The emulator authors are doing neither (unless you can find a trademark for a targeted machine outside of the dead "Atari 2600" mark). The 2600, which is a targeted machine, never had a BIOS. Try again.
Except none of the machine names are currently trademarked (and the one existing "Atari 2600" trademark - not "2600", but "Atari 2600" - is a dead mark).
They don't have the right to go after these emulators, though - they don't infringe "Atari's" copyrights at all. None of them include BIOS images, and the 2600 never had a BIOS to begin with. Also AFAIK all patents are expired on the targeted machines, especially in the case of the 2600. The machine names (2600, 7800, etc) are also not trademarked ("Atari 2600" used to be trademarked, but is a dead mark now).
This seizure suit that I read was filed highlights one of the ways that they do an end run around the Constitution. The suit isn't "United States v Gibson Guitar Corporation", it's "United States v. Ebony Wood In Various Forms". They don't file suit against the legal entity, but they file suit against the property to be seized itself. Someone please explain to me how that's Constitutional, seeing that inanimate wood cannot defend against itself.
Because that's how citations are supposed to be done. By that logic, let's just fire all cops and replace them with automated monitoring and ticketing computers.
So basically, you connect an untrusted device to a device you trust somewhat, and you're shocked when bad things can happen?
It's like people who would pick up a random USB drive off the ground and then plug it into their computer without taking precautions. Why is this any different?
Not that I'm a fan of any political party. I just require more than someone telling me "so and so proposed this legislation/rule/whatever and it will cause this".
Sad thing is, that's probably true, because the buyer can say "this cartridge has never, EVER been dumped, oh but I don't know if it works" and hoarders eat that shit up because they assign too much monetary value to the data on the cartridge, and not enough value to the source of the cart itself (in-house dev board, mag review copy, public demo/kiosk copy, rogue employee burning off tons of extra carts of a game to sell them - see Sonic Crackers). I own a Sonic 3 EPROM cart for Genesis that is binary-identical to the retail NTSC ROM, but with normal RAM instead of FeRAM so it can't save games (whether locked on to S&K or not). The value to me does not come from the game data, it comes from the fact that the cartridge itself is generally one-of-a-kind (or one-of-a-few-of-a-kind).
That's my point - you can't always be sure of the accuracy of the Good* labels. It doesn't matter if you run a ROM through GoodSNES or got it from someone who already did, if the info isn't accurate. As an example, last I checked, the "large" Sonic Crackers proto for Mega Drive that has proto TMNT data in the top half is still labeled an "overdump" when an overdump is a dump where the data has wrapped around to the beginning due to lack of address lines being wired up in the cart, not a dump from a board that happens to have two extra unrelated chips. I would even be surprised if that large dump exists nowadays (at least in a widespread fashion, I'm sure some people have it somewhere, hell I've probably got it on an old backup DVD), what with everyone's blind acceptance of Good* labels and the want to get rid of "bad" ROMs.
Obviously not, and if you'd bothered to actually read the article, you'd know why, instead of being snarky because "oh look everyone else uses snes9x or zsnes, this guy is a nutter".
SNES9x sucks. ZSNES sucks. Every other SNES emulator sucks, because they don't aim for accuracy. Same reason that C64 emulators like PC64, C64S, etc have gone by the wayside, while emulators like Hoxs64, VICE, and CCS64 are at the top of their game. Or why Nesticle was supplanted by modern emulators like Nestopia or Nintendulator.
When it becomes impossible to develop software for a platform because no emulator is accurate enough to reasonably determine whether or not your software is likely to run on the original hardware, there is a major problem. These types of edge cases are mostly used to push the system further than originally designed. To go back to C64 emulators, sure, older ones like PC64, etc would run 99% of games pretty good. But, you throw advanced demoscene stuff at it, things that work perfectly on real C64s, and the emulators would barf up shit. Even a couple of years ago, someone found out how to display a 9th sprite on a C64 scanline, on the far, far right (see: Krestage 3/Crest). Even the most accurate C64 emulator, Hoxs64, did not support this because until then, the "common sense" was that you just can't put more than 8 sprites on a scanline.
This is where I encourage the development of a demoscene (however small but dedicated) for all of the classic-style systems where the CPU more or less runs in lockstep with the video signal. Demosceners tend to find out how to abuse the hardware registers at just the right time to generate a specific effect, and without cycle accuracy those effects just don't work. I've long felt that demos can be amongst an emulator programmer's best testing tools when comparing behavior to the hardware being emulated. Look at stuff like the old Sid Mania SNES demo from Censor Design, which was one of the first major releases for the SNES that had sound. Even today it emulates best on bsnes (big surprise) and sounds like ass on ZSNES.
Which is why people who own such carts and refuse to get them dumped (whether to be released publically or not) deserve to have them stolen, dumped (for preservation), and returned. Luckily, there are far less such people than in the past. They don't realize that if they get the media backed up, they can revive their cart when it does succumb to bit rot.
Slashdot Mirror
Because it was sent to the site owner directly, and not to the ISP.
The emulator authors are doing neither (unless you can find a trademark for a targeted machine outside of the dead "Atari 2600" mark). The 2600, which is a targeted machine, never had a BIOS. Try again.
Except none of the machine names are currently trademarked (and the one existing "Atari 2600" trademark - not "2600", but "Atari 2600" - is a dead mark).
They don't have the right to go after these emulators, though - they don't infringe "Atari's" copyrights at all. None of them include BIOS images, and the 2600 never had a BIOS to begin with. Also AFAIK all patents are expired on the targeted machines, especially in the case of the 2600. The machine names (2600, 7800, etc) are also not trademarked ("Atari 2600" used to be trademarked, but is a dead mark now).
Fuck "Atari".
More real than you thought, huh? =P
Never, as Apple would likely sue.
You forgot a step before profit... "???"
Step 1: Collect NotSanguine's underpants
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit!
Nature "endangers" plenty of animals without our assistance at all. Who's fighting for those animals?
This seizure suit that I read was filed highlights one of the ways that they do an end run around the Constitution. The suit isn't "United States v Gibson Guitar Corporation", it's "United States v. Ebony Wood In Various Forms". They don't file suit against the legal entity, but they file suit against the property to be seized itself. Someone please explain to me how that's Constitutional, seeing that inanimate wood cannot defend against itself.
The rest of the world has their share of retardedness. Don't blindly hate the US without taking a look at your country's closeted skeletons.
Why do you hate freedom?
That goes for you and the brain dead mod who called that tripe "insightful".
Go for it, not like it'll affect his karma.
That's not the style commonly seen on Guevara shirts.
Because that's how citations are supposed to be done. By that logic, let's just fire all cops and replace them with automated monitoring and ticketing computers.
So a guy speeds (which is admittedly potentially unsafe) and suddenly you got a mob of people beating him to death? That's supposed to be just?
I hope you never actually have any say over such things.
I don't think that worked.
So basically, you connect an untrusted device to a device you trust somewhat, and you're shocked when bad things can happen?
It's like people who would pick up a random USB drive off the ground and then plug it into their computer without taking precautions. Why is this any different?
[citation needed]
Not that I'm a fan of any political party. I just require more than someone telling me "so and so proposed this legislation/rule/whatever and it will cause this".
I wouldn't brag about that if I were you.
I meant seller, not buyer, argh.
Sad thing is, that's probably true, because the buyer can say "this cartridge has never, EVER been dumped, oh but I don't know if it works" and hoarders eat that shit up because they assign too much monetary value to the data on the cartridge, and not enough value to the source of the cart itself (in-house dev board, mag review copy, public demo/kiosk copy, rogue employee burning off tons of extra carts of a game to sell them - see Sonic Crackers). I own a Sonic 3 EPROM cart for Genesis that is binary-identical to the retail NTSC ROM, but with normal RAM instead of FeRAM so it can't save games (whether locked on to S&K or not). The value to me does not come from the game data, it comes from the fact that the cartridge itself is generally one-of-a-kind (or one-of-a-few-of-a-kind).
That's my point - you can't always be sure of the accuracy of the Good* labels. It doesn't matter if you run a ROM through GoodSNES or got it from someone who already did, if the info isn't accurate. As an example, last I checked, the "large" Sonic Crackers proto for Mega Drive that has proto TMNT data in the top half is still labeled an "overdump" when an overdump is a dump where the data has wrapped around to the beginning due to lack of address lines being wired up in the cart, not a dump from a board that happens to have two extra unrelated chips. I would even be surprised if that large dump exists nowadays (at least in a widespread fashion, I'm sure some people have it somewhere, hell I've probably got it on an old backup DVD), what with everyone's blind acceptance of Good* labels and the want to get rid of "bad" ROMs.
Obviously not, and if you'd bothered to actually read the article, you'd know why, instead of being snarky because "oh look everyone else uses snes9x or zsnes, this guy is a nutter".
SNES9x sucks. ZSNES sucks. Every other SNES emulator sucks, because they don't aim for accuracy. Same reason that C64 emulators like PC64, C64S, etc have gone by the wayside, while emulators like Hoxs64, VICE, and CCS64 are at the top of their game. Or why Nesticle was supplanted by modern emulators like Nestopia or Nintendulator.
When it becomes impossible to develop software for a platform because no emulator is accurate enough to reasonably determine whether or not your software is likely to run on the original hardware, there is a major problem. These types of edge cases are mostly used to push the system further than originally designed. To go back to C64 emulators, sure, older ones like PC64, etc would run 99% of games pretty good. But, you throw advanced demoscene stuff at it, things that work perfectly on real C64s, and the emulators would barf up shit. Even a couple of years ago, someone found out how to display a 9th sprite on a C64 scanline, on the far, far right (see: Krestage 3/Crest). Even the most accurate C64 emulator, Hoxs64, did not support this because until then, the "common sense" was that you just can't put more than 8 sprites on a scanline.
This is where I encourage the development of a demoscene (however small but dedicated) for all of the classic-style systems where the CPU more or less runs in lockstep with the video signal. Demosceners tend to find out how to abuse the hardware registers at just the right time to generate a specific effect, and without cycle accuracy those effects just don't work. I've long felt that demos can be amongst an emulator programmer's best testing tools when comparing behavior to the hardware being emulated. Look at stuff like the old Sid Mania SNES demo from Censor Design, which was one of the first major releases for the SNES that had sound. Even today it emulates best on bsnes (big surprise) and sounds like ass on ZSNES.
Which is why people who own such carts and refuse to get them dumped (whether to be released publically or not) deserve to have them stolen, dumped (for preservation), and returned. Luckily, there are far less such people than in the past. They don't realize that if they get the media backed up, they can revive their cart when it does succumb to bit rot.