You make it sound like the Gamecube is inferior to both the XBox and PS2. The cube is more powerful than the PS2 but is roughly on the same level as the XBox. So why the need for an upgrade?
The gcn needs more processing power than the xbox to make up for the xbox's greater storage space for FMV. Remember what happened with N64 vs. PSX: where PSX used FMV, N64 had to use polygons.
Triforce has been around since the first zelda, circa 1987, IIRC. Anyone know when nvidia came on to the scene?
However, as Glytch pointed out below, "Triforce" is a trademark for an item in entertainment software, not graphics hardware. Nvidia may have a case because it's the first to name a hardware device with a coined name containing "force" as the second half of a spondee. "Triforce" and "Geforce 3" would sound confusingly similar to some people I know.
I'd consider making my own Tetris game if only to avoid paying $60cdn for shitty Tetris Worlds.
No, you can't make your own Tetris® game because Blue Planet Software aka The Tetris Company owns a trademark on the name "Tetris". You can make a falling tetramino game, but you'll just have to call it something different such as Quadra or freepuzzlearena.
And what's so bad about Worlds? It has Tetris, The New Tetris, The Next Tetris, a clone of Quadra, and two new variations all in one cartridge. That is, other than the fact that speed levels 13 through 15 are practically unplayable.
If the site had been "Here's the product you need to run your GBA apps on your GBA, and here's documentation on how to program for it, and here's some samples of code", then I'd accept that it is a developer's tool. But there's no evidence of any of that.
Then what are those links to gbadev.org and devrs.com doing on the left side of visoly.com?
I know that this is short for "pro bono publico," which translates literally "for the public good," or more idiomatically "volunteer." However, in the minds of many readers, the actions of the late Sonny Bono have diluted this phrase into meaning "in favor of repeated copyright term extensions." Do not use the term "pro bono" in a copyright-related context until the copyright monopoly returns to a more reasonable duration.
The problem is that this site (and many others) make it fairly obvious that "this is a copier" and "we are going to copy illegal stuff with it".
The manufacturer's web page clearly states that "The Flash Advance 256M is furthermore the perfect choice for any professional Gameboy Advance developers or even home developers - Create your own games using your PC (free software is available) and simply use the Flash Advance 256M to show your game/demo to friends or test it on real Hardware." Heck, every single page links to gbadev.org (a homebrew site).
Distributing copies of the game is clearly copyright infringement.
Not if the game has been released as free software (or even free as in beer). Nintendo's titles aren't free, but mine are. I put my proofs of concept and short utilities under the Expat license and my full games under the GNU GPL. It's only copyright infringement to redistribute binaries of GPL'd software if you neglect make an offer to distribute machine-readable source code at cost.
Developing and using free software constitutes a substantial non-infringing use of the Visoly Flash Advance Pro cartridges.
the proprietary arrangement of pins (probably patented) on the cartridge interface can easily be considered copyright protection mechanism, or even an encryption scheme. Counting them (and of course using a voltmeter to find out which is which) is obviously a circumvention technique.
Yes, but the DMCA makes some specific exceptions to its ban on circumventing copy protection. Reverse engineering for interoperability is one of them (17 USC 1201(f)).
Physical things is the realm of patents, and Nintendo may or may not have patents on the interface to their cartridges.
There is no patent on the GBA cart edge connector protocol. If there were a patent, the Intellivision cart edge interface would be prior art, as the primary difference between GBA cart and legacy GB carts is the fact that like an Intellivision cart, a GBA cart has a multiplexed address and data bus.
Standard disclaimers aside, you agree to it by your purchase of their product AFAIK.
Additional restrictions can't be added to a contract after consideration (in this case, money for Game Pak) has been exchanged. By the time you see the additional terms (i.e. have opened the shrinkwrap and the manual), it's too late for Nintendo to present an enforceable contract.
The "protective device" is actually the proprietary cartridge connection format that interfaces the GBA
Multiplexed address and data buses (the primary thing keeping the GBA cart edge interface from being just standard practice) have been around at least since the Intellivision.
Or maybe they just had to wait for a patent to expire?
Good thing the big drug companies haven't scrounged up $6 million a piece to donate to Congress to get the Cherilyn LaPierre Patent Term Extension Act passed.
U-V pipe only was used in the original pentium. Pentium pro and up use an out-of-order executing RISC core.
The P6 core, used in Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Celeron, and Pentium III, has an OoO core with three functional units, one that can execute any kind of instruction and two thin that can do only simple instructions. Think of it as a U-V-W pipe where U is a fat pipe and V and W are skinny.
The Pentium 4 core, on the other hand, has six pipelines, and three of them (the double-pumped ALUs) can handle two micro-ops at once. However, the decoder can feed only three micro-ops per cycle per thread. Hyperthreading goes a long way toward keeping its pipes fed.
I'm in Australia so Lik-Sang can still get stuff through to here
I ordered a GBA flash memory card and linker (for legit home development if you're curious; my GBA page is here) from Lik Sang and had it shipped EMS Speedpost (as opposed to UPS), and it arrived just fine. The problem is with UPS's over-restrictive customs policy.
However, they are using a version of its monopoly OS inside this console.
It's a stripped-down Windows 2000 kernel (24 KB instead of 1 MB) with DirectX on top of it. There's no Internet Explorer on the XBox version of Win2K; can the states use this to establish that IE isn't necessary for Windows?
In any case, I don't think such a device would be allowing any access to copyrighted material, so the DMCA wouldn't apply.
<sarcasm> Microsoft, with its effectively limitless legal defense fund, may be able to buy off a judge enough to convince him that the requirement to "Press Start" makes the controller an effective access control mechanism under the DMCA. </sarcasm>
How are GBA flash cards any more illegal than SmartMedia or CompactFlash cards?. If I load only free software onto a Visoly flash card for Game Boy Advance, whose copyright am I infringing? Yes, free software for GBA does exist, and copying the Nintendo boot logo is legal under Sega v. Accolade. (Read More...)
The UID is proprietary information (similar to a password) and reverse engeneering it is against the law according to the DMCA.
Hold it. The letter of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act specifically permits acts of circumvention that are part of legitimate reverse-engineering for interoperability. From 17 USC 1201(f)(2):
Notwithstanding the provisions of subsections (a)(2) and (b), a person may develop and employ technological means to circumvent a technological measure, or to circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure, in order to enable the identification and analysis under paragraph (1), or for the purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, if such means are necessary to achieve such interoperability, to the extent that doing so does not constitute infringement under this title.
Judge Kaplan made an idiotic mistake in completely ignoring this paragraph.
Would you like me to order you a copy of The Wind Done Gone? Just because somebody files suit doesn't mean they win.
Unless they have money and you don't. Without six figures in the bank, how are you supposed to hire legal representation to defend you from (possibly frivolous) copyright infringement lawsuits?
Slashdot Mirror
is this the triforce of power, courage, or wisdom?
Probably the Triforce of power consumption and heat dissipation.
But what really makes the console for me is the promise of a new MarioKart.
Do you really think that Nintendo will fix most of the bugs in the Mario Kart series' design and implementation?
You make it sound like the Gamecube is inferior to both the XBox and PS2. The cube is more powerful than the PS2 but is roughly on the same level as the XBox. So why the need for an upgrade?
The gcn needs more processing power than the xbox to make up for the xbox's greater storage space for FMV. Remember what happened with N64 vs. PSX: where PSX used FMV, N64 had to use polygons.
Triforce has been around since the first zelda, circa 1987, IIRC. Anyone know when nvidia came on to the scene?
However, as Glytch pointed out below, "Triforce" is a trademark for an item in entertainment software, not graphics hardware. Nvidia may have a case because it's the first to name a hardware device with a coined name containing "force" as the second half of a spondee. "Triforce" and "Geforce 3" would sound confusingly similar to some people I know.
Slashdot's topics page already has a topic, another topic, and a section called Your Rights Online devoted to questionably constitutional civil rights violations. Note that the top story in the YRO section is this very story.
I'd consider making my own Tetris game if only to avoid paying $60cdn for shitty Tetris Worlds.
No, you can't make your own Tetris® game because Blue Planet Software aka The Tetris Company owns a trademark on the name "Tetris". You can make a falling tetramino game, but you'll just have to call it something different such as Quadra or freepuzzlearena.
And what's so bad about Worlds? It has Tetris, The New Tetris, The Next Tetris, a clone of Quadra, and two new variations all in one cartridge. That is, other than the fact that speed levels 13 through 15 are practically unplayable.
Yet I don't see an SDK for it. I don't see links to how to develop games on it.
The manufacturer's site links to a site about homebrew GBA development.
Just a link to a bunch of emulators, one of them called 'BoyCott'.
VisualBoy is better.
If the site had been "Here's the product you need to run your GBA apps on your GBA, and here's documentation on how to program for it, and here's some samples of code", then I'd accept that it is a developer's tool. But there's no evidence of any of that.
Then what are those links to gbadev.org and devrs.com doing on the left side of visoly.com?
pro bono
I know that this is short for "pro bono publico," which translates literally "for the public good," or more idiomatically "volunteer." However, in the minds of many readers, the actions of the late Sonny Bono have diluted this phrase into meaning "in favor of repeated copyright term extensions." Do not use the term "pro bono" in a copyright-related context until the copyright monopoly returns to a more reasonable duration.
The problem is that this site (and many others) make it fairly obvious that "this is a copier" and "we are going to copy illegal stuff with it".
The manufacturer's web page clearly states that "The Flash Advance 256M is furthermore the perfect choice for any professional Gameboy Advance developers or even home developers - Create your own games using your PC (free software is available) and simply use the Flash Advance 256M to show your game/demo to friends or test it on real Hardware." Heck, every single page links to gbadev.org (a homebrew site).
Distributing copies of the game is clearly copyright infringement.
Not if the game has been released as free software (or even free as in beer). Nintendo's titles aren't free, but mine are. I put my proofs of concept and short utilities under the Expat license and my full games under the GNU GPL. It's only copyright infringement to redistribute binaries of GPL'd software if you neglect make an offer to distribute machine-readable source code at cost.
Developing and using free software constitutes a substantial non-infringing use of the Visoly Flash Advance Pro cartridges.
the proprietary arrangement of pins (probably patented) on the cartridge interface can easily be considered copyright protection mechanism, or even an encryption scheme. Counting them (and of course using a voltmeter to find out which is which) is obviously a circumvention technique.
Yes, but the DMCA makes some specific exceptions to its ban on circumventing copy protection. Reverse engineering for interoperability is one of them (17 USC 1201(f)).
Physical things is the realm of patents, and Nintendo may or may not have patents on the interface to their cartridges.
There is no patent on the GBA cart edge connector protocol. If there were a patent, the Intellivision cart edge interface would be prior art, as the primary difference between GBA cart and legacy GB carts is the fact that like an Intellivision cart, a GBA cart has a multiplexed address and data bus.
Then why not go with a public attorney? You know the - if you can't afford to have one then one is appointed thing.
Court appointed attorneys work only on criminal cases, not civil cases. Most copyright infringement cases are civil cases, not criminal cases.
You need to be a registered dev to wrote GBA code and actually distribute it.
Says who? And who says his word is legally binding?
Standard disclaimers aside, you agree to it by your purchase of their product AFAIK.
Additional restrictions can't be added to a contract after consideration (in this case, money for Game Pak) has been exchanged. By the time you see the additional terms (i.e. have opened the shrinkwrap and the manual), it's too late for Nintendo to present an enforceable contract.
ZD didn't inport the flash linkers at all; they were bought from a US supplier. (I wanna know who that is!)
That would be Visoly Inc
The "protective device" is actually the proprietary cartridge connection format that interfaces the GBA
Multiplexed address and data buses (the primary thing keeping the GBA cart edge interface from being just standard practice) have been around at least since the Intellivision.
Or maybe they just had to wait for a patent to expire?
Good thing the big drug companies haven't scrounged up $6 million a piece to donate to Congress to get the Cherilyn LaPierre Patent Term Extension Act passed.
(See also the work of her late partner Sonny Bono, the campaign contributions that led to that law, and the lawsuit to get it overturned.)
U-V pipe only was used in the original pentium. Pentium pro and up use an out-of-order executing RISC core.
The P6 core, used in Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Celeron, and Pentium III, has an OoO core with three functional units, one that can execute any kind of instruction and two thin that can do only simple instructions. Think of it as a U-V-W pipe where U is a fat pipe and V and W are skinny.
The Pentium 4 core, on the other hand, has six pipelines, and three of them (the double-pumped ALUs) can handle two micro-ops at once. However, the decoder can feed only three micro-ops per cycle per thread. Hyperthreading goes a long way toward keeping its pipes fed.
I'm in Australia so Lik-Sang can still get stuff through to here
I ordered a GBA flash memory card and linker (for legit home development if you're curious; my GBA page is here) from Lik Sang and had it shipped EMS Speedpost (as opposed to UPS), and it arrived just fine. The problem is with UPS's over-restrictive customs policy.
However, they are using a version of its monopoly OS inside this console.
It's a stripped-down Windows 2000 kernel (24 KB instead of 1 MB) with DirectX on top of it. There's no Internet Explorer on the XBox version of Win2K; can the states use this to establish that IE isn't necessary for Windows?
In any case, I don't think such a device would be allowing any access to copyrighted material, so the DMCA wouldn't apply.
<sarcasm>
Microsoft, with its effectively limitless legal defense fund, may be able to buy off a judge enough to convince him that the requirement to "Press Start" makes the controller an effective access control mechanism under the DMCA.
</sarcasm>
GBA flash cards are considered illegal
How are GBA flash cards any more illegal than SmartMedia or CompactFlash cards?. If I load only free software onto a Visoly flash card for Game Boy Advance, whose copyright am I infringing? Yes, free software for GBA does exist, and copying the Nintendo boot logo is legal under Sega v. Accolade. (Read More...)
The UID is proprietary information (similar to a password) and reverse engeneering it is against the law according to the DMCA.
Hold it. The letter of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act specifically permits acts of circumvention that are part of legitimate reverse-engineering for interoperability. From 17 USC 1201(f)(2):
Judge Kaplan made an idiotic mistake in completely ignoring this paragraph.
Would you like me to order you a copy of The Wind Done Gone? Just because somebody files suit doesn't mean they win.
Unless they have money and you don't. Without six figures in the bank, how are you supposed to hire legal representation to defend you from (possibly frivolous) copyright infringement lawsuits?