If a console system somehow played games from the PS2, GameCube, XBox, Super Nintendo, Genesis, and ROMs downloaded off the internet for any of those systems AND Mame... wouldn't you buy it?
No. I would not buy it because I would have no chance of getting any kind of after-sale service from a company that's three days away from being shut down by the courts for violating patents on console hardware and copyrights on software.
Wine works for some things I have tried. The only things I really care about thus far are games.
Games? Wine is not an emulator. To run games, you want a real emulator. Accurate emulators for NES, Super NES, Sega Genesis, Game Gear, and all Game Boy systems exist for FreeBSD and GNU/Linux. So far, I've covered thousands of compatible games. If you own the cartridge, get a cart reader (a GBA cart reader costs about $50), dump the games, and play them.
You have a choice, you can buy the product or not buy the product. Copyrights and patents protect the creator from you stealing their hard efforts without just compensation.
You don't always have a choice. Before AT&T was split up, did you have a choice as to what telephone provider you could use? It was either AT&T or use a pay phone. It's the same in most areas with electric power: either the local energy monopoly or live like the Amish.
If anything like the the SSSCA passes: "You must buy computers with a DRM OS. Microsoft has a patent on DRM OS technology. Therefore, you must buy Microsoft software or never buy another computer for twenty years, until the patent expires." Then Microsoft goes and pulls a Sonny Bono trying to get its monopoly on computers extended.
Narrow government-granted monopolies are OK (to replace patented GIF LZW use PNG Deflate; to replace patented MP3 use Ogg Vorbis; to replace Win2k use FreeBSD). Broad government-granted monopolies (such as one-click shopping, hyperlinks, topological sorting of computation in a functional program, pause function on DVR, etc.) are not.
The only area that WinXP excells in is client/workstation software - which OS/2 can now (once again) boast it can run more client software than any other OS on the planet - period - using VirtualPC, allowing it to run Windows and Linux in virtual machines under OS/2 (or eComStation).
And the Mac can run OS/2 in its version of Virtual PC.
Most Photoshop users will never switch to the GIMP, not ever, for any reason.
Most Photoshop users who work in prepress use Photoshop for prepress, and all known methods of doing prepress on a computer are patented. Most Photoshop Elements users (PS Elements is PS minus prepress for only $100) don't. This situation will change 20 years after the day Photoshop introduced prepress, when the patents expire. Just thank God that Sonny Bono never got to patents.
You should not discount that in considering the future of Windows. It is the preferred development platform for games.
You don't need Windows to make a Game Boy Advance game. You need only a text editor (Emacs), a compiler (GCC targeted for ARM), a paint program (GIMP), a graphics converter (several exist), a compression tool (gzip), a build tool (GNU make), and a way to flash a cartridge or transfer a 256 KB netboot image. Software included with Linux or freely downloadable provides all of the above.
I'm not sure I understand; you're saying Windows will continue to exist because of hardware compatability?
Windows will continue to exist as long as makers of popular video and sound cards refuse to release register-level documentation for their hardware or to release Linux drivers compatible with each major kernel version.
Windows NT did a fantastic job with many Win16 apps. (They ran in sort of a VM so that NT was protected from their crap.)
NT also claimed to run DOS in a VM. However, the WinNT and Win2K VMs always had severe, reproducible problems with DOS support, such that DOS apps could crash the virtual machine. This is like a DOS app being able to damage the motherboard; the virtual machine should be engineered well enough that this doesn't happen.
There is nothing stopping you from making a new browser, make it bug free, secure, and sell it for say 15$ or something.
What about the fact that you can't make it faster to load than IE because IE is already loaded by the time the user sees Opera's icon? What about the fact that you can't replace MSHTML.dll (which other programs use) with your own browser?
If you want to compare my side of things lets look at compilers. MSVC is fairly solid and optimizes well.
MSVC does not generate code for any non-x86 targets. What happens when you want to make an app that runs on Itanium? Intel's response: Use GCC.
GCC is the next in line competitor [I feel].
Factoid: Nintendo developers use GCC to compile code for the ARM7TDMI processor in the Game Boy Advance system.
Cygwin for example is a rather complete [minus an IDE] distribution that is gaining popularity.
"Minus an IDE"? What about Emacs? Or by IDE, do you mean dialog box designer? Those exist also.
Most MS development tools for example have color highlighted syntax
So does Emacs, with any of the popular.emacs files (such as Claude Anderson's) or.emacs generators.
popups for API syntax
Don't many users hate pop-ups and use Proxomitron to turn them off on the web? When I want to look up API syntax in Emacs, I pop up my own Info window (thank you very much) with C-x 2 C-h i, which is explained on the menus and in the tutorial.
Please cite the section of law that prohibits playing media from places where you do not live.
United States patent law, and the contract on the outside of every PlayStation console's box.
Unless the mod chip makers entered into a contract with Sony for some reason
No, the end users did. Consoles say "Licensed for use only with software marked PlayStation [NTSC|U/C]" on the back. This is outside the box and is more likely to be enforceable than shrinkwrap EULAs that aren't visible until you've opened the box.
Of course, Sony has deeper pockets, so there is no law stopping them from just suing the mod chip makers out of business with nuisance lawsuits.
Congress has power to regulate the courts so as to stop frivolous lawsuits, but unfortunately, Congress is too bought to consider such a thing.
Slavery, prohibition, and preventing women from voting were all legal once in the U.S.
Prohibition is still the law. Even though Prohibition no longer covers ethanol (21st amendment), the Commerce Clause lets Congress declare a War on Some Drugs.
Newer Dreamcast units don't play CD-R
on
Sony vs Modchips
·
· Score: 1
Dreamcast (which has some outstanding hacks available, and is cheaper then dirt right now!)
One or the other is true, not both. The "outstanding hacks" require one of the older Dreamcast units because units manufactured on or after September 2000 cannot read the CD-R media on which those hacks reside. Most of the $50 units you find were manufactured on or after September 2000.
However, you do need a license to use hardware because the exclusive privilege granted by patent law covers "make, use, or sell." The PlayStation hardware is patented out the wazoo, and Sony licenses those patents on conditions that are spelled out on the back of the PlayStation's box: "Licensed for use only with software bearing the PlayStation logo and the [NTSC|U/C] designation."
You're assuming the user is in the U.S. In most of the world it's perfectly legal.
Two words: Dmitry Sklyarov.
(Yes, I know the Feds let him off in exchange for his testimony.)
EULAs for console games are printed ON the box
on
Sony vs Modchips
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Bzzt. There's no law that prevents you from importing software that is otherwise legal.
Except the EULA printed on the back of the box: "Licensed for use only with products bearing the PlayStation logo and [NTSC|U/C] designation." Any other use violates the patents on the PlayStation hardware.
even if they are subject to licenses, which is certainly fairly doubtful
The console licenses are more explicit than PC software EULAs, as the terms for consoles and games are printed right on the back of the package, next to the UPC symbol, as opposed to being hidden inside the shrinkwrapped box like PC software licenses.
the validity of the licenses themselves are in doubt
Even that doesn't prevent Sony from abusing the legal system, filing frivolous lawsuits against small businesses in order to run up the small businesses' legal bills. The legal system is broken, and Congress has shown itself to be too bought to fix it.
You're going to claim that it's somehow your right to take someone else's work?
After a reasonable amount of time (perhaps 30 years, or 10 years after the author dies, both of which are more than reasonable in today's market), yes, I am justified that it should be my right to take someone else's work; that's the whole point of. Congress, on the other hand, listens to $$$ instead of reason and lets DisneyCo dictate the duration of copyright.
You want to take without giving anything back.
No, I'm upset at Disney for taking without giving back. Disney released movies such as Pinocchio and The Jungle Book the year after the copyright expired, and then closed the doors behind themselves by getting Congress to extend copyright terms.
How does this make you different from the plethora of twinks that complain about some hobbyist's open sourced software without ever contributing back so much as a meaningful bug report?
I do submit meaningful bug reports. For example, search bugzilla.mozilla.org for 'Damian Yerrick'. I've also submitted bug reports to several other projects, but the projects turned out to be unmaintained. I've wanted to submit an IE bug report for a reproducible issue involving MIME types for XHTML, but Microsoft maintains no public bug tracker.
But when you start to make the case that you somehow have the right to indiscriminately take and benefit from another man's work, you lose me
Then answer this question: is being the only one allowed to decide the use and dispensation of your creation a right, or a privilege?
Privilege. The United States Constitution, article 1, section 8, clause 8, gives Congress power to grant this privilege; it doesn't state that citizens automatically have that right. Free speech is a right; copyright is a privilege that Congress can in theory quite easily take away in whole or in part at any time. (I say "in theory" because Congress is too bought to consider a more reasonable set of copyright laws.)
Here here! Where is a list of their affiliated companies so I can avoid them?
Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, Sega, anybody else who rates games E, T, or M. Those ratings are trademarks of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, a division of IDSA. I can't even check the ESRB's web site because it's severely broken: every single page on the site redirects me to a 404 page.
It would seem to me that there would *always* be someone who owned the IP, although it might not be the original company. Awareness of ownership and desire to enforce copyright are probably in question, but ownership?
Good point, but how can a company sue over something it doesn't know it owns? What practical difference is there between not knowing you own something and not owning it? If a company knew it owned the Zero Wing franchise, you can bet that at least some of the AYBABTU sites would have received nasty letters months ago.
----------
To all Slashdot readers: If you know who represents the corporation that currently owns the IP of the late Toaplan Co., please click 'Reply to This' below and give more information.
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Lots of things are rights, even if the Constitution doesn't prescribe that the Congress not breach them.
Such as the right to cop^H^H^Hshare information? One fellow's right is another's restriction.
The DMCA applies only to software
Such as the console BIOS?
If a console system somehow played games from the PS2, GameCube, XBox, Super Nintendo, Genesis, and ROMs downloaded off the internet for any of those systems AND Mame... wouldn't you buy it?
No. I would not buy it because I would have no chance of getting any kind of after-sale service from a company that's three days away from being shut down by the courts for violating patents on console hardware and copyrights on software.
I just can't see Java overcoming C# once the latter takes off.
What about a free implementation of the C# language, virtual machine, and standard libraries?
Wine works for some things I have tried. The only things I really care about thus far are games.
Games? Wine is not an emulator. To run games, you want a real emulator. Accurate emulators for NES, Super NES, Sega Genesis, Game Gear, and all Game Boy systems exist for FreeBSD and GNU/Linux. So far, I've covered thousands of compatible games. If you own the cartridge, get a cart reader (a GBA cart reader costs about $50), dump the games, and play them.
You have a choice, you can buy the product or not buy the product. Copyrights and patents protect the creator from you stealing their hard efforts without just compensation.
You don't always have a choice. Before AT&T was split up, did you have a choice as to what telephone provider you could use? It was either AT&T or use a pay phone. It's the same in most areas with electric power: either the local energy monopoly or live like the Amish.
If anything like the the SSSCA passes: "You must buy computers with a DRM OS. Microsoft has a patent on DRM OS technology. Therefore, you must buy Microsoft software or never buy another computer for twenty years, until the patent expires." Then Microsoft goes and pulls a Sonny Bono trying to get its monopoly on computers extended.
Narrow government-granted monopolies are OK (to replace patented GIF LZW use PNG Deflate; to replace patented MP3 use Ogg Vorbis; to replace Win2k use FreeBSD). Broad government-granted monopolies (such as one-click shopping, hyperlinks, topological sorting of computation in a functional program, pause function on DVR, etc.) are not.
The only area that WinXP excells in is client/workstation software - which OS/2 can now (once again) boast it can run more client software than any other OS on the planet - period - using VirtualPC, allowing it to run Windows and Linux in virtual machines under OS/2 (or eComStation).
And the Mac can run OS/2 in its version of Virtual PC.
That was answered in the first post of mine.
If you have something important to say, say it above the 4 KB mark so that Slashdot doesn't cut it off "Read the rest of this comment..."
Most Photoshop users will never switch to the GIMP, not ever, for any reason.
Most Photoshop users who work in prepress use Photoshop for prepress, and all known methods of doing prepress on a computer are patented. Most Photoshop Elements users (PS Elements is PS minus prepress for only $100) don't. This situation will change 20 years after the day Photoshop introduced prepress, when the patents expire. Just thank God that Sonny Bono never got to patents.
You should not discount that in considering the future of Windows. It is the preferred development platform for games.
You don't need Windows to make a Game Boy Advance game. You need only a text editor (Emacs), a compiler (GCC targeted for ARM), a paint program (GIMP), a graphics converter (several exist), a compression tool (gzip), a build tool (GNU make), and a way to flash a cartridge or transfer a 256 KB netboot image. Software included with Linux or freely downloadable provides all of the above.
I'm not sure I understand; you're saying Windows will continue to exist because of hardware compatability?
Windows will continue to exist as long as makers of popular video and sound cards refuse to release register-level documentation for their hardware or to release Linux drivers compatible with each major kernel version.
Windows NT did a fantastic job with many Win16 apps. (They ran in sort of a VM so that NT was protected from their crap.)
NT also claimed to run DOS in a VM. However, the WinNT and Win2K VMs always had severe, reproducible problems with DOS support, such that DOS apps could crash the virtual machine. This is like a DOS app being able to damage the motherboard; the virtual machine should be engineered well enough that this doesn't happen.
DJGPP FAQ 3.3
There is nothing stopping you from making a new browser, make it bug free, secure, and sell it for say 15$ or something.
What about the fact that you can't make it faster to load than IE because IE is already loaded by the time the user sees Opera's icon? What about the fact that you can't replace MSHTML.dll (which other programs use) with your own browser?
If you want to compare my side of things lets look at compilers. MSVC is fairly solid and optimizes well.
MSVC does not generate code for any non-x86 targets. What happens when you want to make an app that runs on Itanium? Intel's response: Use GCC.
GCC is the next in line competitor [I feel].
Factoid: Nintendo developers use GCC to compile code for the ARM7TDMI processor in the Game Boy Advance system.
Cygwin for example is a rather complete [minus an IDE] distribution that is gaining popularity.
"Minus an IDE"? What about Emacs? Or by IDE, do you mean dialog box designer? Those exist also.
Most MS development tools for example have color highlighted syntax
So does Emacs, with any of the popular .emacs files (such as Claude Anderson's) or .emacs generators.
popups for API syntax
Don't many users hate pop-ups and use Proxomitron to turn them off on the web? When I want to look up API syntax in Emacs, I pop up my own Info window (thank you very much) with C-x 2 C-h i, which is explained on the menus and in the tutorial.
I can type "Mozilla" in MSN Search and find it no problem at all.
But where did you come up with the term "Mozilla" or "Netscape" to search on?
In other words, when IE and MSN Explorer come with the computer, how are novice users supposed to know that other still-maintained browsers exist?
And won't they be surprised when they go to look for the latest "l337" animation
Macromedia, the maker of the Flash plugin, continues to support Netscape browsers. Yes, the AYBABTU Flash animation will still run in Mozilla.
Please cite the section of law that prohibits playing media from places where you do not live.
United States patent law, and the contract on the outside of every PlayStation console's box.
Unless the mod chip makers entered into a contract with Sony for some reason
No, the end users did. Consoles say "Licensed for use only with software marked PlayStation [NTSC|U/C]" on the back. This is outside the box and is more likely to be enforceable than shrinkwrap EULAs that aren't visible until you've opened the box.
Of course, Sony has deeper pockets, so there is no law stopping them from just suing the mod chip makers out of business with nuisance lawsuits.
Congress has power to regulate the courts so as to stop frivolous lawsuits, but unfortunately, Congress is too bought to consider such a thing.
Slavery, prohibition, and preventing women from voting were all legal once in the U.S.
Prohibition is still the law. Even though Prohibition no longer covers ethanol (21st amendment), the Commerce Clause lets Congress declare a War on Some Drugs.
Dreamcast (which has some outstanding hacks available, and is cheaper then dirt right now!)
One or the other is true, not both. The "outstanding hacks" require one of the older Dreamcast units because units manufactured on or after September 2000 cannot read the CD-R media on which those hacks reside. Most of the $50 units you find were manufactured on or after September 2000.
You don't need a license to use software.
However, you do need a license to use hardware because the exclusive privilege granted by patent law covers "make, use, or sell." The PlayStation hardware is patented out the wazoo, and Sony licenses those patents on conditions that are spelled out on the back of the PlayStation's box: "Licensed for use only with software bearing the PlayStation logo and the [NTSC|U/C] designation."
You're assuming the user is in the U.S. In most of the world it's perfectly legal.
Two words: Dmitry Sklyarov.
(Yes, I know the Feds let him off in exchange for his testimony.)Bzzt. There's no law that prevents you from importing software that is otherwise legal.
Except the EULA printed on the back of the box: "Licensed for use only with products bearing the PlayStation logo and [NTSC|U/C] designation." Any other use violates the patents on the PlayStation hardware.
even if they are subject to licenses, which is certainly fairly doubtful
The console licenses are more explicit than PC software EULAs, as the terms for consoles and games are printed right on the back of the package, next to the UPC symbol, as opposed to being hidden inside the shrinkwrapped box like PC software licenses.
the validity of the licenses themselves are in doubt
Even that doesn't prevent Sony from abusing the legal system, filing frivolous lawsuits against small businesses in order to run up the small businesses' legal bills. The legal system is broken, and Congress has shown itself to be too bought to fix it.
You're going to claim that it's somehow your right to take someone else's work?
After a reasonable amount of time (perhaps 30 years, or 10 years after the author dies, both of which are more than reasonable in today's market), yes, I am justified that it should be my right to take someone else's work; that's the whole point of. Congress, on the other hand, listens to $$$ instead of reason and lets DisneyCo dictate the duration of copyright.
You want to take without giving anything back.
No, I'm upset at Disney for taking without giving back. Disney released movies such as Pinocchio and The Jungle Book the year after the copyright expired, and then closed the doors behind themselves by getting Congress to extend copyright terms.
How does this make you different from the plethora of twinks that complain about some hobbyist's open sourced software without ever contributing back so much as a meaningful bug report?
I do submit meaningful bug reports. For example, search bugzilla.mozilla.org for 'Damian Yerrick'. I've also submitted bug reports to several other projects, but the projects turned out to be unmaintained. I've wanted to submit an IE bug report for a reproducible issue involving MIME types for XHTML, but Microsoft maintains no public bug tracker.
But when you start to make the case that you somehow have the right to indiscriminately take and benefit from another man's work, you lose me
Do you feel that the copyright on the song 'Happy Birthday to You' (© 1933 or so) should still be in force?
Create something. Work hard for years to create something truly original and unique.
Not much is truly original or unique anymore. At least the stuff that gets copyrighted all the time (teen movies, teen music, etc.) isn't. Heck, the total number of possible eight-note melodies is less than a million.
Then answer this question: is being the only one allowed to decide the use and dispensation of your creation a right, or a privilege?
Privilege. The United States Constitution, article 1, section 8, clause 8, gives Congress power to grant this privilege; it doesn't state that citizens automatically have that right. Free speech is a right; copyright is a privilege that Congress can in theory quite easily take away in whole or in part at any time. (I say "in theory" because Congress is too bought to consider a more reasonable set of copyright laws.)
Here here! Where is a list of their affiliated companies so I can avoid them?
Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, Sega, anybody else who rates games E, T, or M. Those ratings are trademarks of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, a division of IDSA. I can't even check the ESRB's web site because it's severely broken: every single page on the site redirects me to a 404 page.
It would seem to me that there would *always* be someone who owned the IP, although it might not be the original company. Awareness of ownership and desire to enforce copyright are probably in question, but ownership?
Good point, but how can a company sue over something it doesn't know it owns? What practical difference is there between not knowing you own something and not owning it? If a company knew it owned the Zero Wing franchise, you can bet that at least some of the AYBABTU sites would have received nasty letters months ago.
----------
To all Slashdot readers: If you know who represents the corporation that currently owns the IP of the late Toaplan Co., please click 'Reply to This' below and give more information.