Re:What nintendo etc needs to do to END illegal ro
on
Borrowing ROMs
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· Score: 2, Informative
The only issue I can see with this : royalty compensation to the original authors. I've never seen an agreement that developers must sign with NOA (or any of the console manufacturers), so I'm not sure if NOA has the right to redistribute the ROMs for ALL of the carts for ALL of their systems. With the sheer number of carts out there, it would be hard to track down each and every developer (many of them are probably defunct) to send checks for the ROMs purchased.
But I do agree with the sentiment -- at the bare minimum NOA should do this for their own titles. I for one would pay a few bucks for each ROM, for each Nintendo first-party title.
Re:This sounds...
on
Borrowing ROMs
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· Score: 3, Informative
It looks like NOA hasn't contacted them in over a year regarding the alleged violation. Perhaps that means NOA realized they don't have much of a case against ConsoleClassix.com. Either that or they've been brewing a legal case for the last 13 months, which doesn't sound all that likely to me.
Who knows, maybe someone has finally figured out a way to sling stones at the giants and defeat them.
This sounds to me like the Prohibition era. Something that was seemingly your right (consuming alcohol) became an unlawful act overnight. The problem was that bootlegging became an overnight industry. Hell, from what I remember in some history books, it was members of Congress and other high profile socialites that ended up keeping bootleggers in business. It took them 15 or so years, but they finally repealed the 18th Ammendment.
All this DRM crap is probably gonna run the same course. We will enter a period where even owning a black marker will land you in jail, loaning your CD to your neighbor becomes a federal crime and installing a copy of Windows without express written consent from Microsoft can land you more time in prison than "real" crimes. Then the Congresspersons we have now will be voted out, replaced by a younger generation that sees the restrictions as useless. Their collective strings won't be pulled by the RIAA, and their pocketbooks won't have been lined by big corporations. The laws will get repealed and all will be forgotten. We just have to endure a bit of dark time before our lawmakers realize just what these laws actually mean.
there has to be some organization to do the same for C/C++ or it will surely grow old and die
It's called the ISO C++ Standard Committee. The members meet regularly and are comprised of the world's C++ experts.
GUI's are as standard as iostreams now, yet there is no standard for programming GUI's
If you are looking for a C++ standard in GUIs, then you will most likely go to the grave with that wish. C++ (like it's older sibling, C) is not designed as a language to handle these platform-specific functions. Many people (yourself seemingly included) seem to think that this means C++ is somehow defunt, archaic, useless, etc. The fact is that the language is actually designed to decouple itself from such functionality, leaving the major platfom-specifics up to the implementer of the compiler/environment. I like it this way, many C++ developers the world over like it this way, and I think we all would be upset if it changed.
Read The Design and Evolution of C++ sometime. It will open your eyes to the realization that C++ is not an environment like Java, but just a basic language to assist you in creating your environment.
And that is breaking and entering. A more appropriate method would be to setup a door with said lock, have the reporter run a special on this (at the same time making you the "hero" in discovering this), then have the reporter make a big deal over the fact that government buildings have this insecurity.
Why does it have to be spelled out for people that most (all) U.S. laws contain no special clauses that excuse you from the penalty of committing a crime if you are only committing the act for "educational" purposes. Suddenly the world would be filled with more "teachers" than society could deal with. "Your Honor, I merely shot Jeff in the chest 16 times to demonstrate that people should wear a bulletproof vest while walking around New York City. I'm trying to help educate our public and save more lives!"
Now...once this fscking P2P bill in Congress gets passed, things will definitely change. Sony will be able to break into an unsecured network and simply say that they thought Judge Smith was using Gnutella to host Barry Manilow MP3s.
And there is a large difference in theorizing how an attack could take place versus actually making an attack to demonstrate your hypothesis. The news can point out all the bridges and nuclear plants that they want; you don't seem them actually carrying through with their ideas to demonstrate said insecurities. A major difference between what this gentleman in Houston did.
Advanced Animation and Rendering Techniques by Alan Watt Mathematics for Computer Graphics Applications by M. E. Mortenson Efficient Memory Programming by David Loshin Game Programming Gems series isn't half bad. Kinda pricey, though. Physics for Game Developers by David Bourg Books by Jim Blinn For a trip down memory lane, Graphics Programming Black Book by Michael Abrash.
Granted these don't all apply to strictly Computer Graphics as a field, but games and graphics go hand-in-hand.
Don't have AirPort or Ethernet or a CD burner? I hear a lot of PCs, for reasons that are beyond me, still don't ship with any of those built in. Amazing!
Because poor people have a right to a computer. Like it or not, there are people that go to Sam's, Costco or some other discount warehouse and buy a $399 e-Machines Celeron with a 12" monitor, a CD-ROM drive and a modem. Many people can't (or won't) spend more than that on a computer.
Of course, the odds of these people suddenly rushing out to drop $1500 on the latest iMac is likely nil, but that's beside the point.:^)
time = LookAtWatch(); if ( NULL == time ) time = LookOutside(); if ( DARK == time ) money = RumageForQuarters(); if ( NULL == money ) money = AskCoworkersForQuarters();
Want to use a VPN so you can work from home easily? Legal. Want to watch streaming concerts and keynotes of big events? Maybe view videos of your classes? Legal. Want to have a decent ping on game servers? Legal. Want to download the latest 200MB game demo in a matter of minutes? Legal. Want to try videoconferencing with your loved ones to save phone bills? Legal.
If you can't think of legal uses for broadband, then maybe you're one of those people that's content to stick with a dial-up modem.
I believe OS X is also localized in Norwegian, but I could be wrong on this count
Apple's site in Norwegian. I would think that Norwegian is one of the languages given this site. I'm also making the assumption that this truly is Norwegian, and not one of the other Scandinavian languages that all closely resemble each other. I want to say that Norsk, Dansk and Svensk were listed as languages, but I don't have a copy of OS X in front of me to verify.
It would be very good for Apple to jump on this and push their solutions.
Well, 98 -> 2K wasn't really meant as an upgrade path for consumers to follow. 98 -> XP is that upgrade. It's supposed to merge the consumer compatibility of 98 (ie, for games and such) with the stability of 2K. I guess if you're coming from 2K there isn't much to offer, but there's plenty if you're upgrading from any of the consumer OSes.
then how come WinXP was such garbage? couldn't they "fix" their own software too?
What exactly needs fixing in XP? This is a serious question...I've been using it since the first beta for my work development box on a Compaq laptop. I've only run into 1 issue, and that looks to be fixed in the upcoming service pack. Is it just the new graphics that you don't like, or have you found some major glitches that actually keep you from using your machine productively?
If you need suggestions, listen to several of the top internet radio stations that play electronic music. Groove Radio, Cablemusic.com, or my personal favorite, Radio Free Virgin. These radio stations all have branded players that will display the song, sometimes even giving you a way to purchase the music right away. It's an awesome way to start finding new artists that appeal to your electronic music tastes. RFV even has a couple of electronic stations that allow you to hear different styles.
I'm sure this has been suggested, but also try finding local record shops (not the mainstream ones) that carry music meant for DJs. Usually you'll find club DJs hanging out there, and you can ask them what's new and what's good.
Salesperson Bob: I need your email address. Answer: Sure thing. It is G... double E... T... B... double E... N... T... @hotmail.com
Better yet, tell 'em that your e-mail is lover@teensex.com. Or come up with something even more raunchy than that. If they give you any weird looks or complain, hey, they asked you!
May seem funny now, but it won't be so funny when 2 men in black suits show up and confiscate all of your possessions in the name telecomm sexual harassment.
Or maybe you just like having your phone tapped by Big Brother...
Why doesn't the UK join the rest of the world and drive on the correct side of the road? Same reason we bill our cell phones to the telephone owner -- that's the way it started and it's too hard to change that now.
I don't know if I speak for a majority of cellphone-toting Americans, but I for one shudder at the thought of ME getting billed everytime I need to call a friend that has a cell phone. I suppose it works if that's how your economy has learned to use cellphones, but try telling the 300 million people in the US that it will cost them money to call a friend and say hello. Land lines don't work that way, why should cell phones?
Last time I used CodeWarrior on a Mac, this code ran without a hitch:
// assume main and all that other stuff long x = 0; cout << "2 / x = " << 2 / x << endl; // end
Most platforms will throw some sort of exception, presumably one that originates at the processor level. The output of this on OS X was:
2 / x = 0
2 divided by zero equals zero sounds like a bug. Yes, I know there are registers you can check in the PPC...but it still sounds bad to me. Maybe there's a math person out there with a reason why this expression would be evaulated this way. The fact also remains that there isn't a good way in C++ to catch this problem/exception without writing some assembler.
The argument that MS could possibly be a small fraction of the entity it is today -- well, it's just plain lame. People jumped on the Sun/Java bandwagon when Java seemed like nothing more than the pipe dream of a PhD locked in a corner office somewhere. There are also highly successful companies that continue to develop for Apple's platforms. Microsoft may be diminished in the future, but by the time it becomes a serious non-competitor in the marketplace,.NET will be a thing of the past and we'll all be programming in something totally different.
And who said that just because you use.NET your application won't be portable. Unless you're using a framework like Qt, the GUI code has to be rewritten for each platform. As much as you'd like to think that C/C++ will just transfer from one environment to the other, most good apps require some sort of reworking to take advantage of OS-specific APIs for more than just GUI stuff. I've been doing x-platform development for a while now and C++ makes it easier, but it's not the panacea that you seem to think it is..NET simply makes it easier to write the MS-specific portions of you app, and you can do it in C++. The rest of your code can be whatever you want -- you just may be stuck writing some hooks between your Win32/64 code and you.NET code, which is not very difficult if you know what you're doing.
Come up with a different argument than "Microsoft might possibly vanish in a puff of smoke just like the Earth did in Odyssey 5". Or at least back up your argument with more than ".NET is simply the worst development tool out there." So far I see no reason why I shouldn't rely on MS's new framework for parts of my next app based on your statements above.
Erasing memory is/was always to get around. Just tell the prof that you need what's in there for another class. You can't erase the memory cause you lose programs for Calculus or something. Always worked for me...
But erasing memory and all of this other crap is just darting around the real problem -- teachers aren't adapting to the tools available for the students. I'm sure if you were to dig up Newton he'd laugh at the people that used a book of logarithmic tables, let alone high-powered calculators. There will always be the people that gripe about "how good kids today have it" and "how the more archaic method of my education is the better way." That's not the answer -- the answer is that teachers need to design courses and exams around the tools. I had a chemistry teacher in college that let you have a calculator, gave you a sheet with ALL of the relavent formulae on it and even encouraged you to fill up your TI-8? with data. The exams were always designed to test your ability to think and apply what you should have learned. All of the cheats and formulae and math figures in the world wouldn't help on these tests if you didn't understand how to apply the knowledge.
So what if a kid has a calculator that can derive, integrate, draw circles and play games? Start designing cirricula around these new-fangled machines and find a way to test a student's application of the material. That will make calculators and PDAs and computers useless for "doing the work for you".
But that money comes from your tuition anyways, so the savings are all only perceived
The savings aren't perceived...they're real for a student. The more Mom and Dad can pay for, the more money that's left over for chicks and beer! And the more to spend CDRs to store all of that other free software you get from the school's network...
I follow you. We'll just have to see what happens when this case appears in a different form, in a different EU country. Incidentally, I wonder if a company would be able to shrug off a court case if that company had dealings in other EU nations. ie, if MS could tell the German government to piss off because they had no ties to Germany but did have ties to, say, France. I'm not up on the European legal system, but it's a scary thought that this case provokes.
Perhaps you'd care to point out where exactly I say "MS doesn't have any business in Germany." I was merely responding to sterno's comment about this case appearing in a "major venue". My comments implied that Germany IS a major venue and the case has real implications in and outside Europe.
I think it is you that needs to work on those higher-level reading skills...
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The only issue I can see with this : royalty compensation to the original authors. I've never seen an agreement that developers must sign with NOA (or any of the console manufacturers), so I'm not sure if NOA has the right to redistribute the ROMs for ALL of the carts for ALL of their systems. With the sheer number of carts out there, it would be hard to track down each and every developer (many of them are probably defunct) to send checks for the ROMs purchased.
But I do agree with the sentiment -- at the bare minimum NOA should do this for their own titles. I for one would pay a few bucks for each ROM, for each Nintendo first-party title.
http://www.consoleclassix.com/legal.htm
It looks like NOA hasn't contacted them in over a year regarding the alleged violation. Perhaps that means NOA realized they don't have much of a case against ConsoleClassix.com. Either that or they've been brewing a legal case for the last 13 months, which doesn't sound all that likely to me.
Who knows, maybe someone has finally figured out a way to sling stones at the giants and defeat them.
This sounds to me like the Prohibition era. Something that was seemingly your right (consuming alcohol) became an unlawful act overnight. The problem was that bootlegging became an overnight industry. Hell, from what I remember in some history books, it was members of Congress and other high profile socialites that ended up keeping bootleggers in business. It took them 15 or so years, but they finally repealed the 18th Ammendment.
All this DRM crap is probably gonna run the same course. We will enter a period where even owning a black marker will land you in jail, loaning your CD to your neighbor becomes a federal crime and installing a copy of Windows without express written consent from Microsoft can land you more time in prison than "real" crimes. Then the Congresspersons we have now will be voted out, replaced by a younger generation that sees the restrictions as useless. Their collective strings won't be pulled by the RIAA, and their pocketbooks won't have been lined by big corporations. The laws will get repealed and all will be forgotten. We just have to endure a bit of dark time before our lawmakers realize just what these laws actually mean.
there has to be some organization to do the same for C/C++ or it will surely grow old and die
It's called the ISO C++ Standard Committee. The members meet regularly and are comprised of the world's C++ experts.
GUI's are as standard as iostreams now, yet there is no standard for programming GUI's
If you are looking for a C++ standard in GUIs, then you will most likely go to the grave with that wish. C++ (like it's older sibling, C) is not designed as a language to handle these platform-specific functions. Many people (yourself seemingly included) seem to think that this means C++ is somehow defunt, archaic, useless, etc. The fact is that the language is actually designed to decouple itself from such functionality, leaving the major platfom-specifics up to the implementer of the compiler/environment. I like it this way, many C++ developers the world over like it this way, and I think we all would be upset if it changed.
Read The Design and Evolution of C++ sometime. It will open your eyes to the realization that C++ is not an environment like Java, but just a basic language to assist you in creating your environment.
And that is breaking and entering. A more appropriate method would be to setup a door with said lock, have the reporter run a special on this (at the same time making you the "hero" in discovering this), then have the reporter make a big deal over the fact that government buildings have this insecurity.
Why does it have to be spelled out for people that most (all) U.S. laws contain no special clauses that excuse you from the penalty of committing a crime if you are only committing the act for "educational" purposes. Suddenly the world would be filled with more "teachers" than society could deal with. "Your Honor, I merely shot Jeff in the chest 16 times to demonstrate that people should wear a bulletproof vest while walking around New York City. I'm trying to help educate our public and save more lives!"
Now...once this fscking P2P bill in Congress gets passed, things will definitely change. Sony will be able to break into an unsecured network and simply say that they thought Judge Smith was using Gnutella to host Barry Manilow MP3s.
And there is a large difference in theorizing how an attack could take place versus actually making an attack to demonstrate your hypothesis. The news can point out all the bridges and nuclear plants that they want; you don't seem them actually carrying through with their ideas to demonstrate said insecurities. A major difference between what this gentleman in Houston did.
Add these to your list :
Advanced Animation and Rendering Techniques by Alan Watt
Mathematics for Computer Graphics Applications by M. E. Mortenson
Efficient Memory Programming by David Loshin
Game Programming Gems series isn't half bad. Kinda pricey, though.
Physics for Game Developers by David Bourg
Books by Jim Blinn
For a trip down memory lane, Graphics Programming Black Book by Michael Abrash.
Granted these don't all apply to strictly Computer Graphics as a field, but games and graphics go hand-in-hand.
I taught myself C with that book and had no problems whatsoever. It's not that bad.
Don't have AirPort or Ethernet or a CD burner? I hear a lot of PCs, for reasons that are beyond me, still don't ship with any of those built in. Amazing!
:^)
Because poor people have a right to a computer. Like it or not, there are people that go to Sam's, Costco or some other discount warehouse and buy a $399 e-Machines Celeron with a 12" monitor, a CD-ROM drive and a modem. Many people can't (or won't) spend more than that on a computer.
Of course, the odds of these people suddenly rushing out to drop $1500 on the latest iMac is likely nil, but that's beside the point.
Want to use a VPN so you can work from home easily? Legal.
Want to watch streaming concerts and keynotes of big events? Maybe view videos of your classes? Legal.
Want to have a decent ping on game servers? Legal.
Want to download the latest 200MB game demo in a matter of minutes? Legal.
Want to try videoconferencing with your loved ones to save phone bills? Legal.
If you can't think of legal uses for broadband, then maybe you're one of those people that's content to stick with a dial-up modem.
I believe OS X is also localized in Norwegian, but I could be wrong on this count
Apple's site in Norwegian. I would think that Norwegian is one of the languages given this site. I'm also making the assumption that this truly is Norwegian, and not one of the other Scandinavian languages that all closely resemble each other. I want to say that Norsk, Dansk and Svensk were listed as languages, but I don't have a copy of OS X in front of me to verify.
It would be very good for Apple to jump on this and push their solutions.
Well, 98 -> 2K wasn't really meant as an upgrade path for consumers to follow. 98 -> XP is that upgrade. It's supposed to merge the consumer compatibility of 98 (ie, for games and such) with the stability of 2K. I guess if you're coming from 2K there isn't much to offer, but there's plenty if you're upgrading from any of the consumer OSes.
Well, maybe "plenty" is a strong word here...
then how come WinXP was such garbage? couldn't they "fix" their own software too?
What exactly needs fixing in XP? This is a serious question...I've been using it since the first beta for my work development box on a Compaq laptop. I've only run into 1 issue, and that looks to be fixed in the upcoming service pack. Is it just the new graphics that you don't like, or have you found some major glitches that actually keep you from using your machine productively?
If you need suggestions, listen to several of the top internet radio stations that play electronic music. Groove Radio, Cablemusic.com, or my personal favorite, Radio Free Virgin. These radio stations all have branded players that will display the song, sometimes even giving you a way to purchase the music right away. It's an awesome way to start finding new artists that appeal to your electronic music tastes. RFV even has a couple of electronic stations that allow you to hear different styles.
I'm sure this has been suggested, but also try finding local record shops (not the mainstream ones) that carry music meant for DJs. Usually you'll find club DJs hanging out there, and you can ask them what's new and what's good.
Salesperson Bob: I need your email address.
Answer: Sure thing. It is G... double E... T... B... double E... N... T... @hotmail.com
Better yet, tell 'em that your e-mail is lover@teensex.com. Or come up with something even more raunchy than that. If they give you any weird looks or complain, hey, they asked you!
May seem funny now, but it won't be so funny when 2 men in black suits show up and confiscate all of your possessions in the name telecomm sexual harassment.
Or maybe you just like having your phone tapped by Big Brother...
Why doesn't the UK join the rest of the world and drive on the correct side of the road? Same reason we bill our cell phones to the telephone owner -- that's the way it started and it's too hard to change that now.
I don't know if I speak for a majority of cellphone-toting Americans, but I for one shudder at the thought of ME getting billed everytime I need to call a friend that has a cell phone. I suppose it works if that's how your economy has learned to use cellphones, but try telling the 300 million people in the US that it will cost them money to call a friend and say hello. Land lines don't work that way, why should cell phones?
Most platforms will throw some sort of exception, presumably one that originates at the processor level. The output of this on OS X was
2 divided by zero equals zero sounds like a bug. Yes, I know there are registers you can check in the PPC...but it still sounds bad to me. Maybe there's a math person out there with a reason why this expression would be evaulated this way. The fact also remains that there isn't a good way in C++ to catch this problem/exception without writing some assembler.
The argument that MS could possibly be a small fraction of the entity it is today -- well, it's just plain lame. People jumped on the Sun/Java bandwagon when Java seemed like nothing more than the pipe dream of a PhD locked in a corner office somewhere. There are also highly successful companies that continue to develop for Apple's platforms. Microsoft may be diminished in the future, but by the time it becomes a serious non-competitor in the marketplace, .NET will be a thing of the past and we'll all be programming in something totally different.
.NET your application won't be portable. Unless you're using a framework like Qt, the GUI code has to be rewritten for each platform. As much as you'd like to think that C/C++ will just transfer from one environment to the other, most good apps require some sort of reworking to take advantage of OS-specific APIs for more than just GUI stuff. I've been doing x-platform development for a while now and C++ makes it easier, but it's not the panacea that you seem to think it is. .NET simply makes it easier to write the MS-specific portions of you app, and you can do it in C++. The rest of your code can be whatever you want -- you just may be stuck writing some hooks between your Win32/64 code and you .NET code, which is not very difficult if you know what you're doing.
And who said that just because you use
Come up with a different argument than "Microsoft might possibly vanish in a puff of smoke just like the Earth did in Odyssey 5". Or at least back up your argument with more than ".NET is simply the worst development tool out there." So far I see no reason why I shouldn't rely on MS's new framework for parts of my next app based on your statements above.
Really? And where is exactly is this evacuation plan should an object of this size crash into, ohhhh, I don't know, an overpopulated section of India?
I don't think there's an easy way to relocate 100 million people or a number of that magnitude.
Erasing memory is/was always to get around. Just tell the prof that you need what's in there for another class. You can't erase the memory cause you lose programs for Calculus or something. Always worked for me...
But erasing memory and all of this other crap is just darting around the real problem -- teachers aren't adapting to the tools available for the students. I'm sure if you were to dig up Newton he'd laugh at the people that used a book of logarithmic tables, let alone high-powered calculators. There will always be the people that gripe about "how good kids today have it" and "how the more archaic method of my education is the better way." That's not the answer -- the answer is that teachers need to design courses and exams around the tools. I had a chemistry teacher in college that let you have a calculator, gave you a sheet with ALL of the relavent formulae on it and even encouraged you to fill up your TI-8? with data. The exams were always designed to test your ability to think and apply what you should have learned. All of the cheats and formulae and math figures in the world wouldn't help on these tests if you didn't understand how to apply the knowledge.
So what if a kid has a calculator that can derive, integrate, draw circles and play games? Start designing cirricula around these new-fangled machines and find a way to test a student's application of the material. That will make calculators and PDAs and computers useless for "doing the work for you".
But that money comes from your tuition anyways, so the savings are all only perceived
The savings aren't perceived...they're real for a student. The more Mom and Dad can pay for, the more money that's left over for chicks and beer! And the more to spend CDRs to store all of that other free software you get from the school's network...
I follow you. We'll just have to see what happens when this case appears in a different form, in a different EU country. Incidentally, I wonder if a company would be able to shrug off a court case if that company had dealings in other EU nations. ie, if MS could tell the German government to piss off because they had no ties to Germany but did have ties to, say, France. I'm not up on the European legal system, but it's a scary thought that this case provokes.
Perhaps you'd care to point out where exactly I say "MS doesn't have any business in Germany." I was merely responding to sterno's comment about this case appearing in a "major venue". My comments implied that Germany IS a major venue and the case has real implications in and outside Europe.
I think it is you that needs to work on those higher-level reading skills...