Its interesting, though, that apparently the binary image can be posted w/o fear of copyright infringement.
Wrong. Much abandonware falls under the "no suitor, no judge" rule. For example, it's OK to distribute the "Zero Wing" ROM because Toaplan, its publisher, no longer exists and therefore can't sue. However, in this case, both Hasbro (Parker Bros parent) and Tolkien's estate (licensor of LotR franchise) still exist and still maintain legal departments.
Are all 2600 games 'free' now?
Copyright on corporate-authored works lasts ninety-five years plus the rest of the calendar year. Blame Sonny Bono and Di$ney for such a counterproductively long copyprivilege term.
I recall that for SNES games and the like the ROMs are still considered warez or bootlegged.
You're probably thinking of mask work copyright, which Nintendo claims prohibits even fair-use backups of software that happens to be stored on a semiconductor ROM chip. (A careful reading may show that it prohibits only burning the data back onto a ROM chip; however, this depends on how the courts interpret "reproduction" of a mask work and whether or not ROM is a "commonplace design" that goes unprotected.) Such copyright lasts only ten years plus December 31.
Is "photoshop" falling into common usage as a word meaning "to digitally modify [an image]" similar to the way "xerox" is now synonymous with "photocopy"?
If you pay over $40 for a CD-ROM there is something wrong with you.
Not every common PC system has a $40 CD-ROM drive available. Some people use laptops, and laptops can't take standard ATA 5.25" form factor drives. What if the choice is between a $300 laptop CD-ROM drive or a $40 standard ATA CD-ROM plus a $260 docking station? It's still $300 either way. For $300, heck, I could get a GameCube and two games.
can't upgrade... here's why
on
Uplink
·
· Score: 1
One of the goals in the game is to upgrade to a better computer with more and faster processors, more memory and the like.
I tried that, but then the computer said "Could not execute uplink.exe: Unknown executable format." The game doesn't run on anything but Win32 on x86, and the fastest x86 machine is still in the 2 GHz range. And if I try to run it on a machine with more than one x86 processor, the machine just laughs at me, asking for my credit card number so that it can license an upgrade to a "professional" operating system. Trying a real professional operating system (Linux with Transgaming WineX) produces unpredictable results.
The term "Gameplay" refers to Balance
on
Uplink
·
· Score: 1
the term "gameplay". Gameplay is about the most vague description of a game, ever. You may as well say the game rocks.
I define "gameplay" as those aspects of a game that make it fun. Most of gameplay falls into these two categories: 1. responsive play control, and 2. balance.
How is a congressman supposed to review this? Do you expect them to look up the context around every change? Legislators have many patches (excuse me, bills) to review, so you should help them out by using a --context or --unified switch in your diff command.
Ever heard of a diff visualization tool? Those tools take a tree and a patch and line up the before and after versions side-by-side, highlighting the differences. How do you know your congresscritter isn't using one?
IP is not "property" and isn't subject to "theft"
on
Webcasting and the DMCA
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Slashdorks can agree with any politician as on as they support the theft of intellectual property
The U.S. Constitution recognizes it not as a birthright but as a tool "to promote the progress of science and useful arts" (U.S. Const. 1.8.8) "Copyright" is a misnomer; it really should be "copyprivilege". The law doesn't recognize intellectual "property" as property at all, especially considering how it treats transfer of exclusive rights. Copying another's work isn't termed "theft" but merely "infringement" on a government-granted privilege. Besides, with enough storage space, I could generate and store every melody in the book or at least a melody confusingly similar to every melody in the book (thus killing practical trademark law).
But if we could browse articles at rejection levels, or we could browse articles through article moderation, like I suggested, these wouldn't even be issues
In that case, you would love a Scoop site such as Adequacy or Kuro5hin (which WILL be back up by Monday).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe "M$" is childish name calling.
M$ is a name for a string variable in a language that Bill Gates and Microsoft popularized on early 8-bit home computers. This language was Basic. This code works on Applesoft Basic (the Basic interpreter included with Apple II) and QBasic (the Basic interpreter included with MS-DOS until about 7.1). I haven't tried it on Visual Basic.
Actually [a person complaining about losing money for every minute the service is down] would be son while playing his on-line games. So, by this reasoning, my son playing on-line games is classified as business use.
Explicit acknowledgement in their service agreement... that I can run a web server (as long as its not commercial)
How do they define "commercial"? Do they use the BBC H2G2.com standard of "if it links to an external web site that links to a web site controlled by a producer or vendor of a product, it's commercial; take it down now"? Is posting your resume considered an action taken for commercial gain?
Let's see here, I'm sure you can do the math. $0 to drive in, or $200 for "business class ISP".
Not $0 to drive in by any means. For each employee who drives in, the company has to pay for the lease on the office space, pay for furniture, pay for climate control and ventilation, pay for electricity, and possibly pay for petrol or bus fare. Does this add up to less than $200/mo?
DHCP is actually a misleading name in that it actually Checks your ethernet MAC address. In that sense it is not dynamic at all. It assigns an IP to you based on rules they set up.
True, but what if the "rules they set up" include a lease renewal to a randomized IP address every two hours?
Do I have to be running a server to download linux ISOs, pr0n videos and public domain (50-year-old) movies?
Sorry, but the only public domain movies are those first published on or before December 31, 1922. Almost anything first published on or after January 1, 1923, is under effectively perpetual copyright in the United States, under a precedent set by the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and the Eldred v. Ashcroft decision that gives Congress the power to set arbitrarily long terms on copyright.
Guess when the first Technicolor movie was made? 1923.
you need a static IP to run a VPN server the correct way.. is your 'homeuser' rate going to allow for that?
Cable and DSL IPs tend to be almost static, that is, DHCP doesn't change them more often than once every few months for a customer that remains in good standing.
I suppose you could call your family before connecting to see what the IP of the week is.
Or use DynDNS.org, which provides DNS hosting with TTL 4 hours. Yes, if you want better Quality Of Service, you need a business account.
Similarly, if you run servers you're a business user.
Not necessarily. As c_g_hills (who unfortunately posts at -1) pointed out in the above comment:
If i run a counterstrike server for my friends to play on i am not a business. If i run a web server to host my own non-profit site i am not a business. If i use my connection to make money ie charing people for use of the counterstrike server, or advertising my business on my website, *then* i would be a business customer.
Not all servers are business servers. Had you said "Similarly, if you run servers for commercial purposes, you're a business user," I would agree, provided also that business users get stronger quality of service assurances.
If my isp ever told me i'd have to pay for a business conection, i would call em up, tell them in no uncertain terms where they can shove their tos, and that they just lost a customer.
In that case, you have three choices:
downgrade to dial-up,
switch from broadband provided by the local cable monopoly to broadband provided by the local phone monopoly (provided you live downtown and haven't canceled them too), or
Not only has the rampant Tetris-playing caused my students to stop paying attention in class
Then don't allow your students to bring Game Boy units to class. The only handheld units that can run Tetris® brand products are Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance. No TI, HP, or Casio calculator has a Tetris product available. The closest equivalents to "Tetris" on TI-89 are Jetris, Queue, etc. Of course, there are also Nibbles, SameGame, Dr. M****, and P*c-M*n.
but the ability to store "notes" in the calculator is a major source of cheating on tests
Bull. If your students (like supabeast!) use their calcs as a mnemonic aid for formulas, the problem lies not necessarily in the calcs but perhaps in the tests themselves. Design the tests to require a higher level of thought than simple recall (such as the ability to comprehend, apply, or analyze the underlying mathematics), and don't let them use cable or IR links during the test.
Not only the badly translated intro
on
SNES Portable
·
· Score: 2
So long as it still had the badly translated introduction, right?
Not only the badly translated introduction, but the entire Flash movie along with it. That would be very doable on GBA; heck, I've done it on an NES cartridge (but couldn't fit anything else on the cartridge).
SPC700 was 8-bit but the DSP was 16-bit
on
SNES Portable
·
· Score: 1
The SPC700 was only an 8-bit stereo audio processor. Much like a Soundblaster Pro.
I seem to remember that the SPC700 was a 6502 knockoff with the instruction set rearranged a bit and a few new 16-bit instructions that combined the X and Y registers (as in Z80). However, it connected to a DSP that did support 16-bit stereo output.
So where do I get Zero Wing?
on
SNES Portable
·
· Score: 1
The Genesis original [of Toaplan's Zero Wing] is already portable, with the [handheld Genesis-compatible] Nomad.
Sega handheld units are notorious for low battery life. Yes, I have enough light in my bedroom to play GBA games (other than the non-gamma-corrected Castlevania).
I have a GBA. I don't have a Nomad. When I find Nomad units on eBay for $60 plus shipping, how do I pay for eBay items without going through PayPal?
I've only played the ROM (Toaplan is dead; no plaintiff, no judge), not the cartridge. Where can I get a cartridge? eBay gave zero relevant results when searching for 'zero wing' (lots of MS Gundam "Wing Zero" action figures), 'sega zero wing' (mostly AYBABTU t-shirts), and 'genesis zero wing' (zero results).
When Toaplan died, who bought Toaplan's IP? Perhaps they would be willing to license the Zero Wing franchise for a GBA homebrew Special Edition of the game; I'd be more than willing to write much of the code.
Slashdot Mirror
Its interesting, though, that apparently the binary image can be posted w/o fear of copyright infringement.
Wrong. Much abandonware falls under the "no suitor, no judge" rule. For example, it's OK to distribute the "Zero Wing" ROM because Toaplan, its publisher, no longer exists and therefore can't sue. However, in this case, both Hasbro (Parker Bros parent) and Tolkien's estate (licensor of LotR franchise) still exist and still maintain legal departments.
Are all 2600 games 'free' now?
Copyright on corporate-authored works lasts ninety-five years plus the rest of the calendar year. Blame Sonny Bono and Di$ney for such a counterproductively long copyprivilege term.
I recall that for SNES games and the like the ROMs are still considered warez or bootlegged.
You're probably thinking of mask work copyright, which Nintendo claims prohibits even fair-use backups of software that happens to be stored on a semiconductor ROM chip. (A careful reading may show that it prohibits only burning the data back onto a ROM chip; however, this depends on how the courts interpret "reproduction" of a mask work and whether or not ROM is a "commonplace design" that goes unprotected.) Such copyright lasts only ten years plus December 31.
Is "photoshop" falling into common usage as a word meaning "to digitally modify [an image]" similar to the way "xerox" is now synonymous with "photocopy"?
This has been true at least since the All Your Base photoshopping craze. Read More: A Google search for "photoshopped"
Yes, I say "gimped" instead.
The game doesn't run on anything but Win32 on x86
s/Win32 on// (the reviews on the sites that are up don't clue a fellow in on the existence of a native version)
Trying ... Linux ... produces unpredictable results.
OK... native version... same result. Damn proprietary beta drivers.
If you pay over $40 for a CD-ROM there is something wrong with you.
Not every common PC system has a $40 CD-ROM drive available. Some people use laptops, and laptops can't take standard ATA 5.25" form factor drives. What if the choice is between a $300 laptop CD-ROM drive or a $40 standard ATA CD-ROM plus a $260 docking station? It's still $300 either way. For $300, heck, I could get a GameCube and two games.
One of the goals in the game is to upgrade to a better computer with more and faster processors, more memory and the like.
I tried that, but then the computer said "Could not execute uplink.exe: Unknown executable format." The game doesn't run on anything but Win32 on x86, and the fastest x86 machine is still in the 2 GHz range. And if I try to run it on a machine with more than one x86 processor, the machine just laughs at me, asking for my credit card number so that it can license an upgrade to a "professional" operating system. Trying a real professional operating system (Linux with Transgaming WineX) produces unpredictable results.
the term "gameplay". Gameplay is about the most vague description of a game, ever. You may as well say the game rocks.
I define "gameplay" as those aspects of a game that make it fun. Most of gameplay falls into these two categories: 1. responsive play control, and 2. balance.
How is a congressman supposed to review this? Do you expect them to look up the context around every change? Legislators have many patches (excuse me, bills) to review, so you should help them out by using a --context or --unified switch in your diff command.
Ever heard of a diff visualization tool? Those tools take a tree and a patch and line up the before and after versions side-by-side, highlighting the differences. How do you know your congresscritter isn't using one?
Slashdorks can agree with any politician as on as they support the theft of intellectual property
The U.S. Constitution recognizes it not as a birthright but as a tool "to promote the progress of science and useful arts" (U.S. Const. 1.8.8) "Copyright" is a misnomer; it really should be "copyprivilege". The law doesn't recognize intellectual "property" as property at all, especially considering how it treats transfer of exclusive rights. Copying another's work isn't termed "theft" but merely "infringement" on a government-granted privilege. Besides, with enough storage space, I could generate and store every melody in the book or at least a melody confusingly similar to every melody in the book (thus killing practical trademark law).
But if we could browse articles at rejection levels, or we could browse articles through article moderation, like I suggested, these wouldn't even be issues
In that case, you would love a Scoop site such as Adequacy or Kuro5hin (which WILL be back up by Monday).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe "M$" is childish name calling.
M$ is a name for a string variable in a language that Bill Gates and Microsoft popularized on early 8-bit home computers. This language was Basic. This code works on Applesoft Basic (the Basic interpreter included with Apple II) and QBasic (the Basic interpreter included with MS-DOS until about 7.1). I haven't tried it on Visual Basic.
Actually [a person complaining about losing money for every minute the service is down] would be son while playing his on-line games. So, by this reasoning, my son playing on-line games is classified as business use.
Is your son an EverQuest admin or something?
Explicit acknowledgement in their service agreement ... that I can run a web server (as long as its not commercial)
How do they define "commercial"? Do they use the BBC H2G2.com standard of "if it links to an external web site that links to a web site controlled by a producer or vendor of a product, it's commercial; take it down now"? Is posting your resume considered an action taken for commercial gain?
Let's see here, I'm sure you can do the math. $0 to drive in, or $200 for "business class ISP".
Not $0 to drive in by any means. For each employee who drives in, the company has to pay for the lease on the office space, pay for furniture, pay for climate control and ventilation, pay for electricity, and possibly pay for petrol or bus fare. Does this add up to less than $200/mo?
DHCP is actually a misleading name in that it actually Checks your ethernet MAC address. In that sense it is not dynamic at all. It assigns an IP to you based on rules they set up.
True, but what if the "rules they set up" include a lease renewal to a randomized IP address every two hours?
Do I have to be running a server to download linux ISOs, pr0n videos and public domain (50-year-old) movies?
Sorry, but the only public domain movies are those first published on or before December 31, 1922. Almost anything first published on or after January 1, 1923, is under effectively perpetual copyright in the United States, under a precedent set by the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and the Eldred v. Ashcroft decision that gives Congress the power to set arbitrarily long terms on copyright.
Guess when the first Technicolor movie was made? 1923.
you need a static IP to run a VPN server the correct way.. is your 'homeuser' rate going to allow for that?
Cable and DSL IPs tend to be almost static, that is, DHCP doesn't change them more often than once every few months for a customer that remains in good standing.
I suppose you could call your family before connecting to see what the IP of the week is.
Or use DynDNS.org, which provides DNS hosting with TTL 4 hours. Yes, if you want better Quality Of Service, you need a business account.
Similarly, if you run servers you're a business user.
Not necessarily. As c_g_hills (who unfortunately posts at -1) pointed out in the above comment:
Not all servers are business servers. Had you said "Similarly, if you run servers for commercial purposes, you're a business user," I would agree, provided also that business users get stronger quality of service assurances.
If my isp ever told me i'd have to pay for a business conection, i would call em up, tell them in no uncertain terms where they can shove their tos, and that they just lost a customer.
In that case, you have three choices:are you stupid? there is a 68k tetris program by jimmy mardell for the 89 that is PERFECT, better than tetris brand
I wasn't saying there wasn't a good tetrisclone. I was just saying there wasn't Tetris®.
and PalmOS has an official tetris version produced for it, and its a handheld
Sorry; I wasn't aware of it.
Not only has the rampant Tetris-playing caused my students to stop paying attention in class
Then don't allow your students to bring Game Boy units to class. The only handheld units that can run Tetris® brand products are Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance. No TI, HP, or Casio calculator has a Tetris product available. The closest equivalents to "Tetris" on TI-89 are Jetris, Queue, etc. Of course, there are also Nibbles, SameGame, Dr. M****, and P*c-M*n.
but the ability to store "notes" in the calculator is a major source of cheating on tests
Bull. If your students (like supabeast!) use their calcs as a mnemonic aid for formulas, the problem lies not necessarily in the calcs but perhaps in the tests themselves. Design the tests to require a higher level of thought than simple recall (such as the ability to comprehend, apply, or analyze the underlying mathematics), and don't let them use cable or IR links during the test.
So long as it still had the badly translated introduction, right?
Not only the badly translated introduction, but the entire Flash movie along with it. That would be very doable on GBA; heck, I've done it on an NES cartridge (but couldn't fit anything else on the cartridge).
Are there any judgments made about that? Or only threatening letters?
If you get a cease-and-desist letter, and you don't have enough money to pay an attorney to fight it, you effectively have a judgment.
My list of games that I enjoy includes Dead or Alive 3, Oddworld, Arctic Thunder
All three rated T for Teen (the idsa's equivalent of mpaa's pg-13)
Amped and Project Gotham Racing.
This leaves only two that are rated E for Everyone (the idsa's equivalent of mpaa's G/PG).
Source: Xbox Catalog
The SPC700 was only an 8-bit stereo audio processor. Much like a Soundblaster Pro.
I seem to remember that the SPC700 was a 6502 knockoff with the instruction set rearranged a bit and a few new 16-bit instructions that combined the X and Y registers (as in Z80). However, it connected to a DSP that did support 16-bit stereo output.
The Genesis original [of Toaplan's Zero Wing] is already portable, with the [handheld Genesis-compatible] Nomad.
When Toaplan died, who bought Toaplan's IP? Perhaps they would be willing to license the Zero Wing franchise for a GBA homebrew Special Edition of the game; I'd be more than willing to write much of the code.