can grab the money and run.
...thereby placing the responsibility in the hands of the person accessing the shared folder? That's something I've wondered about as well. Have there been any cases yet where the RIAA has gone after someone for downloading copyrighted music, but not distributing it? Have they gone after anyone who was actually doing the copying, as opposed to doing the sharing?
If not, why not? Is it a matter of being more difficult to tell who has downloaded something, when it's much easier to find who is sharing something?
It reminds me of the oft-quoted Claire Wolfe from the book 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution: "It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
Slashdot Mirror
Oops... sorry, that should be Activision, not Acclaim.
Even before the NES, there was an Acclaim vs Atari lawsuit that ended in a settlement. At the time it pretty much opened the doors for third-party, unlicensed games on a system.
However, I've learned that in recent years console makers have been using digital signatures in order to validate their licensed games. The game won't run without the signature, and forging the signature is a violation of the DMCA. That leaves unlicensed developers without any real options for releasing their game.
Any game that you can save that didn't use a password, really. Zelda, Final Fantasy, etc. They all had batteries inside to keep the save data alive.
The SNES carts have screws? I tried opening one of my NES carts after the battery died, but there were no screws, so it was pretty much broken beyond repair when I split it in half. I gave up trying to get it back together.
Oh well.
They're just standard AA batteries. But I think the point was that we shouldn't expect Apple to replace iPhone batteries for free any more than we should expect Nintendo to buy us new AAs for our Wii, because batteries aren't intended to last forever.
Since you mention SNES though, I actually have a question... do you have any games with battery backups, and does the battery still work for saving games? I got rid of my NES a few years ago, and at that time the Dragon Warrior games I still had with it no longer saved data.
Although, I have a musical birthday card that I got more than 20 years ago, and it still (very weakly) plays, so I guess those little batteries can last a lot longer than you might expect.
http://www.mp3sparks.com/info/payments.shtml
Here's an article that tells about how they sent law enforcement to a music festival in Tennessee, not to stop drug use, but specifically to collect the taxes that are due on those drugs.
= 46251
http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid
So yeah, tax authorities don't care if you're doing something illegal or not, they just want their money.
Seriously, if he's giving his music away for free anyway, what the hell does he care if you can buy it in a record store?
if it's phoning home or sending data anywhere, surely that must be detectable, right?
- those increasingly rare times when I actually need cash
- when I have a paper check that I want to deposit right away
If I could "scan" my check with my cellphone and have the funds deposited into my account, or if I could hook it up to a printer and print out some bar-coded "cash" (like you can do with postage stamps!), now that would be impressive.I'm looking forward to Carnival Games, which looks like it will be of the "lots of fun mini-games" variety. It was due at the end of August last I heard.
Didn't Atari v. Activision in 1982 decide that you didn't need a manufacturer's permission to publish a game for their system?
Maybe I misunderstood the results of that lawsuit, but I thought it required the publishers to pay royalties, but the console maker couldn't stop you from releasing your game.
I'd like to see a breakdown of who those murder victims are.
What percentage are people like you, innocent people minding their own business, and what percentage are criminals themselves, murdered during the course of being a criminal? Those numbers may well indicate the chances of you having your head blown off are significantly lower than it seems. Maybe still greater than in the UK, but perhaps not 27 times greater.
On the other hand, what percentage of robberies are committed against "innocent" people? I'd bet that the overwhelming majority are, especially the ones that actually get reported to the police.
As I've said before, it's ingrained in American culture to be self-reliant and capable of defending yourself. Being robbed is more than just a matter of having your possessions stolen; it's an affront to your dignity and security as a human being, and many Americans would consider submitting to such an assault without even the opportunity of self-defense a fate worse than death.
So we accept an overall increase in gun crimes because we value our sense of self-reliance more than we value life. We would rather go down fighting than be helpless and victimized.
Maybe it's just that Americans have a lot less faith in the government, or maybe it's the idea that once you rely on another person or entity to protect you, you have subjugated yourself to that entity.
Self-reliance has always been a huge part of the American psyche, and you can argue forever over whether crime rates and murder rates would go down with stricter gun control, but frankly it's a tradeoff many Americans are not willing to make. They would much rather maintain that modicum of self-reliance, regardless of the consequences, because that self-reliance is held in higher value. It's the essence of the saying "give me liberty or give me death".
Because you need the right to anonymously post lies in order to maintain the right to anonymously post the truth. Unfortunately there's no easy way to separate the two, but I think as a whole we'd be much worse off without the right to sometimes stay anonymous.
Sometimes the truth has to be posted, and sometimes "they" can't know who's posting it. If that means a few people get slandered in the process and don't have much recourse, that's an unfortunate price we pay. It's fine to feel sorry for the victims, but understand that the system is set up that way for a reason.
Oh sweet, my first IANAL post!
Anyway, if I understand correctly, the SONG itself may be public domain, which means you don't have to pay anyone to perform it or record it, but the particular recording on this record could still be copyrighted. That may or may not be the case in this instance (since the recording is so old), but if so, you still wouldn't be allowed to copy the recording, even if the song itself was in the public domain. For copyright purposes, the two are separate works.
You're right, if there was a 100% complete sea-change in the attitudes of everyone in the world, privacy wouldn't be so important. But that's never going to happen so I say again, I would rather have a little privacy than let someone else decide whether my life violates some laws or morals that they hold dear.
Don't forget either... in 1984, Big Brother didn't spy on you. Big Brother didn't exist. Your neighbors spied on you. Your employer spied on you. Your wife and children spied on you.
...or you're sitting there imagining horrors that aren't real to fill in the gaps of your ignorance and fear, and we need to get that sorted out right away before you do something stupid. This line of thought seems like exactly the reason privacy is important. Because apparently there are people who think that "imagining horrors" is something that needs to be "sorted out" by some higher authority.Ok, so say I'm imagining some horrors. What then? What do you propose should be done to me, to "sort me out"? You're assuming that I'm going to "do something stupid" so are you suggesting that my "ignorance and fear" should be corrected preemptively?
If I'm prone to imagining horrors, should I be submitted to some kind of corrective therapy, against my will, just to be sure that my ignorance and fear don't get the better of me? Even if I never really would do "something stupid" about it? What's wrong with letting me have my ignorance and fear? Who are you to tell me what I should or shouldn't think or imagine?
Frankly, I think a world where privacy is unneeded would be great, but in such a world everyone would have to mind their own business. As long as there are people who believe in thoughtcrime, and people who want to "sort you out" before you "do something stupid", I think maybe privacy is something we should hang onto for just a bit longer.
The briefcase includes a 5-inch black and white monitor! Now that really is the ultimate in convenience!
I agree... I also have an HDTV, and regular DVDs look great on it.
I mean, I like the way HD looks, but it's just not a big deal to me so I can't picture myself making a major purchase based on it. (In fact, even for my TV I'd say the screen size and small footprint were the biggest attractions, as opposed to the HD picture quality.)
I think I'll be satisfied with regular DVD quality until my DVD player breaks and I can't get a new one. There's just no incentive for me otherwise, unlike making the astronomical leap from VHS to DVD.
Even if we lived in a universe where cannibalism was generally accepted, I don't think industrialized cannibalism would be very practical. Humans wouldn't just stand idly by and allow themselves to be raised for food, so the human-farmers would have to constantly deal with insurrection and rebellion among the livestock.
Maybe we could go the "soylent green" route, and recycle people who are already dead or dying, but even in that case the people being led to slaughter would probably put up a fight. When there are plenty more docile animals to be eaten, breeding humans for food on an industrial scale just doesn't make economic sense.
And based on your reply to my earlier question in which you referenced BMG v. Gonzales (thank you, by the way), it sounds like they took the cheap and easy way out on that as well.
If I understand correctly, they originally brought action against Gonzales for "making available" the 30 songs in question, but once she admitted to downloading them in the first place they stopped pursuing the "making available" claim and moved for summary judgment on the downloading since it was a sure thing.
No need to follow through with the original claim I guess, when they can grab the money and run.
...thereby placing the responsibility in the hands of the person accessing the shared folder? That's something I've wondered about as well. Have there been any cases yet where the RIAA has gone after someone for downloading copyrighted music, but not distributing it? Have they gone after anyone who was actually doing the copying, as opposed to doing the sharing?If not, why not? Is it a matter of being more difficult to tell who has downloaded something, when it's much easier to find who is sharing something?
It reminds me of the oft-quoted Claire Wolfe from the book 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution:
"It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
Thank you, now I can go back in my time machine and explain that to myself when I was in fourth grade.