However, it was the antagonist of the Sega Genesis X-Men game, as I recall. Mainly for the same reason the Holodecks were used in Star Trek, to justify logically incosistent hazards. (In this case, "Why are the X-Men fighting all their major villains at once?")
The used a similar plot in Spider Man and The X-Men in Arcade's Revenge (the video game), except in this case it was an obstacle course created by the evil Arcade, so the environments weren't portrayed as being realistic.
This was analyzed in a very important book by William H. Whyte called The Organization Man. I've posted this chapter up before in reference to another topic, but it seems very appropriate here:
The DivX Cube (Aluminum Mini Computer) is one of the first good looking all-in-one PC solutions to create your own audio and video station which can perfectly be integrated into your existing home theatre system.
Why would anybody want that overpriced, crippled alternative??
My feeling about this is very simple. I don't object to the concept of closed source software as long as Free Software alternatives are legally allowed to exist. I normally wouldn't have a problem with Apple trying to find legal means of preventing people from distributing an unauthorized patch for their software. (I don't think, honestly, that they could come up with legal reasoning that I would find morally acceptible, but if I accepted that the laws of this country were just and the legal system were not corrupt, it wouldn't be a problem.)
However, I think that their use of the DMCA should cause people to think twice about buying Apple hardware or software. In this case, there are so many computer companies out there with dirty hands (any company that requires you to buy a copy of Windows that you will never use) that you will have a hard time buying a computer without compromising your principles.
The DMCA is an evil law, the worst kind of corporate welfare. It essentially has prevented legal Free Software DVD tools from being developed. This particular case is simply an extension of that.
The real problem is the DVD format itself, which is chained down by all sorts of license restrictions but has still become ubiquitous. There needs to be a viable, Free alternative, but I don't see how that will be possible since most people's primary DVD players are not general purpose computers.
Actually, this Email is scary because it shows you where the really screwed up people in the world come from. I mean, here is a woman who is clearly grinding down her son, and doubtless has for his entire life. I don't get "concerned parent" out of this Email, I get the impression of a broken mother-son relationship.
He's probably "barely" working at Electronics Boutique because he doesn't have the education or the skills for something better. It's hard to find a good job right now even if you are well educated and experienced, imagine looking for one if you are unskilled labor!
Oddly, though, I do agree with her that he shouldn't spend money on video games. Because, if he's living in that woman's house, his #1 priority should be to get out. If he stays, he'll end up strangled by her apron strings. At 19, although I realize this is unfortunately uncommon, a person should be a fully functioning adult. It's unlikely that someone brought up by someone like that will be. I think this need to escape will often show up in people raised like this. (Read H.P. Lovecraft's rather depressing biography sometime.) Of course, our whole society is focused on cutting a person's useful working life short at both ends, by extending childhood into the twenties and encouraging retirement when a person should still have many productive years ahead.
Imagine if this guy committed suicide. I think anyone reading this could see where the problem probably lies, but we'd end up with another frivolous lawsuit against the video gme industry.
The other sad thing is that this makes me despair of our nation's schools. I mean, she thinks she is well spoken. I've written some stupid things in Emails and online, but at least I was aware when I sounded like a raving lunatic.
Well, that's because my definition does not fit with the formal definition of software. I really wanted to ask the question, "what does legally restricted data with licensed players mean to Free Software?"
I think I was trying to grope my way to the idea of Palladium, the idea that computers could be licensed "players" for software the way DVD players could be licensed players for movie data. I missed a key element though. You can play unlicensed data in a licensed DVD player, I think. At least, some DVD players will allow you to play VCDs which aren't signed by DVD encryption.
The computers we are looking at in the future will not only run heavily licensed and restricted software, they will not run Free alternatives. In other words, we will have computers that will run software if and only if it is signed by trusted authorities, and those authorities will be able to decide what will run and what will not. Besides that, work is currently under way to make those authorities legal regualatory bodies with official status, through the CBDTPA.
However, at that time I couldn't even concieve of a law as grotesque as CBDTPA. It didn't even appear at the edge of my nightmares. So, after bringing up the point of the idea of computers being licensed "players" for software, I went off on a tangent about UCITA and click through licenses making reverse engineering illegal.
Hmm, you've pointed out a major flaw in my question. If Slashdot ever interviews RMS again, I'll be able to frame the issue better. However, I was asking about a concept of Free Harware that would be complementary to the idea of Free Software.
In the Slashdot interview of Richard Stallman a while back, I asked this very question. His response was very simple and to the point.
Q: The battle over CSS has been about whether people have the right to use software (I consider DVDs software because they are programs read by a computer chip) when it is controlled by the content control system CSS, even after they've bought it. I hope they'll lose in the courts, but it is unclear at this point whether they will, however, my question is on another, related topic.
Suppose very strong, nearly unbreakable encryption were used on traditional Software DVD (i.e. stuff like M$ software or other companies software, just in a DVD format) and a DVD CCA for software were set up saying, "You aren't allowed to access the content of any DVDs unless you use our licensed DVD decryption software. Oh, and our DVD decryption software contains a legally enforceable (under UCITA) software license which states that you cannot reverse engineer any content you have decrypted using our decryption software." How would Free Software handle it?
RMS:With laws like that, there would be no lawful way to solve the problem. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act comes close to what you imagine, and it may be enough to prohibit free software for this job. (I don't know for certain, and I think the answer is not known yet.) It may be necessary to develop this software in countries which do not have these laws.
Q:Does there now need to be a Free Hardware philosophy which states that "Hardware which exists tied to a proprietary software system must be replaced by Free Hardware standards" or something similar?
RMS: I agree--but it will be hard to get the movie companies to release movies for that hardware. Fundamentally, the only solution will be when enough of the public believes in freedom to change the laws that are the basis for denying our freedom.
It is actually kind of depressing that even though we were all so well aware of what was coming we are still here, right up against the wall with so little progress to show.
We ran on Tomcat without Apache, it worked very well. Unfortunately, the company went the way of other.coms, but the technology behind the company was fundamentally sound.
Interesting, Sony's movie division (Columbia/Tri-Star) is following the same pattern as their games division. They did something similar with their Playstation with games when they came out with a new format that wouldn't play in modified Playstations.
Sony, can't live with 'em, can't legally coat their executives with napalm and set 'em ablaze...
Most of the people I know from SE Asia still by a lot of VCDs. In fact, if you absolutely have to have a movie but still don't want to give MPAA your money, this is a good route to go. Well, they still get some money from you, but a lot less than if you buy a $20.00 DVD. Here's one place you can get them:
Remember you think of these people as dirt poor, but if they were really that dirt poor they wouldn't be buying DVDs or VCDs at all. If the cost of DVDs or VCDs gets out of hand, they will either:
1. Resort to piracy.
2. Stick to locally produced content.
3. Spend their money on other forms of entertainment, like Net Cafes.
4. Create DVD/VCD libraries.
The best thing for people in these countries, anyway, would be to spend more on local content. That way they could build up local industries with world-exportable product (like Japan and Hong Kong have).
In fact, it occurs to me that the sinister American media cartels might discount their content in those regions to prevent such competition from arises. (I mean, it's either that or they are just ruthlessly ripping off people in the more well to do areas of the globe. Oh, or maybe it is both. Knowing them, I'll go with both.)
Articles like this one by Declan McCullough make me sick. Our economy is currently in the dumpster because politicians went around doing the wrong things. How many of us lost jobs in the tech bubble?
If your job is working with computers, then the stuff coming out of Washington should terrify you. They could severely limit the amount of growth in the computer field with some of these proposals. Eventually, that means it will be likely that you will have to find a new career doing something other than coding. I mean, we all have to eat. Even if you don't love working with computers for their own sake, you should at least consider the monetary aspect. (I know, we are all supposed to live on our love of coding and manufacture things like food and clothes out of our good intentions.)
Technology and politics always go together. New technology always shakes things up and creates chaos. In authoritarian societies, this chaos can lead to revolution and counter revolution, to bloodshed and mayhem. In democratic societies, the change is still unpleasant. Politics is never easy, it's never quick. What this article is saying is, "let's just stay in our ivory towers and wait for the storm to blow over?" Maybe he believs that technological revolutions can't be stifled by a concerted effort of politicians. How many time do I have to cite this article, UNNATURAL MONOPOLY: CRITICAL MOMENTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE BELL SYSTEM MONOPOLY, on the telephone monopoly before people like Declan McCullough get it?
Recently I have been reading a great book about politics. It's called Means of Ascent and it is about a ruthless, brilliant politician named Lyndon Baines Johnson (and to a lesser extent, to his opponent in the first Senate race LBJ ever won, Coke Stevenson).
Johnson was brilliant at using money and technology to get his message out to the voters (his message mostly being about destroying Coke Stevenson's reputation in the State of Texas). How did Johnson use technology? Well, he used the radio much more effectively than previous Texas politicians. He also used the helicopter to go from speech to speech. The book makes a point that this kind of campaigning was extremely effective. (Of course, Johnson still had to turn to what I will euphemistically call "machine politics" in the end, but even that wouldn't have been effective without using the gains he had gotten with his effective use of technology. Even with the machine politics, wiretaps were very helpful to the Johnson campaign.)
However, the main thing that the story of Johnson and Stevenson impressed on me was that Stevenson's problem was that he refused to "sink to Johnson's level." He refused to defend himself against Johnson's charges (some of which, like suggesting Stevenson was a Commie stooge, were clearly absurd if people thought about them), and point out problems with Johnson's own record himself. He felt he was above all that.
Well, in the end Johnson went to the Senate and Stevenson didn't. That's what happens when you give up a political fight before you've really lost it.
Walmart did carry an edited version of the computer game Sacrifice, the normal version was rated "M" and the Walmart version was rated "T." I believe it was an experiment. Of course, Sacrifice was a financial failure (though a critical success) and I noticed that the "M" version, packaged with Messiah was selling in Walmart as shovelware.
[I] was watching a show on food the other day. [The show] mentioned that when Nathan's started out people were afraid that their hot dogs were low quality because they were cheaper than the competition. [Nathan's] succeeded by offering free hot dogs to doctors if they would come to eat them in their medical garb.
After all, when you are a second-class citizen, you have NO rights at all, never mind a curtailment of your freedom of speech!
This is not strictly true, a person can be a second class citizen and still have rights. I'll admit, it is far more likely that they will be paper rights and trampled all over by the first class citizens, but they will still actually exist on paper. For example a society can grant some one the right to own property but not the right to vote.
What is currently being set up in the United States is a new class system, in which some people have more rights than others. DRM is part of it, but it isn't all of it. The main thing I see is an attempt to set up a society in which insiders will maintain control of the majority of the wealth and outsiders will not be able to topple them. The insiders consist of a class of people who move between the halls of Congress and the top levels of major American corporations, the outsiders are everyone else. This type of plutocracy has existed in the past in many parts of the world, and it always has disasterous results. As has been noted many times, it is a major feature of colonialism. Both the first wave which brought about the American revolution and the later wave for which brought about the Indian independance movement that Gandhi was a famous leader of.
Mr. Wells, in his "Middle Kingdom" describes the origin of this first war with England: "This war was extraordinary in its origin as growing chiefly out of a commercial misunderstanding; remarkable in its course as being waged between strength and weakness, conscious superiority and ignorant pride; melancholy in its end as forcing the weaker to pay for opium within its borders against all its laws, thus paralyzing the little moral power its feeble government could exert to protect its subjects. . . . It was a turning point in the national life of the Chinese race, but the compulsory payment of six million dollars for the opium destroyed has left a stigma upon the English name."
He also says, "The conflict was now fairly begun; its issue between the parties so unequally matched --one having almost nothing but the right on its side, the other assisted by every material and physical advantage-could easily be foreseen" and again, after speaking of it as being unjust and immoral, he concludes "Great Britain, the first Christian power, really waged this war against the pagan monarch who had only endeavored to put down a vice harmful to his people. The war was looked upon in this light by the Chinese; it will always be so looked upon by the candid historian, and known as the Opium War."
Within fifteen years after this first war, there was another one, and again Great Britain came off victorious. China had to pay another indemnity, three million dollars, and five more treaty ports were opened up. By the terms of the Treaty of Tientsin, the sale of opium in China was legalized in 1858.
All the pieces are falling into place:
1. New powerful cartels being formed by the United States government with global interests and quasi judicial/law enforcement powers.
Of course, my pure self-interest leads me to worry about the effects this will have here in the U.S. of A. not just the rest of the world. I don't want to go to jail for fixing my computer so it actually works correctly after a law is passed that requires it to be shipped broken (and stay broken!). I don't want the RIAA/MPAA to be given special law enforcement rights without any accountability under the Constitution. Basically, I don't want any of what's going on. Looks like we are all going to get it though, whether we like it or not!
Re:Why not a partnership?
on
Borrowing ROMs
·
· Score: 2
Because a lot of classic video game makers would still rather sell their games like this:
I agree with that too. A fast track to citizenship is a good idea. I want people who are contributing to the country to be able to vote.
However, even my greencard idea isn't currently on the table. I know a lot of people who were hoping for more liberal immigration laws who got their hopes dashed on September 11th. (Pre-Sept. 11 there were even rumors of a general amnesty for certain people. I haven't heard of that lately.)
A lot of the people who I know would just like to be able to reside here permanently and not have to worry that things are going to change on them suddenly. (Of course, even full naturalized citizen is kind of second class. My maternal grandfather couldn't legally be president of the United States. That doesn't make much sense to me, since he would probably be a lot more acceptable to people than I would be;-)
Burns: Now, as an added incentive, the second-to-last team to arrive
at the cabin will receive an hilarious "world's first employee trophy." Homer: Hey, this sounds like fun! Burns: And the last team to arrive will be fired. Homer: [chuckles] [realizing] Uh-oh.
And to show that I'm not playing favorites, both Smithers and I will be
participating. Who knows? I might be the unlucky one who gets fired.
[sotto voce] Not bloody likely.
-- Simpsons' episode "Mountain of Madness" direct quote from Simpson's Archive )
Ok, I'm seeing a big lie being repeated over and over again by Sony fanboys. The lie is "the only reason anyone would ever chip their PSX is to play pirated games." I have to thank Sony for being a big help in proving that this is, indeed, a lie.
A long time ago, when I was innocent and mostly unaware of DMCA, I got my PSX modchipped. This was one of the earliest mod chips (this becomes important later in the story). I was in Virginia working for my cousins software company (a defense contractor) and they had this cool video game store there that sold a lot of imported games. Well, they had just gotten in Samurai Spirits 1 & 2 for the Playstation. I bought it and brought it home, and tried to use the "swap method" to play it. (The swap method is where you prop the Playstation open while keeping the closed button under the lid pressed down. You then put an American game in your Playstation, and after it starts to boot swap it with an import.)
Well, this was a failure, so (long story short) I mailed my Playstation to a friend of mine and had him install a modchip. I finally got my Playstation back and spent many happy hours playing Samurai Spirits.
Well, a while later Sony got Capcom to tweak their software so it wouldn't work in modded Playstations. I found this out after buying two games. The first was Rockman III, a very expensive game that I can only play using Bleem! (I'm unwilling to rechip my Playstation with a newer "stealth chip" and I certainly won't ever buy another one.) The second was the American version of Dino Crisis! I solved that problem by getting my friend to ship me a patched CD-R of Dino Crisis, which worked fine in my modded Playstation.
So, essentially, Sony had convinced Capcom to tweak their software so that legitimate copies of their software wouldn't run on my chipped Playstation, but "pirate" games would work fine.
After this experience, I decided Sony was run by the Devil incarnate, something which was only confirmed by their later behavior.
Slashdot Mirror
The used a similar plot in Spider Man and The X-Men in Arcade's Revenge (the video game), except in this case it was an obstacle course created by the evil Arcade, so the environments weren't portrayed as being realistic.
The Organization Man: Chapter 16, The Fight against Genius
Why would anybody want that overpriced, crippled alternative??
Thai Linux Penguin
However, I think that their use of the DMCA should cause people to think twice about buying Apple hardware or software. In this case, there are so many computer companies out there with dirty hands (any company that requires you to buy a copy of Windows that you will never use) that you will have a hard time buying a computer without compromising your principles.
The DMCA is an evil law, the worst kind of corporate welfare. It essentially has prevented legal Free Software DVD tools from being developed. This particular case is simply an extension of that.
The real problem is the DVD format itself, which is chained down by all sorts of license restrictions but has still become ubiquitous. There needs to be a viable, Free alternative, but I don't see how that will be possible since most people's primary DVD players are not general purpose computers.
Ron Paul: Former Libertarian Presidential Candidate serving in Congress as a member of the Republican Party
Victory or not? If a victory, is it pyrrhic?
He's probably "barely" working at Electronics Boutique because he doesn't have the education or the skills for something better. It's hard to find a good job right now even if you are well educated and experienced, imagine looking for one if you are unskilled labor!
Oddly, though, I do agree with her that he shouldn't spend money on video games. Because, if he's living in that woman's house, his #1 priority should be to get out. If he stays, he'll end up strangled by her apron strings. At 19, although I realize this is unfortunately uncommon, a person should be a fully functioning adult. It's unlikely that someone brought up by someone like that will be. I think this need to escape will often show up in people raised like this. (Read H.P. Lovecraft's rather depressing biography sometime.) Of course, our whole society is focused on cutting a person's useful working life short at both ends, by extending childhood into the twenties and encouraging retirement when a person should still have many productive years ahead.
Imagine if this guy committed suicide. I think anyone reading this could see where the problem probably lies, but we'd end up with another frivolous lawsuit against the video gme industry.
The other sad thing is that this makes me despair of our nation's schools. I mean, she thinks she is well spoken. I've written some stupid things in Emails and online, but at least I was aware when I sounded like a raving lunatic.
I think I was trying to grope my way to the idea of Palladium, the idea that computers could be licensed "players" for software the way DVD players could be licensed players for movie data. I missed a key element though. You can play unlicensed data in a licensed DVD player, I think. At least, some DVD players will allow you to play VCDs which aren't signed by DVD encryption.
The computers we are looking at in the future will not only run heavily licensed and restricted software, they will not run Free alternatives. In other words, we will have computers that will run software if and only if it is signed by trusted authorities, and those authorities will be able to decide what will run and what will not. Besides that, work is currently under way to make those authorities legal regualatory bodies with official status, through the CBDTPA.
However, at that time I couldn't even concieve of a law as grotesque as CBDTPA. It didn't even appear at the edge of my nightmares. So, after bringing up the point of the idea of computers being licensed "players" for software, I went off on a tangent about UCITA and click through licenses making reverse engineering illegal.
Hmm, you've pointed out a major flaw in my question. If Slashdot ever interviews RMS again, I'll be able to frame the issue better. However, I was asking about a concept of Free Harware that would be complementary to the idea of Free Software.
It is actually kind of depressing that even though we were all so well aware of what was coming we are still here, right up against the wall with so little progress to show.
P.S. Yes, I am aware of how the "M$" makes me look :-) the sad thing is I am a lot like that guy, except until I got my well paying IT job it was my parent's garage, not basement.
We ran on Tomcat without Apache, it worked very well. Unfortunately, the company went the way of other .coms, but the technology behind the company was fundamentally sound.
Sony, can't live with 'em, can't legally coat their executives with napalm and set 'em ablaze...
Eureka Movies
Remember you think of these people as dirt poor, but if they were really that dirt poor they wouldn't be buying DVDs or VCDs at all. If the cost of DVDs or VCDs gets out of hand, they will either:
1. Resort to piracy.
2. Stick to locally produced content.
3. Spend their money on other forms of entertainment, like Net Cafes.
4. Create DVD/VCD libraries.
The best thing for people in these countries, anyway, would be to spend more on local content. That way they could build up local industries with world-exportable product (like Japan and Hong Kong have).
In fact, it occurs to me that the sinister American media cartels might discount their content in those regions to prevent such competition from arises. (I mean, it's either that or they are just ruthlessly ripping off people in the more well to do areas of the globe. Oh, or maybe it is both. Knowing them, I'll go with both.)
If your job is working with computers, then the stuff coming out of Washington should terrify you. They could severely limit the amount of growth in the computer field with some of these proposals. Eventually, that means it will be likely that you will have to find a new career doing something other than coding. I mean, we all have to eat. Even if you don't love working with computers for their own sake, you should at least consider the monetary aspect. (I know, we are all supposed to live on our love of coding and manufacture things like food and clothes out of our good intentions.)
Technology and politics always go together. New technology always shakes things up and creates chaos. In authoritarian societies, this chaos can lead to revolution and counter revolution, to bloodshed and mayhem. In democratic societies, the change is still unpleasant. Politics is never easy, it's never quick. What this article is saying is, "let's just stay in our ivory towers and wait for the storm to blow over?" Maybe he believs that technological revolutions can't be stifled by a concerted effort of politicians. How many time do I have to cite this article, UNNATURAL MONOPOLY: CRITICAL MOMENTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE BELL SYSTEM MONOPOLY, on the telephone monopoly before people like Declan McCullough get it?
Recently I have been reading a great book about politics. It's called Means of Ascent and it is about a ruthless, brilliant politician named Lyndon Baines Johnson (and to a lesser extent, to his opponent in the first Senate race LBJ ever won, Coke Stevenson).
Johnson was brilliant at using money and technology to get his message out to the voters (his message mostly being about destroying Coke Stevenson's reputation in the State of Texas). How did Johnson use technology? Well, he used the radio much more effectively than previous Texas politicians. He also used the helicopter to go from speech to speech. The book makes a point that this kind of campaigning was extremely effective. (Of course, Johnson still had to turn to what I will euphemistically call "machine politics" in the end, but even that wouldn't have been effective without using the gains he had gotten with his effective use of technology. Even with the machine politics, wiretaps were very helpful to the Johnson campaign.)
However, the main thing that the story of Johnson and Stevenson impressed on me was that Stevenson's problem was that he refused to "sink to Johnson's level." He refused to defend himself against Johnson's charges (some of which, like suggesting Stevenson was a Commie stooge, were clearly absurd if people thought about them), and point out problems with Johnson's own record himself. He felt he was above all that.
Well, in the end Johnson went to the Senate and Stevenson didn't. That's what happens when you give up a political fight before you've really lost it.
Hoppeism and the Bailout
Unfortunately, I know of no way as an American to profit from these bail-outs.
Also, the protectionist tariffs on behalf of the American steel and soft wood industries have the same basis as a bail out. Oh! Don't forget the Airline Industry, well see what happens the next time they whine for a bail out...
Walmart did carry an edited version of the computer game Sacrifice , the normal version was rated "M" and the Walmart version was rated "T." I believe it was an experiment. Of course, Sacrifice was a financial failure (though a critical success) and I noticed that the "M" version, packaged with Messiah was selling in Walmart as shovelware.
Speaking of which, I hated the 8080Xt Vendex Headstart. It was vastly inferior to my Atari 800...
Now that's marketing!
Bacardi Girl: No, I'm talking to you because I'm in love with you.
Dungeon & Guarder
I keep getting killed though... it isn't easy!
What is currently being set up in the United States is a new class system, in which some people have more rights than others. DRM is part of it, but it isn't all of it. The main thing I see is an attempt to set up a society in which insiders will maintain control of the majority of the wealth and outsiders will not be able to topple them. The insiders consist of a class of people who move between the halls of Congress and the top levels of major American corporations, the outsiders are everyone else. This type of plutocracy has existed in the past in many parts of the world, and it always has disasterous results. As has been noted many times, it is a major feature of colonialism. Both the first wave which brought about the American revolution and the later wave for which brought about the Indian independance movement that Gandhi was a famous leader of.
These revolutionary movements were primarily aligned against economic concerns. That's what the British East India Tea Company was about. The preferential treatment of the British East India Tea Company by the British government was a major factor in sparking the American revolution. (I can just see Slashdot circa 177X, "I can't believe that you are getting upset about something as trivial as a tea monoply when there are som many more serious injustices in the world, have some sense of proportion!!") Of course, later the British East India Company was to turn to the opium trade to expand its interests in China. This opium trade was used as an excuse to sieze parts of China for the British Empire.
All the pieces are falling into place:1. New powerful cartels being formed by the United States government with global interests and quasi judicial/law enforcement powers.
2. A new openness about the so-called rightness of imperialism by politically connected intellectuals.
3. Propaganda campaigns designed to link copyright infringement with terrorism. (And thus justify the use of force, both in the domestic and foreign spheres.)
Of course, my pure self-interest leads me to worry about the effects this will have here in the U.S. of A. not just the rest of the world. I don't want to go to jail for fixing my computer so it actually works correctly after a law is passed that requires it to be shipped broken (and stay broken!). I don't want the RIAA/MPAA to be given special law enforcement rights without any accountability under the Constitution. Basically, I don't want any of what's going on. Looks like we are all going to get it though, whether we like it or not!
Konami Collector Series: Castlevania and Contra
Nintendo, on the other hand, prefers to release older games as Game Boy Advance titles.
However, even my greencard idea isn't currently on the table. I know a lot of people who were hoping for more liberal immigration laws who got their hopes dashed on September 11th. (Pre-Sept. 11 there were even rumors of a general amnesty for certain people. I haven't heard of that lately.)
A lot of the people who I know would just like to be able to reside here permanently and not have to worry that things are going to change on them suddenly. (Of course, even full naturalized citizen is kind of second class. My maternal grandfather couldn't legally be president of the United States. That doesn't make much sense to me, since he would probably be a lot more acceptable to people than I would be ;-)
You really shouldn't pick on the geek market, unless Pepsi is only being marketed to geeks. I don't think it is.
A long time ago, when I was innocent and mostly unaware of DMCA, I got my PSX modchipped. This was one of the earliest mod chips (this becomes important later in the story). I was in Virginia working for my cousins software company (a defense contractor) and they had this cool video game store there that sold a lot of imported games. Well, they had just gotten in Samurai Spirits 1 & 2 for the Playstation. I bought it and brought it home, and tried to use the "swap method" to play it. (The swap method is where you prop the Playstation open while keeping the closed button under the lid pressed down. You then put an American game in your Playstation, and after it starts to boot swap it with an import.)
Well, this was a failure, so (long story short) I mailed my Playstation to a friend of mine and had him install a modchip. I finally got my Playstation back and spent many happy hours playing Samurai Spirits.
Well, a while later Sony got Capcom to tweak their software so it wouldn't work in modded Playstations. I found this out after buying two games. The first was Rockman III, a very expensive game that I can only play using Bleem! (I'm unwilling to rechip my Playstation with a newer "stealth chip" and I certainly won't ever buy another one.) The second was the American version of Dino Crisis! I solved that problem by getting my friend to ship me a patched CD-R of Dino Crisis, which worked fine in my modded Playstation.
So, essentially, Sony had convinced Capcom to tweak their software so that legitimate copies of their software wouldn't run on my chipped Playstation, but "pirate" games would work fine.
After this experience, I decided Sony was run by the Devil incarnate, something which was only confirmed by their later behavior.